A Long Island Story

by Rick Gekoski

  Now this really was alarming. Perle might well have misplaced a finger or two, but to evince an interest in the Yanks was a sign of something mentally amiss. He peered at her intently.

  ‘I think it’s you we need to worry about,’ he said.

  ‘Please. Maurice. Just answer the question, and one or two more, then I will know you’re all right . . .’

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘Who’s the pitcher?’

  The pitcher? Who’s pitching?

  ‘Whitey Ford.’

  ‘Who else?’

  Else?

  ‘Early Wynn.’

  She took her hand from his shoulder and bent over to kiss his forehead, which was sufficiently unusual to confirm that she was seriously disturbed.

  She laughed, full of relief. (Very seriously disturbed.)

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I have some good news and some bad news.’ She loved that phrase, and the bad news was always her favourite, the headline leader.

  He knew how to play this one. ‘Start with the bad.’

  ‘I talked to the doctor – you know Barry from Brooklyn Heights? – and he said you might have a concussion, but I know you don’t because you don’t have the symptoms. But he said it would be best to cancel the party, so I have. Nobody minds, they all send love, and we will reschedule . . .’

  He tried to summon some anger, irritation even, but in truth he was relieved. The fall had shaken him up, and the idea of drinking and schmoozing didn’t appeal a bit.

  ‘You should have consulted me. It’s up to me.’

  ‘No, it isn’t! And anyhow, I didn’t know how long you would sleep.’

  He was unwilling to acknowledge the good sense of this, but ceased to complain. ‘And, nu, the good news?’

  ‘You can watch your fancy-pants game with Jake, Addie will let him stay up. It starts at eight.’

  Fancy pants was a good name for the Yankees. He smiled, he loved those pinstripes, made them look like big businessmen at work. And they were, the best in the business.

  He got up, pressed Perle’s hand and headed for the shower.

  Please God, please, she thought. Please, he doesn’t have another fall.

  She’d made a birthday dinner for him, his favourite: steak cooked well done – he didn’t put ketchup on it, like Frankie, just A1 sauce – baked potato, corn on the cob, a wedge of iceberg lettuce with Russian dressing, some pickles. He declined a beer, which was unusual, but ate a large slice of birthday cake. A good appetite! A good sign!

  He and Jake arrived at the TV just before eight, twisted the aerial so that the interference wasn’t too bad, loaded bowls of popcorn and pretzels, opened a real beer for Poppa, you can’t have baseball without beer, and for Jake root beer because you got to root, root, root for the home team, only the Senators were his real team. Poppa knew that, he didn’t mind.

  Jake’s secret was that he had another home team, not the Yankees – Ben said they looked like Republicans! – but the Dodgers. Ben said the Dodgers were real people. It wasn’t clear what that meant. Sort of like real workers, Ben explained. It wasn’t clear what that meant either. But both of them liked that the Dodgers had Negro players, and the Yankees didn’t have any. They were prejudiced.

  Jake had asked Poppa about this.

  ‘It’s not prejudice,’ he said. ‘They’re just not ready yet. There’s one or two good Negroes under consideration. One’s a catcher, he can come in after Yogi. We just have to be patient.’

  Ben had been listening.

  ‘That’s what they say about prejudice everywhere, don’t you worry if you have no civil rights or human dignity, just be patient! Morrie, you should know better!’

  Morrie knew better, better than to be drawn on such a subject. What he cared about, most, was winning. Of course it would be good if Negroes had civil rights, even better if one of them could hit .300 and thirty home runs for the Yanks. Now that’d be civil rights, in spades!

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said, ‘all things come in time.’

  They’d argued about the subject before. Maurice was . . . what word could Ben use to describe him? A bigot? Too strong, even with the Schwarze business. Maurice came from a culture that did not deal with the coloured, it employed them; he never met one socially. Negroes were coming, there was no doubt about that, but like the Yankees, Maurice was prepared to wait for the good ones. Not many of them about.

  In the meantime, the all-white Yankees in the pinstripes were doing just fine. By the bottom of the sixth, Jake was asleep in his chair and Maurice felt his eyes closing too. The Yanks had just gone ahead 4–0, and Whitey was pitching up a storm, game over really, they didn’t blow leads like that, that was why they had won exactly twice as many games as they’d lost. ‘A win percentage of .667,’ said Jake, who loved baseball statistics, could quote them not merely about modern players but about Ty Cobb (lifetime average .366: Best ever!), Rogers Hornsby (batted .424 in 1924: Highest ever!), Cy Young (won 511 games: Most ever!). Maurice was very proud of the boy. What a memory!

  One moment Maurice was watching Phil Rizzuto’s double knock in the fourth run, then he was being shaken gently by the shoulder. The TV had been turned off. Jake was standing up, groggy and ready for bed, while Addie looked at her father with concern in her eyes.

  ‘Dad, you were sleeping.’

  ‘Why not? Been a long day, just a bit tired.’ He stood up, stretched and yawned. ‘Let’s turn it off and turn in.’ His head was throbbing insistently, though Perle had renewed the ice pack several times.

  Addie helped him from the rocking chair. He didn’t resist.

  He slept late the next morning, the sleep of the dead, no dreams, no movement, not even getting up for a pee. Lying beside him, sleeping only intermittently, Perle would occasionally shake him by the shoulder, wipe his brow with a washcloth, insist he take a sip of water, enquire if he wanted the ice pack. He shook his head irritably and a moment later was unconscious once more. She woke him up regularly, that’s what you were supposed to do.

  When he hadn’t woken by ten, she rang the doctor again and was advised to wake Maurice, get him dressed and take him immediately to the ER at Huntington Hospital.

  ‘Do I need to call an ambulance?’ she asked.

  ‘Not if he’s awake and ambulatory.’

  ‘He is, but he’s not right, not himself.’

  ‘Get him there this morning.’

  Maurice resisted going, though the combined forces of Addie and Perle, and the hovering children, were adequate persuasion. He got showered, took four aspirins, had a quick shave. The smoothing of the lather on his face – he didn’t use one of those new-fangled pressure cans – was soothing, and he was careful, feeling as ill as he did, not to cut himself. His only concession to modernity was that he had abandoned his old straight razor in favour of the new Gillette super-speed, with a double-edged disposable blade, which was almost as efficient, and harder to cut yourself with. The children loved watching him mixing the lather, putting it on, taking it off with smooth and precise strokes (not so smooth or precise today). And after, he would wash his face, put a hot cloth on it, then tip the bottle of Old Spice into his hand, rub his palms together and put it on his face and neck, going ‘BRRRR!’ and shaking his head to make them laugh.

  Then he would put a few dabs of the shaving cream on their faces: they held their heads right back, stood still looking at the ceiling, closed their eyes.

  ‘Don’t move now!’ Poppa would say seriously, and then he would draw the side of his Diners Club card down their cheeks, removing the lather. ‘Eyes closed!’ They screwed their little faces up, thrilled and frightened as the card scraped gently across their cheeks. Before they opened their eyes he would put some of the lather on his razor, to show them, before offering the bottle of Old Spice. They loved the smell, took some of the aftershave in their hands, put it on their faces – BRRRR! – shaking their heads.

  When Addie smelled them, she would grab hold of Becca, laughing and lifting
her up, sniffing her neck greedily, tickling her. ‘You smell like Natalie Wood!’ she’d say. Becca liked that, Natalie Wood was a Star, that was even what her movie was called, her picture was on front of the Shore Movie Theatre on Wall Street. Becca had bangs just like her, she looked like her and she smelled like her too!

  Their father was a shaving bore. He’d bought a Remington electric and loved how much simpler shaving had become, faster too. No fun for the kids there, nor would he use aftershave of any kind. He felt it made men smell like tarts, but wouldn’t have said so to Becca or Jake, nor to Maurice or Frankie, both of whom did.

  Maurice was soon in the car, with Addie behind the steering wheel, the kids staying with Perle, who was torn between bringing them along to the hospital – no, not that – and the fact that Addie would then have to drive Maurice on her own. Please God, she doesn’t get lost! She issued a set of instructions, wrote down what Barry the Doctor had said and got a promise that Addie would ring from the payphone as soon as Morrie got out, though it was only a ten-minute trip back to the bungalow.

  ‘Don’t worry so,’ Maurice said. ‘We’ll be home in a jiffy, it’s no big deal.’

  It wasn’t. It was a disaster. Not the concussion, not that – he was sure he had one, he’d had them before, got conked on the noggin more than once playing ball, saw double for a week, could hardly stand up, next week he was behind the plate again as if nothing had happened. Occupational hazard, nothing to worry about. But what there was to worry about was that he didn’t have a week this time, he wasn’t on holiday, had been going to the city most days and knew that the coming few days were going to be . . . what was the word, something not too dramatic? Not important. Not crucial. Maybe, just maybe, the right word was critical, as a heart attack is critical?

  He shook his head, it hurt. Nah, he’d been in plenty of jams before, knew the ropes, always came out smelling of roses and dollar bills. He’d been expecting this one. So, they wanted to raise the prices, cut his margins, take a bit of the business? What did he expect? It was amazing, a real tribute to his . . . he hesitated to think of it as genius, no, his smarts, that was the sandlot word.

  Molly and Sol had found him out early, well before the war. The off-the-books racket, making and selling clothes on his own. They summoned him to a meeting. You can’t serve two masters, you can’t steal part of the business! They had a good mind to fire him.

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Maurice. ‘Silly thing to do. If you want to get on a high horse, remember it hurts if you fall off . . .’

  Sol had glared at him. He was in his sixties, the business was declining, large manufacturing firms could undersell him, and his clothes no longer looked as fresh and modern as, say . . . Maurice’s. Maurice had the unmitigated gall, even, to use some of his boss’s designers (who thought Sol and Molly behind the times) to make snazzy new clothes, and he then used some of their own fabricators to make them up! Talk about chutzpah!

  All off the books, all cash. Maurice bought his materials from a reliable guy called Sal in Little Italy, near the Bowery, and had them made into cheap but fashionable lines by ladies who worked from home and were paid in cash. When he sold the garments on, it was all cash as well. To all intents and purposes, his little sideline was invisible – it was hardly a big business, netted him maybe $2,000 in a good year.

  He was vulnerable, of course. Someone might rat him out to the IRS, but it would be hard to prove much. Even Sol and Molly could, they were that mad, but what did they have to gain by ruining him? He was their best salesman, brought in more than the schleppers combined, without him they were farkakte, and they knew it.

  He’d abandoned a potential career as a lawyer, all the tedium of having to pass the Bar (instead of going into one), hanging out a shingle, settling down to the stultifying details of closings and divorces, for the relatively easy life of the rag trade. He was a natural salesman, people basked in his warmth – Morrie, he was called, fondly.

  A salesman’s number one product is himself. And most have no natural geniality, shake hands too firmly, grimace instead of smiling, speak in oleaginous tones. And in their eyes the tell-tale desperation. They treat you as if you were an old friend and you’re not. You’re a potential customer and if you’re not buying their product it’s because you’re not buying them.

  Sometimes, sitting on the B train that took him downtown to his office, he would muse about sales pitches, coups of a sort no one but he would have contemplated. And this, Mrs Eskimo – may I call you Mrs E? – is just the right air-conditioner for your igloo! Don’t you worry about the cold air coming out, it’s cold in there already. But this is conditioned air, it is purified and cleansed, it will protect your children from germs and infections!

  He needed his employers, and they needed him. His extra off-the-books income bought the bungalow, the Caddies, the sandwiches, Frankie’s new office, Addie and Ben’s furniture and school tuition for the children. And now he was going to have to support them for months while Ben studied for the Bar.

  Fine, he could do that, was already putting some money away. Then one day he got the call. It was Salvatore.

  ‘Morrie! How ya doin’, pal?’

  He was always ‘pal’ when something was amiss.

  ‘Hey, Sal, what’s up?’

  It seemed there was a bit of a problem. Sal’s suppliers were letting him down, raising their prices, it was highway robbery!

  Maurice was very sorry indeed to hear it.

  ‘Nu?’ Sal knew from ‘nu’ the way Maurice knew from Pisan.

  ‘Long and short of it, Morrie, prices gotta go up . . .’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. How much?’

  ‘Double. Starting now, starting the money you owe me already. Double it.’

  He’d been expecting it for years, planned for it: but not for this catastrophic rise. What can you do? You do business with the devil, he will bite your ass, keep biting it, and if you don’t pay he drags you down. And your family. They’d suckered him with artificially low prices, maybe 25 per cent less than anywhere else, good credit terms, some nice food and booze, offered a girl here and there.

  They weren’t a goodwill shop, it had to end. He’d already had a few modest price rises, knowing them to be a foretaste of something bigger to come, as the ground war against the Japs had presaged the big bombs. He’d planned for that, maybe up by 50 per cent. So now he would be paying more than if he took his business elsewhere, and he knew better than even to think of that. They had him over a barrel, and if they decided to roll it, that’d be that. He’d rather be in the hands of the IRS, he’d run rings round them. But these guys?

  ‘I think we need to talk about this, Sal. I haven’t planned for it. I’ll come see you next week, work something out.’

  ‘Always love seeing you, Morrie, we’ll go out, have a nice lunch at Mama Leone’s. On me. It’ll be swell to see ya.’

  He’d spent the time in his garage since then, working out the figures, pretending he was fixing an iron that was on the fritz. Funny, Fritz was Frankie’s nickname, brought it back from the war, at first Maurice hated it, Fritzes were Nazis. But somehow it stuck, though Perle would never use it.

  Nothing lasts forever, he knew that, he’d been prudent, salted away a few bucks, could do with less income. But not just now. He could probably wheedle a week’s respite out of Sal, who was a good enough guy until you crossed him. Tell him about the visit to the Emergency Room, put him off for a week or so, until the concussion eased.

  But the heart condition wasn’t going to ease, he wouldn’t be able to work so hard, hustle for business – for two businesses; he would have to take it easy. Easier. But not yet. Next year maybe. Or maybe not. If he quit Sol and Molly’s, they would go under, couldn’t carry on without him; if he quit his sideline, Salvatore would be angry. Maybe not shoot-you-in-the-eye and rape-your-daughter angry, but (a phrase he used occasionally) ‘very disappointed’.

  Maurice had no desire to find out what this actually meant, or entailed
– surely he was not indentured to Sal, he could retire, same as normal human beings, especially those with heart conditions? He was small beer, a small fish, no big deal. He always ironically described himself as ‘a small man’, by which he meant not a small man, but just now he felt one. Surely he’d earned some rest?

  Mr Smarty Pants, Perle called him; she knew the score. But it hadn’t stopped her taking the money and running the family. She knew they were compromised, like him she was used to it, had learned to cast a blind eye and shrug a shoulder, but the shrugged shoulder was also the one she’d been looking over all these years, and it was starting to hurt. Maybe she’d get to retire, too.

  No one would have called Maurice an ironist. Salesmen can’t afford to be. But this particular irony was not lost on him, not for one second: Sal was doing to him what he had been doing to his own customers for thirty years. Get them hooked, reel them in, make them dependent, raise the prices. What was that expression about being hoisted? He was! Did he deserve to be? No, not at all, no way, never. It was an outrage!

  Of course it wasn’t working, couldn’t work, God knows why he thought it might, as if sending Rhoda that letter had resolved their problem, rather than simply delayed any resolution. In fact, made it more difficult. It was insulting, as if an emotional problem could be settled with a letter! They saw each other willy-nilly, coming into the building, in the hallways, in the elevator, nodded in what was intended to be a neutral manner to avoid making colleagues curious, but hardly exchanged a word.

  It was horrible. The day after Ben’s special delivery, he got a knock on the door, not aggressive, curiously muted, a couple of light taps, intimate even.

  ‘Come in,’ he said.

  It was Rhoda. She stepped inside, closed the door, leant her back against it.

  ‘Let’s stop this,’ she said. ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘You’re right. But not now, not here.’ She crossed to his desk and took his arm, and he defended himself from the reflex of pulling away, or of taking hers in his turn. It was impossible to know what to do, and how to do it.