Last Respects (43 page)

“What’s that got to do with it?” I said.

“Nothing, I suppose,” Herman Sabinson said. “A driver who is not a Puerto Rican would probably have made the same mistake.”

“What mistake?” I said.

“He went to the Peretz Memorial Hospital and he picked up your mother’s body around eleven-thirty this morning,” Herman Sabinson said. “But he had two more pickups. The Evangeline Booth General down near Throg’s Neck, and the Francis Xavier Special Surgery on Columbus Avenue.”

“In Manhattan?” I said.

Herman Sabinson nodded. “That’s what caused the trouble,” he said. “On account of it’s the day before Christmas, and a Sunday yet, too, they’re short-handed all over town, so they gave him this Manhattan pickup. I mean, ordinarily he would have done only the Queens hospitals and gone back to Queens General. This pickup in Manhattan, though, Francis Xavier Special Surgery on Columbus Avenue, he got his signals crossed. The driver. He thought he was ordered to carry all the bodies to Francis Xavier. Which is what he did. You can imagine what a snafu that caused. Anyway, they’ve just got it straightened out. What they want you to do, you don’t have to go to Queens General again. All you have to do is go over to Francis Xavier. You can identify your mother’s body right there, in Manhattan. They understand it’s their fault, the mix-up, I mean, so they’re trying to make it easy for you.”

Without warning I fell apart. It was as though I had been paddling along on a stretch of lonely but smooth water and been caught in a sudden squall. The sound of my own sobs terrified and disgusted me. It was like no weeping I had ever heard or heard described. I felt cheap and worthless. All at once, I saw no point to the half century through which I had managed to remain on my feet. It had always seemed to me terribly important to keep going. No matter what. Now I saw it had all been a waste of energy. For the first time in my life I wished I was dead.

I turned and walked out into the bedroom my mother and father had shared for the last twenty years. I did not realize Herman Sabinson had followed me until I heard his nervous little cough.

“Don’t let it get you,” he said. “When someone dies, people always cry. I see a lot of it. Honest, believe me, it’s natural.”

It was not natural for me. I had got through the death of my father without tears, and he had been a man I liked. Even after that day when he had belted me. But I had never known how I felt about my mother. Except for that one moment, the moment when we were sitting on the dock late at night, waiting for what I then did not know was going to be the
Jefferson Davis II
, and she had put her hand on my shoulder to reassure me against the shapeless threats of the river. She had been a source of irritation to me for so long. Why was I suddenly acting like a Hindu widow struggling to escape the clutching hands of relatives who were trying to restrain her from hurling herself on her husband’s funeral pyre?

“Look at it this way,” Herman Sabinson said. “It’s better it should happen here in private. I mean in front of a friend. At least now you know you won’t make a spectacle of yourself when you get there.”

“I’m not going,” I said.

Herman Sabinson walked around me as though I were a statue, moving with slow, deliberate, stalking strides until he was directly in front of my face.

“You don’t mean that,” he said quietly.

The horror was that I did.

“Herman,” I said. “Can’t you do it for me? You were her doctor for twenty years. You can identify the body better than I can. I’ve never asked you for a favor. We’re East Side boys. We always stick together.” I caught myself just in time. I had been about to remind him that we had flown in the Lafayette Escadrille together. “Please do this for me.”

“There’s things nobody can do for you,” Herman Sabinson said. He added, not without irony, “It’s against the law.” He took my elbow. “Come on,” Herman said. “Act like a guy who grew up on East Fourth Street. I’ve got the car outside. I’ll ride you over.”

H
ERMAN SABINSON DROVE
the way all doctors drive. With very little regard for other vehicles on the street, totally absorbed in only one problem: finding a parking place. By the time we reached the hospital I was all right. That is to say, I was no longer shaking. How I felt was another matter. A matter in which I took no pleasure. But at least I looked the way any average citizen of middle years should look while entering a morgue to identify the body of his mother. If this does not provide a sharply etched picture, I am not surprised. I have never in my life seen a man of middle years while he was entering a morgue to identify the body of his mother. Francis Xavier Special Surgery on Columbus Avenue is not noted for a profusion of mirrors.

“I’ll wait for you,” Herman Sabinson said. Then he must have seen something in my face, because he added, “If you want?”

I did, of course. Which is why I had to refuse. “No, thanks,” I said. “You told me to act like a guy who grew up on East Fourth Street.”

Herman Sabinson tapped the knot in his tie, touched the embroidered flower under the knot, and tipped the golden sign of Caduceus that held the tie to his well-fed little belly. The three movements, like a flourish of small trumpets, brought a smile to his face. Herman was proud of me. He’d known all along that all he had to do was mention the code by which we East Side boys lived, and I would shape up.

“You’ve done more than enough,” I said. Like many people my age I watch a great many World War II movies on the late show. I know the dialogue. “‘You have rendered service above and beyond the call of duty,’” I said. “I’ll feel better if you let me take it from here alone.”

“Okay, kid,” Herman Sabinson said. “But if you want me, you know my number.”

“Thanks, Herman,” I said.

“I mean my number at home,” he said. “Not the service. Sandra always knows where I am.”

She did, indeed. Sandra’s father had been a policeman.

“If I have any trouble,” I said, “I’ll call you at home.”

Herman Sabinson patted my arm. “Just remember this,” he said. “What’s happened to you is upsetting, but it happens to everybody.”

I wondered. A few minutes later I was seated at a desk in a room not unlike the one in which a few hours earlier I had met Mr. Bieber. Or had his name been Beybere? Already he seemed a shadowy creature out of a shapeless past that kept moving away from me.

“Yes, we have the body,” said the man behind the desk. “Do you want to identify it?”

His voice was more harsh than Mr. Bieber’s had been. Perhaps because Manhattan up around Columbus Avenue is a harsher part of town. I had never before thought of Queens as an outlying province.

“I was told I have to,” I said.

“Yes, you have to be told that. But it’s no more than a formality. I have all the papers.” He tapped them. “Many people find it an upsetting experience. Everything is in order, I assure you.”

I wished all at once I could believe his assurance. “You mean I don’t have to actually—?” My voice drained away. I could not finish the sentence.

“No,” the man behind the desk said. “All you have to do is sign here.”

He pushed a paper across the desk and made a tiny X with his ballpoint next to a dotted line. I took the pen and hesitated. What would Herman Sabinson think of me? Or George Weitz and Chink Alberg and Hot Cakes Rabinowitz? I could see them on learning of my defection. Gathering around me slowly in the troop meeting room in the basement of the Hannah H. Lichtenstein House. Placing a loaded revolver in front of me at the table where as senior patrol leader I had helped them to grasp and believe that a scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. The cold eyes of Mr. O’Hare stabbed at me across their heads. They turned and marched to the door. As Chink opened it, Mr. O’Hare turned to give me a final glance. His eyes dropped to the loaded gun in front of me. The scoutmaster nodded compassionately but sternly. He knew I would do the right thing. The door shut behind them. I closed my eyes.

“Is anything wrong, sir?”

I opened my eyes. The man behind the desk was looking at me with a troubled frown. I shook my head. “No,” I said.

To hell with George Weitz, I thought. Nuts to Chink Alberg and Hot Cakes Rabinowitz and Mr. O’Hare. I signed. The man behind the desk looked pleased as he retrieved the ball point and the paper.

“Good, good,” he said. I sensed a note of triumph in his soaring voice. He had achieved something I was not in a position to win. “Thank you,” he said.

“That’s all?” I said.

“That’s all,” he said.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Benny Kramer Novels

When the sands were all dry,

He was gay as a lark,

And would speak in contemptuous

Tones of the shark.

But when the tide deepened,

And sharks were around,

His voice had a timid,

And tremulous sound.

Lewis Carroll

I
F YOU HAVE TO
go to Philadelphia for a reason you don’t want your wife to know about, the best way is to attend law school about thirty years before the time you have to be in the City of Brotherly Love. Being a lawyer is like being a bottle of ketchup in a restaurant that specializes in bad steaks. It covers a multitude of sins. This may not be a noteworthy comment to make on an ancient and occasionally honorable profession. But it is something I have come to value. I have been a lawyer for thirty years.

I have also been a husband for almost three decades, and a father for two. And I had to get to Philadelphia without allowing Elizabeth Ann or Jack to know why.

A grocer might have had some difficulty swinging it. Not Benny Kramer. I thanked you know who—God, of course—for my N.Y.U. law degree (evening session 1933-1937). I wrapped myself in the mantle of S. (for Shloymah) B. (for Berel) Schlisselberger, my most lucrative client. And I caught the 10:00
A.M.
Metroliner for Philadelphia.

The verb “caught” plucks irritably at the mind. When I was a boy on East Fourth Street, we used to catch butterflies in Tompkins Square Park. Now I am a middle-aged man functioning on Madison Avenue (office) and Fifth Avenue (home), and I catch trains. Thorstein Veblen would, I am certain know how to make the definitive comment. Benny Kramer did not have time to try. He had to get to Philadelphia.

I got there at noon, and I went directly to the office of S. B. Schlisselberger. I was not really interested in S. B. Schlisselberger. But he is, as I said, my client, and he was paying my fare, and he was providing what during my war was known as my cover story.

My war, by the way, was not The First Punic. My war was the affair supervised by Winston Spencer Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Benny Kramer was young when he was caught up in it. And we beat the ears off a bastard named Hitler. When the days seem to be lacking in sunlight, Benny Kramer thinks about that. Even in Philadelphia. It helps. In Philadelphia anything helps. Especially a sinfully fattening lunch at the Bellevue-Stratford.

“Start with the pepper pot,” said Shloymah Berel Schlisselberger. “After all, how often do you get to Philadelphia?”

Too often. Nobody goes to Philadelphia infrequently. Not even Benjamin Franklin. Even once is too often. So I started with the pepper pot.

I had to get Shloymah Berel Schlisselberger out of the way without letting him know I had come to Philadelphia to see somebody else. Even with the help of a bowl of pepper pot, Shloymah Berel Schlisselberger is a difficult object to get out of the way. By twelve-thirty the pepper pot had caused me to reach furtively for two tablets of the Gelusil I always carry the way James Fenimore Cooper always carried Natty Bumppo. Heartburn is a condition of middle-aged human existence.

“You understand the problem,” said Shloymah Berel Schlisselberger.

I could go into detail, if you insist. Please don’t. These details will not enlarge your emotional horizons. Or even provide you with a chuckle. The law is funny only to those who practice it. Also, my client is a nut. The preoccupations of nuts are not always amusing. They are, however, frequently expensive. This was the sort of case only a nut would get involved in. A wealthy nut, that is. At my age, fifty-eight, I have no other kind on my list of clients. In my tax bracket the thrilling old pennant-waving civil-rights cases are behind me. “Free Tom Mooney!” The stirring words no longer make my blood pressure rise. The sounds merely tell me the lamentable truth: no fee. I can no longer afford the luxury. I have three mouths to feed, one of them my own.

My client had made his money in real estate. Making money in real estate is childishly simple. Perhaps that is why so many people who have done it are simple-minded and childish.

All you have to do is come to America as a penniless immigrant in 1890. Go from door to door with a pack on your back, selling female undergarments and bottles of Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound. Then use your tiny profits to buy worthless lumps of swampland within sight of Independence Hall.

My client bought the right lumps. On them, after he had nailed down the deeds, grew federal roads, apartment houses, and even a main street to which the Philadelphia fathers gave, as they then had a tendency to do, the name of a nut. On this street daring entrepreneurs had built several theaters. Good theaters they are, too. I have sat through plays in them. But the theater had done in recent years what the theater had been doing since Aeschylus with his stylus first scratched out “Act 1, Scene 1.” The theater in Philadelphia has fallen on bad times.