by Philip Roth
Goldie looked at him, mystified, while Epstein searched for words appropriate to his posture.
At last: “You had a nice bath?”
“Nice, shmice, it was a bath,” his wife mumbled.
“You’ll catch a cold,” Epstein said. “Put something on.”
“I’ll catch a cold? You’ll catch a cold!” She looked at the hands laced across his crotch. “Something hurts?”
“It’s a little chilly,” he said.
“Where?” She motioned towards his protection. “There?”
“All over.”
“Then cover all over.”
He leaned over to pick up his pajama trousers; the instant he dropped the fig leaf of his hands Goldie let out a short airless gasp. “What is that?”
“What?”
“That!”
He could not look into the eyes of her face, so concentrated instead on the purple eyes of her droopy breasts. “A sand rash, I think.”
“Vus far sand!”
“A rash then,” he said.
She stepped up closer and reached out her hand, not to touch but to point. She drew a little circle of the area with her index finger. “A rash, there?”
“Why not there?” Epstein said. “It’s like a rash on the band or the chest. A rash is a rash.”
“But how come all of a sudden?” his wife said.
“Look, I’m not a doctor,” Epstein said. “It’s there today, maybe tomorrow it’ll be gone. How do I know! I probably got it from the toilet seat at the shop. The shvartzes are pigs—”
Goldie made a clicking sound with her tongue.
“You’re calling me a liar?”
She looked up. “Who said liar?” And she gave her own form a swift looking-over, checked limbs, stomach, breasts, to see if she had perhaps caught the rash from him. She looked back at her husband, then at her own body again, and suddenly her eyes widened. “You!” she screamed.
“Shah,” Epstein said, “you’ll wake Michael.”
“You pig! Who, who was it!”
“I told you, the shvartzes—”
“Liar! Pig!” Wheeling her way back to the bed, she Bopped onto it so hard the springs squeaked. “Liar!” And then she was off the bed pulling the sheets from it. “I’ll bum them, I’ll bum every one!”
Epstein stepped out of the pajamas that roped his ankles and raced to the bed. “What are you doing—it’s not catching. Only on the toilet seat. You’ll buy a little ammonia—”
“Ammonia!” she yelled, “you should drink ammonia!”
“No,” Epstein shouted, “no,” and he grabbed the sheets from her and threw them back over the bed, tucking them in madly. “Leave it be—” He ran to the back of the bed but as he tucked there Goldie raced around and ripped up what he had tucked in the front; so he raced back to the front while Goldie raced around to the back. “Don’t touch me.” she screamed, “don’t come near me, you filthy pig! Go touch some filthy whore!” Then she yanked the sheets off again in one swoop, held them in a ball before her and spat. Epstein grabbed them back and the tug-of-war began, back and forth, back and forth, until they had torn them to shreds. Then for the first time Goldie cried. With white strips looped over her arms she began to sob. “My sheets, my nice clean sheets—” and she threw herself on the bed.
Two faces appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. Sheila Epstein groaned, “Holy Christ!”; the folk singer peeped in, once, twice, and then bobbed out, his feet scuttling down the stairs. Epstein whipped some white strands about him to cover his privates. He did not say a word as his daughter entered.
“Mamma, what’s the matter?”
“Your father,” the voice groaned from the bed, “he has—a rash!” And so violently did she begin to sob that the flesh on her white buttocks rippled and jumped.
“That’s right,” Epstein said, “a rash. That’s a crime? Get out of here! Let your mother and father get some sleep.”
“Why is she crying?” Sheila demanded. “I want an answer!”
“How do I know! I’m a mind reader? This whole family is crazy, who knows what they think!”
“Don’t call my mother crazy!”
“Don’t you raise your voice to me! Respect your father!” He pulled the white strips tighter around him. “Now get out of here!”
“No!”
“Then I’ll throw you out.” He started for the door; his daughter did not move, and he could not bring himself to reach out and push her. Instead he threw back his head and addressed the ceiling. “She’s picketing my bedroom! Get out, you lummox!” He took a step towards her and growled, as though to scare away a stray cat or dog. With all her one hundred and sixty pounds she pushed her father back; in his surprise and hurt he dropped the sheet. And the daughter looked on the father. Under her lipstick she turned white.
Epstein looked up at her. He pleaded, “I got it from the toilet seat. The shvartzes—”
Before he could finish, a new head had popped into the doorway, hair messed and lips swollen and red; it was Michael, home from Linda Kaufman, his regular weekend date. “I heard the noise, is any—” and he saw his aunt naked on the bed. When he turned his eyes away, there was Uncle Lou.
“All of you,” Epstein shouted. “Get out!”
But no one obeyed. Sheila blocked the door, politically committed; Michael’s legs were rooted, one with shame, the other curiosity.
“Get out!”
Feet now came pounding up the stairs. “Sheila, should I call somebody—” And then the guitar plucker appeared in the doorway, eager, big-nosed. He surveyed the scene and his gaze, at last, landed on Epstein’s crotch; the beak opened.
“What’s he got? The syph?”
The words hung for a moment, bringing peace. Goldie Epstein stopped crying and raised herself off the bed. The young men in the doorway lowered their eyes. Goldie arched her back, flopped out her breasts, and began to move her lips. “I want…” she said. “I want…”
“What, Mamma?” Sheila demanded. “What is it?”
“I want … a divorce!” She looked amazed when she said it, though not as amazed as her husband; he smacked his palm to his head.
“Divorce! Are you crazy?” Epstein looked around; to Michael he said, “She’s crazy!”
“I want one,” she said, and then her eyes rolled up into her head and she passed out across the sheetless mattress.
After the smelling salts Epstein was ordered to bed in Herbie’s room. He tossed and turned in the narrow bed which he was unused to; in the twin bed beside him he heard Michael breathing. Monday, he thought, Monday he would seek help. A lawyer. No, first a doctor. Surely in a minute a doctor could take a look and tell him what he already knew—that Ida Kaufman was a clean woman. Epstein would swear by it—he had smelled her flesh! The doctor would reassure him: his blemish resulted simply from their rubbing together. It was a temporary thing, produced by two, not transmitted by one. He was innocent! Unless what made him guilty had nothing to do with some dirty bug. But either way the doctor would prescribe for him. And then the lawyer would prescribe. And by then everyone would know including he suddenly realized, his brother Sol who would take special pleasure in thinking the worst. Epstein rolled over and looked to Michael’s bed Pinpoints of light gleamed in the bov’s head- he was awake and wearing the Epstein nose chin and brow.
“Michael?”
“Yes.”
“You’re awake?”
“Yes.”
“Me too,” Epstein said, and then apologetically, “all the excitement…”
He looked back to the ceiling. “Michael?”
“Yes?”
“Nothing…” But he was curious as well as concerned. “Michael, you haven’t got a rash, have you?”
Michael sat up in bed; firmly he said, “No.”
“I just thought,” Epstein said quickly.” You know, I have this rash…” He dwindled off and looked away from the boy, who, it occurred to him again, might have been heir to the busines
s if that stupid Sol hadn’t … But what difference did the business make now. The business had never been for him, but for them. And there was no more them.
He put his hands over his eyes. “The change, the change,” he said. “I don’t even know when it began. Me, Lou Epstein, with a rash. I don’t even feel any more like Lou Epstein. All of a sudden, pffft! and things are changed.” He looked at Michael again, speaking slowly now, stressing every word, as though the boy were more than a nephew, more, in fact, than a single person. “All my life I tried. I swear it, I should drop dead on the spot, if all my life I didn’t try to do right, to give my family what I didn’t have…”
He stopped; it was not exactly what he wanted to say. He flipped on the bedside light and started again, a new way. “I was seven years old, Michael. I came here I was a boy seven years old, and that day, I can remember it like it was yesterday. Your grandparents and me—your father wasn’t born yet, this stuff believe me he doesn’t know. With your grandparents I stood on the dock, waiting for Charlie Goldstein to pick us up. He was your grandfather’s partner in the old country, the thief. Anyway, we waited, and finally he came to pick us up, to take us where we would live. And when he came he had a big can in his hand. And you know what was in it? Kerosene. We stood there and Charlie Goldstein poured it on all our heads. He rubbed it in, to delouse us. It tasted awful. For a little boy it was awful…”
Michael shrugged his shoulder.
“Eh! How can you understand?” Epstein grumbled. “What do you know? Twenty years old…”
Michael shrugged again. “Twenty-two,” he said softly.
There were more stories Epstein could tell, but he wondered if any of them would bring him closer to what it was he had on his mind but could not find the words for. He got out of bed and walked to the bedroom door. He opened it and stood there listening. On the downstairs sofa he could hear the folk singer snoring. Some night for guests! He shut the door and came back into the room, scratching his thigh. “Believe me, she’s not losing any sleep … She doesn’t deserve me. What, she cooks? That’s a big deal? She cleans? That deserves a medal? One day I should come home and the house should be a mess. I should be able to write my initials in the dust, somewhere, in the basement at least. Michael, after all these years that would be a pleasure!” He grabbed at his gray hair. “How did this happen? My Goldie, that such a woman should become a cleaning machine. Impossible.” He walked to the far wall and stared into Herbie’s baseball pictures, the long jaw-muscled faces, faded technicolor now, with’signatures at the bottom: Charlie Keller Lou Gehrig Red Ruffing … A long time. How Herbie had loved his Yankees.
“One night,” Epstein started again, “it was before the Depression even … you know what we did, Goldie and me?” He was staring at Red Ruffing now, through him. “You didn’t know my Goldie, what a beautiful beautiful woman she was. And that night we took pictures, photos. I set up the camera—it was in the old house—and we took pictures, in the bedroom.” He stopped, remembered. “I wanted a picture of my wife naked, to carry with me. I admit it. The next morning I woke up and there was Goldie tearing up the negatives. She said God forbid I should get in an accident one day and the police would take out my wallet for identification, and then oy-oy-oy!” He smiled. “You know, a woman, she worries … But at least we took the pictures, even if we didn’t develop them. How many people even do that?” He wondered, and then turned away from Red Ruffing to Michael, who was, faintly, at at the comers of his mouth, smiling.
“What, the photos?”
Michael started to giggle.
“Huh?” Epstein smiled. “What, you never had that kind of idea? I admit it. Maybe to someone else it would seem wrong, a sin or something, but who’s to say—”
Michael stiffened, at last his father’s son. “Somebody’s got to say. Some things just aren’t right.”
Epstein was willing to admit a youthful lapse. “Maybe,” he said, “maybe she was even right to tear—”
Michael shook his head vehemently. “No! Some things aren’t right. They’re just not!”
And Epstein saw the finger pointing not at Uncle Lou the Photographer, but at Uncle Lou the Adulterer. Suddenly he was shouting. “Right, wrong! From you and your father that’s all I ever hear. Who are you, what are you, King Solomon!” He gripped the bedposts. “Should I tell you what else happened the night we took pictures? That my Herbie was started that night, I’m sure of it. Over a year we tried and tried till I was oysgamitched, and that was the night. After the pictures, because of the pictures. Who knows!”
“But—”
“But what! But this?” He was pointing at his crotch. “You’re a boy, you don’t understand. When they start taking things away from you, you reach out, you grab—maybe like a pig even, but you grab. And right, wrong, who knows! With tears in your eyes, who can even see the difference!” His voice dropped now, but in a minor key the scolding grew more fierce. “Don’t call me names. I didn’t see you with Ida’s girl, there’s not a name for that? For you it’s right?”
Michael was kneeling in his bed now. “You—saw?”
“I saw!”
“But it’s different—”
“Different?” Epstein shouted.
“To be married is different!”
“What’s different you don’t know about. To have a wife, to be a father, twice a father—and then they start taking things away—” and he fell weak-kneed across Michael’s bed. Michael leaned back and looked at his uncle, but he did not know what to do or how to chastise, for he had never seen anybody over fifteen years old cry before.
4
Usually Sunday morning went like this: at nine-thirty Goldie started the coffee and Epstein walked to the comer for the lox and the Sunday News. When the lox was on the table, the bagels in the oven, the rotogravure section of the News two inches from Goldie’s nose, then Sheila would descend the stairs, yawning, in her toe-length housecoat. They would sit down to eat, Sheila cursing her father for buying the News and “putting money in a Fascist’s pocket.” Outside, the Gentiles would be walking to church. It had always been the same, except, of course that over the years the News had come closer to Goldie’s nose and further from Sheila’s heart; she had the Post delivered.
This Sunday, when he awoke, Epstein smelled coffee bubbling in the kitchen. When he sneaked down the stairs, past the kitchen—he had been ordered to use the basement bathroom until he’d seen a doctor—he could smell lox. And, at last, when he entered the kitchen, shaved and dressed, he heard newspapers rattling. It was as if another Epstein, his ghost, had risen an hour earlier and performed his Sunday duties. Beneath the clock, around the table, sat Sheila, the folk singer, and Goldie. Bagels toasted in the oven, while the folk singer, sitting backwards in a chair, strummed his guitar and sang—
I’ve been down so long
It look like up to me…
Epstein clapped his hands and rubbed them together, preparatory to eating. “Sheila, you went out for this?” He gestured towards the paper and the lox. “Thank you.”
The folk singer looked up, and in the same tune, improvised—
I went out for the lox…
and grinned, a regular clown.
“Shut up!” Sheila told him.
He echoed her words, plunk! plunk!
“Thank you, then, young man,” Epstein said.
“His name is Marvin,” Sheila said, “for your information.”
“Thank you, Martin.”
“Marvin,” the young man said.
“I don’t hear so good.”
Goldie Epstein looked up from the paper. “Syphilis softens the brain.”
“What!”
“Syphilis softens the brain…”
Epstein stood up, raging. “Did you tell her that?” he shouted at his daughter. “Who told her that?”
The folk singer stopped plucking his guitar. Nobody answered; a conspiracy. He grabbed his daughter by the shoulders. “You respect your father, you u
nderstand!”
She jerked her shoulder away. “You’re not my father!”
And the words hurled him back—to the joke Ida Kaufman had made in the car, to her tan dress, the spring sky … He leaned across the table to his wife. “Goldie, Goldie, look at me! Look at me, Lou!”
She stared back into the newspaper, though she held it far enough from her nose for Epstein to know she could not see the print; with everything else, the optometrist said the muscles in her eyes had loosened. “Goldie,” he said, “Goldie, I did the worst thing in the world? Look me in the eyes, Goldie. Tell me, since when do Jewish people get a divorce? Since when?”
She looked up at him, and then at Sheila. “Syphilis makes soft brains. I can’t live with a pig!”
“We’ll work it out. We’ll go to the rabbi—”
“He wouldn’t recognize you—”
“But the children, what about the children?”
“What children?”
Herbie was dead and Sheila a stranger; she was right.
“A grown-up child can take care of herself,” Goldie said. “If she wants, she can come to Florida with me. I’m thinking I’ll move to Miami Beach.”
“Goldie!”
“Stop shouting,” Sheila said, anxious to enter the brawl. “You’ll wake Michael.”
Painfully polite, Goldie addressed her daughter. “Michael left early this morning. He took his Linda to the beach for the day, to their place in Belmar.”