Prayers for the Living (50 page)

“I'll do that. Mama, I've been invited to give a lecture at Rutgers. Now what do you think of that?”

“I'm impressed. So who invited you?”

And he explained to me the whole thing. Of course it wasn't until later that he told me how he had in mind inviting mother and daughter, which as it turned out was a mistake bigger even than Jersey. But this again was the little boy in him—he wanted to give his speech in front of his family so that they could puff up their chests in pride. Me, I didn't need no puffing, let me tell you. And you think Maby did? No, sirree. And Sadie? She puffed—on the funny cigarettes from her friend the painter, ex-teacher, who saw her now and then in Manhattan when she was supposed to be up at the school it was costing my Manny a pretty penny for her to attend.

Believe it or not, he went through with it, and Sadie and the Jews for Justice, they all showed up.

As my Manny saw it, for him it was the high point of his long climb after his first fall, the opening of another part of his life, the first
step on a trip toward becoming a part of diplomacy, an ambassador somewhere in the world, and all of this, he was sure, was to come from the way he handled his new holdings. The company he took over had the worst reputation in the world for the way that it treated people
down there
. People called them everything including slaveholders, and a lot of it must have been true because my Manny went out of his way from the start to explain all the good things he wanted to do to change this. In his mind, he was going to make the business, the fruit and whatever it was down there, work better than ever, and he was going to do it in a way that would make everybody, north and south, feel good. Included in this package of dreams was, of course, the idea that he was going to show Sadie once and for all that he was not the monster she took him for. What he wanted to show Maby, that's harder to say. I suppose, big man that he was, he was just being a little more sentimental than I expected—his mother I could see he should have around at this time, but the wife who had such trouble and made so much trouble, did she have to be there too? It could have been that deep in his heart—and my Manny, after all, had a good one—he wanted to make a complete picture, the mother, the wife, the daughter, the grandmother who was also his mother, in his hour of greatest success. If everybody in the picture, present person excluded, wasn't a little crazy, it would have worked. Oh, darling, remember how he talked to you about it? Remember how you wanted to come but didn't even dare try to sneak in?

“I want to see you,” you said. “I want to see you in action.”

“Impossible,” he said. “I'm bringing Maby, Sarah, and my mother.”

“Bring me.”

“Impossible.”

“I'll come by myself then. I'll stand in the crowd.”

“There won't be a crowd. You'll stand out.”

“I'll wear a mask. I'll paint my face.”

“Then you will stand out.”

“I'll sit down, I'll wear a veil.”

“Who is the lady in the black veil in the back row? The mystery lady. Darling, I don't think so. I don't.”

“I'll bring a pen. I'll sketch you, I'll make a record for you of your triumph.”

“My triumph. Not a triumph at all. But certainly something very satisfying to me. I wish only . . .”

“What?” you asked him.

“I wish . . .”

“You're weeping,” you said. You touched a hand to his cheek.

“My . . .”

He was choking on his memory, pouring tears out from his wish.

“What is it, Manny?” you said to him, cradling him in your arms.

“My father . . .”

Of course, like any man feeling always like a little boy, he wanted Jacob to be there to see him, he wanted to pull his spirit up out of the dark where it has rested all these years and put him in a seat in the whatever-it's-named auditorium and make the speech for him to hear, in front of all the students and teachers for him to see. And if my Jacob might be wondering what's the problem with the family—with the wife who doesn't look at the husband, and the daughter who shoots heat from her eyes, like lightning, at the father, and the father, however big a success he is, struggling to hold the family together for just this afternoon—well, he would look and see the success and that would be enough to return with into the dark, into the forever ended, into the black hole where my eyesight stops and the nothing of the rest of the time of things begins.

“Forty-seven!” Manny shouted, pounding his fist against the pillows of your bed. “Forty-seven! Forty-goddamned-seven!”
Oi
, and how he cursed, for the first time he did this, and you can imagine, well, you saw it in his fiery eyes, in the reddening cheeks, the puffed-up shoulders, the emotion he was feeling. “And I'm like a child! I have this speech to make, and all I really care about is that I could make it in front of my father! I have this company, and all I really care about is that I could show my father what I've done! I have this country, I explained it to you, an entire goddamned country almost, and it means nothing to me . . .”

“It means a lot to you,” you interrupted him, stroking his head, stroking.

“No, it means nothing. Nothing, because I cannot have the satisfaction . . .”

“Your mother will be there.”

“No!” And here he pounded again, and doesn't it strike a little spark of misery into my heart to hear this? Yes, it does, but it is the truth, and that is all I know, sitting here in the dark, that is all that comforts me. So I tell you again, and I listen again as I tell you, and I'm sad as I was when I heard it the first time, but so what else is new? A mother is sad? So a mother is sad. And the sun goes down. And the stars come out, with a moon.

Once more in the night you drew him in, caring for him as I would have had he searched for sleep and comfort in my own arms, if he had become a real little boy again instead of only a man with white hair who felt young and helpless. But he was not truly helpless, as you know, because of what he did with you after you put out the light and took off his clothes, and yours, and cupped his aching sacs in your palms and sluiced his mouth with your tongue, brushed his eyelids shut with lips wet with saliva, and sketched his body for a finished drawing with your own, your own. No, no, what you do in the dark is not your business only when you do it with my son, because at times like these I am with him in his pleasure because of the times I am with him in his pain, we have been that close from the beginning, we will be that close to the end, and though he has ended he will not become an eclipse until my voice goes out like my lights.

Remembering his best and highest moments, I could cheer. Seeing the sheer drop before him I could tear my hair, pull my eyes, yank my fingernails out by the roots and turn my bleeding fingers into tree limbs, burning in brushfires, slaked by the driest winds.

Manny.

My Manny.

Where are you now? With your father? And do you hold his hand pressed to your chest as you did when you were a little boy? And
do you glance with admiration at his thick dark beard, hoping for the chance to give it a playful tug? to show him how much you love him? to make him feel the pressure of your presence, your life?

You arrived, my son, in the college town in your long black automobile driven by the man from
down there,
one of the Spaniards you always had driving for you, and you enjoyed conversing with him in his language, a little of which you were learning every day, yet another tongue as you had learned English and Hebrew, and now learning the Spanish, a real smart scholar you were, sometimes enjoying more the thrill of learning than using what you learned, I think, and you had with you your wife, who sat silently, hands folded in her lap, in the thrall of the pills that kept her quiet most of her waking days, and you were to meet your daughter here in the hall where you were to speak—she had refused to come down with the two of you in the car, preferring instead to find her own transportation, but that was all right, because you valued her independence now that she seemed to have thrown off the yoke of that vile and vicious creature of a teacher who had caught her up in her plans with even more of a tenacity than the hold the pills had on your wife, her mother . . .

A
ND IT SEEMED
right and fitting that this should be taking place, you in the same dark suit and white hair that you had when you first addressed your first congregation—though the suit now was made of fine wool, but still the same dark shade, black, black, yea the very essence of all the black suits you had worn, and worn out, in your lifetime thus far—and Maby in her light brown suit, a color that didn't become her hair—she paid little attention to what she wore, although aided by nurses and social workers she had made some effort to look smart and tailored, because of the nature of the occasion . . .

And you, my Manny, as the long black car slid as if on silent wheels onto the campus, could see the crowds of students filing up
and down the avenues, and saw the crowds thicken as the car slowed down in its approach to the hall. You had now several years of such appearances, before boards of elders from the thickest stock of the gentile rulers, and that never fazed you. You had years of wrangling with accountants and consultants and specialists, in paper and machinery and oil and gas and heavy construction and ships and now agricultural experts, agronomists, and econometrical engineers of the size equivalent to builders of small cities and growing empires on sea islands and isthmuses, these things you did and I never understood the inner parts of them, how they worked, but then you ate my cooking all these years in your childhood and you never wondered about the recipes, the seasonings, the heat and length of simmering, the time for pickling, the role of fats and oils, and just as you had mastered the study of the laws you mastered the means and methods of these businesses, yea, better yet, you had the impression that you could and would and had and did, and you understood that after all was said and done you still had yourself and your integrity, the ability to make the right decision at the lowest cost in terms of cash and human dignity also, and pleasure, all of these you factored. I never knew how you did it—to me it always seemed you had magical powers. That you could walk into a room full of experts and make them see that you had more expertness than they, more expertise, is that the word? and more insight and foresight and hindsight and sideways and upside down, all the powers in the world. Manny. My Manny.
Oi, oi, oi
. . .

W
HEW
. I
HAD
to take a breath. But here you are, Manny, and your own breathing has become shallow, as if you are saving yourself for the big run, the speech. It has been weeks in coming, because you had so much to do, meetings, conferences, and more meetings, more conferences, and as the news of the takeover reached the ears of the reporters more interviews and more, and finally you decided that you would answer all of the questions that came up by giving the
speech at the university, a speech in which you could state the policy of your company and your position as a man—my Manny. And you would use the occasion to give Maby the chance to try and come back into your life—and, oh, darling, my listener, I know how this hurts you to hear, but still it's the truth and I had to say it! And you would use the occasion of the speech to show your daughter, the wayward and—you hoped not permanently—estranged little—I call her little but she's not little no more—Sarah-Sadie that you could do good as well as the other of which she thought you were capable only. And you would use the occasion of the speech to speak to your brother-in-law, Mord, and give him some guidance for how you wanted the company to grow.