by Irwin Shaw
“I have done things, Ma,” Sol said slowly, choosing his words with great care, “that were not so good.”
“If we were all angels, we wouldn’t need airplanes,” Ma said with finality. “Let me look at the chicken.”
She went over and looked at the chicken. “That butcher!” she said. “He is selling me eagles.” She closed the oven door and sat down again.
“I have done things,” Sol said quietly, “that God wouldn’t like.”
“I think God has other things on His mind, these days, Sol.”
“Ma,” Sol said, not looking at his mother, “Ma, would you light candles on Friday night and make the prayer?”
There was silence in the kitchen, broken only by the small crackle from the oven, where the chicken was browning.
“I haven’t lighted candles for a long time, Sol,” Ma said gently. “Ever since the day I married your father. He was a Socialist, your father.”
“Would yuh light ’em now, Ma?” Sol pleaded. “Every Friday night?”
“What is it, Sol? Why should I light candles?”
Sol took a deep breath and stood up and walked back and forth in the kitchen. “Violet,” he said, “Violet’s goin’ to have a baby.”
“Oh!” Ma gasped, fanning herself. “Oh! Well! That blonde girl! Oh! A grandchild! Oh! Sol, Baby!” She grabbed Sol and kissed him. “My Sol!”
“Don’t cry, Ma. Ma, please …” Sol patted her solid wide back. “It’s all right.”
“It’s about time, Sol. I thought you’d never …” She kissed him on the forehead and smiled widely. “I thought Violet was beginning to look very good in the breasts. Congratulations from the bottom of my heart. We’ll name him after my father.”
“Yeah,” Sol said. “Thanks. How about the candles now, Ma?”
“What do you need candles for? I had five children without burning a single candle.”
“Violet’s different,” Sol said uneasily. “She’s not like you.”
“She is just built for children,” Ma declared. “She is built like a horse. When I had you I weighed ninety-five pounds. Including you. She doesn’t need candles.”
“You don’t know, Ma.” Sol looked intently into his mother’s eyes. “Today Violet slipped in the bathtub.”
“Well?”
“She coulda killed herself. As it is, she fainted.”
“So you want me to pray because your wife doesn’t know how to take a bath. Sol!” Ma waved him away. “Every day millions of people fall down in bathtubs.”
“Lissen, Ma,” Sol said, holding both her hands. “Nuthin’ can’t happen to Violet. And nuthin’ can happen to the kid. See, Ma? We been tryin’ to have a kid for five years now and …” He stopped.
Ma shook her head in wonderment. “That big blonde horse.”
“We want that kid, Ma. We gotta have that kid. Everybody should have a kid. What’ve I got if I haven’t got a son?”
“Sssh, Baby,” Ma said. “Sure, you’re right. Only don’t yell. You’re too nervous to yell.”
“All right, I won’t yell.” Sol wiped the sweat off his forehead with a blue silk handkerchief with a green monogram. “All right. What I want to say is, Violet’s dumpin’ herself in the bathtub was a omen.”
“A what?”
“A omen. It’s a …”
“I know.”
“It shows us we can’t take any chances, Ma.”
“Loose in the head, my baby Sol,” Ma said. “Too much night life.”
“We got to pray to God, Ma,” Sol said, “that nuthin’ happens to that baby.”
“If you want to pray to God, go ahead and pray. Did I make the baby?” Ma asked. “Let Violet pray.”
Sol swallowed. “Violet’s not fit to pray,” he said gently. “She’s a first-class girl and I would lay down on railroad tracks for her, but she ain’t fit to pray to God.”
“That’s no way to talk about your own wife, Solly,” Ma said. “Shame on you.”
“I love her like she was my right arm,” Sol said. “But she’s not a very good woman, Ma. What’s the sense in kiddin’ ourselves? Violet has a weak character, Ma, and she has done two or three or five things.… Give Violet four drinks, Ma, and she says ‘Yes’ to the man from Macy’s. She’s young, she’ll outgrow it an’ settle down, but right now …” Sol nervously lit a cigarette. “Right now, Ma, Violet’s prayers’d carry top weight in the field.”
“Sol, Sol,” Ma said gravely, “why can’t you pray?”
Sol sat quietly, observing his cigarette. The blush came up over his purple collar, like dye soaking in cloth. “I am not one hundred percent perfect in any respect, myself,” he said. “First of all, Ma, in my business if yuh don’t tell the customers dirty jokes, yuh might just as well apply to the WPA.”
“You should’ve been a doctor, like I said.”
“I know, Ma,” Sol said patiently. “But I’m not. I’m a man who has to play in cheap night clubs in Philadelphia and Lowell, Massachusetts, and Boston, weeks at a time. Yuh don’t know how lonely it can get at night in Lowell, Massachusetts.”
“A lot, Sol?”
“A lot, Ma, a lot,” Sol cast his eyes up at the kitchen ceiling.
“A boy with a face like yours.” Ma shrugged. “Girls’re funny.”
“If I prayed, Ma, the words’d stick in my throat.”
“So you want me. I don’t even believe in God, Baby.”
“That’s all right, Ma,” Sol said. “You’re a good woman. Yuh never hurt anybody in all yer life.”
Ma sighed hugely. “I’ll have to go down to Mrs. Aaronson and get her to teach me the prayer. Sol, darling, you’re a nuisance.”
Sol kissed her, his eyes shining.
“I got to see what’s happening to that bird,” Ma said, bending over the chicken. “I’ll pray that it’s a boy,” she said, “while I’m at it.”
Every Friday night the candles were lighted and Ma steadfastly said the old words: “Burach ee, burach shmoi, Burach ee, burach shmoi. Burach ee, burach shmoi. Burach ata adanoi eluchainu melach huoilom. Chaleck necht shil shabos.” And then she prayed for a boy.
It was on a Friday night that Sol and Violet brought the baby over to Ma’s for the first time.
Sol held the smiling and pink and robust boy in his arms as if he were wood.
“See, Ma?” he said, holding the baby out.
Ma put her hand out slowly, and gently rubbed the little soft head. “Hair,” she said. “He’s got hair.” She chuckled and took the baby’s hand out and kissed it. “Take him into the bedroom, Violet,” she said. “I’m busy here for a minute.”
She turned and lighted the seven candles in the window, one by one.
“The last stronghold of religion,” Lawrence said. “All of a sudden. This house.”
“Shut up,” Ma said. “City College philosopher.”
And she said, “Burach ee, burach shmoi. Burach ee …” as the candles burned.
Return to Kansas City
Arline opened the bedroom door and softly went over between the twin beds, the silk of her dress making a slight rustle in the quiet room. The dark shades were down and the late afternoon sun came in only in one or two places along the sides of the window frames, in sharp, thin rays.
Arline looked down at her husband, sleeping under the blankets. His fighter’s face with the mashed nose was very peaceful on the pillow and his hair was curled like a baby’s and he snored gently because he breathed through his mouth. A light sweat stood out on his face. Eddie always sweated, any season, any place. But now, when she saw Eddie begin to sweat, it made Arline a little angry.
She stood there, watching the serene, glove-marked face. She sat down on the other bed, still watching her husband. She took a lace-bordered handkerchief out of a pocket and dabbed at her eyes. They were dry. She sniffed a little and the tears started. For a moment she cried silently, then she sobbed aloud. In a minute the tears and the sobs were regular, loud in the still room.
E
ddie stirred in his bed. He closed his mouth, turned over on his side.
“Oh, my,” Arline sobbed, “oh, my God.”
She saw, despite the fact that Eddie’s back was toward her, that he had awakened.
“Oh,” Arline wept, “sweet Mother of God.”
She knew that Eddie was wide awake listening to her and he knew that she knew it, but he hopefully pretended he hadn’t been roused. He even snored experimentally once or twice. Arline’s sobs shook her and the mascara ran down her cheeks in straight black lines.
Eddie sighed and turned around and sat up, rubbing his hair with his hands.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “What’s bothering you, Arline?”
“Nothing,” Arline sobbed.
“If nothing’s the matter,” Eddie said mildly, “what’re you crying for?”
Arline didn’t say anything. She stopped sobbing aloud and turned the grief inward upon herself and wept all the more bitterly, in silence. Eddie wiped his eye with the heel of his hand, looked wearily at the dark shades that shut out the slanting rays of the sun.
“There are six rooms in this house, Arline darling,” he said. “If you have to cry why is it necessary to pick the exact room where I am sleeping?”
Arline’s head sank low on her breast, her beautiful beauty-shop straw-colored hair falling tragically over her face. “You don’t care,” she murmured, “you don’t care one dime’s worth if I break my heart.”
She squeezed the handkerchief and the tears ran down her wrist.
“I care,” Eddie said, throwing back the covers neatly and putting his stockinged feet onto the floor. He had been sleeping in his pants and shirt, which were very wrinkled now. He shook his head two or three times as he sat on the edge of the bed and hit himself smartly on the cheek with the back of his hand to awaken himself. He looked unhappily across at his wife, sitting on the other bed, her hands wrung in her lap, her face covered by her careless hair, sorrow and despair in every line of her. “Honest, Arline, I care.” He went over and sat next to her on the bed and put his arm around her. “Baby,” he said. “Now, baby.”
She just sat there crying silently, her round, soft shoulders shaking now and then under his arm. Eddie began to feel more and more uncomfortable. He squeezed her shoulder two or three times, exhausting his methods of consolation. “Well,” he said finally, “I think maybe I’ll put the kid in the carriage and take him for a walk. A little air. Maybe when I come back you’ll feel better.”
“I won’t feel better,” Arline promised him, without moving. “I won’t feel one ounce better.”
“Arline,” Eddie said.
“The kid.” She sat up erect now and looked at him. “If you paid as much attention to me as to the kid.”
“I pay equal attention. My wife and my kid.” Eddie stood up and padded around the room uneasily in his socks.
Arline watched him intently, the creased flannel trousers and the wrinkled shirt not concealing the bulky muscles.
“The male sleeping beauty,” she said. “The long-distance sleeping champion. My husband.”
“I don’t sleep so awful much,” Eddie protested.
“Fifteen hours a day,” Arline said. “Is it natural?”
“I had a hard workout this morning,” Eddie said, standing at the window. “I went six fast rounds. I got to get rest. I got to store up my energy. I am not so young as some people any more. I got to take care of myself. Don’t I have to store up energy?”
“Store up your energy!” Arline said loudly. “All day long you store up energy. What is your wife supposed to do when you are storing up energy?”
Eddie let the window shade fly up. The light shot into the room, making it harder for Arline to cry.
“You ought to have friends,” Eddie suggested without hope.
“I have friends.”
“Why don’t you go out with them?”
“They’re in Kansas City,” Arline said.
There was silence in the room. Eddie sat down and began putting on his shoes.
“My mother’s in Kansas City,” Arline said. “My two sisters are in Kansas City. My two brothers. I went to high school in Kansas City. Here I am, in Brooklyn, New York.”
“You were in Kansas City two and a half months ago,” Eddie said, buttoning his collar and knotting his tie. “A mere two and a half months ago.”
“Two and a half months are a long time,” Arline said, clearing away the mascara lines from her cheeks, but still weeping. “A person can die in two and a half months.”
“What person?” Eddie asked.
Arline ignored him. “Mama writes she wants to see the baby again. After all, that is not unnatural, a grandmother wants to see her grandchild. Tell me, is it unnatural?”
“No,” said Eddie, “it is not unnatural.” He combed his hair swiftly. “If Mama wants to see the baby,” he said, “explain to me why she can’t come here. Kindly explain to me.”
“My husband is of the opinion that they are handing out gold pieces with movie tickets in Kansas City,” Arline said with cold sarcasm.
“Huh?” Eddie asked, honestly puzzled. “What did you say?”
“How can Mama afford to come here?” Arline asked. “After all, you know, there are no great prizefighters in our family. I had to marry to bring one into the family. Oh, my God!” Once more she wept.
“Lissen, Arline.” Eddie ran over to her and spoke pleadingly, his tough, battered face very gentle and sad. “I can’t afford to have you go to Kansas City every time I take a nap in the afternoon. We have been married a year and a half and you have gone to Kansas City five times. I feel like I am fighting for the New York Central Railroad, Arline!”
Arline shook her head obstinately. “There is nothing to do in New York,” she said.
“There is nothing to do in New York!” Eddie’s mouth opened in surprise. “My God! There’s something to do in Kansas City?” he cried. “What the hell is there to do in Kansas City? Remember, I have been in that town myself. I married you in that town.”
“I didn’t know how it was going to be,” Arline said flatly. “It was nice in Kansas City. I was an innocent young girl.”
“Please,” said Eddie. “Let us not rake up the past.”
“I was surrounded by my family,” Arline went on shakily. “I went to high school there.”
She bent over and grief took possession once more. Eddie licked his lips uncomfortably. They were dry from the morning’s workout and the lower lip was split a little and smarted when he ran his tongue over it. He searched his brain for a helpful phrase.
“The kid,” he ventured timidly, “why don’t you play more with the kid?”
“The kid!” Arline cried defiantly. “I take very good care of the kid. I have to stay in every night minding the kid while you are busy storing up your energy.” The phrase enraged her and she stood up, waving her arms. “What a business! You fight thirty minutes a month, you got to sleep three hundred and fifty hours. Why, it’s laughable. It is very laughable! You are some fighter!” She shook her fist at him in derision. “With all the energy you store up you ought to be able to beat the German army!”
“That is the business I am in,” Eddie tried to explain gently. “That is the nature of my profession.”
“Don’t tell me that!” Arline said. “I have gone out with other fighters. They don’t sleep all the time.”
“I am not interested,” Eddie said. “I do not want to hear anything about your life before our marriage.”
“They go to night clubs,” Arline went on irresistibly, “and they dance and they take a drink once in a while and they take a girl to see a musical show!”
Eddie nodded. “They are after something,” he said. “That is the whole story.”
“I wish to God you were after something!”
“I meet the type of fighter you mention, too,” Eddie said. “The night-club boys. They knock my head off for three rounds and then they start breathing throug
h the mouth. By the time they reach the eighth round they wish they never saw a naked lady on a dance floor. And by the time I get through with them they are storing up energy, flat on their backs. With five thousand people watching them. You want me to be that kind of a fighter?”
“You’re wonderful,” Arline said, wrinkling her nose, sneering. “My Joe Louis. Big-Purse Eddie Megaffin. I don’t notice you bringing back the million-dollar gate.”
“I am progressing slowly,” Eddie said, looking at the picture of Mary and Jesus over his bed. “I am planning for the future.”
“I am linked for life to a goddamn health-enthusiast,” Arline said despairingly.
“Why do you talk like that, Arline?”
“Because I want to be in Kansas City,” she wailed.
“Explain to me,” Eddie said, “why in the name of God you are so crazy for Kansas City?”
“I’m lonesome,” Arline wept with true bitterness. “I’m awful lonesome. I’m only twenty-one years old, Eddie.”
Eddie patted her gently on the shoulder. “Look, Arline.” He tried to make his voice very warm and at the same time logical. “If you would only go easy. If you would go by coach and not buy presents for everybody, maybe I can borrow a coupla bucks and swing it.”
“I would rather die,” Arline said. “I would rather never see Kansas City again for the rest of my life than let them know my husband has to watch pennies like a streetcar conductor. A man with his name in the papers every week. It would be shameful!”
“But, Arline, darling”—Eddie’s face was tortured—“you go four times a year, you spread presents like the WPA and you always buy new clothes …”
“I can’t appear in Kansas City in rags!” Arline pulled at a stocking, righting it on her well-curved leg. “I would rather …”
“Some day, darling,” Eddie interrupted. “We’re working up. Right now I can’t.”
“You can!” Arline said. “You’re lying to me, Eddie Megaffin. Jake Blucher called up this morning and he told me he offered you a thousand dollars to fight Joe Principe.”
Eddie sat down in a chair. He looked down at the floor, understanding why Arline had picked this particular afternoon.