Among the Living (2 page)

“You’re far more handsome than in your photograph,” the woman said. “And younger. I wouldn’t have you a day past twenty-five.”

“Thirty-one,” Goldah said. “This past April.”

“That’s right. Thirty-one in April.”

They moved into the station, where an amplified voice cut through the hum of scattered conversations.

“No trouble in Richmond?” the man said. “You can have trouble in Richmond changing to the Seaboard Air Line. The tracks can be confusing.”

“No. No trouble.”

“Good, good. Glad to hear it.”

They stopped at the door to the street. Goldah thought the woman might speak again but the man said, “It’s quite a thing, isn’t it, having you here.”

Goldah was struck by this first breach of sentiment, cautious sentiment, and he took the woman’s hand and held it. He knew it was for him to console for his past.

“Thank you,” he said, “for letting me come. It’s a great kindness.”

The woman stared up at him before she began to cry. She quickly embraced him. Her head reached only as high as his chest, and Goldah awkwardly wrapped his long arms across her shoulders. The man, uneasy behind a smile, patted a soft hand on her back.

“Okay, Pearl honey. We’re still in the train station.”

Outside the air was damp with salt. Goldah had smelled the sea before but the air here was nothing so bracing. It was the smell of sodden land and untamed growth and, he thought, were he to toss a seed in the air, it might sprout even before touching the ground.

Up ahead, the sun caught the windscreen of a sedan, whitewall tires and an aerial for the radio, and they stopped.

“Brand new,” Jesler said. “Forty-seven Ambassador with the unitized body. You know your cars, Yitzhak?” Jesler opened the trunk and placed Goldah’s suitcase inside. “Twenty-eight cubic feet without the spare — that’s something, isn’t it?” Jesler shut the trunk and stepped around. “You come sit up front with us. Pearl’ll squeeze in between. You don’t mind, Pearl honey, do you?”

There was no reason to squeeze. The bench seat was plush and wide, with room enough for Jesler to point out awnings and street signs as they drove. He detailed the weather for the next week: rain with some cooling off before the mercury would shoot back up, but that was okay because it meant the gnats would be keeping out of sight, too. Jesler laughed. He liked the sound of the word “okay” and said it as if it were some kind of code, the way GIs had said it to make you feel better: “You’re okay, buddy. You’ll be okay.”

“Johnny Becker’s,” Jesler continued, nodding toward a dry goods store. “And that’s Levin’s — everybody’s worked at Levin’s.”

The buildings were tightly packed two- and four-story affairs with ragtag fronts and stalls that spilled out onto the paved sidewalk. Goldah noticed one that was sporting shoes, tied at the laces on long sticks and selling two pair for a dollar.

“You don’t go into business in Savannah without first working for Joe Levin,” said Jesler. “I had overalls then ladies’ hats before the shoes. Levin taught you how to make a living. Pearl worked there weekends before we were married. You remember that, honey?”

Pearl smoothed out the lap of her dress. “I remember.”

“I was going with a working girl, Yitzhak, can you imagine?” Jesler laughed and Pearl’s cheeks grew red, and Goldah smiled without knowing why.

“And that’s Yachum and Yachum. Funny story there, Yitzhak. You wouldn’t know it, but Yachum’s not the family name. The Perlman brothers own it — Hymie and Morris — but the two of them used to yak so much that everyone just started calling it Yachum and Yachum, and now there’s a big sign on the door. That’s pretty funny, don’t you think?”

Goldah nodded and said, yes, it was a good story, he had heard stories like it before — “Who hasn’t” — and the string of names continued: Lang and Max Gordon, Blumenthal and Odrezin, which was National Tailors where the
schwartzes
went for their box-back suits, but still, they do very good work, and aren’t the
schwartzes
entitled to a suit the same as anyone? This was the second code, the second assurance that Goldah belonged, because here there were Jews — vital Jews — who made the city what it was, and wasn’t that a comfort to know given everything else.

“You missed the turn,” said Pearl.

“I didn’t miss it.”

“You missed the turn for the house. You’re going to the store.”

Jesler seemed to grip the wheel a bit tighter. “I’m just driving past.”

“Yitzhak will be tired, and you’re driving past the store?”

“Yes, just driving past the store. Yitzhak,” he said, “I was thinking of driving past the store, but if you’re not feeling up to it —”

“I’d love to see the store,” said Goldah.

“He’d love to see the store. Well imagine that. Okay then.”

Jesler took the turn onto a wide avenue. This had the feel of all those photographs from American magazines, the kind Yitzhak had peeled through while sitting in a white-walled sanatorium somewhere west of London, with nurses who smelled of rose water and bleach, and who never once
showed an excess of pity for all those dreadful things that had happened but instead very kindly — very sternly — said it was time to be on the mend, time to push on, which wasn’t much good thinking about anyway, and weren’t the photographs of America quite lovely? There was a Sears and a Kress and a Kaybee and streetlamps along the paved walk, where a few lines of bulbs hung high across the street. Windows showed furniture and mannequins, an entire car glistening in light blue, and Goldah watched Jesler’s eyes wander to it as they drove by. Men strode with newspapers or packages tucked under an elbow while women sauntered arm in arm. Up ahead a crowd had gathered outside a store, where free neckties were being promised with the purchase of any $49 suit. Goldah noticed one woman, slender and with a child in tow, who was stepping away from the crowd, the silk of her dress brushing against her calves. He watched her and thought how the past here was young and untried, and how the world made sense only in the grasp of such promise and abundance.

“It’s up here,” Jesler said as he slowed the car. “Friedman Jewelers, Harris the Hub, and us, with the big blue awning.”

The
h
of Jesler Shoes had gone slightly askew on the sign above the door, and an older black man stood at the base of a ladder, while a younger one was perched at the top trying to realign it.

“I don’t want to stop, Abe,” Pearl said. “Just nod to the boys and let’s keep driving.”

Jesler had been planning on more but knew it was best to keep them moving along. He slowed and leaned his head out the window.

“Looks like we’re making good progress there, Calvin. We need it by tonight.”

The older man, gray hair and overalls, quickly took off his soft cap and started toward the car. When he realized it wasn’t going to stop, he nodded and raised a hand. “Yes, suh, Mr. Jesler. Have it done by tonight.”

Jesler waved back. “They’re good boys there, Yitzhak.”

He took the next turn, where the stores and shops quickly gave way to a street lined with houses. Staircases and railed balconies huddled under a dense canopy of tree limbs and hanging moss. The heat remained, but it seemed somehow tamed here, as if the air could breathe more fully hidden away like this.

Jesler drove them around a square with a small park at its center, benches and hedges along the sides, and the ease of the afternoon written in the drowsy gait of the few who were walking through. If Goldah had forgotten the depths of his own exhaustion, he imagined this might be the gentlest reminder of it.

“We do mostly American,” said Jesler, “but I also sell the Ferragamos. That’s Italian. Very high-end. They’re doing something with a sandal this year. Invisible they call it. Been in all the magazines. You ask me, it looks like a heel with a suspension bridge made out of nylon on the top, but I display it so we’ll have people coming by and taking a look.” He glanced over at Pearl. “You want some invisible shoes, honey?”

“If I can pay for them with my invisible money, why not?”

Jesler laughed and Pearl laughed and Jesler cleared his throat. It was only a moment but Goldah saw Jesler sharpen his gaze. Pearl’s smile also disappeared as if she knew full well what her husband was going to say.

“We were thinking,” Jesler said with a newfound weight in his voice, “and of course this would be entirely up to you, Yitzhak — what with everything that folks are beginning to
know about what was going on during the war, you know, all of that can be difficult to understand, painful even … more so for you — naturally for you — I wouldn’t mean to imply or make light of … You understand what I’m saying. It’s just that we don’t want you to feel outside of things, or for folks not to know how to make it easier to invite you in, make you feel a part of the community.”

“What Abe is saying,” Pearl piped up, “is that it’s such a different kind of name — Yitzhak. We just don’t hear it all that often, even in shul. Hardly ever, really. You see it’s Isaac there and we were thinking maybe it would be better if you had something more familiar, something that would be more inviting —”

“Easier,” said Jesler.

“Yes, I said that, Abe.”

“I know you did. I just think Yitzhak needed to understand that it’s not that we don’t care for the name.”

“No, of course not, that’s not the case at all.”

“Or that we’d be forcing him to do this in any way.”

“No. Nothing like that. He understands that, Abe. You understand that, Yitzhak.”

Jesler said, “It’s just more about … protecting —”

“
Yes
,” said Pearl with no small amount of relief. “Protecting. That’s a
very
good way of thinking about it. As Abe said, Yitzhak, it’s a way of protecting.”

“And making things easier.”

“Easier,” said Goldah. It was such a simple, desperate word. “I can see that, yes.”

“Of course you can,” said Jesler. “Good man. You’ll see it’ll make a world of difference. Especially when you’ll be wanting to make a name for yourself.”

Goldah noticed a group of children in a park with sticks and a small rubber ball that was cut in two. They were laughing.

“What did you have in mind?” he said as he continued to watch the children. “Isaac then?”

“Well …” Jesler rubbed the back of his hand along the soft flesh of his throat and Goldah was drawn by the sound of the stubble against Jesler’s rough knuckles. “It’s a possibility, certainly a possibility.”

“We thought about Izzy or Iz,” Pearl said, “but Isadore Rabinowicz — that’s the treasurer of the shul — he goes by Izzy, and Isher Laski is Iz as well.”

“ ‘Is Iz,’ ” Jesler repeated with a quiet laugh. “That’s always been funny to me: Is Iz. ‘Is Iz coming to the store?’ ‘Is Iz at home, Mrs. Laski?’ Is Iz. What do you do with that?”

“He went to Chapel Hill on a music scholarship,” said Pearl, “so I’m thinking it worked out just fine for him. Now, we were thinking of something —”

“Ike,” said Jesler. “Ike Goldah. That’s good and strong.”

Goldah realized the name had been in the car with them all along. “Ike,” he said.

“Yes,” said Pearl. “Ike Goldah.” She was masking her disappointment at having had her husband say it first. “Like the general. That has a
very
good sound to it, don’t you think?”

“Strong,” said Jesler.

“Very strong,” said Pearl.

“And familiar,” said Jesler.

Goldah said, “Like the general.”

“
Yes
,” said Pearl. “Like the general.”

Goldah thought he might wait until they arrived at the house to agree, but Jesler and his wife seemed so eager to have it all taken care of. “Squared away,” a GI had put it. “Get things squared away.”

“Well,” said Goldah, “Ike it is.”

Jesler tapped his hand on Pearl’s knee, and Pearl smiled and took hold of Goldah’s hand. “That’s just fine, then,” she said. “Just fine.”

Jesler held out his hand across his wife, and tried to keep his eyes on the road. “Well, glad to meet you, Ike Goldah.”

Goldah let go of Pearl’s hand and took Jesler’s. They shook firmly.

“Yes,” said Goldah. “Glad to meet you.”

Pearl insisted on a short detour. She had forgotten flowers — it simply couldn’t be helped. She said her boys could wait in the car. It was an uncomfortable few minutes until Jesler remembered the scrap of paper in his pocket. With all the preparations for Goldah’s arrival, he’d let it slip his mind completely. Jesler checked his watch. It was nearly two. He’d told Jimmy he’d get back to him no later than one thirty.