“I didn’t ask you in simply to tell you I was tired,” Flo said. “And I won’t keep you. But I want to say something that’s on my mind. It’s important.”
Her voice was cold. “Shoot,” Sam said, smiling, hoping she would see that he was pleased to have her address him directly.
Flo leaned back in her chair. “I could preface what I’m going to say with a thousand qualifications, thoughts—but they would all come to the same thing.” Sam had an urge to reach out, so that he could smooth her forehead, her hair. “Yes. I think you care about my opinion, Sam. And I think I have some sense of your turn of mind. Here, then: I’d like Stella to bear your child.”
Sam felt something hammer on his chest. “What—?” He coughed, needing air. “Listen, are you—?”
Flo continued, ignoring his reaction. “Stella has said nothing to me, but I love her and know her too, and I’m sure she has, already, allowed herself to hope. You should say nothing to her, though, about what I’ve said.” Flo’s lips were touching Sam’s forehead, and—he didn’t know how—he found that he was sitting in a green chair, his hands at his sides. Flo’s hands were on the back of his neck, touching him. “You see, Sam, I love you like a son. And—this has all come to me since the day we took the trip together, to Ben’s and Mason’s old neighborhood—it pains me to think of you living on here by yourself someday, without seeing anything of yourself that will live on when you are gone. Ben is gone. My children are gone. Stella has no brothers or sisters. This store will be gone.”
Sam thought of moving, but he didn’t. His head, sticking out from his mackinaw, felt cool, but his body, inside, felt hot. Flo’s lips were smooth, like satin, and they moved against his forehead, above his eyes, touching his skin. “Of course I want this for myself—isn’t that obvious?—but that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be right for you too. This has been on my mind. I came here today hoping you would pass so that I would, once I’d stopped you, alone, have to tell you.” Despite what she was saying, her voice remained cooler than her lips. “You’ll do what you want—what you have to—and if nothing happens, that will be no worse than if I’d said nothing.” He felt her breath on his neck. “I think sometimes that I know your turn of mind, and yet I couldn’t be sure the same thought had, or had not, occurred to you. Ben was right. In some things, you are a mystery, Sam. You should have a child. You’re not too old. Stella can bear you a child. Think about it. You don’t have to say anything.”
Her voice moved away and Sam found himself at the door. “Sure,” he said. “I mean, sometimes I think about what you must have gone through.”
“This has been on my mind,” Flo said. “I came here today hoping you would pass.”
Sam sniffed through one nostril. Then, feeling weak, he said, “I don’t get it.” He paused, his hand on the doorknob. He wanted to say something clever—after all, he thought, it had taken a lot for her to have said something like that to him, as weird as it was—still, nothing occurred to him. “I don’t get it,” he said a second time, and was surprised to hear himself, with a boy’s voice, say such a thing.
“Don’t be afraid,” Flo said, but when she came toward him, through the maze of cartons and used furniture, her hands slightly outstretched, palms up, he turned and slipped through the doorway, into the darkness of the corridor. He closed the door behind him. Above, in the light from his landing, he saw Muriel’s feet hanging down, below the posts of the banister. As he opened the door under the staircase, he felt the weakness pass from him. He didn’t, of course, have to believe Flo, but she didn’t fool him either. He imagined Sid and Herbie and Max and Shimmy—even Nate—crowing over him, telling him how terrific his kid was, and the thought angered him. The birds were, Sam knew, switching on the light and heading down the wooden stairs to the cellar, everywhere, trying to make you—he laughed to himself, sweating, hearing his shoes bounce on wood, thinking of words—swallow anything. He remembered Sabatini—heard his voice—trying to make him quail, and he laughed aloud because he could have told him, or Flo—or anybody—that they were wasting their time: in poker or in life, Sam Berman couldn’t be gulled.
The cellar was dry and warm, the light dim. The furnace, black and red, was to the left. Pipes ran along the ceiling, packed in white casing. The concrete floor, under Sam’s shoes, had a thin layer of grit on it, so that Sam felt as if he were walking on sandpaper. There were wooden bins along one side of the room, with padlocks—Sam supposed that he and Ben were entitled to a bin, though they’d never used one. Along the back end, arranged more neatly than they were upstairs, furniture and cartons for the rummage shop were stored, perhaps five or six feet deep. Sam had to duck, stepping around a supporting pillar, in order not to hit his head against low-hanging copper pipes. Shovels and brooms and wooden poles were lined up against the side of one bin, and three garbage pails stood next to them. Sacks of special salt, for the sidewalks, were piled about ten high against the bare wall. Everything was in order. The basement was longer—perhaps forty feet in all—than Sam had imagined it would be, but then, he figured, it probably ran the full depth of the house. Sam saw stairs at the back end, which must have led outside to some small courtyard behind the building that Sam had never seen. He breathed in, wanting to compose himself before seeing Tidewater, and he was surprised at how light and thin the air seemed. He walked forward, his head bent down, toward the front of the building, and saw a door, a dull orange color, about five feet beyond the staircase, to the right of what must have been the water boiler. To the left of the door, meters were attached to the walls and Sam could see silver horizontal disks spinning in them. He knocked and waited.
“Ah, Sam,” Tidewater said, opening the door and stepping aside. “Please. I was hoping you would come by.”
“Sure,” Sam said, and not wanting to appear afraid he walked by Tidewater, stepping quickly into a square room—Sam could see at once that it was the man’s only room—which was very brightly lit. The room measured about ten feet along each edge. The walls, of whitewashed concrete, were bare; the floor, an inch above the level of the cellar floor, was now covered with slats of wood, which were highly waxed.
“Please sit down,” Tidewater said, gesturing to an easy chair which was against the left wall. “I’m so glad you came.” “Sure,” Sam said, and sat. “Nice layout you got here.”
“It’s rent-free,” Tidewater said.
“It’s small, though.”
“I’m alone,” Tidewater replied, smiling, and Sam remarked to himself that the color of the man’s skin matched the color of the walls. At the top, the walls seemed to slope inward, so that the ceiling was smaller than the floor. For the moment, Sam kept his eyes away from the man’s face. He concentrated on the room, looking at its furnishings, wall by wall. There was a bookcase next to his easy chair, three shelves high and filled. Then a wooden table, with nothing on it. At right angles to the table, along the wall opposite the door, was a narrow bed, covered with a blue chenille spread. A metal reading lamp was clamped to the bed’s headboard, and there was, on the floor next to the bed, a navy blue oval rug; shoes were lined up, evenly, underneath the bed. A table—Sam figured, from the jar of pencils and the bowl of sugar, that it was a combination desk and dining table—filled the remaining space along the wall. Opposite Sam, where Tidewater stood, his hands clasped in front of him like a preacher, the stove, sink, and refrigerator were next to one another—the stove was old and yellow, with sliding trays that could be lifted to cover the gas burners. There was a high slender chest in the far corner—for groceries, Sam imagined—and on either side of the front door, along the wall to Sam’s right, was a dresser. The middle of the room was empty.
“I mean,” Sam said, nodding to himself, then glancing back at Tidewater, “you have all you need, right?”
“Oh yes,” Tidewater said. “As you do.”
“Sure,” Sam said. “With Ben gone, I don’t even use his room, if you know what I mean.”
“Of cours
e,” Tidewater said. “May I make you some tea? I was about to prepare some for myself.”
“Sure,” Sam said. “But I can’t stay too long—I got something to do—”
Tidewater went to the high closet and took out a tin can, and some cups and saucers. Sam smiled—he’d been right—seeing the dishes and groceries in the closet. Tidewater struck a match and lit one of the burners, then put water on to boil. He sat down in a chair he pulled from under his table and faced Sam. “I’m glad you came,” he said.
‘Tm a sport,” Sam said. He glanced at Tidewater’s face, to see if the man would smile. Tidewater seemed slightly puzzled. “Ben must’ve spent a lot of time here,” Sam offered.
Tidewater sighed. “Sometimes I wonder: did I merely use your father during our times together? I loved hearing him tell stories, jokes—” He stopped; his voice became matter-of-fact: “The sound of his voice, in this small room, was so special. You can understand that.”
“Oh sure,” Sam said. “He had some voice.” Sam felt warm. He lifted himself from the chair, sliding his right arm from his mackinaw, and stood to take it off. Tidewater took it from him and laid it across the bed. “I mean, if he wanted, he could have been a pedagogue.”
Tidewater stood at the stove, preparing the tea. “I think I understand now why he left.”
“Listen,” Sam said. “We got on okay, the last five years. We had some good times together. I don’t blame the guy. I said that before—with the winters, and his age, and his brother Andy hanging on like—”
“No,” Tidewater said. “No. He was worried about you. I told you before. Now that you’re here with me, I can see it: he wanted to leave you alone, so that we could, as we have, come to know one another. Don’t you see that? He sensed something—he gave you up, you see, despite—”
“Come on,” Sam said. “I told you before: I look out for number one. I don’t buy that stuff about everybody trying to save everybody else’s ass. He did the same thing, finally, looking out for himself. He’ll live ten more years, with the air they got out there.”
“You are not listening to what I say,” Tidewater said angrily. Sam sighed inside himself, and he was ready to leave. Would he tell Stella about coming down to Tidewater’s apartment? Tidewater was smiling. “You’re like your father in that. I’m not sure how carefully he ever listened to me—but that is no matter. Please, Sam, try to listen to the words I use. He gave you up, his only son—do you understand? He left you to me.”
“You’re bats,” Sam said; then, feeling more confident than he’d imagined he would, he went on. “All that black-white white-black jazz—the way you thought about it all those years—it—” He stopped, not sure of how he had intended to complete his thought. What he wanted to say, he knew, was that Tidewater should play what was there. He should take things for what they were. But if he said that, he would not, he realized, have been able to explain exactly what he meant. “It turned you bats, that’s all. I don’t mean completely—but…”
“Ben,” Tidewater said, with a dreamy look on his face, “might have said that it turned me bats and balls—”
Sam groaned. “I didn’t mean anything,” he said. “You can believe what you want.”
“You were his gift to me,” Tidewater said. “He said so.”
“I was on special,” Sam replied, and laughed to himself. He leaned forward, watching the man’s back as he poured tea for them.
“Sugar?”
Sam nodded. “Sugar.”
“Lemon or milk?”
“Some lemon, I guess.”
Sam took the cup and saucer Tidewater offered him. He sipped his tea and remembered that his grandfather had always put strawberry jam into tea. The liquid entering Sam’s chest warmed him pleasantly. The story about his grandfather quitting work one day—maybe Ben had been right about them getting on together, had the old guy lived. Sam’s fingertips were cold. “I was looking at your story again—the description of your first game. Your brothers were right, if you ask me—you shouldn’t have taken it so hard. From what you say, the runs weren’t really earned anyway.” Sam paused, shifted his body in the chair. “That’s what I think, for what it’s worth. You took it too hard.”
“Yes.”
“I like the way you described things, though.” He shrugged. “That’s all. I mean, Ben—he could of talked your ear off, I guess.”
Sam could see that Tidewater was pleased, and that was all right too, he figured. He’d been nuts before, letting the guy give him the creeps, when all he was, really, was a frightened old man living by himself. There were thousands of them all over the city. Sure. That was something he’d learned from cards but had forgotten to apply to his life: you should never give people any more power than they showed. Most of the time they’d be holding less than you. Things evened out, in the long run.
“But he would not have taken it as seriously as you do. Don’t you understand? Bats and balls—of course. He reduced all things to jokes, in his classic Jewish manner. There was nothing—neither God nor the Holocaust—which was immune.” Tidewater’s eyes found Sam’s. “He knew that, like me, you did not find humor in every morsel of life. He knew that you were the one who should have possession of my story. Don’t you understand?”
Sam watched the bluish streak on the man’s tongue, as the tongue reached out to touch the upper lip. A man—Sam saw his grandfather’s face—sits by the railroad station, weeping. Sam listened to his father’s voice, acting out the parts. “My God!” the man groans. “My train is gone! What will I do? Everything is lost!” For some reason, Sam now thought that in the joke the word “everything” referred specifically to Ben’s two older brothers. “When did it leave, your train?” “Only a minute or two ago,” the man replies, his body heaving, tears rolling down his cheeks into his beard. “Is that all?” says the other. “From the way you carry on one would think you’d missed it by an hour!” Sam saw Ben, walking across the green lawns of Pioneer Estates, laughing with his new neighbors, pleased to be able to entertain them, to receive their applause. “I’ll tell you the truth,” Sam said, aloud. “I’m not sure I got it all. I didn’t like Johnson, though, I’ll tell you that. I’d cut a wide trail around a guy like him.” Sam lifted his cup and drank some more. “I would’ve steered clear.”
“I wondered about his nickname,” Tidewater said. “It intrigued me, and when I inquired about it as a boy, my brother Tucker told me the story.” Sam settled back. “In Johnson’s first game, pitching for the Page Fence Giants against the Cleveland Elites, sometime during the last five years of the nineteenth century, he had hit a man named Dell Corrigan on the side of the head. Corrigan, the story went, had not even tried to duck, and blood had spilled from his ear, wetting the dirt in the batter’s box. Corrigan’s teammates had, while Corrigan still lay unconscious on the ground, started for Johnson, whereupon Johnson appeared on the mound—nobody had seen him leave it—brandishing a baseball bat in each hand, swinging them around his head and screaming that he would crack six skulls as easily as one. They believed him, and after trading angry words, order was restored, Corrigan removed, and the game continued. Corrigan lay in a coma for twelve days and when he awoke was reported to have asked: “Who hit me with that big brick?” He did not remember Johnson throwing at him, and he did not ever again play baseball or fully regain his senses.
“There were some on the Dodgers who disputed this account—they claimed that Johnson actually had the name before he ever entered baseball, for beating a man senseless with a brick during the robbery of a window-shade factory; this story lost credibility, though, when one tried to fit a jail term into what was known of Johnson’s life—of a baseball career that, if his given age were true, had begun at fifteen. No matter which story was told to Johnson, however, he had the same reply: ‘That sounds good.’ As for myself, I preferred to believe that the name referred to the man’s torso, which—a rare thing in a pitcher—was large and square—black, but with a reddish caste to the bl
ackness.”
Sam put his cup and saucer down on the table next to him. “I better get going,” he said.
“Yes.” Tidewater rose, put his own cup and saucer on the table, and handed Sam his coat. They stood in the middle of the room, two feet from one another, and looking into the man’s face, being able to reach out and touch the pale skin, Sam thought for an instant that he was in Stella’s room, about to touch her. He felt dizzy.
“You work here?” he asked. “Writing, I mean.”
“Ah,” Tidewater said, and Sam moved away from him. He remembered Flo’s smile, when she had approached him upstairs. He felt tired.
“I was just curious,” Sam said.
“Your father never asked,” Tidewater said, and reached a hand toward Sam. “Come with me. I have something to show you.”
“I told you,” Sam said. “I got to get going. I got a date.”
“Of course,” Tidewater whispered. “At your age, you need somebody for that. I understand. But come with me first. I have something to show you. Come with me. It is not an accident that you asked.”
“I was just curious,” Sam said. “Maybe I was just—no offense—being polite. I mean—”
“Come with me. I promised I would show you, if you recall—the night of Ben’s dinner…”
Tidewater led the way from his room back into the cellar. “But it can’t take too long,” Sam said. “I told you—”
“Come with me,” Tidewater said, and Sam followed. “I will show you where I work, since you asked.”
“Sure,” Sam said. “Since I asked.”
A few minutes more, he told himself, and he’d be able to get away, out into the streets where he could breathe, even if it was cold. He followed closely behind Tidewater. The man stepped behind the oil burner and motioned to Sam to follow him. Sam was sorry he’d put his coat back on. In the dim light, he could not see Tidewater’s eyes. A foot or two behind the furnace, where it would not have been wide enough for the two of them to have stood side by side, the old man was on his knees, brushing the floor with his hands. Sam blinked. He could not decide whether or not to take his coat off again. He remembered how he had felt walking through the snow to the card game Sabatini had set him up for, and he reminded himself to be careful. He heard footsteps on the floor above—Flo, he figured, moving racks of dresses.
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