GOLDA
Ben didn’t come home that night. Golda thought that he must have gone up to Liberty to collect Morty’s body. All the while her mind was in turmoil; memories crowded her brain. Morty as an infant, his sweet milk breath, the blue of his eyes that fixed on her face, just like Esther’s. She had not loved him at first. He had been the cause of her sister’s death and the reason she had given up her dream of an independent life. But he had been irresistible. His brilliance, the sweetness of his smile, the way he reached for her when he woke from his nap and nestled his head on her chest. Despite herself, she knew she had loved him.
When he was so sick with the flu, she had hovered over him, even neglecting Isaac, who had seemed fine until the last day of his life. Morty had made her proud with his accomplishments in school, with the way he treated his sister. And now this. What had turned him? She couldn’t fathom it, and she couldn’t forgive him for it.
The next day she sat in the parlor with Sylvia, waiting for Ben to return. They didn’t speak. Sylvia tried to read. Golda held her embroidery in her lap but didn’t make a stitch.
Late in the afternoon, the doorbell rang. Golda got up and answered the door. This time she opened it without the chain. A man wearing a jacket and a hat and holding a camera stood behind a young woman wearing a green dress and a matching hat. She held a pad. The woman spoke first and very quickly.
“Mrs. Feinstein, my name is Edith Sperling. I’m a reporter with the Brooklyn Eagle, and we’d like to interview you about your son, whose body was found upstate—”
Golda interrupted her. “He’s not my son.”
“What do you mean? Isn’t your son Morton Feinstein?” she persisted.
“My son wouldn’t be in a gang. He was a good boy. And then this? You think he let us scrimp and save to send him to Polytech College so he could be an engineer, and then he left school and became a criminal? No, not my boy. That’s not my son.” The words poured out of her, as if she had prepared a speech. They surprised even Golda.
The reporter wanted to ask her more questions, but Golda became very agitated. “That’s all I have to say. Nothing else. No picture,” she insisted as the photographer raised his camera. She slammed the door in their faces. She walked back to the sofa, sat down, and began to cry. Sylvia took her in her arms and tried to comfort her.
Golda kept murmuring, “It can’t be Morty. It can’t be.” There were pictures in her head, things she would have thought she had forgotten, but they bubbled up and filled her with longing and sorrow. The first time she looked down at the newborn baby, his face calm and beautiful in sleep. His first smile. His first toddling steps. How quickly he learned to speak. All the milestones in his life. How he cared for Isaac and then Sylvia. Golda shook her head, walked around the living room, sat down again.
Still Ben did not come home. Golda wondered if there would be a story in the newspaper. The next day, she sent Sylvia down to buy the Brooklyn Eagle. Sylvia brought the newspaper upstairs and handed it to her mother. On page three was a small story with no photo. Golda read it quickly.
Date: October 12, 1940
MOTHER SPURNS RACKETEER SON SLAIN IN GANG WAR
by Edith Sperling
SLOT MACHINE WAR
A boy’s best friend may be his mother, but even she is justified in forsaking him when he takes up a life of crime. This was the attitude of Mrs. Benjamin Feinstein when police asked her if she wished to claim the body of Morton Feinstein, slain racketeer whom they believe is her son, from its temporary resting place in a Liberty, New York morgue.
Feinstein, a slot machine manipulator who made thousands weekly for the syndicate, was murdered in a gang war feud in which others were also wounded.
Mrs. Feinstein said, “If this boy was a gangster, he was not my son. I don’t know who this body is, but I don’t care. I don’t consider him my son.” Mrs. Feinstein has no interest in claiming the body of Morton Feinstein.
Golda held the paper, limp in her shaking hands. The story shamed her. How could she have said that to the reporter? Had she really said that? Where was Ben? Would he ever forgive her? How had their lives turned out like this? She sat on the sofa, staring at nothing, and waited for her husband to come home.