“Bounce is waiting,” Ruth added. The kid loved the bear so much, Aaron wondered if it was normal. Ruth and Dr. Spock assured him it was, so he let it go. Two-year-old and bear had all kinds of imaginary adventures. They were often noisy, so Aaron hoped like blazes they were imaginary, anyhow.
His wife’s ploy worked. Leon’s face lit up. “Bounce!” he said.
“Give everybody a good-night kiss,” Aaron said. Usually, that just meant him and Ruth, but now Leon had a whole round to make. Aaron’s younger brother took the pipe out of his mouth so his kiss would work better. Sarah moved her drink to keep Leon from knocking it off the coffee table. Olivia, who was fourteen, gave her cousin a big, smacking smooch. Leon squealed laughter.
Ruth took him back to the bathroom-he was getting potty-trained, but he hadn’t got all the way there yet-and to his bedroom.
“He’s a good kid,” Marvin said. “Must come from his mother’s side of the family.”
“Heh,” Aaron said. All the Finches had barbed wits. The barbs on Marvin’s were longer and more rebarbative than most. That crack would have been nothing in some tones of voice. Not in the one Marvin used.
Aaron glanced over at Sarah Finch. Is it her fault that Olivia’s a good kid? he wondered. But, though he did wonder, he didn’t come out and say it. That showed at least some of the difference between himself and his brother.
Ruth walked back into the living room. “He’s in there talking with Bounce,” she reported. “I think he’ll settle down.”
“It’s when the bear starts answering that you’ve got to worry,” Marvin said.
Sarah and Olivia laughed. Even Aaron chuckled. But Ruth said, “The bear does answer sometimes. Leon starts with this high, squeaky voice, and it’s Bounce talking. Leon’s smart. I just hope like anything he’s smart enough to stay out of trouble.”
“He’d better take after you, in that case. His father wasn’t.” Marvin pointed to the letter from Harry Truman that Aaron had framed.
“Do I have to get tsuris about that from you, too?” Aaron said. “Roxane and Howard already told me I should have bought that Russian a ticket to Vladivostok. First class, too.”
“Why don’t you get me another scotch, Aaron?” Sarah did her best to defuse things when Marvin started sniping. The trouble was, her best wasn’t good enough. Marvin didn’t pay attention to her most of the time.
If Aaron had been in her shoes, he would have bopped Marvin in the nose. But Sarah seemed resigned to being Marvin’s punching bag. Or maybe she even liked it. Some people did. How could you know for sure?
You couldn’t. He could fix Sarah another scotch. He got out of the rocking chair, plucked her glass from the coffee table, and took it into the kitchen, where he built her a reload. He took another Burgie out of the icebox for himself, too. Sometimes Marvin was easier to stand after a couple of beers.
By that logic, Sarah would never draw a sober breath if she had any sense. But if she was a lush, she was a quiet, discreet lush. Plenty of people went on like that for years and years.
Ruth raised an eyebrow when she saw him come back with the fresh beer as well as the scotch. To his relief, that was all she did.
Not at all to his relief, Marvin pointed to the letter again. “You know, you never should have got that,” he said.
“Daddy!” Olivia could sound indignant where Sarah didn’t dare. “Uncle Aaron did a brave thing, catching that Russian.”
“I suppose.” Marvin sounded as if he didn’t believe it for a minute. “But if Truman wasn’t a dumb shmo, there wouldn’t have been any Russians parachuting down into Glendale.”
“If pigs had wings, we’d all carry umbrellas.” Aaron didn’t feel like getting into it with his brother tonight. He lit a cigarette, even though he’d stubbed one out just a few minutes earlier. Tobacco lent a little calm-not a lot, but a little.
Or so people said. Marvin’s pipe didn’t seem to lend him any. “Truman never should have dropped those A-bombs on Red China,” he declared, as if Aaron claimed Truman should have done exactly that. “Stalin couldn’t just sit there after he did that. So of course he started dropping bombs of his own.”
“You may be right,” Aaron said. Ruth blinked-he seldom came even so close to agreeing with his brother. He didn’t intend to come that close tonight, either. He went on, “But don’t you think it’s close to a year too late to kvetch about it now? He did what he did, not what he might have done. We have to roll with the punches, not say he shouldn’t have thrown that left hook.”
“But anybody with the sense God gave a camel could have seen it had to mean trouble.” Marvin stuck out his chin. Yes, he was always ready to argue.
“I didn’t hear you complaining about it then,” Aaron said.
“That’s because you weren’t listening.” Marvin didn’t like it when anyone called him on anything. He never had. And he’d skated on thin ice often enough that he’d been called more often than he should have.
“No, it’s because you weren’t talking-for once,” Aaron retorted. His younger brother turned red. Once they got going, they might have been back in their folks’ home in Portland during the First World War. The years since then fell away like magic. Aaron added, “Hindsight makes you look smarter now than you did then.”
“Geh kak afen yam!” Marvin said furiously. When he-or Aaron-dropped into Yiddish like that, they were well and truly steamed. “You were an ass then, and you’re still an ass now.”
“Ass? I’ll tell you about ass! Tukhus means ass, and I’ll kick yours for you if you want!”
Both men jumped to their feet. Before they could go for each other, Ruth and Sarah and even Olivia jumped between them. It didn’t come to punches. It hadn’t for years, even if the potential was always there. Sarah said, “I think we’d better head for home,” which would do for an understatement till a bigger one burst like an atom bomb.
Ruth said most of the good-byes. Aaron managed a nod or two. The urge to smash in his brother’s capped front teeth ebbed even faster than it had swelled. And the emptiness it left behind made him feel stupid, almost sick.
“The two of you!” Ruth said after Marvin’s De Soto purred away. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“I am ashamed of myself-now.” Aaron might have been a hung-over drunk mourning his fall from the wagon. “But he always gets my goat.”
“You had nothing to do with getting his, of course,” his wife said.
“Who, me?” Aaron sounded more innocent than he knew he was. “Marvin gets everybody’s goat, though. Did I ever tell you he came to our older brother Sam’s wedding in blackface?”
“Vey iz mir, no!” Ruth said. “How old was he?”
“Thirteen, maybe fourteen,” Aaron answered. “He’s always been a piece of work. Sam’s wife still hasn’t forgiven him, not to this day.”
“And you have?” Ruth said-fondly, Aaron hoped. In another week or two, they’d see Marvin again. Things might go pow again, or they might not. How could you know till you knew?
15
“Oh, that’s excellent!” The sister beamed at Daisy Baxter. “We’ve eaten all of our custard, haven’t we?”
Daisy didn’t beam back. She glared. “It’s bad enough, getting treated like a three-year-old. When people start treating me like two three-year-olds, that’s a bit much.”
“I’m sorry.” The sister didn’t mean it; Daisy could hear that. Why should she mean it? She hadn’t been at Fakenham when the A-bomb leveled the airfield at Sculthorpe next door. She still had all the health she’d been born with. Daisy knew too well the same didn’t apply to her.
She was still here to glare at obnoxious, well-meaning fools. Too many people from Fakenham couldn’t any more. Some of the women who’d been in the tent with her had their last plot of earth these days, six feet by three feet by six deep.