Prayers for the Living (10 page)

“
Papa!
” he yells in a rush across the lake of milk that's spread out from beneath the wreck of truck and cart. Stepping-stones of fruit trip him and he stumbles.

And picks himself up.

There is screaming.

And he sees the gathering crowd, the mob.

And he hears the screams rise higher and higher in pitch until

Pap!

a snap, a crack of a pistol. Birds scatter up all around and the horse sinks into a heap of itself.

Oi,
and then what he sees next!

Oi,
and then what he sees!

No boy should have to see.

No man should have to see.

No one in the world should have to see.

But he sees it.
Him
. His father lying stretched out in the pond of milk, fingers curled around half-moons of yellowish-brown sheaths from which the fruity pith has been squashed as flat as his chest. His eyes are open—looking directly upon Atlantis.

What does his son do next? What would anyone do? He doesn't know what to do. And as the crowd follows the sound of the moaning—before the horse's, now his—he kneels on his father's awful chest, and then reaches out into the mess of milk and muck
and—I'm telling you, and afraid I'm telling—the blood that spilled there, too, and up comes his hand with a piece of six-pointed glass.

“Here, give me another napkin, I'll show you what.”

“And this is how he lost his father?”

“Yes, so look.

“With the lipstick, it's messy. But I'm glad I use lipstick so I could show you. Today they don't use it—Sarah wouldn't be caught dead wearing lipstick, and your grandchildren, besides your one the youth leader, the girls? Well, whatever. Here. Look. The star. The six points. And if you can believe that glass shatters in a design—and who can say it can't because it did—then listen to what happened next.”

T
HE WAY A
life breaks. The way life goes. The pieces. The pattern. What happens next.

He's now kneeling, my Manny, and now he's crying, moaning, the shock has hit him, the shock is setting in. And around him he hears voices—
oi
, they will become so familiar!

“Help him up, you idiot!” A man's big booming order.

“Pa, he won't . . .”

“Help him, damn it!”

“It was the cabby's fault, it was the cabby, the cabby,” he hears a woman jabbering alongside the raging of the men.

“Help him. Oh, you schmuck, here!”

And a strong arm lifts under his and Manny is up on his feet, as loose-limbed as a puppet from a puppet show in his misery, his shock.

“Your father?” the man asks.

Manny looks up to see this balding man in a fine suit and overcoat, nose like a hawk, eyes like a fox, and the arm that holds Manny belongs to this man.

“His father, all right,” a taller, younger man, also balding, says.

“How are we doing here?” comes a cop along to say.

And Manny, who has never stood so close to a policeman before, studies his uniform, such heavy blue cloth, shining gold buttons, and then becomes distracted by the approaching sound of

bells bells BELLS BELLS BELLS

as the ambulance roars in from the west.

And the man takes him by the arm away from the crowd, the policeman accompanying them, and they ask where he lives and he gives them his address.

And they open the door of the stalled taxi and help him into the back seat while they go on talking, talking outside.

And he sits in the cab staring straight ahead at the back of the seat in front of him, and he loses himself in the smell and design of the upholstery, like a snail's whorl of a shell, spinning around and around into a tighter and tighter knot, and he's fingering the star-shaped shard until all the doors appear to open at once. A man climbs in, the smell of the street on his coat, the younger man in a suit, a big boy, with a high, nasal voice, and the woman, still jabbering—“Shut up already!” says the hawk-nosed man; “Shut up—don't you dare!” the woman says back to him.

And he sniffles in the woman's perfume and the odor of a cigar as the hawk-nosed man lights up.

And only then, his fingers responding to the sharp-pointed star, does he turn away from the pattern on the upholstery, lift himself
up and out of the pattern—this was how he put it to me—and look to his right, on the seat to his right, and there he sees the little girl. When she got there he doesn't know. She could have been there the whole time or she could have climbed in with her parents, her brother. But nonetheless there she is. Pale, pink, freckled face. Hair like wispy reddish cotton candy from a carnival, all done up in a knot. Like a doll's hair. A little skirt she wears beneath her tiny fur wrap. White-stockinged feet that don't reach to the floor of the cab. And as he stares at her something happens in her eyes—and she wiggles her nose in disgust—and that's when he smells it too, and looks around for the source. An odor like the horse in its dying. Garbage. Manure. Filth of the gutter. And only when she opens her eyes wide—if a girl that small can feel horror, show horror—and points a finger at him, and cries out, only then, just as he lets another one go in his pants, does he understand what has been done to him, and what he has done.

“T
HE POOR CHILD
.”

“Poor.”

“And this is how he lost his father?”

“This is how.”

“And this is how you lost your Jacob?”

“This is how.”

“I'm telling you . . .”

“You're telling me? I'm telling you!”

“But it has a good side, no?”

“It has a good side? Sure, it has a good side. I'm sitting here drinking coffee with you. That's a good side. I'm still here. And Manny is still here.”

“No, I meant, this is how they met, wasn't it?”

“How did you figure it out?”

“The hair. You described the hair. So it's
her,
isn't it?”

“It's her. The
first
her. The mother of the
other
her. The opposite of the
third
her.”

“It was her family in the taxi.”

“It was her family. Her father, her mother, her mixed-up brother.”

“The brother-in-law? He's mixed up?”

“You should meet him now that he's a grown man.”

“I saw him at temple.”

“Up close you should see.”

“I'll take a look next time.”

“Take a good look. It's all part of the family show. After years away he shows up, and he's part of the family again.”

“Here.”

“I don't take sugar, so why are you passing me the sugar?”

“Darling, don't talk bitter.”

“Bitter? All of a sudden I'm talking bitter? Mrs. Pinsker, Rose, I am sweet. Very sweet.”

“It was only a joke, Mrs. Bloch. Minnie.”

“Some joke.”

“Don't get miffed.”

“All right, I won't get miffed.”

“And you'll tell me more?”

“I'll tell you. I'll tell you things. I'll tell you that when they brought my Manny home to me without his father . . .”

“Don't tell me if it makes you remember.”

“Remember? I don't remember, darling. And I don't forget. I'll tell you this. Manny said to me, the poor little boy, he says, ‘Mama, you know, if they used paper bottles instead of the glass the weight of the wagon wouldn't have been so much on Papa.'”

“He said this to you?”

“He said it. Of course, he said it. Would I make something up like that? He didn't know what he was saying. He was in shock still.”

“Shock? Shock? Who wouldn't be in shock? But
they
brought him to you? Or the police brought him?”

“They did. The Sporens. This was their name. It still is their name. The brother, of course, he's alive. The mother, the father, they died some years ago. Terrible. They had their accident. He was in
his house, a very beautiful home in Cincinnati, let me tell you, and he was going to go to the basement to look for a bottle of wine—it was a Sunday, they were at home together—and she says, ‘Meyer, let me go for you.' She was a cold woman in a way, the little I knew her I could tell that, but she also had a good side, a nice side. When she had a glass of wine, it came out.”

“She sounds nice.”

“She was nice this time. Already she'd had one glass. And look where it got her? She goes over and opens the door to their downstairs, to their cellar. The house was on a steep hill, they have many steep hills in Cincinnati . . .”

“I've never been there.”

“Someday you'll go.”

“At my age? I want to see Paris first.”

“You never saw Paris? We stopped there on our trip to Israel a few years ago.”

“Rome. When we went to Israel we stopped in Rome.”

“Rome we stopped too. But so you'll never see Cincinnati, it's a lot like Rome, they say, because of the hills—so she opens the door and reaches for the light, and in the reaching, loses her balance, and she falls down the stairs. Terrible.”

“Terrible.”

“She hits her head. Without a sound she lies there. And he comes to the head of the stairs, the old boat captain, that's how he started out, and he bought more and more barges, I told you already, and pretty soon he's got a fleet, he's got docks, he's got bigger and bigger ships, and you think a man like this could live a long time to enjoy it. But . . .”

“So what happened?”

“What happened? He comes to the top of the stairs, squints down into the dark. And he calls to her.”

“And she answered?”

“She couldn't talk. She was paralyzed. Her neck, you know? Her spine . . . the cord . . .”

“So? Don't keep me in the dark.”

“Very funny. He pulls on the light and he looks down and he sees her, and he starts down the steps. And by the time he gets to the bottom he's already dead himself.”