“Tomorrow’ll be five.”
“Holy bejesus,” he bit off. “I’ll be here Sunday. I’ll find out.”
She smiled, supplicating.
“Some radio,” he said, raising his voice. “You got the best radio in Harlem.” He prepared to go. “I’ll get my coat.” And by dint of teeth and brows alone: “Sunday.” He stabbed his forefinger at her. And prepared a face to meet the faces in the kitchen. “Well, mazel tov, ” he said cheerfully. “I’m glad I came. That’s some radio. Those red dragons around it. Wow!” He picked up his coat and hat from the covered washtub. “Wait till I tell Mom.”
“And don’t forget Sunday she should be here. Twelve o’clock.”
“Oh, no.”
“It cost a good little piece of money, that radio,” said Joe. “I’m a mehvin, no? Value I recognize right away.”
“Wunderbar! It’s some beauty. Wear it in good health,” Ira joked.
“Wear it without Zaida coming out in his underwear, you should say,” Hannah appended.
“You’re a bright one, all right,” Ira approved.
“I should be on the stage, no?”
“Home talent,” Stella called the front room.
“Oh, shut up.”
“Well.” Ira buttoned up toward leave-taking. “Good night, everybody. Good night, Mamie. I’ll tell Mom.”
“Wait, I have something else to show you.” Diminutive Joe stood up and stretched out his hand. Visible on it, though flesh-colored, a flat round disk was strapped against the palm. “A salissman made a deal with me for a piece of pineapple-cheese pie and a cup of coffee.”
“What is it?”
“Shake hands with me, you’ll find out.”
“It’s not gonna squirt water, is it?”
“Nah, nah. Don’t be afraid. Give a shake.” Ira clasped his uncle’s outstretched hand, squeezed mutually. The device in Joe’s palm emitted a loud, blatant fart. Involuntarily, Ira drew his hand away — to Joe’s beaming chuckle.
“It’s a real fortz, nisht?”
“Couldn’t be better.”
“If it stank a little, it would be just like my second cousin Meyer, the shnorrer. You remember him, Ira?”
“He always looked like he needed a shave.”
“Tockin, tockin,” Mamie corroborated. “With him such a fart would be a trifle. Nothing to disapprove of.”
Hannah giggled. “For once Ira doesn’t look like he’s got something important on his mind.”
X
You dumb sonofabitch, you dumb sonofabitch. Like an animal dragging his trap after him, Ira made through dark 112th Street for the brightly lit store under the streetlamp on the corner of Fifth Avenue. Reaching it, he stopped there, trying to think, could think only of the click of pool balls overhead, sometimes cracking loudly, subdued at others — at the far end of the overhead pool hall, clicking like knitting needles. He moved on, stopped again to watch the big-bosomed woman in white removing the French pastries from show window to refrigerator in the back. It was cold, but he scarcely felt it; nor was he aware of the few passersby, nor throb of low-beam autos rolling along the avenue. Funny only it wasn’t funny: the first thing you thought of was to murder them. Clyde, Clyde, lost his hide. Lucky he had already read An American Tragedy, so he knew better than to act like Clyde. But he didn’t feel that same twist, that same frenzied torsion beyond tolerance, beyond sound return, that had wrenched him so horribly with Minnie, so that even when she told him she was all right he felt he would never wholly recover: the Euclid twist, the fatal snap, the wave of insanity, who would know what he meant? But he had grown wise now, wise guy: blame someone else. What if she didn’t? And what if Mamie finds out something from Zaida?
Oh, shit, he groaned, moved on: think, will you, think. . Four days overdue. Blastula, gastrula, exponential growth. How big was a fetus four days, tomorrow five days old? Big as a bead? Big as a marble?
Let’s see. He didn’t know anything about pregnancy. He knew names. That’s all he knew about everything: parturition, gestation. Names stuck to him like — yeah, like that goddamn thing is stuck to her. Now, wait a minute. What did Edith say? She tried hot baths. That didn’t work. What else? Castor oil. Didn’t work. What the hell was the name of that drug? Ergot. Erg is from physics, quantity of work. Ergo, it didn’t work. What did Mom do? Picked up Morris with her arms and belly. .
He had slowed down to a plod, trying to think, and beginning to feel cold. C’mon, get up a little steam. He quickened gait. Look, Edith turned to you when she needed — when she needed bolstering. . consoling, yes? This is so shameful, screwing your sixteen-year-old kid cousin. You’d have to tell her everything, if she said: how long? From the time she was only thirteen. And if she asked about anybody else. Who-o-ow. Tell her about Minnie, pratting her when you were only twelve yourself; she was only ten. Smash the mask you wear, the pretty gentile mask she’d painted over your twisted Harlem face: pristine innocence; impersonal, nice guy, chaste, noble. Reveal. Reveal. Confess.
Call her up tomorrow — no, wait. Call up Stella first, you dope. What if she says, I’m all right? I’m all right. Oh, boy! But what if not? Then call up Edith, that’s all. Call up Edith, and tell her you’re in trouble. You’re in trouble. You need a favor. Advice. She ain’t perfect, right? She double-crossed Larry with Lewlyn. And when you took those walks with her in Woodstock — if you hadn’t been so scared because all you’d ever screwed was kids—
At 116th Street, he wheeled east, traveled between the few remaining lighted stores and the accompanying glint of trolley tracks. How will you say it? You impregnated your cousin. You inseminated her. Nah, you donkey, who do you think you are? Milton? Oh, Jesus, Milton he had just barely looked at. If he’d stayed home and read, he wouldn’t have known a damn thing about any of this. And maybe Stella would have got over it after a while by herself. All right, you call up Edith, and you ask to come over. All right, so you can’t say you think you knocked up your cousin. You had intercourse, all right? Maybe she’s pregnant; she hasn’t had her period — menstruated, menstruated — four days — it would be five tomorrow. Maybe you don’t have to mention Minnie. Why should you? Stella was bad enough. Don’t even have to tell Edith when you started. Stella’s sixteen now, going on seventeen. That’s old enough. So. . you’re waiting for Mamie to come home, and maybe give you a dollar. Edith knows that. So Stella comes over and puts her arms around you. .
Just within hearing distance on Park Avenue, and seemingly at eye level ahead, the trestle level above the rise of ground, a New York Central coach glided by, the lighted windows of the train like the luminescence of a deep-sea creature. Dubito, cogito, ergo sum. Yeah. Ergo. No fancy Latin is going to talk the kid out of her belly, as Mom would say. Just tell Edith you’re stuck, and why.
He turned north again. What the hell happened to that moon?
They must have just gone to bed when he unlocked the kitchen door, switched on the light, and entered — because Mom, Mom spoke to him softly, when he opened the door to the freezing bedroom, and hung up coat and hat on the wall hooks at the foot of his bed. She always fell asleep last, slowly, like himself, while Pop fell asleep at once, slept hard for a few hours, then lightly the rest of the night; and Minnie in her folding cot beside the bed did very much the same.
“Ira?” Mom said.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“You won’t stay up too late.”