The Best Revenge

by Sol Stein

She held the receiver out for me. “It’s for you. A man.”

  “Yes?” I said into the phone.

  “Ben, it’s Sam Glenn here. I got some bad news for you. I never deposit a check that might bounce without checking the bank first. Ben, using escrow funds is a crime. Knowingly issuing a bad check is a second crime. You better come back to my office right now.”

  “Relax, Sam,” I said, “I’ve just closed the partnership with a single investor who’s picking up the balance.”

  “You are a fucking liar, Ben.”

  “I can’t say what I’d like to say, Sam, there’s a lady in the room.”

  “She your investor?”

  “No, someone in New York I talked to half an hour ago.”

  I saw Anna trying to understand my lie.

  Sam said, “You better give me his name.”

  What name?

  “I’m waiting.”

  Go ahead, Louie said, use it.

  “Manucci,” I said.

  “Spell it.”

  I spelled it.

  “First name?”

  “Arthur.” Whole cloth.

  “Phone number?”

  “Listen, Sam, I just made the deal. Give me three or four days to get the papers signed.”

  “Is he listed?”

  “Must be.”

  “Manhattan?”

  I couldn’t hesitate. He’d know I was inventing. “Bronx.”

  “Hey, Ben, what the fuck is someone with that kind of money doing in the Bronx? You come down to my office.”

  “I’ve got to catch the five o’clock out of O’Hare.”

  “Ben, I’m going to call this Arthur Manucci, just in case he’s real. I’ll tell him I’m just a friendly fellow investor checking to see who else is in the deal. You’d better not be fucking me over, Bennie. I’m getting my dough back or you’re going to jail.”

  He slammed the phone down so hard I was sure Anna heard it.

  “What’s the matter, Ben?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing is nothing. Tell me.”

  “I’m having a little trouble raising the money to put a play on.”

  “If you don’t raise the money,” Anna said, “don’t put it on.”

  There it was, straight and simple, from a woman who knew nothing of business. How could I explain to her that all my life I did things first, then figured out how to pay for whatever I was doing?

  I excused myself to go to the bathroom not just because much tea will eventually require it, but because I wanted a moment’s thought without Anna’s face in front of me.

  In Anna’s bathroom, an enema bag hung from the shower curtain rod as if it were a permanent fixture for daily use. I committed an unpardonable invasion of privacy. I opened the medicine cabinet and surveyed the bottles and ointments, reading the labels. Codeine for arthritis, charcoal tablets for gas, a diuretic, the rudiments of Anna’s aged life. And a razor. Was it Charlie’s, kept as a memento? Perhaps she used it. Sometimes answers were simpler than questions. Why didn’t I just close the play down? Flush it away. Settle what I could. Slink off till everybody forgot about it, then come back like gangbusters with a comedy smash.

  Carefully, I put the seat back down the way I had found it. There was no man in this house anymore. I washed my hands and dried them not on the single towel, but with some tissues from the box, though Anna’s problems were not communicable. Perhaps I had heard enough for one day. Louie’s problems had been his, mine were mine. Why did I want to hear more? Besides, Chicago was only a two-and-a-half-hour flight from LaGuardia. I could return. Would that inventory of medicaments keep her alive?

  Anna, her eyes searching my expression, asked, “You’re not leaving, are you? Your plane is when?”

  “Five.”

  “Plenty of time. Besides, you can’t eat and run.”

  Now or never.

  “Anna, what really happened here?”

  She was avoiding my eyes.

  “What did Louie do that was so wrong?! My mother said he was a thief.”

  “He wasn’t a thief!” Anna cried out.

  “She said he stole her life! What was she talking about?”

  “In the Depression it wasn’t only jewelry. People stopped buying everything. Zipporah and Louie were like bugs in a puddle, flailing every which way trying to stay alive.”

  “Was he playing the stock market?”

  “He didn’t invest except in himself.”

  “In a fool!”

  “No, Ben, Louie’s so-called devoted customers were the ones who bought stocks on margin. They thought everything would go up forever. What was Louie to do when his customers started pawning their jewelry instead of buying more?”

  “Maybe open a grocery store.”

  “Would you, Ben? Louie had this fantastic plan. His inventory, full of beautiful things he had designed himself, was his secret treasure, waiting only for an upturn in business to be sold. Tomorrow was just around the corner—don’t you feel the same way? He was full of plans, schemes, solutions.”

  “He wasn’t an optimist, he was crazy.”

  “Crazy about you, your mother, your future, while out there were all those animals waiting to take everything away from him because he hadn’t finished paying for the gold he had made into jewelry nobody wanted to buy.”

  “Then the fool did buy on margin.”

  “Bite your tongue, Ben. Charles and I knew that Louie’s debts to refiners and diamond merchants had always been high, but as long as Louie was able to keep his loving customers buying, there was always enough cash to pay a little here and there.”

  “Charles wasn’t a gambler like Louie, was he?”

  “No. Maybe that’s why I wanted to run away with your father. Who wants to run away with a science teacher? If he could have figured out how to make love without touching he would have done it.” Anna put her fingertips to her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to say that. God forgive me.”

  I took Anna’s hands. They felt warm.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You’re right. I’m a gambler like Louie. I live on margin.”

  “Oh, Ben. Learn from experience.”

  “Learn how not to be attractive to women like you? Not a chance.”

  “You talk just like Louie.” She took her hands back from me. “Listen, Ben, my Charles was a practical man. He advised Louie to remove the diamonds and rubies from the jewelry in his inventory and give them back to his so-called suppliers, or sell them to someone else at a discount and at least pay some of the bills. You know what Louie said? He said, ‘A painter can’t sell his frames. My frames mean nothing without the stones.’ Ben, your father was a great, foolish, wonderful romantic. But I’ll tell you something, I hope you’re a better businessman. Your lunatic father said, ‘I will pay all my debts dollar for dollar if it takes me the rest of my life.’ Charles warned Louie what could happen, told him the law gave him a way out. Don’t be stubborn, he said. The Depression isn’t your fault. You know what Louie said? He said, ‘I hate the law.’ And by saying that, Ben, he committed you and your mother and himself to the consequences of his pride.”

  *

  I could hear Louie’s voice clearer than ever. If you think I was a fool, Ben, what will your son think?

  Anna was saying, “I’m sorry my Charles isn’t here. He would have liked you.”

  “I’m sure I would have liked him, Anna.”

  “Sit down, Ben, standing makes me nervous. Don’t run like Louie did.”

  “I’m not running away to New York, I live there.”

  “You know what I mean. Running somewhere else. Louie fled Chicago like a man running from the wind. Your mother saw the move to New York as a descent into hell. The expensive furniture he’d bought just two years earlier was sold for next to nothing. Her friends were in Chicago. Her courses were at Loyola, even though they could no longer pay for them. In New York she’d have to start all over again. I told her all these thi
ngs were less important than Louie making a new start. Zipporah felt I was taking Louie’s side, and so she told me her secret.”

  Anna put a knuckle to her lips and bit it.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “It isn’t God’s will that you should know everything.”

  “You don’t know God’s will,” I said.

  She took it like a slap in the face. I tried to take her hands but she wouldn’t let me have them.

  “Just like Louie,” she said. “You want to know everything.”

  “Only about them. And the professor.”

  “I can’t believe it. She talked about him?”

  “Only when they quarreled. He was a weapon.”

  “I tell you, Louie had no competition.”

  “Anna? Please. I want to know everything about them.”

  “Before I die? All right. That’s fair.” For a moment she turned her back to me as if it would be easier to talk to the wall. “At first, Ben, I thought the professor was somebody your mother made up. After your father went off to New York to look for a job, she told me who he was, a distinguished scholar from the old country who had emigrated at the same time as she had and who, perhaps to follow her, was then teaching at the University of Chicago, his position as secure as Charles’s and he was paid a lot more. Your mother—with tears—confessed that she met with the professor alone, first for lunch at a nice little restaurant near his bachelor apartment. It wasn’t really a date, she explained, just a meeting, but yes, she had gone up to the apartment afterward. They had talked about the state of the country and the world. The professor was an intelligent man, and your mother, like so many of you Jewish people, was excited by intelligence more than by anything. So when the professor put his hand on her hand, it confused her. The mere thought of infidelity in those days was very exciting. But his hand was clumsy, and the physical feeling made her pull her hand back in a way, she said, that the professor mistook for reproof. She went on to me about how well-read he was, his theories about the world, and so on, and I interrupted her to say, ‘Zipporah, you’re not telling me how you feel about him.’ You know what she answered? ‘When you cut an apple in half, the insides turn brown. That’s how I feel, in half and rotten. You know what excites the professor more than me? When his worst enemy, another professor in the same field, publishes something new!’

  “And so I told her what she knew, that she loved Louie, and she said, ‘I don’t love what’s happened to us. The professor at least has his feet on the ground.’ And so I said, ‘You’re not in love with the professor’s feet.’ Thank God your mother had a sense of humor. Listen, Ben, enough about the old days. Will your play come to Chicago so I can see it?”

  “Why wait? I’ll fly you into New York for opening night.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t. I don’t have, you know, the right thing to wear.”

  “My wife will take you where she gets all her gowns.”

  “I couldn’t afford—”

  “It’ll be on the house.”

  “You are just like your father. If only Louie and Zipporah were alive to know of your success.”

  “They know,” I said, barely above a whisper.

  Comrades, we shook hands.

  “Anna, I really have to make my plane.”

  “I know. I’m so glad you came.”

  “Me too.”

  She said, “Give my love to the father of your children.”

  I kissed her cheek and said, “This has been more important to me than any business trip.”

  I took her wizened hand in my left hand, turned it palm up with the long lifeline showing, and put my right hand on top of hers, cradling her hand in mine.

  “Jews touch,” I said. Then I hugged her bosom against me. Louie, who was as tone deaf as I am, sang in my ear. It enriched me to know that with Anna and Zipporah in the same room, Louie must have felt like a king.

  I was on the other side of the threshold, the line of demarcation between us, when Anna said, “Your family was the best part of my life.”

  For a brief moment I memorized her face, then fled down the steps to the street.

  BOOK IV

  16

  Ben

  It was the first time I arrived at the office with a Band-Aid on my cheek. “What did you do to yourself?” Charlotte asked.

  “Shaving and thinking at the same time.”

  The tall vase on Charlotte’s desk had sprouted three long-stemmed, orange-yellow roses.

  “You have another admirer?”

  “Another?”

  “Other than me.”

  Her eyes bright with mischief, she said, “It’s my birthday.”

  “Jesus.”

  “That’s in December. Today is mine.”

  “I forgot.”

  “No, you didn’t.” She picked up a slim, white-beribboned box. “I figured you were preoccupied. I bought this for you to give to me.”

  “I’m embarrassed.”

  “That’ll be the day.”

  “I truly am. What is it?”

  “A slightly fancy pen from Tiffany. I charged it to your account. Thank you, Ben.”

  I kissed her blushing cheek. “The man who has you, Charlotte, has everything.”

  Her look denied that. That worm needed to be put back underground. “Any calls?”

  “How was Chicago?”

  “Centrally located,” I said.

  “I meant your meeting with Glenn. That’s who called.”

  “This morning?”

  “Twice. Very rude man. I told him to try being polite because it was my birthday. He said if you didn’t return his call before ten o’clock, your most recent birthday would be your last.”

  “He actually said that?”

  Charlotte pressed a button on the phonemobile. I heard the rewind hiss. She pressed another button, and Sam’s voice was saying, “and another thing, sweetie, you tell that Jewboy boss of yours that if I don’t hear from him by ten this morning, his last birthday is going to be his last birthday, you got that?”

  “Don’t erase that tape,” I said to Charlotte. “Please get him on the phone and record both sides.”

  “With pleasure.”

  *

  By the time Charlotte buzzed me, I was ready. In my most nonchalant manner I said, “You called?”

  “Twice. I had some son-of-a-bitch time getting that old man to come to the phone.”

  “Manucci?”

  “Yeah. And his name ain’t Arthur. And he’s not an investor. He gave me his son’s phone. Don’t you know who that Nick Manucci is? He said he offered to bankroll your whole production and you turned him down. Are you fucking dumb or what?”

  “There are some kind of deals I won’t do, Sam.”

  “Let me tell you something, prick. You owe me mine. If you got a deal that will bale me out you take it.”

  “You’re not running my life, Sam. If I took Manucci’s deal, you’d still be in.”

  “You’re getting deaf, Ben. You didn’t hear a thing I spoke to you in Chicago. You go kiss this Manucci’s ass. When he funds the production, the first check you write is a refund of my piece.”

  “When I told him how much was in I included yours.”

  “Well you tell that dago mine what was in is out. I don’t care if he takes a few more points off your end, you get me my money. If you don’t do a deal with Manucci, sell your wife, but get me my dough or I’ll grab every asset you got including your wife’s diaphragm.”

  I slammed the phone down and presented my red-faced self to Charlotte.

  “I think I got it all,” she said. Instantly, the phone rang. Charlotte’s voice, suddenly half an octave higher, sounded as if she were chewing gum. “Carson Chemicals, can I help you?”

  She hung up. “It was him.”

  I laughed and applauded Charlotte’s performance.

  “Who shall I get first?”

  “The guy I want to talk to doesn’t have a phone,” I said, and retreated to my offi
ce.

  *

  I looked at the fist I’d made of my hand. I opened it palm up to look at the lifeline.

  The best revenge was the play’s revenge on me. That play was what Louie had once expected of me. Even if it ran for a year, would my share be enough to cover Manucci’s take? What if interest rates soared and I couldn’t meet the payments? Manucci will grab my house.

  You won’t lose it.

  Hey, Pop, Manucci wants a lien on it.

  You lean on him. Think of a way.

  I need some cards.

  Hear me out, Ben.

  I’ve got a headache.

  You’ll have a bigger headache if you don’t listen. How many times did I tell you that if you don’t want people to pick on you, walk as if you’re taller than they are.

  How did a shrimp like you get by, Pop?

  With women, charm.

  With men?

  By letting them know I don’t give an eye for an eye, I give two for one. I’m not interested in revenge, I’m interested in prevention.

  Then how come a mountain of trouble fell on you?

  My father didn’t stay around to talk to me. All I care is you come out all right. I made old Manucci need me. You’ve got to make young Manucci need you.

  How the hell am I supposed to do that?

  Every man’s got trouble. Find out what his trouble is. Then make it worse in a way that you can make it better.

  Ezra would say that isn’t cricket.

  You tell your friend that Americans don’t play cricket. They play baseball.

  Hardball.

  You got it, Ben.

  You think your way could have stopped Hitler, Pop?

  Funny you should ask. I sometimes dreamed that I could talk each of the six million to put up a buck apiece. In the 1930s you could have bought every Mafia hit man here and in Sicily a thousand times over for that kind of money. I’d offer the jackpot to whoever knocked Hitler off first. Believe me, they would have lined up for the job.

  You’re a tough man, Pop.

  Ben, if I didn’t teach you to play tough, I failed.

  “You didn’t fail,” I said out loud.

  “Talking to me?” Charlotte asked. “Where’ve you been?”

  I opened my eyes.

  “It’s okay,” said Charlotte. “I won’t tell.” She slid mail into my in box.