A Long Island Story

by Rick Gekoski

  He stared into his glass, drank it down.

  ‘See you around,’ she said, turning her back on him, not abruptly but with a studied calm that suggested just how furious she was.

  Back in his apartment, earlier than expected, as comprehensively shaken as the martini before him, iced, sour with onions, he sat down at the kitchen table to write a letter on his yellow legal stationery. The paper directed him, slowed his breathing, helped him to calm down, to try to think straight, marshal his arguments, be brief.

  He hoped – no, he rather assumed – that she’d respond to the yellow pages and the fine lines in the same way he did. Pavlovian, the reverse of Pavlovian. See a legal pad and you stopped slobbering.

  Darling,

  I am so sorry, so sorry indeed that I hardly know what to say.

  We’ve been through this, and I don’t see why it is necessary to go through it again. I won’t.

  I feel desolate that my shorthand reference to toxicity and pollution might be taken, in any way, as a metaphor that defines or affects us. We care for each other, deeply.

  But, of course, it does. The toxicity and pollution are what we breathe, and what fails to sustain us, the shit in the air and on the streets. I have no future here, we both know that, and so we have no future together. If I had any faith in the organ or the metaphor I would say it breaks my heart.

  But Order 10450 was the final straw. They’ve given themselves the power to persecute anyone and anybody, not just for being a Red – they were on that road already (and I was, and in my heart I still am) – but now anyone who seems to their beetle gaze morally compromised, or dangerous. Like me. May they rot in hell!

  I can’t live like this, and if the air in Huntington is not uncontaminated it is not befouled like it is here in DC. I have a family, and I have obligations to them, to locate them in some space that is not toxic for us all, to protect the love that I have for them. For the children, of course. And for Addie? She is my wife, the mother of my children, I have chosen her and she me.

  And so, so. So sorry, so desperately sorry to hurt you. But this shouldn’t go on, should it? It’s been too wonderful, but it has to stop sometime.

  Love,

  Ben

  He put the pen down, finished his martini, chewed the onions carefully so that the sour taste filled his mouth. He’d done version after version, and in the end it sounded that little bit equivocal. Well, why shouldn’t it? He was. The first draft had ‘can’t go on’ rather than the later ‘shouldn’t’. He had added the ‘Love’ at the end, reluctantly. It would have seemed unbearably cold otherwise. But surely she would get the message? He went to bed without brushing his teeth.

  In the morning, groggy with sleeplessness, head throbbing, he arrived at the office half an hour early, before she would get in, and slipped the note under her door. That was all very well, but in twenty-five minutes she would enter her office across the hall, read the note, ignore him and his entire geographical location studiedly and keep clear of him for as much of the day as was possible, a strategy it was impossible to sustain. But what else could he have done? At least this way she could be allowed to end it once and for all.

  It wasn’t his attractiveness that had drawn them together first for corridor chats, shared cigarettes in his office or sometimes (which was more intimate) hers, then coffee, then walks and long talks, then, well, it was inevitable. If it hadn’t have been him, it would have been one of the others.

  Rhoda made a striking first impression, there were few enough women lawyers in the department, none so chic, so memorable. Unlike the many secretaries she didn’t wear dresses that looked like advertisements for flower shops, was slim and free enough to dispense with a girdle. She loathed them, the slick sweaty pressing confinement, the sense of being packaged. ‘My pussy has a right to breathe!’ she said to him, assuming it would shock, pleased that it didn’t. He loved that. If it had been allowed at work, she would have dressed much like the men, in dark suits and cotton shirts. Maybe even a tie. She sometimes went to parties dressed like that, which caused some comment, and insinuation that she was a lesbian, especially from the many men whose advances were summarily dismissed, hardly even noticed. Oh, were you flirting with me? Is that what it was?

  Ben got lucky, his office was opposite hers, he saw her every coming and going. She saw his. And if he wasn’t Rock Hudson he was amiable and bright and funny, and his tongue wasn’t hanging out. Things progressed slowly but inexorably, until one day, over hoagies on a park bench, she tried to draw back from what was inevitable.

  ‘Look,’ she said, taking his arm, displacing a few onions and shreds of lettuce, ‘you need to know I don’t fool around with married men.’

  ‘Thank God for that!’ he said. ‘Neither do I.’ He started to giggle, and was immediately encouraged by her protracted guffaw – perhaps she was about to change her policy?

  ‘Where’d you say you’re from?’

  ‘Philadelphia!’ She knew that, he was miffed that she’d forgotten.

  ‘I thought so. You’ve eaten too many of those cheesy steaks! That’s one of the oldest lines in the book!’

  ‘Was it? How mortifying! I thought I was making it up!’

  ‘You and every guy who’s ever come on to me . . .’

  ‘That would be a lot?’

  ‘Look at me! Buckets full!’

  And then they were in bed, that very evening, and for months after when they could, resolved to be careful, to make things last, knowing they could not, would not. Did not.

  He needed to write a letter to Addie, an extra big one, packed with lies, and evasions, false heartiness and true concern. Becca had been ill, he could start with that.

  Addie dear,

  Two letters! I’m quite overwhelmed, and touched, and apprehensive about meeting the high standards you have set. To be frank, it’s been difficult here. It’s not just the State Department that is at risk, it gets in the news, but the rest of us are under surveillance as well. Arnold W. finally got a position with a firm in Maryland, small and leftist and utterly inconsequential. Pays a pittance. You know Betsy left him? She took the boys, couldn’t stand the heat any more. He’s utterly desolate.

  The game has changed, now all they have to do is claim you are morally unfit, and they have no need to specify how or why. I am morally unfit by their standards, and proud of it. But it is an insidious business and I wonder how we can tell the children why we are moving? Jake is already on edge, and the little one is catching his anxiety. She tends to somatise, her sore throat is the result of this.

  He put the pen down, not wearily but firmly, as if combatting some enemy. Let’s not pretend. The letter oozed insincerity – that was to be expected, it was inevitable – but it was the wrong sort, it was crap, it pained him to re-read it. Addie would see through it, most of it anyway, and though it was shadowed by Rhoda she would, please God, be imperceptible. He crumpled the yellow page into a ball, tightened it, closed one eye and aimed for the wastepaper basket on the other side of the room, missed. Crumpled another sheet, a clean new one, tightened and rounded the ball, squinted again, cocked his wrist as if for a free throw, tossed the paper delicately and precisely. Missed again. Tried again, missed again, gave up.

  Dear Addie –

  I feel a bit embarrassed, owing you two letters, to be writing only this note, because I am just off to the office and things are hotting up. I spend hour after hour meeting folks – friends and colleagues, yup, but also the few (relatively) sympathetic administrators, trying to get clear how best to make my escape.

  I guess we will have to hammer out details when I come. Only two weeks now! Perhaps the Silbers’ is too soon, but we have to settle on something. I cannot see a way round Huntington, sorry, I wish I could. I need to make some money after I pass the Bar and Huntington will be best. We have quite a lot of contacts already, more through Maurice and Frankie – and I can join things and meet new people: the Arts Council, tennis club, even the shul. Temple
Beth El, is it, the one on Park Avenue? Mind you, half the congregation will be lawyers.

  I feel terrible asking your father for a few more sandwiches for the months that I will need to study. I have no idea how he can afford it.

  Sorry to be so business-like. I feel swamped, and emotionally clogged. You’ll get more and better from me when I get there. Can’t wait!

  Glad Becks is better, and Jake is OK. I am concerned at how they are going to respond to moving, but we’ll just say it is a great new opportunity for us all. Exciting! Kids hate change, but they accommodate it easily enough in time. You and I will too. DC palls. It stinks.

  Love, as ever,

  Ben

  He addressed an envelope using his typewriter: Adele Grossman, Harbor Heights Park, Lane L, Huntington, NY. He liked that, so rural and unimaginative, as if it were the best that some hick Long Island town board could think of. L for what? Luck (Bad). Of course there were Lachrymose, Laughable, Loser, Lunatic . . .

  He was satisfied with the tone of the letter, best to keep things cool, though their emotional carpets were bulging with swept-under issues. There wasn’t much choice really, but to write: the phone in the bungalow right there in the middle of the living room, any conversation could be heard round the house. Anyway, Addie was a quick correspondent and her return letters were likely enough to set an agenda, and extend the process of making choices and decisions.

  In emotionally demanding times, it was his invariable habit to get down to work, review case law, begin constructing arguments, lose himself in the minutiae that he used to find stimulating. But, now, why? He was leaving, about to resign before the forces of darkness banged on his door to fire him for his multiple personality and political disorders. The cases were no longer his – never had been really – and, from the increasing distance suggested by his escape, it was impossible to give a damn.

  He brought his books to the office, best to lock the door, lean back in his office chair and read. He had abandoned Dickens, that little rat, and returned to Proust, to a second and even more satisfying reading of À la recherche du temps perdu. Three weeks to wallow in the luxurious prose, to lose himself amongst his aristocratic friends.

  When Rhoda first sighted him opening his much thumbed copy of Swann’s Way, she teased him about swanking it, trying to impress her, only she wasn’t that sort of girl. She didn’t give a damn about Proust, never read a word, nor did she care about Ben’s other heroes, about Joyce or Eliot, Frost or Wallace Stevens. Modernism. She sneered.

  ‘If you want to be so modern, why not read what is exciting today, not yesterday? You’re studious, not engaged, you’re not excited by new voices!’

  He was rather hurt by this, apparently disadvantaged by being so East Coast. She’d been at college in San Francisco, majoring in English before going to Stanford Law, and she’d immersed herself in the new poets. Read these, she’d insisted, placing a handful of pamphlets and little paperbacks aggressively before him. Kenneth Rexroth he’d heard of, not most of the others. Sloppy rubbish, most of it.

  He said so. ‘I read an article in the New York Times about this, didn’t I? Maybe last year. Beatniks, was it?’

  ‘Beatniks! Some fatuous journalist bigging himself up by inventing a name. There are no Beatniks! Never were, never will be.’

  ‘That’s a relief then,’ said Ben.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘There’s enough bullshit in the world already.’

  4

  On his sixty-second birthday Poppa Maurice didn’t have a fall. He insisted on that. Though they had found him on the garage floor, his forehead bloodied, half-conscious and only barely able to stand, he said that he had tripped over a wire – what wire? where? – and banged his head. What he had was an accident, a category that he approved of. Men had accidents, not falls – old people had those. He was a man not an old person. All men need is a band aid, four aspirins and a glass of water, and a little rest, then they are fine.

  He wasn’t, and he knew it, and Perle suspected it. She’d discovered the phial of pills tucked behind the socks in Maurice’s dresser. Stupid hiding place! Who put the socks in there anyway? She made a note of the contents and immediately rang Cousin Hattie’s son Barry the Doctor, an internist in Brooklyn, who was always happy to allay her anxiety. Anxiety was his specialty. There was a lot of it about, he prescribed for it whenever anyone asked, dispensed more Miltown than penicillin, and it did more good. Informed about the pills, he confirmed that Maurice had a treatable heart condition. Perle followed Barry’s sage counsel and kept her own. And as ever, kept an eye out, both eyes.

  For the last three and a half years Maurice had been making regular visits to Beth Israel in the city, where his atrial fibrillation was monitored. With medication and adequate exercise, his condition had not worsened, and his cardiologist continued to prophesy, if not to guarantee, a long life. It might, he said, be good at least to cut back on the smoking. Though there was no conclusive evidence that it was bad for you, his clinical experience left him in no doubt that it was. Whether this was related to, or exacerbated, Maurice’s recurrent bouts of dizziness was unclear. But what was there to lose?

  Cigarettes, that’s what. Maurice made his promises, he was a first-class promiser, and continued to smoke a pack and a half a day. That wasn’t so bad; it might easily have been two packs, it was when he was younger, when he went to clubs and speakeasies, so that saved ten cigarettes a day right away, 3,650 a year. That must be good for you.

  Perle and Addie had planned a party to celebrate his birthday, wondered now whether to call round and cancel, say that Maurice had a headache, or the flu, something or other. Perle knew this would be wise, but Maurice had no need of wisdom, he wanted a party. His party, in his honour, though what honour accrued from a farkakte birthday of a man of sixty-two was unclear. But company, good food, a few beers, being the centre of attention, some laughs, some smutty jokes about not being so young any more (hard enough to get up, much less get it up): it was the stuff of life, he adored it as much as Perle would have hated it.

  But by the mid-afternoon he was still fast asleep, unusual for him and rather a worrying sign. Might he have a concussion? Perle called Barry on the phone, and got a return call when he was between patients, explained the situation.

  ‘Could be,’ Barry said, without much concern. ‘Did he have double vision? Dizziness? A bad headache?’

  No and no, maybe a little.

  ‘Well, tell you what, when he gets up make sure he is steady on his feet, test his memory – ask him questions about baseball, maybe – check his vision, see if the headache is any worse. If it’s all OK it’s just a bump, nothing to worry about . . .’

  ‘Baseball, what do I know from baseball?’

  ‘Ask the boy, he’ll know. And call me if anything still seems amiss, I can get him admitted to Huntington Hospital.’

  Gratefully Perle sent love to his family, hung up and sought out Jake. Best not to alarm the boy – what did he know from a concussion? – so she just asked, in an innocent voice, to be told some things about the Yankees, that was Poppa’s team, wasn’t it?

  Jake looked puzzled.

  ‘What things, Granny?’

  ‘Anything. I don’t know. When do they play?’

  Jake looked excited. ‘Tonight! There’s a great home game tonight, it’s Whitey Ford against Early Wynn, a real pitcher’s duel.’

  Perle wrote this down carefully, unsure what an early win might consist of.

  ‘Can we have the TV on even if it’s the party?’ the boy asked eagerly.

  Now there was an idea! If it was such a big-shot game, Maurice would be sad to miss it, and perhaps it would be adequate compensation for the cancellation of the party. Party schmarty, they could always reschedule it at short notice, nobody went anywhere in the summer, most sat around wishing for the phone to ring, maybe a little action.

  Yes, that was right. As Jake looked on with big eyes, she rang Martha, Momshe, Michelle �
�� such a lot of Ms, she’d never noticed! – a couple of the other wives, to say that Morrie was feeling ill – nothing to worry about! – and that they would have to reschedule.

  When Addie and Becca got home from town, Perle told them about the accident and that she had cancelled the party. Addie looked relieved, remembered herself, and asked after her father.

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ said Perle. ‘He’s having a nap.’

  The nap had already lasted three hours, which was not a good sign, though when she went to the bedroom, she found Maurice sitting on the side of the bed wearily.

  ‘You’re up? That’s good. How are you feeling?’ She stooped to put an ice pack against the growing bump – there would be a real bruise in a day or two – and took his hand, adjusted it to hold the pack firmly on his forehead.

  How was he feeling? He was wondering that himself. Paused to consider, took a quick organic inventory. Put a finger gingerly on the Band-Aid on his forehead.

  ‘I’m not used to sleeping in the afternoon . . . Know what, it makes you feel worse!’

  ‘How worse?’

  ‘Groggy, like you can’t wake up. Not refreshed, more tired.’ He didn’t mention the throbbing headache, no need to cause alarm, he could take some more aspirins once he got rid of Perle.

  ‘Can I ask you some questions?’

  It was always a bad sign when Perle asked questions.

  ‘Sure, but I want to get up, have a shower, might perk me up . . .’

  She put three fingers in front of her face. She’d read that in a magazine.

  ‘How many fingers?’

  ‘What?’ He hadn’t read the magazine. Was she worried she’d lost a finger? Why? He looked for signs of blood, or maybe a tell-tale stump.

  ‘No need to worry,’ he said with a laugh. ‘You haven’t lost any.’

  ‘How many!’

  ‘Three.’ He started to get up, but she placed a hand on his shoulder to restrain him briefly.

  ‘When are the Yankees playing?’