GOLDA
Golda sat in the darkened living room on a hard-backed chair. She was picking at a loose thread on her skirt, worrying it back and forth, back and forth, trying to tear it without pulling it and making a hole in the material. But the thread was woven tightly, and the more she moved it back and forth, the greater was the puckering in the fabric.
She looked up at her husband but said nothing. Then she rose from the chair and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on for tea. Ben followed her and stood behind her, his face drawn, his eyes piercing. She turned to him.
He took a newspaper clipping from his pocket. The Brooklyn Eagle. “How could you say that?” He stared at her, pointed to the headline. “How could you say he wasn’t your son? He was the best son there was.”
Golda stared at the kettle; her shoulders slumped. “He was not my son. My son would not be a gangster.”
Ben raised his voice. “He is your son. You were there at his birth. You are the only mother he ever had. You fed him, you clothed him, took him to school, made him study. You nursed him through the flu, even though our precious Isaac had passed and you were sick yourself. He loved you, tried his whole life to please you, always looking to you to see what you thought. Why did you not claim him as your own?”
“Because . . .” She hesitated and stopped speaking. She did not think she could say the words, speak what was going through her head, the jumble of thoughts, the pain. She bit her lip.
“Because what?”
Golda looked at Ben in surprise. All these years he had not spoken to her this way. He wanted to know; she would tell him. “He threw away his life. He was going to make something of himself; we were so proud of him. We scrimped and saved for him to be an engineer, and he leaves school and follows his friend—that Rudy—into the world of gangs. For what did I stay and care for him? So he could be a gangster?”
“You don’t know what you are talking about. He was never a gangster until I made him one.” Ben turned his back and sat at the dining table.
Golda followed him out of the kitchen. “What? What do you mean you made him a gangster? How?”
Ben took a breath. “He did it to save me. Because of me, he got involved in that gang. He was a good son who tried to do his best, to make me whole with money.” His voice broke. “I am the reason he is dead!”
Golda’s mouth dropped open. What do you mean he made you whole with his money? What are you talking about? How are you the reason he is dead?”
Ben shook his head. “The money I owed for the rent on the two buildings. He got it from his friend . . . from Rudy . . . and then he had to work for him. It was my fault. My fault.”
Golda turned paper white, stunned. “I didn’t know.”
“Where did you think I got the money from? I needed it to pay the rent or I would have lost the business. First I took from our savings . . . then I borrowed from the street. Then I couldn’t pay that back, so he borrowed from that Rudy.”
The kettle was boiling. The whistling sound pierced the air. Golda turned off the flame, and it stopped immediately. She did not know what to say. “I knew you took my embroidery money.” She turned back to look at Ben. She had never told him this before.
Ben looked at her, his face red, then bowed his head. “It wasn’t enough. Not your embroidery money, not his school money.” His shoulders were shaking. She felt an urge to take him in her arms and pat his back to comfort him, but she was afraid that if she did, she would break inside, and all the barriers she had built would collapse. She wanted to say something, but she didn’t know what.
She knew he was right. If Morty had gotten the money from Rudy, it had saved Ben. Otherwise, he might have been maimed or worse. Why had she not known that? Why hadn’t Ben told her? Had she been so unyielding that he was not willing to show her his weakness? His needs? She was sick inside. She felt revulsion for herself. She turned away.
“You think you are the only one who was left without choice?” Ben said. “Because you stayed and married me—a man with a baby? I married twice because I had to. Esther because . . . because she and I had already been together. And then you. Again, because you had come here to help us, and I had a baby, and someone had to care for him. And we married. But I embraced the choice. Made it my own. Came to love you for everything you did.”
She remembered how Cousin Surah had told her she did not have so many choices. How Rabbi Levy had said the same to her. She had made a choice but not embraced it until so much later. Had she never let Ben know she loved him? That she loved Morty? She staggered toward a chair and sat, mute. She wanted to touch him, to tell him how much she regretted.
Golda opened her mouth to speak, but Ben cut her off. “He was in Liberty because of me. Me.” He repeated the story again. “I needed money to pay back loans I took from the street. The gangsters. He went to Rudy and begged him to help, and the price for help was that Morty had to work for Rudy. Which he did. And that ruined his chance to finish school.”
Golda sat heavily on the sofa. She began to cry, and the words came out, punctuated by sobs. “He . . . did that . . . ? And I . . . didn’t know? How . . . could you not tell me?”
Ben sighed. “I was so ashamed. So ashamed that I had to ask him for money. That he got the money that way. That I couldn’t pay it back.” They were silent. “At least we can give him a funeral, bury him properly, mourn him as we should.”
Golda was weeping and couldn’t speak. But she nodded, and Ben knew she would do what he asked.
Ben, Golda, and Sylvia buried Morty’s body in the Jewish cemetery on Long Island. The trees were still gold and red with early November fall colors. The world was jeweled in the sunshine. All around them, the gray headstones lined up, some upright and newer, proclaiming the lineage of the dead, and others decrepit and crumbling, leaning helter-skelter, carved words illegible.
Golda had not been to the cemetery since they put the headstone on Esther’s grave years before. Morty’s grave was not next to hers but was close enough that Golda could see it. Morty’s funeral was sparsely attended: Cousin Surah and her husband, Yaacov; Ben’s old boss, Abe Frankel, and his children; a few friends; and Rabbi Levy. Ben looked around. Cemeteries were so peaceful, he thought. The graves were crowded together, but there were no flowers on the Jewish graves, just grass or ivy.
Golda took the rabbi aside and asked him if she was supposed to sit shiva for Morty. She knew the law. She was not Morty’s mother or sister or daughter or wife. There was no obligation. But it was not forbidden, Rabbi Levy said, and he encouraged her to take her rightful place beside Ben, as Morty’s mother. And in her heart, Golda finally had accepted him completely as her son. She was his mother in every way except legally. They had never done a legal adoption.
For the next week, the three of them—Ben, Golda, and Sylvia—sat on the wooden boxes provided by the funeral home whenever a visitor came to see them. They wore slippers on their feet, and their shirts had been ripped by the rabbi at the graveside as a sign of mourning. Their visitors sat on chairs. Ben answered all the questions the visitors asked and told them what he had discovered from the police. Golda sat quietly, barely speaking.
To Mr. and Mrs. Weissman from next door, Ben said, “They said they found the body, dead already two months. It was not able to be identified except by the clothes and wallet. They didn’t open the casket for me. The police said later they would give me his wallet back.”
To Cousin Surah he said, “There was a man I met from the store where I bought cigarettes up there. Bob something. He said he saw Morty going to the bus depot with a rucksack. Morty told him he was coming in for cigarettes later, but he never came. He was sure Morty took a bus out of town.”
“Where would he have gone?” Cousin Surah asked. “Wouldn’t he have written you?”
Ben shrugged. “I did get a note from him saying he was running away, but Detective Hanrahan said he was killed right after he mailed it.”
Ben’s partner, Abe, was silent at first; then he whispered, “Maybe it wasn’t him?”
Ben shrugged. “But they said it was. And I told them what the store-man said. They didn’t care.”
To Mr. Aranov from the synagogue, he said, “They had buried the body already in a goyish cemetery. I took it out of there and buried him at Sons of Israel.”
Mr. Aranov nodded. “Good you did that. At least it’s a Jewish cemetery.”
Golda listened to all of this but said little.
The week dragged on, and when it was over, the family went on with their lives . . . Golda and Ben to work and Sylvia to school. Life was gray, solemn, sad. Ben and Golda hardly talked. They had little more to say to one another that had not already been spoken.