What's in It for Me? (6 page)

“The middle of the block,” I said to the driver finally. “Stop over on the right side, a little ahead of the lamppost.”

I helped her out and paid the driver. Then I stood on the sidewalk for a moment and looked up at the house curiously.

“Not like Central Park West, hah?” she said at my elbow. I laughed quickly.

“Aah, now, Ma, don't kid me about that. I just do that for business, that's all.”

“You do a lot of things for business,” she said quietly.

“Listen, Ma,” I said, “don't start that stuff about—”

But she wasn't listening. I followed her and took the key from her hand. I opened the door and let her go in first. She went into the bedroom to leave her hat and coat and the fur collar and I paraded through the flat for a minute. After the Montevideo, this felt like a set of pill boxes with slightly worn edges that were going to give at any moment. I fingered a few of the pieces I had bought and sent up recently, but even with all the new stuff, it was still a dive. You wouldn't think, to see me in bed with Martha Mills or pushing around Seventh Avenue financiers like chessmen on a board, that I'd come from a dump like this. It was only a half hour by taxi, but measured by other standards it was quite a distance. It was a lifetime.

“What are you laughing at?” she asked behind me. “On Central Park West they keep a house cleaner?”

I dropped my hat and coat on the sofa in the living room and followed her into the kitchen.

“No, Ma,” I said. “I was just thinking that after I get myself set well again, which shouldn't take long, when the real money starts coming in, I'd like to take you out of the Bronx and—”

“You don't have to bother, Hershie,” she said. “For me the Bronx is good enough. I know where I belong.”

“I was only making a suggestion,” I said. “I didn't say you
have
to do it. I'm not hitting you over the head and dragging you out of here. It's up to you.”

“Thanks,” she said dryly.

“Say!” I began, “What the—?”

She came up from behind the door of the icebox with a dish in her hand.

“You want me to make you something eat?” she asked.

I looked at her and she met my glance. We remained like that for a long moment, until my eyes dropped first.

“I don't know,” I said finally. “I ate downtown. But well, all right. I could eat something at that, Ma.”

If she wanted to cook, let her cook. Maybe she wouldn't talk so much.

“What do you want?” she asked.

I shrugged and lit a cigarette.

“I don't care, Ma. Anything you make. It'll be okay.”

“Anything at all?” she asked. “You don't want anything special?”

“Nah,” I said, waving my hand. “It doesn't matter, Ma. You can make me whatever you—” Then I stopped. That made the second kick in the belly that night. “Sure,” I said, grinning quickly. “You know what I want, Ma. I want some—”

“I'll make them for you,” she said.

I tried to make up for my stupidity.

“That'll be swell, Ma,” I said enthusiastically. “I tell you the truth, I haven't had any since—”

“I'll make them for you,” she repeated. “Stop standing around like a policeman and sit down a little.”

She busied herself at the gas range and I sat down at the table. Then the bell rang.

“I'll go see who it is, Ma.”

She pushed me back into my chair.

“Stay better where you are, on your behind, and keep your brains warm. Somebody should see a stranger like you open the door, they're liable to think you're a murderer or a crook or something and they'll run call the police.”

“I just didn't want you to walk so much,” I said.

“Once in three months to go open the door for me,” she shot back, “that's some vacation for my feet, hah?”

She disappeared into the foyer and I took a drink of water from the sink. A few moments later she was back, closely followed by the fat woman from upstairs with the worn shoes and the Clarence Darrow for a son. She got a little flustered when she saw me, which gave me an opportunity to recover my impeccable drawing-room manner.

“Hello, there Mrs. Herman,” I said. “How are you?”

She looked all ready to begin telling me, too, but she was interrupted.

“You're a lucky woman tonight,” mother said as she went back to work at the gas range. “My son remembers your name.”

Nobody laughed, but Mrs. Herman looked a little frightened. I could understand it, too. The atmosphere of friendliness in the room wasn't exactly overwhelming.

“Hello, Mr. Bogen,” she said. Then she looked over mother's shoulder. “Pancakes you're making, Mrs. Bogen?”

Mother nodded.

“My Hershie is crazy for them. A whole day he can't think of anything else. He can't get them out of his head. He goes around for weeks like a wild one, with his tongue hanging out, waiting for them.”

I wasn't worried by her sarcasm. I was worried by the fact that I had actually stepped into the house without having my mouth begin to water for them.

“But so late to make pancakes?” Mrs. Herman protested. “It's after nine o'clock already!”

No wonder her son was a lawyer.

“There used to be a time when I made pancakes at the regular time,” mother said acidly, “the way other people make them. The way regular people with regular families make them. But now, of course, now I got such a big shot for a son, you know, I gotta make them when I catch him, and then I gotta consider myself lucky yet in the bargain.”

She could go on like that for hours. Without any visible signs of strain, either. I turned to Mrs. Herman politely.

“How's Murray doing?” I asked.

She beamed on me at once. I had asked the right question.

“Oh, fine, Mr. Bogen! He's—”

“You can call him Harry,” mother added without turning.

Mrs. Herman didn't take the hint. Any guy wearing clothes like mine was a mister to her. Automatically.

“Just fine, Mr. Bogen,” she said. Her fat face quivered with pride and happiness. “He's—”

“He in practice for himself yet?”

She looked horrified.

“Oh, no!” she said. “Not yet. That takes plenty of money, Mr. Bogen, you know that.”

Or plenty of brains. I had done it. Why couldn't he?

“I guess it does,” I said. “What's he doing, clerking for somebody?”

“Clerking?” she said indignantly. “Murray finished his clerkship, I don't know, must be a good two
years
already! He's a regular lawyer now. Mr. Bogen! You know what he's doing?”

I knew what he should have been doing if he had any sense, but I didn't have to tell her that.

“What?” I asked.

“His boss, Mr. Lefferts, he got appointed not long ago, a few months, to the District Attorney's office. State? Federal, I think. Anyway, you know, the special lawyers downtown there, by the government. I don't know exactly what. My Murray, he told me already a dozen times, but my head, you know, for those things! Anyway, Mr. Lefferts, he was so busy, he didn't have time to do the work. So he let my Murray do it and he did it so good, honest, Mr. Bogen, so good that now the District Attorney, he heard about it, so he said maybe, if there's an opening, he's gonna give Murray the appointment in his office. Because Murray did the work so well. Isn't that wonderful, Mr. Bogen?”

“It sure is, Mrs. Herman,” I said. “Tell him I wish him a lot of luck, will you?”

“Thanks, Mr. Bogen.” The way she said it you'd think my wishes were a guarantee of the appointment.

“That's all right, Mrs. Herman,” mother said. “You don't have to be bashful. You can—”

“No,” she said hastily, “I think I'll—Well, good-night.”

Her fat face bobbed up and down and she was gone. Mother broke the silence first.

“She's a lucky woman, that woman.”

“It all depends on how you figure luck,” I said sharply.

“And how do you figure luck, my smart Hershie?” she asked calmly.

“I figure it by what you can take down to the bank and deposit,” I said. “I notice she's still wearing the same pair of shoes I saw on her when I saw her last. What's the matter, that brilliant son of hers still hasn't been able to get together enough dough to get her a new pair of shoes?”

“What you got in your head and your heart, Hershie, isn't changed by whether you wear good shoes or torn shoes.”

“Well,” I said, “maybe I'm not on any crime committee and I got expensive paintings on my walls instead of law school diplomas, but at least I notice when you come down to see me, Ma, you wear a silver fox collar, and not torn shoes.”

“I got the fur collar,” she said quietly, “but she doesn't have to go downtown to see her son. Her son comes home every night to see her.”

“Aah, hell, Ma, don't let those things get—”

“Hershie,” she said suddenly, squinting her eyes at me curiously. “Don't you ever get lonely?”

I scowled at her.

“Lonely? What do you mean lonely?”

Imagine being in bed with Martha Mills and considering yourself lonely!

“I mean,” she said, “how about friends? You have friends? People you can—”

“Of course I have friends. What do you think I am, a criminal or something? I've got plenty of friends. I got so many friends, I don't even remember them all. Why, you know who I met last week, Ma?”

“Who?”

“Walter Winchell. I was in a night club with Mar—well, with some friends of mine, and he was there. Somebody brought him over the table and introduced us. He stuck around and talked with me for over twenty minutes. More than that I think. Maybe a half hour even. He's a great guy, that Walter Winchell.”

“Who's Walter Winchell?”

I stared at her in amazement.

“You don't know who—?” I began. “Say, you mean to tell me you never heard of—Ma,” I said, “you must be kidding me.”

“He's your friend?” she asked.

“Well, yeah, sure, in a way, I guess. After all, I, met him.”

“I don't mean that,” she said. “I mean to who do you talk?”

I scratched my head and then shook it.

“Talk?” I said, “What do you mean, talk?”

“Suppose you got a headache, you don't feel so good, you got a cold maybe, somebody did you something wrong, anything, you want somebody to talk to. What do you do, Hershie?”

“I don't talk much,” I said. “They don't give you any interest at the bank for your choice of words, Ma. And anyway, when I wanna have a real good gab fest, hell, I can always call you up. You can still bend a mean ear, Ma.”

I grinned at her tentatively, but she wasn't cooperating.

“All the talking you and I we did the last few weeks,” she said, “you carry it in one ear and it wouldn't even tickle. Now if I want to talk to you I have to go downtown to kidnap you from under the noses of those tramps of yours.”

She'd never met Martha, but the description was fairly accurate.

“Yeah, well,” I said, “that's because I'm up to my neck in plans right now. But about this business of friends. I don't know. The kind of friends you mean, Ma, they're like an anchor around your neck.”

“There'll come a time, Hershie, when you'll need someone.”

“What are you doing,” I demanded angrily, “wishing things on me.”

“You'd know that there comes a time in
every
person's life, I don't care who or how smart or what, when he needs friends, when he needs someone he can turn to and—”

“If he gets to that point,” I said, “then he couldn't have been so smart to start with.”

She shrugged and changed the subject.

“Maybe we better just talk about other things, Hershie.”

“You're doing plenty of talking,” I said.

I jumped up angrily. There's a limit to what any guy can take, even from his own mother.

“Look here, Ma,” I snapped. “You trying to tell me I'm not welcome here?”

She shrugged and smiled. It was the sort of smile you see at funerals.

“Not welcome?” she said. “What kind not welcome? It's your house, not mine. You paid for everything. The things in it that were mine, the old things, even my clothes and my dishes, you threw them all out a year ago and put in fancy new ones.” She raised her hands a little to take in the house. “Now it's all yours,” she said.

For a moment I couldn't move. I could only look at her. For a single moment, for the first time that night, I saw her clearly and it was all back, the way it had been in the beginning. Then it snapped and she began to shift out of focus again, with the distance climbing between us, and it was so far and so long that I couldn't stand it.

“Ma!” I cried suddenly. “Ma, I—I”

I couldn't say it. She moved forward at the same time. Then she was in my arms and I was crying. I held her like that for a long time, shaking a little and not thinking of anything, until I could control my voice again.

“Ma,” I began, “I'm—”

“Don't talk Hershie,” she said softly. “It's all right. I understand.” She stroked the back of my head until I felt the tenseness go out of my arms. “Come, Hershie,” she said finally, in her quiet voice. “Come, I'll make the bed for you.”

I
WOKE UP FEELING A
lot like a man who rushes desperately to make a train but misses it, and then, hours later, picks up a paper and reads that it had been wrecked and everybody on it has been killed.

Out in the kitchen I could hear mother humming softly as she prepared breakfast.

“Hello, Mom,” I said as I came into the kitchen. “What's for breakfast?”

“You'll see when it's finished,” she said. “How was it to sleep?”