Rich Man, Poor Man

“What a family.” She shook her head. “The famous Jordache collection of authentic mummies. Why don’t you get on the train with me and come live in New York?”

“You know I can’t do that,” he said.

“I thought I couldn’t do it, too,” she said. “And I’m doing it.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why’re you going? What happened?”

“A lot of things,” she said vaguely. She took a long swig of her whiskey. “A man mostly.” She looked at him defiantly. “A man wants to marry me.”

“Who? Boylan?”

Her eyes dilated, grew darker in the dim saloon. “How do you know?”

“Tommy told me.”

“How does he know?”

Well, why not, he thought, She asked for it. Jealousy and shame for her made him want to hurt her. “He went up to the hill and looked in through a window.”

“What did he see?” she asked coldly.

“Boylan. Naked.”

“He didn’t get much of a show, poor Tommy.” She laughed. The laugh was metallic. “He’s not much to look at, Teddy Boylan. Did he have the good luck to see me naked, too?”

“No.”

“Too bad,” she said. “It would have made his trip worthwhile.” There was something hard and self-wounding in his sister that Rudolph had never seen in her before. “How did he know I was there?”

“Boylan called upstairs to ask you if you wanted to have your drink there.”

“Oh,” she said. “That night. That was a big night. Some time I’ll tell you about it.” She studied his face. “Don’t look so stormy. Sisters have a habit of growing up and going out with fellas.”

“But Boylan,” he said bitterly. “That puny old man.”

“He’s not that old,” she said. “And not that puny.”

“You liked him,” he said accusingly.

“I liked it,” she said. Her face became very sober. “I liked it better than anything that ever happened to me.”

“Then why’re you ru

“Because if I stay here long enough, I’ll wind up marrying him. And Teddy Boylan’s not fit for your pure, beautiful little sister to marry. It’s complicated, isn’t it? Is your life complicated, too? Is there some dark, sinful passion you’re nursing in your bosom, too? An older woman you visit while her husband’s at the office, a …?”

“Don’t make fun of me,” he said.

“Sorry.” She touched his hand, then gestured toward the bartender. When he came over, she said, “One more, please.” As the bartender went back to fill the order, she said, “Ma was drunk when I left. She finished all your birthday wine. The blood of the lamb. That’s all that family needs—” She spoke as though they were discussing the idlosyncracies of strangers. “A drunken crazy old lady. She called me a harlot.” Gretchen chuckled. “A last loving farewell to the girl going to the big city. Get out,” she said harshly, “get out before they finish crippling you. Get out of that house where nobody has a friend, where the doorbell never rings.”

“I’m not crippled,” he said.

“You’re frozen in an act, Brother.” The hostility was out in the open now. “You don’t fool me. Everybody’s darling, and you don’t give a good goddamn if the whole world lives or dies. If that’s not being crippled, put me in a wheelchair any day.”

The bartender came over and put her drink down in front of her and half filled the glass with soda.

“What the hell,” Rudolph said, standing up, “if that’s what you think of me, there’s no sense in my hanging around any more. You don’t need me.”

“No, I don’t,” she said.

“Here’s the ticket for your bag.” He handed her the slip of paper.

“Thanks,” she said woodenly. “You’ve done your good deed for the day. And I’ve done mine.”

He left her sitting there in the bar, drinking her second whiskey, her lovely, oval face flushed at the cheek bones, her eyes shining, her wide mouth avid, beautiful, hungry, bitter, already a thousand miles removed from the dingy apartment above the bakery, removed from her father and mother, her brothers, her lover, on her way to a city that engulfed a million girls a year.

He walked slowly toward home, tears for himself in his eyes. They were right, they were right about him, his brother, his sister; their judgments on him were just. He had to change. How do you change, what do you change? Your genes, your chromosomes, your sign of the zodiac?

As he neared Vanderhoff Street, he stopped. He couldn’t bear the thought of going home yet. He didn’t want to see his mother drunk, he didn’t want to see that stu

Far out, he could see something moving. It was his father’s shell, the oars going in a fierce, even rhythm, biting the water, going upstream.

He remembered that his father had killed two men, one with a knife, one with a bayonet.

He felt empty and beaten. The whiskey he had drunk burned in his chest and there was a sour taste in his mouth.

I’ll remember this birthday, he thought.

X

Mary Pease Jordache sat in the living room, in darkness and in the fumes of smoke from the roast goose. She was oblivious to them and to the vinegary aroma of the cabbage that lay cold on the disordered platter. Two of them gone, she thought, the thug and the harlot. I have Rudolph alone now, she exulted drunkenly. If only a storm came up and swamped the shell, far, far out on the cold river, what a day it would be.

Chapter 7

I

A horn blew outside the garage and Tom climbed out from under the Ford on which he was working in the grease pit, and wiping his hands on a rag, went out to where the Oldsmobile was standing next to one of the pumps.

“Fill’er up,” Mr. Herbert said. He was a steady customer, a real estate man who had taken options on outlying properties near the garage at low, wartime prices, lying in wait for the post-war boom. Now that the Japanese had surrendered, his car passed the garage frequently. He bought all his gas at the Jordache station, using the black-market ration stamps Harold Jordache sold him.

Thomas unscrewed the tank cap and ran the gasoline in, holding onto the trigger of the hose nozzle. It was a hot afternoon and the fumes from the flowing gasoline rose in visible waves from the tank. Thomas turned his head, trying to avoid breathing in the vapor. He had a headache every night from this job. The Germans are using chemical warfare on me, he thought, now that the war is over. He thought of his uncle as German in a way that he didn’t think of his father as German. There was the accent, of course, and the two pale-blonde daughters who were dressed in vaguely Bavarian fashion on holidays, and the heavy meals of sausage, smoked pork, and kraut, and the constant sound of people singing Wagner and Schubert lieder on the phonograph in the house, because Mrs. Jordache loved music. Tante Elsa, she asked Thomas to call her.

Thomas was alone in the garage. Coyne, the mechanic, was sick this week, and the second man was out on a call. It was two o’clock in the afternoon and Harold Jordache was still home at lunch. Sauerbraten mit spetzli and three bottles of Miller High Life and a nice snooze on the big bed upstairs with his fat wife to make sure they didn’t overwork and have premature heart attacks. Thomas was just as glad that the maid gave him two sandwiches and some fruit in a bag for his lunch to eat at the garage. The less he saw of his uncle and his family, the better he liked it. It was enough he had to live in the house, in the minuscule room in the attic, where he lay sweating all night in the heat that had collected there under the roof in the summer sun during the day. Fifteen dollars a week. His Uncle Harold had made a good thing out of that burning cross in Port Philip.