by Paul Hond
“Look, if there was an affordable way to protect against a riot situation, I’d be the first one in line.”
“That’s my point,” Joe said. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” He took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. “I’m trying to help you out here.”
“Uh-huh.” Joe was always trying to “help out,” Mickey reflected, and it always amounted to some wild scheme.
Joe folded the handkerchief and stuffed it back in his pocket. “You know I’ve got two colored fellas down my place,” he said. “You’ve seen ‘ em. Big sons of bitches.”
“So they’re big.”
“That’s right. And very well-connected in the shvartze community. You know blacks—everybody has a cousin who knows this one who knows that one. So today they take me aside and say, ‘Baby, we just want you to know, if trouble breaks out, we got you covered.’ Just like that. No discussion. ‘We got you covered.’ Loyalty, right? Then they says to me, ‘Do you have any friends who need protection?’ So of course I think of you, and Buddy, and Marv, okay, fine. I says, ‘Yeah, I might know some people.’ They says, ‘We’ve got plenty of people. For a reasonable price, we can keep the bruvvahs away.’ ”
Mickey clucked his tongue. “You get a commission?”
“I’m serious, Mick. These fellas seem to know what’s what. They know all the top shvartzes in the streets.”
“Well, as long as you got your guys, you’re safe, right?”
“What about you?”
“Look, I got nothing but bread in there. I was thinking to myself after I closed the place up today: a person wants to break a window and steal, what are they gonna bother with bread? Clothes, jewelry, okay. But pumpernickel? Rye?”
Joe rubbed his nose with the sleeve of his white windbreaker. “When a shvartze is on a rampage,” he said, “the stealing becomes indiscriminate. They see a window, they’ll break it and take whatever’s there. Men running with lingerie in their hands. Brassieres. And then for good measure they’ll spritz some gasoline and toss a match.” He sat back and folded his arms. “Ask my cousin Barry in Newark, he’ll tell you.”
Yes, Newark. Joe had never been the same since Newark. Barry was beaten unconscious, and Barry’s father, Max, had taken a whack across the knees with a pipe, all this in the back of Max’s dry-cleaning shop. But that was no reason for Joe to make blanket statements. Did he forget that it was a colored nurse who was caring for his grandmother? A colored woman who looked after his kid?
There came the sound of footsteps; before Mickey could say anything, Emi came into the kitchen wearing Mickey’s striped pajamas. “Excuse me,” she said.
Joe’s eyebrows arched.
Emi went to the sink and poured herself a glass of water.
Mickey watched, speechless, as Joe stared at her. Instantly he regretted not having told him that she’d come back.
Emi sipped from the glass. The pajama bottoms covered her feet. Walking out, she trailed a fresh soapy smell from the bath she had helped herself to earlier. Mickey looked down at the tablecloth.
“Well,” said Joe. “That explains a thing or two.”
Mickey looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Naturally you’re not thinking about the shop. You’ve got other things.”
“I’ve been meaning to tell you. Remember the violinist—”
“You mean the French whore? That’s her?”
“Now wait a minute,” said Mickey. “She’s not a whore, first of all—”
“Take it easy. I’m joking.” Joe crossed his legs, attempting to appear blasé, but Mickey could see that he was hurt. “I had a feeling you were up to something.”
“Well,” Mickey said, “just so you know, I’m going to marry her.” It came out like an attack on Joe.
“What?” Joe said.
Mickey squeezed his hands together. “It all just happened. She doesn’t even know yet.” He put a fist to his mouth as if to stifle a cough.
“Wait a minute—hoo boy, Mickey. Don’t tell me you knocked her up.”
Mickey said nothing.
Joe opened another beer and slid it across the table. “Hoo boy.” He whistled like a bomb. “Hoo boy oh boy.”
“Cut it out.”
“Tell me,” Joe said, and he fixed his eyes on Mickey and lowered his voice. “Is she white or rye?”
Mickey shrugged. “I haven’t asked.”
Joe leaned forward on his elbows. “Not that it makes a difference.” But there was awe in Joe’s voice—no one in their circles had ever been with a Gentile. Mickey would be breaking with tradition, putting himself outside the community.
“The truth is,” said Mickey, with an edge of defiance, “I never even thought about it.”
Joe shook his head. “Does Morris know about this?”
Mickey touched the cold brown bottle. “He doesn’t know she’s—no. He doesn’t know anything. And we can keep it that way.”
“Sure, sure. But will he approve?”
“At this point,” Mickey said, “I think he’ll just be happy I didn’t go in for pumpernickel.”
Joe laughed at that one. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “Boy, some day this has been.” He drank to that. “You mean to say that I’m looking at a soon-to-be husband and father?”
“In that order.”
“And you know for a fact that you’re the one? I mean, Mick, with all due respect.”
“That’s a hell of a thing to say about her, Joe.”
“Looks like I struck a nerve.”
“Maybe,” said Mickey, eyeing Joe hard, “you want to take it back.”
“Okay,” said Joe. “Okay. Just looking out for you, that’s all.” He checked his watch. “Of course, the important thing is that you—love her. You love her, Mick?”
Mickey gripped his bottle. “I do,” he said softly. His head bobbed slowly at the phrase, and he could hear a pulse beating in his ears. “I do.”
The next day, Friday, Mickey decided to open the bakery. So far, there had been no signs of violence or unrest. Besides, Fridays were his busiest days; it would take nothing short of Armageddon to keep him from opening. Let Joe Blank eat a day’s worth of business.
Most of the regulars came in for their Sabbath bread. In fact, the King assassination took a backseat to the news, spread proudly by Morris, that Mickey was “involved” with a “French woman,” though of course he did not yet know to what extent, didn’t know that she’d woken up this morning in Mickey’s bed, and that he’d made repeated athletic love to her the night before, as though hoping to influence the development in her womb, inject it with his own substance, to sway the biology toward himself. Joe had planted the seed of doubt, no question.
Mickey went home an hour earlier than usual, anxious to see Emi. As he entered the house he caught a whiff of his favorite aroma in the world: the salty, hot, mustard-colored seasoning marketed under the name “Old Bay,” used in the steaming of crabs and shrimp—a summer smell, a holiday smell. What was Emi up to?
He went back to the kitchen: there was Emi, clad only in one of Mickey’s flannel shirts, washing dishes. On the table was a large brown bag, its bottom wet and heavy with juices and clumps of seasoning, tiny pink claws poking out here and there. Mickey’s throat went dry with wonder and gratitude, and for a moment he couldn’t speak.
Emi looked up at him. “Are you hungry?” she said, as though he had just walked through the door for the thousandth time. It was strange: the suggestion of familiarity gave birth to an instant history. Mickey perceived a hazy tradition of comings and goings, of aromas in the yard and the clink of pots and spoons. He went over and kissed her softly on the cheek.
“Am I dreaming?” he said. “Where did you get them?”
“Oh, I captured them myself. Also, I took a taxi to my flat and brought back some things.”
“What things?”
“Just my violin. And some sheet music. Don’t worry.”
“No, no,” said
Mickey. “I’m not worried.” She must have gone to her place and hit Bo Brooks on the way back; he’d pointed it out to her one time, saying how they had the best crabs in town. She herself had never tried them. “Bring everything you want. I’ve got plenty of room.” He could hardly believe his words, but he meant it. “I’ll get some newspapers.”
He spread some old newspapers out on the table. He saved papers for this very purpose, though it had been a while since he’d utilized them. He laid out two wooden mallets and two knives, and grabbed one of the bottles of National that Joe had left the night before. Then he ripped the bag down the sides, revealing a heap of red shell-plates covered in muddy spices and curds of fat that had oozed out from the bodies during steaming. He picked one up by its pincer, causing Emi to jump back. There it was: eight little legs like folding knives, two long arms, the pincers carefully toothed; hell, Mickey told her, these weren’t even biggies, it wasn’t even crab season yet. You ought to see them late in the summer.
When they were through—the debris and papers thrown out, the legs bagged and refrigerated, hands washed—Emi went upstairs. As Mickey rinsed the mallets and knives in the sink, he heard, for the first time in the house, the squeal of her violin—so much like a voice in distress that he froze in perfect fear.
It was then that he realized he couldn’t wait. The moment had arrived. The sound of urgency filled the house. Tomorrow, first thing, he would do it.
He awoke in the guest room, which was his old bedroom; he had fallen asleep there waiting for Emi to finish with her practicing. Rubbing his eyes, he saw a frost on the windows. He liked an April frost, just so long as it came in early April, and not after he’d done the bulk of his planting. He threw off the blankets and dropped his feet on the cold wood floor, then straightened his pants and his shirt and went to the closet.
There was an old El Producto cigar box on the top shelf. He took it down and opened it. Inside was a smaller box that contained the diamond ring his grandmother had given him years earlier. Just days before her death, she had summoned him to her bedside at the nursing home and motioned for him to lower his ear to her lips.
“Take,” she said. It was her favorite English word.
“Take what, Nanna?” Through the net of white hair he could see the brown and reddish spots on her scalp.
“Take,” she said, the voice a small croak.
Her closed hand rose from the bed. Mickey caught it and pulled gently at her fingers, as he used to when it was meant as a game, when the prize was a butterscotch candy. But the old woman was resisting: she would have no help. He let go, and the fist opened slowly, like balled-up plastic. He cupped his hand under hers, and something hard fell into his palm. He was afraid to look; it was as if her gradually departing spirit had passed a tiny nugget, a sudden morsel of her being.
“Nanna,” he said. He felt her hand on his, coaxing his fist closed. She gave a squeeze.
“It belonged to my mother,” she said with some effort. “Your great-grandmother. I always thought I’d see the day when you would walk down the aisle. But you take your time. You’re my grandson.” She blinked her eyes, and a drop rolled down a cheek whose skin was delicate as tissue paper, leaving a dark stripe.
That had been a dozen years earlier. Now, with the small box in his hand, Mickey walked out into the hall. He could hardly believe the moment was upon him, that he was about to approach a woman with Nanna’s ring—albeit under considerably different circumstances than Nanna would have preferred, or that he himself would have imagined. But what other chance would he get, to marry so high up? To marry at all? There were no other candidates, and here he was almost thirty. This was a chance he couldn’t afford to blow. And hell, it wasn’t as if he brought nothing to the table; he could offer a house, a yard. Tenderness and loyalty. He wasn’t rich, but the cupboards were never empty. And he had a respectable business. Emi was smart enough to see the advantages; he saw her seeing them when she first walked in the house. The way she moved from room to room, wearing his clothes. The way she looked things over.
He stopped at the closed door of the master bedroom. Was she still asleep? Should he wake her softly, or come back later? He felt a weakening in his knees. He was no good at presentations, at speeches. He opened the box and peered in at its contents. What should he say?
The doorknob turned: there she was, cloaked in a bedsheet. Mickey stepped back, and the box fell from his hand. The ring spilled out onto the gray carpet.
Mickey stared in horror at the twinkling band, aware that Emi was looking at it too. Another man might be able to make a joke and move on, even make the dropping of the ring seem like part of the proposal, and not feel, as Mickey did, that he’d been caught red-handed in a theft. There was no escape: all he could do was stand there as his mind scrambled to find a clever remark, hoping against hope that Emi would take action and rescue them, but of course she wouldn’t, her silence was like a punishment, a lesson for a careless boy.
The phone rang. It was pure deliverance for Mickey—suddenly he was the man of the house, the one who answered the phone, and in a small way he hoped for a crisis on the other line, that the dropped ring might be forgotten and his authority brought to the fore. He walked past Emi to the night table and let the phone ring again. Then he picked up.
“Hello?”
“Mick. It’s me.”
“Joe.”
“Listen, I’m down here at the store. The fellas told me there’s gonna be trouble tonight for sure.”
“We already had this conversation,” said Mickey, turning to afford Emi a view of his profile, the firmness of his jaw in the face of adversity.
“Mick, I’m trying to tell you something.”
“This isn’t Detroit, for Christ’s sake.” If Mickey was performing for Emi, he was also responding in earnest, and this merging of the image he wished to project and the man he actually was gave him increased confidence in his argument. “The worst thing we can do,” he said, glancing at Emi, “is panic.”
“Did you see the headlines this morning? ‘NINE KILLED IN D.C., CHICAGO RIOTS.’ Washington, Mick.”
“Washington is Washington. Anyhow, it’s too damn cold out for a riot.”
“You know of an Abe’s Grocery, on Druid Hill Avenue? Someone tossed a Molotov cocktail last night.”
“Thanks for the update,” said Mickey. He hung up.
Emi entered the room; the sheet had fallen from her, revealing a nakedness of circles: the small breasts, the belly, the dark patch of hair; it was as though she were making herself equal to him, baring herself, reducing herself, but her obvious self-possession seemed to undermine her intent, turning the gesture into a kind of musky cultural challenge.
The ring was in her hand.
She said, “Is everything okay?” The concern in her voice was like a reward, an opportunity.
Mickey smiled and nodded, allowing for some tension at the corners of his mouth. “So,” he said, winking at the box in her hand as though it were something she had retrieved, a little earlier than she should have, from under a Christmas tree. “How do you like it?”
“Mickey. This is a—ring.”
Mickey felt the hero in him buckle, but he managed to keep his shoulders square and his chin up. “Yes. That’s what it is.”
Emi stared at it.
“You don’t have to accept it,” Mickey said.
“No.” She shook her head slowly. “Fate has put us together, I think. I’m not afraid of that.”
Mickey folded his arms and nodded, wanting to match her professed fearlessness with a courage of his own, though clearly she was the one who, for whatever reasons, had nothing to lose, the one whose circumstances had left her so meekly philosophical, invoking Fate.
“Mickey,” she said, looking at him, “you don’t have to do this.”
“I know that,” he said, and it occurred to him that by acknowledging mystical influences—“Fate”—she had eclipsed the primacy of the will, his will; indee
d, she had stripped his decisions, his attempts to do the brave and correct thing, to shoulder responsibility for a single reckless night, of any meaning whatever. And yet the notion of Fate did have its allure: it justified nearly anything, and to a degree pardoned him for acts and consequences that would no doubt be judged harshly, would shame the memory of his parents and destroy the sanctity of Nanna’s deathbed gesture. This idea now seemed far more appealing than the grimace of a proud man bearing burdens; it was an opening, and Mickey pounced on it: “You’re right,” he said. “Fate has put us together.” He stepped toward her and put his hand on her shoulder. Even in a world where events are predestined there had to be someone to step forward and make sense of things; and Mickey was resolved, in this instance, to be that person.
Emi looked into his eyes, as if seeing there his effort to master her. “Mickey.”
“I love you,” Mickey said hoarsely.
Emi looked down again at the open box, as if she hadn’t heard him. “It’s a beautiful ring.”
Mickey removed his hand from her shoulder and scratched his forehead. “My grandmother gave it to me,” he said. “It’s been in my family for quite a long time.” He looked at it with her.
“I should tell you something,” she said. “You’ll laugh at me, probably.”
Mickey put his hands in his pockets, hoping to recapture some of the quiet strength that had marked his performance on the phone. “Tell me.”
“I’ve never worn a ring in my life.”
“Never?”
“Well, maybe when I was a little girl. But when I started playing the violin, I got rid of them. I don’t even wear a watch.”
“Well then.” Here it is, Mickey thought, the first humiliation: the ring wasn’t good enough. What the hell did she expect—the Hope diamond?
“Don’t be angry, Mickey.”
Mickey waved that off, not wanting to be pitied. “Listen,” he said, “I wouldn’t wear a ring in my line of work either. It could fall in the dough and end up in someone’s lunch.”
Emi laughed. Mickey laughed too, telling himself that maybe it was all for the best, that Nanna’s ring, so sacred, would now be spared the finger of a pregnant woman of shadowy origin—which was how Nanna herself would view it. “But we still have to have some kind of wedding ceremony,” he said, taking a childlike joy in discussing so grave a matter. It was like make-believe. “And if we end up hating each other, we can get a divorce.”