Axel had been gone for three days now. There had been no word from Elysium and there was no telling how many more nights Rudolph would have to come down into the cellar and face the heat, the flour dust, the arm-numbing lifting and shoving and hauling. He didn’t know how his father could stand it. Year in and year out. After only three nights, Rudolph was almost completely worn out, with purplish bruises of fatigue under his eyes and his face haggard. And he still had to take the bicycle and deliver the rolls in the morning. And school after that. There was an important exam in math the next day and he hadn’t been able to prepare for it and he never was all that good in math anyway.
Sweating, fighting the greasy, huge trays, the flour smearing chalkily over his bare arms and face, after three nights he was his father’s ghost, staggering under the punishment his father had endured six thousand nights. Good son, faithful son. Shit on that. Bitterly, he regretted the fact that he had come down to help his father on holidays, when there was a rush on, and had learned, approximately, his father’s profession. Thomas had been wiser. Let the family go to hell. Whatever trouble Thomas was in now (Axel had not told Rudolph what it was when he got the telegram from Elysium), Thomas just had to be better off than the dutiful son in the blazing cellar.
As for Gretchen, just walking across a stage three times a night for sixty dollars a week …
In the last three nights Rudolph had figured out approximately how much the Jordache Bakery earned. About sixty dollars a week, on the average, after rent and expenses, and the thirty dollars for salary for the widow who took care of the shop now that his mother was sick.
He remembered the bill for more than twelve dollars that Boylan had paid in the restaurant in New York, and all the money for drinks that one night.
Boylan had gone down to Hobe Sound, in Florida, for two months. Now that the war was over, life was returning to normal.
He put another tray of rolls into the oven.
He was awakened by the sound of voices. He groaned. Five o’clock so soon? He got out of bed mechanically. He noticed that he was dressed. He shook his head stupidly. How could he be dressed? He looked blearily at his watch. A quarter to six. Then he remembered. It wasn’t morning. He had come home from school and thrown himself on the bed to get some rest before the night’s work. He heard his father’s voice. His father must have come home while he was asleep. His first thought was selfish. I don’t have to work tonight.
He lay down again.
The two voices, the one high and excited, the other low and explaining, came up from downstairs. His father and mother were fighting. He was too tired to care. But he couldn’t go to sleep, with all that noise downstairs, so he listened.
Mary Pease Jordache was moving out. She wasn’t moving far. Just to Gretchen’s room across the hall. She stumbled back and forth, her legs hurting from the phlebitis, carrying dresses, underwear, sweaters, shoes, combs, photographs of the children when they were young, Rudolph’s scrapbook, a sewing kit, Gone With the Wind, a rumpled package of Camels, old handbags. Everything she owned, getting it out of the room she had hated for twenty years and piling everything on Gretchen’s unmade bed, raising a small cloud of dust every time she came in with a new load in her arms.
She kept up a surging monologue as she went back and forth. “I’m through with this room. Twenty years too late, but I’m finally through. No one shows any consideration for me, I’m going to go my own way from now on. I am not going to be at the disposal of a fool. A man who travels halfway across the country to give away five thousand dollars to a perfect stranger. The savings of a lifetime. My lifetime. I slaved, day in and day out, I denied myself everything, I became an old woman, to save that money. My son was going to go to college, my son was going to be a gentleman. But now he’s not going anywhere, he’s not going to be anything, my brilliant husband had to show what a great man he was—handing out thousand dollar bills to millionaires in Ohio, so that his precious brother and his fat wife wouldn’t be embarrassed when they went to the opera in their Lincoln Continental.”
“It wasn’t for my brother or his fat wife,” Axel Jordache said. He was sitting on the bed, his hands dangling between his knees. “I explained to you. It was for Rudy. What good would it do going to college if one day all of a sudden people found out he had a brother in jail?”
“He belongs in jail,” Mary Pease Jordache said. “Thomas. It’s the natural place for him. If you’re going to hand out five thousand dollars each time they want to put him in jail, you’d better get out of the bakery right away and go into the oil business or become a banker. I bet you felt good giving that man the money. You felt proud. Your son. A chip off the old block. Full of sex. Potent. Right on the target. It isn’t enough for him to get one girl pregnant at a time. Oh, no, not Axel Jordache’s son. Two at a time, that’s the kind of family he comes from. Well, if Axel Jordache wants to show what a great big he-man he is in bed from now on he’d better start looking for a couple of twins on his own. It’s all finished here. My Calvary is over.”
“Oh, Christ,” Jordache said. “Calvary.”
“Filth, filth!” Mary Jordache screamed. “From one generation to another. Your daughter’s a whore, too, I saw the money she took from men for her services, right in this house, eight hundred dollars, I saw it with my own eyes, she hid it in a book. Eight hundred dollars. Your children command a good price. Well, I’m going to have a price, too. You want anything from me, you want me to go down into that store, you want to come to my bed, you pay. We give that woman downstairs thirty dollars a week, and she only does half the job, she goes home at night. Thirty dollars a week is my price. I’m giving you a bargain rate. Only I want my back pay first. Thirty dollars a week for twenty years. I figured it out. Thirty thousand dollars on the table. You put thirty thousand dollars on the table and I’ll talk to you. Not before.”
She had the last bundle of clothes in her arms now and she rushed out of the room. The door to Gretchen’s room slammed behind her.
Jordache shook his head, then got up and limped up the stairs to Rudolph’s room.
Rudolph was lying on the bed, his eyes open.
“You heard, I suppose,” Jordache said.
“Yeah,” Rudolph said.
“I’m sorry,” Jordache said.
“Yeah,” said Rudolph.
“Well, I’m going down to the shop, see how things are.” Jordache turned away.
“I’ll come down and give you a hand tonight,” Rudolph said.
“You sleep,” Jordache said. “I don’t want to see you down there.”
He went out of the room.
Chapter 11
1946
I
The lights were down low in the Westerman basement. They had it fixed up as a sort of den and they gave parties there. There was a party on tonight, about twenty boys and girls, some of them dancing, some of them necking a little in the dark corners of the room, some of them just listening to Benny Goodman playing “Paper Doll” on a record.
The River Five didn’t practice much anymore there because some guys back from the Army had started a band, too, and were getting most of the dates. Rudolph didn’t blame people for hiring the other band. The guys were older and they played a lot better than the River Five.