I GOT UP EARLY in the morning. She was still sleeping when I got in the car and drove off. Nausea and loathing accompanied me when I turned onto the Atlantic City Expressway. I felt no better when I pulled up to the driveway of the casino. I had them park my jalopy. Inside, crowds surged in all four directions.
I walked straight to the cage.
“I’m here to cash in a marker,” I said.
I gave my name and three IDs.
The clerk’s name was Doris Whittingham, a pleasant, matronly type. She punched information into the computer and then vanished. I waited. It never occurred to me something might go wrong.
As I waited I had a nightmare of a flashback...We have survived mountains and oceans and here we are. I don’t know where we are but there’s a huge American flag above where we sit, in the waiting room. My sister sits neatly clutching her Shirley Temple doll. My father and mother have that depleted refugee look about them, even after some years in Montreal. Men and women--Americans!--stroll back and forth, so well dressed, so easy, so tall. We’re so short, I keep thinking. We are waiting for papers. Years earlier, on the other side of the mountains and the oceans, it had been papieren. Now it is papers. So we sit and we wait, and we wait. People are opening doors and closing doors, walking into this office, out of that office. There is one man my parents are waiting for. Where is he? Why is he taking so long? What does it mean?
What does it mean?
Finally he comes strolling toward us. My mother reaches for my father’s hand. He does not notice. He’s too busy watching the man come closer and closer. He keeps coming but it seems he will never arrive. He is not smiling. What does it mean?
“Mr. Kane?” he says.
My father rises.
“We’ll be glad to give you a permanent visa,” the man says, “except one thing. Are you aware that your son has an irregular heartbeat? He didn’t pass the physical.”
My father knew enough English to understand the words--but he still does not understand.
“He’s a healthy boy,” my father says. His eyes begin to fill. “This boy,” he says, “this boy walked up and down mountains! Isn’t that healthy enough?”
“Has your son ever had scarlet fever?”
They confer in Yiddish, Mother and Father.
“No,” says my father.
“Please wait,” says the man.
Again he leaves and again we wait.
My mother says, “They won’t let us in?”
Would even Canada take us back? By some error, Canada had already ripped up our citizenship papers.
“Shh,” says my father.
“They won’t let us in?”
“Shh.”
“We have to go back?”
“Shh.”
“Back where?”
Now here he comes again and he is smiling. He says, “It’s probably just the excitement.”
Then: “Welcome to the United States.”
What does it mean? I asked myself when this Doris left me waiting.
Can’t be, I thought. No, can’t be.
What a dirty rotten trick. But it would serve me right, I thought, and then I thought--why? Why would it serve me right? What had I done? Plenty. Okay, that was fact. I had committed this and that transgression. But had I done anything so terribly wrong--in wanting a better life? Sy was correct there, wasn’t he? This was everybody’s soft spot. This was the theme of every life. Every living thing pursued this.
So what if it wasn’t paradise when you caught this thing you pursued? This too was life.
I thought of the novelist James M. Cain. All of his books, he said, were about people whose dreams had come true.
And all of his books were tragedies.
“Mr. Kane,” Doris said. “This will require a joint signature.”
“You mean the money is here.”
“Oh yes. One million dollars, right?”
“That’s right. One million dollars.”
“It’s here and ready to go, except that your wife has to sign for it, too.”
“She’s not here.”
“Well, can she get here?”
“No. That’s impossible. Never.”
“I’ll have to talk to my supervisor. I don’t know what to do in a case like this. Is she sick?”
“Yes.”
“Can it wait till she gets better?”
“No.”
“The money will still be here.”
“Listen, can’t I sign for her?”
“It’s against regulations.”
“I’m her husband.”
This was a wild complication. I knew Joan would never consent to coming down here, not even for a million dollars.
Especially not for a million dollars.
“She’s very sick,” I said.
“I understand.”
“I’m afraid you don’t. She’s very sick.”
“Oh.” Then she handed me the papers and said, “Sign these.”
Forty minutes later she handed me a check.
“I hope everything is all right,” she said.
“Yes. May I have an envelope for this?”
“Certainly.”
I slipped the check into the envelope and tucked the envelope in my billfold and slid the billfold in the deep pocket on the right side of my jeans. I kept my right hand dug in as I marched out.
I waited for the car and when it came I heard a voice shout my name.
But I knew all about turning back and I was gone.
When I got home Joan was on the couch reading the latest Bellow.
“Why do all his characters come off the page like alte cackers?” I said.
“Whose?”
“Below.”
“Bellow,” she said. “And I wasn’t reading anyway.”
“Oh.”
“I was sitting here worrying.”
“About what?”
“About you.”
“I told you where I was going.”
“I know.”
“You sat here all day worrying?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Something might happen.”
“What might happen?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
“Like what?”
“They’re shooting at each other on the highways.”
“That’s California,” I said. “This is the rest of America.”
“They’re all over, these people.”
“Well, nothing happened.”
“I don’t want anything to happen.”
“You’re afraid something might happen.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“You’re afraid something might happen before New York.”
“Maybe.”
“Superstitious? My Joan?”
“It’s not superstition. It’s--maybe it’s premonition.”
“It’s superstition.”
“You think everything will be all right?”
“Of course. We’re going to New York, aren’t we?”
“Not soon enough.”
“Ta da!” I said and I brought out the cane.
“Oh God, I forgot! How could I forget? The cane! Of course! The cane!”