“Hi,” she said. “What’s up?”
He returned the smile, keeping the knife behind his back. “I have news for you,” he said. “We’re expanding, like I suggested. No more small-time stuff, Sara.”
She sighed. “Not again, Andy. I told you before…”
“This time I’m telling you.”
“Oh,” she said, amused. “Do you think you can get along without me?”
“I know I can.”
“Really?” She threw back the bedcovers and smiled up at him. “You need me, Andy.”
He forced himself to look at her. He ran his eyes over the firm breasts, the soft curves of her hips. He looked at her carefully, waiting for the familiar stir within him. It didn’t come.
“I don’t need you,” he said, slowly. “Look.”
He held out his right hand, the hand that held the knife. He unbuttoned the sleeve and rolled it down slowly, showing her the marks of the needle. “See? I’m a junkie, Sara. I only care about one thing, baby, and it isn’t you. You don’t show me a thing.”
But her eyes were not on the marks on his arm. They were on the knife in his hand, and they were wide with fear.
“I don’t need you at all,” he went on. “I don’t need liquor, I don’t need sex, I don’t need you. You’re just dead wood, Sara.”
She rose from the bed and moved toward him. “Andy,” she cooed. “Andy, honey.” Her whole body seemed to reach out for him, hungrily.
He shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “It just won’t work anymore. I don’t care about it. Just the horse is all that matters.”
She looked into his eyes, and they were flat and uncaring. “Wait,” she said. “We’ll play it your way, Andy. We’ll expand, like you said. Anything you say.”
“You don’t understand. I don’t need you.”
“Please!” she moaned. “Please!”
“Sorry. It’s time for my shot.” And he lowered the knife.
He moved toward her and she tried to back away, but he kept coming, the knife pointed at her. “No!” she shrieked. And she started to say something else, but before she could get the words out the knife was in her heart.
A SHROUD FOR THE DAMNED
SIGMUND OPENED THE DOOR SLOWLY and tiptoed inside. The door squeaked shut behind him as he headed for his room. The night was still and dark and Sigmund was very tired. He wanted to sleep.
“Sigmund!” He started at the voice.
She was sitting in the red armchair. At least it had been red once, many years and several owners ago. With the passage of time the color had faded almost entirely away, and in the dim lamplight the chair was an unimaginative gray. And she looked gray in the lamplight, with her hands so busy and her eyes so still. She looked as gray and as shop-worn as the old armchair.
“Hi, Ma,” he said. “I thought you’d be sleeping.” He smiled automatically and started once again for his room.
“Sigmund!” The voice caught him, halted him in his tracks, and turned him toward her once more.
“Come here, Sigmund.”
He tiptoed at first, until he realized that she was awake and that she had seen him, and he had no reason to walk softly. He crossed to the side of the old armchair and stood there awkwardly, looking down at her, waiting for her to speak.
“Sit down,” she said. “In the other chair. Sit down so your mother can talk to you. You’re so tall I can’t talk to you when you stand up. You grew fast this last year, Sigmund.”
He started to protest, started to tell her how tired he was, then gave it up and took the seat across from her. He sat, watching her, and if her hands had not been moving all the while he would have thought that she was sleeping. But her hands moved, quick and sure, and they were as much alive as her eyes were dead.
“Sigmund,” she said at last, “you were out late.”
He looked away. “It’s not so late.”
“Late,” she said, firmly. “You should come home early and be with your mother. Then maybe you could wake up mornings. It’s not good you should sleep so late in the mornings.” He didn’t say anything. He started to tap his foot on the floor, slowly and rhythmically, but after a few experimental taps the foot stopped by itself.
“You know what I’m doing?”
“Knitting,” he said.
“Smart boy. And do you know what I’m knitting?”
He shook his head, desiring only to end the conversation and crawl into his warm bed. But she had no one else to talk to, and she seemed so horribly alone, always looking desperately and methodically for something which was no longer present.
“You don’t know,” she said, accusingly. “In the old country you would know, but here…” She shrugged briefly and left the sentence dangling, unfinished.
Here we go, he thought. The old country bit again. You’d think she was still living there.
“It’s a shroud,” she said. “You know what’s a shroud for?”
“Yeah. It’s for when someone dies.”
She nodded. “To wrap them. In the old country, when a person died he was wrapped in a shroud before they buried him. It was to keep out the spirits.”
He looked at her hands and watched the long knitting needles flash back and forth. All right, he thought. But so what?
“Not here,” she continued. “Not in this country, where they bury a man in a suit. Does it make sense? A suit? This will keep out spirits?”
He didn’t answer, nor did she wait for an answer. “Your father once said that a person who made shrouds and grew food would never grow hungry. You understand?”
He didn’t, but nodded anyway.
“Because,” she said triumphantly, “if people lived, he sold food, and if they died, he sold shrouds. You understand?”
“Sure. I understand.”
“But not in this country. Here they bury men in suits. Here a boy sixteen years old thinks just because he’s tall he can stay out all night. It isn’t right that children should come home so late.”
He sighed. “Look, Ma. Listen a minute, will you? People don’t buy shrouds here and you can’t grow food in a crack in the sidewalk. You know what I mean?” His voice rose involuntarily and he lowered it.
“Ma, we have to eat. You can’t sell your shrouds, and we have to eat. I brought money for you.” He pulled some bills from his pocket and held them out to her.
She closed her eyes and silently refused the money. “Where did you get it, Sigmund?”
He looked away. “I got it. What’s the difference where?”
She darted a look at him, and for an instant there was life again in her eyes. Then they were dull once more, dull and flat and tired. “You stole it,” she said. “You are a thief.”
He tightened his hands into fists and remained silent.
“My son is a thief. My son Sigmund stole money. A thief.” And then she too was silent…
The silence came over him like a dark woolly blanket, more accusing than anything she could say. He had to break it. “Ma,” he said at last, “don’t you understand? Don’t you?”
“I understand only that you are a thief.”
“We need the money to live. You won’t let me quit school and get a job…”
“A boy should go to school,” she said.
“And you won’t let me take a job on Saturdays…”
“No son of mine will work on the Sabbath.”
“And you won’t take the relief money…”
“Charity,” she broke in. “Charity I don’t want.”
“And you don’t have a job. So I have to steal, Ma. What else can I do?”
She didn’t seem to hear his question. “I would work,” she said slowly. “I would have a job. No one will hire me, not in this country.”
Her eyes closed then, and only her hands moved. It was the same argument, the same words that Sigmund had heard a hundred times in the past. Either he would be a thief or she would go hungry, it was that simple.
He stood up and walked quietly to the kitchen. He took the lid from the cookie jar and noted that only a handful of change remained. She could spend it well enough, even if she never took it directly from him or acknowledged the source of the money. He grinned sadly and placed the bills in the jar.
He slept well that night. There were dreams, unpleasant ones, but he was tired enough to sleep anyway and he didn’t hear the alarm clock in the morning. And once again he was almost an hour late for school.
SCHOOL ENDED, FINALLY. The classes were dull and the teachers were something of a nuisance, but Sigmund clenched his hands into fists and lived through it, just as he lived through the flight from Poland long ago. He would clench his hands into tight little fists, and sometimes lower his eyelids, and everything passed in time.
Lucci was waiting for him after school. Lucci was the same age but not as tall as Sigmund. But Lucci’s mother was dead and Lucci’s father drank red wine all day, so Lucci did not go to school.
“Tonight,” Lucci said. “We’ll go out tonight, okay?”
Sigmund hesitated. “It’s cold out. It’ll be cold as ice tonight.”
“So what? You can use the gold, can’t you?”
Sigmund nodded.
“So we’ll go out then. Want to shoot some pool?”
“I can’t,” said Sigmund. “No money.”
Lucci shrugged. “What the hell, we’re buddies, aren’t we? I’ll treat.”
They were buddies, and they went to the small poolroom on Christie Street where the cigar smoke was thick and warm in the air. They played two games of eight-ball and one game of straight and one game of Chicago, and they each smoked two of Lucci’s cigarettes, and Lucci paid for all the games. Then it was time to go. They shook hands warmly because they were buddies and Sigmund walked home for his dinner. It was so cold on the street that he could see his breath in front of his eyes, hovering in the air like the cigar smoke in the poolroom. He shuddered.
When he opened the door he could smell food cooking on the stove, but otherwise he would not have known that his mother had moved at all since the previous night. She was sitting again in the red armchair, her fingers flying as they skillfully manipulated the slender needles. She looked up as he came in.
“It is cold out,” she said. “You are almost blue from the cold, Sigmund.”
He rubbed his hands together. “It’s not that bad.” He took off his jacket and hung it on a peg on the wall. When he turned around she was holding her knitting up proudly.
“Look,” she said. “It’s almost finished. Weeks I have worked on it, and it’s almost finished.”
He forced himself to smile. “That’s good. That’s real good, Ma.”
“Tonight it will be done.” She stood up slowly and beckoned to him. “Come, let us eat.”
The food was good. There was tender boiled cabbage and lamb stew and milk, and Sigmund enjoyed the meal. He ate quickly despite her frequent injunctions to chew his food more thoroughly, and he stood up from the table as soon as he was finished.