“Should I put on the—?” Harry began and then despaired. “I guess they’re not really interested. I loved the Civil War at that age,” he wondered aloud with unembarrassed self-admiration.
“That’s why you became an historian,” Peter said.
The doorbell rang.
“My mother,” Max said in a voice of doom.
“I’m not a historian,” Harry said. “In fact, I can appreciate your old-fashioned and quite correct usage of ‘an’ historian. I teach American literature,” Harry said in a modest mumble, as though mentioning something so secret and precious that he had to be careful not to be overheard by the wrong party.
The doorbell rang again.
“Harry, can you get that!” Flora’s voice called from the kitchen.
“Don’t my daughter’s legs work?” Harry asked rhetorically; he had already begun a shuffle down the hall.
Max looked up at Peter and Diane Hummel. Both stood in formal poses holding empty drink glasses. He was alone with two strangers.
“You know I decided to ask around about your lawyer,” Diane said. Peter shifted from one foot to another. For him that was almost feverish behavior.
“And you found out he’s a shyster,” Max said.
Diane’s dark eyebrows lifted. “No. Do you think he’s a shyster?”
“I don’t think he’s honest.”
“In other words, he’s a lawyer,” Peter said and laughed gutturally in his wife’s direction.
She winced and her nostrils tightened, as if she had smelled something foul. “No, but…he’s, well, he’s second-rate. And he has no experience in aviation liability.”
“I know that. I gave him the job because he’s second-rate.”
“Do you always do self-destructive things or are you planning to sue him for legal malpractice?” Peter Hummel grinned at Max, pleased by his own wit.
“My old firm is handling Byron’s case,” Diane said. Her small mouth spread, revealing small yellow teeth. She was attempting a friendly smile. “They’re very good. If you want I can arrange for them to take over.”
Max’s mother and sister, looking more and more as if they were sisters, gradually moved down the hall toward them. Their chubby faces and deep amused voices were strange to him. He had a flash of memory — a still photo of his mother as she knelt on the sidewalk beside his dead father. She was skinny. Her black hair, rich and curly, bounced with each of her sobs and cries for help. Recalled to his consciousness years ago by his therapy, Max knew what he had thought about his mother at that instant, at that sad and by now legendary moment of their family history, as she tried to cradle his dying father’s head, lifting it from the concrete of New York. She’s so beautiful, thirteen-year-old Max had thought. How old was she, with her lover dead, her children fatherless? Thirty-seven. Five years younger than Max now. Poor woman. She had remained alone for all those years.
Diane Hummel said softly, “Are you okay?”
Max looked at her. She seemed surprised by something on his face. He reached for his cheeks and discovered they were wet with tears. Max dabbed at them with the palm of his hand. Peter no longer appeared self-satisfied. He stared at Max with dispassionate curiosity.
“I’m sorry,” Max said. “Thank you for your offer. But I picked Brillstein because he’s second-rate, because it’s a big score for him. He’s been second-rate his whole life — just like me — and he thinks he needs just one break. I know he’s sleazy — I understand that he’s gotten several of the other survivors as clients by introducing himself as the Good Samaritan’s lawyer.”
“So you know about that?” Diane said in a musing tone.
“Max,” his mother said, arms and hands out. She and his sister Kate had arrived at the living room. “No kiss?”
“Sure, Mom,” Max said and rose dutifully. He talked to Diane while crossing the room to his mother. He touched his mother’s cheek with his lips briefly. The skin was soft and flabby and cold from the outdoors. Thirty years before, the widowed woman on the sidewalk had tight skin and gaunt cheeks. “I don’t really believe it’s going to take any skill to make a killing off this and I wanted that schlepper to have his big break.”
“What schlepper?” his sister said. “Are we talking about one of my old boyfriends?”
Max kissed Kate as well. Her skin wasn’t soft or loose. He finished his explanation to Diane: “Brillstein may blow the case but he’ll never be able to say he didn’t have a chance at the big time.”
“Is this man a friend of yours?” Peter said. He frowned resentfully as though he suspected Max of being a tease.
“No,” Max said gently. He continued softly, apologetically to Diane: “I guess it sounds crazy to you. But you’ve been at the top always, right? I mean I don’t know, but I get the feeling you were top in your class and that you’ve had your pick of jobs—”
“Diane’s a killer lawyer,” Peter said with a confusing mix of pride and acerbity.
“I haven’t had my pick,” Max said. “And yet I think I’m as smart as you. And I know in his heart of hearts Brillstein thinks he’s as good as any lawyer. Maybe we’re both kidding ourselves. But we deserve a shot, don’t we?”
“Max,” his mother said, a note of alarm and urgency in her tone.
“Yes, Mom?” he waited for her predictable reassurance, her usual tepid spoonful of soupy praise. What would it be? You’re not second-rate; in fifth grade Mrs. Horowitz said you were a visual genius. Or one of her negative palliatives: You do your best, Max, that’s all anyone can ask and your best is very good, better than most. Or perhaps the gift of her physical compensation: a kiss on the forehead, a mumbled “You’re a good man, Max,” her eyes shining into his, hands lingering on his waist a few Oedipal seconds too many.
“Max,” she said, again insistent.
“What?”
“No lawsuit talk on Thanksgiving. No crash talk. We’re supposed to give thanks today, aren’t we?”
“We’re Jewish, Ma,” Kate said. “We don’t give thanks, we just stop complaining.” Kate enjoyed her own joke, laughing hard. So did Harry. Their mother also; she laughed hard and reached for her daughter’s hand to give it an appreciative squeeze. Even Peter smiled — cautiously.
“That’s ridiculous,” Diane Hummel said angrily. The amusement was embarrassed into silence. She stood rigidly, her sleek black hair as tight and shiny on her scalp as if it were black enamel. Her lips had thinned to a pale red line. Her hands were clenched at her waist, lowered but ready for a fight. She raised her bony chin and declaimed in a voice fit for argument before the Supreme Court: “Thanksgiving belongs to all Americans.”
Later, when Max passed Diane the plate of stuffing, she said in a low voice, “They’re all ghouls anyway. Even the best.”
“Who?” Max asked.
“The aviation liability lawyers,” she mumbled. “Ghouls in Paul Stuart suits.”
Max didn’t have an appetite for the meal. He had lost it somewhere in the living room conversation. He knew that he would have to test himself soon.
Jonah and Sam didn’t want to linger at the table. Each time they tried to escape, Flora or Harry or Debby or Peter held them with either a bribe of dessert, a threat of failing some standard of maturity, or an unfavorable comparison to Byron. Byron was a paragon because, encouraged by his father’s interviewer’s manner, he ate all of Flora’s dishes and entertained the adults with statements of his architectural ideas and explanations of what Architron could do.
“Why don’t we have educational games like that for Jonah?” Debby asked Max.
“It’s not a game,” Max said. Jonah rolled his eyes and whispered something to Sam. Max continued, “It’s a thousand-dollar piece of software that Jeff and I didn’t think we could afford.”