Seventh Avenue (55 page)

“
It’s sex, like your husband said.”

“
Of course it is, you silly fool. Sex and a million and one other
things. Any
complaints” - she
picked up a butter knife and flourished it – “because if there are, you will most certainly be a man
around town but in chunks.” He sat her on his lap and kissed her, and
she laughed when she drew away. “Ah, is it madness, yes midsummer
madness?”

“
Last night, did
you .
. . ?”

“
Did I what?”

“
Well,
I
wasn’t very careful.”

“
I thought you were not only careful, but magnificent into the
bargain.”

“
Precautions.”

“
I threw them to the wind when I left my husband, or did you
forget?”

“
Seriously?”

“
Most seriously.”

“
What
if .
. . ?”

She laughed so violently that her whole body shook with the pure
joy of it.

“
This is my own unique form of planned parenthood. Both the
man and the woman avoid the use of anything but skin, and if they’re
lucky,
first
shot, they are delivered of a little bundle nine months
hence.”

“
You must be kidding.”

“
Darling, it’ll be
our
child. A bastard or
bastardess
because we
shan’t have had the benefit of matrimony. So, there. Alas and alack,
and all that crap. Now off you go, and tell your wife the good news
and then meet me at Saks.”

Eva concealed her surprise when he appeared unannounced at the
house. She was sitting on the sun terrace alone, reading a magazine,
but her face tightened when he sat down on the white bench opposite
her, and her uneven breathing sent out a nervous, apprehensive emotional code
that
he detected at once.

“
You’ve just missed Lorna and my mother.”

“
That’s a shame,” he replied without conviction.

“
Why didn’t you give me a ring? Everything okay at business?”

“
Of course,” he said with curious violence.

“
You don’t have to jump down my throat. I only asked a civil
question.”

He reached out and picked up a glass of fresh orange juice
that
was on
the wooden
table and drank it.

“
I haven’t even asked you if you’ve had breakfast.”

“
Yes, I have. Thanks just the same. I’m only thirsty.”

She lit a
cigarette
,
and her hand trembled as she held
the match
to
it. She saw that he was watching
her
,
and she tried to control her
nervousness.

“
Did you bring your clothes?”

“
No. I don’t plan to stay.”

“
Oh, I wish you’d change your mind. It’s been pleasant with Lorna
and my mother but you being here would give us all a lift. Couldn’t I
persuade you? Please.” He put down the empty glass, “I’ll squeeze
some more, would you like that?”

“
No, I’m fine.”

“
You were just passing by and you decided to stop by to say
hello?”

“
Not exactly.”

“
We ought to talk about having a vacation. Anywhere particular
you want to go, or should we stay down here for the summer? I’ve met
a few people who’ve asked me to get you down here. Everyone’s so
anxious to meet
you .
. . a lot of Wall Street people who know all
about you and they say that the stock is going to be a blue chip when
it’s on the market.”

Jay turned his head slightly and closed his eyes. The sun was hotter
than he expected for eleven o’clock in the morning. A few beads of
sweat appeared on his
forehead
,
and he wiped them off with his
handkerchief.

“
I saw one of your suits in the
bureau
so you can change and have
a
swim.”

He opened his eyes and turned his head slowly so that his eyes
were in a line with hers, but then quickly she averted her face. He
could see how frightened and nervous she was, and he had a sinking,
doomed, feeling inside.

“
I’m going to go,” he said.

She was working desperately to control herself, but her mouth
twitched and she started to blink, so she put on the sunglasses that
were hooked over the edge of the chaise longue.

“
I have to, Eva.”

“
I knew it was coming. Oh God, Jay, I feel too awful to say anything. For
days
,
I’ve been walking around with this terrible tense
feeling in the pit of my stomach. Nerves, I told myself. On
edge
. But
all the time I was sinking and I couldn’t hold onto anything. It’s coming. My body knew. I’m almost relieved that I’ve heard. I used to get
the same nervous tension when I was a
kid
,
and I waited for my
school report card. I used to dream of failing all my subjects.”

“
I’ll get my stuff out today.”

“
Whenever you like. Will you go to a hotel or what?”

“
I think so. It’s your house. In your name.”

“
Oh, boy. Compensation.”

“
No, not compensation. Money isn’t involved. I’m sure you’re
not thinking of money.”

“
You’re right. I always wondered how I’d react when this finally
came. And the day we got married I was sure that you’d leave me and
not the other way around. A big emotional scene. Screaming. Abuse.
I can’t, though - I’m not built that way.” She took out a cigarette and this time he lit it for her. “Your hands are shaking too. Which must
mean that you feel
something
,
and it’s not just cold-blooded murder.”

“
Sure I feel something.”

“
We tried to build a marriage on the bones of a dead man and
what’s dead doesn’t live again. But you did care for me, didn’t you?
Once?”

“
Very much.”

“
But not enough. Is it the girl you never mentioned?”

“
Yes, it is.”

“
The college girl who threw you over.”

“
I threw her over.”

“
That doesn’t make sense.”

“
I don’t suppose it does.”

“
The one who came over to you at the country club bar?”

He nodded. The futility implicit in her quest for information disturbed him. It was like watching someone with a rash scratch uncontrollably until the skin was a mass of bleeding sores.

“
I knew it was her. Don’t ask me how I knew. But in my bones, I
sensed that we were dead together.”

“
I’d better go,” he said, unwilling to prolong her agony, but as he
got up to leave he turned and in a voice that came as close to entreaty
as he was capable of, he said: “Would you consider a divorce?”

She pursed her lips
tightly
,
and the long cigarette ash fell on her
bare stomach, but she did not appear to notice it.

“
I’ve acted like a lady, and you like a gentleman, very unusual for
us.” She paused as though remembering his question. “I can’t divorce
you, Jay. I just couldn’t do it.”

“
I didn’t think . . .”

“
Remember me to Neal, will you? He’s really a nice kid. I’m sorry
he didn’t like me, but
I guess he had his reasons.”

Jay drove from the house in a daze. He was out of Southampton
on the road back to New York when he realized where he was. He
pulled into
a driveway
and turned his car around. In
Southampton
,
he parked his car in front of Saks and walked in. The lights made
him feel a bit giddy. He circled most of the counters in the front of
the
store, then
somebody took his arm.

“
Jay, Jay, darling,” Terry said, “you’re crying.”

“
Am I?”

She wiped his face with her handkerchief.

“Was it so terrible?”

“No, that’s the point, it was almost painless.”

“You feel something for her and you’re sad. But it’s sentiment.”

“You’re probably right.”

“You’ve found me, Jay. You’re my man. The best man in the world.”

“Let’s have a drink somewhere.”

“Yes, let’s have a drink. Only one.”

“Why only one?”

“Well, there’s nothing to forget now, is there?”

The severity of the winter seemed almost supernatural to Sports.
He regarded the snow as a nemesis
that
fate had designed to torment and test him. He had been on a losing streak for two months;
it had begun on Christmas Eve with a fixed basketball game in Madison Square Garden, a game he was so confident of winning that he
broke his long-standing habit, and started to count his money before
it ended. The team he bet on lost by two points in the last eleven
seconds, and he recalled the sinking, recoiling sensation
that
turned
his stomach upside down as he stood in the exit with Rhoda by his
side as the ball sailed through the hoop. Two quick losses on football
games followed and he knew with that instinctive helpless sixth sense
that gamblers possess that he was on a losing streak. The difficulty,
as he explained to Rhoda, who had begun to deplete her savings in an
effort to save him, centered on making the right move: “Do I just
sit on the sidelines with no action, hoping that my luck changes, or
do I stick my head into a meat grinder?”

Perplexed and with growing desperation, she had replied:

“
I
dunno
what to advise
you .
. . I trust you.”

“
I’m in a hole, and I gotta fight back,” he protested.

“
Then fight! I’ll stick with you no matter what.”

And she was as good as her word. She would study the television
screen with as much concentration as she could muster, while he
twisted
his
hands, bit
his
fingernails, picked sores on his face, his
complexion a composite of sallow green,
his
eyes red from loss of
sleep as he listened, listened, interminably to sports commentaries
which, by the end of January, sounded as though they were the
product of the same voice describing the same game she had heard
hundreds of times.

“
I need money. I gotta pay off, or they come for me,” he
threatened. “And when they come, they break everything. They
wreck the house completely and put me in the hospital.”

She gave him the store’s receipts
that
she was to deposit in the
bank on Monday.

“
Business is bad, Sports. It’s the slow season. All the sales are on,
and I’m stuck with loads of dresses I can’t move, and bills I can’t pay.”

“
I need money,” was the plaintive cry, and she gave it to him. “Go
to the bank. They’ll give you a loan.”

“
You don’t see a customer all day. Nobody walks out of the house
in this weather. Eighteen inches of snow last night. The Saturday is a
write-off.”

“
Go to the bank, Rhoda!” he said in a menacing voice, slamming
his fist down on the cash register and breaking the glass.

“
Sports, I’m in hock up to my neck. I’m afraid to go to the bank
because I haven’t made last month’s repayment on the car.”

“
Who the hell needs a canary yellow convertible in the Arctic?
What do we need it for? Let’s get rid of it.”

“
But how can we? It’s not ours to sell. The bank manager won’t
give me the right time. If I ask him for another loan, he’ll get
worried
,
and he’ll send somebody down to the store and they’ll see that we’re
losing money.”

“
Get a personal loan.”

“
What do you think I got?” she shrieked, helplessly.

“
Well,
Latkin
’s coming this afternoon and he’ll want his money.
Ten thousand dollars.”

“
I’ll go home with you. We’ll plead for more time.”

“
He knows from pleadings? Are you crazy or something? Who
do you think goes to him?
Pleaders
, people who can’t get nowhere
else? Do you understand, Rhoda?”

She looked at the empty store, and the dust on the floor
that
had
not been cleaned for weeks: the dirty marks made by galoshes and
boots.

“
It’s a pigsty, this store. That’s what Jay would say. It was a business principle with him to have a clean store. He said people leave
dirty filthy
homes, but
they want to shop in a clean store. We’ve got rats
in the basement, and I’m afraid to go down to put the rat poison on
the bread.” She flourished the stale bread in his face. “Would you do
it for me?”

“
Please, don’t bother me. I’m not a businessman. This ain’t my
business.”

“
No? Well, you spend the money that comes out of it pretty good.”

“
I don’t ask you to decide on teams and you don’t ask me to sell
dresses.”

“
I wasn’t asking you to sell dresses, but to act like a man, a husband.”

He scratched his ear violently, picked some wax out of it, and
flicked it on the floor.

“
A husband!” he jeered. “Listen, Rhoda, I been a pretty goddamned
good husband, by anybody’s standards.”

“
You’ve never worked since
I
met you.”

“
I perform my other duties all right by you. Frankly, sleeping with
you ain’t no picnic. With the kind of
appetite
you got.
I
done
my
share.”

“
I was starved for a long time. Didn’t have any real affection.”

“
So that makes you a glutton? You got no complaints.”

“
No, I got what I deserved.”

“
I’ve got to have the money.”

“
What should
I
do, manufacture it out of thin air? Tell me what
I should do, and I will.”

“
You got any jewelry you haven’t told me about?”

“
It’s all been
hocked
. Sell the
car
,
and we’ll both wind up in jail.”

“
Can you get anything for the furniture?”

“
Maybe three or four hundred dollars. It’s eight years old. And
Jay bought it!”

“
So Jay bought it, but it’s yours.”

“
Doesn’t it bother you, selling another man’s furniture?”

“
Oh, you’re getting self-righteous with me? C’mon, let’s go home
and wait for
Latkin
. He said he’d be there at twelve o’clock.”

“
What happens if you’re not there?”

“
Simple. You become a widow.”

The synagogue was a large, square building on Eastern Parkway
that
had been built in the early twenties. It stood on a dark
corner
,
and its gray façade had been recently cleaned. Young Rabbi
Davidson
,
who was in charge of it
,
took a special pleasure in welcoming
those who came to Saturday morning services. He was a pink-cheeked
man, with a strong sense of decorum and he enjoyed the feeling of
older, wealthier men seeking his counsel; sometimes they came away
after a discussion with him convinced that he was a sage.
Latkin
was
his favorite, for
Latkin
consulted him frequently on fine points of theology, and made himself readily available when the synagogue
was one short of a
minyan.
They had a mutual interest in trivial
pedantries - the rabbi scholastic, and
Latkin
purely pragmatic, for
he was determined at all costs to get into heaven, which he regarded
as an exclusively Jewish club - its physical characteristics he imagined
were similar to a good
frim
Catskill mountain hotel where the men
sat on the lawn at card tables playing pinochle and the women sweated
in the kitchens cooking food, and elderly infidels (all those whom were
not members of the tribe) ran back and forth bringing cigarettes and
ice water to the players. He never got around to revealing this
celestial vision to Rabbi Davidson because he was sure that the rabbi
had his own “
particala
idear
of da place:
sometink
more
heim,
as
befitted a man still lean in years.”

“
It’s a sad anniversary,” Davidson
said,
as he stood on the steps,
the wind blowing his long black coat.

“
Fifteen years,”
Latkin
admitted, “an’ I still feel like it was yesteryear.” Western films had given his broken English a contemporary
flavor.

Davidson blew hot breath on his white frostbitten hands.

“
She was a good woman,” he said.

“
A good woman?” Incredulously,
Latkin
clapped his hands together, for he was not sympathetic to understatement. “Da best. A
heart made from
gold,
she had.”

“
How old was she when you had your loss?”

Latkin
did some hasty logarithms on his tobacco-stained fingers.

“
Seventy-four. A young woman.
Kerried
herself like sixty.”

“
You were a good son.”

“
I
nevah
merried
,” he said, rolling his r’s with the same enthusiasm
he reserved for sweet Passover wine. “My life - I
geve
it up for
her, but who’s
complainink
. Did you hear me
complainink
? I should
live so long if I
ever .
. .”

The rabbi began rubbing his arms, engaging in something close
to a self-embrace as he attempted to restore the circulation in his
flaccid muscles.
Latkin
could keep him standing there for an hour
and a half, and he knew he couldn’t move because
Latkin
had just
given him a check for a thousand dollars - his annual contribution.
Latkin
sucked in his cheeks, made a popping sound, and sighed
in Davidson’s face. Davidson waited for him to continue.
He himself
had no intention of providing the conversation with any additional fuel.
Latkin
nodded to
him
,
and Davidson nodded back. The week
before they had nodded to each other for a good fifteen minutes, and
Davidson’s neck had hurt all week.
Latkin
walked down a single step
and repositioned himself, and Davidson, assuming that the interview
was concluded, hastened to walk up two steps, but
Latkin
seized his
sleeve and pulled him close, so that the younger man had to
stoop
awkwardly. He whispered through his frosty breath: