Impatiently, Christie shook her head. “No, that’s not what I meant. Nora, did Mike ever say—well—I guess a man doesn’t say that to his mother.” She made an annoyed clicking sound against her teeth, then blurted out, “Did he ever describe me as ‘sexy’?”
Nora’s spontaneous laugh was clear and honest. “My God, no! He said, ‘Mom, this kid is so damn cute: a regular little tomboy!’” Nora bit down on her lower lip. “Oh-oh. I think I said exactly the wrong thing, didn’t I?”
“No,” Christie said shortly, “you just told the truth, dammit, like you usually do. Nora, do I still look like a ‘regular little tomboy’?”
Christie jutted out one hip, shifting her weight, her hands resting on the back of her hips. She lowered her head, striking a pose, peering at Nora, who studied her.
“Not exactly. But honey, let’s face it. There’s not a damn thing you can do about your bustline or that flat fanny, so make the best of what you have.” She stood up, turning Christie around. “At least, you won’t get all saggy and sloppy. You’re built to last. You’re the slim type. You’ll never have to worry about the calories, like some people do.” She thumped her own round rear. “And I’ll tell you a secret: I think I would have hated you if you had been a real sex-pot, one of those sweatery, curvy gals.”
“Oh, swell. I was good for your morale.”
“Honey, it wasn’t easy facing mother-in-law-hood and possible grandmotherhood in my early forties. Christie, I know what your problem is. You don’t get around enough.” She held her hand playfully over Christie’s mouth, stifling her protests. “Oh, I know, good old Dan takes you out regularly. But you know as well as I do that Dan is safe; all tied up and unavailable. And such a perfect gentleman that he would never say, the hell with what you say, kiddo, I’m male, you’re female.”
“Nora, you’re beginning to sound like my-mother-the-matchmaker. I remember your friend Mrs. O’Donnell’s son, Jeffrey with the curly blond hair. And the opinions.” Her mouth pulled back. “Jeffrey O’Donnell had more opinions than there are subjects to have opinions on. Particularly about the New York City Police Department and all members of that ‘authoritarian, perverted’ city agency. He and I sure had something in common: a natural antagonism for each other.” She put her arm affectionately around her mother-in-law, giving her a sharp pinch. “Stop playing the nervous mother with me, okay?”
“Okay, okay. But you tell me then: when are you going to meet some men? And don’t tell me that you’re around men all day. They’re either married cops or loony criminals. And what about Mickey? You know as well as I do ...”
“Nora, don’t preach what you didn’t practice. You were a widow when Mike was fourteen years old; you were still young, but you didn’t remarry.”
Nora brushed that away. “I was afraid Mike would have a resurgence of his Oedipus complex; after all, he was in the throes of adolescence.” Then, flippantly, “You know, I think I read too much in those days. But anyway, even if I didn’t remarry, I had fun. Remind me, sometime, to tell you a few things.”
Christie grinned. “Nora O’Malley Opara, you are an Irish phony.”
Nora winked. “That’s what you think.” Then, she stopped at the doorway and turned, her voice serious. “Listen, you just keep on being Christie, you hear? That was good enough for Mike, and he was a pretty discerning fellow. I know—I raised him. There’ll be another man—a perfectly available man—who is looking for exactly the same Christie who knocked Mike Opara silly. Don’t change yourself: you just be you. That’s what makes you the very special girl you are.”
Christie blotted her lips on a Kleenex, thinking of Nora. Whoever invented all the nasty mother-in-law stories hadn’t met the likes of Nora. She started down the stairs, but was halted midway by Mickey, his face steamy with dirt, his baseball cap tilted over one eye.
“Ah, gee whiz, Ma. Gee whiz, why are you all dressed up like that? Gee whiz,” he muttered disgustedly.
“Well, ah gee whiz, I thought maybe you’d say your mother looked just a little nice.”
Wrapped up in his own problem, Mickey said, “Mr. Silverman was supposed to pitch for us in the driveway and he had to go somewhere for his wife and I told the kids my mother would pitch.” Mickey banged his glove against the banister, his face pulled down. “Gee, Ma, it’s the big guys—eight and nine years old—and the only reason they’re going to let me play is if you pitch. Can’t you change into pants or something?”
“Sorry, my boy. You scout up somebody else’s father. I’m somebody’s mother, remember?”
The small face crumpled. Mickey rubbed the large glove across his forehead, leaving long dark streak marks. He let Christie steer him to the door, then wriggled free of her hand, darting to the kitchen. “Hey, Nora? Gran? Can’t you get Mom to come out and play ball with the guys?”
Nora, her hand on Mickey’s neck, called, “Hey, Mom, can’t you go out and play ball with the guys? They need a good pitcher.”
Christie looked at the two of them, Nora’s face warm with amusement, Mickey’s heat-flushed and hopeful. She glanced at her watch. “For one half of one hour—not a minute more. Not one single minute more. I do have a date in Manhattan. Remember, now, Mickey, at exactly six-thirty, I have to drop out and shower again and get dressed again.” As she spoke, Christie turned and ran up the stairs. “Go on, Mick. I’ll be ready in a minute.”
Changing rapidly, Christie tossed her jersey dress over the rocking chair, slid the dirty jeans and a fresh shirt over her flame-red, Tweed-impregnated lingerie. She said mockingly to the face in the mirror, “Well, can I help it if I happen to be the best pitcher in the neighborhood?”
7
MURRAY ROGOFF LEANED HIS hip easily against the glass wall of the phone booth. It was a nice feeling, enclosed in the small cubicle, with people walking past, cars gliding along right outside, yet he, Murray, all protected, all closed in while they were all closed out. No one could see him but he could see all of them: the punk kids whispering against the wall, their eyes darting away from each other, their faces mean and sharp; the thin, hollow-eyed junkies, yawning and scratching, waiting for their fix-it man. What a hangup that was. The bleached-out little queers, wagging their tight little cans at each other. Murray let his breath out slowly. He’d like to lift up three of them at a time, way over his head, and smash them down into the gutter. Murray flexed the muscles in his arm, ran his fingers over his biceps. God, he felt strong. God, he felt so good.
He slipped the dime into the slot and dialed carefully, closing his eyes. She always answered on the second ring, like she wanted to be sure the first ring was her telephone, not some neighbor’s.
“Hello?” The small, soft voice, questioning. From just the one word, she formed within his brain. A bright girl with nice, natural color and flashing dark hair, all shining and clean. That was what Murray liked most about her: that glowing cleanness, the fresh sweetness. Everything about her honed and nice, not an extra ounce of flesh. Her legs, long and straight, the thighs tapering neatly to the slight flare of her hips, and the small waist, not all pulled in with wide belts the way the cheap girls were, just curving in the way a girl’s waist should and her breast a nice size to cup into a man’s hand and a white neck and not too much makeup on her face: just on her eyes, so that they flashed with bright live color.
“Hello?” Again, the voice, only trembling a little.
“Hello, Carol Logan.” Murray’s voice was full and gentle, his hands cupping the mouthpiece, his eyes closed.
He didn’t hear the sharp intake of breath or even catch the sense of her words. “Who is this? Please. Who is this?”
“I love you, Carol Logan.”
Murray heard the click in his ear, the dead sound where her voice had been, but he understood. His tongue flicked out, touching, just touching the earpiece, where her lips had been, then he carefully replaced the receiver. He looked at his watch. He had a lot of time. She couldn’t speak with him now because she had a dancin
g class at eight. He understood.
Murray walked along Broadway, stopping briefly at the corner of 51st Street, craning his neck, counting four stories up. That was where she would be for her hour’s session. She never missed a lesson: three times a week—Monday, Wednesday, and tonight, Friday. It must cost most of her salary. How much could she earn working in an advertising agency? But he knew Carol was a smart girl. Those ad agency people had connections; they sponsored TV shows and things and maybe her boss could get her a spot somewhere.
But she stayed out too late after those dance lessons: particularly on Fridays. Murray rolled his fingers into fists. She shouldn’t go out with all those boys from the dance school: they were all fags. Even the big guys: couldn’t she see that? No. A kid as clean and pure and young as Carol, she probably didn’t even know about those things. But didn’t she even wonder why they never took her home? They probably felt that the Bronx was too far to travel: those moles, all digging into some little rats’ nests in the Village—with each other.
She was lucky he had seen her home every Friday night for the last month.
Murray glanced at the clock set in a flickering advertisement high above the street. He had plenty of time to go over to the Automat for some coffee. It wasn’t even starting to get dark. Murray hated daylight saving time. The streets were just as bright, though cooler than afternoon. Murray unbuttoned his collar. The shirt was starchy as were his immaculate chinos, and beneath his clothing he still felt as scrubbed and clean as when he had stepped from the tub an hour ago. He stood for a moment, absently fingering the crisp short sleeves of his shirt. Some little guy lunged into him, letting out a curse word at the unexpected obstacle, and Murray turned, bending forward to look directly at his face. The man gasped, hanging onto the arm of a cheap little broad with high, stiff, whitened hair. She yanked at the man’s arm, her eyes wide, her mouth redly opened. Murray made a deep hard sound way down in his throat and he heard the broad say, “My God!” Murray stood in the middle of the street, watching them hurry into the crowd, and he began to laugh. He raised his arms over his head, freely reaching, feeling the stretch from the waist up, along his torso, pulling his lean flesh along his ribs. He felt so good. So great.
Murray Rogoff did not see the faces of any of the people. He did not notice the usual loungers, hunched against open-front hot dog stands and penny arcades, taking him in with swift, evaluating eyes, then discounting him, or the bland-faced tourists who moved in startled detour from his path, staring at him with the same sense of wonder and incredulity with which they had regarded the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty or the hollow immensity of the Radio City Music Hall. Murray saw only his destination, the Automat, and he whirled through the revolving door, faintly amused that he had sent two indignant, potty women spinning out onto the sidewalk, mouths sputtering and packages toppling.
He jammed his two nickel into the slot and watched the coffee squirt into the heavy battered cup. Carol drank too much coffee. She should drink more milk. For energy. A dancer needs a lot of energy. She should eat only food containing a lot of vitamins, like an athlete; when you use your body a lot, you have to give it the right fuel. Like he did. No matter what Mama said, Murray would not eat the heavy swill she tried to load him with; his hand would sweep away all the starches and his fingers would pounce on the meat and chicken and fruit and milk. Milk: boy, he drank it down by the bottle, right from the bottle, a quart straight down without stopping for breath, the way some guys drank beer. They were crazy to drink beer: fat bellies, that’s what they were. Young guys, growing, should take care of their bodies. Like he did. Everyone should do routines: muscle-flexing and bends and stretches and resistance. It made a guy feel so great. Almost as great as when you took a girl.
Murray Rogoff sat down at a table near the large floor-to-ceiling window. He did not think it was strange that the man and woman and little girl who had been sitting there, eating from a collection of dishes on their trays, had gotten up, staggering off with their heavy trays. He liked having a table all to himself: it was like having a private box seat on Broadway. He drank his coffee in a few hot gulps. He didn’t like coffee, but he was feeling a little tired and he needed something to keep him awake. It was Friday and it would be a long night for him. He sat watching for a long time, then looked at the clock in the Automat. It was time for him to go to 51st Street. He had to make sure Carol got to her dancing class.
For Murray Rogoff, time began and ended now at the particular moment. Living was walking along Broadway, right now, to 51st Street, to wait for Carol Logan. There had been no morning on some subway station with the terrible, confusing, unknown dread whirling through him, “eating away at his body, devouring his brain; there had been no collection of people, moving him within the depths of his nightmare to strange rooms, telling him to move here, put your fingers on this pad, on this paper, sit there, look at this camera, turn sideways, look up. There had been no small, narrow room with a hard platform bed and dirty uncovered toilet and no clanging of steel or long barred corridors and no large and dusty courtroom filled with men who spoke around and at him.
There had been no hot and blinding afternoon and no Frankie Santino, fully grown into semblance of manhood, whispering some words at him, pinching his arm and shoulder. And there had been no David, clenching his shoulder, his knee, his neck. There had been no screaming in the hot small rooms on the top floor of the tenement on Rivington Street where his mother, lighting the Sabbath candles, had dropped the taper at the sight of David, unexpected and unseen for more than a year. For Murray, time had canceled out and his day had been as all his days: an automatic enduring of the hours in his father’s fish store, toward the time when the sun would finally let go, darken things down so that the lights would flash on all over the wide and busy streets and Murray Rogoff feeling young and strong and great like he could throw off whatever crazy shroud-like thing seemed to encase him and he would emerge as he truly was, at the center of himself as he always had been: Murray the Norseman, Murray the Great, filled by that special and good and joyous feeling which was fully his now, no longer hiding beneath a furious jumble of sounds and voices and hard-faced strangers, and he could identify joy and savor it and know it: Carol Logan.
He pressed against the fender of a light blue Buick convertible, watching the street, his eyes blinking away all the unimportant people who tried to fill his vision. There. Murray held his eyes steady, sharply set on her. With the first far-off glimpse, he knew it was Carol as surely as if a spotlight had picked her up and hovered over her in the beginning dimness. His eyes fastened to the top of her head, which was the first part of her he could see, bobbing in and out among the faceless bodies. She moved surely, easily, steadily, emerging whole and beautiful, half a block away: dressed in a blue shift which hit her slender thighs as she walked that nice, ladylike walk, her face held high, her eyes not caught by any of the punks and bums, her ears not aware of the dirty remarks and crude passes. She could walk through mud _ and come out clean.
Murray slid his body down so that his lower spine rested against the fender; his arms folded into each other. As she passed directly in front of him, he dropped his head so that he appeared to be dozing, but his eyes, beneath his glasses which were half-hidden by the peak of his tan cap, were steady on her and she kept going, her face straight ahead and held high. He watched, straightening up now, watching those legs in the nice little heels, not high and spiky, just medium heels and firmly hitting the pavement. The dress touched along her body and you could tell she wore a girdle, probably just a soft little girdle, but just right so that it gave her a smooth line across the backside and the little waist could be seen, not all pulled in, just nice and natural and wonderful.
Murray smiled, watching her safely into the building. He pulled himself from the car and took a large breath, filling his lungs with the sooty air. He rubbed his chest with both hands, laughing a little, looking at the creeps pushing along the sidewalks with
their dirty little pickups. He walked about aimlessly: down a block, across Broadway, stopping to look in a window where they sold the type of underwear prostitutes wore: little black things on skinny little strings. Murray shook his head. It was disgusting. He turned, looked across Broadway, over the tops of the cars and taxis and buses. Carol was up there, dressed in her dancer’s leotards, which she carried in that little leather satchel, and he could see her: firm and neat in command of every part of her body. He shook his head again at the terrible things in the window.
The hour went by quickly. An hour is a short time and Murray Rogoff had endless patience during that particular hour. But the rest of the evening was too long and he was beginning to get tense. Just because it was Friday, that didn’t mean she should stay out so late. Not with those punks, anyway. And not in that dump: all those ham-and-egg joints were the same. He stood leaning against the closed-down, deserted newsstand, shifting his weight from time to time. He didn’t like that girl with the red hair. It was a cheap, obvious dye job and if Carol hung around with someone like that, some of these Broadway sharpies might get the wrong idea about her, might think she was like that. Murray wondered how she could eat that crappy food, all greasy and heavy with rancid oil. But Carol only played with the food on her plate, occasionally taking some into her mouth, chewing slowly, her lips slightly parted. She leaned across the table, her eyes on the boy with the white skin and the black hair. One of those: Murray knew the type. God, Carol was a baby. That guy was turned on himself. One of those pretty boys who looked around constantly to see who was watching him, speaking with his hands, his eyebrows, his shoulders, then breaking into one of those wide smiles, but always making sure that everyone else was giving him the right reaction. Carol certainly was. He was one of those weirdos who could make it with a girl or a queer or maybe even all by himself.
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