“Edison,” he said, warily, because he knew this was a guy who would not take anything he said at face value. The man moved his head like a turtle, getting a better look at him in the gloom of the store. “You the Edison man?”
Dennis put his hand out to introduce himself and saw that the man was missing the middle three fingers of his right hand, and the tips of the last three on his left. He was a Polish Jew, not long in New York. A tailor, he said, before the war, and without indicating his hands gave a vaudevillian shrug. Now a shopkeeper, ladies’ and children’s apparel. Or anyway, as soon as he had the power he would be.
As Dennis had predicted, the man didn’t want to hear anything he said, and end of next week was too long for him to wait. He was not an old man, not as old as he’d first appeared, but he seemed shrunken inside his big coat and he had a lousy set of dentures that slipped as he spoke and made his breath stale.
“Mr. Lynch,” he said—once he got hold of Dennis’s name he was like a dog with a bone—“consider my situation.”
“Mr. Leibowitz,” Dennis told him, “consider your wiring. Consider your shop going up in smoke.”
The man pretended to be resigned. He looked around the place as if all his struggle, through the war, through the camps, through the long crossing over, had come to this cold pathetic end. He shook his head, as if he was familiar with this, this mundane disappointment delivered by this mundane, earnest, broad-faced man, a disappointment as pervasive and as terrible as the world’s more famous evils. He shrugged and then suddenly turned and gently took Dennis’s hand, holding his wrist in the space between his pinky and thumb on the left. He drilled a folded bill into Dennis’s palm with his right.
“Anything you can do,” Mr. Leibowitz said.
Dennis objected and tried to hand the money back, but the man turned away, waving his gaped hand beside his ear, swatting at the words. He might have said, “It can’t hurt.”
The folded bill was still in his pocket when he got back to the office. He rode the elevator up with Claire Donavan and three other girls, just back from lunch, their fur collars smelling of perfume and cigarette smoke, their bright lipstick fresh and the powder on their cheeks and noses like a dusting of sugar.
“You’re quiet, Mr. Lynch,” Claire Donavan said into his ear as they watched the lights moving behind the numbers for each floor.
“I’m praying for a power failure, Miss Donavan,” he said, moving only his eyes to look at her, her bright white smile and the gum cracking like sparks behind it. Peppermint. Sugar. Lilac perfume. The war was far enough behind them now: bread was bread once again, not cake. He had a hankering for cake.
Billy got on at twelve. “Dennis!” he said, and Dennis said, “Billy boy,” as if he’d spent the morning looking for him. They nearly shook hands. But the eyes of the four women were on them, on Billy more accurately. He was the only one of them not wearing a hat and a coat, and it made him seem finer, somehow, in his gray suit and white shirt and simple tie—the way a priest all in black can seem the more elegant in the midst of brightly colored wedding guests.
“You’ve been out in the field?” Billy asked softly.
“Till just now,” Dennis said.
When they got to their floor, the girls stepped out, but Dennis pinched Billy’s sleeve and made him stay on.
“Who is he?” they heard before the door closed on them again, and Claire Donavan answered, “Cousins.”
Dennis reached into his pocket and pulled out the folded bill. He was surprised to see it was a ten. He handed it to Billy. “Put this in your happily-ever-after fund.”
Billy looked at it sheepishly. “Where’s it from?”
The elevator stopped and Dennis pushed another button for a higher floor. He told him. He said he was going to put it into the poor box at St. Brigid’s but the door was locked. “I think the bums have been coming in and stealing the Communion wine.”
“Catholic bums,” Billy said.
Dennis nodded. “The worst kind. So take it and put it in your happily-ever-after fund.”
Still, Billy hesitated. He told Dennis to put it in the collection basket on Sunday. Dennis said he’d have it spent by Sunday. Billy said, Spend it. Dennis said he had a rich mother, he didn’t need to spend it. Finally, he pushed the money into Billy’s palm as Mr. Leibowitz had done to him. He said when the time came, when Eva was back here and they were snug in their little cottage in East Hampton, Billy could buy all their baby clothes from Mr. Leibowitz.
“Will it ever happen?” Billy said wistfully, even as he folded the money into his pocket.
Dennis said, “I don’t see why it shouldn’t.” Although, in truth, he saw: indistinctly as yet and as if from the corner of his eye. Think of those ruined, ragged men in the street, Billy among them, in the unimaginable future. Think of Leibowitz’s butchered hands. Think of the promises he had made to Mary at moments when the girl had every right to believe him. When, for as long as it took, he managed to believe himself. With so many other forces at work in the world, brutal, sly, deceiving, unstoppable forces, what could be more foolish than staking your life on an ephemeral feeling, no more than an idea, really, a fancy, the culmination of which is a clumsy bit of nakedness, a few minutes of animal grunting and bumping, a momentary obliteration of thought, of conscience?
Indistinctly, and as if from the corner of his eye, he saw what Billy’s fine dream, Billy’s faith, was going to come to. But he also saw, in his own (his own father’s) romantic heart, that its consummation would become a small redemption for them all.
Holtzman’s head was huge when you came upon him from behind, in the dim back corner of his shoe store, bent over his inventory sheets and fresh from the barber’s, so the only way of telling where his neck stopped and his head began was the seemingly arbitrary place where a shadow of tiny hairs began to sprout from that Germanic column of red-and-purple flesh.
The stockroom smelled of shoe leather and cardboard and, as Dennis came closer, dill pickles and mustard. The overhead lights were remarkably dim; the only brightness came from the single gooseneck lamp that sat on his desk. His sandwich in its wax-paper nest rested on the corner of the desk, just outside the circle of light, and when Dennis saw Holtzman’s fat hand reach for it and lift it to his mouth, he knew for certain that the man still hadn’t heard him come in and that if he cleared his throat and called Holtzman’s name or came a few steps farther and touched his shoulder, he would startle the old Kraut, perhaps send that plug of ham on rye with butter and mustard right into his esophagus.
So Dennis paused, long enough to see Holtzman return the sandwich to the desk, long enough to see that it was chewed and swallowed (he turned an inventory sheet over and sighed and lifted a finger to his mouth to dislodge something from between cheek and gum). Long enough, too, to reconsider what he was doing and to turn around, get back on the train, get back to work. Let Billy’s sweet romance follow its own course.
But the road to hell … and Dennis said, “Excuse me, Mr. Holtzman. I’m sorry to interrupt.”
The man turned, his big head like an old buffalo’s, peering over his flank. And then, when he saw it was Dennis behind him, he swiveled his chair around and wiped his mouth and began to stand.
Dennis held out a hand. “Don’t get up,” he said, although Holtzman was already standing, already saying, “Dennis,” and then, “Is everything all right?” the chubby hand to the heart, the heart lacking even the courage to let him say, “Is your mother all right?”
Dennis knew then that he’d had the right idea, coming here, to him.
Holtzman offered him the metal chair beside his desk. “Please, sit,” he said after Dennis had assured him that his mother was fine, that he had only come to ask a favor. Even in that dim light, Dennis saw two things pass in quick succession over the man’s face: one was the relief that there was no bad news. Second, the sudden suspicion that he was about to be asked for money.
Which Dennis, did, of course, and witho
ut too much beating around the bush. He said he wanted to borrow five hundred dollars to give to Billy so he could send for his girl and her mother by summer, find an apartment for them all, and get on with his life. He said Billy would be glad to work in the store on the weekend so that the money would be an advance against salary, not a flat-out loan, and that Billy, and he, would be sure all of it was paid back in a timely manner, with interest.
He said he was certain that Billy would eventually save what he needed himself, without anyone else’s help, but it could take him another year, and a year was a long time for a young girl to wait all alone on the other side of the ocean.
“You met her,” Dennis said. “Last summer. On Long Island. Outside St. Philomena’s.”
Holtzman nodded. “A pretty girl,” he said, and already Dennis could see that he was forming an argument against him: prettiness was a virtue. She would wait for Billy to earn the money himself.
Dennis nodded. “Pretty enough,” he said, countering what he hadn’t spoken. “But for Billy, the moon and stars encircle her head. I don’t know that he can wait.”
Holtzman shrugged a little, touching thumb and forefinger to his chest. Dennis saw his eyes glance longingly at his thick sandwich.
“Eat, please,” he said. “Don’t let me stop you.”
Eagerly, Holtzman took hold of the sandwich, sending, as he did, another longing glance toward his inventory sheet. Dennis began to wonder if he should have gone to his mother instead. But he’d been certain that his chances with Holtzman were better. The man had, after all, given up what had seemed a comfortable and complacent bachelorhood to take on a penniless wife and her grown son; he had opened his home to them, his cottage on Long Island; he had moved his ancestral furniture to the basement or distributed it to her relations in order to accommodate her secondhand junk. He had readjusted his morning routine, rewritten his will, instituted what was called a “family discount” at his store (which was essentially 20 percent off for anyone who was identified as part of Daniel Lynch’s sprawling legacy), and increased his own grocery bill by at least 50 percent. He had complicated his life. All because a tiny woman had entered his shoe store looking for size fours. All because she had placed her stockinged foot in the palm of his hand.
He had, according to Billy’s mother, who was there, wept copiously, gratefully, as he recited his wedding vows in the dim front room of the rectory.
Holtzman took another bite of sandwich, passed his tongue over his teeth, chewed, put the napkin to his thin lips. He never had managed to look Dennis straight in the eye. My mother’s husband. Finally, he said, “I’m not a wealthy man.”
Dennis nodded, murmuring like a priest. He understood that, he said.
“I’m not made of money,” he said. Dennis understood that, too. “It’s an awful lot of money,” he added while Dennis continued to nod. “I don’t know that I have access to that much money myself.”
Dennis pursed his lips sympathetically. He was always struck by the irony of it. His father’s wealth, which was purely figurative, had always been boldly proclaimed. Holtzman’s, a literal fact, was relentlessly denied.
“The business is still recovering from the war years,” he said. “Long-time customers came in and told me that they wouldn’t shop here anymore because of what went on in Europe. There was leather rationing, you know. I had these damn corduroy shoes to sell. I lost a lot of business.”
He looked at the big sandwich in his hand, seemed to consider whether or not it contradicted his lean-times story, bit into it anyway.
“Billy might be an asset, then,” Dennis told him as he chewed. “It might impress your customers to know you’re helping out a former GI.”
Holtzman considered this, seemed to like it, but then shrugged it off lest Dennis begin to think he had an advantage.
“He’s a good-looking guy,” Dennis went on. “Soft-spoken. People like him. Women like him.”
Holtzman shrugged again as if to say Dennis didn’t understand the shoe business.
“If you would think of it as an investment, not a loan.”
“It’s a lot of money,” Holtzman said.
“It’s what I figure he really needs.”
“And when would he be in here? Just Saturdays?”
“Isn’t Saturday your busiest day?”
Holtzman shook his head. “He’ll take a long time to earn back five hundred dollars just working on Saturdays.”
“He’ll be paying you off from his salary at Edison, too,” Dennis said. “And I’ll be helping him out.”
Holtzman put the sandwich down, daintily wiped his fingertips and then his mouth. Turned a little in his chair, as if, Dennis thought, he was about to dismiss him. But then he said, working that tongue into his cheeks, looking over his papers, “I’m thinking of staying open Thursday nights. Gimbel’s does it.”
“Billy could be here Thursday nights,” Dennis said. “Billy could be here by 5:30 easy.”
Holtzman sucked his teeth again, turned to another inventory sheet on the desk before him. It was clear he was becoming more and more interested as he feigned growing indifference. Not nearly as sly as he believed himself to be. “What does he know about shoes?” he said.
Dennis laughed. “How much is there to know?” and then quickly amended it. “Smitty can show him what he needs, I’m sure.”
Holtzman looked up from his desk. “He’s willing to do this?”
Dennis grinned. He hadn’t mentioned any of this to Billy yet. “Are you kidding?” he said. “He’s dying to do this. He’s nuts about this girl. It’ll be nearly a year. He’s dying to see her.”
Casually Holtzman leaned down to slide out the bottom drawer of his desk. “I’ll give him a dollar an hour to begin. Thursdays till nine. Saturday nine to six. Twelve-fifty a week. Fifty dollars a month.” He lifted a heavy check ledger from the drawer, tossed it onto his desk. Flipped it open. “He adds whatever he can from his regular salary once a month.”
“What kind of interest do you want?” Dennis said.
Holtzman waved the pen he had lifted. “This is family,” he said. And then he added as he wrote, exacting another kind of payment, “You boys will never have any money if you spend everything you make before it’s earned.” He might have been talking to a child.
Dennis felt the warmth in his cheeks. “This is an advance, Mr. Holtzman,” he reminded him. “Billy will earn it.”
Holtzman lifted his head to give Dennis a shrewd look—a skin-deep look if there ever was one. “But first he’ll spend it,” he said.
Billy was at his desk when Dennis got back to the office. He put the check in front of him. “Here you go,” he said, and understood for the first time why it was that his father had bankrupted himself and estranged his wife and filled their tiny apartment with far-flung relatives from the other side: simply to know this power, this expansiveness. Simply to be able to say, as he said to Billy that day in the office on Irving Place, “Here you go.” Here’s your life.
Full of himself, and of Billy’s sweet, blushing gratitude, he decided that day, too, that he would marry Mary when Eva came. Make a good confession for a change, say yes and mean it, rather than have it turn into another instant sin when the priest behind the dark screen asked him if he planned to marry this girl he was having his way with. He’d give her a ring on the day Billy married Eva. Find them a place of their own. Get his life started. Why not? He could afford it, he had a rich mother. Why not? Bread was what you wanted over the long haul, when you got right down to it. When you got right down to it, you wouldn’t want a lifetime of cake. And it would make for a fine summer.
BILLY WIRED THE MONEY to Eva in April and in his next letter asked her to send him her shoe size and the sizes of her younger sisters so he could pick up something for them at the store. This she did, including in her last note to him a folded sheet of butcher paper that contained a tracing of her right foot and each right foot of her three younger siblings. She said she knew that
shoe sizes were different in the States and thought this was the best way to be sure of a good fit. She said, too, that she was making this letter a short one—she wanted to catch the postman—and would write more later. She said she was busy making plans.
In the shoe store that Saturday morning, Billy spread the brown paper out on the counter so Smitty, Mr. Holtzman’s assistant, could determine each size. Smitty advised oxfords for the sisters, and by lunchtime Billy himself had selected a pair of tan-and-white spectators for Eva. He had sold a pair to a woman that morning, a young woman who had come in intending only to get her old father fitted with a pair of wingtips. The shoes had made even her thick ankles seem elegant and sporty.
The same girl returned twice that summer, once more with her father, once with a talkative girl friend who did all the trying on and buying. This was the summer that Billy, holding his breath, was going through the mail his mother had left out on the sideboard each evening and finding nothing, as he told them down at Quinlan’s, nothing at all from Eva. The same summer that Dennis had begun to keep a tally of all the simple things a Brooklyn-born girl knew that an Irish-born girl had to have explained to her.
Like the prohibition against a girl calling a fellow on the telephone. On a Sunday afternoon in late September of 1946, Holtzman told Dennis there was a young lady on the phone and with a disapproving shake of his head handed him the receiver. Dennis sat beside the three-legged telephone table Holtzman had once retrieved from a pile of junk at someone else’s curb. An hour later he met Mary at the service entrance of her building, on Seventieth Street, just off Park. He was thinking that if she was expecting a child, then he would, of course, marry her immediately, and tell himself that it was the hand of God (his father consulting) moving him toward a future that he only understood now he never honestly wanted. A future in which his own bad luck was the other side of Claire Donavan’s sailor’s opportunity.
Charming Billy Page 12