the car, almost missing Jake. Addie had insisted, before they set off, on making bacon and scrambled eggs for the children. Both resisted, but lots of ketchup and extra bacon had solved the immediate problem, and exacerbated the resulting one.
The copious ejaculate, which emerged in a muddy rainbow arc, made the rear of the car uninhabitable, ready for an emergency United Nations task force. Rotten half-digested eggs and red slush with brown bits covered much of the surfaces, and some of Jake’s. Fallout was nothing compared to this, just some dusty powder, nothing to it, whatever the consequences . . .
Ben had opened the window, put on the fan for fresh air and, gagging continuously, exited the highway five minutes later in search of a store where he could buy some cleaning materials, and a pharmacy to get something to settle Becca’s stomach, all of their stomachs. It took twenty minutes to find one, during which they had to pull over twice for Becca to empty her stomach, and for the rest of them to fill their lungs.
They filled buckets with water, scrubbed and brushed and installed air fresheners, the result of which was that the car smelled like a hospital on a humid day, the air falsified by cleaning odours, underlain by the stench of decay.
Becca knew that none of them wanted that again.
‘I ate too many jellybeans. I think I might . . .’ She made a retching sound from the back of her throat and repeated it while clutching her stomach.
Jake glared at her. He’d heard that sound before, not when she had actually vomited, which she’d done quickly and without any fuss, but some time afterwards, when she was ostensibly playing in the yard. The first time he’d rushed over to her, to ask if she was sick. She looked sheepish, cleared her throat, walked away. She’d been practising.
Addie had brought a vomit bag from their plane trip to Bermuda the previous Easter and had it ready.
‘Here, darling, try to hold on, and if you need to vomit do it in this. It’s a special bag. You remember, from the plane?’
‘I’m not doing it in a bag! I’ll miss and get it all over me!’
‘Better than getting it on me!’ said Jake.
‘I need the bathroom! Hurry!’
It was impossible not to stop, though Addie and Ben suspected, and Jake knew, that there was no danger of a barf.
He looked at his sister suspiciously.
‘Becky,’ he said, ‘is drecky!’
She glared right back.
‘Jakie,’ she hissed, ‘is snakey!’
‘Shut up! Now!’ said Addie.
*
Everything was a potential source of harm. Particularly Maurice. One day he threw a baseball when the boy had his head turned and hit him on the cheek, the next day he pushed Becca too high on the swing and she began to cry. He let them stay up too late, and the next day they’d be cranky and hurt themselves.
He had no sense of having done wrong, the only wrong was in being there at all, or too often. He should have gone to the city for the day, though he supposedly had the month off. But there were always deals to be done, orders supervised: the rag trade was like that, quiet one moment, frantic the next. Even in the dog days. The sales force – grand name for the eight of them, five of them useless schleppers, God knows why Sol and Molly kept them on – all took a break in August, so if there was anything to be done, Sol would get on the phone, knowing Maurice wanted to say yes.
Perle objected each time. But some opportunities were too good to miss, and when he returned from his occasional triumphs, pockets full of cash, she’d be mollified. Sometimes even more than that. Talk about blessings!
She’d watch him drive off, suit jacket folded on the seat next to him, his shirtsleeves rolled up, arm resting outside the window. By now he had more hair on his arms and chest than on his head, but he looked good going bald, not like the rest of the shrivelled alter kockers. Even at sixty-one he was a fine figure of a man, noble-browed, browned, still with that body that had once given her such pleasure. In his twenties he’d played the occasional semi-pro baseball game, to help put himself through night classes in law. Five bucks a pop playing for one of the many New York teams. It came in handy, though more often than not he spent it going to a Yankee game himself – tickets, subway fare, few drinks with the other ballplayers and a meal afterwards.
When Addie and baby Frankie were still at home, he’d find an excuse to go out to the Polo Grounds, catch a Yanks game. They were great years, just after the First War, people with smiles on their faces once again, anxious to get dressed up and get out to one of the new speakeasies that were growing up round the town, desperate for a cocktail, a steak and a dance. They were a heedless crowd and he knew how to work them.
That’s how Morrie saw it. He could afford to, he had it all. And them all, most of them anyway. Their friendship, their trust, their business, their favours, occasionally their sexual favours. He was not a philanderer, God forbid, but with a few drinks in him he liked some fun. There was one girl. He met her at the Stork Club, not a waitress or hatcheck girl, nothing tawdry, just the niece of one of his acquaintances, with a taste for mature men. He treated her well, and she didn’t ask more than the occasional meal and bottle of hooch, and some pretty clothes. He could supply all of those, and he was a better lover than her young suitors. He made her crazy, for a while.
She was in a compartment, and happy to stay there, part of that life, not this one. Out of her company, he couldn’t think of her. Lying in bed at night with Perle, an image of Flora would have kept him awake for hours. Best to read.
He was a poor sleeper, and glad of it. Even after a few hours’ rest he felt fresh in the morning, and managed to read two or three books a week during the nights. History and biographies mostly, but an occasional novel too. Howard Fast perhaps, nothing fanciful, something with a good story that you could learn from.
He had a bookplate designed with a black and white image of books on a bookshelf, with one obviously missing, and glued it into his books: STOLEN FROM THE LIBRARY OF MAURICE KAUFMANN. He liked lending the books to friends in the sly hope that they might forget to give them back and be caught out by a visitor looking casually through their bookshelves.
Worse than getting lost, way worse, was what was coming to them all, and soon! Addie quailed at the prospect, the children caught her anxiety, only Ben was immune from the fear. Even when they were an hour away, the children could see their mother withdrawing, opening a bottle of pills and tossing one in her mouth, swallowing it without even a sip of water. How could she do that?
The threat was called the Holland Tunnel. Not that this particular tunnel was so frightening – they might as well have taken the Lincoln Tunnel, a few miles down the road, or that other one on the other side of the city that they would have to take next.
Addie had explained it to the kids when they were little. The tunnel went under a river – the Hudson River – so you could get to the other side. It was built with extra care, it was perfectly safe, the water that surrounded it couldn’t get in. It was dry, it was totally dry! And safe, safe as houses!
Once they had entered the fearsome underwater space, the spooky darkness only partially lit, there would be a terrible hissing of tyres, and Addie and the children would peer out the windows and scan the walls anxiously for moisture because that would mean the tunnel had sprung a leak and they would all drown when it filled up. Unless they
