Among the Living (16 page)

The smell of sweat and varnish filled Goldah’s nose as he sat on the bleachers and watched the boys in their short pants and sleeveless shirts move across the wooden floor. There was a squeal of rubber each time one stopped. Jacob, the smallest and fastest, showed no fear of darting in between the rest.

He had been asking Goldah for nearly a week to come and “catch a game,” a phrase that had caused several moments of confusion until Jacob explained that Goldah would not, in fact, be “suiting up.” This next phrase had brought its own set of problems, though it proved less confounding than the rules to the game itself. Suffice it to say, tonight was Goldah’s first visit to the Alliance and a basketball match. Thirty years ago someone had decided that the poorer Jews in town needed a place to socialize, a place to blend in and forget their shtetl pasts. Now there was glee club and summer camps and stage revues … and a great deal of basketball. It brought a certain pride: nothing too Jewish, and nothing like the workmen’s circle or the communists. Better to throw a ball around for a few hours than to get involved with any of that.

A whistle blew and the boys gathered. The small crowd began to stand and Goldah realized that the game had come to an end. He headed over.

Jacob’s red hair was matted against his brow, the ball tucked under his arm. “Pretty good, huh? You could follow?”

“Enough,” said Goldah. “I take it you won.”

“Killed ’em. Wouldn’t want to be on that bus ride back to Jacksonville tonight, I can tell you that.”

Goldah had to remind himself he was talking to a boy: Jacob spoke with the tired swagger of a man who had won these kinds of victories beyond the playing fields and gymnasiums. Goldah said, “They were much bigger than all of you.”

“Jacksonville Jews is big Jews, but they’re slow, so we just run ’em until they get winded and then we take care a business. We’ll see them again in October, but they’ll be just as slow. It’s the Charleston Alliance boys you got to worry about.”

“Well … it was a good match.”

Jacob looked around as if expecting to see someone.

Goldah said, “Lots doing these days at the store. I’m sure Abe tried to make it.”

“Yeah. Sure. I know.”

As if on cue, Jesler appeared at the doorway. He was winded from the three-story climb, his face red and glistening under the bare bulb of the stairwell light. Goldah smelled the booze as Jesler drew up to them.

“Dammit,” Jesler said, with a weak smile, “I missed it, didn’t I? We had a shipment come in late.” Even he didn’t seem to believe it. “Anyway. You run them?”

“Yup,” said Jacob.

“How many’d you get?”

“Twelve.”

Jesler pulled out his cigarettes and lit one. “You liked it, Ike? Think we can suit you up for the next game?”

“Jacob was excellent.”

“Good, good. You still want that ice cream, son? A win’s a win.”

“I’m good,” said the boy. “I think maybe I’ll just take a shower and head home.”

Jesler smoked through whatever he was feeling. “Sure. Okay.” He took another suck. “How about you, Ike? You want some Leopold’s?”

Goldah hadn’t seen much of Jesler in the past ten days. The store had been quiet with Jesler at the warehouse or in meetings or anywhere but the store. His absence was the surest sign that what had happened to Raymond was no longer up for discussion, for good or ill. Goldah had begun to wonder if, in fact, they were all thinking that the beating had never happened: no police inquiry, no outrage, not even a word from Calvin. And yet none of them had moved beyond it.

“I’m heading out as well,” Goldah said. “Maybe tomorrow night.”

Jesler looked as if he might say something funny or clever but knew it would be neither. Jacob jabbed a thumb in the direction of the locker room. “Well,” he said, “I guess I’ll see you Saturday unless you need me to sleep in on Friday if we got something coming early.”

“No, nothing early,” said Jesler. “Not these days.”

“Okay, then. Thanks for coming.”

Out on the street the humidity trumped the heat and Jesler offered Goldah a ride.

“I’m getting picked up,” Goldah said. He had been playing his part as well by finding any excuse he could to eat away from Pearl’s table.

“Mrs. De la Parra going to drop you off at home?”

“That’s the plan.”

“The plan. Good to have a plan. Always got a plan.” Jesler tossed the butt of his cigarette to the pavement. “You’re sounding like a regular American, Ike. So is it dinner, dancing? Pearl always wants to go dancing.”

“I don’t know. I’m not much of a dancer.”

“That’s not the point, is it?” The smile was no better than the one up in the gymnasium: It was hard, thought Goldah, to help a man so intent on going nowhere. “Okay, then,” Jesler said. “I should probably —”

A pair of headlights turned onto the street and slowed.

“Well, look who’s here,” Jesler said with sudden enthusiasm. He waved a hand as Goldah looked to see Eva’s Cadillac pulling to a stop.

Jesler leaned his head into the passenger window. “Evening, Mrs. De la Parra.”

“Hello there, Mr. Jesler. What a pleasant surprise.”

Jesler settled his forearms on the window frame. “You missed quite a game. Sent those boys packing back to Jacksonville with their tails between their legs. You should come out to the Alliance for the next one. Jacob’s a real fine player and I’m trying to convince Ike here to take it up. He’s got the size.”

“He surely does.”

“You have a beautiful car, Mrs. De la Parra.”

“Why thank you.”

Goldah had stepped around and was opening the driver’s door. Eva slid across to the passenger seat and Goldah got in.

Jesler said, “Taking him for some dancing tonight, Mrs. De la Parra?”

“I’m not sure we’ve decided just yet, Mr. Jesler.”

“It’s Abe. Please.”

“Of course. Abe. And I’ve been meaning to ask about your young Raymond. Has the doctor said anything more?”

Jesler seemed to lose his focus. “That’s very kind of you to ask,” he said. “Doing the best he can, that’s where it is. Looking good on the eye, but the hand — that’s a different story. We’ll just have to see. But he’s strong and young. He’ll never have a worry as long as I’m around.” He was searching for something else to say and settled on, “Well … you have a pleasant night, the two of you.” Even Jesler’s well-wishes held a kind of hopelessness. “You come when you want, Ike, make your own time.”

Jesler stepped back and Goldah pulled out, watching in the mirror as Jesler stared after them. Jesler turned, uncertain for a few seconds as to where he had left his own car, and walked off.

“Poor man,” said Eva.

Goldah took the next turn. “He’s all right.”

“Don’t be unkind.”

Is that what it was, thought Goldah — unkind? Unkind to expect something more of Jesler, of himself. The world was once again moving forward, getting on with things, taking care of itself. But he had seen it in Mary Royal’s eyes, in Raymond’s. They would never look at him the same way. The familiarity in their silence reminded him of his own resentment, one that Goldah had learned to choke down long ago. But to find it here … Unkind. It was a word without meaning.

He reached his hand over and held it open. Eva took it, and he said, “There was a time when I wouldn’t have seen a difference between Raymond and me. I shouldn’t forget that.”

This time he had caught her off guard. She said, “Only you could see it that way.” She ran her thumb over his palm and, staring down at it, said almost to herself, “Foolish to think a little apple butter would make a difference.”

“What?”

She looked up. “Nothing,” she said. “Mr. Jesler must be feeling the weight of the world on him. He’d been drinking.”

“I imagine he’ll figure it out.”

“You really should think about finding your own place. It would make it easier on him.”

“Would it? And what do we think Pearl might do with that? She’s already so pleased with how far we’ve let things progress between us.”

“Is she?” said Eva. “I’d be happy to set up a luncheon between Mrs. Jesler and my mother at the golf club so they could share in their untold happiness.”

“Are the tables at the club fire-resistant?”

“I’d have to call ahead and ask.” She shifted almost imperceptibly and said, “So how far have we progressed in all this?” Eva never failed to find a singular moment to catch him off guard. He took another turn, and she said, “You’re taking us back where we came from.”

“Am I?”

“You have no idea where we’re going, do you?”

“In this car? No. I don’t suppose I do.”

She was looking at him, his face in and out of the lamplight. “So how far?”

Far enough, he thought, if questions like this could come so blithely.

“I saw your father yesterday,” he said. “Downtown. He was having lunch at that pharmacy on Bull.”

“Pinkussohn’s,” she said and let him move them along. “Every Tuesday. With Jack Stern and Sid Friedman. They’ve been doing it for twenty years.”

“He’s always so generous with his time.”

“It’s because he likes you.”

“He hardly knows me.”

“He knows enough to know. If the store is so terrible, why not leave and write for my father? You know he’d love that.”

Goldah saw they were about to pass the Alliance for a second time. He accelerated and said, “So you’ve had a chat with your father.”

“I have lots of chats with my father. Yesterday we talked about a patch in the garden that doesn’t seem to know how to grow. He was rather concerned. You’ve just driven past the Alliance again.”

“I’m making sure everyone got out safely.”

“He knows how good you are. He wanted to know if I could bring it up subtly so as not to seem pushy.”

“Oh dear, there’s that chance gone.”

“Hush. But he understands how important family must be to you and how you might not be inclined to step away from that. But what a shame, he said, with a young man who has such talent. Take the next left.”

“Why — is he waiting for us somewhere on Gaston?”

“Yes, he wants to take you dancing.”

Goldah pulled the car over. Nothing too dramatic but he felt the need to look at her, tell himself that this was real, regardless of everything else.

“What’s the matter?” she said, but even her concern couldn’t touch this moment.

He turned to her and reached his hand across to her waist. It was always the waist and the smallness of her hips, the feel of them beneath the crisp, taut layer of cotton, and he pulled her closer into him.

“Oh, I see,” she managed before he gently kissed her, then with greater need. She was still holding him when she said, “You surprise me when you do that.”

“Do I do it too often?” He felt the heat from his collar between them.

“No … Maybe.”

“And it worries you?”

“It’s not a worry, no. It just feels —”

“As if I don’t trust you’re here.”

“Yes.” There was more strength in her voice. “Why doesn’t it surprise me that you’d know exactly what I mean.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s as if somehow you need to convince yourself of what you’re feeling. You
are
feeling it, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

“It’s unfair, I know — what with everything you’ve been through. I can only imagine.”

“You can’t,” he said perhaps too bluntly, then more gently, “and that’s the way it should be. I’m sorry if I’m not terribly good at this.”

“You’re wonderful at this and you know it. You’re not asking for anything beyond what this is right now.”

“But I am.”

She sat quietly, searching his face, and Goldah wondered how it was that he could question what was so clearly in front of him. How easy life would be, he thought, to blame it on his past, that crucial everything-he’d-been-through that she and everyone else gravitated to as a way to make sense of him. How much more of a shock to admit that this reticence, his numbness, had been his long before the camps and that, perhaps, his survival was simply proof that such detachment had its own worth.

“A few rooms,” he said. “So how does one go about finding those?”

Jesler placed his keys on the hall table and felt the ache of the failing booze in his neck. He’d been drinking too much lately,
he knew it. Hirsch didn’t care about Raymond. He said the boy was a Savannah issue, nothing to do with the unions. Pay the Irish what you owe them. That’s how it works. Any trouble with the Micks was Jesler’s problem. In fact, if Hirsch had known Jesler was playing it this way from the start — “I told you not to sign anything” — it was too late now.

Jesler saw the lights on in the parlor. Pearl was usually upstairs this time of the evening. She was spending a great deal of time upstairs these days.

“Abe? Is that you?”

Her voice had more life to it than he expected. He stepped in and saw her with a glass of tea, sitting across from a young man he had never seen before.

“This is Mr. Thomas from the
Morning News,
” she said with an equally unexpected pride. “He says he’s been trying to get in touch with you for several days.”

Thomas was on his feet. He seemed an amiable enough fellow: tall, reedy, blond.

“You’ll forgive me, Mr. Jesler,” Thomas said. “I telephoned your office downtown and left several messages. I thought I’d try and leave a note for you here.”