6

That morning was supposed to have been my last at the Patimkin house; however, when I began to throw my things into my bag late in the day, Brenda told me I could unpack—somehow she’d managed to inveigle another week out of her parents, and I would be able to stay right through till Labor Day, when Ron would be married; then, the following morning Brenda would be off to school and I would go back to work. So we would be with each other until the summer’s last moment.

This should have made me overjoyed, but as Brenda trotted back down the stairs to accompany her family to the airport—where they were to pick up Harriet—I was not joyful but disturbed, as I had been more and more with the thought that when Brenda went back to Radcliffe, that would be the end for me. I was convinced that even Miss Winney’s stool was not high enough for me to see clear up to Boston. Nevertheless, I tossed my clothing back into the drawer and was able, finally, to tell myself that there’d been no hints of ending our affair from Brenda, and any suspicions I had, any uneasiness, was spawned in my own uncertain heart. Then I went into Ron’s room to call my aunt.

“Hello?” she said.

“Aunt Gladys,” I said, “how are you?”

“You’re sick.”

“No, I’m having a fine time. I wanted to call you, I’m going to stay another week.”

“Why?”

“I told you. I’m having a good time. Mrs. Patimkin asked me to stay until Labor Day.”

“You’ve got clean underwear?”

“I’m washing it at night. I’m okay, Aunt Gladys.”

“By hand you can’t get it clean.”

“It’s clean enough. Look, Aunt Gladys, I’m having a wonderful time.”

“Shmutz he lives in and I shouldn’t worry.”

“How’s Uncle Max?” I asked.

“What should he be? Uncle Max is Uncle Max. You, I don’t like the way your voice sounds.”

“Why? Do I sound like I’ve got on dirty underwear?”

“Smart guy. Someday you’ll learn.”

“What?”

“What do you mean what? You’ll find out. You’ll stay there too long you’ll be too good for us.”

“Never, sweetheart,” I said.

“I’ll see it I’ll believe it.”

“Is it cool in Newark, Aunt Gladys?”

“It’s snowing,” she said.

“Hasn’t it been cool all week?”

“You sit around all day it’s cool. For me it’s not February, believe me.”

“Okay, Aunt Gladys. Say hello to everybody.”

“You got a letter from your mother.”

“Good. I’ll read it when I get home.”

“You couldn’t take a ride down you’ll read it?”

“It’ll wait. I’ll drop them a note. Be a good girl,” I said.

“What about your socks?”

“I go barefoot. Goodbye, honey.” And I hung up.

Down in the kitchen Carlota was getting dinner ready. I was always amazed at how Carlota’s work never seemed to get in the way of her life. She made household chores seem like illustrative gestures of whatever it was she was singing, even, if as now, it was “I Get a Kick out of You.” She moved from the oven to the automatic dishwasher—she pushed buttons, turned dials, peeked in the glass-doored oven, and from time to time picked a big black grape out of a bunch that lay on the sink. She chewed and chewed, humming all the time, and then, with a deliberated casualness, shot the skin and the pit directly into the garbage disposal unit. I said hello to her as I went out the back door and though she did not return the greeting I felt a kinship with one who like me had been partially wooed and won on Patimkin fruit. ‘

Out on the lawn I shot baskets for a while; then I picked up an iron and drove a cotton golf ball limply up into the sunlight; then I kicked a soccer ball towards the oak tree; then I tried shooting foul shots again. Nothing diverted me—I felt open-stomached, as though I hadn’t eaten for months, and though I went back inside and came out with my own handful of grapes, the feeling continued, and I knew it had nothing to do with my caloric intake; it was only a rumor of the hollowness that would come when Brenda was away. The fact of her departure had, of course, been on my mind for a while, but overnight it had taken on a darker hue. Curiously, the darkness seemed to have something to do with Harriet, Ron’s intended, and I thought for a time that it was simply the reality of Harriet’s arrival that had dramatized the passing of time: we had been talking about it and now suddenly it was here—just as Brenda’s departure would be here before we knew it.

But it was more than that: the union of Harriet and Ron reminded me that separation need not be a permanent state. People could marry each other, even if they were young! And yet Brenda and I had never mentioned marriage, except perhaps for that night at the pool when she’d said, “When you love me, everything will be all right.” Well, I loved her, and she me, and things didn’t seem all right at all. Or was I inventing troubles again? I supposed I should really have thought my lot improved considerably; yet, there on the lawn, the August sky seemed too beautiful and temporary to bear, and I wanted Brenda to marry me. Marriage, though, was not what I proposed to her when she drove the car up the driveway, alone, some fifteen minutes later. That proposal would have taken a kind of courage that I did not think I had. I did not feel myself prepared for any answer but “Halleluiah!” Any other kind of yes wouldn’t have satisfied me, and any kind of no even one masked behind the words “Let’s wait sweetheart,” would have been my end. So I imagine that’s why I proposed the surrogate, which turned out finally to be far more daring than I knew it to be at the time.

“Harriet’s plane is late, so I drove home,” Brenda called.

“Where’s everyone else?”

“They’re going to wait for her and have dinner at the airport. I have to tell Carlota,” and she went inside.

In a few minutes she appeared on the porch. She wore a yellow dress that cut a wide-bottomed U across her shoulders and neck, and showed where the tanned flesh began above her breasts. On the lawn she stepped out of her heels and walked barefoot over to where I was sitting under the oak tree.

“Women who wear high heels all the time get tipped ovaries,” she said.

“Who told you that?”

“I don’t remember. I like to think everything’s shipshape in there.”

“Brenda, I want to ask you something …”

She yanked the blanket with the big O on it over to us and sat down.

“What?” she said.

“I know this is out of the blue, though really it’s not … I want you to buy a diaphragm. To go to a doctor and get one.”

She smiled. “Don’t worry, sweetie, we’re careful. Everything is okay.”

“But that’s the safest.”

“We’re safe. It’d be a waste.”

“Why take chances?”

“But we aren’t. How many things do you need.”

“Honey, it isn’t bulk I’m interested in. It’s not even safety,” I added.

“You just want me to own one, is that it? Like a walking stick, or a pith helmet—”

“Brenda, I want you to own one for … for the sake of pleasure.”

“Pleasure? Whose? The doctor’s?”

“Mine,” I said.

She did not answer me, but rubbed her fingers along the ridge of her collarbone to wipe away the tiny globes of perspiration that had suddenly formed there.

“No, Neil, it’s silly.”

“Why?”

“Why? It just is.”

“You know why it’s silly, Brenda—because I asked you to do it?”

“That’s sillier.”

“If you asked me to buy a diaphragm we’d have to go straight to the Yellow Pages and find a gynecologist open on Saturday afternoon.”

“I would never ask you to do that, baby.”

“It’s the truth,” I said, though I was smiling. “It’s the truth.”

“It’s not,” she said, and got up and walked over to the basketball court, where she walked on the white lines that Mr. Patimkin had laid the day before.

“Come back here,” I said.

“Neil, it’s silly and I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why are you being so selfish?”

“Selfish? You’re the one who’s being selfish. It’s your pleasure…”

“That’s right. My pleasure. Why not!”

“Don’t raise your voice. Carlota.”

“Then get the hell over here,” I said.

She walked over to me, leaving white footprints on the grass. “I didn’t think you were such a creature of the flesh,” she said.

“Didn’t you?” I said. “I’ll tell you something that you ought to know. It’s not even the pleasures of the flesh I’m talking about.”

“Then frankly, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why you’re even bothering. Isn’t what we use sufficient?”

“I’m bothering just because I want you to go to a doctor and get a diaphragm. That’s all. No explanation. Just do it. Do it because I asked you to.”

“You’re not being reasonable—”

“Goddamit, Brenda!”

“Goddamit yourself!” she said and went up into the house.

I closed my eyes and leaned back and in fifteen minutes, or maybe less, I heard somebody stroking at the cotton golf ball. She had changed into shorts and a blouse and was still barefoot.

We didn’t speak with each other, but I watched her bring the club back of her ear, and then swing through, her chin tilted up with the line of flight a regular golf ball would have taken.

“That’s five hundred yards,” I said.

She didn’t answer but walked after the cotton ball and then readied for another swing.

“Brenda. Please come here.”

She walked over, dragging the club over the grass.

“What?”

“I don’t want to argue with you.”

“Nor I with you,” she said. “It was the first time.”

“Was it such an awful thing for me to ask?” She nodded.

“Bren, I know it was probably a surprise. It was for me. But we’re not children.”

“Neil, I just don’t want to. It’s not because you asked me to, either. I don’t know where you get that from. That’s not it.”

“Then why is it?”

“Oh everything. I just don’t feel old enough for all that equipment.”

“What does age have to do with it?”

“I don’t mean age. I just mean—well, me. I mean it’s so conscious a thing to do.”

“Of course it’s conscious. That’s exactly it. Don’t you see? It would change us.”

“It would change me.”

“Us. Together.”

“Neil, how do you think I’d feel lying to some doctor.”

“You can go to Margaret Sanger, in New York. They don’t ask any questions.”

“You’ve done this before?”

“No,” I said. “I just know. I read Mary McCarthy.”

“That’s exactly right. That’s just what I’d feel like, somebody out of her.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” I said.

“You’re the one who’s being dramatic. You think there would be something affairish about it, then. Last summer I went with this whore who I sent out to buy—”

“Oh, Brenda, you’re a selfish egotistical bitch! You’re the one who’s thinking about ‘last summer,’ about an end for us. In fact, that’s the whole thing, isn’t it—”

“That’s right, I’m a bitch. I want this to end. That’s why I ask you to stay another week, that’s why I let you sleep with me in my own house. What’s the matter with you! Why don’t you and my mother take turns—one day she can plague me, the next you—”

“Stop it!”

“Go to hell, all of you!” Brenda said, and now she was crying and I knew when she ran off I would not see her, as I didn’t, for the rest of the afternoon.

*  *  *  *  *

Harriet Ehrlich impressed me as a young lady singularly unconscious of a motive in others or herself. All was surfaces, and she seemed a perfect match for Ron, and too for the Patimkins. Mrs. Patimkin, in fact, did just as Brenda prophesied: Harriet appeared, and Brenda’s mother lifted one wing and pulled the girl in towards the warm underpart of her body, where Brenda herself would have liked to nestle. Harriet was built like Brenda, although a little chestier, and she nodded her head insistently whenever anyone spoke. Sometimes she would even say the last few words of your sentence with you though that was infrequent; for the most part she nodded and kept her hands folded. All evening as the Patimkins planned where the newlyweds should live what furniture they should buy, how soon they should have a baby—all through this I kept thinking that Harriet was wearing white gloves, but she wasn’t.

Brenda and I did not exchange a word or a glance; we sat, listening, Brenda somewhat more impatient than me. Near the end Harriet began calling Mrs. Patimkin “Mother,” and once, “Mother Patimkin,” and that was when Brenda went to sleep. I stayed behind, mesmerized almost by the dissection, analysis, reconsideration, and finally, the embracing of the trivial. At last Mr. and Mrs. Patimkin tumbled off to bed, and Julie, who had fallen asleep on her chair, was carried into her room by Ron. That left us two non-Patimkins together.

“Ron tells me you have a very interesting job.”

“I work in the library.”

“I’ve always liked reading.”

“That’ll be nice, married to Ron.”

“Ron likes music.”

“Yes,” I said. What had I said?

“You must get first crack at the best-sellers,” she said.

“Sometimes.” I said.

“Well,” she said, flapping her hands on her knees, “I’m sure we’ll all have a good time together. Ron and I hope you and Brenda will double with us soon.”

“Not tonight.” I smiled. “Soon. Will you excuse me?”

“Good night. I like Brenda very much.”

“Thank you,” I said as I started up the stairs.

I knocked gently on Brenda’s door.

“I’m sleeping.”

“Can I come in?” I asked.

Her door opened an inch and she said, “Ron will be up soon.”

“We’ll leave the door open. I only want to talk.”

She let me in and I sat in the chair that faced the bed.

“How do you like your sister-in-law?”

“I’ve met her before.”

“Brenda, you don’t have to sound so damn terse.”

She didn’t answer and I just sat there yanking the string on the shade up and down.

“Are you still angry?” I asked at last.

“Yes.”

“Don’t be,” I said. “You can forget about my suggestion. It’s not worth it if this is what’s going to happen.”

“What did you expect to happen?”

“Nothing. I didn’t think it would be so horrendous.”

“That’s because you can’t understand my side.”

“Perhaps.”

“No perhaps about it.”

“Okay,” I said. “I just wish you’d realize what it is you’re getting angry about. It’s not my suggestion, Brenda.”

“No? What is it?”

“It’s me.”

“Oh don’t start that again, will you? I can’t win, no matter what I say.”

“Yes, you can,” I said. “You have.”

I walked out of her room, closing the door behind me for the night.

When I got downstairs the following morning there was a great deal of activity. In the living room I heard Mrs. Patimkin reading a list to Harriet while Julie ran in and out of rooms in search of a skate key. Carlota was vacuuming the carpet; every appliance in the kitchen was bubbling, twisting, and shaking. Brenda greeted me with a perfectly pleasant smile and in the dining room, where I walked to look out at the back lawn and the weather, she kissed me on the shoulder.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello.”

“I have to go with Harriet this morning,” Brenda told me. “So we can’t run. Unless you want to go alone.”

“No. I’ll read or something. Where are you going?”

“We’re going to New York. Shopping. She’s going to buy a wedding dress. For after the wedding. To go away in.”

“What are you going to buy?”

“A dress to be maid of honor in. If I go with Harriet then I can go to Bergdorf’s without all that Ohrbach’s business with my mother.”

“Get me something, will you?” I said.

“Oh, Neil, are you going to bring that up again!”

“I was only fooling. I wasn’t even thinking about that.”

“Then why did you say it?”

“Oh Jesus!” I said, and went outside and drove my car down into Millburn Center where I had some eggs and coffee.

When I came back, Brenda was gone, and there were only Carlota, Mrs. Patimkin, and myself in the house. I tried to stay out of whichever rooms they were in, but finally Mrs. Patimkin and I wound up sitting opposite each other in the TV room. She was checking off names on a long sheet of paper she held; next to her, on the table, were two thin phone books which she consulted from time to time.

“No rest for the weary,” she said to me.

I smiled hugely, embracing the proverb as though Mrs. Patimkin had just then coined it. “Yes. Of course,” I said. “Would you like some help? Maybe I could help you check something.”

“Oh, no,” she said with a little head-shaking dismissal, “it’s for Hadassah.”

“Oh,” I said.

I sat and watched her until she asked, “Is your mother in Hadassah?”

“I don’t know if she is now. She was in Newark.”

“Was she an active member?”

“I guess so, she was always planting trees in Israel for someone.”

“Really?” Mrs. Patimkin said. “What’s her name?”

“Esther Klugman. She’s in Arizona now. Do they have Hadassah there?”

“Wherever there are Jewish women.”

“Then I guess she is. She’s with my father. They went there for their asthma. I’m staying with my aunt in Newark. She’s not in Hadassah. My Aunt Sylvia is, though. Do you know her, Aaron Klugman and Sylvia? They belong to your club. They have a daughter, my cousin Doris—” I couldn’t stop myself “—They live in Livingston. Maybe it isn’t Hadassah my Aunt Sylvia belongs to I think it’s some TB organization. Or cancer. Muscular dystrophy, maybe. I know she’s interested in some disease.”

“That’s very nice,” Mrs. Patimkin said.

“Oh yes.”

“They do very good work.”

“I know.”

Mrs. Patimkin, I thought, had begun to warm to me; she let the purple eyes stop peering and just look out at the world for a while without judging. “Are you interested in B’nai Brith?” she asked me. “Ron is joining, you know, as soon as he gets married.”

“I think I’ll wait till then,” I said.

Petulantly, Mrs. Patimkin went back to her lists, and I realized it had been foolish of me to risk lightheartedness with her about Jewish affairs. “You’re active in the Temple, aren’t you?” I asked with all the interest I could muster.

“Yes,” she said.

“What Temple do you belong to?” she asked in a moment.

“We used to belong to Hudson Street Synagogue. Since my parents left, I haven’t had much contact.”

I didn’t know whether Mrs. Patimkin caught a false tone in my voice. Personally I thought I had managed my rueful confession pretty well, especially when I recalled the decade of paganism prior to my parents’ departure. Regardless, Mrs. Patimkin asked immediately—and strategically it seemed—”We’re all going to Temple Friday night. Why don’t you come with us? I mean, are you orthodox or conservative?”

I considered. ‘Well, I haven’t gone in a long time … I sort of switch…” I smiled. “I’m just Jewish,” I said well-meaningly, but that too sent Mrs. Patimkin back to her Hadassah work. Desperately I tried to think of something that would convince her I wasn’t an infidel. Finally I asked: “Do you know Martin Buber’s work?”

“Buber … Buber,” she said, looking at her Hadassah list. “Is he orthodox or conservative?” she asked.

“…He’s a philosopher.”

“Is he reformed?” she asked, piqued either at my evasiveness or at the possibility that Buber attended Friday night services without a hat, and Mrs. Buber had only one set of dishes in her kitchen.

“Orthodox,” I said faintly.

“That’s very nice,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Isn’t Hudson Street Synagogue orthodox?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I thought you belonged.”

“I was bar-mitzvahed there.”

“And you don’t know that it’s orthodox?”

“Yes. I do. It is.”

“Then you must be.”

“Oh, yes, I am,” I said. “What are you?” I popped, pushing.

“Orthodox. My husband is conservative,” which meant, I took it, that he didn’t care. “Brenda is nothing, as you probably know.”

“Oh?” I said. “No, I didn’t know that.”

“She was the best Hebrew student I’ve ever seen,” Mrs. Patimkin said, “but then, of course, she got too big for her britches.”

Mrs. Patimkin looked at me, and I wondered whether courtesy demanded that I agree. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said at last, “I’d say Brenda is conservative. Maybe a little reformed…”

The phone rang, rescuing me, and I spoke a silent orthodox prayer to the Lord.

“Hello,” Mrs. Patimkin said. “…no … I can not, I have all the Hadassah calls to make…”

I acted as though I were listening to the birds outside, though the closed windows let no natural noises in.

“Have Ronald drive them up … But we can’t wait, not if we want it on time…”

Mrs. Patimkin glanced up at me; then she put one hand over the mouthpiece. “Would you ride down to Newark for me?”

I stood. “Yes. Surely.”

“Dear?” she said back into the phone, “Neil will come for it…No, Neil, Brenda’s friend … Yes … Goodbye.

“Mr. Patimkin has some silver patterns I have to see. Would you drive down to his place and pick them up?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know where the shop is?”

“Yes.”

“Here,” she said, handing a key ring to me, “take the Volkswagen.”

“My car is right outside.”

“Take these,” she said.

*  *  *  *  *

Patimkin Kitchen and Bathroom Sinks was in the heart of the Negro section of Newark. Years ago, at the time of the great immigration, it had been the Jewish section, and still one could see the little fish stores, the kosher delicatessens, the Turkish baths, where my grandparents had shopped and bathed at the beginning of the century. Even the smells had lingered: whitefish, corned beef, sour tomatoes—but now, on top of these, was the grander greasier smell of auto wrecking shops, the sour stink of a brewery, the burning odor from a leather factory; and on the streets, instead of Yiddish, one heard the shouts of Negro children playing at Willie Mays with a broom handle and half a rubber ball. The neighborhood had changed: the old Jews like my grandparents had struggled and died and their offspring had struggled and prospered and moved further and further west towards the edge of Newark then out of it and up the slope of the Orange Mountains, until they had reached the crest and started down the other side pouring into Gentile territory as the Scotch-Irish had poured through the Cumberland Gap. Now, in fact, the Negroes were making the same migration following the steps of the Jews, and those who remained in the Third Ward lived the most squalid of lives and dreamed in their fetid mattresses of the piny smell of Georgia nights.

I wondered, for an instant only, if I would see the colored kid from the library on the streets here. I didn’t, of course, though I was sure he lived in one of the scabby, peeling buildings out of which dogs, children, and aproned women moved continually. On the top floors, windows were open, and the very old, who could no longer creak down the long stairs to the street, sat where they had been put, in the screenless windows, their elbows resting on fluffless pillows, and their heads tipping forward on their necks, watching the push of the young and the pregnant and the unemployed. Who would come after the Negroes? Who was left? No one, I thought, and someday these streets, where my grandmother drank hot tea from an old jahrzeit glass, would be empty and we would all of us have moved to the crest of the Orange Mountains, and wouldn’t the dead stop kicking at the slats in their coffins then?

I pulled the Volkswagen up in front of a huge garage door that said across the front of it:

PATIMKIN KITCHEN AND BATHROOM SINKS
“Any Size—Any Shape“

Inside I could see a glass-enclosed office; it was in the center of an immense warehouse. Two trucks were being loaded in the rear, and Mr. Patimkin, when I saw him, had a cigar in his mouth and was shouting at someone. It was Ron, who was wearing a white T-shirt that said Ohio State Athletic Association across the front. Though he was taller than Mr. Patimkin, and almost as stout, his hands hung weakly at his sides like a small boy’s; Mr. Patimkin’s cigar locomoted in his mouth. Six Negroes were loading one of the trucks feverishly, tossing—my stomach dropped—sink bowls at one another.

Ron left Mr. Patimkin’s side and went back to directing the men. He thrashed his arms about a good deal, and though on the whole he seemed rather confused, he didn’t appear to be at all concerned about anybody dropping a sink. Suddenly I could see myself directing the Negroes—I would have an ulcer in an hour. I could almost hear the enamel surfaces shattering on the floor. And I could hear myself: “Watch it, you guys. Be careful, will you? Whoops! Oh, please be—watch it! Watch! Oh!” Suppose Mr. Patimkin should come up to me and say, “Okay, boy, you want to marry my daughter, let’s see what you can do.” Well, he would see: in a moment that floor would be a shattered mosaic, a crunchy path of enamel. “Klugman, what kind of worker are you? You work like you eat!”‘ “That’s right that’s right, I’m a sparrow, let me go.” “Don’t you even know how to load and unload?” “Mr Patimkin, even breathing gives me trouble, sleep tires me out, let me go, let me go…”

Mr. Patimkin was headed back to the fish bowl to answer a ringing phone, and I wrenched myself free of my reverie and headed towards the office too. When I entered, Mr. Patimkin looked up from the phone with his eyes; the sticky cigar was in his free hand—he moved it at me, a greeting. From outside I heard Ron call in a high voice, “You can’t all go to lunch at the same time. We haven’t got all day!”

“Sit down,” Mr. Patimkin shot at me, though when he went back to his conversation I saw there was only one chair in the office, his. People did not sit at Patimkin Sink—here you earned your money the hard way, standing up. I busied myself looking at the several calendars that hung from filing cabinets; they showed illustrations of women so dreamy, so fantastically thighed and uddered that one could not think of them as pornographic. Thé artist who had drawn the calendar girls for “Lewis Construction Company,” and “Earl’s Track and Auto Repair” and “Grossman and Son Paper Box” had been painting some third sex I had never seen.

“Sure, sure, sure,” Mr. Patimkin said into the phone “Tomorrow, don’t tell me tomorrow. Tomorrow the world could blow up.”

At the other end someone spoke. Who was it? Lewis from the construction company? Earl from track repair?

“I’m running a business, Grossman, not a charity.”

So it was Grossman being browbeaten at the other end.

“Shit on that,” Mr. Patimkin said. “You’re not the only one in town, my good friend,” and he winked at me.

Ah-ha, a conspiracy against Grossman. Me and Mr. Patimkin. I smiled as collusively as I knew how.

“All right then, we’re here till five … No later.”

He wrote something on a piece of paper. It was only a big X.

“My kid’ll be here,” he said. “Yea, he’s in the business.”

Whatever Grossman said on the other end, it made Mr. Patimkin laugh. Mr. Patimkin hung up without a goodbye.

He looked out the back to see how Ron was doing. “Four years in college he can’t unload a truck.”

I didn’t know what to say but finally chose the truth. “I guess I couldn’t either.”

“You could learn. What am I, a genius? I learned. Hard work never killed anybody.”

To that I agreed.

Mr. Patimkin looked at his cigar. “A man works hard he’s got something. You don’t get anywhere sitting on your behind, you know … The biggest men in the country worked hard, believe me. Even Rockefeller. Success don’t come easy…” He did not say this so much as he mused it out while he surveyed his dominion. He was not a man enamored of words, and I had the feeling that what had tempted him into this barrage of universals was probably the combination of Ron’s performance and my presence—me, the outsider who might one day be an insider. But did Mr. Patimkin even consider that possibility? I did not know; I only knew that these few words he did speak could hardly transmit all the satisfaction and surprise he felt about the life he had managed to build for himself and his family.

He looked out at Ron again. “Look at him, if he played basketball like that they’d throw him the hell off the court.” But he was smiling when he said it.

He walked over to the door. “Ronald, let them go to lunch.”

Ron shouted back, “I thought I’d let some go now, and some later.”

“Why?”

“Then somebody’ll always be—”

“No fancy deals here,” Mr. Patimkin shouted. “We all go to lunch at once.”

Ron turned back. “All right, boys, lunch!”

His father smiled at me. “Smart boy? Huh?” He tapped his head. “That took brains, huh? He ain’t got the stomach for business. He’s an idealist,” and then I think Mr. Patimkin suddenly realized who I was, and eagerly corrected himself so as not to offend. “That’s all right, you know, if you’re a schoolteacher, or like you, you know, a student or something like that. Here you need a little of the gonif in you. You know what that means? Gonif?”

“Thief,” I said.

“You know more than my own kids. They’re goyim, my kids, that’s how much they understand.” He watched the Negro loading gang walk past the office and shouted out to them, “You guys know how long an hour is? All right, you’ll be back in an hour!”

Ron came into the office and of course shook my hand.

“Do you have that stuff for Mrs. Patimkin?” I asked.

“Ronald, get him the silver patterns.” Ron turned away and Mr. Patimkin said, “When I got married we had forks and knives from the five and ten. This kid needs gold to eat off,” but there was no anger; far from it.

*  *  *  *  *

I drove to the mountains in my own car that afternoon, and stood for a while at the wire fence watching the deer lightly prance, coyly feed, under the protection of signs that read, Do Not Feed the Deer, By Order of South Mountain Reservation. Alongside me at the fence were dozens of kids; they giggled and screamed when the deer licked the popcorn from their hands, and then were sad when their own excitement sent the young loping away towards the far end of the field where their tawny-skinned mothers stood regally watching the traffic curl up the mountain road. Young white-skinned mothers, hardly older than I, and in many instances younger, chatted in their convertibles behind me, and looked down from time to time to see what their children were about. I had seen them before, when Brenda and I had gone out for a bite in the afternoon, or had driven up here for lunch: in clotches of three and four they sat in the rustic hamburger joints that dotted the Reservation area while their children gobbled hamburgers and malteds and were given dimes to feed the jukebox. Though none of the little ones were old enough to read the song titles, almost all of them could holler out the words, and they did, while the mothers, a few of whom I recognized as high school mates of mine, compared suntans, supermarkets, and vacations. They looked immortal sitting there. Their hair would always stay the color they desired, their clothes the right texture and shade; in their homes they would have simple Swedish modern when that was fashionable, and if huge, ugly baroque ever came back, out would go the long, midget-legged marble coffee table and in would come Louis Quatorze. These were the goddesses, and if I were Paris I could not have been able to choose among them, so microscopic were the differences. Their fates had collapsed them into one. Only Brenda shone. Money and comfort would not erase her singleness—they hadn’t yet or had they? What was I loving, I wondered, and since I am not one to stick scalpels into myself I wiggled my hand in the fence and allowed a tiny-nosed buck to lick my thoughts away.

When I returned to the Patimkin house, Brenda was in the living room looking more beautiful than I had ever seen her. She was modeling her new dress for Harriet and her mother. Even Mrs. Patimkin seemed softened by the sight of her; it looked as though some sedative had been injected into her, and so relaxed the Brenda-hating muscles around her eyes and mouth.

Brenda, without glasses, modeled in place; when she looked at me it was a kind of groggy, half-waking look I got, and though others might have interpreted it as sleepiness it sounded in my veins as lust. Mrs. Patimkin told her finally that she’d bought a very nice dress and I told her she looked lovely and Harriet told her she was very beautiful and that she ought to be the bride, and then there was an uncomfortable silence while all of us wondered who ought to be the groom.

Then when Mrs. Patimkin had led Harriet out to the kitchen, Brenda came up to me and said, “I ought to be the bride.”

“You ought, sweetheart.” I kissed her, and suddenly she was crying.

“What is it, honey?” I said.

“Let’s go outside.”

On the lawn, Brenda was no longer crying but her voice sounded very tired.

“Neil, I called Margaret Sanger Clinic,” she said. “When I was in New York.”

I didn’t answer.

“Neil, they did ask if I was married. God, the woman sounded like my mother…”

“What did you say?”

“I said no.”

“What did she say?”

“I don’t know. I hung up.” She walked away and around the oak tree. When she appeared again she’d stepped out of her shoes and held one hand on the tree, as though it were a Maypole she were circling.

“You can call them back,” I said.

She shook her head. “No, I can’t. I don’t even know why I called in the first place. We were shopping and I just walked away, looked up the number, and called.”

“Then you can go to a doctor.”

She shook again.

“Look, Bren,” I said, rushing to her, “we’ll go together, to a doctor. In New York—”

“I don’t want to go to some dirty little office—”

“We won’t. We’ll go to the most posh gynecologist in New York. One who gets Harper’s Bazaar for the reception room. How does that sound?”

She bit her lower lip.

“You’ll come with me?” she asked.

“I’ll come with you.”

“To the office?”

“Sweetie, your husband wouldn’t come to the office.”

“No?”

“He’d be working.”

“But you’re not,” she said.

“I’m on vacation,” I said, but I had answered the wrong question. “Bren, I’ll wait and when you’re all done we’ll buy a drink. We’ll go out to dinner.”

“Neil, I shouldn’t have called Margaret Sanger—it’s not right.”

“It is, Brenda. It’s the most right thing we can do.” She walked away and I was exhausted from pleading. Somehow I felt I could have convinced her had I been a bit more crafty; and yet I did not want it to be craftiness that changed her mind. I was silent when she came back, and perhaps it was just that, my not saying anything, that prompted her finally to say, “I’ll ask Mother Patimkin if she wants us to take Harriet too…”