The Hours Count (9 page)

DAVID FELL ASLEEP
early, and Ed did not come home at his usual time. When darkness enveloped the apartment, I turned on the lamp and picked up David’s blocks, arranging them neatly in their wooden container. I smoked a cigarette and stared down to the street below, my nightly ritual. And I felt a sadness in thinking that this small moment of the day had come to exemplify my entire life: watching the rest of the city breathe on by from too far away to truly be a part of it.

The hour grew later and the masses on the sidewalk below thinned. I wondered if Ed might not return home at all. David and I could move in with my mother and Bubbe Kasha, or maybe Susan and Sam would take pity on us and invite us into their large suburban home. But how long would Susan endure David’s moodiness, his silence, before she, too, would want to suggest a different place for him?

Finally, I heard Ed’s key turning in the lock and I put my cigarette out in the ashtray and smoothed back my hair. Ed walked in, removed his hat and hung it by the door, and then he stopped for a moment and looked at me as if it surprised him to see me here on our perfect blue couch looking as I always did.

“There’s a plate for you in the oven,” I said.

He walked toward the kitchen. I tried to judge from my place on the couch how much he’d had to drink after work and whether he was clearheaded enough to have a conversation or whether he might grab my wrist again, or worse, now that we were here alone. I stayed on the couch and watched him sit at the table and cut and
chew his meat loaf. After eating a little bit Ed looked up, stared straight at me, and said, “He is gone?”

“Gone?” My heart thrummed so loudly in my chest that I was sure Ed could hear it even from across the room.

“The boy,” Ed said almost casually as he took another bite of the meat loaf.
The boy?
As if David were an object, something foreign. Though Ed’s tone was even, I felt my hands begin to shake. I held them together to try to steady them but I couldn’t. David was our son,
Ed’s son
, and Ed really didn’t love him. The hatred I suddenly felt for Ed overcame me, and I had to stand up from the couch and take a deep breath so I wouldn’t begin to scream.

I walked to the doorway of our bedroom, stood there, and watched David. He looked so peaceful and calm, his tiny chest rising steadily up and down. “David is asleep,” I finally said, more to myself than to Ed. David was safe. Ed could not take him as long as I was here to protect him. And I would. I had to.

“Asleep?” Ed dropped his fork against the plate, and it clanged loudly enough that I saw David stir a little in his sleep.

“Shhh.” I approached the table and Ed and picked up the fork to stop it from making more noise. “You’ll wake him.” I stared at Ed, challenged him with my eyes. I gripped the fork tightly in my hand. Should Ed move toward the bedroom—and David—I would take the fork and . . .

But Ed stood and walked back into the kitchen. I heard the sounds of ice clinking against glass, vodka pouring over the ice, the ice crackling a little bit.

I watched him from the edge of the kitchen as he swirled the liquid in the glass and then drank it down too fast. From here, in the semidarkness, he reminded me of a dangerous pouting child,
one who hadn’t gotten his way, and gulping vodka was his tantrum.

Ethel was right.
He is nothing more than a boy,
I thought as I watched Ed grimace at his drink.
You’ll think of something,
Ethel had said.
We always do . . . appease him.

And then I knew what I needed to do. I walked into the kitchen and dropped the fork carefully into the sink. Then I leaned against the counter and stood next to Ed, close enough so our elbows were touching. I closed my eyes. “I will give you another child,” I said steadily. “But you will leave David alone.”

I heard him put his glass down on the counter, the sound of the ice jumping uneasily, and when I opened my eyes, he was standing there in front of me. He put his hand on my wrist, circling it with his fingers, gentler than last night but in the same spot, so it still hurt. I resisted the urge to pull away.

“Mildred,” he whispered into my ear, his fingers moving up my arms, across my back, into my hair. “Now we are understanding each other.”

The fall moved slowly after I threw away my diaphragm. I dreaded Ed coming home from work even more. I knew now that there was bound to be another child soon, and that made the weight of Ed’s body on top of mine feel even more insufferable. Each night, I closed my eyes and made myself concentrate very hard on the ceiling, counting, forcing myself to keep my breathing even.

But Ed stuck to our agreement and left David alone. In fact, he left him entirely alone. He ignored David even more than before, if possible, and did not ask about him or even acknowledge me when I spoke of David. I longed for David to talk so that Ed might begin to love him, especially as I had noticed other fathers in Knickerbocker Village playing with their boys on weekends or walking with them hand in hand to attend
shul
on Saturdays.

I ran into Julie and John playing catch in the courtyard one Sunday morning after Ed had gone to visit Lena—thankfully, without us—and David and I were off to visit my mother and Bubbe Kasha.
Julie was dressed down, in casual slacks and a sweater, and he and John both wore Dodgers caps as they tossed a baseball back and forth.

Julie stopped throwing when he noticed me, and David and he motioned for us to come over, so we did. “How would David like to join us?” Julie asked, bending down to David’s level to pat him on the head. Then Julie stood back up and smiled at me.

Julie’s sweetness hit me as an ache, the sudden weight of jealousy and longing in my chest, and I had to force a smile. “That’s so kind of you to offer. But I don’t think he quite understands catch yet,” I said.

“He does!” John shouted. “He does, Millie. Let him play.”

John ran over and grabbed David’s arm, handing him the ball, trying to explain to him how to throw it. David held the ball up in his hand, looking rather bewildered.

“Why don’t you get Ed down here?” Julie asked. He lifted the Dodgers cap off his head, wiped his brow, and put the cap back down. “We’ll make it a foursome.”

“Ed’s not home,” I said. “But maybe another time?” though even as I said the words I knew it would probably never happen.

David dropped the ball awkwardly and John shrugged, frustrated with David’s lack of ability or interest in the game. “We should be going,” I said, and I picked David up. I didn’t want to intrude on their time, but also I couldn’t bear to watch anymore. “You two enjoy your catch,” I called out, trying to keep my voice even as I walked away.

“Always do, Millie,” Julie said as he swiped the ball back up off the ground and threw it to his son.

THE MORNING OF
the presidential election I woke up feeling awful. I barely made it to the toilet to throw up, and then when I went to stand, I felt dizzy and I had to cling to the sink for support.

“Don’t forget.” Ed peeked into the bathroom, not seeming to notice my terrible state. “We want Wallace to win.”

“I know,” I said, but what I knew was that in the privacy of my voting booth I would vote for anyone but Ed’s choice.

A few hours later, I still wasn’t feeling well as I walked with my mother down Monroe Street to cast our votes.

“The fog is going to kill us all,” my mother said, leaning unsteadily on my arm. I balanced both her and David, one on each side, and her girth—and her constant chatter—were weighing me down, as opposed to David’s lightness and silence.

“Fog?”
I asked. An unbearable lightness and nausea had overtaken me. Deep down, I knew what it meant. I had felt this way only once before, when I was first expecting David.

“I saw it on the television”—my mother continued talking—“on the ABC News. There’s a fog in Donora, Pennsylvania. It’s killing people. There’s nothing to stop it from getting us, too, you know. Pennsylvania isn’t even that far away. It’s even closer to New Jersey. I’ve warned Susan not to go outside with the twins . . .”

“Hmmm,” I murmured, thinking about how my mother had become even more insufferable since Mr. Bergman had brought her and Bubbe Kasha a small television, a luxury Ed still would not consent to for us. “If the bomb doesn’t get us all first, that is,” I
said, swallowing back the urge to vomit again, right here on the street. I focused very hard on walking, placing one foot in front of the other.

“Oh, the bomb.” My mother waved her free hand in the air as if that were an altogether ridiculous idea and this killer fog oh so much more likely. “All these politicians so worried about the communists and the Russians and here a fog can come and get you just like that.
A fog.
” I nodded, hoping that my tacit agreement would be enough to silence her, and we headed up the steps. “Dewey is going to win, you know,” my mother said. “That’s what they’re saying all over the television.”

She let go of my arm as we opened the doors to the polling place, but I still held on to David, not wanting to lose him in the rush of the crowd. It was noisy inside the library now, with everyone here to cast their votes, and David put his hands to his ears to block it out. He tried to pull away from me, but I held on tightly, pulling back. He was getting bigger, stronger, and it was harder for me to hold on to him than it was when he was a baby and a toddler. But I didn’t like to think about that too much. It overwhelmed me with a terror so thick that sometimes I couldn’t breathe. How was I going to manage David if he continued on like this and he grew bigger and stronger than me?
David and a baby,
I reminded myself, focusing very hard again on not throwing up. Oh, this took so much concentration. All I wanted to do was go back home and get in bed.

“Mrs. Stein, is that you?” I looked up at the sound of my name, and I squinted to make out who was calling me. Another wave of dizziness hit me and I had to hold my free hand out to steady myself against the wall. “Are you all right?” He put his hand on my arm,
and I realized it was Dr. Gold. No,
Jake
. The kind man I’d met at Ethel’s party.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, regaining my balance and pulling gently out of his grasp. I remembered how I thought I saw him there on the street that morning when I felt I was being followed. But Ed and I had an agreement now and I did not expect to see Zelda Weiss again anytime soon.

Jake smiled. “Well, I’m casting my vote.” Of course. Everyone in the neighborhood converged on the same place today.

David yanked my arm hard and stomped his feet. “Darling, I’ll be quick, I promise,” I said to him. “I’m sorry,” I said, turning back to Jake, “David doesn’t like crowds. I’ve got to go and try to finish quickly.”

“Would you like me to watch him while you cast your vote?” Jake asked.

It seemed like such a strange thing to say, a
man
offering to watch my child? But Jake crouched down to David’s level, spoke to him softly, and David’s thrashing calmed. Jake was a psychotherapist, I remembered. And I thought about how Ethel was hoping therapy would help John. She’d recently made an appointment to see a woman named Mrs. Elizabeth Phillips at the Jewish Board of Guardians. But Jake was also friends with Ed.

“No thank you,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to trouble you.”

“No trouble at all,” Jake said. “We’ll sit right outside on the steps and count the taxicabs going by. Wouldn’t you like that, son?” Jake leaned down to David’s level again, and David stopped thrashing altogether and leaned forward, maybe intrigued. How could Jake know about David’s perfect fascination with taxicabs and counting?
Their yellowness so attractive to him that there was barely anything David liked more these days.

“I’m sure my husband wouldn’t approve of his friend going to such trouble,” I said.

Jake stood back up and he stared at me. He had kind eyes. They were a brown color similar to Ed’s, but Ed’s eyes reminded me of stones, like the worn pebbles you might find along the shore at Coney Island. Jake’s eyes were bright, more of an almond color, and they appeared to be smiling even though the rest of his face wasn’t. “Make no mistake, Mrs. Stein,” he said, “I’m no friend of your husband’s.”

“Really?” I murmured. He sounded so serious that I almost got the feeling he actively disliked Ed, which seemed strange given that I’d assumed they were part of the same circle. So he was no friend of Ed’s and he wasn’t a friend of Ethel’s either. I wondered who had invited him to her party? Maybe he knew Julie. Ed and I had been to another party at their apartment last month, but Jake hadn’t been in attendance at that one. Maybe he didn’t know the group all that well.

“Come on, now. I don’t mind at all,” he said. “David and I will keep each other company while you go vote, won’t we, David?”

No one ever offered to watch David, and here this man, this doctor, was practically begging me to do it. David stared up at Jake’s face, his eyes open wide, I thought, with curiosity. I also thought if he could speak he would tell me that, yes, he would much rather count the taxicabs with this man than walk farther into the throng of noisy people with me. Another wave of nausea came over me. “You’ll only be out on the steps?” I said, meeting Jake’s eyes again.

Jake nodded and reached out his hand. David hesitated for only a second before taking it, and I wondered if maybe Ethel was right about this whole therapy idea and if Jake might even be able to help
David. David was definitely taken with him, I could tell. And David was normally taken with no one.

I stepped into the library all alone and suddenly I felt weightless. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone into a public place without David, without having to navigate the contours of his anxiety and silent tantrums.

“Who’s that?” my mother asked, and I realized she was standing next to me again.

“Just a friend of Ed’s.” My voice didn’t even catch on the lie. “He offered to watch David while I voted.”

“He must be quite a good friend,” my mother scoffed. And I pursed my lips tightly together so I wouldn’t say what I was thinking, that she could’ve offered to watch him for a few moments given that she was his grandmother, after all. But she wasn’t afraid to tell me why she didn’t like to be alone with him or how his silence and his kicking for attention made her nervous. I wondered how she was going to feel about the new baby and if she might be willing to help me more if the child was
usual
, as she called it, like Susan’s girls, who she was willing to ride a train to watch. I thought about Ethel’s boys, about how different Richie and John were, such opposites in every way. But I pressed my lips tightly together, not wanting to think how impossible it would be if there was another baby just like David.

My mother was none the wiser, nor did she seem to notice that I had my hand on the wall to steady myself. She leaned in and kissed my cheek. “I’ve already voted and I can’t wait for you. I’ve got to head home. You know Bubbe Kasha can’t be left alone for long and you’re taking forever. Really, Mildred . . . Choose Dewey if you want to choose the winner.”

I simply leaned in to kiss her back and quickly got in line.

AFTER I CAST
my vote for Truman, I walked back outside and scanned the steps. I didn’t see Jake and David and I suddenly couldn’t breathe. Had Jake been lying? And Ed, too? Maybe the thought of a new baby had only made Ed resolve to get rid of David even more. Was Jake somehow connected with Zelda Weiss and here to take David from me? And I had given him away so easily, just like that. I was so stupid.