Mrs. Ted Bliss

by Stanley Elkin

  “Hey, forget it,” said the guy he thought he’d aggrieved. “I’m only a distant nephew. I barely knew him. I’m his lawyer. Uncle Manny hired me over the phone to buff up his affairs if anything happened to him. I’m just here on the case, no harm done.”

  Mrs. Bliss wasn’t so sure but held her tongue.

  The harm, she supposed, was to Manny’s spirit. Olov hasholem, Manny, she thought, and even, she thought, may have muttered aloud. (She was deafer than ever these days, and couldn’t always distinguish her thoughts from what she actually said.) At any rate it wasn’t the little nephew lawyer pisher to whom the harm had been done. It was an insult that there couldn’t have been more than ten people in the place. And even at that, no turnover to speak of because Mrs. Bliss had been there all evening practically and for every two or three people who left barely one arrived to take their place.

  It was just too bad there really wasn’t anyone to be sore at, for the fact of the matter was that in the just four years since Rosie’s death the Towers had practically emptied out. There just weren’t that many old-timers or familiar faces left. When someone died their children, who usually had no use for Florida, would either list the condo with an agent or hang around for a month or so to try to sell it themselves. The price of these places had gone through the floor, and the sad truth was that Mrs. Ted Bliss could have had the biggest, highest-priced condo the Towers had to offer (except for the penthouses of course) for many thousands less than what she and Ted had given for their own only median-scale suite of rooms back in the sixties.

  “Did you know,” Junior Yellin said beside her on Manny’s long white leather sofa, “the silly son of a bitch arranged for the caterer himself?”

  “He was my friend, I won’t listen to gossip about him,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss.

  “What gossip?” Junior said. “His nephew told me.”

  “Shh!” Mrs. Bliss, whose increased hardness of hearing encouraged her in the belief that people tended to raise their voices when they were around her, waved down the volume of Junior’s voice.

  “I don’t know did he, didn’t he, but the kid gave me his word as a lawyer your pal not only knew who would and who wouldn’t be here today, but pretty much sized up the collective tastes of the crowd. That’s why you see more decaf and sweet table than lox and pastrami. They’re counting cholesterol, they’re stinting on fat.”

  “It’s ridiculous he had his own shivah catered. It’s ridiculous, it’s nuts.”

  “Is it, oh yeah? Wasn’t he a lawyer, didn’t he have a head for contingency and probability?”

  “What’s that got to do?”

  “What’s that got to do, what’s that got to do?”

  “Shh!”

  “Look at this place, will you,” Junior said. “Who are these people? They sit off by themselves. They could be patients in the waiting room reading my magazines.”

  Mrs. Bliss glanced around the room, which, except for Junior, herself, and the nephew, had only two other visitors left. “Since when,” she asked, “has your waiting room been this full?”

  “Wise guy,” Junior said, “it gets me through my days.”

  “Oh, now,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss.

  “ ‘Oh, now? Oh now?’ Dorothy, this is the way goyim talk. Maybe you’ve been in this place too long.”

  It was true, thought Mrs. Ted Bliss, the Towers had gone downhill. Many of the Cubans and Latin Americans had moved out to Palm, or farther down Collins to South Beach, or bought in the Keys, while a lot of the Jews had died off or moved out altogether. Ted, she reflected, wouldn’t recognize the place today, and then corrected herself. Yes, he would. Sure he would. Of course he would. It wasn’t all that much different from the fifty-unit Chicago apartment building he owned on the North Side where Dorothy went with him on the first Monday of every month to collect the rents, covering for him with a gun he hadn’t even known she had.

  So sure he would, he’d have known in a minute, failing only to recognize that this, in the end, was where he’d chosen to bring her, to live side-by-side with those same old Polacks and Slavs her family had fled when she was a kid. Only, in an odd way, she had the upper hand while they, the new goyim, were the interlopers.

  Change, she reflected, between crumbs of sweet coffee cake she licked from her fingers, if you just managed to live long enough, even change changed.

  Because here was Mr. Milton Junior Yellin beside her—butcher, farmer, realtor, bookkeeper, philanderer, black marketeer, recreational therapeusisist, and general, all-round-who-knows-what-all, a bona fide quick-change champion in his own right, transmogrified again from masher to friend, then friend, absorbed into friendship, something even more valuable—mutual witnesses to each other’s lives, necessary kibitzers. So that they could, even at their age, get down, Yellin reserving the right to accuse her speech (“Dorothy, this is the way goyim talk”), Mrs. Bliss at liberty to discuss the fiction of Junior Yellin’s “practice.” It was heady stuff, heady, and, quite frankly, they may have embarrassed Manny’s nephew executor with their open laughter.

  Because with the exception of the nephew, Mrs. Bliss, and Milt Yellin, Manny’s condo was now quite empty of mourners. It must have seemed that there was no one left in the entire world who genuinely missed him, this once minister-without-portfolio who did so much for so many of them in the Towers complex that he seemed to have become a kind of precinct captain and ward heeler for them. (All this was in the old days, of course. Though, really, Mrs. Bliss thought, the old days weren’t all that long ago. Hadn’t she pressed her claims on Manny’s mysterious volunteer spirit as recently as last year when she’d packed two or three times more than she needed and counted on what even then as well as in hindsight was an already thinning, short-winded huffer and puffer who shouldn’t have been called upon to so much as snap her valises shut let alone carry them from her apartment all the way down the hall to the elevator, albeit he made two trips with one suitcase held out in front of his belly with both hands—the way children carry weights too heavy for them—rather than two suitcases, one dangling from each hand and swinging along beside him as if to the marching music of youth and strength? And didn’t, for a short-winded old man, two trips with half a load each create a greater threat to the constitution than just some single let’s-get-it-over-with effort of the double weight? So it was only fitting, she thought, that she who had added to his burdens the longest should have stayed the longest, making the most of his death even at the expense of wearing out her welcome.)

  The sun had already begun to set before Dorothy realized that though they’d been talking together for some hours now they’d never been formally introduced. She broke off in the middle of a reminiscence to do the honors.

  “I’m Dorothy Bliss,” she said, “and this here is Junior Yellin.”

  “Call me Milt.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” the nephew said, “I’m Nathan Apple.”

  “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Nathan Apple.

  “Excuse me, Nathan, but I have to get this off my chest. You mustn’t judge by what you saw today.”

  “Saw today?”

  “Well, didn’t see today. The turnout. Your uncle was one of the most popular, well-known, best-loved men in Building One. Were you at Rosie’s funeral? Your aunt’s?”

  “My mother’s sister’s half-sister.”

  “And I’ve been thinking, the reason Rosie had so many people and Manny so few in comparison, no disrespect to your aunt, wasn’t so much a tribute to Rosie as a show of support for her husband. Also, you’ve got to remember that many of those who dragged themselves out to her funeral on walkers back then are now in wheelchairs, and that a whole bunch of them who were in wheelchairs are now restricted to their beds. Many of the rest, may they rest, are dead. Others may not really have gotten to know him because he was already too old by the time a lot of them moved in for him to help them out much. Sure,�
�� she said, “by that time Manny was the one who needed help. So I’m just saying, you mustn’t feel bad.”

  “I appreciate what you’re saying, Aunt Dorothy.”

  Aunt Dorothy? Mrs. Bliss thought. Aunt Dorothy? She was stung by this smart aleck’s familiarity. Why, when you reached a certain age, did they rub your face in your harmlessness? That guy at Frank’s house in Providence should have smacked his kid for calling her his greatgrandma Dorothy.

  “So tell me, Nate,” Junior Yellin said, “you got plans for this place?”

  “Plans?”

  “You know. How you intend to market it.”

  “We haven’t really gotten that far in our thinking, Milt.”

  “We?”

  “Aunt Rosie’s and Uncle Manny’s legatees.”

  “You know best, Counselor, but I figure you’re down here—what?—only one or two more days? Probably figure to list your uncle’s condo with an agent and skedaddle the hell out of here before you even get to know the lay of the land.”

  “Junior!” said Mrs. Ted Bliss.

  “Well, he was hired over the phone, Dorothy. He’s…what…a distant nephew? Manny and Rosie were from Michigan. That’s distant. Am I getting warm, Nate?”

  “Well,” Nathan Apple said.

  “Sure I am, I’m getting warm. All I’m saying, son, is that I’ve handled a few real estate transactions in my day. Aunt Dorothy can tell you. As a matter of fact I had at least a leetle something to do with some property she and her husband had a few years back. That was in Michigan, too, now I recall. Tell him, Dot.”

  “Junior!”

  “Tell him.”

  “My husband bought a farm from Mr. Yellin.”

  “Through Mr. Yellin. I know you’re already the executor, young Nate, but if it makes you more comfortable why don’t you consult with the legatees and see what they want to do with the place? Tell them you have a man who might be willing to handle it for them without, under the circumstances, taking a commission.”

  “Under what circumstances?” the lawyer said.

  “Well, it’s sentimental,” Junior Yellin said. “I know how helpful Uncle Manny was to Mrs. Bliss. How indebted she was to him. In her book he was practically Uncle Johnny-on-the-spot.”

  “Come on,” said Mrs. Bliss, “cut it out.”

  “He was, wasn’t he?”

  “He was very kind to me,” Mrs. Bliss admitted.

  “I’m afraid I don’t see—”

  “Tell me your price range. Maybe I’ll buy it myself.”

  “I don’t know,” Nathan Apple said. “I don’t know the lay of the land. You said so yourself.”

  “Ballpark.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s the most expensive of the three basic floor plans. It’s got a beautiful panoramic view of Biscayne Bay. And didn’t my uncle refurnish the place a few months after Aunt Rosie died?”

  Junior nudged Mrs. Bliss and winked. “He don’t know he says, he don’t know. Is this guy Mr. Perry Fucking Mason or what?”

  “I don’t know,” Nathan said. “A hundred seventy thousand dollars?”

  “Jesus,” Junior said, “he don’t know!”

  Mrs. Bliss was amazed by Yellin, who seemed in the few minutes he’d been talking to Apple to have climbed down from all the moderated energies he’d displayed for her since coming to Florida and renewing their (in a sense) practically historical relationship, and reverted to his old piratical ways. The seamlessness of the transition was what most surprised her, some now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t quality to his character palpable as a magician’s trick. Old and diminished as he’d become, conversational, anecdotal, at times almost soliloquial in some gentle, calm, barbershop sense of mild, almost privileged reflection; then, quick as snap, there he was, back in business again. He was no slouch. And neither, Mrs. Bliss saw, to judge by the kid’s $170,000 gambit, was young Nate.

  She was probably just a foolish old woman, thought Mrs. Ted Bliss, but she had a sense that at least a bit of this male flourish and display were for her benefit. Even the pisher’s. It was a proposition incapable of being tested, but she had the impression that if she weren’t there to witness them, their moves and positioning, their vying, would never have been near so blunt. It was astonishing to her how people just couldn’t help themselves, fantastic they should be so mired in gender. Then she thought, look at the pot calling the kettle black. What, I’m not getting a kick out of this? And surrendered to what, in all the most ancient parts of her old being, she hoped would prove to be spectacular.

  And egged it on even.

  “A hundred seventy thousand dollars,” she said, almost like someone in a prompter’s box reminding the players where things stood, pronouncing this as the prompter would, without emphasis, neutrally as she could, almost meaninglessly.

  “Ballpark,” said Nathan, picking up his cue.

  “Yeah, sure,” Junior Yellin said, “ballpark. But Yankee Stadium?”

  Mrs. Ted Bliss loved it. It was delicious. She ate it up.

  “Okay,” Nathan said reasonably, “all right. I forgot about your loyalty to Uncle Manny and Aunt Dorothy. I forgot about your willingness to sacrifice your usual commission. What’s five percent of a hundred seventy thousand? Eighty-five hundred, am I right? A hundred seventy thousand take away eighty-five hundred is what…? A hundred sixty-one thousand, five hundred.”

  “Absolutely,” Junior said. “Back in Grosse Pointe. Down here they go by the new math altogether.”

  “The new math.”

  “Yeah, well, first of all we start from an entirely different commission basis. The agent takes ten percent, not five. Already that brings us down to one hundred fifty-three thousand, and that’s without even factoring in the buyer’s initial additional expenses.”

  “What initial additional expenses?” Apple said.

  “The initial additional expenses of refurnishing this place.”

  “That’s no problem,” Nathan said, “we’re selling it furnished.”

  “You decided that? You and Aunt Rosie’s and Uncle Manny’s legatees?”

  “I’m the executor.”

  “I guess it just wasn’t meant to be,” Yellin said. “We’re at an impasse here, Dorothy.” Junior sighed sadly. Nathan Apple, deep in thought, stroked his chin.

  “Let’s see,” he said, “maybe not.” And looked up brightly. “Tell you what,” he said. “You gave up your agent’s commission, I’ll give up my executor’s commission. But you know,” he said, “my hands are tied. We’re paid on a sliding scale. In most states, in an estate like Uncle Manny’s, the lawyer is entitled to a two and three-quarters percent fee. Anyone have a pocket calculator?”

  “I do,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss, “your uncle gave me this in a time of trouble.” She handed it to him. “It works on solar,” she said.

  The lawyer punched some numbers into the little machine, then showed them the numbers that ran along the top of the keypad like a faded headline. “I make that $4,207.50,” he said. “Subtract that from…We’ll use your $153,000 as a base price, Milt. There, it’s $148,792.50.”

  “Tell him, Dorothy.”

  “Tell him what?” said Mrs. Bliss.

  “Tell him about the neighborhood.”

  “I want to stay out of this,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss.

  She did. She wanted to stay out of it altogether. She wished only to sit there, comfortably ringside, and watch these two champions go at each other. Rivals, she thought girlishly. Rivals for my hand. She almost laughed at the absurdity. She was eighty years old. If she had once been beautiful it would have taken the genius of some paleontological vision to restore her from her fossil clues and data. Bands of archaeologists would have had to reconstitute her from the geological record. It wasn’t vanity, she wasn’t vain. It had to do with that old gender mire. It was that they couldn’t help themselves. They couldn’t.

  “Go on, Dot. Tell him.”

  “You tell him, Milt.”

  “Tell me
what?”

  “It’s sociology,” said the jack of all trades.

  “Sociology.”

  “And style. Sociology and style. Sociology and style and evolution, both progressive and retrograde.”

  The jack of all trades was into his recreational therapeusistical mode now with more than a touch, thought Mrs. Ted Bliss, of his handy-dandy bookkeeping and old black-marketeering skills than of his realtor ones.

  “Because what you’ve got to remember,” Junior Yellin said, “is that this place, south Florida generally, is a one-industry town—the weather industry. Now you’ve got to refine that to read the winter weather industry. Not like Vermont, of course, or Vail, Colorado, but in some it’s-June-in-January sense. Why, it was practically invented by people with bad circulation. Well, it’s called the Sunshine State, ain’t it? They stick it on the goddamn license plates!

  “All right, so what we essentially got here isn’t so much a place to be as a place to come to. You’re a kid, or in your thirties or forties or fifties, the blood is running, your daddy’s rich and your ma is good lookin’, and you’ve barely even heard of it. Maybe Disney-world, maybe Cape Canaveral. Maybe stone crabs, maybe Key lime pie. Because your nose is to the grindstone, your shoulder to the wheel. Because, jeez, you’re too busy even to notice the temperature, and if you did, so what? Because weather is a thing you strive for. You sock it away for a rainy day. I mean for when the blood turns to sludge, to thirty-weight oil. I mean for when the damp shtups mold and arthritis into your bones.