“Why don’t she hire a hall?”
“For God’s sake—muzzle it.”
All along the car people were craning their necks to see her. She looked out. They were passing Eighteenth street. Another three quarters of an hour and she would be home. Three quarters of an hour more of this—and then—home—the deserted flat—and no supper for herself.
The picture of the other came to her, gently, insinuatingly. To get off, the station after next, and take a taxi to his house… And someone would take the baby out of her arms and she could sink onto a soft bed, and know that she would not have to raise her weary limbs again, nor rouse her tired brain to action.
The train stopped at Grand Central and even more people got on.
To get off at the next station and step into a taxi—
“People with babies shouldn’t travel in the rush hours.”
—and have somebody take the baby from her arms—
“God! Doesn’t it ever let up?”
—and to be able to sleep—tight, sound sleep—relaxed—
“Hey! Charlie! Tell that dame her kid’s crying. Maybe she don’t know it.”
—to drop it all from her shoulders for one perfect? night—
“Aw, give it Rough-on-Rats! Dey don’t die in de house.”
—to feel that somebody else—
“Seventy-Second street!” yelled the guard.
By a miracle she was able to get through the crowd and out in time.
* * * *
In the luxurious semi-darkness of a big, well-ordered room, Nedda lay, and stretched her limbs deliciously, in the embracing softness of the huge four-poster bed. The weight was gone from her head, and from her heart, and body. An ecstatic numbness crept up from her limbs. She said to herself exultantly, though with increasing drowsiness, over and over, “I am going to sleep—I am going to sleep… Who knows whether Esau, eating his pottage, did not consider it well worth the trifling cost of a birthright…
To Nedda there was nothing but soul-deep content in the abandon of the moment that comes before longed-for sleep. Even the sound of a man’s voice somewhere in the house, did not send a disturbing wave of reminiscence through her waning consciousness…
She smiled happily at the Ogre, now grinning no longer, but vanishing discomfited through a door which had opened softly, somewhere. And the smile did not fade even when the Ogre seemed suddenly grown concrete, with dark eyes and a Mack moustache. For she had already passed into the Promised Land of Sleep.
WE CAN’T AFFORD IT
“I don’t want to hetz you up, Bessie, but the answer is, you got to put your feet down with Irving. He’s got to give you more money.” Bessie Apfel looked down at her thus-mentioned pedal extremities where she had them half curled under her on her mother’s lavender-satin bed quilt. The expression in her eyes, still dewy with recent tears, was not exactly hopeful. The feet in high-heeled, soft-kid pumps did not look reassuringly capable of solving her problem.
A shaft of September sunlight streaming through the half-curtained window of Mrs. Levinson’s big gaily French-cretonned bedroom brought out subtle tones of red in her daughter’s fluffy dark hair and lines of gray not at all subtle in her own. No, there was nothing subtle about Mrs. Levinson. What she was, she was. A very comely, small-featured, well-corseted, blue-serge-clad matron with a great energy, a great shrewdness, and a great kindness inscribed in her still-sparkling black eyes where all who ran might perceive. The history of her life, complete in two volumes, she carried on her hands—five huge, unimpeachable, blue-white diamond rings to show whither she had risen; and the red, wrinkled, work-roughened skin and knobby knuckles underneath to show whence.
Bessie was a small-scale duplicate of her mother—more subtly presented, more delicately toned. Before her marriage she had always been considered an extraordinarily pretty girl, even in Flatbush, where pretty girls are by no means extraordinary. She had an utterly insignificant nose, the kind of mouth that is more often written of than encountered and an eternal au secours crying from the depths of the biggest, brownest, velvetiest eyes imaginable. Her figure might best be described as a small armful.
“It can’t go on this way!” continued Mrs. Levinson. She was embroidering a sixty-inch luncheon cloth for Bessie, and she jabbed the stiletto violently but skillfully into a potential eyelet. “I wouldn’t say if he wasn’t making it. But Counselor Goldstein says last year he made out for him the income tax on twelve thousand dollars.”
“Twelve thou—” Bessie sat up incredulously, her five-feet-three sinking deep into the soft lavender comforter.
“Honest! I didn’t told you before, because what’s the use to hetz you up? I thought maybe with good treatment you’ll bring him round. But now I see it’s a mistake. You got to put down your feet.”
Bessie wriggled one small pump on and off a narrow heel, her expression more utterly au secours than ever.
“It’s not easy, mamma. I’ve tried lots of times to reason with him. But you just can’t argue with Irving. Either he changes the subject, or he says ‘We can’t afford it,’ and that’s all the satisfaction I get.”
“If there’s anything tighter than a German Jew that’s tight I got to meet it yet. Forty dollars a week to give his wife when he’s making easy over two hundred! And she stands for it!”
“But, mamma, what can I do? I can’t be always fighting, especially over money. I’d rather do without than keep nagging for a thing.”
“Sure! Don’t I know? And don’t he know too? Is he such a damn fool he don’t know that rather than fight you’ll do without? And rather than you should do without, I’ll give?”
“I feel so ashamed—sometimes—to keep taking—”
“What do you got to feel ashamed? What did papa and I work for all our life, only you should have something? You shouldn’t feel ashamed, darling. He should feel ashamed.”
There was a little silence while Mrs. Levinson poked little lakes in the linen and then sent her needle traveling dexterously round the shores. Bessie let her eyes wander pensively, down the tree-bordered street. It was one of those shrub-decorated, park-tended, colorfully named streets which distinguish Flatbush from other sections of the borough that are merely Brooklyn. Every house on the street was the kind which—pictured in a suburban-real-estate booklet—brings a certain look into the eye of the urban householder that bodes ill for the urban landlord. Every garden showed the loving care of a gardener—of two gardeners, I should say—the Cincotta brothers, fifteen dollars a month, gardens tended in summer, lawns sodded in spring, furnace and snow shoveling in winter, leaves raked in the fall.
“You know, darling,” Mrs. Levinson went on, “it ain’t because I don’t want to keep on giving. What I got is yours. When I’m gone you get it all. You could have it today if you need it. All I want is enough I shouldn’t have to beg in my old age my son-in-law for a crust. But I see it’s a mistake, giving you. The more you get from me the less he bothers himself. And you can’t stand that krenk all the time. I can’t understand such a gut. Don’t he know things is gone up?”
“Of course I’ve told him enough times. But all he says is ‘We can’t afford it.’”
“If I knew before you married him he was such a gut d’ye think he’d get my Bessie? No! I thought really he’s the grandest feller in Noo York.”
“He is, mamma—really. In everything but money he’s grand. He isn’t a crank. He’s satisfied with everything I put on the table, so long as it isn’t fish or pudding. He doesn’t expect me to stick round the house all the time like some girls have to. We’re out every night and I have all the freedom in the world. He never asks me where I was or with whom. He trusts me absolutely and I—I trust him. And that’s an awful lot, mamma—you know it.”
“Sure I know it! A woman chaser you couldn’t cure except you put him in a coffin and nail down the lid. Even old
age don’t cure him. And a card player you could waste your lungs out you wouldn’t cure him. But a gut! That’s why I want you should put your feet down, Bessie, before it’s too late. A gut, if you begin young enough, you could cure him.” Bessie sighed.
“I’d be so happy if I didn’t have that constant aggravation about money. You know, with Ruthie growing up I’ll need more and more.”
“You’re telling me?”
“He’s so good every other way. You remember when Ruthie was sick how he rocked her in his arms and made me get my rest so I could look after her the next day.”
“Positively! If he wasn’t no good I’d tell you to give him a good kick out. Irving’s a good boy. All he needs is a operation on his pocketbook. Maybe if you leave him once—”
“Oh,” interposed Bessie hastily, “I couldn’t! Oh, no! I never could! And if I did I’d go right back to him. I’m not made that way. I’m different—”
“Sure! You’re made different from every other woman that loves her husband. Sure! Well, all right—don’t leave him already. But something you got to do. He’s got to feel his responsibilities. If he marries a girl from a nice family he’s got to keep her nice. If he’s got children it’s got to cost him money. A lot it’s my fault, Bessie. He knows you don’t want for nothing because mamma’s always here with her hand in the pocket. And that reminds me—I wasn’t going to tell you. But I should see you smiling again. I ordered for you a coat today by Wolper’s—moleskin.”
“Moleskin!”
“Yeh. I promised you a coat and I told him if he’ll come down on the price I’ll take the moleskin. And tokisch he come down, so I give him the order. You had the last time sealskin.”
“Oh, mamma, it’s too wonderful! I don’t know how to thank you! Moleskin! Oh, mamma!”
She was on her knees before the rocker, her arms about her mother’s shoulders and on her face such a look of rapture as—well, as can only appear on the face of a pretty girl who has just been promised a moleskin coat.
“Oh, mamma, you’re too good to me!”
“Th—th—listen to her! Ain’t you good to me too? That’s my happiness. At the Ladies’ Auxiliary everyone used to say to me, ‘Levinson, your Bessie is the best-dressed girl in Flatbush.’ That’s my pleasure. Thanksgiving you’ll have the coat. You should wear it in good health. Only I wish your husband was giving it to you. You’d have more satisfaction with it.”
A shadow crossed Bessie’s face. She got up and stood looking out at the bit of street framed by the window.
“Never mind. Maybe if we’ll make a successful operation on his pocketbook before Thanksgiving he’ll pay for the coat. Then you could buy for my money instead a lav’leer like Essie’s.”
“What a chance!” smiled Bessie, waving to Ruthie, who had just roller-skated into view.
“Never mind what a chance! Already while I’m talking I got a grand idea. Ring for Susan and I’ll tell you. Don’t look so scared! Th’ old mamma wouldn’t tell you nothing wrong. Even it’s funny—positively. Lots of good cures sounds funny, only not for the patient. Oh, Susan, two cups coffee, please! And call Miss Ruthie in. She should have a glass milk.”
As she kissed her daughter goodbye an hour later Mrs. Levinson warned her:
“Remember, darling, if you bust, hold in your temper—and no tears. Remember, a good cure you couldn’t make in a minute. Patience you got to have. If you don’t cure him now your whole life you’ll have an aggravation with him about the money, so hold in your horses if it takes a year. If he’s cured it’s worth it, ain’t it?”
“Oh, mamma!”
“Also, begin it and keep it up! No rachmonis on him! And no crying! Be smart! Remember, a German Jew knows how to get up early in the morning. So his wife got to learn how to stay up the night before.”
* * * *
“Irving,” began Bessie innocently, seating herself firmly on his lap in the darkest corner of the screened-in porch of their King’s Highway, stucco, one-family, detached house. It was September, but warm enough to be comfortable out of doors. “Irving, do your help downtown keep raising you?”
He jerked away his coat and settled her comfortably on his knee. Her head rested just below his collar bone. He was the kind of big man against whom it is easy to be comfortable. Good looking, too, with clear blue-black eyes and a square blue-black chin. His small ears were set close to his head, on top of which rolled wave on wave of smooth black hair.
“I should say!” he answered, patting her arm. “Every minute another!”
“What do you do?”
“What can I do? I got to give it to them.”
“Well, Irving, Annie just raised me five dollars and struck for me to give out the flat wash to the laundry, so I’ll have to ask you for some extra money.”
“Now looka here, Bessie!” An ominous note crept into Irving Apfel’s gentle voice. He was like an organ with one stop marked “Money,” and when you pulled out that stop the organ took on a special distinct tone—a closed, wary, defensive tone. “I give you a certain amount to run the house on and you got to get along on it.”
“But, Irving, forty dollars isn’t enough.”
“Forty dollars is a lot of money. That’s the trouble with you, Bessie. You wasn’t brought up to realize the value of money. And besides we can’t afford any more.”
“But, dear, what do you want me to do? Annie won’t stay for that.”
“You couldn’t expect me to be worried about every little thing round the house, could you? I give you the money and that’s your job—to see you come out on it I don’t bother you every time my help downtown gets a roppel.”
“No, you just draw a little more money. I won’t bother you with details either, Irving, but I must have more money—prices have gone up so.”
“You’re telling me? Ain’t I sweating blood account of it? You couldn’t tell me nothing about prices that I couldn’t tell you twice as much.”
“I just can’t get along any more on forty dollars. I’m sure your business throws off much more than that. I’m coming down sometime and take a look at your books. I think a wife has a right to know how much her husband is making.”
“Bessie, you better not begin like that. I don’t mix in your business and don’t you mix in mine. Frankly, I wouldn’t let you see my books. Once you let a woman see how much money you got, and pcht! she’s got a use for all of it. No, I know how much I can give you. Something we got to save for sickness or trouble.”
“But, Irving, I thought you were doing so well?”
“No business is so good that you could draw out all the cream and still have it grow. Something you got to put back.”
“Of course, but do we have to deny ourselves everything? What good is the money if I’m never to have anything out of it?”
“You will have. What d’you think I’m working for? Only so you and Ruthie shouldn’t want—”
“But I do want—lots of things. And Ruthie too. Now! We only live once, Irving—”
“Sure! And if we listen to the women we die in the poorhouse. A woman can’t understand business. In business you got to have what’s called a budget. A budget is—you allow yourself so much for overhead, so much for living, so much for everything—all figgered out. That’s how we figger the profits. But if you begin drawing out here fifty dollars and there a hundred the end of the year you don’t know where you stand. And before you know it you’re bankrupted.”
“Oh, Irving, you know that what I want won’t bankrupt you! I want just what it costs to run the house and clothe Ruthie and myself without taking money from mamma. Surely that won’t bankrupt you!”
She retired into the silences, but when he, too, remained entrenched behind an impenetrable wall of stillness she girded up her loins afresh and went forth to give him battle.
“I want you to give me a hundred doll
ars a week,” she announced with more courage than she felt, “and—and—a fur coat.”
It lacked a certain ring of sincerity—of spontaneity—as though it were a distasteful lesson she had learned with difficulty and schooled herself to recite. He failed to notice it.
“You’re crazy, Bessie! What d’you think my business is—the Standard Oil? A fur coat! Ain’t you got a fur coat?”
“It’s seven years old, Irving. It’s about worn out.”
Again Irving withdrew into the silences. And again distastefully she hounded him out.
“You see,” her tone was full of apology, “I have to have something for the winter. A decent cloth coat costs a fortune this year. And a fur coat, while it’s a lot of money, still it lasts a good many years.”
“I thought your mother was talking something about a fur coat for you?”
“She—she changed her mind.”
“Changed her mind? Why?”
“She’s going to get me a lavaliere instead.”
“Let her better buy you the coat. You could use it more.”
“She won’t. She says it’s about time you paid for some of your wife’s clothes, and if you couldn’t afford to dress a wife any better than a servant girl you—”
“She says I dress my wife like a serv—”
“Sh-h, Irving! Don’t yell so! Mrs. Yittelman is moving her rubber plant, but it’s only an excuse to hear what we’re talking about. Mamma says she isn’t going to give Ruthie or me another thing.”
“Let her not!”
“That’s just what I told her, Irving. If that’s the way she feels about it she needn’t buy me a coat. My husband would get me one.” Somehow the latter part of this speech fell short of being as convincing as the first part. Poor Bessie! Just when she should have handed him the fountain pen and pointed to the dotted line her heart failed her and, “You—you will, won’t you, Irving?” she asked very shakily.
The Viola Brothers Shore Mystery Page 24