Gold sensed an innuendo at which he perhaps ought to take offense. "I'm not very pushy, Ralph," he said softly.
"That will be a big plus for you, Bruce, that you're not pushy. Like so many others."
"So many other what, Ralph?"
"So many others who are pushy," Ralph went on with such uninterrupted affability that Gold concluded he had been unfairly sensitive. "Could you start immediately?"
"How much money would I make?"
"As much as you want, Bruce. No one comes to Washington to lose money."
Gold's next question carried a twinge of pathos. "Would I have to be unnamed?"
"Just at the start. After all, if we want to use you as an unnamed spokesman, it wouldn't do if everyone knew who you were, would it?"
"I guess not."
"Next week, why don't you come up here for a day to talk the whole thing over?"
"Up?" said Gold, feeling a bit disoriented.
"Oh, I'm sorry." Ralph laughed quietly. "I mean down. I've been talking to so many legislators from the South I can't help feeling that they are the bottom of the world, and we're the top."
"Say, Ralph, that's pretty good," Gold told him. "I'd like to use it in a piece, if you don't mind."
Ralph was flattered. "Of course not, Bruce. But don't use my name. You can imagine the trouble Td he in if I were quoted."
"Don't worry," Gold reassured him. "I'd much rather present it as my own."
78
"On the other hand," said Ralph, sounding touchy, "I would like some credit for it. After all, I did think it up."
"But how could I do that?" Gold was confused. "How could I give you credit for it in print if you don't want your name mentioned?"
The answer arrived in a second. "Couldn't you say it came from a spokesman?"
"Sure. I could do that."
"Fine, Bruce. That will make all my families very proud. Andrea Conover blushed like a schoolgirl when I gave her your regards. She'd love to see you again."
"When should I come?" asked Gold.
"I'll phone you on Monday or Tuesday, or Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. You know, Bruce," Ralph pointed out, "the only daughter of Pugh Biddle Conover is no one to sneeze at."
Gold had no intention of sneezing at her.
"Well?" Belle studied him closely when he returned to the kitchen to finish his dinner. Dina watched him too.
"I may have to go to Washington next week. They want my opinion about something."
Belle was no dope. "Is it about a job?"
"That was supposed to be secret," he admonished her again. Belle shrugged. "Who will I tell? Your family?"
Dina's face glowed. "I would tell Leo Lieberman. I bet that would make his father jealous."
"Suppose it falls through," Gold asked, "and I get nothing?"
"I would tell them," said Belle, "that you turned it down."
"That I refused to compromise my integrity?"
"Sure," said Belle.
"Me too," vowed Dina.
"Yes," he admitted. "It's about a government job." Later that evening in their own room he said to Belle,
79
"I thought you didn't want me to take a job in Washington. You said you wouldn't go."
Belle answered, "I'm not going."
"You won't change your mind?"
"Absolutely not."
They slept in separate beds, with a night table in between. He moved into hers.
I
IV
Nothing Succeeds as Planned
VFOLD finished his martini, feeling so consumedly braced he was almost offended that the woman with whom he was lunching was his sister.
"Esther told me you're writing a book about Jews," said Joannie. Cold poached salmon would follow for Gold, with cucumber salad and green mayonnaise. They were lunching at the St. Regis and she would pay. She was a tall, suntanned woman with bright clothes, a springy figure, and hair expertly streaked.
"Esther?"
"She calls about every two weeks," said Joannie. "And has nothing to say. Jerry isn't happy about your book."
"Is that why you're in New York?"
She shook her head. "He wants to know why you can't write a book about something else."
"I ain't got that much choice, Joannie."
"Toni," she corrected.
"What's he worried about?"
"We spend a lot of time in California trying to get
83
each other to forget we're Jewish. That's one of the reasons his family changed their name."
"To Fink?"
"It used to be Finkleman. Jerry gives a lot to both political parties. He thinks he's got a good chance now of being a judge."
"Jerry's not a lawyer, is he?"
"You don't have to be a lawyer out there to be a judge," Joannie explained. "At least that's what they tell him when they come for money."
"You belong to every temple in lower California," Gold derided.
"That's civic, not religious," she countered. "We make it a point never to pray." She picked without appetite at her small salad. "I saw Pop yesterday."
Gold was loath to ask. "How was he?"
"Quiet." Her smile was rueful. "He still thinks it's his fault I left home. He says you're all trying to make him buy a condominium in Florida so he'll stay there all year. I told him to do what Sid says."
"We're seeing him tomorrow," Gold said joylessly. He put his silver down and felt his face turn warm. "Jesus Christ, Joannie—"
"Toni."
"—you don't know what it's like having him around. He thinks we're still a family and he's still the head. He bosses me around like I'm a goddamned kid. I don't have time to go to family dinners three or four times a week and neither does anyone else. We don't like each other that much. We've all got families of our own now and other people we want to see. You ought to have him out in California for a while."
"Jerry can't stand him."
"He knows that," said Gold, in the same tone of protest. "Neither can Gussie's children, so they can't go to Richmond either. He can't just keep telling us whose house he's coming to whenever he wants to and who's going to drive him there and back and who else has to be invited. Christ, I think we've seen more of each other the past few months than when we were all
84
packed together in those five rooms over the tailor shop. Each year he comes up earlier and each year he stays later—this year for the Jewish holidays. Shmini Atzereth. Have you ever heard of it? Neither have 1.1 swear he's making his goddamned Jewish holidays up."
Joannie laughed. "Don't you think that's funny?"
"No. And neither would you if you had to take so much of him and the crazy lady."
"Gussie is cute."
"She's crazy as a loon."
"She's sweet to me. And smart, too."
"She's losing her marbles," Gold sulked. "Both of them. Every time I see them they lose another marble."
"She gave me some good Southern advice," Joannie related. "She told me to get myself a dog. If a married couple has no children, she said, they find themselves with nothing to talk about if they don't have a dog. She also warned me not to sit facing each other when we're eating home alone, and to avoid noisy foods, especially breakfast cereals that snap, crackle, and pop, and meats that require excessive chewing." Her imitation was marvelously exact. "Well," Joannie continued, her mood clouding, "we have no children and we don't have a dog, so we've got nothing to talk about but his real-estate and insurance business and all the people he doesn't like. We sit opposite each other when we eat and are sick of staring into each other's face. And he does make a god-awful lot of noise when he chews, and I do too. If we didn't have a radio or television set blasting away at dinner and breakfast when we eat home alone I think we'd both want to die. Dinners are over in six minutes and seem like an eternity."
Gold was uncomfortable, hedged in suddenly by pity and embarrassment. She was still his kid sister. He bent forward and touched her
hand with his index finger.
"Listen, Joannie—"
"Toni,"
"Your name is Joannie."
"I changed it legally when I became an actress."
85
"Did you ever act?"
"I couldn't. I'd get jobs as a chorus girl sometimes, but I couldn't dance."
"Stay for Rose's birthday party Sunday. Come to the house."
She said no at once. "There's someone in Palm Beach I want to see before I go back. I don't like them in a crowd. I had dinner with Rose and Max and Esther last night, and I'm meeting Ida later. I spoke to Sid. Muriel I can do without, but I telephoned her anyway. I think I slowed down her poker game. Is she any better to Victor?" Gold indicated she was not. "Rose is getting deaf, I think."
Gold was relieved to have his impression confirmed. "And Max's speech is slurred. Did you notice that?"
"He drinks a lot during the day. Rose told me."
"He shouldn't be drinking at all," Gold said with surprise. "She never told me."
"You probably never asked. She says it keeps him calm."
"He was always nice to us," Gold remembered. "He was our first in-law."
"How would you feel," Joannie asked, "if you had to work in a post office for over forty years and then found yourself scared because you would soon have to retire?"
"Not good," admitted Gold. "And I'd be drinking a lot more than I do."
"Lousy. God—neither one of them has ever had another job. That's one of the reasons I got out of Coney Island so fast. I couldn't stand the thought of being poor. My friend Charlotte—the one I ran away with to go into beauty contests—her father was a shoemaker. Imagine having a father who's a shoemaker or a tailor today."
"Did you ever win a beauty contest?"
"I'd come in third or fourth. I wasn't heavy enough."
86
"Norma's in San Francisco living with a lay psychologist now, doing social work and still finishing her education, if you can believe her, and I don't. They say Allen is a musician somewhere in Spain or North Africa, but you and I both know he's a junkie and probably gay, although they don't. One day soon a letter will come and we'll all find out he's dead. Rose thinks it may be because she went to work. She cried a little. Max too."
"That's why I don't ask," said Gold. "Tell her I said it isn't her fault. The same thing happens to kids whose mothers don't work."
"You ought to see them more," Joannie said.
"I don't have that much to say to them. And Esther makes me nervous, ever since Mendy died. She clings."
"To what?"
"To nothing. She could go live with either one of her kids. They both want her."
"Not like us," said Joannie.
"Not like us. I wish she'd marry that guy Milt."
"He hasn't asked her. She also tells me," Joannie said, "that you might be going to Washington to work in the government."
"That's a long shot, I think. How will Jerry feel about that?"
"It depends." Joannie responded pleasantly to his sarcasm. "If you get in the papers a lot, he'll approve. Otherwise, he'd rather brag about you as a college professor."
"I'll try to oblige," Gold joked. "Tell Jerry not to worry about the book. Very few people read books and almost nobody reads mine. I certainly won't mention him and I'll try not to use anyone like him as an example."
"How about me?"
"Jesus, I don't know, Joannie—"
"Toni."
"I've got five sisters, one brother, three children, a wife, father, stepmother, and more in-laws and nieces and nephews than I can keep track of. It's hard for m
87
to deal with any subject without coming close to some of them. If I do they're embarrassed, if I don't they feel snubbed. My problem is that I've got to write about the Jewish experience in America and I don't even know what the Jewish experience is. Did Mom ever talk to you about sex?"
"I was only nine when she died."
"What'd she die of?"
"It was after an operation."
"Was it cancer?"
"I don't think so. You better ask someone else."
"What about her neck? She wore it bandaged a lot, didn't she?"
Joannie was unsure. "I don't remember that. You'll just have to ask. We were the two babies. If you want to know what my Jewish experience is, I can tell you." Gold felt a chill blow through him. "It's trying not to be. We play golf now, get drunk, take tennis lessons, and have divorces, just like normal Christian Americans. We talk dirty. We screw around, commit adultery, and talk out loud a lot about fucking."
Gold drew back in horror. "I wish you wouldn't talk like that to me," he chided her gently, almost pleading. "It makes me uncomfortable."
"That's part of your Jewish experience," she said.
"Do you screw around a lot?" he asked.
"Not since I married Jerry," she replied, and teased, "I do worse. I eat pork."
jT ROM the very outset, Julius Gold had been distinctly aloof to the idea of a condominium. Gold wore a topcoat and muffler and put on leather gloves as Sid's car pulled to a stop at the curb in Manhattan Beach. Harriet's winter coat was buttoned to the neck. Her head was covered in a knitted cap pulled down over her ears. Sid carried a light raincoat.
"Birr—it's cold," said Gold.
"Freezing," said Harriet. "It's turning icy."
"I don't feel it," said Gold's father with a vacancy of expression that was eloquent with disdain. Julius Gold was dressed in a baby-blue cardigan and a thin summer sport shirt. He padded about in velvet slippers of navy blue monogrammed in gold with two interwoven letters on each. "Maybe in the back it's warmer," he said without inflection.
Wordlessly he led the three through the bottom floor of the house to the open sunlit porch. In one direction was a brilliant view of the sea. In the other was
89
Sheepshead Bay, bobbing with moored charter fishing boats. The breeze that occasionally stirred was salutary to the extreme.
"Should I get you some blankets?" offered Gold's stepmother with exquisite kindness, seating herself on a bench. She wore a flat straw hat with colored cotton balls dangling from the wide brim and she looked gaily demented.
Sid lay back in a chaise and turned his face blissfully skyward. It was time to begin.
"The city," said Harriet, clucking in elegy. "It's deteriorating rapidly."
"I haven't noticed," said Julius Gold.
"There's lots of crime."
"Not around here," said the game old man. "I ain't been mugged once."
"In the subways," droned Sid. "In the streets."
"We don't go there."
"How are the garbage pickups?" asked Gold.
"Splendid," answered his stepmother, who seemed to have it in only for him. "You may be wondering what it is I am knitting. It may be that I am knitting you an afghan. To keep you warm on frigid days like this."
Gold took off his coat. Harriet unbuttoned hers and removed her hat.
"We wouldn't notice things like garbage," Gold's father elaborated. "We don't have much."
"We eat so little," said Gussie.
"I got sons who take me out to lunch," said Gold's father. "And daughters who want me in their homes for dinner every night."
"Sometimes we're too tired to go."
"Get them something to drink," Gold's father ordered Gussie. "Serve them in the chipped glasses, not me.
Sid asked for beer, Gold for club soda. Harriet would wait for tea.
"Look at my two sons." Julius Gold spoke with distaste. "Fat and skinny." Gold was basking in this compliment when his father added, "Hey, stupid—why
90
don't you put on some weight? You look like a string bean."
Gold, reacquainted with his destiny, heaved a fatalistic sigh. "It's the style now. Ain't you heard?"
"People will think I ain't got what to feed you."
"Ain't there anything I can do to please you?"
"No."
With almost palpable reluctance Sid said, "I heard about this condominium." He rose, wheezing, and chose a chair closer to his father. "It sounds like a good buy."
"In Lauderdale?"
"Hallandale."
"I like Miami Beach."
"There's a good one there too."
"So?" The old man fished in his pocket for a match for his cigar. "Buy it."
"I meant for you."
"For me?" One would have supposed from,his father's pure surprise that the subject had not been broached before. "What are you bothering me with condominiums? Go find me a good apartment to rent. Like always."
"It makes more sense to buy your own home, Pop."
"My own home?" His father's voice was mocking. "How many acres?"
"Thirty-five thousand," said Gold.
"Do I have to share?"
"How many do you need? You ain't growing wheat, you know."
"No acres, Pop," Sid resumed. "It's an apartment in a building. But it's yours and Gussie's. You can stay in Florida as long as you want." Sid was perspiring now from more than the heat.
"I stay there now as long as I want. And I've got my money in blue chips. Why don't you buy it?"
"I would," said Sid, "if I lived in Florida."
"1 don't live there," his father replied with asperity. "It's for a vacation I go." In a milder tone, he said, "Well, Professor, what do you think?"
91
"I would do what Sid says."