“But how?”
“Don’t ask me, but happening at the same time the way they both did-”
Yet to those few who came up and asked him what he thought about the Hirsh business, in each case he replied, “I don’t know. I didn’t know the man.”
He was pleased to see that Miriam, who would normally have remained standing at his side, had shown sense enough to take one of the folding chairs against the wall. A small group of women had gathered around her and were being solicitous.
“Above all, my dear, you mustn’t worry. That’s the worst thing you can do. When I was having my third, my Alvin, the doctor said to me, ‘Whatever you do, don’t worry; it tightens the muscles.’ I shouldn’t worry when my Joe was being transferred here from Schenectady, and we didn’t know if we were going to be able to get a house or have to live in a hotel, and what would I do with Marjorie and Elaine, with their school in the meantime. But I made up my mind that the baby comes first, and I told Joe to go ahead and make any arrangements he wanted and I’d live with them.”
“That’s right,” said Mrs. Green. “Mental attitude is important. I know it’s old-fashioned to think that you have to think beautiful thoughts during your pregnancy, but when I was having Pat I had the phonograph going all day long, and didn’t she get to be the first drum majorette of the high school band? The instructor said she had an innate sense of rhythm, whereas Fred who had trumpet lessons for years could never even keep in step, let alone keep time to the music.”
“It didn’t work with me,” said Gladys Moreland flippantly. “My mother went to the museum every Sunday right up to her seventh month, and I can’t draw a straight line.”
“Oh, but you’ve got artistic temperament,” insisted Mrs. Green. “Anyone who sets foot in your living room can see that you’ve got exquisite taste.”
“Well, I am interested in interior decorating.”
Mrs. Wasserman, wife of the first president of the temple, pulled up a chair alongside Miriam. She was a motherly woman of sixty and had been friendly from the day the Smalls first arrived in Barnard’s Crossing.
“You feel tired these days, huh?”-her way of noting that Miriam was sitting down instead of standing by her husband’s side.
“A little,” Miriam admitted.
She patted her hand. “Pretty soon now. Nothing to worry about. And I’ll bet it will be a boy.”
“David and his mother, especially his mother, won’t accept anything else.”
Mrs. Wasserman laughed. “If it’s a girl, they’ll accept. And after two or three days, you couldn’t get them to swap for a boy. He’s nervous, the rabbi?”
“Who can tell?”
“Oh, they all try to be like that, like it’s not important, but you can tell. Before my first one was born, Jacob, he was so cool and calm. But he had the whole steam system checked over, he thought maybe the house was a little chilly. He had a carpenter come in and make a chute from the baby’s room to the laundry in the basement. In those days we didn’t have a diaper service. He hired a man to shovel the snow off the steps and the walk for the whole season. He took out extra insurance, God forbid anything should happen to him there would be plenty for me and the baby. I’ll bet your husband is the same way.”
Miriam smiled faintly. “You don’t know my David.”
“Well, he’s so busy-”
“It was all I could do to make him stop at the taxicab office to arrange for transportation in case our car wouldn’t start. But for the rest”-she smiled-“he thinks it’s enough to examine his conscience and make sure he isn’t doing anything he thinks wrong.”
“Maybe that’s the best way,” suggested Mrs. Wasserman gently.
“Maybe. Though sometimes-”
“You’d like him to be a little more-excited?”
Miriam nodded.
“It doesn’t mean anything, my dear. Some men, they keep their tenderness all inside. My father, may he rest in peace, he was like that. When I was born-my mother used to tell about it, it was like a family joke-she felt the pains coming so she sent a neighbor’s boy for my father who was in the House of Study. It was in the old country, you understand. He was in the middle of a discussion, and maybe being a young man he was a little embarrassed before the older men, so he told the boy to go back and tell her to cover herself up good and that it would probably pass. But a minute later, he excused himself and ran so fast that he reached home the same time as the neighbor’s boy.”
Miriam laughed. “My David wouldn’t be embarrassed, but if he were really involved in a discussion he might forget to come…”
Morris Goldman who owned a garage drifted toward where the rabbi was standing, talking loudly: “-a little shrimp of a guy, bald-headed with a potbelly, and he turns out to be married to a big gorgeous redhead, a shicksa yet, who is half his age. Oh, Gut Shabbes, Rabbi. I was talking about this guy Hirsh.”
“You knew him?”
“I knew him like I know any customer. You know how it is, they’re waiting around for their car, you pass the time of day. Him I guess I knew a little better than most because he had an old car so he brought it in more often-brakes, flat tire. Once I put a new muffler on.”
“How’d he come to go to you?” asked one of the bystanders. “Your garage is way out of town.”
“He worked at the Goddard Lab and I get all the cars from there. My place is off Route 128, maybe five hundred yards from the Lab. You know, right at the foot of the cutoff just before you get to the Lab. They leave their cars with me for a lube job, a tune-up, and then walk to work from there.”
“You do all kinds of work?” asked the rabbi.
“You bet, and if I say so myself I’ve got as good a crew of mechanics as any place on the North Shore. I’ve got one man, an ignition specialist, I’ve had people come from as far away as Gloucester just so he can service them. Why, your car acting up on you, Rabbi?”
“I’ve been having a bit of trouble,” he said. “She’s hard starting. And sometimes when I come to a stop, she dies.”
“Well, it could be almost anything, Rabbi. Why don’t you ride out someday and let me take a look at it?”
“Maybe I will.” He thought he saw Miriam sending out distress signals, and excused himself. “Are you tired, dear? Would you like to go home now?”
“I think I should,” she said. “I’ll get my coat.”
He was waiting for her to find her things in the cloak-room when he saw a jubilant Jacob Wasserman and Al Becker bearing down on him.
“Well, Rabbi! Things certainly look a lot different now, don’t they?”
“How do you mean?”
“This announcement by the police, by the district attorney,” exclaimed Becker. “Of course, the D.A. was pussyfooting. He’s a politician and all politicians have to double-talk, but there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that Hirsh was murdered. He as much as admitted it. So you’re vindicated! He got you off the hook. You’re in the clear.”
“If you’re referring to the burial service I conducted, Mr. Becker, I needed no vindication from the district attorney. And if I had, I would hardly consider it good news to be let off the hook as you put it, at the cost of a man’s murder.”
“Sure, sure, nobody likes to hear someone has been murdered. I’m sorry about it. Who wouldn’t be? But don’t you see-it knocks the pins out from under Mort Schwarz and his gang. You heard that he called off the regular Board meeting Sunday?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You’ll probably get a card in the mail tomorrow.”
“And what significance do you attach to the cancellation?”
Wasserman rubbed his hands gleefully. “We think perhaps under the circumstances they want to see how the Hirsh business comes out before they bring up the matter of your resignation. I have it from a very reliable source that Marvin Brown refused to go ahead with laying out the road.”