“Oy, mad to the death,” said Mom. “Isn’t this a child’s mind?”
“Leah, I warn you!”
“Mom, please,” Ira pleaded vehemently. “Can’t you just let him talk? You’re only making things worse all the time. Anh, what’s the use.” He snapped the book shut.
But Mom seemed obdurate beyond retrieval now, stony, irrevocably desolate. “I’m making things worse. I. Two dollars a whole week he owes me, and if I didn’t flay him for it, he’d cheat me. He’d forget. But me, who penny by penny, with tears, scraped together a few hundred dollars toward some comfort in my life, he would wrest away to squander in his lunatic schemes. Oh, my mother, where you lie there in the grave: ‘Break it off,’ you said. ‘Give him back his gift. He’s a lunatic.’ Everyone in Tysmenicz comes to me with the same story, everyone who knows him: ‘Er’s a mishugeneh. Break it off.’ Ha, Mamaleh, Mamaleh, that I didn’t heed you. But with four younger sisters at my back, how could I? ‘No, Mamaleh,’ I said. ‘My shoulders are broad. Sorrows I can bear, griefs won’t break me.’”
“And good wares they foisted on me too!”
“I’m getting the hell out of here!” Ira slammed his book down on the table and sprang to his feet.
“Go, go,” Mom invited. “Who’s keeping you? Do you still have to hear this story?”
“He won’t take your lousy few hundred dollars!” Ira raged. “You’re out of your mind!”
“No? I don’t know his burnings and his blisterings. He’ll burn at me until I offer it, just for relief.”
“He won’t, I tell you! He can’t!”
“Ah, would she come to her senses!” Pop addressed unseen auditors in a transport of fulfillment. “Would she sponsor me with that few hundred. The balance, if the bank didn’t loan me, suppliers would advance. And then”—Pop glowed with inner light—“who would sidle up to the restaurant window to peer in and count my customers? Her brothers: Moe and Saul, that swindler, and Max and Harry with his long nose. ‘Come in,’ I would wave from the cash register. ‘Come in.’ And I would say: ‘Why loiter outside? Have a prune tart. Have a coffee.’ I can be munificent too. And who would be the first one to brag that her husband had a kopf for business like no other? She.”
“Mad to the death.” Mom sat perfectly still, her palms flat on the figured red cloth of the housedress on her broad thighs; only her head shook, barely, as if trembling — trembling with incredulity. “Isn’t this a dreamer? Isn’t this a child? What I married.” Then suddenly aroused: “Talk till you drop! This time I won’t budge. You can’t tempt me. Ah.” She rubbed her breast in a fierce joy of triumph. “The few hundred are mine.”
“Cow!”
“Baby!”
“You goad me?” Pop jumped to his feet. “I warned you!”
“Fling, if you dare. Mad dog!” Mom pushed the table suddenly and stood up. A candle guttered out, smoked.
“Pop!” Ira stood between them. “For Christ’s sake, will you quit it! What the hell, are you going crazy?”
“Out of the way! Shtarkeh! Na!” He gave Ira a sudden shove.
“I fear you,” Mom taunted. “I’m not that same timid, docile slave you brought over from Galitzia.”
“No? Let’s see.” He had turned quite pale. All in one motion he seized Mom’s half-empty glass from the table and dashed the tea in her face.
“You filth! You mange!” Mom’s voice seemed to drop whole octaves, appallingly, viscerally frenzied. “Vile mannikin!” She wiped drops from her chin that were falling on her florid bosom. “Be torn to shreds.”
“You still seek? I’ll slap your gross mouth too!” Pop advanced on her.
“And I’ll submit?”
Ira threw himself at his father. “That’s enough, Pop. Cut it out!”
“Let go!”
“No!”
“I said let go!” Pop stamped his foot.
“No!”
“No?” Pop made a sudden vicious thrust downward toward Ira’s crotch — and not a moment too soon Ira pinned Pop’s arms to his sides.
“Cut it out, Pop! You do that again—”
They tussled, swayed. Compact, surging with rage, Pop’s head in his felt hat butted his son’s face, while he tried to bowl him over, yelled curses in Yiddish, and Mom screamed — and then, from below: a series of terrifying thumps, like demented gaveling at a mad auction: thump, thump, thump, and unintelligible epithets like shouted bids, undistinguishable babel of opprobrium converging on one distinct word: “Jews!” Thump. Thump. Thump. Pop went slack. And the next instant, as if he were falling away, he tore himself from Ira’s hold. Thump. Thump. Thump.
“Ah!” Mom patted her stomach in an exaltation of gloating. “A splendid goy! Oh, is that a fine goy! Stamp your foot again, Chaim!”
“Leah.” Pop retreated. “Leah, enough.”
“Why enough? Knock their ceiling down. He’ll come up and smash your paltry face. I would rejoice.”
“Leah, my jewel.”
“Huh. Huh. I’ll tell him: there he stands.” Her head snapped back, and she pointed at Pop. “Oy, Raboinish ha loilim, let him come up!”
“Leah, please,” Pop entreated. “Say you tumbled, you tripped, you fell. You knocked a chair over.”
“No. Let him know what a cur I have here. Look, I’ll show him.” She wiped the moisture from her cheek, mocking her husband in what English she had. “Mister Irisher, azoy you do vit your vife’s gless tea? Look on mein housedress, vie sit’s vet. Ai, may he buffet you soundly!”
“Mom!” Ira implored hopelessly. “Calm down.” And in a sudden fit of wrath: “You were to blame yourself. You didn’t have to bring up that goddamn two dollars. Friday, let the goddamn thing go!” He pawed at the air. “Two lousy bucks!”
“Gey mir in der erd. It was my money. A whole week he tormented my blood — and now this?” Her chin lowered to the dark stain below the neckline of the housedress. “Lord bless me, that Esau is on the way!”
“Leah, I beg before you. Two dollars is due you. True. True. You’re right. Here. Let’s not dispute.” Pop tugged at his pocketbook, fingered among the banknotes. In the frantic haste he tore the bills out, a third greenback clung to the second.
“Na, a drittle!” Irate with himself, he threw all three to the floor. “Here. Peace. Turn him aside. You’re my wife, no?”
“Burn to a cinder — for my sake!” The tears starting from her eyes, Mom stooped and gathered up the scattered dollar bills. “How hideous, my life. Martira. Martira. L’chaim, na,” she punned bitterly on Pop’s name, and straightening up, the three greenbacks in one hand, she made a fig with the other: “To life indeed.”
“Do you hear anyone?” Poised for retreat, Pop shrank against the bedroom door. “Ira, child, tell me.”
“Yeah.” Ira thought he heard something in the hall. “Yes.” Now what? “I hear somebody.”
“Maybe it’s the virago. She won’t devour you,” Mom advised her husband — as she herself staunchly confronted the door to the hall. Pop slipped into the dark of the bedroom. Without a knock, the knob turned, the hall door opened — Minnie entered. “Come out, my stalwart,” Mom called. “It’s your daughter.”
Everything took on a different tenor the moment Minnie entered. She dissipated tension. Rosy-cheeked from the cold, breathing quickly with hurrying and climbing of stairs, she looked pretty and animated as she got out of her coat, took off her cloche, shook her reddish bobbed hair.