Extraordinary! In a kind of golden haze compounded of candlelight and rumination, he watched Mom plodding heavily but quietly about the kitchen. From a large paper bag on the washtub utility table she removed the braided kholleh, the appealing Sabbath bread, its ornamental braids on top glistening like sardonyx as she transferred the loaf to a platter. She brought the platter to the dining table near the candlesticks, covered the loaf with a white cloth.
“Everything is becoming so frightfully dear,” she said. “A small bunch of soup greens, five cents, an onion three cents, a piece of chuck meat forty cents a pound.” She went to the stove, lifted the lid on the pot of simmering chicken soup, looked down disapprovingly at the contents. “I cut off all the fat from the hen, but still the broth has a thick layer of it.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I know. He does.”
“Well, I don’t. It’s too damned schmaltzy.”
“I know. I know your American tastes, Ira. Yours and Minnie’s. Do you remember when you once fought over who was to get the heel of Herbst corn bread with chicken schmaltz on it? Chicken schmaltz spread on after it was rubbed with garlic.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t mind it today, but not in soup. And anyway, try to show up among American people with garlic on your breath.” He chuckled. “Good old knubl,” reverting to the word in Yiddish. “Knubl, knubl, toil and trouble.”
“For your sake I’ll skim off as much as I can.” She brought out a large serving spoon and a carving knife from the drawer in the built-in china closet, placed the carving knife on the table, and proceeded to skim the chicken soup. “So why has everything become so frightfully dear?”
“Supply and demand,” Ira said tersely.
“And what does that mean?”
“More buyers, fewer sellers.”
“And yet I see the same pushcart peddlers when I go shopping on Sunday morning on Park Avenue. The pushcarts are heaped with fruit and vegetables. So much. Still, every housewife with her few dollars stands aghast at the high prices. A cabbage, to make stuffed cabbage, a lowly cabbage, four cents a pound. It’s unheard of, Iraleh. I have to ponder every Sunday where best to spend the little money I have. It’s the truth. It takes me longer and longer to shop.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
“Why?”
“Why what? That I’ve noticed?”
“No. That everything is so dear.”
“Oh.” Ira scowled. “There must be a shortage somewhere, Mom,” he said testily. “Somebody’s cornered the cabbage market. Or all the Yidlekh are suddenly dying for hullupchehs. Has sour salt gone up too?”
“Alles!” Mom said emphatically. “Turn where you will.”
“Damned if I know, Mom. Tell you the truth, I never gave a damn about economics. That’s what they call this subject in college. It has to do with commerce and trade and profits. And of course, money—gelt.”
“I know it. A Jew like you is something not to be believed. A Jew without regard for making money — who hates huckstering, haggling, bargaining — he wriggles like a worm when I go shopping with him for secondhand clothes. Did you ever hear of such a thing? Not to strive for wealth. It’s something rare, rare. How did you lose out? You’re my son. You’re Chaim Stigman’s son. For success in business, my husband would barter his breath. Had he the judgment to match his craving, believe me he’d be a magnate, but he hasn’t. And you care nothing for success. Even Minnie does.”
Mom rested the serving spoon in a dish and came over to the table and sat down again. “Well, where is he? Plague take him. He’s lost himself in some theater.”
She suddenly became spirited and spiteful. “Would he were lost for good. I’d be rid of him. Gotinyoo!” she invoked. And was interrupted by Ira’s exclamation of warning:
“Mom!”
“Forgive me, zindle. I forgot myself. I forgot our agreement.” And after a short space of silence, “Do you know the rent goes up two dollars a month beginning December?”
“You told me.”
“An Irisher, and for no reason he raises the rent. Talk about Jewish landlords flaying the hide off the tenant. An Irisher. You see? The bleak year take him. He doesn’t do the same? Two dollars, on top of the three he already mulcted from us when he tore out a washtub and knocked a doorway through to the toilet and put in electricity. But to paint these decrepit burrows, to daub the kitchen walls with a fresh coat of that green bile, green slop, he calls paint, condemn him to death before he’ll do it.”
“Yeah?” He forgot himself listening to Mom: who could help but surrender to that contralto richness of feeling in which everything she uttered was steeped?
“And you,” her sorrowful brown eyes searched his face, “do you have a few groats on yourself?”
Ira debated with himself for a few seconds while he returned her steady gaze. The last thing he wanted was a donation from Mom. He knew only too well how much and how often she suffered wringing her paltry allowance from Pop.
“I have a few groats, yes.”
“You have, yes,” she mimicked skeptically.
“I tell you I have!”
“From whence have you? Mamie’s alms were a week ago. You don’t think I know?”
“Aw, Mom. For Christ’s sake!”
“Sinful mother that I am, I mean only if you truly need it. I see you have become a personage. You mingle with higher folk than ever I dreamed you would — than ever you dreamed you would. Isn’t that true? Noo, with empty pockets how can you consort with them — those you’ve told me about? Somehow your destiny is there. I see.” She clasped her hands. “Only speak — I hoard for a Persian lamb coat, you know as well as I do.”
“I don’t need it. Thanks.” Ira nodded in strenuous assurance; less than strenuous Mom wouldn’t believe. “I’ve got almost three dollars in my pocket.”
“Verily?”
“Do I have to show you?”
“No, no. Gott sei dank. From where did you filch three dollars?”
“I didn’t filch it. Edith gave it to me.”
“The Professora? Azoy?”
Ira shrugged — noncommittally.
“Aha. I have a gigolo for a son. Cadger!”
“I’m not a cadger!” He had raised his voice. “I’ve spent a lot of time with her when she’s been in trouble—tsuris, you understand? I’ve listened to her complaining. I’ve sympathized with her. She feels I’ve been of service, I’ve done a great favor, done her a lot of favors. She feels indebted. So what am I going to do? She won’t let me go around penniless.”
“You don’t feel ashamed?”
“I don’t know what to feel.”
“But you take it. Noo, bless her for her generosity. What a fine, noble person she must be.”
“She is.”
“Woe is me.” Mom’s sigh would have been stagy in anyone else, but with her, emotion resonated from the depths of her being.
“Why do you say that?” Ira demanded gruffly.
“I already see,” she said.
“Oh, you do? You see what?”
“Indeed, my son.” A sibylline presence, a sibylline quiescence enveloped her as she spoke. “A woman forsaken is like a vine. She clings to whatever will support her.”
“Who says she’s forsaken?”