Israel (46 page)

The shelf was nine feet off the floor. Leah tried to grasp a can with the reach extender, but she was just too short. She would need the stepladder.

“Mrs. O'Malley,” Leah pleaded, “Mario should be back from his deliveries soon. He's been gone over an hour. I'll have him bring it right over to you.”

“No. I want it now, young woman. And if I can't have it now, you can just cancel the entire order, including the ham. I'll go elsewhere to spend my money, where they have proper clerks to serve their customers.”

“All right, Mrs. O'Malley! Just wait one moment for me to fetch the stepladder.”

Where was Mario? Leah wondered as she dragged the folded stepladder from its place beside the produce bin and brought it around the front counter. If only he would come back. She knew she had no business climbing the stepladder in her condition, but Mrs. O'Malley's food order was over sixteen dollars. It would be shame to let such business go elsewhere. There was no use trying to stall. Mario was most likely at the corner candy store smoking cigarettes with his friends, and Abe wouldn't be back from Washington Street until around five.

She had maneuvered her swollen body halfway up the rungs before she realized that she'd forgotten the reach extender.

“Mrs. O'Malley, would you—?” Leah pointed to the thingamajig.

“I'm an old woman,” Mrs. O'Malley scowled, “and I don't work here.”

If you and your daughters-in-law didn't do so much shopping here—Leah thought as she worked her way down.
It was hard going; her big belly forced her to lean backward to balance herself. Even this small amount of physical exertion after so many weeks of inactivity was exhausting. She leaned against the stepladder for a moment to catch her breath. She was feeling dizzy. She fought off her fatigue. I can do this, she stubbornly insisted to herself. I will get this old hag her baking soda, and I will be able to tell Abe how much money we made today.

She grabbed the reach extender and climbed back up. The tool was designed to be used with one hand, but Leah's fingers were not strong enough to compress the spring grips that caused the pincer mechanism to expand. She had to use both hands, working the grips like a bellows.

To do so she had to release her steadying hold on the stepladder. She concentrated on working the unwieldy reach extender. She didn't want to climb more than two thirds of the way up the ladder. That meant rising up on her toes.

She felt herself on the brink of a dizzy spell. As her vision darkened she let go of the reach extender and tried not to panic. You're only a few feet off the ground, she thought desperately, but as she tried to climb down her foot missed the next rung.

Leah cried out as she felt herself toppling backward. She pinwheeled her arms, trying to regain her balance, and then she was falling. The back of her head struck the edge of the counter. There was a moment's numbing, sickening pain and then nothing at all except for Mrs. O'Malley's faraway frightened yammering and her impact with the floor, which seemed as soft as a feather bed.

Mrs. O'Malley stared down. There was blood seeping from her nose and ears and more of it dripping from beneath her skirt.

“Little girl?” the old woman called up the back stairs to Becky. “Little girl, come down here! Your mother needs help.”

At that moment the bell above the front door tingled musically as Abe strode in. “Leah! They let the new manager in training go home early because of the holiday weekend—”

The horror was enhanced by Abe's giddy nightmare sense of it's all having happened before. Just like that first miscarriage, Abe found himself thinking as he sat in the hospital waiting lounge. That whole thing is happening again.

There were some differences, of course. Old Dr. Glueck had passed away in '22. The unconscious Leah was carried out of the store on a stretcher by two grim-faced attendants. She went to the hospital by ambulance. There was no Dr. Henderson at the hospital. Henderson had no doubt long since gone on to better things than a staff position at Gouverneur. The young obstetrician Leah had been seeing this time had been far more sanguine about her pregnancy. No semiprivate room had been reserved weeks in advance.

As it turned out, none was needed. Leah went directly from the ambulance to the operating room. In addition to the obstetrician a surgeon had been summoned. There was something wrong—an injury to the head—a nurse told Abe. She has a concussion, they said darkly. There was bleeding inside her brain.

Please, God, Abe thought over and over as he sat alone, reliving the nightmare, don't let her die, I've got nothing if she dies.

Becky was with Sadie. Joseph had gone to services to pray for Leah.

And I'm having my own service right here on the wooden bench outside from where the doctors are cutting my wife to keep her alive. God, I've tried to be better. I really have. If you want me to make it, don't let her die.

He waited ninety minutes before the obstetrician came
out to say that the baby was breech and a Caesarian section called for.

“Meanwhile, the surgeon was operating on your wife's head. You must understand, Mr. Herodetsky. I considered it my responsibility to deliver the baby as quickly as possible because—”

“My wife is dying, is that it, doctor?” Abe asked softly.

“The surgeon will talk to you about that. But you have a healthy son, Mr. Herodetsky.”

Do not do this to me, God, Abe warned. Do not give with one hand and take with the other. I will not accept it; I won't. None of your tricks. Give her back to me.

Twenty minutes later the surgeon came out to say that he was very sorry but that Leah Herodetsky had died on the operating table.

Abe did not carry on; he showed no emotion. He thanked the surgeon and quickly left the hospital. He did not go to Sadie and Joseph's, but to Cherry Street.

“Mr. H, I'm real sorry,” Mario, pale and frightened, stammered when Abe came into the store. “I cleaned up, you see?” the boy said, pointing to the spot where Leah had fallen. “I didn't take nothing, Mr. H. Honest I didn't.”

Abe nodded and managed a thin smile. “You're a good boy. Now go home.”

“Mr. H? How is she?” Abe did not reply and the boy began to blubber. “Oh no, it's all my fault! I shoulda come back sooner.”

“Go home, Mario. It's not your fault.”
We know whose fault it is, don't we, God?

Abe pushed the sobbing boy out of the store, then locked the door and pulled the shades. He went to the back of the market and moved aside several boxes in order to uncover the two empty Thirsty Boy Peaches crates. He took the two quarts of vodka and thrust one into each side pocket of his jacket. Then he left the store.

He couldn't stay at Cherry Street. Too many people could disturb his drinking if he remained there. He would head for the waterfront. Just the river and his vodka could keep him company.

“Abe,” a customer called to him as he locked the door and pocketed his keys, “I need a few things. Open the store.”

“I'm closed up,” Abe snarled, hurrying down the street. There was no Leah, no expanse of life for him to contemplate without her—there was only that first swallow of vodka to think about.

Abe's eyes fluttered open. He stared into total darkness. Where am I? What has happened?

Leah
—The realization that she was gone thudded home to him. “Oh, no,” he moaned. Leah was gone, the vodka was gone, and he was all alone. He remembered how he'd wandered to the waterfront area and searched out a secluded spot from which to watch the river as he drank. Then he must have passed out.

Where am I now? he wondered. He was lying spreadeagled on his back on a rough cement floor. I'm inside. There's a roof over my head. I must have crawled into some sort of warehouse.

“Leah?” Abe began to sob. “Leah, how can you be dead?” His despair tore loose within him. He wept until every tear was expended. He wept himself sober. He did not think of his daughter or his infant son. He wept only for himself.

At some point Abe heard the squeal and clang of a steel door moving on rusty hinges. The noise should have been as abruptly shocking in that still, cavernous darkness as the cry of a great beast in some nocturnal jungle, but, Abe ignored it. He felt invincible, wrapped in the hard shell of his grief.

Directly above him flared a bare electric light bulb.
Abe shouted out, covering his light-sensitive eyes with his hands. The glaring bulb seemed to sear through his brain.

He heard footsteps scuffing toward him and turned to the sound. He squinted up at a man dressed in longshoreman's garb.

“Get up if you can,” the man said. “He's waiting for you.”

“Who is?” Abe demanded. “Where am I?”

“He'll answer all your questions, I guess,” the man said. “My job is to take you to him, and then I can go home. Can you walk or should I carry you?”

Abe rose unsteadily. The longshoreman eyed him. “You all right?” Abe nodded and the man said, “Follow me.”

Abe stumbled along, but then he began to black out. The longshoreman caught him and half-carried, half-dragged him through a maze of crate-stacked pallets to the outdoors and onto a dockside loading bay. It was evening. Abe saw the stars, bleached of their brilliance by the competing illumination cast by the city at night. Across the river glimmered the lights of the New Jersey waterfront.

He had a moment's peace to listen to the water lapping against the pilings, and then a match flared and touched the wick of a kerosene lantern. Several figures, demonic-looking in the wavering light, stepped out from behind the stacked boxes to close around Abe.

“What? What's happening?” Abe blurted, frightened and disoriented.
How long have I been drunk?

“It's Stefano de Fazio, Abe.”

“Stefano?” Abe shielded his eyes against the lantern light.

“You're at my warehouse,” Stefano said. “It's July third, Saturday.”

“L-Leah died yesterday night, yes?”

“You've been drunk since then, wandering the waterfront,” Stefano said. “As soon as I heard about what
happened, I had my men look for you. They found you three hours ago, curled up like a damned worm behind some trash bins. They brought you to my warehouse and we've been waiting for you to sober up.”

“I'm sober now, Stefano,” Abe said mournfully. He smiled tentatively. “You got plenty of hooch here, yes, Stefano? I could have a drink, couldn't I?”

“That's what you want, is it?” Stefano muttered coldly. “Not to know how your daughter is, or your son, for God's sake? What you want is a drink.”

“Oh, don't, Stefano.” Abe shook his head. “You don't know—Just leave me be.”

“Sit down, Abe.” Stefano indicated a couple of boxes stacked in the middle of the loading bay.

“I don't want to. I want a drink!”

Stefano uttered a command in Italian. Abe felt strong hands propel him to the stacked boxes. “Sit down,” somebody snarled into his ear. Abe sat.

“What the hell are you doing?” Abe demanded of Stefano. “What is this?”

Stefano reached out to press his fingers against Abe's lips. “Shh. Listen to me,” he said quietly, “because you could die tonight if you piss me off any more.”

When Stefano removed his fingers, Abe asked, “What's going on? Why are you doing this?”

Stefano scowled at him. He began pacing back and forth in front of Abe. “I'm doing it because I owe you. Besides, I cared about Leah, God rest her soul. I'm doing it because you got a daughter the same age as my Dolores, and now you got a helpless baby boy. I have to straighten you out, Abe. Now that Leah's dead there ain't nobody else to do it. It ain't right you going on a bender at a time like this—”

“Who are you to tell me what's right?” Abe demanded.

“Never mind that,” Stefano snapped, running his fingers through his grey hair in exasperation. “Look at it
this way. You belong to me, my friend. From the day you agreed to be the dummy owner of my Cherry Street building in exchange for free rent, you became one of my people. Your personal business is my business. I don't let my people lose discipline. I'll kill you myself before I let drink do the job.”

“But we're friends. I thought—”

“Oh, brother,” one of the men behind Abe—Tony Bucci, he thought—muttered in embarrassment.

“Yeah, sure you're my friend,” Stefano shrugged.

No, I'm not, Abe thought. I understand now. I've been a fool, but now I understand. You called me your good luck charm, and that's all I am, an underling, a pet.

“You never needed me for that manager job, right Stefano?”

“Need you?” Stefano laughed. “I was killing myself figuring out ways to fit you in without pissing off the people who really ran that place for me. It cost me a bundle to keep everything jake with Louie Carduello. ‘Louie,' I told him, ‘you're gonna be the real boss, but make this new guy think he's important.' Need you? That's a fucking laugh.”

“I hate you for this, Stefano.” Abe stood up. “I'll never forgive you for this.”

Stefano's eyes glittered dangerously. “Sit down.”

“Go to hell, Stefano,” Abe uttered hoarsely. “What will you do, kill your good luck charm? I think you are too superstitious to do that. Yes, I think I will leave here now.”

Stefano glared another moment, then shook his head and started to laugh. “I swear, Abe, I don't know what it is with you, guts or stupidity or maybe a little of both.” He slapped Abe on the back. “You're right, I won't kill you.”

“Then leave me alone,” Abe demanded.

Stefano grew serious. “Oh no, never that, Abe. I'll
never leave you alone. I can't. I'm too superstitious, as you put it. You're nothing to me now, but I owe Leah a promise I made. I'm gonna see to it that her kids are taken care of, my friend. That means no more drinking, Abe. That means if I find out you've been hitting the booze I'll have my guys come around and hurt you—not kill you—but beat you up enough to make you think twice about disobeying me again.”