The Two-Family House(10)

So Mort took up the task at hand. He brought his daughters on walks to the candy store. He complimented his wife the way he used to when they were first dating. One morning, as Rose helped him on with his jacket, he decided to kiss her goodbye. As he turned to her, the look of utter disbelief on her face shamed him. He reached out to take her cheek in his hand. It was soft, velvety, like the outside of a peach. For a moment, he forgot about his nighttime tally and breathed in the scent of her.

As the weeks went by, Mort decided it was easier to keep track if he assigned point values to specific actions. He fell into a nightly ritual of calculating his credits and debits, the good deeds and the bad, and silently congratulated himself as his column of virtuous living out-valued the row of unkind words and selfish actions that had so recently defined him.

In his quest to boost his quota, Mort had agreed to an unprecedented outing with Abe’s family. The two families spent a lot of time together, but they rarely socialized outside their home. Mort was frustrated. Wasn’t it enough that he worked with Abe every day and spent every holiday with his family? Wasn’t it enough that he could hear Abe’s sons pounding overhead all day long? He had to go out with them on a Sunday too? But saying no for such selfish reasons would compromise his numbers so, reluctantly, he agreed.

Helen had invited them to dinner at a restaurant in Manhattan, courtesy of her older brother Sol. Sol was the proprietor of a candy stand located in the lobby of a large office building on East Thirty-eighth Street. He sold candy bars, newspapers, cigarettes and cigars. Sol also had a notary license and was happy to provide his official stamp for anyone in the building seeking his services. This tidy enterprise earned him a respectable living. But Sol made his real money as a bookie. In the morning, a customer might slip him an extra twenty-dollar bill while paying for a newspaper to place a bet on a boxing match. An afternoon chocolate bar was an excuse to pick a winner in baseball. No one questioned the monetary exchanges or the visits to Sol’s stand. Someone paying close attention might have noticed that Sol rarely had to make change for his customers. But if anyone noticed, it never came up. It was the perfect front.

Though he was older than Helen, Sol had married for the first time only a few years ago. His son, Johnny, was two, and lived on a steady diet of chocolate bars and Sugar Daddy caramel pops. Mort thought Sol should take bets on when Johnny would lose all his teeth.

To Mort’s way of thinking, Sol’s activities were clearly illegal. But Helen adored her brother and forbade anyone from talking about Sol’s side business. It was one of Sol’s customers, however, who presented the reason for their upcoming excursion.

This particular customer owned an elegant Italian restaurant near the office building and found himself in debt to Sol after getting some bad tips on a horse. Rather than shell out the cash, he invited Sol for dinner at the restaurant. Sol graciously accepted. Knowing the size of the debt, he figured he’d be eating lunch there for a month if he went alone, so he invited Helen and her boys for dinner, and told her Mort’s family should come as well.

The girls squealed when Rose told them about the invitation. Dinner at a fancy restaurant! In Manhattan!

“Can we go? Can we?” pleaded Mimi.

Eight pairs of eyes turned to Mort for approval. His initial reaction was to shake his head no. But he nodded his approval instead.

“Will we get to take the subway?” Judith asked her father, obviously excited at the prospect.

“I suppose so,” Mort said. He tried to smile. He noted, with satisfaction, that it was his third smile of the day.

“Mommy says the restaurant will be very pretty and everyone will be dressed up. I’m going to wear my best dress and my pink hair ribbon and I’m going to carry my purse!” Mimi spun around as she described the details of her outfit.

Dinah giggled and spun around as well. She approached Mort cautiously, and he patted her on the head.

“Time for bed now,” he declared.

As he got into his own bed that evening, Mort began to regret the process he had undertaken. It was only getting harder. The more interested he pretended to be in people, the more they expected from him. A smile one day led to an anticipated “good morning” the next. Just yesterday at work, his warehouse manager, Tom, had cornered him on his way out and asked him what his weekend plans were. Mort was offended. Tom had clearly mistaken his quiet “hello” at the coffee machine a few days earlier as an invitation to discuss all kinds of personal matters. Where would it end? At the rate he was going, he’d end up wasting half his workday with pleasantries and chitchat. The final straw was the dinner with Abe’s family. It was too much. Tomorrow, he’d tell them they weren’t going.

“Mort?” Rose turned on her side to face him and touched his arm. “Are you asleep?”

“No, I’m awake.”

“Thank you for letting us go to the restaurant tomorrow. I know you’re not a big fan of Sol, but the girls are so excited. I think we’ll all have a wonderful time.”

“Well, at least it won’t cost us anything,” he conceded.

Rose took his hand in the darkness and brought it to her face, where his fingers felt the yielding smoothness of her cheek. Next, she brought the hand to her mouth and kissed it, not just once, but twice, so that a sudden longing overcame him. By the time he kissed her lips and she wrapped her arms around him, he was awash in satisfaction, his nighttime tally long forgotten.