The Vertical City Part 41

Sara Turkletaub dried her eyes, but it was as if the shadow of crucifixion had moved forward in them.

"If just once, Mosher, Nicky would make it easy for me, like Leo did for Gussie. When Leo's time comes he marries a fine girl like Irma Berkowitz from a fine family, and has fine children, without Gussie has to cry her eyes out first maybe he's in company that--that--"

"I don't say, Sara, we didn't have our hard times with your boy. But we got results enough that we shouldn't complain. Maybe you're right. With a boy like Leo, a regular good business head who comes into the firm with us, it ain't been such a strain for Gussie and Aaron as for us with a genius. But neither have they got the smart son, the lawyer of the family, for theirs. _We_ got a temperament in ours, Sara. Ain't that something to be proud of?"

She laid her cheek to his lapel, the freshet of her tears past staying.

"I--I know it, Mosher. It ain't--often I give way like this."

"We got such results as we can be proud of, Sara. A genius of a lawyer son on his way to the bench. Mark my word if I ain't right, on his way to the bench!"

"Yes, yes, Mosher."

"Well then, Sara, I ask you, is it nice to--"

"I know it, Papa. I ought to be ashamed. Instead of me fighting you to go easy with the boy, this time it's you fighting me. If only he--he was the kind of boy I could talk this out with, it wouldn't worry me so.

When it comes to--to a girl--it's so different. It's just that I'm tired, Mosher. If anything was to go wrong after all these years of struggling for him--alone--"

"Alone! Alone! Why, Sara! Shame! Time after time for punishing him I was a sick man!"

"That's it! That's why so much of it was alone. I don't know why I should say it all to-night after--after so many years of holding in."

"Say what?"

"You meant well, G.o.d knows a father never meant better, but it wasn't the way to handle our boy's nature with punishments, and a quick temper like yours. Your way was wrong, Mosher, and I knew it. That's why so much of it was--alone--so much that I had to contend with I was afraid to tell you, for fear--for fear--"

"Now, now, Mamma, is that the way to cry your eyes out about nothing? I don't say I'm not sometimes hasty--"

"Time and time again--keeping it in from you--after the Chinese laundry that night after you--you whipped him so--you never knew the months of nights with him afterward--when I found out he liked that--stuff! Me alone with him--"

"Sara, is now time to rake up such ten-year-old nonsense!"

"It's all coming out in me now, Mosher. The strain. You never knew. That time you had to send me to the Catskills for the baths. You thought it was rheumatism. I knew what was the matter with me. Worry. The nights--Mosher. He liked it. I found it hid away in the toes of his gymnasium shoes and in the mouth to his bugle. He--liked that stuff, Mosher. You didn't know that, did you?"

"Liked what?"

"It. The--the stuff from the Chinese laundry. Even after the Juvenile Court, when you thought it was all over after the whipping that night.

He'd snuff it up. I found him twice on his bed after school. All druggy-like--half sleeping and half laughing. The gang at school he was in with--learned him--"

"You mean--?"

"It ain't so easy to undo with a day in Juvenile Court such a habit like that. You thought the court was the finish. My fight just began then!"

"Why, Sara!"

"You remember the time he broke his kneecap and how I fighted the doctors against the hypodermic and you got so mad because I wouldn't let him have it to ease the pain. I knew why it was better he should suffer than have it. _I knew!_ It was a long fight I had with him alone, Mosher. He liked that--stuff."

"That--don't--seem possible."

"And that wasn't the only lead-pipe case that time, neither, Mosher.

Twice I had to lay out of my own pocket so you wouldn't know, and talk to him 'til sometimes I thought I didn't have any more tears left inside of me. Between you and your business worries that year of the garment-workers' strike--and our boy--I--after all that I haven't got the strength left. Now that he's come out of it big, I can't begin over again. I haven't got what he would call the second wind for it. If anything should keep him now from going straight ahead to make him count as a citizen, I wouldn't have the strength left to fight it, Mosher.

Wouldn't!"

And so Sara Turkletaub lay back with the ripple writing of stormy high tides crawling out in wrinkles all over her face and her head, that he had never seen low, wilting there against his breast.

He could not be done with soothing her, his own face suddenly as puckered as an old shoe, his chin like the toe curling up.

"Mamma, Mamma, I didn't know! G.o.d knows I never dreamt--"

"I know you didn't, Mosher. I ain't mad. I'm only tired. I 'ain't got the struggle left in me. This feeling won't last in me, I'll be all right, but I'm tired, Mosher--so tired."

"My poor Sara!"

"And frightened. Such a blonde in a red hat. Cabarets. Taxicabs. Night after night. Mosher, hold me. I'm frightened."

Cheek to cheek in their dining room of too-carved oak, twin shadow-boxed paintings of Fruit and Fish, the cut-gla.s.s punch bowl with the hooked-on cups, the cotton palm, casually rigid velour drapes, the elusive floor bell, they huddled, these two, whose eyes were branded with the scars of what they had looked upon, and a slow, a vast anger began to rise in Mosher, as if the blood in his throat were choking him, and a surge of it, almost purple, rose out of his collar and stained his face.

"Loafer! Low-life! No-'count! His whole body ain't worth so much as your little finger. I'll learn him to be a worry to you with this all-night business. By G.o.d! I'll learn my loafer of a son to--"

On the pistol shot of that, Sara's body jumped out of its rigidity, all her faculties coiled to spring.

"He isn't! You know he isn't! 'Loafer'! Shame on you! Whatever else he is, he's not a loafer. Boys will be boys--you say so yourself. 'Loafer'!

You should know once what some parents go through with real _loafers_ for sons--"

"No child what brings you such worry is anything else than a loafer!"

"And I say 'no'! The minute I so much as give you a finger in finding fault with that boy, right away you take a hand!"

"I'll break his--"

"You don't know yet a joke when you hear one. I wanted to get you mad! I get a little tired and I try to make myself funny."

"There wasn't no funniness in the way your eyes looked when you--"

"I tell you I didn't mean one word. No matter what uneasiness that child has brought me, always he has given me more in happiness. Twice more.

That's what he's been. Twice of everything to make up for--for only being half of my twins."

"Then what the devil is--"

"I don't envy Gussie her Leo and his steady ways. Didn't you say yourself for a boy like ours you got to pay with a little uneasiness?"

"Not when that little uneasiness is enough to make his mother sick."

"Sick! If I felt any better I'd be ashamed of having so much health! If you get mad with him and try to ask him where he stays every night is all that can cause me worry. It's natural a handsome boy like ours should sow what they call his wild oat. With such a matzos face like poor Leo, from where he broke his nose, I guess it ain't so easy for him to have his wild oat. Promise me, Mosher, you won't ask one question or get mad at him. His mother knows how to handle her boy so he don't even know he's handled."

"I'll handle him--"

"See now, just look at yourself once in the gla.s.s with your eyes full of red. That's why I can't tell you nothing. Right away you fly to pieces.