Part 25 (1/2)
”Did you get enough to eat?” Ethel said She looked pleased but, it seemed to Sammy, a little taken aback
”Did you save room for my babka?” Bubbie said
”I always always save room for dessert, Mrs Kavalier,” Bacon said He turned to Sammy ”Is babka dessert?” save room for dessert, Mrs Kavalier,” Bacon said He turned to Sa ue that it's actually a kind of very sot up to make coffee Bacon stood up and started to clear away the dishes
”Enough already,” Sa hi athered up the dirty plates and utensils and carried them into the tiny kitchen
”Don't stack theets the botto to be helpful”
”Your kind of help is worse than no help” She set the percolator on the ring and turned on the gas ”Stand back,” she said, striking a as stoves for thirty years, but each ti She ran water in the sink and slid the dishes in Steam rose from the bubbles of Lux; the dishwater must of course be antibacterially hot ”He looks just like Josef draws hi all right with your cousin?”
Sas were hurt ”He really wanted to come, Ma,” he said ”But it was short notice, you know?”
”It doesn't ”
”Is there news? What does the ency say?”
”Hoffal”
”With the nuns” As a girl, during the first war, Ethel had been sheltered briefly by Orthodox nuns They had treated her with a kindness that she had never forgotten, and Sammy knew that she would have preferred her little nephew to reuese Care, rather than to set off across a submarine-haunted ocean in a thirdhand steamer with a rickety name But the nuns were apparently under pressure fro Jewish children fro
”The boat is on its way over there now,” Saot itself into one of these convoy things, you knoith five US Navy destroyers Thoht to be here in a month, Joe said”
”A month Here” His mother handed him a dishtowel and a dish ”Dry”
”Yeah, so Joe's happy about that He see those crazy hours like he used to anyhall the books he orking on but three[8][8] I had to hire I had to hire five five guys to replace hi down He was getting wild before Fighting Getting hurt on purpose”
”The thing is, I think he likes it here,” Sammy said ”I wouldn't be surprised if he decided to stay, even after the war's over”
”Kayn ayn hora,” his mother said ”Let's hope he has a choice” his mother said ”Let's hope he has a choice”
”That's a cheerful thought”
”I don't know this girl very well But she seeo so far as to bestow actual praise on Rosa ”I got the feeling she has a good head on her shoulders” The previous month, Joe and Rosa had taken Ethel to see Here Comes Mr Jordan; Here Coomery ”He could do omery ”He could do ht”
Then, for a minute, he just dried the dishes and forks she passed to him and set them, under his mother's scrutiny, in the rack There was no sound but the squeak of the dishtowel, the chi of hot water into the sink Bacon and Bubbie sees to say to each other It was one of those prolonged silences that meant, Ethel always used to say, that somewhere an idiot had just been born
”I'd like to meet someone, you know,” Sa Just recently Meet someone nice” like to meet someone, you know,” Sa Just recently Meet someone nice”
His mother shut off the tap and pulled the stopper fro water
”I'd like that, too,” she said She opened another drawer and took out the box of waxed paper She tore off a piece, spread it on the zinc counter, and took a dish fro the dish upside down on the sheet of waxed paper
”Who's that?”
She nodded toward the dining room ”That one” She folded the ends of the sheet of paper up over the dish and smoothed theht,” Saood Yeah, I think he'll do fine”
”Will he?” she said, and, lifting the wrapped dish, she looked hih it would recur often enough in his memory in later years, he would never know exactly what she hadday, a wealthy young New Yorker narandfathers and was called before the Torah to become a bar h she had never le an invitation to the reception at the Pierre as the date of one of the entertainers on the bill, the perfor Cavalieri
When she woke from a post-coital nap that Saturday afternoon, in her bedroo in front of her scarf-drapedwith remarkable interest at his own naked reflection Rosa pulled a pillow over her head and lay very still so that she could watch hi himself She could smell the trace of his breath in her own exhalations, the indeterminate but distinctive flavor of his lips, somewhere between ht that he was engaging in rank self-admiration, and since she considered his lack of vanity about his appearance-his ink-stained shi+rtfronts, rued trouser cuffs-to be itself a kind of vanity, one for which she loved hiht he had added to his long, spare fraoing out, he was so absorbed by his work that he rarely took ti quite mysteriously on coffee and bananas, but as Rosa herself, to her considerable satisfaction, had begun to absorb Joe uest at her father's dinner table, where there were never fewer than five courses and three different varieties of wine His ribs no longer stuck out, and his skinny little-boy's behind had taken on a ed in a process of transferring hiue to New York, a little at a time, and every day there was more of him on this side of the ocean She wondered if this could be what he was looking at now-this evidence of his irrefutable existence here, on this shore, in this bedrooloved knuckles of his spine, the stippled pale stone of his shoulders Presently, however, she beca his blue eyes, tightening the theain As he did so hein soestured broadly, flourishi+ng his fingers around a handful of e
Finally she couldn't stand it anymore and threw off the pillow
”What the hell are you doing?”
He juarette fro table He retrieved it, brushi+ng ash fro were you watching?”
”An hour,” she lied
He nodded Had he really been standing there like that for an hour, giving hi?
”You looked like you were trying to hypnotize yourself or souess I'ht in the colish had i in front of your family Your father” Rosa's father had not appeared at a Saks faht just to see Joe perforious portion of the proceedings that , too, at B'nai Jeshurun, but God forbid He hadn't been inside a synagogue, he calculated, since 1899 ”Right now he thinks I'ician in New York,” Joe continued ”Because he's never seen ht, maybe he'll think I'm a palooka”
”He'll love you,” she said She was touched to see that her father's opinion meant so much to hi to her ”Don't worry”
”Mm-hmm,” he said ”You already think I' a hand up his thigh and taking hold of his penis, which at once began to show renewed interest in her ”I know you're ic”
She had seen his act twice now The truth was that Joe was a talented but careless performer, liable to bite off more than he could chew He had renewed his career, as promised, with the Hoffman reception at the Hotel Trevi the previous Noveetting the disdain in which his teacher Bernard Kornblu to his fatal weakness, fro and the beau geste-he becaon, an elaborate set-piece trick that he had purchased, on credit, froic Shop It was a hoary bit ofFoo, in which a silk ”dragon” in a brass cage was s, each presented to the inspection of a witness for signs of seaorging so to a member of the audience who, up to this point, had not been aware of his watch's or lighter's disappearance froreat strength, however, and he was long out of practice In the Trevi's lobby, before the show, there was an unpleasant incident with the bar , which had to be hastily s the perforht eyebrow He had moved quickly into cards and coins after that, and here his renewed training and the native gifts of his fingers served him well He caused half-dollars and queens to behave in bizarre ways, endowed them with sentience and e stor fro Maurice Hoff his own bar mitzvah in teeks and had determined to is followed: all at once Joe discovered that he had beco the wealthy, male Jewish adolescents of the Upper West Side, many of them, of course, loyal readers of Empire comic books They didn't seem to care that from time to time an ace dropped from his watchband or that he misread their minds They adored him, and he accepted their adoration In fact, he seemed actively to seek out the coratified his ego, Rosa thought, as because he longed to see his brother again so badly And because their co to be awed, stubborn in their desire to get to the bottos for Thoence, at once innocent and hard-edged, homely or handsome but uniformly well dressed, their faces free of all shadow save those of acne or an incipient beard These were boys who lived free of the fear of invasion, occupation, cruel and arbitrary laws With Rosa's encouragereat ardor, to envision the transformation of his brother into an Aements with the parents beforehand, the naht (naturally with a commensurate increase in his fee) perform an escape; but here he drew the line