“When they have a baby,” said Doris, the last word on the struggle of the generations, “then that’ll be that. What else?” she asked, showing me her palms. “We have two, and my parents, believe me, are having a whole new life through the grandchildren.”
“Gabe,” Maury said, frank and serious, “you know Paul probably better now than I do.” But with his practical business head, I knew he did not believe I knew anything better than he did, except perhaps how to parse a sentence. “Gabe, would you do me a favor, do us all a favor? When you go back there to the University, when you see Paul and his wife, would you tell them that Maury Horvitz, Mushie, sends his regards? As far as I’m concerned, personally, I mean, whatever Paul did was all right with me—”
“Look, nobody’s objecting to that,” Doris announced. “Whatever he thought he wanted to do, he should have done. Nobody’s denying him that.”
“But his father is a sick man, we see how sick he is every day. This is something Paul doesn’t see. And his mother is giving herself up to that man, she waits on him hand and foot. Just like she always waited on Paul. That woman has aged in three years in a most terrific way. As far as I’m concerned there’s only one thing that can keep those two from just drying up and dying—”
“Maury—” said Doris.
“A baby!” declared Maury. “A baby would heal that rift, I know it. Gabe, I would write to Paul myself, I would tell him my feelings on this whole thing — but to Paul I’m probably just an old friend he doesn’t even remember. But you could tell him. Somebody has to tell him. You can’t be selfish all your life. Paul was my best friend, but he always had a tendency to be a little selfish. Not to think of the other guy. Just a tendency, but still …”
“I’ll tell him,” I said, as the phone rang.
“Thanks, kiddo,” Maury said, taking my arm. Then he was on his sprightly elfin feet and had picked up the phone, which was pale blue to go with the carpet. I really couldn’t stand him.
“Hello? What … No-no-no. Just chatting …”
“Who?” Doris whispered, and for an answer Maury merely had to close his eyes.
Doris nodded. She said, sotto voce, “They call three times a day.”
When Maury hung up, he said, “I have to go down for a few minutes. Leonard says she’s hysterical. She keeps crying about Thanksgiving.”
“I hope I didn’t do it,” I said. “I probably shouldn’t have come.”
“How could you know?” Doris demanded in her singsong voice. “She’s been like this for a week already.”
“I’ll be right back,” Maury said.
“Take Marjorie Morningstar,” Doris said. “Maybe they’ll read it. If he’ll just start it,” she explained to me, “I’m sure he’ll be gripped. Have you read it?”
“Not yet,” I said, and began to get up.
“Wait a minute,” Maury said to me. “I’ll be right back.”
“I have to run on home myself.”
“Why don’t you wait until I talk to the folks? I’d appreciate that.”
“Sure. Okay.” I sat down on the cushions.
When we were alone, Doris lost a little of her composure, or whatever you may choose to call it, and began to hum. She said finally, “You don’t look Jewish, you know?”
“No?”
“You look Irish.”
“Not really. Not Irish.”
“Well, you know what I mean. Paul always looked very Jewish.”
“I suppose so.”
“You ought to read Marjorie Morningstar,” she said. “It’s about a girl who one of her problems is, I don’t think she wants to be Jewish. I think maybe Paul ought to read it.”
“You think I ought to recommend it to him?”
She did not know what to make of my response. She said, “Look, it’s just funny when a boy you went out with marries a Gentile girl. I mean I always thought of Paul as a very Jewish fella. He worked in the mountains, he never got in any trouble, he went to college, he had a good sense of humor—and then he turns around and does a thing like that. I don’t think those things generally work out, do you? Most divorces are intermarried, you know. Maybe Paul’s will work out, I’m not saying that. I’m sure if Paul picked her she’s a very nice girl. Certainly I have nothing against her. I don’t even know her. It’s just, I don’t know, none of us expected it. Do you get what I’m talking about?”
“I think so. Yes, I do.”
“Let me give you an example. Maury — now Maury, I mean you just know Maury wouldn’t do it. Maury is a very Jewish fella. He’s a very haymishe fella. To him a family is very important, a nice place to live is very important, he has a good sense of humor—” She got up off the floor and went to the piano, where there was another framed photograph. “This is Maury,” she said, carrying it back to me, “with Ted Mack. Ted Mack from the Amateur Hour. You know Ted Mack, don’t you?”
When I told her I did, she seemed somewhat relieved about my chances in the world.
“Now, Maury could have been a singer. Maury could have been a terrific singer on the style of Frankie Laine. Maury is a very interpretive fella with a song. He won two weeks in a row on Ted Mack, and when he lost, it was only to that little Rhonda whatever her name; you know, the one who had polio and overcame it. I mean that’s very nice, but it certainly didn’t have very much to do with talent. Maury was very unfortunate with that whole thing. Still, two weeks is definitely not nothing, and Arthur Godfrey was very interested in Maury, and the phone calls were coming in from agents for a week. In fact, we had a friend whose cousin was Ed Sullivan, so I mean anything could have happened. I mean Eddie Fisher just happened to meet Eddie Cantor and that was the whole thing. What I’m getting at is that Maury is a very different fella from Paul.” Her point — some point — made, she took the picture back to the piano. I stood up to stretch my legs.
“When I met Maury,” Doris was saying, “I had only really stopped seeing Paul because he went away to Cornell. Otherwise I don’t know, I probably would still have been dating Paul. I was in NYU and I personally did not even know Maury was a friend of Paul’s, can you imagine? And I was in this psychology class, and the first day in walks this very attractive fella, and it was Maury. And I knew how he had been on Ted Mack already, and what a terrific showman he was, and Maury asked me out, and then we just saw each other right on through, and then we got married. And that’s it.”
“And that’s it,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said mousily, and shrugged her shoulders. “That was all really. We met each other and we liked each other and that was all.” She put one hand on her hip; she seemed almost to have become angry with me. “I mean I never put out for Paul, you know. I mean I knew I would marry Maury very early.”
“In life?”
“You remind me of a guy in Marjorie Morningstar,” she said. “Noel Airman. He’s an intellectual, you know, and also a wise guy. When I was reading the book, in fact, I was thinking of Paul. I’ll bet he turned out a little bit that way too.”
At this point I kissed her. I closed my eyes, dreaming of the simplest, the very simplest of lives.