Sam's Legacy (23 page)

“The basement is only three-quarters finished since you saw it, Sid—it's gonna be a game room for the kids—and a guest room maybe.”

“How've things been?” Sid asked, his arm on Sam's shoulder. They walked down the steps. Sam saw copper pipes running along the walls. He remembered, afterward, following his grandfather down to the basement of their apartment house. It had terrified him—the shadows, the barking of the super's German police dog—and when his grandfather had opened the iron door of the furnace and Sam had seen the fire—white light leaping on top of the burning coals—he had wanted to cry. Burning the
chumitz
, it had been called. Sam remembered. His grandfather had pushed him close to the furnace door and Sam could still feel the heat on his face, the weakness in his thighs. The crumbs were in the bowl of the wooden spoon, the feather and candle on top, the rag wrapped around, tied in a knot. “Give a throw, Samela,” his grandfather had said, and when Sam had thrown it in, and seen the package burst into flame, his grandfather had bent over—slightly, for Sam was almost his height by then—and kissed him on each cheek. His grandfather had, for some reason, been crying, and Sam had been proud of himself—glad that he had held back his own tears. His grandfather had pulled him close—Sam remembered the man's smell: rancid, like clothes which had been waiting too long to be washed—but he had not moved, he had kept his body rigid. His grandfather had said—had sung—something in Yiddish, and though he had not understood a word of it, he had been sure that his grandfather had been thinking of his wife, and of his two older sons, Ben's brothers, who had never crossed the sea and come to America.

“I got no kicks,” Sam said, to Sid.

“This is the hot water boiler,” Herbie said, opening a door, revealing two large tanks. “And that's the furnace.” He spoke to Sid. “We use forced air heat—that way, with the ducts already there, we can have central air conditioning hooked right in some day if we want.”

Sid nodded. The basement ran for the full length of the house—thirty or forty feet—and the walls were covered in a wood-grain material. The ceiling was made of white perforated squares. There was a bench along one side of the wall, an old TV console, shelves filled with games and toys. There were cartons and several old pieces of furniture—a dresser, end tables, chairs, a Formica kitchen table. The floor was made of red and white squares, alternating in a checkerboard pattern. The fluorescent lighting, overhead, was too bright for Sam's eyes. He had never liked fluorescent lighting. Screw Sid, he thought. He won't get anything from me. Herbie opened another door, halfway down the length of the room, revealing a bare concrete floor, more pipes, concrete walls. The room, he explained, could be made into either a guest room or an at-home office for himself. If he did the latter, he would get a tax break. Sid nodded. He did some private counseling and testing now, and took off something every year for the room he used at home.

“So?” Herbie asked, facing them. “What do you think?”

“Great stuff,” Dutch said. “You got it made, Herbie. The life of Riley—”

“It's something,” Sam offered, when Herbie's eyes caught his, and he could see, in front of him, ten couples—all past sixty-five years of age—arms on one another's shoulders, the women's hair done up, their wrinkles hidden under creams and powders.
You may dance the buckles off your shoes, whatever your dance is…
.

Herbie moved off, Dutch kidding him about married life, about his pot belly, but Sid detained Sam by stepping slightly in front of him. “Listen, Sammy, you look like—if you don't mind my saying so—as if something's bothering you.”

“I got things on my mind,” Sam said. He heard Stella's voice, speaking to Sid, and it made him smile.
Why do people always have to say things is what I want to know…
.

The still photo from the brochure—a white-haired woman in the foreground with diamond earrings and a diamond necklace above her low-cut pink gown—suddenly came to life, the way pictures did sometimes at the beginnings of movies. Sam saw the old people dancing around Herbie's basement. “Look, Sam—I'll tell you the truth, with old friends like us, we shouldn't stand on ceremonies. I won't press you, but…” Sam thought that Sid's eyes were watering. “If I can do anything—if you want to talk about it—well—just know that I'm available, any time, night or day, okay?”

“Sure,” Sam said. “That's white of you, Sid. I mean—”

Sid put up a hand, to stop Sam. “None of that shit with me, you jerk—but, like my wife's girl says, ‘anything I can do to resist you, Mr. Adlerstein, you let me know.'”

Sam smiled. He wanted to let Sid know that he appreciated the offer, that he knew—the truth—that any of the guys would have given the shirts off their backs for him if he'd asked them. Sure. Sam felt his Adam's apple bob. He saw Sid lying back on the bed in his T-shirt, the telephone receiver cradled between his shoulder and his ear; he remembered listening afterward while Sid told him all about what one of the other guys—Sid wouldn't say which one—had been telling him about what had happened, something between the guy and his sister. “I'll let you know, Sid,” he said, and felt Sid's fingers tighten along his arm-muscle. “Sure. You'd be the first.”

Sid patted Sam on the stomach. “I don't know how you do it, Ace—how you keep in shape.” Sid motioned with his head, and the two of them walked, toward the staircase.

Sam glanced at the room with the boiler and the furnace. He wondered if Sid ever thought about his own grandfather, he wondered what Sid would make of his thoughts—of the business of the wooden dolls, of how he sometimes saw himself, Ben, and his grandfather in reverse order…. “Flo said to say hello,” he said.

“Flo. Flo—she's terrific,” Sid said, as they made their way up the staircase. “Flo. That girl is terrific—still running a store in a neighborhood like that. She has a lot of what we call ego-strength.”

Sam flicked the light switch. “In here!” he heard Herbie calling. “It's eating time, Sam, Sid—in the dining room.”

Sid looked into Sam's eyes. “I have a good life, Sam,” he said. “I really do.” Sam looked down at Sid's balding head, at the dark spots along his cheeks, where the bristles of hair were beginning to come back in. “Sometimes, of course, I envy guys like you and Dutch—the freedom you have, the girls you can
shtup
—but I have a good life.” Sam didn't know why Sid was talking this way, and yet, when he thought about it, it was the way Sid had always been; it had been, he thought, this way of sharing his life—this sincerity—which had made everybody love him so much, which had made him, as others put it, such a sweet guy. “I love my work—and I'm good at it. Believe me, Sammy, I've helped a lot of youngsters get out of some tough jams. You wouldn't believe the things they do nowadays—it's nothing like when we were growing up. But they're terrific youngsters. And my wife—Susie—you should see her with our kids. She's a terrific wife….” Sam found that he couldn't listen to Sid. Sure. He imagined that Sid would probably have found the library book more interesting than Tidewater's story.

There were, Sam knew, exactly sixteen major league baseball players earning over a hundred grand a year now—it was a fact he found himself wanting to offer Sid, for conversation, but he knew that Sid might have found it strange, Sam simply introducing a subject like that. It made you think, though. Things changed. Sam remembered when he'd thought being a pro ballplayer would be a great life because there was a minimum yearly salary of five grand. Now, in addition to the sixteen, there were close to a hundred ballplayers earning over fifty thousand a year. Sid's arm was around Sam's shoulder. They entered the dining room, from the hallway, and Sam saw that the other guys were already seated around the table. The girls, as always, had eaten first. Ruth had put out the usual spread: plates of lox and pickled herring and cream cheese and butter, baskets of bagels and rolls and bialys, smoked white fish and matjes herring, carp and sliced tomatoes, platters of cookies and
rugelech
and egg salad. “But you know something I realized,” Sid said, as they sat down, next to each other, between Shimmy and Dutch. “There's something missing out here—our kids have a terrific life, but they don't have what we had: for example, I can't send Elliott to the corner to get anything. Do you see what I mean? The kids out here, in developments like ours, they grow up without ever knowing what it is to run down to the corner for an
errand.”

“I see what you mean,” Sam said, and he thought of a guy he'd seen walking along Church Avenue a few days before, sporting a mink jump suit. He remembered the twin El Dorados. He saw all the guys sitting around a table in Garfield's: Cohen, Stein, Mandel, Adlerstein, Zelenko, Gotbaum, and Berman. Strange how, when they'd been younger, they'd called one another by their last names or nicknames—he'd always been Berman, or Sam the Man, or Sam Junior—and now, in their thirties, they'd taken to using first names. Sid reached in front of Sam for a seeded roll, split it with his hands, began spreading cream cheese on it. Sam took a piece of rye bread and watched the others work, buttering their toasted bagels, laying the pieces of lox on their rolls, filling their mouths. He laughed to himself. That was the quick way to get out of shape. Sure. He'd still be wheeling and dealing long after the rest of them were in their graves.

All eyes were on Max, who was telling one of his jokes: “…so Rastus lies there in the gutter, poor Rastus, his lip torn, blood streaming from his ears, his face a pulp, his knife in his hand—while Rufus staggers off, heading up to the second floor where Ella Mae, who they've fought over, is looking out her window, her eyes rolling, her bazookas dancing up and down—and all the
shvartzehs
look down at Rastus, poor Rastus, wondering why he has such a huge grin across his beaten face…” Was this the guy, Sam wondered, who had been the best dancer in their high school? Sam saw Max, a crowd of guys and girls around him while he moved his feet wildly, beautifully. And yet—the crazy thing—with all his rhythm, with the endlessly subtle moves of his body and feet and hands, he'd been a lousy athlete, totally uncoordinated. “…‘Because,' Rastus said, looking up at the crowd from the gutter, showing them his knife. ‘Wait till he get upstairs with Ella Mae—I got that mother's balls right here in my back pocket—!'”

Shimmy laughed, gagged on a piece of his sandwich, and Sam saw the seeds from a sliced tomato trickle down his chin. The other guys roared with laughter. Max was working them up. Sam watched their mouths. “You know what nine out of ten Cadillac owners say?” Max asked. Shimmy rubbed the tears from his eyes. The other guys were still laughing, eating, rocking back and forth. Max lowered his voice. “De Cadillac am de best car on de road.”

“You told that fifteen years ago,” Nate said, and he didn't laugh.

“And the tenth one,” Max went on, wrinkling his nose, eyes and mouth together, giving his best Yiddish inflection: “Hit's ha very good car….”

Shimmy waved him off, and swayed against Sam's shoulder. “Say dere, Kingfish,” he said, pointing a piece of bagel at Max. It was like old times, Sam thought, Shimmy and Max trading jokes. “Did you hear about the homosexual who had a hysterectomy?”

“Stop!” Max cried. “You're getting personal.”

“They took out all his teeth,” Shimmy said. There was a moment of silence and then the laughter exploded again. Sam found himself laughing also, but he wasn't sure if it was at the joke, or at the sight of the other six guys' faces, at their laughter.

“I'm
plotzing
already!” Herbie cried, trying to get into the act. “Wait till I tell Ruthie that one—”

The jokes continued, Ruthie came in and put down a lemon meringue pie, a coffee cake, a platter of butter cookies, and a pot of coffee. Herbie pinched her, the guys laughed. She wore black toreador stretch pants—all the wives seemed to be wearing slacks, Sam noticed, except for Lillian, Max's wife, who wore a mini-skirt. That figured. Sam remembered her, in high school, with her cone-shaped brassieres. He'd gotten what he'd wanted off her, he told himself. He took a slice of lemon meringue pie. She'd always had the hots for him. If he'd dry-humped her once, he'd dry-humped her a hundred times. Max could have his private house and his fancy sports clothes and his filthy jokes; Sam knew—and Max knew too—which one of them had taken sloppy seconds. When Max had been social chairman of their club, Sam remembered, driving out to Belle Harbor and Manhattan Beach to get them socials with the rich Jewish girls, he'd called himself Jonathan Avant the Third.

Sam saw Lillian in the doorway to the kitchen, helping Ruth. With all the make-up she wore now, and the frosted hair—part silver and part a fake red color—you wouldn't even know who you were doing it with. Sam looked at Dutch. Dutch glanced toward Lillian, back at Sam, then winked. Sam smiled. Sure. Dutch was okay. In the train, coming out, he shouldn't have been so hard on the guy. Maybe, with time, Dutch would come around—the two of them could ride the rails together again. If anything ever opened up, that was.

“Watch this,” Max said, then called into the kitchen. “Lillian—tell the guys—who's Cazzie Russell?”

Lillian looked in, smiled. “Oh Max,” she sighed. “He's the seventh man on the Knicks.” She saw the guys smiling at her, and handed them the punch line. “Everybody knows that.”

The guys laughed. Sam looked at the gold chains hanging from her neck in bunches, past her navel. A gold safety pin held her skirt together at the side. “And—watch this—what makes them so tough this year?” Max asked.

“Their defense, sweetie—Red Holzman has worked miracles with them.”