Prayers for the Dying: Pam of Babylon Book #4

by Suzanne Jenkins

  “What are you making for dinner tonight?” His wife was Polish and he was Italian but they never ate macaroni. When Frank requested it, Nelda’s response was that it was too fattening and they had a house full of girls to keep thin and marriageable. Secretly, she hated Italian food. If he wanted it, he could go upstairs and let his mother cook it for him.

  “Roast beef,” she replied.

  Perogies were the staple for Sunday dinner, but they were too smelly to serve someone from Columbus Avenue. Nelda was a classic snob. She was also a Jew-hater but she did not yet know Jack’s heritage. Frank loved his wife and daughters but he knew his place in their Brooklyn household. His job was to bring in the money and they would spend it as fast as they could. Life went smoother if he kept his mouth shut. Money was tight with the girls in college, although his mother, bless her heart, paid living expenses for the household. Pam was finished and Sharon was in her first year. That one-year overlap was murder. Sharon had wanted to be a physical therapist since she was a youngster, which meant more college. Susan was right behind her and dental school was in her future if they could find the money. Hopefully, Marie would be satisfied working at Macy’s or serving hot dogs at Devil Dogs because he didn’t think he would live long enough to get her through college. Now, with Jack Smith in the picture, that might change.

  “What time is he supposed to be here?” Frank asked, gazing longingly at his recliner.

  But Nelda wasn’t having it. “Don’t even think about it,” she snapped. “You’ve got to run the vacuum for me and get a shower.” She looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall. “Better hurry up. Those girls will be back from the store soon and they have to get washed up, too.” Raising four girls with one bathroom was easy as long as she kept them to a strict schedule. She wondered what was taking them so long. “If they stopped to eat anything, I swear to God I will whip all four of them.” She swept the kitchen floor in a frenzy, beating the broom bristles against the wood.

  Putting the last of his sandwich in his mouth, Frank got up from the table, resigned that the rest of his Sunday would be spent in domestication. Secretly, he was fine with it. And although he longed for the day when all four girls were independent, he was afraid of being alone with Nelda again. “I’m going out for a smoke and then I’ll get started,” he told Nelda, determined to waste as much time as he could before he got down to real work. He grabbed his cigarette pack and lighter and went out the back door, which led from the landing to the basement and outdoors. Nelda had made a place for him to smoke, providing an old coffee can filled with sand for the butts.

  The houses on their street lined up evenly across the back and the men of the households sat outside on their fire-escape landings to smoke and catch up with the latest neighborhood gossip. Nelda counted on Frank to fill her in on the divorces, affairs, births, and deaths of Benson-hurst. Today, the talk centered on Jack Smith of Columbus Avenue.

  “We got the stoop swept off just for yer’ company today, Pizon. My wife drivin’ me crazy. ‘Get up off yer’ lazy backside and do something about the trash!’ she holler at me. Thanks a lot,” Fredo complained from his stoop next door.

  “Which of your girls is he comin’ for?” Mario asked from the other side of the house. “It gotta be Pamela.” The other men whistled or sighed in agreement.

  “None of your business,” Frank yelled. “You’re all a bunch of perverts.” Outside of the relief he could get financially, Frank didn’t allow himself to dwell on the aftermath of what a marriage would mean to one of them. He wasn’t raising them to be any man’s sexual partner; the thought was disgusting, sickening, maddening.

  Nelda told him he was being ridiculous. “You can’t have it both ways, Frank. If you want another man to pay for your daughter, she has got to sleep with him.”

  “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Shut up! What are you trying to do to me! Jesus!” he yelled, holding his hands over his ears as she went on and on about what was wrong with him, did he think his children were above sex? “It’s not something I want to think about, if it’s alright with you.” Having the neighbor men droning on about which of his girls were bait for the rich Smiths angered him because they had hit a nerve. He threw his cigarette down onto the grass and stormed back in the house, leaving the men to laugh at him. “He thinks his kid is going to stay a virgin forever! What a putz!”

  Going to the kitchen sink to wash his hands, Frank stared out the window over the sink. He’d go upstairs and see his mother before he started vacuuming, further delaying the inevitable. Nelda walked in as he turned from the sink.

  “I think I’ll go up and see Mom first,” he said. “Do you want me to take anything up to her?” His mother had moved to the third floor of the house when Susan was born nineteen years ago. The family had needed more room and the one-bedroom apartment on the third floor was too small for a family with three children. Being upstairs would give everyone more privacy. But Nelda didn’t see it that way. She thought Genoa was fleeing from the children. Her help with them had made motherhood tolerable for Nelda.

  “What kind of grandmother doesn’t want to be around her grandchildren?” she’d challenged when Frank told her about the move. “I have never heard of such a thing.” Her own mother lived in Hamtramck and wouldn’t leave Michigan to visit them. Nelda didn’t have the money to go there either, so the children had never met their maternal grandmother. Nelda had separate and severe standards for her in-laws that didn’t apply to her own family.

  “She does want to,” he’d said. “She really wanted us to have more room is all.”

  But Nelda was used to it now, after all these years. She was fond of her mother-in-law, and grateful for the home she provided and all the help she’d given when the girls were younger. Nelda wouldn’t have survived if it weren’t for Frank’s mother.

  “Can you take her mail up?” Nelda asked. She turned her back to fish through a pile of papers and envelopes. “Ask her to have dinner with us too, okay? Pam said Jack will be here at six sharp.”

  Frank took the handful of mail from his wife. He climbed two flights of stairs to reach his mother; she rarely ventured down these days. The time may have come for her to revisit the lower floor of the house. Pam would be moving out soon; she could have her room. Frank knocked on the door.

  “Mom, it’s me!” He could hear her giggling to herself; his salutation always made her laugh. Who else would it be?

  “Pam’s boyfriend will be here for dinner. Can you come down at six?” He put her mail on a small table by the door and went into her sitting room where windows looked out on Bay Parkway. In front of the windows were two comfortable chairs on either side of a small, round pedestle table. He’d sat there over the years, having meals with his mother, listening to her tell stories of the family. Occasionally, one of the girls would accompany him. Pam liked visiting with her grandmother more than the others did because she could remember the days when her grandfather was alive and they lived on the first floor while Frank and Nelda lived upstairs with their growing family.

  “Who’s the boyfriend? Not the kid from Columbus Avenue?” Grandma Fabian asked, suddenly speaking with a Brooklyn accent. She shook her head no. “I don’t like his mother; she’s a lush, not that it matters much anymore.” She thought of her own daughter-in-law.

  Frank ignored the comment.

  “I don’t see Nelda warming up to her, either.” Genoa Fabian liked her son’s wife, but she didn’t have any misconceptions about her. Nelda saw things a certain way and was unable to accept any other point of view. “Yes, I suppose I must come down. You know, it is getting more and more difficult to leave these three rooms,” she told him.

  “You should move into Pam’s room when she leaves, Momma,” Frank replied. “I don’t like you so far up here, either.” He thought about the years when his father was alive and the two families lived under one roof. His mother had picked up the slack until Pam was old enough to help out. When the children were small, Frank left the house each
morning at dawn, worried about whether his wife would get through the day without any problems. Now, from the lower floors of the house, they could hear female voices shouting, laughter, doors slamming. His four daughters were home.

  “Dad? Nonny? Can I come up?” It was Pam, Genoa’s favorite grandchild. Genoa got up from her chair with the pep of a much younger woman and went to the door of her apartment. Hearing her granddaughter’s voice had transformed her. Opening the door, she called down the stairs.

  “Siamo qui, Pamela, vieni su. We’re here, come up, per favore,” she said, waiting while Pam ran up the stairs. Pam’s radiance as she came through the apartment door brought a smile to her father and grandmother’s faces. She always seemed to float into a room. Of all the girls, she looked most like a Fabian, with the blonde good looks of Genoa’s Northern Italian heritage. Genoa had some German blood and she supposed that is where the light coloring came from. Pam had pale, almost alabaster skin; huge brown eyes; and long, black eyelashes. Her hair was golden, thick and wavy; the envy of the other three, who had dark, straight hair like Nelda’s. Pam was Genoa’s favorite, although she would deny it and the others ignored it. If it could be considered a flaw, Pam was shorter, barely five and a half feet, in a household of tall people. It made the rest of the family protective of her.

  “Nonny, are you coming down tonight?” She hugged her grandmother, almost jumping up and down with excitment. “Dad, you know what’s going to happen, don’t you! Did Jack call you? Did he try to get in touch with you in any way?” Her eyes were sparkling, a smile almost as wide as her face betraying her attempt at composure.

  She entered the sitting room, dragging her grandmother along by the hand. “He’s going to ask you tonight, Dad, Jack is. He’s going to ask you if we can get married.” She swung around to look at her grandmother. “I feel like a fool, but I am so thrilled and have to hide it from the others because they’ll tell him I am acting like this!” She started laughing, giggling almost, and Frank and Genoa laughed along with her. Frank knew when she said “the others,” that is was really about Nelda. She’d find a way to expose Pam’s excitement about her upcoming engagement. The only people on earth Pam felt safe with was her father and grandmother.

  Genoa looked at her son, concerned. The girl should be able to be herself in front of the young man, shouldn’t she? Frank, as though reading his mother’s mind, frowned and shook his head no to his mother.

  “He never got in touch, Pam. Did he tell you he was going to call me?” Frank asked.

  “No, I just thought he might. Maybe he isn’t going to ask me tonight.” She had a doubtful expression on her face. “How embarrassing. I may have misunderstood him.” To be with Jack meant putting aside her need for emotional security. He was on the continuum of Pam’s unearned trust. He was more than domineering; he was both intimidating and secretive. She had to accept at face value that he wanted to be with her, that he loved her, that he thought she was special. For months she had observed him, had watched him watching her. Something about him spoke to that part of her that was confident, that said, I am worth his adoration. Pam had hidden strength and she didn’t yet know what its origins were. But she wanted Jack. She wanted what he was capable of giving her, which was more than financial security, the envy of other women, and a family. A marriage to him meant freedom from her roots. He made it clear from the beginning that he wanted someone to have his children and make him a home while he built his financial empire.

  “Tell me now that you don’t want a life with me and we can end it. I won’t waste your time and you won’t waste mine,” he said. Pausing, and then putting his arm around her—they were sitting on his bed in his Midtown apartment—he went on. “Well, what do you think? Babies with me? The ride of your life? Or an ordinary existence. Plain. Blah. Boring. I guarantee you will never be bored with me.” Pam turned her head away from his eyes; she didn’t want him to see her smiling, almost smirking. He had such a goddamned big ego! She thought for just a second. What had been her one desire from the time she could recall memory? A home and a family completely different from the one she was born into.

  “Yes, I want children. Two of them, a boy and a girl.” She stopped because possibly that was going too far. She’d been the recipient of his derision in the past over things she’d said. She held her breath. What other kind of children were there? she could hear him ask. But the ridicule didn’t come. She felt his body shaking; was he laughing at her? She slowly turned her head to look at him and he was crying, unabashedly sobbing, with tears rolling down his cheeks. She had never, ever seen a man cry before. Paralyzed, she didn’t move at first, not sure what to do for him. She took his hand and held it until he was able to calm down.

  “Well, I’m a very lucky man if you really mean it,” he said. “I just imagined my kids. We can have two if you want. A boy and a girl.” He smiled at her, tightening his arm around her shoulder, not making fun of her as she had feared but agreeing with her. He saw their children in his mind’s eye. Two children who looked like them melded. In a split second he visualized a home they would make together with a sober, involved wife and mother and happy, well-adjusted children. “We should tell your parents. I don’t want to wait.”

  He’d never said anything to her about getting engaged or married. She’d assumed it was what he meant. Now, the night was upon them and she didn’t have a clue what he was going to do once he got to her house. He was aware of their modest circumstances and it didn’t seem to bother him at all. Pam hated to admit to herself that she was ashamed of the way they lived, the shabby furniture and cheap knickknacks, the pervasive food odors. Her grandparents and parents put her through college; she should be grateful, not embarrassed.

  “Genoa, is Pam with you?” Nelda yelled up the staircase.

  “I’m here, Mom,” Pam yelled back.

  “Can you get your shower up there? Ask your grandmother.” It was a constant shuffling of needs, trying to get four girls ready for an evening. “Ask Daddy to come down, will you please?” So their afternoon was interrupted; Frank had to vacuum and get his own shower before the important visitor showed up.

  Miraculously, everyone was ready by six p.m. Genoa made it down the stairs in one piece, the house was neat, and dinner was ready when Jack Smith, son of Bernice and Harold Smith, arrived at the Bensonhurst home of his girlfriend, Miss Pamela Fabian. Pam met him at the door and was surprised when he swept her into his arms for a hug in front of her entire family. He appeared slightly red around the eyes, too. She hoped it was happiness and not regret that was making him cry. Without waiting to see if everyone was present, not really knowing who should be there anyway, he dove right in. He looked over at Frank first.

  “With your permission, sir?” Then, getting down on one knee, he proposed to her. Nelda and Pam gasping, Genoa doing her best not to snicker, and the younger girls sighing in harmony, Jack pulled a ring box out of his side pocket and opened it, facing Pam. Frank almost fainted at the size of diamond.

  “Pam, will you marry me?” he asked, not wasting any time.

  As she had taught herself from the onset of their romance, she took it at face value. He didn’t say anything about loving her, about his feelings for her. Just “will you marry me?” Without hesitation, she answered yes.

  He stood up, fighting back tears, and scooped her up in his arms again. The family clapped and cheered. It was a happy time! They were going to have a wedding.

  “When’s the big day?” Nelda asked. She was sensible enough to know that she and Frank would not be responsible for the financial end of the wedding. If they were, the reception would be held in their Bensonhurst backyard. Jack looked down at Pam, hesitant to answer because Bernice had picked the date without conferring with the bride. Her reaction could determine whether the engagement would move forward.

  “June 15,” he replied.

  Pam’s face broke into a smile. “I’m going to be a June bride!” she said, trying not to jump up and down. She kept
her enthusiasm in check as she had practiced since she was a small child until it became second nature, the result being that no one ever really knew what she was thinking, except perhaps, her father. If it crossed her mind that she wasn’t consulted about the date of her own wedding, she hid it well. Nelda was taken aback by the date, taking a surreptitious glance at her daughter’s abdomen. What was the hurry? With her hands behind her back, she counted the months. Not even slightly ashamed of her thoughts, as soon as they were done eating, Nelda got up from the table and started to clear the plates.

  “Mom, we’ll do the clearing. Stay here so we can talk about the wedding plans,” Sharon said. Genoa was appalled. Nelda was not interested in the least and it showed. But Jack and Pam didn’t notice her behavior and went on talking about the wedding. Frank was interested and asked questions, prompting his daughter to think about who her attendants would be, her sisters; where they would honeymoon, Hawaii, of course; and where they would live.

  “We haven’t talked about that yet,” Pam answered, but she looked at Jack. He had everything else figured out. Did he know yet where they would live as husband and wife?

  Jack didn’t hesitate. “The Upper West Side. Not Columbus Avenue, further west. He looked at Pam, gauging her reaction. Once again, he was on target. He had chosen his new partner wisely. Pam was smiling happily at him, nodding her head yes to everything he said.

  The Upper West Side? If he wanted to live there, what reason could she have not to want to join him? It was like a dream. After living in Brooklyn all of her life, hiding her enthusiasm for life from her pessimistic mother, making it to Manhattan was a dream come true. She would realize later that living there had its drawbacks.

  Marie left her chair next to her Nelda and moved over to where Pam sat. They assumed their usual posture, Marie standing alongside a sitting Pam. Marie would have to consciously remind herself as an adult that it was inappropriate to cling to her sister. But as a child, it was her birthright. The only reason she sat next to her mother during the meal was so that Nelda could clamp a hand over her daughter’s mouth if she started to say anything that might embarrass the family. But tonight she was quiet and well-behaved. She thought Jack was the most handsome man she had ever seen. She kept her mouth shut because she didn’t want to miss out on the plans. Would she be included? A little trickle of fear brewed in her chest; what would become of her if Pam got married and moved out? She would ask Pam as soon as Nelda was out of earshot and everyone else was occupied. In the meantime, she stuck like glue to her sister’s side and Jack didn’t seem to mind a bit.