Prayers for the Living

by Alan Cheuse

  So there he is, riding in the train through the dark country, and it comes to him how much he has lived under a cloak, behind a curtain. Not like his little friend Arnie, who could barely come up to his shoulder—he’s already going off to volunteer for the war—and you can be sure Mrs. Tabatchnick still thinks about that, you can be very sure. No, but Manny’s making plans to volunteer for other things—to volunteer for the world. To make his way in the world. It’s near dawn. He’s got whiskey on his breath, and in his mind a million ideas churn all around, mixed together, the past, the present, things he wants to do in the future, though the future is the darkest part, darker now than the forests outside the window of the train—and he’s wondering at how far he has come in less than half a day, and he’s wondering just how much farther life will carry him, because something has changed inside of him, something he cannot yet understand or explain, but the color of his hair seems to signal it to him, like a flag, like a new blossom on a bud sprouting out in time-stoppage photography. There’s a war on in Europe, and there’s a war on inside himself. And the Allies have Churchill, the Allies have FDR, and in his head he’s got his father’s voice, the bird that spoke in his father’s tongue, and this helps him get through the ride, through the night. Now if this sounds crazy, let it be. Who knows what other boys keep in their minds to themselves? This is what he told me, long long after. And if he heard voices then at least the voices told him to do good things, not bad. Go west, young man. Go to the school that will do you good. And do good to others. Build a life. A way of life. A plan. A business that spreads out the good to other people.

  So he arrives in the new city, and there’s a war on inside and out, but to look at the outside you would never know it. Not in the morning. It’s bright, sunny, a beautiful day, above the Union Station the birds soar, the clouds scatter past, and Manny is standing there waiting for his host, his sponsor, his patron you can say, to arrive. He didn’t know that they walked past him several times before finally stopping, staring, and Meyer Sporen pointing a finger at him, and saying, “You? It’s you?”

  At his side stands Maby. “Daddy,” she says, “who else is he supposed to be?” To my boy, she says, “I remember you. But your hair! What happened to your hair?”

  And Manny retreats into himself, curling up inside like a little child, though he’s still standing there, looking up at the girl on the platform, his hand on his suitcase, his coat open, shirt roughly wrinkled, one corner sticking out from beneath his belted waist. She’s so pink, freckled, fresh, fair, young—he can hardly believe that voice comes out from that small pink birdlike mouth. It’s music that slides up and then down, up and then down, an imitation of something she heard from the lips of people she greatly admires, the voice of an actress, the voice of some woman whom she might like to adopt as her mother. Oh, if I could have been standing there with him, I would have whispered in his ear, watch out! Watch out!

  And now he’s remembering.

  And he’s trying to disappear inside himself because he knows what she’s remembering and what she’s about to say.

  You, she is thinking. You did it in your . . .

  Oh, and now he wishes he had leaped from the deck of the ship, wishes he had died with his father crushed under the weight of a thousand breaking bottles of milk, drowned in the milk, in the blood pressed out of him! If he had only been the horse, the horse against whose head the policeman pressed the pistol! Pap! and he’d have gone, never to have had to live long enough to step into this moment! And he can tell, it’s happened before, he’s drawing blood from his fingers with the shard.

  “Yes, it’s me,” he muttered, and tried to smile. Tried to cover it over, overcome it, comb it smooth, oh, I wish I had been there to help! To brush his thick white hair, to make him feel neater, more handsome. He’s so embarrassed, you know, because through all this she’s, how do you say? exciting him! That’s right, he’s looking at the pin, her hip, the way it pokes, the ruffles across her chest, the blouse, the face, the hair.

  “Oh,” she says, “it’s you all right,” and she laughs a kind of laugh that spreads across the air between him like those same ruffles, unfolding but never completely opening.

  Here is where I really wish I could have been standing there, invisible—and why couldn’t he imagine my voice? I didn’t talk to him enough? I didn’t help to raise him like both his mother and his father? And whose voice does he call up at a time like this, the temperamental dried-up old prune of a humpbacked rabbi who never told him outside of Talmud anything worthwhile? Manny, I would have said, Manny, Manny, boychick, stand up to her! Oh, if I could have been a pure white pigeon, the bird swooping down! I would have said to him, Manny, stand tall to her now or forever she will always keep the upper hand!

  “You never liked her because she was mean to him? Or she was mean to him because you never liked her?”

  “Who can say? A little of both. Look, I liked her at first. Why shouldn’t I? Her father was so generous to us all the years. The accident made us like family. It brought us together and kept us together. So you think it was an accident that the girl and the boy should get together? Let me tell you, this was fate. This was what they were supposed to do. I’m only complaining about the way that they did it.”

  “It hurts you so much to think about it that it brings tears to your eyes?”

  “Tears! Not tears. Itches. My eyes itch like crazy. I went to Doctor Mickey, he checks me out, he gives me an ointment. I rub it in. After we eat I’ll go home and rub it in. But let me tell you about Manny’s itches. Oh, did he get an itch!”

  “He fell in love?”

  “It was love, let me tell you. They clicked together like two magnets. The letters he wrote to me about her! They were poetry.”

  “So it wasn’t bad after all? You made me think you thought from the start it was bad.”

  “It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t good. It was what happened. Now if I had been there I could have helped him handle what happened, but who could have turned him away from what was supposed to happen?”

  “Stop rubbing your eyes. Sure, my children are the same. They got to school, they get married, they have children.”

  “Except for one difference.”

  “And what’s that? And stop rubbing the eyes.”

  “I’m stopping. I’m stopping.”

  “And the difference?”

  “The difference is the ones that are near don’t write, they call, and the far ones don’t call, they write.”

  “So Manny called you?”

  “Well, let me say without too much fanfare that Manny wrote to me every week while he was away. For years he wrote to me. About his school, his studies, his business classes—Meyer Sporen put up the money so that he could also take classes at the University of Cincinnati just down the street from the Union. And Manny never asked but over the years I asked, I asked myself, what does this man want? Years ago he made up for whatever bad feelings he may have had about the accident, but he keeps paying and he keeps paying. So why does he keep paying?”

  “Was it that he wanted a nice boy for his daughter to marry? Stop with the eyes, darling.”

  “I’m stopping. I’m stopping. If that was what he wanted, then he got it.”

  “Ladies?”

  “Yes, we’d like to see a menu.”

  “Here you go.”

  “Thank you. Now Mrs. Pinsker, you look at this. I’m going to show you something else. Some things I brought with me.”

  “So what did you bring?”

  “Letters I brought. Lucky for you, I carry them with me.”

  “Lucky for me so I’ll look at them. But first. Here. So how’s the fish?”

  “The fish is nice.”

  “I’ll have the fish. Minnie, so you?”

  “I’ll also have the fish.”

  “Two of the fish.”

  “Two fish. One. Two. You can always count on the fish.”

  “And you can always count on the mother to reme
mber.”

  Dear Mama,

  It’s only a few weeks and I’m settled in already, feeling a lot like home. My room, up on the sixth floor of the dormitory, has a fine view of the river, looking southeast to where the Ohio comes down out of the West Virginia hills and squirms its way past the city, the city of hills as they call it here, comparing it to Rome where I’ve never been so I can’t say. But if the city is supposed to look like Rome, it doesn’t sound like it. A lot of people speak German, that’s the accent here, along with Southern, something you’ll have to hear to believe. The latter I mean, not the former, which you hear all the time in the city. The City. This is not The City by a long shot, Mama. This is a city in imitation of The City. The one thing it’s got going for it, in terms of my own needs, is that it’s just small enough so that when I talk to Meyer Sporen about what’s going on in my business classes I get to hear about the main currents and big deals of Cincinnati commerce, the banks, boat, factory, insurance deals, all that stuff. How could I hear that in New York in our neighborhood?

  Anyway, I don’t mean to dwell on the business part. My work is going well, Talmud, etc., and I’m taking history classes, something I hadn’t done before, world history, I mean. They emphasize a lot of stuff that the old rabbi would consider pure goyish hogwash—almost literally hogwash, Mama, traife. I didn’t know how far I’d have to travel from the city to get some sophisticated teachers—there must be some but I never met them, did I? Not the way Arnie will go to Juilliard. I mean, where was the equivalent of Juilliard for me? I’m just lucky that Meyer Sporen kept in touch with us all these years. Otherwise, where would I be? Maybe—I can’t write that word anymore without smiling, I’ll explain in a minute—I’ll still go into business someday, I’m certainly preparing myself for that, but at the same time I’m enjoying my studies, pushing myself with good results, you’ll be pleased to learn, but I’m not hurting myself. I’m eating well, I’m getting plenty of sleep, and think of the exercise alone I get climbing six flights of stairs several times a day to get to my room. It’s just like home! Speaking of home, the Sporens feed me once a week, and even if Mrs. Sporen is a little strange she has a cook who makes great Jewish and German meals. Oh, and why do I laugh when I write the word—“maybe,” because, of course, Maby. I’m teaching her Hebrew. She went to good schools here, and she learned Latin and French and German, but no Hebrew. So while Mr. S doesn’t want me to feel an obligation, still I do. I volunteered.

  I miss you, Mama. And I hope that you don’t think that just because I was raving about the Sporens’ cook’s meals, I don’t miss your cooking, because I do. And I miss your company. I miss Arnie, too. You said that he’s supposed to play in an army band? Let me know when his mother hears more. And please send me his address.

  Well, I’ve got to run now. I’ve got a class in modern criticism, that’s how to read difficult Biblical texts, and a public speaking class, and an accounting examination over at the University of Cincinnati. And oh yes, and economic history from the ancient Assyrians, our old neighbors, up to and past our own 1929 when American businessmen jumped out of windows, poor fools! Everyone in the dormitory here tells me they don’t know how I do it, working in both worlds, as they put it, but I can tell you. I work as hard as I can. That’s my secret. I like to think that I’ve inherited my strong points from Papa. Do you think so? He was that kind of man, wasn’t he? And when he worked on the Sabbath he did it for our sakes, I know. And I’m doing the same, aren’t I? Joke question: What kind of a Jewish boy would work on the Sabbath? Answer: A rabbi. End of joke. And end of letter. I miss you. I’ll see you on vacation. Meanwhile it’s off to the races . . .

  Your loving son,

  Manny

  Dear Mama,

  I got your postcard. I’m glad that you saw the show on Second Avenue. What a treat, my mother at the theater! I’m proud of your going, and with me away from the city and not eating you out of house and home perhaps you can go more often. I was sorry to hear that I missed Arnie when he was home on leave, but keep me posted as to where he is in Europe and so forth. Here everybody’s talking about the war, because it’s now on two fronts, and with all of the horrible news that we get about what’s happening you feel sometimes that there’s not much an individual can do, whether he’s a rabbi, a barge owner, or even a soldier or a president. The world out there isn’t the fairy-tale Atlantis my father thought it was, is it, Mama? with no disrespect to Papa, may he rest in peace.

  I’m off to class.

  Your loving son,

  Manny

  Dear Mama,

  I don’t know if I can write this, feeling suddenly as bad as I do. It just hit me without warning. I’m so homesick that it’s in my stomach, in my chest, in my gut, in my head, in my joints, in my muscles. I was pretending to feel so blase about it all, being away from the city for the first time, and the Sporens watching out for me, making sure that I have everything I need. Sometimes I think, and I don’t mean to question his generous impulses, but his son still hasn’t come home, and from what I figure he’s been away several years. The father and son never got along. I can even remember that from the day of Papa’s accident all that long time ago. Maby doesn’t get along with him. But she’s not close to her mother, either. So she’s living sort of out on a limb in her own house, talking to me about going away somewhere to college, but who knows? She can’t do it without their permission and she’s sure they’d never give it. She’s very smart though and should go to school. I know, I know, you probably think she should marry a nice Jewish boy and make a home . . . who do you have in mind? That’s a joke, ha, ha! Seriously, I think it’s important for a smart girl to go to college and I am trying to convince her to talk to her parents about it. “Talk to them?” she says. “They never hear what I say.” “Manny,” she says, “I think I’m a changeling, some other kind of creature born of another race and magically transplanted into their household.” “You mean you think you were adopted?” I asked her. Because she had said that more than once to me since I’ve known her. “No,” she said, “I’m a changeling.” “And your brother? He too is a changeling?” “He’s just a mean fairy thing,” she said. “What do you mean?” I asked. “You heard me,” she said. I was shocked to hear a girl talk like that. I never heard things like that even on the street. Sure, Arnie and I used to run around, though not so much because I was working and studying and he was busy with his music lessons, with practicing. And so perhaps our experience was a little more limited than most, but not that limited, and I never heard a girl talk that way about her brother. Or anyone. She troubles me. But also I have to admit she attracts me. Don’t be jealous, Mama, but it’s true. I don’t want you to think I could ever love anyone the way I love you, and I’m not even saying that I’m in love with her. But we always promised we would tell each other the truth and so I’m telling you. Do you think I should still talk to her? I’m still tutoring her, but I don’t know . . .

  “IT’S A NICE letter. But enough of the letter, Minnie. Here’s the fish.”

  “It smells good.”

  “It looks good. It looks nice here even if it’s the mall.”

  “The mall. The mall. Today everything is at the mall. I remember before the mall. Everything was in the neighborhood, you didn’t have to drive nowhere else. Because how could you drive if you didn’t have a car?”

  “Today we drive. We fly. To the moon.”

  “Tomorrow the moon. Fish on the moon. The mall on the moon. Oi, I should be so lucky to eat on the mall on the moon. What we would eat there I don’t know. Fish? Moon fish? What do you think? Are there fish on the moon? In the mall on the moon? And this same dark woman will be serving us? Moon women? Moon men? Grandmothers, grandmothers on the moon? There’ll always be grandmothers. On the sun. Moon. Stars. We’ll always be here, talking, making nice for the children, for the grandchildren. Here. Look. The fish is getting cold, Rose. Eat the fish. Enjoy. Is it moon fish?”

  “It’s fish fish. Not a
fishy fish but a meaty fish. A fleshy fish. Sole.”

  “Sole. Moon sole. Soul. Soul moon. Eat. I’ll eat.”

  “And talk?”

  “And talk. You want to finish that letter. Read more letters. But I didn’t bring more. More I have at home. Sometime I’ll show. Letters. Diaries also I have. And papers. Plenty of papers. These he gives to me for safekeeping. He trusts me. Don’t you like a boy who trusts his mother? What more could you want? The moon?”

  “Why not the moon?”

  “So I’ll give you the moon. And you know what that is?”

  “What?”

  “The truth. The moon is the truth. Everybody wants it, but it’s always hanging up there in the sky just out of reach.”

  “And this you can give to me?”

  “On this subject I’m trying.”

  “So tell me more.”

  “I’m telling. First a bite of fish. And then more moon.”

  IT WAS THE woman who decided it. You know, it’s always the woman.

  He was teaching her Hebrew, and she asked him if they could read poetry in Hebrew. So at night he came over to teach her, and one night, this was in his last year, after his classes, after his dinner in the dormitory, where, I assure you, he ate well but not as well as he ate at home—he had stopped, you see, eating so much at the Sporens’ because of the atmosphere, Meyer Sporen becoming louder at the dinner table, the son still absent, Mrs. Sporen constantly sneaking off into the other room to take a drink, and Maby the daughter living in another world from which now and then she would visit, in the form of saying nasty things to both her parents, and teasing Manny.

  So one night she tells him, after a year of reading together in the downstairs parlor, “Come up with me, I want to show you something.”

  And like a fool he climbs the stairs. Like a fool—like a boy so much in love he couldn’t pee or eat a potato without thinking of her. It had been that way with him ever since that time he saw her at the station and he looked up and saw her beautiful white-ruffled chest—this is how the world is decided, by either seeing such things or not seeing and that changes everything—and in Manny’s case he saw, and so when she invited him up after all this time—because she had other things on her mind all those other years, crazy things, they all show up later, sometime I’ll show you, you’ll see, you’ll see—anyway she invites him up, and he can’t climb the stairs fast enough—oh, if he could hear me tell you this he’d turn red, he’d say, Mama, Mama, please, do you think you could read my mind? How do you know how I felt then? And I’d have to remind him that he was a good son, that he wrote all this to me, that he told me everything, even though now he would like to forget it, now that he’s on his second honeymoon in Bitch Heaven, Beach Haven some normal people call it—the bitch herself leading him up the stairs . . .