Goodbye, Columbus (25 page)

“Michael? Yes.” Epstein flushed, for reasons Ida Kaufman did not know. He felt the red on his neck and coughed to make it appear that some respiratory failure had caused the blood to rush up from his heart.

“He’s a very nice boy, extremely polite,” she said.

“My brother Sol’s,” Epstein said, “in Detroit.” And he shifted his thoughts to Sol so that the flush might fade: if there had been no words with Sol it would be Michael who would be heir to Epstein Paper Bag. Would he have wanted that? Was it any better than a stranger…?

While Epstein thought, Ida Kaufman smoked, and they drove on without speaking, under the elm trees, the choir of birds, and the new spring sky unfurled like a blue banner.

“He looks like you,” she said.

“What? Who?”

“Michael.”

“No,” Epstein said, “him, he’s the image of Sol.”

“No, no, don’t deny it—” and she exploded with laughter, smoke dragoning out of her mouth; she jerked her head back mightily, “No, no, no, he’s got your face!”

Epstein looked at her, wondering: the lips, big and red, over her teeth, grinning. Why? Of course—your little boy looks like the iceman, she’d made that joke. He grinned, mostly at the thought of going to bed with his sister-in-law, whose everything had dropped even lower than his wife’s.

Epstein’s grin provoked Ida Kaufman into more extravagant mirth. What the hell, he decided, he would try a joke himself.

“Your Linda, who does
she
look like?”

Ida Kaufman’s mouth straightened; her lids narrowed, killing the light in her eyes. Had he said the wrong thing? Stepped too far? Defiled the name of a dead man, a man who’d had cancer yet? But no, for suddenly she raised her arms in front of her, and shrugged her shoulders as though to say, “Who knows, Epstein, who knows?”

Epstein roared. It was so long since he had been with a woman who had a sense of humor; his wife took everything he said seriously. Not Ida Kaufman, though—she laughed so hard her breasts swelled over the top of her tan dress. They were not cups but pitchers. The next thing Epstein knew he was telling her another joke, and another, in the middle of which a cop screamed up alongside him and gave him a ticket for a red light which, in his joy, he had not seen. It was the first of three tickets he received that day; he earned a second racing down to Barnegat later that morning, and a third speeding up the Parkway at dusk, trying not to be too late for dinner. The tickets cost him $32 in all, but, as he told Ida, when you’re laughing so hard you have tears in your eyes, how can you tell the green lights from the red ones, fast from slow?

At seven o’clock that evening he returned Ida to the bus stop on the comer and squeezed a bill into her hands.

“Here,” he said, “Here—buy something”; which brought the day’s total to fifty-two.

Then he turned up the street, already prepared with a story for his wife: a man interested in buying Epstein Paper Bag had kept him away all day, a good prospect. As he pulled into his driveway he saw his wife’s square shape back of the Venetian blinds. She ran one hand across a slat, checking for dust while she awaited her husband’s homecoming.

Prickly heat?

He clutched his pajama trousers around his knees and looked at himself in the bedroom mirror. Downstairs a key turned in the lock but he was too engaged to hear it. Prickly heat is what Herbie always had—a child’s complaint. Was it possible for a grown man to have it? He shuffled closer to the mirror, tripping on his half-hoisted pajamas. Maybe it was a sand rash. Sure, he thought, for during those three warm, sunny weeks, he and Ida Kaufman, when they were through, would rest on the beach in front of the cottage. Sand must have gotten into his trousers and irritated him on the drive up the Parkway. He stepped back now and was squinting at himself in the mirror when Goldie walked into the bedroom. She had just emerged from a hot tub—her bones ached, she had said—and her flesh was boiled red. Her entrance startled Epstein, who had been contemplating his blemish with the intensity of a philosopher. When he turned swiftly from his reflection, his feet caught in his pants leg, he tripped, and the pajamas slipped to the floor. So there they were, naked as Adam and Eve, except that Goldie was red all over, and Epstein had prickly heat, or a sand rash, or—and it came to him as a first principle comes to a metaphysician. Of course! His hands shot down to cover his crotch.

Goldie looked at him, mystified, while Epstein searched for words appropriate to his posture.

At last: “You had a nice bath?”

“Nice, shmice, it was a bath,” his wife mumbled.

“You’ll catch a cold,” Epstein said. “Put something on.”

“I’ll catch a cold? You’ll catch a cold!” She looked at the hands laced across his crotch. “Something hurts?”

“It’s a little chilly,” he said.

“Where?” She motioned towards his protection. “There?”

“All over.”

“Then cover all over.”

He leaned over to pick up his pajama trousers; the instant he dropped the fig leaf of his hands Goldie let out a short airless gasp. “What is
that?
”

“What?”

“That!”

He could not look into the eyes of her face, so concentrated instead on the purple eyes of her droopy breasts. “A sand rash, I think.”

“
Vus far
sand!”

“A rash then,” he said.

She stepped up closer and reached out her hand, not to touch but to point. She drew a little circle of the area with her index finger. “A rash, there?”

“Why not there?” Epstein said. “It’s like a rash on the band or the chest. A rash is a rash.”

“But how come all of a sudden?” his wife said.

“Look, I’m not a doctor,” Epstein said. “It’s there today, maybe tomorrow it’ll be gone. How do I know! I probably got it from the toilet seat at the shop. The
shvartzes
are pigs—”

Goldie made a clicking sound with her tongue.

“You’re calling me a liar?”

She looked up. “Who said liar?” And she gave her own form a swift looking-over, checked limbs, stomach, breasts, to see if she had perhaps caught the rash from him. She looked back at her husband, then at her own body again, and suddenly her eyes widened. “You!” she screamed.

“Shah,” Epstein said, “you’ll wake Michael.”

“You pig! Who, who was it!”

“I told you, the
shvartzes
—”

“Liar! Pig!” Wheeling her way back to the bed, she Bopped onto it so hard the springs squeaked. “Liar!” And then she was off the bed pulling the sheets from it. “I’ll bum them, I’ll bum every one!”

Epstein stepped out of the pajamas that roped his ankles and raced to the bed. “What are you doing—it’s not catching. Only on the toilet seat. You’ll buy a little ammonia—”

“Ammonia!” she yelled, “you should
drink
ammonia!”

“No,” Epstein shouted, “no,” and he grabbed the sheets from her and threw them back over the bed, tucking them in madly. “Leave it be—” He ran to the back of the bed but as he tucked there Goldie raced around and ripped up what he had tucked in the front; so he raced back to the front while Goldie raced around to the back. “Don’t touch me.” she screamed, “don’t come near me, you filthy pig! Go touch some filthy whore!” Then she yanked the sheets off again in one swoop, held them in a ball before her and spat. Epstein grabbed them back and the tug-of-war began, back and forth, back and forth, until they had torn them to shreds. Then for the first time Goldie cried. With white strips looped over her arms she began to sob. “My sheets, my nice clean sheets—” and she threw herself on the bed.

Two faces appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. Sheila Epstein groaned, “Holy Christ!”; the folk singer peeped in, once, twice, and then bobbed out, his feet scuttling down the stairs. Epstein whipped some white strands about him to cover his privates. He did not say a word as his daughter entered.

“Mamma, what’s the matter?”

“Your father,” the voice groaned from the bed, “he has—a rash!” And so violently did she begin to sob that the flesh on her white buttocks rippled and jumped.

“That’s right,” Epstein said, “a rash. That’s a crime? Get out of here! Let your mother and father get some sleep.”

“Why is she crying?” Sheila demanded. “I want an answer!”

“How do I know! I’m a mind reader? This whole family is crazy, who knows what they think!”

“Don’t call my mother crazy!”

“Don’t you raise your voice to me! Respect your father!” He pulled the white strips tighter around him. “Now get out of here!”

“No!”

“Then I’ll throw you out.” He started for the door; his daughter did not move, and he could not bring himself to reach out and push her. Instead he threw back his head and addressed the ceiling. “She’s picketing my bedroom! Get out, you lummox!” He took a step towards her and growled, as though to scare away a stray cat or dog. With all her one hundred and sixty pounds she pushed her father back; in his surprise and hurt he dropped the sheet. And the daughter looked on the father. Under her lipstick she turned white.

Epstein looked up at her. He pleaded, “I got it from the toilet seat. The
shvartzes
—”

Before he could finish, a new head had popped into the doorway, hair messed and lips swollen and red; it was Michael, home from Linda Kaufman, his regular weekend date. “I heard the noise, is any—” and he saw his aunt naked on the bed. When he turned his eyes away, there was Uncle Lou.

“All of you,” Epstein shouted. “Get out!”

But no one obeyed. Sheila blocked the door, politically committed; Michael’s legs were rooted, one with shame, the other curiosity.

“Get out!”

Feet now came pounding up the stairs. “Sheila, should I call somebody—” And then the guitar plucker appeared in the doorway, eager, big-nosed. He surveyed the scene and his gaze, at last, landed on Epstein’s crotch; the beak opened.

“What’s he got? The syph?”

The words hung for a moment, bringing peace. Goldie Epstein stopped crying and raised herself off the bed. The young men in the doorway lowered their eyes. Goldie arched her back, flopped out her breasts, and began to move her lips. “I want…” she said. “I want…”

“What, Mamma?” Sheila demanded. “What is it?”

“I want … a divorce!” She looked amazed when she said it, though not as amazed as her husband; he smacked his palm to his head.

“Divorce! Are you crazy?” Epstein looked around; to Michael he said, “She’s crazy!”

“I want one,” she said, and then her eyes rolled up into her head and she passed out across the sheetless mattress.

After the smelling salts Epstein was ordered to bed in Herbie’s room. He tossed and turned in the narrow bed which he was unused to; in the twin bed beside him he heard Michael breathing. Monday, he thought, Monday he would seek help. A lawyer. No, first a doctor. Surely in a minute a doctor could take a look and tell him what he already knew—that Ida Kaufman was a clean woman. Epstein would swear by it—he had smelled her flesh! The doctor would reassure him: his blemish resulted simply from their rubbing together. It was a temporary thing, produced by two, not transmitted by one. He was innocent! Unless what made him guilty had nothing to do with some dirty bug. But either way the doctor would prescribe for him. And then the lawyer would prescribe. And by then everyone would know including he suddenly realized, his brother Sol who would take special pleasure in thinking the worst. Epstein rolled over and looked to Michael’s bed Pinpoints of light gleamed in the bov’s head- he was awake and wearing the Epstein nose chin and brow.

“Michael?”

“Yes.”

“You’re awake?”

“Yes.”

“Me too,” Epstein said, and then apologetically, “all the excitement…”

He looked back to the ceiling. “Michael?”

“Yes?”

“Nothing…” But he was curious as well as concerned. “Michael, you haven’t got a rash, have you?”

Michael sat up in bed; firmly he said, “No.”

“I just thought,” Epstein said quickly.” You know, I have this rash…” He dwindled off and looked away from the boy, who, it occurred to him again, might have been heir to the business if that stupid Sol hadn’t … But what difference did the business make now. The business had never been for him, but for them. And there was no more them.

He put his hands over his eyes. “The change, the change,” he said. “I don’t even know when it began. Me, Lou Epstein, with a rash. I don’t even feel any more like Lou Epstein. All of a sudden, pffft! and things are changed.” He looked at Michael again, speaking slowly now, stressing every word, as though the boy were more than a nephew, more, in fact, than a single person. “All my life I tried. I swear it, I should drop dead on the spot, if all my life I didn’t try to do right, to give my family what I didn’t have…”

He stopped; it was not exactly what he wanted to say. He flipped on the bedside light and started again, a new way. “I was seven years old, Michael. I came here I was a boy seven years old, and that day, I can remember it like it was yesterday. Your grandparents and me—your father wasn’t born yet, this stuff believe me he doesn’t know. With your grandparents I stood on the dock, waiting for Charlie Goldstein to pick us up. He was your grandfather’s partner in the old country, the thief. Anyway, we waited, and finally he came to pick us up, to take us where we would live. And when he came he had a big can in his hand. And you know what was in it? Kerosene. We stood there and Charlie Goldstein poured it on all our heads. He rubbed it in, to delouse us. It tasted awful. For a little boy it was awful…”