Sam's Legacy (3 page)

What had he made the last time, though? A hundred and twenty—and it had been his only game in six weeks. There was no point in laughing at the others. He sighed, remembering how easy it had been, playing his hands, small and smart, waiting for the others to make their moves. He could have written the script ahead of time, from the way they ran their mouths so much. When they raised the house, he knew he was home free. If he'd wanted to, in his head, he could have replayed every hand he'd had during that four-and-a-half-hour game. But the thought tired him. There'd been no need to follow the betting pattern: when his own cards were there, he'd stayed in, no matter how many they drew or what they bet. Sam felt himself tense. What good was it, being able to see through a bunch of two-bit players when, in the end, he was the one who was back where he started from, having to bet on things he shouldn't be betting on, having to wonder if he'd get enough games to get by on, having to worry about what he'd tell Ben when his cash reserves were gone, and the bottom dropped away.

Bundles of newspapers flew out of the back of a truck, and two black boys raced each other to get to them. Milt, the old newsdealer, made angry motions at them, but when the kids had dumped the bundles in front of the newsstand, Sam saw Milt give them each some money. The rumble of conversation in the cafeteria relaxed Sam. He remembered when Garfield's had first opened; he remembered the Flatbush Theater, which had been in the spot before—still showing vaudeville long after it had disappeared everywhere else in the city; he remembered—he stopped: heads were lifting, all staring in the same direction, and Sam saw why—the kids on the steps of the church had gone to the corner. A pair of lavender-colored El Dorados, like twins, were parked one behind the other. The roofs, Sam could tell, were made of alligator skin. The roof of the first car began rising, moving backward, and Sam saw the driver, a young black man in a mink-colored fur jacket—and next to him, a girl with a pile of silver-pink hair swirling a foot over her head. They showed you something—he had to admit it. Sure. If he had a wife and kids and a lot of junk in the house, he might want out also—he could understand that—but his old buddies, living out on the Island in their private homes, they missed the chance to see something like this: how often did any of them get to the Garden, as much as they all loved basketball? Sure. When their sons were at a certain age, they'd probably make a day of it once or twice a year—but it wasn't the same thing.

He finished his coffee. The El Dorados turned left and cruised by in front of the window. Along the chrome stripping there were things sparkling like sequins. Sam stood and made his way to the cashier. A girl, sitting near the trays and silverware, had her eye on him. She sat very straight, an empty coffee cup in front of her, and Sam saw, most of all, the ring of black and purple she'd painted around her eyes. He'd seen her here before, waiting, and he was pretty sure he remembered her from high school: he hadn't known her, but he'd seen her, hanging around the Bedford Avenue arch at lunchtime and after school. It would be a treat for her, he guessed, taking him home instead of the old men and the blacks. Sure. Things were rough all over, he said to himself, recalling an old line—even the chorus girls were kicking. He paid, stuck a mint-flavored toothpick in the side of his mouth, and left.

“How's t-tricks, Sam?” Milt asked, stuttering slightly, as he always did.

“Can't complain, Milt.”

Milt reached to the side of the newsstand.
“Morning Telegraph?”
Sam nodded. “You want one of Powell's Sheets—he's been h-hot lately.”

“Sure,” Sam said. Milt's lips were blubbery, his eyes miniscule behind thick, round glasses. He'd been there ever since Sam could remember, a bit of drool trickling out the left side of his mouth, wearing the same green-check lumberjacket, the same baggy brown pants.

“The
Times
isn't in yet,” Milt said. “Another f-fifteen minutes maybe.”

“What do I owe you?” Sam asked. Milt seemed to concentrate, as if, Sam thought, he'd asked him about the state of the world. “That's one dollar and forty cents—P-Powell is half a dollar.”

Sam gave him the money. “I had the Knicks tonight,” Sam said suddenly, and felt a warm wave flood across his face.

“I'm happy for you,” Milt said. “You're a good boy. How is your f-father feeling?”

“Fine,” Sam said, stepping back, indicating he wanted to get away. “He gives you his best. He told me to say that.”

Milt seemed to smile, but Sam couldn't be certain: the guy's face was so pasty. “He's a fine man.” The words came out evenly, as if, Sam thought, Milt were reading them. “You're a good boy…he's a fine man…. You're…”

Sam had the papers folded under his arm. He walked away, waved, half-turned, “See you around—”

At Rogers Avenue, in the London Hut, there were a few guys sitting at the counter, half-asleep. Ahead of him, people were coming out of the Granada Theater. Some of them, going in the opposite direction, passed him: they weren't afraid, he figured, when there were so many of them. But when they split off, heading in different directions, their numbers thinning until they were alone for the last block or half-block…

Sam turned left at Nostrand Avenue, around the subway entrance, the corner cigar store. He crossed over, onto his own block, came to his building, and glanced through the window of the rummage shop. The racks of coats and dresses, and the tables of clothes and odds-and-ends, were pushed to the sides—it had been the night, he knew, for one of their parties, when all the cripples would be wheeled into the store to listen to music and fill their stomachs with soda and food, parents feeding the ones who had lost the use of their hands. There were a few older ones who could still walk in—their legs stiff, their bodies tilted backward as if they were imitating Frankenstein—and when Sam imagined them trying to dance with one another, he cringed.

There was no light on in the back of the store, though, which meant that Mason Tidewater—the janitor, one had to call him, he supposed—was downstairs, in the basement. Sam opened the door. The hall light, which had gone out the night before, was back on. Sam brushed the brass mailboxes with his shoulder, took the steps two at a time, fished in his pocket for his key, and opened the door.

All the lights were out, none coming from under Ben's door. Sam flicked the wall switch and saw that there was something under his foot. Even before he reached down, he had a feeling—it made him set his teeth, angrily—that he knew what he would find. He stared into the man's printed face, and cursed. The pamphlet was printed on glossy paper, three inches square, in blue ink, with the photograph in the middle, and Sam could hear the guy's voice reciting the printed words:
It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. Hear my story, brother, so you too may be saved
.

Sam took his jacket off, laying the papers and the pamphlet down on the kitchen table. He threw the cushions off the couch, grabbed the leather loop, and jerked: the sofa unfolded, filling his half of the room.

2

When Sam opened his eyes, his head thick with sleep, he saw above him the white silk, and above the silk, two weaving lines of black. He blinked. He felt as if there were a layer of black mesh across his own face, through which he was looking up. His father's head was banded in black, and the Hebrew letters, along the collar of the silk shawl, silver woven on silver, seemed for a moment to be blue. Sam sniffed in, pulled the covers higher, to his chin, rolled his head against the pillow, stretching his neck muscles. A small square of black above his father's eyes dropped toward him, and Sam rubbed his hand across his own eyes, then applied pressure at the sides, with thumb and middle fingers.

He had, arriving home the night before, fallen asleep at once—he never suffered from insomnia—and he could remember nothing except the comforting depth of that sleep. Even now, when he had things on his mind, he did not dream much, and he was grateful: he imagined that people who had dreams all night long, one after the other, worked at half-strength during their waking hours. It would be, he thought, like sitting up through an endless series of Late Show movies. It was all a question of will, of control. When he hit the sack, he put everything out of mind. Sure: out of sight, out of mind.

“What is it?” he asked. Ben lifted his head, smiled, stepped away from the bed. Sam saw the black leather box at the top of his father's forehead, suspended from its straps, the straps circling backward around the crown of his father's head, under a black
yamulka
. Ben's hands were at his sides, his right index finger locked between the pages of an old
siddur
. His left fist was closed around the end of one strap, holding it in place. Sam had read somewhere about holy men in India who kept their fists clenched until the nails grew through the palms and came out through the backs of their hands. He felt a chill wash over his body, but he showed nothing: he lay between the sheets, waiting.

“I wanted to be sure to be here when you woke—before you left for the day.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. It was all right to move now, he decided. He lifted his right arm from under the cover and rubbed the tip of his nose with the back of his hand. Then he slid backward, on his elbows, until he was sitting.

“I'd like to talk with you.”

“I'm not going anywhere.”

“Good. May I finish first?” Ben asked, indicating, by flicking the fringes of his silk
talis
with his fingers, his prayers.

Sam shrugged, swung his feet out from under the covers. While Ben prayed, Sam dressed; then he went to the stove and put some water on to boil. The kitchen—a kitchenette actually, with a refrigerator, stove, and sink—was an alcove directly across from his bed. If he wanted to, he could close it off: there were folding doors, with slats in them. In the other half of the room was the square maple table he and Ben used for eating, and behind it, a mahogany breakfront—one of the few pieces Ben had saved from their Linden Boulevard apartment—in which they kept their dishes, glasses, and silverware. The room was, without the kitchenette, about twelve by fifteen feet, and, crowded as it was (in addition to the bed, table, and breakfront, it contained a dresser, desk, coffee table, end-table, and easy chair, a TV set, two stand-up lamps, two small bookcases, a green leather hassock, a newspaper rack, an old costumer for their coats), Sam liked it. He liked it better, in fact, than he'd liked the room—just as big—that he'd had to himself on Linden Boulevard.

He could, as he had once put it to Dutch, be in an entire apartment all at once: living room, bedroom, kitchen, dining room, TV room, study, office—even the bathroom. Since the bathroom he shared with Ben was connected to Ben's bedroom, on the far side, Sam kept a stainless steel hospital pan with him in the living room, resting on its side behind the convertible bed; he used it at night, if Ben were already asleep when he got in.

There was a time when he and Dutch had laughed about the bedpan, but that time had passed. Poor Dutch. You and me, Sam had said to him one time when they'd been talking about their old buddies, we're the only ones who haven't flown off, and we're supposed to be the birds. But Dutch hadn't laughed. What do you think, Ace? he'd replied. Are we different because we stay, or do we stay because we're different? Sam had shrugged the question off; when it came to riddles, his father was the expert. Sure. When Ben left for California—which wasn't too far off, he knew, with the phone calls he'd been getting from his brother lately—Sam figured he'd stay on in the apartment, though he didn't really know what he'd do with the second room. He'd offered it to Dutch, but Dutch had, as expected, said no, and that was just as well. There was something in the idea, not just of living completely in one room, but of living completely in one
small
room, that appealed to Sam. He didn't owe anything to anybody.

Sam's Uncle Andy—Ben's younger brother—was, no secret, fatally ill, and when he died Ben would inherit his apartment in California. That was the only thing Ben was waiting for, Sam knew. The brochure which Andy had sent to Ben over a year before would, if Sam wanted to look, be on Ben's desk:
Pioneer Estates—California's Finest Resort-Retirement Community. Peripheral Privacy Guaranteed
. There, among the full-color pictures of the retirement city's golf courses and swimming pools, Andy had marked with an “x” his window on the seventeenth floor of one of the village's two twenty-story high-rise condominiums.

Sam watched Ben unwind his
tephillin
. What kind of privacy, he wondered, was peripheral. Ben liked to turn that phrase over in his mouth, blowing the “p”s through his lips, but Sam would never ask him to explain. He knew what peripheral meant, of course: Bill Bradley of the Knicks, for example, had more peripheral vision than the normal guy—it was what enabled him to see far to the sides, even behind him, and to get a pass off to somebody you wouldn't think was in his range. Okay. Somehow you saw more than one hundred and eighty degrees, but where did that get you? It didn't, Sam concluded, make sense.

“So,” Ben said. “Tell me about the day's doings in the world of sports.”

Sam forced a laugh, opened the refrigerator. “You eat yet?” he asked.

“No.”

“I'll fix some eggs for us, okay?” Sam looked at his father. “Sure. You can't eat till you pray first, right?” Ben nodded. “See,” Sam said. “I know a few things.”

Ben smiled. “I've never denied it.” He put his
tephillin
in his
tephillin
bag, folded his
talis
carefully, and put that in also. Then he busied himself, setting the table. Sam prepared the toast, poured their coffee, turned on the radio—on top of the refrigerator. The two men sat down at the table.