Table Money

by Jimmy Breslin

  As he talked, Dolores thought, there was somewhere in him, somewhere in his life of compounds and formulas, a secret compartment where he was a controlled but ferocious gangster killer; revenge is a dish best taken cold.

  Outside, in the parking lot, she saw LaVine and mentioned this to him. “Of course!” He nodded toward younger students. “If you told them that, they wouldn’t know what you’re saying.”

  For simple conversation, something to say before putting keys into a car lock, Dolores said, “Have you your usual ambulance coming?”

  “Not tonight. Everybody is watching the Lakers game. Don’t get sick in Queens tonight. I got to hurry up and catch the last quarter. You want to stop off?”

  “Thanks. I’m going home.”

  “You live in Glendale, don’t you? We watch the game right up near you. Everybody from my job hangs out in the Trotters. It’s right on Fifty-ninth Street in Maspeth. It’s two blocks from our garage. Stop by, see the end of the game. Plenty of women are there from the job.”

  “Is that my protection?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I’m just asking if you want to see the game. It’s up to you. I don’t want to know your business.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I don’t know whether to talk to you or to run away from you.”

  “What makes you say a thing like that?”

  “I heard. The guy you’re separated from. Forget about it.”

  “Where did you hear this?”

  “Around.”

  “You mean around Marissa.”

  He laughed.

  “And what did she tell you?”

  “She told me who your husband was.”

  “What else did she say about it?”

  “That the guy was so mad at you that he was going to come here some night and blow up the school.”

  “That’s what Marissa said?”

  “Yes.”

  “What else did she tell you?”

  “Not to say anything.”

  “Is that all?”

  “You won’t be mad?”

  “No.”

  “All right. This is what she told me, not what I’m saying. She told me that your husband was out there in the parking lot one night with a gun or something and that she had to talk him out of shooting you when you came out of the school.”

  “She’s nuts.”

  “What can I tell you?”

  “You tell Marissa that I’m going to start telling people some things about her. Tell Marissa to stop bothering senior citizens. She’ll know.”

  When he laughed, Dolores said, “Because of that, now I don’t know whether I want to come tonight or not.”

  It was pleasant to talk to him, and with the pleasantness came a light feeling, which she did not identify as slight excitement until she was at the 59th Street exit. She wondered if he could have been a quarter step or a half step beyond being merely cordial when he asked her to watch the game. Then she was in front of the Trotters, which was a low cinder-block building next to a gas station. She looked once in the big front window and saw ambulance drivers in white shirts crowded against the bar. She watched glasses catch the barlight as they were lifted. Thank you. She started driving home slowly, through side streets.

  At the end of Cypress Avenue, she pulled to the curb. She looked over the tops of low factory buildings and saw the East Side of Manhattan, its riches, white in the night, strewn across magenta. That “the city” can be seen, that there are bridges and tunnels going to it, and subways rushing through the dirty underground air, is the only thing that prevents Queens from being as completely rural in its thinking and emotions as any Arkansas hill town. As it is, people born in Queens, raised to say that each morning they get on the subway and “go to the city,” have a resentment of Manhattan, of the swiftness of its life and success of the people who live there. Those of Manhattan are the brokers on Wall Street and they talk of people who went to the same colleges; those from Queens are margin clerks in the back offices and they speak of friends who live in the same neighborhood.

  At this point, the East River separates Queens from Manhattan. To the eye, it is gray on one side, the Queens side, where it runs past the old pilings of the Pepsi-Cola storage plant, and a delightful seafoam green as it glides past the United Nations buildings and the riches of the East Side. Here the river is three hundred yards wide and forty-one feet deep and its effect on a couple of million people in Queens is as much as an ocean of the world.

  During the week before this, her cousin Virginia had waited for Dolores to get home and, eyes leaping with excitement, said she had spoken to Conlon, the man around the corner with the red-headed kids, and he knew of an odd-hours job in his back office at a Wall Street brokerage. Gonlon was the chief margin clerk, Virginia said. “You can go here when you’re not in school. You won’t have to rely on stealing Owney’s checks.” These were words that Dolores treated as flying glass, but she decided not to contest the notion that the check was not hers. After she had her daughter bathed and in her crib, Dolores walked around to Conlon’s house.

  “Mister Conlon—”

  “Dan.”

  “Fine. Dan, my cousin Virginia told me that—”

  “We got an insane asylum where I work,” Conlon cut in. “The head of the company doesn’t trust machinery. He tells everybody to buy IBM stock, but he won’t let an IBM salesman into the place. We still do our work as if we got Jack Sprat—is that his name?—working with an eyeshade. The margin clerks are working from six-thirty in the morning until midnight. All hours. We have to send them home by cab. We need help at all hours. Do everything by hand. You’re in school again, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. And I don’t know how much time I could spend working. How much would I have to put in?”

  “Well, I mean. It’s only back-office work! You’re not a rocket scientist. It wouldn’t fatigue your head so much. You could fit in five days. That’s the job.”

  “I just don’t know if I could do anything. I can barely make it as it is.”

  “What are you taking that’s so hard? School, how hard can it be? My nephew goes to school.”

  “I’m taking pre-med courses and they’re quite demanding.”

  “What are you taking them for, nurse?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Doctor, maybe.”

  “What’s a girl want to be a doctor for? Girl’s supposed to be a nurse. You’ll have another baby sometime, you’ll never finish anyway.”

  “I’m going to try.”

  “I think that would be very hard for a girl that’s married. I know Doris Roehmer next door was trying to do that, but between the house and then getting pregnant, she gave it up. She’s got a nice thing now. When she needs a few extra dollars she puts in a shift night nursing, St. John’s Hospital.”

  “I think I want more than that.”

  “Suit yourself. I just told Virginia that if you wanted something—”

  “I think I’d rather starve than give up. In fact,” and she patted her middle, “I think I better start starving.”

  Now, sitting in the car, Dolores thought about LaVine. Pure Queens, embarrassed to admit his own dreams. The night wind blew against tin somewhere on the street, the sound of which put a chill inside the car. Dolores pulled her car coat around her, which caused the collar to rise on her neck, and at first brush, against the right side, she immediately remembered Owney’s lips against her neck. Wistful. Then she thought of him alone in his room at the cemetery. Wistful, sad. The feeling, however, didn’t clutch and cause pain, for now she thought about him in one of his bars. Thanks.

  When she got home, she saw the light in Nancy Lucarella’s window and walked across to the house.

  “Still trying?” Nancy said, her arm draped on her stack of paper.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you can’t do it. Nobody can do it. Go from here to anyplace else but a knitting mill.” She slapped her hand on the desk, which caused the can
of soda to spill. Nancy’s elbow sent many pages to the floor. “I’ll get it!” she shrieked. Dolores was bent over and she had the first blank pages in her hands, cover pages, she thought, but then as she started to pick up more, she noticed they all were blank. Suddenly, Nancy’s hand was pushing Dolores out of the way. Dolores straightened up as Nancy picked up her paper.

  Dolores now glanced at the pile left on the kitchen table. The top page was blank. Dolores made a pass at the middle of the stack. The kitchen fluorescent light struck another blank sheet. “You came here and made me nervous,” Nancy said, standing up. “They had me nervous all day. I went to the ASPCA lawyer today. I asked him to help me in surrogate court to get my money from my mother. He said to me, ‘Why are you coming to me to sue for Marilyn Monroe’s money?’ And I said, ‘Because if they are treating me like a dog, then I might as well use a dog lawyer.’”

  “I’m exhausted,” Dolores said, walking to the front door.

  In bed she moved her leg across the emptiness. Once, this would cause him to stir and a hand to reach for her. Now her leg just felt the sheet and through the wall came the sound of her mother’s snoring. She lay awake thinking of Nancy Lucarella, who left this block too late in her life and now was across the street in pieces.

  At five-thirty, she got out of bed, put on a robe, picked up her book and set of highlight pens, and walked out to the kitchen, where she turned on the light. Then she opened her book and started reading.

  On another morning, Marissa called while Dolores was in the midst of changing the baby. “She says Today show right now,” her mother said, and Dolores said, “Tell her I can’t.”

  “She’s screaming.”

  Carrying the baby, she went out to the television. On came a commercial for Dannon yogurt, which made Dolores think of eating a container of maple walnut ice cream on her way to school.

  On the phone, she said to Marissa, “What are you talking about? I hate yogurt.”

  “You turned it on late! When I say something you got to do it right away. You should have seen it.”

  “What?”

  “They had people on from colleges about scholarships. There were two of them that had scholarships for people like you. Older women.”

  “What did they say?”

  “I didn’t hear it all. I had on my hair dryer when they started. I know there was one from Smith and another woman from someplace else. The rest were men. But why I wanted you to catch it, the one from Smith said they even had day care for babies. I don’t know what the others were saying. One was from Texas A and M and they had one other woman. From Syracuse.”

  “Smith had day care?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You at least should ask.”

  “I’ll call right away,” Dolores said. Standing in the kitchen with the baby, not even dressed herself, the idea of a phone call to someplace strange seemed overwhelming. Beyond that, there was no time for exotic contests that were unwinnable; she had to get through each day. When Marissa asked her about this at school, Dolores told her that of course she had called and that the scholarships were only open to minorities, which took care of the subject. And then it rained on a Saturday, rain that started early, before anybody woke up, and drummed on the windows and in the gloom of the house the baby immediately was cranky. Her mother, standing at the front windows, gave an enormous sigh.

  “I got cataracts.”

  “What gave you that idea?”

  “How would I know, I been to the doctor’s.”

  “This is the first time you’ve mentioned it.”

  “You been so busy, I wouldn’t bother you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. We’re going to have to do something about them right away. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “We all got enough to do.”

  “Mother, we’re talking about your eyes.”

  “You just do your job. Maybe someday you’ll know about cataracts. I won’t even have to leave this room to have my cataracts looked at.”

  “They’ll be gone by then.”

  “There’ll be something else for you to look at. I’m at that point now where I’ve started dying.”

  “So has everybody else. Now tell me how much they bother you.”

  “I can’t thread a needle.”

  “Well.”

  “You said it. Well.”

  “I meant that I hardly call that a catastrophe. A lot of people can’t thread a needle at your age.”

  “It’s a pretty big thing to me.”

  “Well, what did the doctor say to you about it?”

  “He said come back. I’m going to call up Jewel Feeney. She had it done. She said it was wonderful.”

  As Jewel Feeney lived in Boynton Beach, Dolores felt the conversation, whether her mother realized it or not, was an expression of fatigue with the present circumstances.

  At the window, her mother sighed again. “Can’t go anyplace in the rain.”

  “Of course you can.” Dolores went over and put her head on her mother’s shoulder and looked out at the street. “You just go for the day.”

  “Where? Go jump in the lake?”

  “Get an umbrella and go.”

  “I can’t take the baby out in the rain.”

  “I’m not leaving here today.”

  “I thought you go by the library today.”

  “No, I’d just rather stay home.”

  She relinquished the day to a fretting baby, and, when the child fell asleep at two in the afternoon, she sat at the kitchen table with her books. Immediately, her cousin Virginia walked in.

  “Did I sleep! Just got up. What are you doing?”

  “I was trying to do some work.”

  “I have an idea,” she said.

  “What?”

  “That there isn’t half the sex in this city that everybody says there is. There are girls walking around this city who have absolutely nothing happening. They don’t have a date. Nothing.”

  “What about the boys?”

  “What boys? There aren’t any in New York.”

  “They’re not all in Vietnam.”

  “Who knows where they are. Dolores, I go out and they’re either married or they’re fags. Where are they all?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “You talked big. You told me just go out and look. Well, I looked. You know what I found? Girls. Do you know what?” Virginia said.

  “Tell me.”

  “All the stories you read about sex are made up. There are no guys in the whole city. If girls answer questions in a poll, they make up the answers. If they told the truth, there’d be no more magazine stories about sex. Because there isn’t any sex in New York.”

  Now Virginia took a seat across from Dolores, who reluctantly put her books away. She went to the front windows and stared out, as Virginia kept talking.

  Dolores discovered the buildings across the street suddenly seemed so close; she could feel them. When she glanced around the apartment, it now seemed miniature. I’m always living in a corner, she thought. Outside, the rain fell steadily and heavily. She went to the phone and called Marissa. “That show you called me about was the Today show, am I right?”

  “Barbara Walters,” Marissa said. “Call her up.”

  In school on Tuesday, Marissa said, “You call Barbara Walters?”

  “Yes,” Dolores said.

  “What did she tell you?”

  “She said, ‘Good morning.’”

  “I was serious,” Marissa said.

  “I know. I just can’t put anything like that together right now.”

  Some weeks later, on a Sunday morning, Marissa called again and told her to look in the Times education pages. Dolores found a story out of Syracuse about the program. It gave the names of the people from Smith and Syracuse. On Monday, Dolores called Smith and the woman said she could fill in an application and then, if it interested the scho
ol, she could come up for an interview.

  “You’re where now?” Dolores said.

  “We’re in Northampton.”

  “And how far is that?”

  “About three hours from you.”

  “Oh, I could never go that far.”

  When Dolores called Syracuse, she was told that an application blank would be sent and that interviewing of New York prospects could be done in Manhattan. When the thick envelope arrived, her mother said, nervously, “What’s that?”

  “They have some sort of a scholarship.”

  “What if you get it?”

  “I’m not going to get anything. Don’t worry.”

  “But if you do, you’d go up there?”

  “I said, I’m not going to get it. Don’t worry.”

  “But what if you did get it? What would you do with the baby?”

  “She’d come with me.”

  “I never heard of such a thing. What would Owney say?”

  “Mother, let’s totally forget about it. There is no way I’ll get anything.” Even an offhand thought of taking the baby away from the father caused guilt to churn in her stomach. How could you consider such a brutal thing, she told herself. She had the application for a week and was about to throw it away at the end of a night. And then she suddenly filled it out. One night two weeks later, her mother said, “The school I don’t like wrote you again.”

  The letter this time said that interviews were being held in Manhattan at a Syracuse University building on East 61st Street. There was a date given for late in the afternoon two weeks from then, and Dolores called Syracuse and confirmed it. On the day of the interview, she came home early from school and changed into her only suit, a navy wool, and a white blouse.

  “Where are you going?” her mother said.

  “To my interview. But only because they were nice even to give me the appointment.”

  “There’d be hell to pay if you took that baby away. My God in heaven. Don’t you think of that?”

  “All the time. That’s why I’m just going to see them. I won’t do anything.”

  At four o’clock, she found the place, a red brick building across from the side entrance to the Pierre Hotel. She sat in the waiting room next to a black of about twenty-five who had his hands clasped.