“Because I believe in what I’m doing.”
“I thought you said you weren’t a virgin?”
“You don’t have to be a virgin to have ideals in sex.”
“What I don’t understand is if you did it before, what’s the difference if we do it now?”
“We can’t, just because I did,” she said, brushing her hair back. “That’s the point. I did it and that’s why I can’t with you now. I said I wouldn’t, that night on the Parkway.”
“I don’t get it,” Frank said.
“Loving should come with love.”
“I said I love you, Helen, you heard me say it.”
“I mean I have to love you too. I think I do but sometimes I’m not sure.”
He fell again into silence. She listened absent-mindedly to the radio but nobody was dancing now.
“Don’t be hurt, Frank.”
“I’m tired of that,” he said harshly.
“Frank,” said Helen, “I said I slept with somebody before and the truth of it is, if you want to know, I’m sorry I did. I admit I had some pleasure, but after, I thought it wasn’t worth it, only I didn’t know at the time I would feel that way, because at the time I didn’t know what I wanted. I suppose I felt I wanted to be free, so I settled for sex. But if you’re not in love sex isn’t being free, so I made a promise to myself that I never would any more unless I really fell in love with somebody. I don’t want to dislike myself. I want to be disciplined, and you have to be too if I ask it. I ask it so I might someday love you without reservations.”
“Crap,” Frank said, but then, to his surprise, the idea seized him. He thought of himself as disciplined, then wished he were. This seemed to him like an old and faraway thought, and he remembered with regret and strange sadness how often he had wished for better control over himself, and how little of it he had achieved.
He said, “I didn’t mean to say what I just now did, Helen.”
“I know,” she answered.
“Helen,” he said huskily, “I want you to know I am a very good guy in my heart.”
“I don’t think otherwise.”
“Even when I am bad I am good.”
She said she thought she knew what he meant.
They kissed, again and again. He thought there were a whole lot worse things than waiting for something that was going to be good once he got it.
Helen lay back on the bed and dozed, awaking when Nick and Tessie came into their bedroom, talking about the movie they had seen. It was a love story and Tessie had liked it very much. After they undressed and got into bed their double bed creaked. Helen felt bad for Frank but Frank did not seem to feel bad. Nick and Tessie soon fell asleep. Helen, breathing lightly, listened to their heavy breathing, worrying how she was going to get down to her floor, because if Ida was awake she would hear her on the stairs. But Frank said in a low voice that he would carry her to the vestibule, then she could go up after a few minutes, as if she had just come home from some place.
She put on her coat, hat and rubbers, and was careful to remember her umbrella. Frank carried her down the stairs. There were only his slow, heavy steps going down. And not long after they had kissed good night and he had gone for a walk in the rain, Helen opened the hall door and went up.
Then Ida fell asleep.
Thereafter Helen and Frank met outside the house.
It was snowing in the afternoon, when the front door opened and in came Detective Minogue, pushing before him this stocky handcuffed guy, unshaven, and wearing a faded green wind-breaker and denim slacks. He was about twenty-seven, with tired eyes and no hat. In the store he lifted his manacled hands to wipe the snow off his wet hair.
“Where’s Morris?” the detective asked the clerk.
“In the back.”
“Go on in,” said Detective Minogue to the handcuffed man.
They went into the back. Morris was sitting on the couch, stealing a smoke. He hurriedly put out the butt and dropped it into the garbage pail.
“Morris,” said the detective, “I think I have got the one who hit you on the head.”
The grocer’s face turned white as flour. He stared at the man but didn’t approach him.
After a minute he muttered, “I don’t know if it’s him. He had his face covered with a handkerchief.”
“He’s a big son of a bitch,” the detective said. “The one that hit you was big, wasn’t he?”
“Heavy,” said Morris. “The other was big.”
Frank was standing in the doorway, watching.
Detective Minogue turned to him. “Who’re you?”
“He’s my clerk,” explained Morris.
The detective unbuttoned his overcoat and took a clean handkerchief out of his suit pocket. “Do me a favor,” he said to Frank. “Tie this around his puss.”
“I would rather not,” Frank answered.
“As a favor. To save me the trouble of getting hit on the head with his cuffs.”
Frank took the handkerchief, and though not liking to, tied it around the man’s face, the suspect holding himself stiffly erect.
“How about it now, Morris?”
“I can’t tell you,” Morris said, embarrassed. He had to sit down.
“You want some water, Morris?” Frank asked.
“No.”
“Take your time,” said Detective Minogue, “look him over good.”
“I don’t recognize him. The other acted more rough. He had a rough voice—not nice.”
“Say something, son,” the detective said.
“I didn’t hold this guy up,” said the suspect in a dead voice.
“Is that the voice, Morris?”
“No.”
“Does he look like the other one—the heavy guy’s partner?”
“No, this is a different man.”
“How are you so sure?”
“The helper was a nervous man. He was bigger than this one. Also this one has got small hands. The helper had big heavy hands.”
“Are you positive? We grabbed him on a job last night. He held up a grocery with another guy who got away.”
The detective pulled the handkerchief off the man’s face. “I don’t know him,” Morris said with finality.
Detective Minogue folded the handkerchief and tucked it into his pocket. He slipped his eyeglasses into a leather case. “Morris, I think I asked you already if you saw my son Ward Minogue around here. Have you yet?”
“No,” said the grocer.
Frank went over to the sink and rinsed his mouth with a cup of water.
“Maybe you know him?” the detective asked him.
“No,” said the clerk.
“O.K., then.” The detective unbuttoned his overcoat. “By the way, Morris, did you ever find out who was stealing your milk that time?”
“Nobody steals any more,” said Morris.
“Come on, son,” said the detective to the suspect.
The handcuffed man went out of the store into the snow, the detective following him.
Frank watched them get into the police car, sorry for the guy. What if they arrested me now, he thought, although I am not the same guy I once was?
Morris, thinking of the stolen milk bottles, gazed guiltily at his assistant.
Frank happened to notice the size of his hands, then had to go to the toilet.
As he was lying in his bed after supper, thinking about his life, Frank heard footsteps coming up the stairs and someone banged on his door. For a minute his heart hammered with fear, but he got up and forced himself to open the door. Grinning at him from under his fuzzy hat stood Ward Minogue, his eyes small and smeary. He had lost weight and looked worse.
Frank let him in and turned on the radio. Ward sat on the bed, his shoes dripping from the snow.
“Who told you I lived here?” Frank asked.
“I watched you go in the hall, opened the door and heard you go up the stairs,” Ward said.
How am I ever going to get rid of this bast
ard, Frank thought.
“You better stay away from here,” he said with a heavy heart. “If Morris recognizes you in that goddamned hat, we will both go to jail.”
“I came to visit my popeyed friend, Louis Karp,” said Ward. “I wanted a bottle but he wouldn’t give it to me because I am short on cash, so I thought my good-looking friend Frank Alpine will lend me some. He’s an honest, hardworking bastard.”
“You picked the wrong guy. I am poor.”
Ward eyed him craftily. “I was sure you’d have saved up a pile by now, stealing from the Jew.”
Frank stared at him but didn’t answer.
Ward’s glance shifted. “Even if you are stealing his chicken feed, it ain’t any skin off me. Why I came is this. I got a new job that we can do without any trouble.”
“I told you I am not interested in your jobs, Ward.”
“I thought you would like to get your gun back, otherwise it might accidentally get lost with your name on it.”
Frank rubbed his hands.
“All you got to do is drive,” Ward said amiably. “The job is a cinch, a big liquor joint in Bay Ridge. After nine o’clock they only keep one man on. The take will be over three hundred.”
“Ward, you don’t look to me in any kind of condition to do a stickup. You look more like you need to be in a hospital.”
“All I got is a bad heartburn.”
“You better take care of yourself.”
“You are making me cry.”
“Why don’t you start going straight?”
“Why don’t you?”
“I am trying to.”
“Your Jew girl must be some inspiration.”
“Don’t talk about her, Ward.”
“I tailed you last week when you took her in the park. She’s a nice piece. How often do you get it?”
“Get the hell out of here”
Ward got up unsteadily, “Hand over fifty bucks or I will fix you good with your Jew boss and your Jew girl. I will write them a letter who did the stickup last November.”
Frank rose, his face hard. Taking his wallet out of his pocket, he emptied it on he bed. There were eight single dollar bills. “That’s all I have got.”
Ward snatched up the money. “I’ll be back for more.”
“Ward,” Frank said through tight teeth, “if you drag your ass up here any more to make trouble, or if you ever follow me and my girl again, or tell Morris anything, the first thing I will do is telephone your old man at the police station and tell him under which rock he can find you. He was in the grocery asking about you today, and if he ever meets up with you, he looks like he will bust your head off.”
Ward with a moan spat at the clerk and missed, the gob of spit trickling down the wall.
“You stinking kike,” he snarled. Rushing out into the hall, he all but fell down two flights of stairs.
The grocer and Ida ran out to see who was making the racket, but by then Ward was gone.
Frank lay in bed, his eyes closed.
One dark and windy night when Helen left the house late, Ida followed her through the cold streets and across the plaza into the interior of the deserted park, and saw her meet Frank Alpine. There, in an opening between a semicircle of tall lilac shrubs and a grove of dark maples, were a few benches, dimly lit and private, where they liked to come to be alone. Ida watched them sitting together on one of the benches, kissing. She dragged herself home and went upstairs, half-dead. Morris was asleep and she didn’t want to wake him, so she sat in the kitchen, sobbing.
When Helen returned and saw her mother weeping at the kitchen table, she knew Ida knew, and Helen was both moved and frightened.
Out of pity she asked, “Mama, why are you crying?”
Ida at last raised her tear-stained face and said in despair, “Why do I cry? I cry for the world. I cry for my life that it went away wasted. I cry for you.”
“What have I done?”
“You have killed me in my heart.”
“I’ve done nothing that’s wrong, nothing I’m ashamed of.”
“You are not ashamed that you kissed a goy?”
Helen gasped. “Did you follow me, Mama?”
“Yes,” Ida wept.
“How could you?”
“How could you kiss a goy?”
“I’m not ashamed that we kissed.”
She still hoped to avoid an argument. Everything was unsettled, premature..
Ida said, “If you marry such a man your whole life will be poisoned.”
“Mama, you’ll have to be satisfied with what I now say. I have no plans to marry anybody.”
“What kind plans you got then with a man that he kisses you alone in a place where nobody can find you in the park?”
“I’ve been kissed before.”
“But a goy, Helen, an Italyener.”
“A man, a human being like us.”
“A man is not good enough. For a Jewish girl must be a Jew.”
“Mama, it’s very late. I don’t wish to argue. Let’s not wake Papa.”
“Frank is not for you. I don’t like him. His eyes don’t look at a person when he talks to them.”
“His eyes are sad. He’s had a hard life.”
“Let him go and find someplace a shikse that he likes, not a Jewish girl.”
“I have to work in the morning. I’m going to bed.”
Ida quieted down. When Helen was undressing she came into her room. “Helen,” she said, holding back her tears, “the only thing I want for you is the best. Don’t make my mistake. Don’t make worse and spoil your whole life, with a poor man that he is only a grocery clerk which we don’t know about him nothing. Marry somebody who can give you a better life, a nice professional boy with a college education. Don’t mix up now with a stranger. Helen, I know what I’m talking. Believe me, I know.” She was crying again.
“I’ll try my best,” Helen said.
Ida dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “Helen, darling, do me one favor.”
“What is it? I am very tired.”
“Please call up Nat tomorrow. Just to speak to him. Say hello, and if he asks you to go out with him, tell him yes. Give him a chance.”
“I gave him one.”
“Last summer you enjoyed so much with him. You went to the beach, to concerts. What happened?”
“Our tastes are different,” Helen said wearily.
“In the summer you said your tastes were the same.”
“I learned otherwise.”
“He is a Jewish boy, Helen, a college graduate. Give him another chance.”
“All right,” said Helen, “now will you go to sleep?”
“Also don’t go no more with Frank. Don’t let him kiss you, it’s not nice.”
“I can’t promise.”
“Please, Helen.”
“I said I’d call Nat. Let that be an end of it now. Good night, Mama.”
“Good night,” Ida said sadly.
Though her mother’s suggestion depressed her, Helen called Nat from her office the next day. He was cordial, said he had bought a secondhand car from his future brother-in-law and invited her to go for a drive.
She said she would sometime.
“How about Friday night?” Nat asked.
She was seeing Frank on Friday. “Could you make it Saturday?”
“I happen to have an engagement Saturday, also Thursday—something doing at the law school.”
“Then Friday is all right.” She agreed reluctantly, thinking it would be best to change the date with Frank, to satisfy her mother.
When Morris came up for his nap that afternoon Ida desperately begged him to send Frank away at once.
“Leave me alone on this subject ten minutes.”
“Morris,” she said, “last night I went out when Helen went, and I saw she met Frank in the park, and they kissed each the other.”
Morris frowned. “He kissed her?”
“Yes.”
“She kisse
d him?”
“I saw with my eyes.”
But the grocer, after thinking about it, said wearily, “So what is a kiss? A kiss is nothing.”
Ida said furiously, “Are you crazy?”
“He will go away soon,” he reminded her. “In the summer.”
Tears sprang into her eyes. “By summer could happen here ten times a tragedy.”
“What kind tragedy you expecting—murder?”
“Worse,” she cried.
His heart turned cold, he lost his temper. “Leave me alone on this subject, for God’s sakes.”
“Wait,” Ida bitterly warned.
On Thursday of that week Julius Karp left Louis in the liquor store and stepped outside to peek through the grocery window to see if Morris was alone. Karp had not set foot in Morris’s store since the night of the holdup, and he uneasily considered the reception he might meet if he were to go in now. Usually, after a time of not speaking to one another, it was Morris Bober, by nature unable to hold a grudge, who gave in and spoke to Karp; but this time he had put out of his mind the possibility of seeking out the liquor dealer and re-establishing their fruitless relationship. While in bed during his last convalescence he had thought much of Karp—an unwilling and distasteful thinking—and had discovered he disliked him more than he had imagined. He resented him as a crass and stupid person who had fallen through luck into flowing prosperity. His every good fortune spattered others with misfortune, as if there was just so much luck in the world and what Karp left over wasn’t fit to eat. Morris was incensed by thoughts of the long years he had toiled without just reward. Though this was not Karp’s fault, it was that a delicatessen had moved in across the street to make a poor man poorer. Nor could the grocer forgive him the blow he had taken on the head in his place, who could in health and wealth better afford it. Therefore it gave him a certain satisfaction not to have anything to do with the liquor dealer, though he was every day next door.
Karp, on the other hand, had been content to wait for Morris to loosen up first. He pictured the grocer yielding his aloof silence while he enjoyed the signs of its dissolution, meanwhile pitying the poor Jew his hard luck life—in capital letters. Some were born that way. Whereas Karp in whatever he touched now coined pure gold, if Morris Bober found a rotten egg in the street, it was already cracked and leaking. Such a one needed someone with experience to advise him when to stay out of the rain. But Morris, whether he knew how Karp felt, or not, remained rigidly uncommunicative—offering not so much as a flicker of recognition when on his way to the corner for his daily Forward, he passed the liquor dealer standing in front of his store or caught his eye peeking into his front window. As a month passed, now, quickly, almost four, Karp came to the uncomfortable conclusion that although Ida was still friendly to him, he would this time get nothing for free from Morris; he wasn’t going to give in. He reacted coldly to this insight, would give back what he got—so let it be indifference. But indifference was not a commodity he was pleased to exchange. For some reason that was not clear to him Karp liked Morris to like him, and it soon rankled that his down-at-the-heels neighbor continued to remain distant. So he had been hit on the head in a holdup, but was the fault Karp’s? He had taken care—why hadn’t Morris, the shlimozel? Why, when he had warned him there were two holdupniks across the street, hadn’t he like a sensible person gone first to lock his door, then telephoned the police? Why?—because he was inept, unfortunate.
The Assistant Page 15