A Stone for Danny Fisher (1952) (26 page)

T
HE
doorman reached out a hand and stopped us, an inquiring look on his face.

“Mr. Gottkin’s apartment, please,” I told him.

He nodded his head politely. “Mr. Gordon’s apartment is C21. That’s on the twenty-first floor.”

We walked past him to the elevator and the door swung shut. The elevator man faced the front of the car stolidly. I looked at Nellie. “What’s this ‘Gordon’ business?” I whispered.

“He changed his name legally last year,” she whispered back.

I nodded my head. I guess he thought Gottkin might be good enough for Brooklyn, but in these fancy apartments on Central Park South, Gordon was more in keeping.

I looked at my watch. It was a few minutes after nine. After we had left Nellie’s folks, we had gone out to dinner and then up to my folks’ house. They lived in a nice place up in Washington Heights now, but nothing near as good as this. The doorman up there had told us that they usually had dinner at their daughter’s house on Friday nights, so we came back downtown again.

I wondered what they would be like. A vague restlessness stirred inside me. Nellie’s family hadn’t been too bad.

Nellie’s father had opened the door. His swarthy face looked angrily out at her. A flood of Italian poured from his lips, and in the middle of it she interrupted him with a few words in the same tongue.

Abruptly his speech came to a halt and he looked at me. I stared back at him. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, because his face was still flushed from his anger. Then he silently stepped aside and let us into the apartment.

Nellie’s mother descended upon us with loud shrieks. She encased Nellie in her arms and burst into tears. I stood awkwardly by the door, watching them. Nellie began to cry too. Her father and I just stood there helplessly looking at each other.

Suddenly there was a shout from the next room. “Danny!” Zep was running toward me, a broad grin on his face, his hand outstretched. I grabbed at it and he was pummelling me on the shoulder. Then Nellie’s kid sister came into the room and began to cry too. After a while things began to quiet down and her father reluctantly
brought out a bottle of wine and they all joined in a toast to our health.

By the time the bottle was almost empty we were all on fairly good terms. I couldn’t imagine they were tremendously pleased at what we had done, but they recognized it and seemed to want to make the best of it. Mamma Petito even helped Nellie pack her few things so that we could go back to the hotel and wanted us to stay for supper. We begged off, saying we had to go uptown to my folks because we hadn’t seen them yet.

The elevator stopped and the doors opened. The elevator
operator
stuck his head out the door and said: “Fourth door across the hall.”

The small nameplate under the bell read: “
SAM GORDON
.” I pressed the buzzer and somewhere in the apartment I could hear chimes ringing. “Real fancy,” I murmured, looking at Nellie.

She seemed pale in the dim light of the hallway. She nodded her head silently as we waited for someone to answer the door. I took her hand. Her palms were moist.

The door opened and a small coloured woman dressed in a maid’s uniform looked out at us.

“Mrs. Gott—er, Mrs. Gordon in?” I asked.

The Negress looked at me impassively. “Who shall I say is calling, sir?” she asked in a low, pleasant voice.

“Her brother,” I said.

The maid’s eyes widened slightly and she stepped aside. “Will you wait in here for a moment?” she asked.

We stood in the foyer and looked around the room while the maid disappeared into the apartment. The foyer was as big as all of Nellie’s apartment. We could hear the quiet murmur of voices coming from another room. Suddenly there was silence and we could hear the maid’s voice.

“There’s a young gen’mun an’ a lady to see you, Miz Gordon.”

I recognized Mimi’s voice. “Did they say who they were?” She sounded puzzled.

The maid’s voice was stolid. “Yes’m. He say he your brother an’——”

She never finished her sentence. “It’s Danny!” I heard Mimi scream. “It’s Danny!” Then she was standing in the foyer looking at us.

We stood there for a moment. At first glance I didn’t think she had changed, but then as we drew closer I could see that she had. Her eyes were darker than ever and there were faint bluish circles beneath them as if she didn’t sleep too well. Maybe it was because she was pregnant
again. I didn’t know, but there were tight small lines in the corner of her mouth that I had never noticed before.

Then her arms were pulling my face down to her and she was kissing me. “Danny,” she whispered. “I’m so glad to see you.” There were tears standing in the corners of her eyes.

I smiled at her. I was glad to see her too. Funny, but I hadn’t known how much I’d missed her. When I had been home we fought all the time, but that was forgotten now.

She grabbed my hand excitedly and pulled me toward the other room. “Mamma and Papa are here,” she said.

I cast a frantic glance over my shoulder toward Nellie. She smiled slightly at me and nodded her head; she was following us. I let Mimi lead me into the other room.

We were standing on a few steps that led down into a living-room. Mamma and Papa were sitting on a couch with its back toward us, but they were turned partly around, looking at me. Mamma held one hand clutched against her bosom, her eyes almost closed. Papa’s face wore a look of dull, guarded surprise, punctuated by a long cigar that hung motionless from his lips. Sam was standing facing them, holding a long drink in his hand, his back resting against a large imitation fireplace. A curious light was glowing in his eyes.

Mimi led me around the couch in front of Mamma and let go of my hand. She was staring up into my eyes as if she was trying to read in them all that had happened since we last saw each other.

“Hello, Mamma,” I said quietly.

Her hand touched the front of my coat and dropped along my sleeve until she found my hand. Her eyes began to fill. She pulled me down to her, her lips pressing against my hands. “My Blondie,” she whispered brokenly, “my baby.”

I stood there looking at her bent head. Her hair was all grey now. This was the moment I had been afraid of. I hadn’t been afraid of how they would receive me; it was really how I would feel about them. Curious how calm I was, how detached I felt. It was almost as if I were watching this from a seat at the movies. I wasn’t really a part of it. It was another guy named Danny Fisher, and he had gone away two years ago and never really come back.

That was what happened. The years and the loneliness had driven a wedge between us that no surge of emotion on either side could ever heal in me. A reluctant sorrow came over me. What great thing had been lost to us, what closeness we would never know again!

I bent and kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry, Mamma,” I said. But no one really knew what I was sorry for.

I straightened up and looked for Papa. He had walked to the far end of the room and was standing there looking at me. There was a frightened, lonely look in his eyes. Slowly I withdrew my hand from Mamma and walked toward him. The only sound in the room besides that of my footsteps was that of Mamma’s weeping. I held out my hand toward my father. “Hello, Papa.”

His eyes wavered for a moment; then he took my hand. “Hello, Danny.” His voice was shaking but reserved.

“How’ve you been, Papa?” I asked.

“All right, Danny,” he replied shortly.

Then we ran out of words and a subtle tension began to creep into the room. I nodded to Sam. He nodded back, but didn’t speak. The others stared at me silently.

Disappointment gathered in me. This was about how I thought it would be. It didn’t really make any difference whether I had come back or not. Despite myself I could feel bitterness creep into my voice.

“It’s been two years,” I said, my eyes going slowly from face to face. “Aren’t any of you going to ask what I did those two years? How I feel?”

Mamma was still weeping softly, but no one answered. Slowly I turned back to my father. I looked at him coldly. “Aren’t you going to ask? Or doesn’t it really matter?”

Papa didn’t answer.

It was Mimi that came to me, Mimi who took my arm and said softly: “Of course it matters. It’s just that we’re so surprised we don’t know what to say.”

I was still watching Papa. I could feel an icy calm descend on me. I had been right: something had gone from us that night the door had been closed to me. It was gone and not all that the years might bring could ever bring it back. I had wanted to see them and not wanted to. Now it didn’t seem important—only that I stood among them feeling like a stranger.

Mimi tried to lead me away from Papa. “Come,” she was saying, “sit down and tell us what you did. We all missed you.”

I looked past her across the room. Nellie was standing in the
entrance
, forgotten by the others, watching us with wide, pain-filled eyes. Somehow I knew that it was not her pain she felt, but mine. I smiled slowly at her and looked down at Mimi. “I can’t stay,” I said gently. I didn’t want to hurt her; at least she had been trying. “I’ve got to be going. I got things to do.”

“But you can’t go now, Danny,” Mimi protested. The tears came into her eyes again. “You just came back.”

My gaze went across the room to Nellie. “I’ve not come back,” I said quietly, “not really. I only tried.”

“But, Danny——” Mimi was crying against my shoulder. I knew how she felt, what she was crying for, but it was no use. It was
something
that could never be again.

I put my arm around her shaking shoulder and walked back across the room with her. “Stop it, Mimi,” I whispered. “You’re only making it worse.” I left her at the couch and went to Nellie. I took her hand and turned back to face them. “The only reason I came tonight,” I said in a low voice, “was because of my wife. She thought we should tell you that we were married this morning.”

I saw the expressions that appeared on their faces—my mother’s pain, the grim, knowing look in Papa’s eyes. I writhed inside. “She was the only one that really wanted me back,” I said quickly.

I waited a moment for them to speak, but they were silent. Nellie’s family hadn’t liked our marriage any more than mine, but at least they had acted like human beings. My family had nothing to say, no words of happiness for us. Nothing.

The pain inside me went away rapidly, leaving behind it a cold numb feeling. I kissed Mamma’s cheek. She was weeping. I kissed Mimi and walked in front of my father. His face was bitter and mask-like. I passed him without a word or a gesture.

I squirmed restlessly in the bed. I was conscious that I had been crying in my sleep, but now I was awake and my eyes were dry. I tried to lie quietly so that I wouldn’t disturb her.

We had undressed in silence in the small hotel room. At last I asked, smiling wryly: “You knew all the time why I didn’t want to see them, didn’t you?”

She nodded silently.

“And yet you made me go.” My voice was almost bitter.

Her hands were on my shoulder, her eyes on mine. “You had to go, Danny,” she said earnestly. “Otherwise it might have been between us all our lives. You had to find out for yourself.”

I turned away from her. “Well, I found out all right.”

Her hand clutched at my arm. “Now it’s over and you can forget.”

“Forget?” I began to laugh. There were some things she didn’t know. “How can you forget? All the things we had together—the hopes, the fears, the good and the bad. It’s easy for you to say forget, but how can I? Can I cut their blood out of me, let it run into the sink and down the drain and out of my life for ever? Good or bad, how
can I forget? Can you forget your own parents? Does right or wrong mean more than the flesh that ties you together?”

Her voice was pleading. “No, Danny, you don’t understand. That’s not what you forget. That’s what you remember. It’s the hurt you must forget, the hurt that will turn you into something you’re not. The hurt that will make you hard and bitter and angry like you are now!”

I didn’t understand her. “How can I forget that?” I asked helplessly. “It’s all part of it.”

“It’s not, Danny,” she cried, pressing herself against me and kissing my lips. “It’s something else altogether. I’ll make you forget the hurt. I’ll make you remember only the good.”

My eyes had widened. “How can anyone do that?”

“I can and will,” she whispered, looking up at me, her eyes deep and earnest. “I have so much love for you, my husband, that you will never need for affection from anyone.”

Then I understood. I caught her hands and pressed their open palms to my lips gratefully. She had made me a promise and I knew that it would be kept. I knew that in the times to come, good or bad, I would find my comfort in her, my strength in her; that no matter what might happen, I would never be alone again.