Chapter 5
LATE OF A CHILL AFTERNOON in October. Rudy sat on the rail of the porch, watched Joe carry his suitcase down and toss it into the back of the red convertible. Joe was leaving, and he regretted seeing him go. It wasn't every day you found a friend like him-a guy who loved to swim as much as you yourself did and wasn't afraid to go out, all the way out. He was mysterious, this guy Joe-hard to figure out. You couldn't tell when he would laugh or get sore; and when he did laugh it was nearly always at someone's expense, often yours. There was something not quite right about him.
He was pushing towards something-but what, Rudy could not have said. He wondered if Joe himself could.
Joe returned to the porch and they shook hands. "Well, Rudy, so long."
"You're off to Florida? I'm sorry to see you go."
They lit cigarettes and sat beside each other on the rail, staring off into space, smoking in silence.
"I'll probably be back next summer," said Joe.
Rudy shook his head. "You'" never be back. You'll be too big for a dump like this, once you've been to Florida.
"You starting now-this time of day?" Rudy asked.
Joe said he was going up to the Bronx to visit his parents, whom he hadn't seen in nearly a year. He would return to Brooklyn first thing in the morning, pick up Helen Carter and take off for Florida.
"Don't go pushing it up to a hundred miles an hour," Rudy warned him. "You're not that good a driver yet-even if it was me who taught you how."
Joe flicked away his cigarette. "You taught me pretty good, Rudy old boy-good enough to get my driver's license, anyway."
He started for the car. When he reached it he turned, waved his arm, and said, "Be seeing you."
He got in, the motor cranked and caught with a roar, the car sped from the curb.
It was nine o'clock at night and the Brodys were in their living room, watching TV. This was the time of day when work is farthest from the thoughts of most workingmen, when they lounge about and relax, puffing on pipes and cigars, getting drowsy. But in Arnold Brody's mind the thought of work was uppermost-the night's work that lay ahead. A baker by trade, he started at midnight and worked through till eight in the morning.
He was about fifty. Once a tall sturdy man, he was now bent and broken by hard work. Thirty-five years in the bakery was wearing on a man's health and appearance. But he was a hard worker, proud of his trade, of his skill at it. He had awakened at eight, been served a warm breakfast by his wife, and now sat beside her on the couch, watching the actors perform. He was not impressed with TV. Or with movies, automobiles or washing machines either. He was from the old country, and over there the things that mattered were the ordinary, down-to-earth things-good food, friendship, hard work, and a place to rest your head when you are weary. And children, of course. He shook his head sadly....It was no fault of his, that he had but one son, and that he....
The doorbell rang and the old man had a presentiment. It came as no shock to him then that when the door was opened his son Joe should walk in.
To Mrs. Brody however, who had opened the door to her son, it did corneas a shock. She had not seen her darling for a whole year. Though he had left three years before, when he was sixteen, and gone off to live somewheres far away-in a rooming house in Coney Island-she still loved him with all the tender compassion that her mother's heart was capable of. She clasped her hands, sighed, shuddered, and sobbing threw herself into her boy's arms. He hugged her and kissed her on the lips. Then, laughing softly, he held her from him.
"Gee Mom, let me look at you-gee, it's swell to see you again!"
He was the same as ever, he was her boy, the boy she had brought into the world.
Joe released his mother and walked across the room to where his father stood. He grasped the older' man's hand and shook it warmly.
"Pop-hello! It's nice to see you again. I'm sorry I stayed away so long. It was bad of me. I'm not a good son."
Arnold dropped the boy's hand, averted his eyes, and sat down on the couch. "Your mother-she is lonely for you-she misses you." It had always been that way, he always scolded the boy indirectly.
Look what you done to your mother.
Mrs. Brody scurried about, preparing a meal for her boy. "Come Joe-Joe darling-you must be hungry. Here, sit down at the table. I will have something for you to eat in a minute!"
After he had eaten, and while he was sipping that coffee, Joe broke the news to his parents, told them that he had come to say goodbye, that he was going to Florida. The immediate effects of the pronouncement on his parents were silence and sadness. Joe looked uneasily from one to the other of them.
"Well, cheer up. It's only Florida, it's not that far away. I'll be back and visit you more often from now on-I promise you!"
But the woman could only look at her son ruefully and shake her head. She knew-perhaps because she was his mother, perhaps because in matters such as this she trusted to instinct rather than logic-that what he told her was not true. He would not come back from Florida ever, he would not visit them again, she would never see him again.
The old man had sat brooding on the couch since his son had arrived; now he turned to him angrily and asked: "How you go to Florida? You walk? You got no job, no money-how you go, huh? Tell me!"
"I've got a car," Joe muttered.
"You-a car!" Arnold laughed harshly. "You got no car-you don't work."
"I don't work-but I got a car. A friend of mine gave it to me."
"You lie! You lie!" The old man leapt to his feet and stood glaring down at his son. "Where you get the car:' Where you get it? You steal, huh? You steal!'" lie raised his hand threateningly.
Joe got to his feet and started for the door, but his mother ran after him, pleading, "No, Joe-stay. Don't mind Poppa. He loves you, he don't mean what he say."
Joe turned to her. "I intended to spend the night here, Mom. Put if he feels that way about it, I'll push oil."
"Stay, you stay! He be good, he don't fight with you no more. Sit there-there on the couch-I make some more coffee."
Joe returned to the couch and sat there, across the width of it from his father. He sipped coffee and chatted pleasantly with his mother, who had drawn up a chair in front of him and was staring at him rapturously. Now and then he cast a surreptitious glance to his father, but did not address him. His father did not speak to him either but sat silent and morose, frowning at the wall across the room. The old man looked bad, worse than he had a year ago.
He was more stooped, more haggard and worn. His skin was pasty-colored and hung loose on his lace, his eyes were sunken and circled with shadows. "That's his reward," Joe thought. "His reward for being honest and decent and hard-working all his life. And now he hates me because I don't want to be like him and wind up like him ... Yeah, he hates me, I can see it!"
But Joe was wrong there, Arnold Brody did not hate him; in fact, though his behavior might indicate otherwise, he really loved him. Joe was his only child. It was just that he could not understand what had got into the boy. That look in his eyes-cold and cruel and aloof. Living alone in a rooming house-and not working-and neglecting to write to his parents or visit them. It would be different-he could understand it-if Joe had given some hint of what was to come, if he had shown mistiness or spite as a child, or been cruel or rough, or stayed away from school, or hung out with other teen-agers in a gang. But till he had been sixteen he had been a quiet, serious, studious lad, polite to his elders, kind and considerate to his parents, always at the head of his class at school. Then suddenly, just when he had started to grow physically, to put on muscle and weight, become manly and handsome, some tiling had happened. What? What had happened to the boy, his kind, gentle, lovable boy, to change him to this-to make him run off to that rooming house, to put that look in his eyes. He was his lather, but he couldn't understand. He tried but couldn't.
No, Arnold Brody could not understand. He had worked hard all his life and had become skilled at his trade, even as he had become stooped and old at it. He was a workman, a bread baker, that was all. He was not learned or wise in the workings of the mind. Often in the past a thought had come to him when he had tried to understand what had happened to his boy. This thought came to him now. A devil had gotten into the boy and taken possession of his soul!
But sometimes when he was alone the biblical words came back to Arnold Brody: "Oh my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, oh Absalom, my son, my son...."
Joe got up early the following morning, had a quick breakfast, kissed his modier, and left the house. lie wanted to be out before his father returned from work, he didn't want to see the old guy again. It made him uneasy to see what life had done to him.
When the door shut behind him, Mrs. Brody leaned against it and wept bitter tears. She knew that her darling whom, good or bad, she had always loved, would not return from this place-this Florida-where he was going. She knew she would never see him again.