Second Lives

by P. D. Cacek

  “You bastard.”

  Ryan smiled, knowing Jamie could see it. “Never claimed to be anything else, if you remember.”

  “You always have to make a joke about everything, don’t you?”

  He shrugged. “That’s what we bastards do. Now, come on, let’s calm down and go inside. I really could use another dr—”

  “No!” The volume was back up to hysterical bordering on screeching. “Not until we finish this.”

  Ryan noticed that the patio was full to capacity.

  “Do you really want to finish this here, like this? With everyone watching?”

  Jamie looked back over his shoulder and the crowd quickly dispersed. Ryan was impressed.

  “Wish I could do that.”

  “Make people disappear?” Jamie asked without turning around. “I thought you were the expert on that already.”

  Ryan felt a solid hit to his Past-Relationships-That-Had-Failed region.

  “Good one.”

  “No, no it wasn’t.” Ryan caught a quick sparkle of tears on his partner’s cheeks as Jamie finally turned around. “I’m done.”

  Thank God. “Good. Let’s grab our stuff and say our goodbyes and—”

  “No, I mean I can’t do this anymore, Ryan. I’m done. Goodbye.”

  Jamie turned and walked away.

  “Jesus. Come on, Jamie, stop acting like a broken blossom.”

  Jamie held up one finger and kept walking.

  “Hey! Did you forget we took my car?”

  The shadow-form kept walking and never looked back.

  Typical Jamie modus operandi – play the martyr so Ryan had to be the one to apologize and then promise everything would be okay, just like he always did.

  “Come on, Jamie!”

  Ryan took a deep breath and that turned out to be a big mistake. It let his brain realize what his partner had already known: he really was drunk and needed to go home.

  Now.

  Right this minute.

  One foot in front of the other, repeat as necessary.

  And it worked all the way down the path – which he’d only managed to miss twice – and across the patio, but stepping up into the house he stumbled into one of the French doors.

  “Oops.”

  Faces turned toward him and all conversation stopped. Even the baby, secure in her Daddy Jiro’s arms, seemed concerned. Jamie’s was the only face missing.

  Oren took a step toward him, but Ryan shook his head.

  “I’m fine. Oh…I dropped a wineglass out there. On the patio thing…edge. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay, no problem.” Oren was still moving toward him, his voice soft and reassuring. “Hey, we just put on some coffee – how ’bout a cup?”

  Ryan shook his head, which was another mistake, but to cover it, he focused on pulling the car keys from his pocket. “Naw, s’kay. Gotta get home, stuff to do. Great party. Cute kid. Thanks anyway, I’m fine.”

  “Give me the keys, Ryan.”

  Jamie made his way through the crowd. He looked like he’d aged ten years. His face was pale and haggard, his gray eyes rimmed in red.

  “I’m fine,” Ryan repeated.

  “No, you’re not.” Jamie’s voice was flat and calm. Would wonders never cease? “You’re drunk. Just give me the keys.”

  Ryan took another step.

  “I said I was fine.”

  Jamie held out his hand. “Give me the damn keys and stop acting like an idiot.”

  Ryan slapped the hand away.

  “You’re not here,” he said, “you’re quote, done, unquote…remember?”

  Jamie made a grab for the car keys, acting like he was suddenly the mature one in the relationship, so Ryan pushed him away, just a little give-me-some-room shove. But it must have been harder than he thought because Jamie went down like a statue knocked off its pedestal.

  And broke.

  They all heard it, the wet celery snap when Jamie hit the floor and lay there like a crumpled doll, his head turned at an impossible angle.

  The room was suddenly filled with words “—okay?—” “— 9-1-1—”

  “—breathing—” “—ambulance—” “—dead?—” “—accident—” “—neck—” “—broken.—” “—hurry—” that floated around Ryan but didn’t make sense…

  …until Jamie moaned.

  “Don’t move him; the ambulance is on the way.”

  “Jamie?” Ryan took a step closer. “Open your eyes, Jamie.”

  Jamie moaned again but didn’t open his eyes.

  God, what did I do? “Jamie? JAMIE!”

  Someone grabbed Ryan’s arm and led him to a chair, sat him down and stayed next to him. It was going to be okay, the someone told him, Jamie was alive and the ambulance was on its way.

  Somewhere in the distance the baby started crying.

  Chapter Six

  Aryeh

  (1926)

  “Esther, kumen?”

  “Yes, Mama. I’m coming.”

  “She comes.” Rena, his wife and the mother of his three children, shook her head. “She comes like ice from a pump in winter she comes.”

  “Sha, wife,” he scolded gently, “she comes, that’s what matters.”

  His wife sniffed loudly and went back to making sure their other children – Jaffa, his firstborn angel, and Leben, only five but already strong enough to help sweep up in the shop – were presentable.

  As if she would let any of them set one foot from their apartment if they weren’t. She reminded him so much of his own dear mameh, may she rest in peace.

  “ESTHER! You come now or we go without you!”

  So very much like his mameh.

  From upstairs came a series of thumps but only one clang as something small and metallic crashed to the floor. A moment later Esther, their middle child, came running down the stairs. Where Jaffa and Leben were more like him in looks – thin and angular with dark brown hair and brown eyes – Esther was more like her mother: a plump little pigeon with hair the color of summer wheat and eyes like warm honey.

  “What fell?” he asked.

  “It didn’t break.”

  Aryeh Rosenberg looked at his wife who could only shake her head and sigh. “I’m so glad. And what was it didn’t break?”

  Esther stopped on the bottom stair, the look of fear in her eyes.

  “It was only the silver plate, Papa.”

  “Only the good silver plate I keep for company to make everything nice?” his wife shouted. “The one for Jaffa when she gets married silver plate? That silver plate that didn’t break?”

  Aryeh watched the terror deepen in his little pigeon’s eyes.

  “Yes, Mameh, but it’s not broken…only a little bent.”

  “Bent!?” His wife’s voice echoed up the stairs to their apartment and down the narrow hall to his watch shop. “Bent! Did you hear that, husband – bent! It’s not enough that she runs around like a three-legged calf bumping into everything, now she destroys her own sister’s bridal gifts! How did I give birth to such a klutz, will someone tell me? Velkh am ikh geun keyn ton mit du?”

  What am I going to do with you?

  If it had just been the two of them alone Aryeh would have answered, “Love her as you love all our children,” but they were not alone and, as their mother, she had the final say in such matters.

  “Wife, speak American. We are Americans now and we must speak like Americans. Yoh? Now, to answer, you will not do nothing now because if you do something now you will be late and keep everyone waiting and how would that look, eh? Worse I think than a dent in a plate.”

  His wife’s eyes narrowed just enough to let Aryeh know she wasn’t happy about his interference and would be speaking to him later about it, after the children were in bed.

&
nbsp; “But it’s Jaffa’s plate….”

  “Then I will look and see and fix, then I will come and all will be gut.”

  “Good,” she corrected and there was a twinkle in her eyes when she said it. “Fine, we go and I make your excuse. But not too long…you know Mrs. Katz.”

  Aryeh nodded. He knew Mrs. Katz; more than he wanted, he knew Mrs. Katz. Everyone in the neighborhood knew Mrs. Katz the Matchmaker, and if you didn’t, not to worry because she would come find you.

  She’d found them a week after they’d gotten off the boat and were still living with Rena’s married brother and his family in a cramped apartment near Tompkins Square Park. Jaffa had only been a baby and the other two children not even dreams in God’s eye. They met Mrs. Katz while they were pushing Jaffa around the park one bright spring morning.

  “Such a beautiful baby!” was the first thing from the woman’s mouth, and “Have you made a match for her yet?” was the second.

  They were not even Americans yet, nor had Aryeh a job, but this was a taste of home that, until it was said, neither he nor Rena realized they’d been starving for. Mrs. Katz made a match for Jaffa within a month of their meeting – “A good boy from a good family” – and, when she learned Aryeh was good with his hands, found him a place as a watchmaker’s apprentice. And when the watchmaker died, it was Mrs. Katz who suggested Aryeh buy the shop with its apartment upstairs and become a businessman like the American he was.

  That had been thirteen years ago but without Mrs. Katz, who knew what would have become of them? Maybe still living with Rena’s brother with him hauling rags for pennies instead of sitting straight in his own shop with windows filled with sunlight. Now he had two fine matches for his daughters and maybe tonight there would be another made for his son.

  His life was good, a bent plate could be fixed, and Mrs. Katz should not be kept waiting.

  “Why are you still standing? You want I should engrave you an invitation to go?” Aryeh flicked his hands toward his family the same way he’d seen his mother and grandmother shoo chickens. “Go. And tell her I come soon.”

  “Soon.” His wife repeated the word to let him know that she’d heard and would keep him to that promise before turning her attention to their children. “Hurry, you heard your papa…we go now so we should not be late for Mrs. Katz, he comes later.” She looked back over her shoulder. “Maybe with a box of that nice salted water taffy she likes so much, yes?”

  Aryeh nodded. Bringing gifts when one went to visit, even when one went to visit a shadchen, was one of those American customs, like people not even married dancing marathons until they passed out (Cholileh!) that he still had trouble with. But who was he to argue with the way things were done in his new homeland? Nothing but a watchmaker on Essex Street Neuyork Neuyork.

  And that was enough.

  “Yoh. Yes, I buy, but for that I will show up a little less soon.”

  “But she’ll like. All right, children – come.”

  Taking their son’s hand, Rena marched to the front door, then stood to one side and watched like a general on a hilltop as their daughters walked into the late-afternoon warmth. There were only a few hours before sunset, but that was of little worry. Mrs. Katz’s dead husband, may his soul be forever blessed, had left her a wealthy widow. Mrs. Katz wanted for nothing, and had a cook and maid who were Irish goyim so that even on Shabbos the lights could be turned on and fires lit and dinner served after the sun went down.

  Such was America.

  The goldeneh medinah, the golden country.

  Still, to show up late would not be such a nice thing, especially for the ‘light tea and cakes’ Mrs. Katz was offering along with the first meeting of Leben’s future wife and her family. A box of taffy would make his lateness maybe less shlekht manners.

  “You hurry,” his wife said then, smoothing down the sheitel he’d bought for her from a store on Houston Street, pulled their son from the house and closed the door behind them.

  The hallway felt colder with them gone. It was always like that when they left – the house silent of the small sounds he knew as well as the beating of his own heart, the rooms empty, leaving him a ghost to haunt alone.

  “Narishkeit,” Aryeh chided himself as he turned and walked up the stairs to their apartment. “Foolishness. Shoyn genug, that’s enough. All right, first, best to see what damage and maybe leave it until later.”

  The dent was nothing. A few minutes tapping it out, then polish and it would be as good as new. And it could wait. But, knowing his beloved would ask about it and fret and worry and make narrow eyes at Esther, Aryeh took the plate down to the shop.

  Five minutes to fix, six maybe and it would be done and he could—

  “Mr. Rosenberg?”

  Aryeh stopped with his hand still on the doorknob and with one foot still poised to take the next step. He’d closed the shop early because of their appointment with the Matchmaker, had turned the sign around and locked the door and turned off the lights, but there they were – two men in well-cut suits holding their hats in their hands like regular gentlemen.

  “You are Mr. Rosenberg, yes?”

  Aryeh nodded and let his foot finally settle on the floor, but his hand refused to let go of the doorknob.

  “Yoh. Yes, I am Rosenberg.”

  “Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Rosenberg,” the taller of the two men said. His suit was tan, the other man’s a light gray. “Please to excuse the intrusion, but the door was open so we came in.”

  “It was?”

  Aryeh dipped his head in respect as he hurried past the men to the door. He was sure he’d locked it.

  The Closed sign was still hanging in the window facing the street, and when Aryeh got closer he saw that the brass door lock had been broken inward.

  “Shame about the lock,” the tall man said, “those things can get expensive to replace. Ask any shopkeeper on this block. They know and will tell you.”

  When Aryeh turned the shorter man smiled.

  “Hoodlums and vandals, vos-in-der-kort,” he said, “such bad men around, but what you gonna do, right? You put a new lock, they break again, then you get another new lock and another and another and then, who knows, maybe the next time it’s a broken window and then, maybe something more valuable gets broken. Maybe something you can’t replace, eh, like an arm or leg?”

  Aryeh felt a chill colder than the one he imagined when his wife and children left.

  “What are you saying to me?”

  It was the tall man’s turn to smile. “Only that the city isn’t what it used to be, Mr. Rosenberg. More and more people are moving in every day and, well—” He shrugged his shoulders and Aryeh saw the edge of a brick peek out from his coat pocket. “Maybe they ain’t such nice people.”

  “No,” Aryeh agreed. “Not so nice.”

  “Then we understand each other, Mr. Rosenberg?” the tall man asked. “Mr. Joseph Toblinsky will be happy to hear.”

  Joseph Toblinsky. Aryeh knew the name from the Yiddish print American newspapers. He was a gangster they said, stories told to him in whispers from his neighbors who had to pay, each and every week so their shops – and families – would be left in peace. Joseph Toblinsky was a parech, a bad man.

  “You want I should pay.”

  Both men, tall and short, smiled.

  “For protection, yes.”

  “No,” Aryeh said. “This is America, Land of the Free.”

  The shorter man laughed. “Only here in this shop is America? Mr. Toblinsky will be interested to know that.”

  Aryeh reached behind him and opened the door. The broken lock rattled.

  “Go and tell him no, not from me one penny will you get.”

  The shorter man walked to the door and pushed it closed, brushing Aryeh aside.

  “A penny,” the man shook his head, le
aning back to block the door. “Did you hear, the man should tell jokes for a living. A penny.”

  “I heard,” the taller man said. “But no, from you we want more than a penny, Mr. Rosenberg…or things could happen.”

  Still smiling, the tall man took the brick from his pocket and began walking around the shop, looking down into the showcases.

  “Beautiful things you got here, Mr. Rosenberg.” He stopped in front of the glass-topped counter and leaned down. “You do all the fixing yourself?”

  Aryeh nodded, his tongue suddenly too dry to make words.

  The tall man nodded as if he’d seen. “Old-world craftsmanship, you don’t find that too much anymore.”

  Almost too fast for Aryeh to see, the tall man raised the brick and smashed it down against the countertop. He remembered the sound. He was only thirteen during the pogrom in Yekaterinoslav, but the sound of shattering glass brought it all back and he reacted without thinking. In his mind he saw his father dead with blood coming from the wound on his head, and the men pushing his mother and sisters down to the floor. In his mind he felt again the pain of the truncheons against the back of his skull.

  In his mind he forgot he was American.

  “NEIN!”

  Aryeh took one step and fell. The shorter man had tripped him and now stood over him like a hunter over a fallen bear.

  “This one has some spunk,” the short man said and sounded impressed. The taller man only shook his head.

  “Not such a good thing to have spunk, Mr. Rosenberg, this I tell you as a friend, and friends we will become, because in this life a man without friends is like a fish without water…he don’t breathe for long. Farshtain? Understand?”

  Blood filled Aryeh’s mouth from where he’d bitten his tongue, but he would not swallow it.

  “I understand,” he said and let the blood run down his chin. “I understand the boss of you is a groyser tzuleyger, big shot of nothing and you are nothings.”

  The hard sole of a shoe pressed down on his back. “What I tell you…spunk!”

  The tall man shook his head again and, putting the brick back into his pocket, reached down into the case and took out the yellow-gold pocket watch with the rose-gold inlay. The man held it by its golden chain and let it dangle from his fingers.