As Close to Us as Breathing: A Novel (22 page)

“Yes, we have an idea. In the next years you’ll get an MBA,” Zelik said, his words a pronouncement. He nodded at Mort, who in turn nodded at Nelson. Nelson was stunned by the remark, which didn’t sound old-fashioned at all. How did his father even know what an MBA was? he wondered. “Try for Harvard,” the old man continued, astonishing Nelson further. “You’re up there anyway. Why not? Knock on their door, see if they let you in. Let’s get fancy is what I say. God knows, it’s going to be good for the store. And good for the family.” Zelik took his now empty soda bottle and blew over its lip until it whistled.

Until that moment Nelson had considered teaching, a notion that resurfaced just then as a whisper in his mind. He opened his mouth. “But—”

“But nothing,” Mort told him, suddenly rising and looking down at Nelson. “We’ve all put in our time. Now it’s time for you to put in yours.”

Nelson nodded, though the thought in his mind still rustled for attention. When he nodded some more, its calling ceased.

Later that day, when Nelson spoke of Mimmie to his father, Zelik asked only one question. “Jewish?”

“Of course.”

“Okay.”

A week after Thanksgiving, and for a second time he and Mimmie made love. Like before, he snuck her up to his room, a rental on Beacon Street, a boardinghouse for male students only, a risky enough venture even if all they’d planned was a serious study session. He locked his door and pushed a wooden chair against it for good measure. He smoothed the sheets on his bed.

Mimmie was wearing a green wool coat and a matching green cap. She had auburn-colored hair, and the outfit, coupled with her petite figure, gave her the appearance almost of a leprechaun. Her cheeks and nose were red from the cold outside. Just as he lunged toward her she collapsed into a helpless shudder.

Their lovemaking, quiet, delicate, and cautious, nevertheless left them insatiably hungry. “Isn’t that interesting?” Mimmie remarked of their sudden voraciousness, and Nelson, nodding, mumbled an embarrassed “Well, there’s been a lot of …” He couldn’t put words to what they’d just done. But the act had changed everything. Outside on Beacon Street the lamps on the sidewalk were glowing especially bright, and the whistling of the coastal winds, so often a hostile sound, seemed to blend into a kind of music. Every store they passed—a pharmacy, a shoe repair shop, another pharmacy—seemed exotic, compelling. It was as if they’d never walked on Beacon before. But how was that possible? Nelson wondered as they hopped a trolley and headed to nearby Brookline, where they could readily find the Jewish food they most craved.

Once they’d been seated at their favorite delicatessen, Mimmie laughed and held her hands to her face, smothering what would otherwise have been a near outburst. She continued laughing as she ordered pastrami on rye, chicken soup, and black coffee.

When the food arrived they ate rapaciously and in silence, except for Mimmie’s occasional “Almost like my mother’s.”

“You know, Nelson,” she said, finally pushing her plate back. She’d consumed all the soup and most of her sandwich. He’d had half as much. “I had a talk with my father last week when I was home.”

“My father talked to me, too.”

“Busy fathers, yes? Well, look. We’re graduating soon. Our fathers are concerned. Mine asked me something surprising. He asked if I wanted to be a doctor like him, a medical doctor. Me, an M.D. Can you imagine? I told him I didn’t know, I’d never thought about it.”

She looked at Nelson for some kind of agreement, and he nodded. She’d never spoken about being a doctor, just a mathematician, which he still found remarkable enough.

“I mean, I’ve taken the biology and chemistry,” Mimmie continued, “so maybe I
was
thinking about it all along, in the back of my mind. I don’t know. Maybe. But you know what?” She stirred sugar into her coffee. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since, and I do. It’s come to me. I really do.” She raised her hands in front of her, palm to palm, as if to pray. “It’s like a dream and I can’t shake it,” she told him. “Some things are meant to be.”

For a week he’d carried in his coat pocket the engagement ring he’d purchased in Middletown. Each day that week he’d wondered if the moment to present it would arise, and as the days passed he began to worry that he’d not recognize the moment even if someone were to hold up a sign:
This is it.
But Mimmie had just said, “Some things are meant to be,” and even though the delicatessen wasn’t the setting of his dreams, he pulled the velvety jeweler’s box from his pocket.

“Some things are meant to be,” he said as he placed the box between them. “That’s what I think too.” He paused for some time, staring at the box, too anxious to look at Mimmie. He finally continued. “You’re the reason for everything. That’s what I’ve been thinking.”

He inched the box toward her but still didn’t look at her face. “Life will be good, Mimmie, so long as you’re with me.”

She smiled at him then reached toward the box. But before she opened it she looked up. “With you where?” she asked. Seeing his surprise, she added quickly, “Nelson, we have to be sure of things.”

He grabbed a napkin to swipe his brow. “Middletown,” he began. “First I’ll get an MBA. Then I’ll go back to the store. We had a family meeting. It’s been decided.”

“By whom?”

“My father. Mort. Me. We discussed it.”

“That’s what you talked about with your father?”

He nodded.

“And me?” she said.

“I talked with him about you too.” From her questioning look he knew that wasn’t what she meant. He added, “There are doctors in Middletown. God knows, there are plenty of sick people. You could be a doctor in Middletown just as well as anywhere else. I won’t hold you back. Mimmie, I’d never do that.”

She paused, considering, then plucked up the little box, springing it open. She gasped. “Nelson, what did you do?” she whispered.

“It’s for you,” he blurted, then felt stupid for saying something so obvious.

But she didn’t mind. She nodded more vigorously as if coming to an understanding, as if his words had actually helped. She looked at the ring for a long while without trying it on or remarking further. She turned the open box one way and then the other. Finally she put the box down and took a bite of what remained of her pastrami sandwich. She chewed, then sipped her coffee. Nelson watched in disbelief. All the after-sex euphoria had drained from her face. She looked serious, almost grim. She swallowed and said, “But you love history. You’re good at it. You write beautiful papers. All your professors say so. You could study history and become, I don’t know, a professor or a teacher or something, and I could study medicine, and we could stay right here.
Right here.
”

For a moment he imagined them spending years together nowhere else but at this Brookline delicatessen.

“I have to get the MBA. I promised. I agreed.”

“The MBA,” she said with disgust. “That’s not you.”

Unable to think of a reply, he shrugged. He didn’t know where to begin to explain why he’d agreed. “
You’re
doing what your father asked,” he said defensively.

“My father opened up a world. He made it a thousand times bigger. He gave me
permission.
But your father. What did your father do?”

“Everything he does, he does for us,” Nelson answered, still defensive. “How many people get an education like this? It’s not like he has one. Mort couldn’t even finish college. You talk as if this is a bad thing. Mimmie, it’s a chance for me.”

“And then you’re indebted. Then he wants you to do what he wants you to do. And you and your brother,” she snapped her fingers, “you just do it, like that.”

“Mimmie, we
want
to do it. We’re
family.
” His voice had almost left him. For reasons that baffled him, he was losing what was always the most persuasive argument in the world. Her people were German Jews and his were Russian, so much poorer, so much more religious. Perhaps that explained the gulf that now emerged between them. In a near whisper he said, “It’s a
family
business. Don’t you know about
family?
”

“Of course. That’s what I’m saying.” She lifted her coffee cup, then lowered it without taking a sip. Holding the engagement ring up to the light she said, “So pretty, Nelson. And thoughtful. Just like you.”

He waited for more but there wasn’t more. She hadn’t said yes. But she hadn’t said no, either.

“Nelson, I’m thinking,” Mimmie explained. When she reached for his hand across the table he felt an intense relief. They loved each other; everything had to work out.

A few minutes later she pulled her hand back and began speaking, her words deliberately paced, her tone firm. “Nelson, I don’t want you to get an MBA because it isn’t you. And I don’t want to go back with you to Middletown because it’s not where I should be. Your family, it’s going to swallow me up and I’m going to choke, Nelson. I can tell from everything you’ve said, from everything I’ve seen. But even more than that it’s not where
you
should be. You’re no businessman. You and I both know this is true. What I’m saying is, it’s not a good fit, that life in Middletown. And neither you nor I deserve to be unhappy.” She placed the ring back into the box. When she snapped the cover shut, causing a loud clap, Nelson’s shoulders jumped.

He stared at Mimmie. He loved her.

“You’re going to have to choose,” she continued, calmly as before.

“Uncle, you’ve got to tell me what to do,” Howard repeated. But before Nelson could explain to Howard why he was the last person to ask such a question of they were interrupted by a waitress who took Nelson’s and Howard’s plates and then brought them coffee. “Everything good?” she asked. She chatted with them for a minute as Nelson stirred his coffee then slipped another Tootsie Roll into his mouth. He’d eaten five since they’d finished their burgers and Howard had announced that Megan O’Donnell was the one for him.

“Uncle, please,” Howard said once the waitress left.

Nelson shook his head. He stared into his coffee. He glanced at Howard—still so young—then turned back to his drink. His hands on the cup were fat, ugly, old.

His next thought was not a new one but it nevertheless came to him with urgency: how right Mimmie had been all those years ago. He’d had a choice, but at the time he couldn’t see it. All he could see then was an inevitable unfolding of something he called, simply enough, the way of things. And by the time he saw that the way of things was like a river, fierce with current, but something you didn’t have to fall into, get dragged along by, by the time he’d had that revelation, he’d graduated from Harvard, had been working at Leibritsky’s Department Store a long time, had settled into something he’d never imagined, a bachelor’s life, a life the others, respectful as they were, pitied.

“Uncle?”

“Soon, soon.”

He was still thinking, still taking in Howard’s youthfulness, contrasting it with his own age, his own regrets.

On most days he felt like a fool. That was another thought, equally urgent. So often at family dinners, Erev Rosh Hashanah, for example, or Passover seder, he felt like a fool, sitting there without a wife, without children, except for a few friendly enough banalities talking to no one, having a life no one else in the family could even imagine, so many dinners alone at diners on either end of Main Street, so much solitude on the weekend. Everything about life, Jewish life,
their
life, was about having a family, and so many times he’d wondered what kind of Jew he was if he’d missed out on this most basic thing. The answer wasn’t so hard to find, really. He was an idiot Jew. An outcast Jew. All three of them, Mort, Leo, and Howard, would be heading to Woodmont the next day and he’d be left behind, as he’d been left behind for years and years. “You’re always welcome,” Ada had insisted because she had to, because he was her husband’s brother, because it was the respectful thing to do. But there wasn’t any room for him there. He knew that. And they did too.

“Am I crazy, Uncle? Am I out of my mind?”

Nelson didn’t know. It could go either way, he figured, crazy to say yes, crazy to say no.

He motioned to the waitress, asked that she clear the table of the used napkins and candy wrappers. They reminded him of his life, and the depth of disgust that he felt for it just then was overwhelming.

Crazier to say no. That was the truth of it. His truth. A little morsel of life experience he could unwrap, offer to Howard.

“Okay, so,” he began, slowly, once the table had been cleaned. Howard, who’d been silent and sulking, looked up. “Consider it a theory is what I was thinking,” Nelson told him. “Consider your feelings for this Megan O’Donnell a theory, something you have to test to be sure.”

“We’ve talked for
hours,
Uncle.”

“So you talk for some hours more. You take some more walks. I recommend you take in a picture or two. Just the way we used to back in the old days. Two people can get to know each other quite well by going to the pictures.”

Howard nodded.

“And if in the end you still feel she’s the one, then what I say is it’s okay to do in life what you really, really want to do. You just can’t be stupid about knowing you really, really want it. You can’t be a jerk on that one. Of course that’s just my opinion. Someone else—” Mort came to mind. “Someone else may have something different to say. That’s how life is, Howard. A bundle of opinions. But maybe you should know of mine.”

Howard’s eyes were wide. “I won’t be a stupid jerk,” he said gravely.

“I didn’t think you would be. I was just saying.”

Howard grinned and Nelson nodded. He reached into a pocket but there were no more candies. “Some night out,” Nelson said, shrugging, wondering already—as he would the rest of the evening—if he’d said too much.

“Some night!” Howard agreed, slapping the tabletop as if it were a drum. “Now how about that?”

The next morning, Friday, Nelson woke with a mild headache. He hadn’t slept well. But some news in the morning paper got him just a little bit charged up: at the London Olympics an American named Bob Mathias, a kid just Howard’s age, had surprised the world by pulling ahead in the decathlon. Nelson brought the sports section in to work to show Howard, who perhaps hadn’t slept well either. But Howard, not the least tired, had already read about it. “I know, I know,” he said confidently when Nelson passed him the paper.