Sam's Legacy Page 14

  The door to his building opened. “Sam—” Sam stopped. Ben was standing in the doorway, in his black overcoat. “Wait a minute. I’ll walk with you—if you’re heading for Church Avenue.”

  “It’s freezing out—you’ll catch cold.”

  “Come,” Ben said, and put his arm into Sam’s. “I told Flo I’d get some more refreshments—they’re running out.”

  “What’s Tidewater get paid for?” Sam asked, but he kept walking, his father beside him.

  “I don’t mind the snow,” Ben said. “It may be the last one I’ll see.”

  They crossed Martense Street, Ben’s small body pressed against his son’s, his head down, to keep the snow out of his eyes. “You should have worn a hat,” Sam said.

  “You know what?” Ben replied, then waited. “You’re right.”

  “This way,” Sam said, and they crossed Nostrand. The lights in the laundromat and the liquor store were still on. In front of the TV repair shop a man was fixing a piece of cardboard on his windshield, under the windshield wipers.

  “Also,” Ben said. “I wanted to see if you needed anything for tonight.”

  “I told you before: I’m okay. You worry about yourself.”

  Sam thought he heard Ben sigh, but it might, he realized, have been the wind. It was getting colder. “There are some things we should talk about,” Ben said. “When you have the time.” He paused. “I had a letter from your mother today.”

  At the corner of Nostrand and Church Avenues, Sam saw an old woman, a bundle of scarves wrapped around her head, tilting a litter basket—it was almost her height—toward her, picking through it with bare hands. “Look,” Sam said. “I got things on my mind. If you have something to say to me, just say it, okay?”

  Ben nodded. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Come—” The light changed, and they crossed the street, arm in arm. The sound of a police siren wailed in the distance. In front of the Bel-Air supermarket, its lights seeming extra bright through the snow, a boy was waiting to help people carry packages home. He jogged up and down, trying to keep his feet warm. “Come inside for a minute, while I get what I have to—unless you’re late.”

  They passed through the electric-eye door. Ben took a shopping cart, pushed it around the checkout registers. The store was quiet, almost empty; the music—all violins—seemed particularly sweet to Sam. “So?” he said to his father.

  “That’s all. She asked about you—she wondered if you would be in Florida this year, to visit her. Next year, she said, she hoped to be in Cuba—her husband, you know, had a large villa and property there, and your mother expects to spend her sunset years enjoying them.” Ben’s voice shifted. “‘That man down there will have to open up to tourists again sometime, won’t he? Irving says he likes baseball, after all, that he used to be a pitcher.’”

  “So?”

  “That’s all. It’s the way she reasons.”

  “She’s a bird,” Sam said, aloud.

  “A what—?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m sorry about that too—but you know that. She shouldn’t have cut you off the way she did.” Ben took a giant bag of potato chips and dropped it into the shopping cart. “But I’ll give her credit: she knew herself. She wasn’t cut out to be a mother. When she said to me, twenty years ago, that I would do a better job, she wasn’t being a joker. Maybe if my father had not been living with us, if I hadn’t insisted—”

  “Look,” Sam said. “I said before, I got things on my mind—no cat and mouse, okay? You said you had things to talk about. I’ve been through the rest before.”

  Ben took two bottles of store-brand soda, and dropped them into the shopping cart, then he took two more. “As long as we’re here, can you think of anything we need?”

  “No.”

  “Also, before I forget—you’re invited to a farewell dinner for Benjamin Samson Berman, tendered to him—that would be your mother’s word, yes?—by his neighbors. A week from Friday night—after we go on our trip. Mason and Flo offered it—and we’ll have it in our apartment. It’s simpler for everybody that way.”

  “I’ll be there. What else—? I don’t have all night.”

  “Come here a second—closer.” Sam saw an old woman wheel by at the far end of the aisle. “Which can of nuts do you think we should bring back?”

  Ben lifted a can of Planter’s Peanuts with his left hand, then put it back on the shelf. “Closer,” he commanded, and Sam drew near. He saw his father’s other hand move quickly—something dropped into the left-hand pocket of Ben’s coat. “There! Ah, you’ve been of great service, Sam Junior—I knew we could work as a team—”

  “You’re bats,” Sam said, and turned away. Ben grabbed the sleeve of his son’s raincoat. Sam felt hot. “You just leave off. You don’t fool me.”

  “Samela,” Ben said, quietly. “Calm yourself. You shouldn’t take things so seriously. I told you, there’s no danger. Who would press charges against a nice old man from the neighborhood? Use your head.”

  “Just lay off is all.” Sam shook his father’s hand off.

  “But you will come Friday night, yes?” Ben said. “And on our little trip. I’m pleased about that.”

  “Excuse me—” A black woman, with purple-black hair that covered her forehead in ringlets, held out a piece of paper to Sam. She spoke very clearly, as if she were a schoolteacher. “I was wondering if you could help me, young man. I seem to have left my eye-glasses at home. Could you be so kind as to read this coupon for me?”

  She held her head high, leaning back, as if she were farsighted. “Sure,” Sam said. “‘If you will try our new delicious cream of turkey soup, Campbell’s will send you a coupon, good for one box of Nabisco Saltine crackers. Simply cut the labels from two—’”

  “Yes, thank you,” she said, putting her hand out. “That’s what I thought. You’ve been very kind indeed.”

  She turned and walked away. He knew the routine. He heard the sound of Ben’s cart, jangling behind him. “Don’t be an idiot your whole life,” he heard Ben saying, in a stage whisper. “Do you hear? Use your head for once. Take, Sam. Take! Believe me, if you let them—”

  Sam stopped, faced his father. “I know all about what a rough life you had, but you don’t fool me anyway. I got a game on tonight, and you want to get my mind off it, right? You’d like to see me sink way down into a hole so you could be the one to pull me out, right?” Sam laughed at Ben, felt good again. “I can figure some things out, and the thing I figured out is that the sooner you get out, the better for everybody.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ben said, and Sam saw that his father’s eyes were watering. “Of course—I wouldn’t deny it—of course it will be, let us say, difficult not living with you. I’m used to having you around, naturally. What you did for me… But you have your own life to lead, and—”

  “Enough,” Sam said. He heard Stella’s voice, and it reassured him. “Sure. Why do people always have to say things is what I want to know.”

  “Shh—you’re making a scene.” Ben’s eyes flicked sideways.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow—don’t wait up.”

  “But—what I wanted to talk to you about—the most important thing—forget the money, and some arrangements that we have to take care of—but what I want to know is this, Samela—” His father’s tiny eyes were dry now, and Sam tried to get ready for him, for the words. “When I’m gone, and you’re left, what, of me, will you pass on?”

  Sam found himself laughing in his father’s face. “That’s rich,” he said, and left his father standing there. At the checkout register he showed his hands to the girl, palms up, to indicate that he’d bought nothing. The kid who’d been standing outside was inside now, at the exit, and Sam saw water dripping from his sneakers. “You got a fag on you?” the kid asked, then looked up, sneered. “Nah—you’re the guy who says he don’t smoke. I know all about it.”

  Sam laughed, reached into his pocket, tossed the kid a quarter. “Get yo
urself a cup of coffee,” he said, and walked outside. He felt better. In front of Ben, he felt sometimes—like the Negro woman—ashamed of what he didn’t know. But not this time. The snow hit his face, and a flake stuck to his upper lip. Sam licked it off. He headed toward Flatbush Avenue. If he’d wanted, he knew, he could have said more: he’d figured it out all by himself, Ben hadn’t surprised him—he knew how his old man’s head worked sometimes. But if he’d said the stuff out loud, Ben would have found something—some detail—to confuse him with.

  I figured it out myself, without your help, he heard himself saying. If I die, then you die too. No more Ben, no more Berman, no more wooden dolls. Sam wiped snow from his eyebrows. Dolls? Ben would have asked. Sam felt good: he’d been right not to have said anything—he had other things on his mind, and if a word like that had slipped out, he would have been finished. This time Ben could stew. Everybody was always acting as if they were so worried about saving Sam Berman’s ass, he thought, but when it came down to it, they were all pumping away for number one, the way Ben had just proved.

  It was, already, Sam could tell, well below freezing. He stuffed his hands deep into his pockets; the tips of his fingers felt frozen. Across the street, the marquee of the Granada Theater was dark. Sam wondered where the guy with the dog stayed on a night like this. He crossed Rogers Avenue, his bare head down. How he had forgotten to take his gloves was beyond him. With his head full—all of Ben’s words, about the loan and leaving for Andy—and with Tidewater’s story taking up space, he wasn’t concentrating the way he had to.

  The city seemed especially quiet—no cars, no people out walking, no lights on in the stores—and the stillness comforted Sam. His arms locked to his sides, his shoulders hunched up at the neck, he began to feel warm, to enjoy walking against the snow. He stayed in shape, and that counted for a lot; if the others showed up, he’d have an edge there. Through the thick downfall of white flakes, the clock on the tower of Holy Cross Church was barely visible, but it looked, to Sam, as if it were almost nine o’clock. The game was scheduled for nine-thirty. If he kept up the pace, he’d make it easily. He imagined Ben walking along Nostrand Avenue, a shopping bag at his chest, cradled in his arms. Sure. It would be Sam’s luck to have his father catch cold and postpone the trip. The way things worked out in this life, Andy would probably be the one to sit shivah for Ben, and not the other way around.

  Sam bent his head down, lower, strained with his forearm, and brushed away the flakes from his eyebrows and eyelashes. It was a question he hadn’t obsessed about, but he wondered now what he would do when Ben kicked off—if he would go to synagogue every day for a year, the way Ben had done for his father. Maybe that, with his ways, was one of the things Ben had really wanted to talk about—he had intended to give Sam his wishes on things like that. Okay. If Ben wanted him to do it, he’d do it. He got up early anyway, and he could understand—even if Ben didn’t believe—how at a time like this it might reassure him, to know that Sam would think of him that way afterward, the way Ben had done for his father. But if Ben was his other self, and made some sarcastic remark, that would be fine with Sam too.

  His nose was dripping, and he sniffed in, then wiped it against his shoulder. In the schoolyard next to Holy Cross, there was a ring of snow—perfect—on each basketball hoop, an inch and a half or two inches high. Sam wondered if, with the wind, the rings would last until morning. The lights in the apartment house, on the other side of the street, were dim, blue-white, from the reflections of televison tubes. There was, he knew, only one way to describe the weather on a night like this—the way the guys had always talked about this kind of weather: cold as a witch’s tit.

  Sam crossed the street. It was crazy, and he cursed himself for seeing things this way, but he could feel his fingers moving a black gown aside, playing with the lace, the meshlike material, and, despite the flames which surrounded him on all sides, scorching hot, the woman’s chest, when he touched it, was stiff and cold. He thought of Stella, of how warm he had felt when he had adjusted her sweater and his fingers had grazed her chin. He’d thought about that too, sometimes—why it was he felt so much about guys like Stallworth and Pete Gray, why he felt the way he did about Flo. Sure. His eyes could tear for Stallworth—hundreds of feet below—and for Flo’s children, whom he’d never seen—but, though he did what Flo asked him to, he knew that he recoiled when he actually had to lift one of the muscular dystrophy kids. It wasn’t so hard to figure out.

  The snow was deeper, and Sam’s legs felt heavy; a trickle of sweat slipped down his back, under his T-shirt. To his left, Erasmus was closed. Next to it, the Yeshiva (when he had been at Erasmus, the building had been used for delinquents, the last stop before reform school) seemed to glow slightly, its red bricks wet, its window sills and fire escapes lined with even borders of white. It was really a bitch out—but if he’d called Sabatini and canceled, where would he have been then? He’d had no choice.

  Being an only child—an only son—had, in his mind, always had something to do with it. If he’d had brothers, at a time like this, with Ben leaving, they’d have taken some of the heat off him. Maybe—it was a connection he’d made before—that was why he’d felt so much for players who’d had careers cut short by injuries and disease: without any brothers or sisters coming after him, he’d always felt somehow as if he were incomplete—as if, it was crazy, Ben hadn’t finished making him. It wasn’t a theory, or an idea he’d tried to trace back—Ben could really have flown, if he’d gotten hold of it—but it was something, as now, which he sometimes felt.

  He passed in front of the Biltmore Caterers, and Joe Spinella’s bowling alley. Above, behind the snow, the neon lights, in circles, lit up a bowling ball which moved down the alley—a series of bowling balls which Sam watched light up, one after the other, in a greenish yellow color—until the neon ten-pins at the end of the alley blinked and fell.

  What he didn’t understand, though—it was a question that had occurred to him before—was what he had done to deserve this. It wasn’t a question he’d put to somebody like Ben, but it was a question he asked himself, and a question whose answer, though he would have liked to deny it, had something to do with the Knicks’ winning streak. But that, he knew, was crazy too: sure, he rooted for the Knicks, he always had—and sure too, he had predicted that they’d go all the way this year; but Sam knew that he was nobody to them, that, if you asked the question you had to ask—where was the control—you saw of course that he’d had nothing to do with their streak.

  Luigi’s was closed. They didn’t deliver and nobody was out walking tonight. It made sense. But the bank closing on the Knicks, his debt to Sabatini, no games and now this: freezing his ass off to play for stakes he would have laughed at a year or two before. It didn’t figure, not at all, and to try to figure out why it was all happening—that was the quick way to hit the bottom of the hole. If you put your mind there, you could forget it all. Like trying to figure out if a guy was bluffing or not: it didn’t matter. You had to keep your mind on your own cards and forget the rest. Play what’s there, don’t bet on air….

  The snow was falling more heavily, and Sam could not see the clock at the top of the Dutch Reformed Church. Milt’s newsstand, at the corner of Flatbush and Church, was closed, a mound of snow. There were lights on in Garfield’s, filtering through the snowfall, but Sam didn’t have time to stop, to warm himself. The exercise was enough; his fingertips were numb, but his body—his chest, his neck, his legs—felt warm, almost sleepy. Snow did that to you. He’d have to be careful, coming in from the cold, to keep his head the way he wanted it.

  He crossed the street, making tracks in the fresh snow, and stopped under the marquee of the Kenmore Theater. He left his hands in his pockets, shook himself so that the loose snow fell from his head and shoulders, his sleeves and cuffs. The city would be paralyzed by morning, he knew. Only the subways would be running, underground—they were bound, with the temperature below freezing, to have trouble
on the elevated lines. The theater was closed for the night, no sign on the cashier’s booth. Sam wiped his nose with his sleeve, set out again, and saw, directly in front of him, the shape of a man, under snow, lying on the ground, propped up next to the wall of a store. The man’s head, uncovered, was at his chest, and there was barely a space the snow had not covered.

  Sam went to the man without hesitating, bent over, lifted his own hands from his pockets. The snow got into his eyes, hung from his lashes, magnifying things. Squinting, he saw the geometric shapes of individual flakes. “Hey—you okay?” he asked. There was no reply. This was, he thought to himself, really what he needed, but he had no choice: you never knew, and on a night like this the guy might be totally covered by morning. Sam grabbed the body through a layer of snow, at the shoulders, and shook it. “Hey—wake up. Wake up there!”

  The snow on the man’s face, from Sam’s shaking, slipped away, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and dripped down. Sam held the man’s shoulders, stayed down at his level, in a deep knee bend position, and saw—it made his heart catch—that the man’s eyes were shining, that his mouth was turned into the side of his face, smiling at Sam. Snow fell lightly between the two men, and Sam could feel the warm air of the man’s breath.

  “I thought you’d be coming this way,” the man said. “I waited for you. Listen—”

  Sam flung the man against the wall, heard a soft thud. “You lay off!” he said.

  With a gloved hand, the man held onto Sam’s trousers. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m dressed warmly. I don’t take chances anymore. I just wanted to warn you. Be careful. Be careful tonight.”

  All the snow had slipped from the man’s face, and the flush of his skin—bright pink—made Sam see him as he had been when they’d both been clapping their hearts out, that first time. Sam’s jaw trembled, but there was a small river of sweat now, running down his spine, and he felt hot. He spoke the only words which occurred to him: “I don’t believe you.”