What's in It for Me?

by Jerome Weidman

  As I scratched the key against the lock, trying to get it into the keyhole, the spring clicked from the inside and the door was pulled open. I looked into three faces: Mrs. Herman, Murray, and Ruthie Ritling. From the bedroom behind them someone was saying, “Ssshhh!”

  “What—?” I began.

  Ruthie’s lips quivered and she put out her hand toward me. Murray cleared his throat.

  “Harry,” he said, “we—”

  “Hey!” I stepped in quickly and tried to push through them. “What’s the—?”

  The sound from the bedroom grew sharper.

  “Ssshhh! Ssshhh!”

  Murray reached forward and grabbed my arm.

  “Harry, you’ve got to—”

  I didn’t like the sound of his voice.

  “The hell I do!” I didn’t like the sound of my own voice. “What’s going on—?”

  Murray’s grip on my arm tightened and Mrs. Herman grabbed at my shoulder. I struggled to get free. Ruthie put both her hands on my chest and shoved me back against them. The pink was gone from her cheeks and her face looked very white. She spoke quickly and her lips quivered again.

  “Harry! Please don’t—!”

  Suddenly my breath was corning very fast and I knew I was going to hit someone. I wrenched one arm loose and drew it back as I shoved myself forward. A man came out of the bedroom. It was Dr. Silverman. I stopped struggling.

  “Please!” His voice was very low and he frowned. Then his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light in the foyer and he recognized me. “Oh,” he said, “Mr. Bogen.”

  I looked down at Ruthie.

  “It’s all right,” I said quietly. “I won’t—”

  They all released me and stepped back.

  “Please be quiet,” Dr. Silverman said. “She’s—”

  I moved toward him and gripped his arm above the elbow.

  “What’s the matter, Doctor? What’s the matter with my mother?”

  He put his finger to his lips and shook his head.

  “Please, Mr. Bogen! We can’t have any—”

  I swallowed quickly and spoke in a whisper.

  “What’s—? I want to see her. I’m going in to—”

  “All right,” he said, “but only for a moment.”

  I stepped past him into the bedroom. He was right behind me. She was lying on her back with her eyes closed. Except for her breathing, which was coming very hard, she was motionless. Most of the time when I saw her she was laughing or she was angry; always her face was in motion. Now, without movement, it looked strange; it was flat and full of deep tired lines and the jowls sagged. Her hair was damp and brushed back, but a few wisps of it were stretched across the pillow on both sides. It had never looked so gray before. Her forehead was wet with perspiration, but she was covered to her chin with blankets. The doctor’s bag stood open on the little table beside the bed. Next to it was a pan of water, a hypodermic syringe, and an open metal box with a blue velvet lining and small bottles clamped to the inside on tiny nickel hooks. Her head moved slightly, perhaps an inch, and her chin shook once or twice until her mouth opened. A blob of saliva spilled over the corner of her mouth and went rolling down the side of her chin and throat into the blankets. I took a step forward and said, “Ma!”

  The doctor grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

  “Please!” he hissed. “I must ask you, Mr. Bogen, not to—”

  “All right,” I said, “I only—”

  “Please!”

  He pulled hard on my arm and I followed him out into the foyer. Mrs. Herman and Murray and Ruthie were standing just as I had left them.

  “Harry,” Ruthie said. She put out her hand and I wanted to take it, but Murray was there. “Harry,” she said again.

  The doctor spoke from behind me.

  “Please!” he whispered irritably. He turned to the others. “Please take him into the kitchen. I’ve got to—”

  “All right, Doctor. I’m sorry. I won’t make any more noise. Let’s go into the kitchen.”

  Mrs. Herman and Murray went first. Ruthie and I followed. She took my hand and squeezed it. I squeezed it back very hard.

  “Oh, Harry.”

  When Mrs. Herman and Murray stepped across the threshold into the kitchen, I pushed her after them.

  “Go ahead, Ruthie. I’ll be in in a second. I just want to—”

  She looked up at me very quickly and then dropped her head and followed them. I stood there quietly for a few moments. Then I blew my nose and I was all right. I stepped into the kitchen. Murray and his mother were sitting at the table, scowling down at their hands which were folded in front of them on the white porcelain table top. Ruthie was at the sink with her hand on the cold water tap.

  “You want a drink, Harry?”

  “Yes, please. Thanks.”

  I drank the water quickly and handed the glass back to her.

  “Another glass, Harry?”

  “No thanks. That’s enough.” I turned to all of them. “What happened?” I asked.

  Murray cleared his throat and opened his mouth to say something. But Mrs. Herman started to cry and he stopped. He nudged her and she dried her eyes quickly. She opened her mouth, but the others opened their mouths, too, and they all started to talk at once. Then, very quickly, they all stopped at once. Everybody seemed to be ashamed to tell some small part of what he or she knew, and the others had to help out. Finally, Ruthie got things moving by nodding to Mrs. Herman and putting her hand on Murray’s shoulder to indicate that he should keep quiet.

  “Three whole days,” Mrs. Herman said, “she was like a wild one. She wouldn’t eat, she wouldn’t listen to me or to the doctor, she wouldn’t do anything, because, well,” she hesitated, “because you didn’t come up, you didn’t call up, you didn’t do nothing, Mr. Bogen.”

  The formality of the Mister had never seemed so out of place before.

  “I was very—” I stopped. “I should have called up,” I said.

  Mrs. Herman looked down at her hands again. Murray took up the story.

  “She made my mother call your place and your apartment, Harry. My mother called two or three times a day, but you were never in and—”

  The apologies rose to my lips again. But I couldn’t tell them about Martha and Nissem and my movements around town.

  “I didn’t get the messages.”

  “I guess not,” Murray said. “Anyway, finally my mother told me to drop in to see you, which I did.” I nodded without looking at him. “You promised to come up to see her. I told her that when I got home that night. She calmed down a little after that, but the next day, when you, well—”

  He stopped and repeated his mother’s gesture. He looked down at his hands.

  “A lot of things came up suddenly. I couldn’t—”

  “All right,” he said. “Anyway, when you didn’t come up, she went wild again. She kept saying she was sure something happened to you and she made my mother make a lot more calls—”

  If there had been anything but quiet friendship in his voice I would have been able to yell at him. I would have been able to tell him what was he worrying about, the calls were made on my phone, weren’t they? But there was nothing else in his voice.

  “I didn’t get those calls, either,” I said.

  “This morning she made my mother make one more call to your place. But they said you weren’t in.”

  That was the call Miss Eckveldt had shot at me as I rushed out after Nissem’s visit.

  “I wasn’t in.”

  “I know,” Mrs. Herman said quickly. “I told her that. And honest to God, Mr. Bogen, I had a job with her just to keep her in bed. I tried to talk her in she should go to sleep, but she didn’t even listen a word I said. Till I made her hot tea and she said all right, she’ll go sleep. And then, then she, she—”

  “She went to sleep,” Murray said, breaking in. “Or anyway, she seemed to go to sleep. So my mother went upstairs for a while to do a little cleaning in our, wel
l, you know. Anyway, she came down in a little while, she didn’t stay up very long, Harry, she came down in a little while and, well, your mother was gone. Naturally, my mother almost passed out from the shock, I can tell you. But she had enough sense to call me up right away at my office. The way I figured, I figured she must’ve gone to your place. So I told my mother to jump in the subway and meet me at 550 Seventh Avenue. I got there first and the girl there, a Miss—”

  “Eckveldt,” I said.

  “That’s right, Miss Eckveldt. She said your mother hadn’t been there and she didn’t know where you were, you said you weren’t coming back. I waited a while till my mother came in and we decided the only other place she could be was your apartment. So we took a taxi to your—”

  “I know. I—”

  He looked at me in surprise.

  “You know? How do you—?”

  “I mean, I—uh—I figured you’d try to get there as quick as you—”

  “That’s right. We took a taxi up there and as soon as we got in the lobby, well—” He paused and dropped his low voice even lower. “Doctor Silverman says the excitement getting dressed and going downtown in the subway and walking from the station on Seventy-second and Broadway to Central Park West was too much for her. He says the clot in her leg, a piece of it, anyway, he says it broke off and started to move around in her system and she, well, she just collapsed there in the lobby, Harry. We took her from the couch there that she was laying on and we, well, we took her home and we called Doctor Silverman right away and—”

  He stopped and bit his lip.

  “And what, Murray?”

  “Well, he says if it reaches the heart, the clot I mean, they call it a pulmonary embolus. And if it reaches the brain, it’s a cerebral embolus. Either one, it’s—”

  “Doctor Silverman says it’s all right, Harry,” Ruthie said quickly. “He says there’s a—”

  I looked at her and she turned away.

  “How did you get up here, Ruthie?”

  I had to ask something.

  “Murray and I work near each other and we have lunch together every—No. Today we were supposed to be going to the printer to see about the invitations for our—I mean,” she corrected, “we have lunch once in a—We were supposed to have lunch today. When Murray didn’t show up I called his office and they said he left in the middle of the day because he got a call from his mother. I was worried about this, so I called up my boss and I told him I thought something happened and could I have the rest of the day off. He said yes, so I rode up right away, but Murray’s door was locked, so I came down here and—”

  She stopped. Now everybody was accounted for. Now it was all clear. What was clear? It was clear that if these three people I was facing were ever asked to name the biggest son of a bitch they had ever met in their lives, they wouldn’t have to rack their brains very hard. The chances were they wouldn’t even wait until they were asked.

  “Well,” I said finally, “we’ll have to see what Doctor Sil—”

  The phone in the foyer began to ring.

  “I’ll answer it, Harry,” Ruthie said.

  She was out of the room and I heard her say “Hello,” before I realized what I had let her do.

  “Ruthie!” I got up and ran out into the foyer. “Ruthie! I’m not—!”

  But it was too late.

  “Yes, he is,” she was saying. “Just a moment, please.” She covered the mouthpiece with her hand and held the receiver toward me. “It’s for you, Harry. A Mr. Nissem.”

  “Tell him I’m not—! No, no! Tell him I left! Tell him you don’t know where I—!”

  She put the receiver back to her ear and looked at me with frightened eyes.

  “He’s not,” she began. But there was a sharp click as the receiver at the other end was banged onto its hook. It made a short dull snap in the foyer. “Harry,” she said in a scared voice, “he said he’s, he said he’s coming up here and—I” She hung up slowly without taking her eyes from my face. “He said he—”

  She didn’t have to tell me what he said.

  “God damn it,” I yelled at her, “why did you—?”

  Mrs. Herman and Murray came up behind me. The three of them stared blankly. Murray spoke first.

  “Harry,” he said curiously, “what—?”

  “Aah, shut up!” I snarled. “I have to get the hell out of here and—”

  I was looking for my hat. It was on the chest of drawers, next to the telephone. I grabbed it and jammed it on my head.

  “But Harry, what—?”

  I shoved him aside with my hand.

  “Go on, you big—!”

  The doctor came out of the bedroom, wiping his hands on a towel and scowling.

  “Please!” He said it in a whisper, but it cut through everything in the foyer. “This is no time for—!”

  I spun around quickly.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor,” I said in a lower voice. “I didn’t mean to—How is she?”

  He shrugged and shook his head.

  “The clot has lodged in—” He stopped and shrugged again, a little quicker this time. “There’s no telling, Mr. Bogen. I’m calling the hospital and asking them to send an—”

  “Listen, Doctor. I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to—”

  He raised his eyebrows slightly.

  “At a time like this, Mr. Bogen, you’re—?”

  I shook my head at him.

  “Listen, Doctor. I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to—to get—” I clutched at his arm. “Listen, Doctor, I’ll explain everything some other time. Right now I’ve got to get out of here. There are things I can’t—I’ve got to get out. I must. You’ll take care of her, won’t you? You’ll see that—?”

  He looked at me coldly.

  “Of course I will. But please lower your voice, Mr. Bogen. This is no time—”

  “I’m sorry.” I lowered my voice. “Please, Doctor, see that she’s taken care of. Here.” I took out my wallet. But there was only the seven dollars. I shoved it back into my pocket. “I haven’t got the—I’ll send you a check, Doctor. I’ll send you—”

  He waved his hand in front of me. A delicate little wave.

  “Please, Mr. Bogen, don’t be silly. Of course I’ll—”

  “I know, Doctor, but I want you to—”

  Murray tugged at my sleeve. I turned to him.

  “Don’t worry about that, Harry,” he said quietly. “I’ll take care of that. Don’t worry about the money. I’ll see that—”

  I nodded curtly and turned away. The bastard. Even that I had to owe him.

  “Thanks,” I said shortly. “Good-by, everybody. Please see—”

  They nodded. All four of them.

  “We will.”

  I opened the door and went out. I was down three steps when I heard footsteps behind me. I stopped and looked back. It was Ruthie.

  “Harry!”

  “What—?”

  I turned and came back up two steps. There were tears in her eyes.

  “Harry, I’m—I’m sorry I—”

  “For what?”

  “On the phone. I’m sorry if I said anything that—”

  Now she was sorry.

  “Forget it. It isn’t your fault.”

  If I let things get the best of me so that I didn’t have sense enough to answer the phone myself, it was my fault.

  “But Harry, I—”

  “Look, Ruthie. I’m sorry I yelled like that before. I didn’t mean it. I was—”

  She bit her lip to hold it steady for a moment.

  “I know, Harry.”

  “Ruthie. Do me a favor, will you?”

  “Of course.”

  I took her hand from the banister.

  “Stay with her, Ruthie. Stay in the house. I’ll call you up later, I’ll call you tonight, from wherever I am. I’ll call you up to find out how she is. You be here to answer. You tell me, Ruthie. Nobody else. All right?”

  She nodded quick
ly.

  “I’ll be here, Harry.”

  I held her hand and hesitated.

  “Ruthie.”

  “Yes, Harry?”

  I figured frig that little jerk upstairs. He had his diploma. He had the district attorney. And he’d have her the rest of his life. He had enough.

  “Ruthie.” I came up the third step and pulled her toward me, hard. “Good-by, Ruthie,” I said, and I kissed her.

  “Good-by, Harry.”

  I heard her crying softly as I ran down the stairs.

  30.

  I TOOK THE SUBWAY downtown and got out at Thirty-fourth Street. I hurried through the tunnel to Penn Station, went into a phone booth, and called the Montevideo.

  “Hello, Charlie. This is Mr. Bogen.”

  “Mr. Bogen? Oh, say!” His voice rose excitedly. “There’s been an awful lot of calls and people looking for—”

  “I know, I know, I know. Listen, Charlie, connect me—”

  “But, Mr. Bogen! A Mr. Nissem. He was here a lot and he—”

  “Charlie, I—”

  “And about a dozen calls, honest, about a dozen from a Mr. Yaz—wait a minute—yeah, a Mr. Yazdab—”

  I scowled quickly. On top of everything else, he had to come back early, too?

  “What did Mr. Yaz—? Aah, the hell with it. Listen, Charlie, I want—”

  “And wait, Mr. Bogen! The most important! A few hours ago, your mother, she came in here and she—”

  “I know all that. I know all about everything. Just connect me with—”

  “But Mr. Bogen! Your mother! She collapsed in the lobby here and we had to—”

  “Listen, jerk!”

  “Whah?”

  “Listen, dope!” I yelled into the phone. “You wanna shut up just for ten seconds? Just long enough so I can—?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said quickly. “Sorry, I didn’t—”

  “Don’t be sorry; be quiet.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Miss Mills. Connect me with Miss Mills.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Bogen. She’s not in.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She went out a little while ago.”