The Inheritors (13 page)

Aunt Prue was in the waiting room of the hospital when I got there. “How is she?” I asked.

“She lost the baby,” said Aunt Prue in a dull voice.

“I don’t give a damn about the baby!” I almost shouted. “How is she?”

“I don’t know. She’s been in the operating room since she got here.”

I went down the corridor to the nurses’ post. “I’m Mr. Gaunt,” I said. “I’d like to get some information about my wife. She was just brought in here a few hours ago.”

“Just a moment, Mr. Gaunt, I’ll find out.” She picked up a phone and dialed a number. “Info on a new admission. Mrs. Gaunt.” She listened for a moment, then nodded. She depressed the bar and dialed again. She looked over at me. “I’m calling operation status.”

After a moment, someone answered. “Check on Mrs. Gaunt,” she said into the phone. “Her husband is here.” She listened for a minute, then put down the telephone and came over to me.

“She’s on her way down to her room,” she said in a professionally soothing voice that did nothing for me at all. “If you’ll go back to the waiting room, Mr. Gaunt, Dr. Ryan will be with you in a moment.”

“Thank you,” I said and went back to Aunt Prue.

It was fifteen minutes before he came into the waiting room. He knew Aunt Prue. He was a young man, but his face was gray and tired and his eyes were bloodshot with strain. He didn’t waste words. “If you’ll come with me, Mr. Gaunt, I’ll fill you in while we’re on our way.”

We went out into the hall and into an elevator. He pressed a button and it began to climb slowly, as only a hospital elevator can.

“Your wife is very low,” he said in his quiet voice. “By the time she was discovered she had lost a great deal of blood. Apparently she began to bleed in the night while asleep, but did not wake up until she actually began to abort. Then she tried to get out of bed for help, but she was already too weak and collapsed. My guess is that it was almost three hours before she was discovered. It’s a miracle that she was alive when she was found.”

The elevator door opened and we followed him down the hall to her room. We paused outside the door. “What’s her chances?” I asked, my words strangely impersonal in my own ears.

“We’re doing the best we can. We had to replace almost all her blood.” He looked right into my eyes. “I took the liberty of calling a priest in case she was Catholic.”

“She’s not,” I said. “She’s Episcopalian.” And I went into the room.

A nurse looked over her shoulder and saw us and moved away from the side of the bed. I looked down at her. There was a tube running into her arm, another into her nostril. She was white, whiter than I had ever seen anyone. I moved over to the bed and took her hand.

After a moment she seemed to become aware of me. Her eyelids fluttered and opened. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear her.

I put my face very close to her. “Don’t try to speak, Barbara,” I said. “Everything will be all right.”

Her eyes looked into mine. Again I felt the wonder of their blueness. “Steve,” her voice was the barest whisper. “I’m sorry about the baby.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We’ll have others.”

Her eyes searched mine. “You mean that?”

“You’ll know I do,” I said. “As soon as you get out of here.”

A faint smile came to her eyes. “I love you,” she said.

“I love you,” I said. She seemed to give a small sigh of happiness and her lips parted. “I’ve always loved you. You know that,” I said.

But she didn’t and she never would. I didn’t even know she was dead until the doctor came over and gently took my hand away from her.

***

After the funeral I went back to the apartment and locked the door and turned off. I didn’t want to see or speak to anyone.

For the first few days people tried telephoning, but I wouldn’t answer and anyone who came was turned away downstairs. By the third day no one called, not even the office. They had all gotten the message.

I wandered through the apartment like a disembodied ghost. She was still there. Everywhere. The perfume of her was in the bed, her clothes were in the closet, her makeup was still spread over the bathroom.

The television set was on, but I didn’t even look at it. It was just on and after the third day of never being off, the tube burned out and I never bothered having it replaced. Now it was really quiet. Deadly quiet. Like the grave. Like where Barbara was.

Sometime during the fourth day the doorbell rang. I just sat on the couch. Whoever it was would go away. The bell rang again. Insistently.

I got up. “Who is it?” I asked through the closed door.

“Sam Benjamin,” he said.

“Go away,” I said. “I don’t want to see you.”

“I want to see you,” he shouted. “Do you open this door or do I have to break it in?”

I opened the door. “You saw me,” I said and started to close it.

But his foot was in the door now and his weight was against it, all two hundred pounds of him. I went back with the door.

He straightened up, puffing. “That’s better,” he said, closing the door behind him.

“What do you want?” I asked.

He looked at me. “It’s time you got out of here.”

I walked away from him and back to the couch. He followed me. “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

“I should,” he said. “You’re really no concern of mine.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“But I still need you,” he said.

“That’s what Barbara said about you.”

“She did?” He looked at me shrewdly. “She was smarter than I thought.” He walked over to the dining room table and looked at the remnants of food on the plates. “When did you eat last?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t remember. When I get hungry I call downstairs.”

“Do you have any booze here?”

“Behind the bar,” I said. “Help yourself.”

He went to the bar and took down a bottle of Scotch and poured two glasses full to the brim. He came back to me. “Here, take one. You need a drink.”

“I don’t want any.”

He put the glass down and, sipping his own drink thoughtfully, wandered off into the apartment. After a few minutes I heard him in the bedroom, then it was quiet. I stared at the glass of whiskey and ignored him.

Or tried to. But after about fifteen minutes and he still hadn’t come out, I went after him.

There was a pile of clothing lying on the floor. He came out of her closet with another armful and threw it on top of the rest. He saw me and stopped.

“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled. “Those are Barbara’s clothes!”

“I know it,” he said, puffing a little. “But what good are they doing to do you? Unless you intend to wear them?”

I began to put them back in the closet. He knocked them out of my arms and with surprising strength pushed me back. I swung at him, but he grabbed my wrists and held them.

“She’s dead!” he said sharply. “She’s dead and you might as well accept it. She’s dead and you’ll never bring her back. So stop trying to climb into the grave with her!”

“I killed her!” I said wildly. “If I hadn’t sent her away, she would still be alive. She wouldn’t have been alone when it happened.”

“It would have happened anyway,” he said quietly. “Everybody dies in their own time.”

“You know,” I said bitterly. “You Jews know everything. Even about death.”

“Yes. Even about death,” he said gently and let go of my wrists. “We Jews have six thousand years of experience with death. We have learned to live with it. We had to.”

“How do you live with it?”

“We cry,” he said.

“I forgot how. The last time I cried I was a little boy. I’m grown up now.”

“Try it,” he said. “It will help.”

“You’ll have to teach me,” I said nastily.

“I will,” he said. He looked around the room and took a hat from my closet and put it on his head. He turned to face me.

I stared at him. The too-small hat on his head, his ruddy shining face, the gleaming black-rimmed glasses. It was all too ridiculous. I almost began to laugh but something stopped me.

“At every funeral and once a year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we say a certain prayer for the dead. It’s called Kaddish.”

“And that makes you cry?” I asked.

“It never fails,” he said. “Because it’s not only for your dead but it’s for all the dead since time began.” He took my hand, “Now say this after me—
Yisgadal, v’yiskadash
—”

He waited and I repeated the words after him. “
Yisgadal
,
v’yiskadahs
—”

I saw the tears come into his eyes behind his shining glasses. He opened his mouth to speak, but his voice began to fail him. “
Sh’may rabbo
—”

I felt the tears burning their way to my eyes. I put my hands up and covered my face. “Barbara!” I cried.

I cried.

I cried.

I cried.

New York, 1955–1960

BOOK TWO

SAM BENJAMIN

CHAPTER ONE

He woke from his sleep feeling drugged and heavy. He was quiet for a moment, then pushed himself up in the bed. The door opened and Denise stood there looking at him.

“So you finally made it,” she said.

He stared at her. “I feel lousy. I got a mouthful of stones.”

“You ought to have,” she said without sympathy. “Must you try to drink all the whiskey in town in one sitting?”

“Don’t
hok
me,” he said, without resentment. “I got a headache.”

She was silent for a moment. “I’ll get you some aspirin.”

She went into the bathroom and he struggled to his feet and stepped on the scale next to the bed. He looked down at the indicator and cursed. Two hundred and twenty pounds.

Denise heard him as she came back into the room. “It’s the drinking,” she said, handing him the aspirin and a glass of water.

He swallowed the aspirin, making a face. “I eat pretty good too.”

“You eat too much, you drink too much,” she said. “You got to start somewhere. Dr. Farber says stop drinking. The weight’s too much for your heart. You’re not getting any younger.”

“Don’t tell me,” he said wearily. “I know. Just tell Mamie to get me some breakfast.” He started for the bathroom.

“Coffee and toast?”

He stopped and looked back at her. “You know better than that. The usual. Four eggs, bacon, rolls, the works. I need the energy.”

“It’s your funeral,” she said.

“Then you’ll be a rich widow.”

She smiled at him. “Promises, promises. Ever since we met that’s all I got from you.”

He went to her and kissed her cheek. “Mama, get breakfast. You talk too much.”

She touched his face and left the room. He stood there for a moment after she left, listening to her voice as she called instructions to the cook, then he went into the bathroom.

As usual the telephone rang while he was sitting on the john. Denise’s voice came through the closed door. “It’s for you. Roger.”

“Damn it,” he said. “Tell him I’ll be right out.” He pushed the flush and shouted over the roar of the water. “And call the phone company. I want an extension in here.”

He went back into the bedroom and picked up the telephone. “Yes, Roger.”

“We’re confirmed for the Rome flight. Alitalia, nine o’clock tonight.” Roger’s voice was hesitant. “You sure you want to go?”

“Of course I’m sure,” he snapped.

“We’re four hundred thousand to the good now,” Roger said. “You make that deal and it’s gone.”

“We don’t make that deal and it will go away,” he said. “In dribs and drabs and we won’t know what happened to it. We got to keep movin’ or we lose it all.”

“What makes you so hot to keep pushing?” Roger said.

“I been waiting all my life for this chance,” he said. “And I’m not goin’ to pass it up.”

“But half that money is mine,” Roger said.

“I’ll guarantee your half,” he said, knowing full well that they were only words. If it went, he would have no money to guarantee Roger anything.

Roger knew it too. “That Gaunt has got your head turned. What if he doesn’t come through?”

“He’ll come through,” Sam said confidently. “He’s the one person around that can see beyond the edge of his nose. Besides, he’s lucky for me.”

Roger knew when to stop. “What time will you be down at the office?”

“In about an hour,” he said. “I’ll pack a bag and we’ll leave from there.”

When he put down the telephone, Denise had returned. “You’re still going through with it?”

He nodded.

“You don’t have to,” she said. “We have enough. The kids don’t need it.”

“I need it. I’ve been around a long time and if I don’t make it now I’ll never make it. Just once I would like everybody to know I’m as good as they are.”

She touched his hand. “You’re better.”

He smiled. “You’re prejudiced,” he said and went back into the bathroom.

***

He heard the faint “Ping” and was instantly alert. The cabin was dark and overhead the seat-belt sign had just gone off. He glanced over at Roger.

Roger was asleep, in the awkward position most perfectly adapted for aircraft sleeping, his mouth slightly agape. He always bragged that he could sleep anywhere. As a boy he had slept on subways and after that everything was easy. Apparently he was right.

It wasn’t like that with Sam. Something about hanging thirty-five thousand feet in the air in a heavy metal container did something to his gut. No matter how much he drank or how many pills he took, his eyes remained steadfastly open.

Carefully he stepped out into the aisle over Roger’s outstretched feet and made his way forward through the dark cabin. Everyone seemed to be sleeping.

He went through the curtains into the lounge, blinking at the light. The lone stewardess sitting there jumped to her feet.

“Can I get you something,
Signor
Benjamin?”

“You know my name?” he asked.

“
Si, signore
,” she smiled. “Doesn’t everyone know the name of the famous
prodottore
?”

It was real Italian con. Especially with his name on the passenger list. “Whiskey and water.”

He sat down as she turned to the galley. He took off his glasses and polished them with his handkerchief. She placed the drink in front of him. He put his glasses back on and almost finished the drink in one draft. He looked up at her. “Where’s the rest of the crew?”