Gladys had pleaded with him, “I really want you to come.” He had come in the middle of the night and was rewarded with a slap in the face and then shunned. At a time when all three of them should be united in mourning the loss of their loved one, they were fighting! It occurred to him to find a nearby bar, but that would not sit well with Gladys if she were to call him with a change of mind. Besides, he needed to think, and think clearly.
Luckily, he had already slept for a couple of hours that evening and his mind was up to the task of thinking. But the thoughts awaiting him brought no comfort.
He was unprepared for Con’s death, but in retrospect it had not come as a total surprise. If he were to believe Doctor Kravitz, Jewish-sounding as the doctor’s name was, just surviving the injury and emergency surgery was a miracle. Obviously Gladys and Debbie believed Kravitz was a miracle worker. Mike was not so sure. But what was the alternative? In a life-and-death situation even a Polish Jewish surgeon, or one with Polish Jewish origins, might be better than none. Mike wasn’t sure of that either, but nobody had asked for his opinion while there was still time. In any case, that was the hand Con had been dealt. And when you’re driving intoxicated, without wearing a seatbelt, crashed, and been seriously injured, you’ve forfeited your right to choose.
❖❖❖❖❖
Mike couldn’t summon the energy to undress. He lay fully clothed on the bed and stared at the ceiling light fixture, whose chief attribute was a lack of imaginative design. Cheap, he thought, like everything else about the motel. Cheap, like his life. Cheap, like his values. How would he be remembered when his time came? As an exemplar of mediocrity, that’s how! Father of a successful college-educated car salesman! Despised by his son; despised by his wife. Surrounded by unseen enemies, the undeserving targets of his xenophobia, disdain, and mistrust. Worse, all of these targets were better, more accomplished people than he. Could he so much as hold a candle to Con’s Asian teacher? To Doctor Prasad? To Doctor O’Leary? To Doctor Kravitz? To Jackie Robinson? To all the skilled ballplayers for whom Jackie Robinson had opened the door to recognition?
And how many more?
At least he excelled as a car salesman and made a good living at it. But when all was said and done, what kind of achievement was it to deflect a customer’s questions and sell him a car that maximized profit for the dealership — and the salesman’s commission — rather than best suited the customer’s need? Any buyer who knew what he wanted wouldn’t need an excellent salesman. Mike, in fact, excelled at preying on weak sales resistance.
Suddenly he didn’t give a damn whether he’d ever sell another car.
To add further injury, Con’s hurried departure from Brooklyn two nights ago came back to him. Mike, himself just arrived home after an unusually bad day at work, had simply waved him off, without a single word of welcome or good-bye. The next time he had said anything to his son, he had spoken words of unimaginable cruelty. When are you going to learn to drive? Those words would live in perpetuity as his farewell message, for he never saw Con alive after that.
Exhausted, he drifted off into a restless sleep, trying to hold on to the image of his son as it receded into the distance until he could no longer recognize it.
He jerked awake. Streetlights percolated dimly through the window. There was absolutely no sound. What had woken him was his last thought before falling asleep: the horrible realization that his son was dead, taking his father’s insults with him. Mike could not retrieve those last words nor apologize for uttering them. But Con had heard them and would likely report them to whomever he met where he had gone. Retribution, maybe Con himself flanking God, would be there waiting for him when his turn came to present himself.
But there was so much more, and the night was still young and dark. From the time little Con was old enough to understand, he had been subjected to his father’s bigotry. The first time Con had seen the picture the Ku Klux Klan meeting, he had asked: “Who are these people? They look like ghosts!” Mike had explained: “They’re not ghosts, Con. They’re carrying on a proud tradition, but they have to cover their faces so they won’t be recognized, because the government’s made them illegal.” Young Con didn’t know about proud tradition, government, or illegal, but whatever his father had said must be true, so he asked no further questions.
He remembered meeting Debbie for the first time, when Con brought her home to introduce her to his parents. Returning from the baseball game at the Yankee Stadium, Debbie — who was not particularly interested in baseball — learned all he wanted her to know about Jackie Robinson, the effect he had on the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the new direction baseball history had taken thereafter. Debbie may not have cared about the rise and fall of the Yankees, but he had made clear to her that the team was never the same after racial integration.
He recalled his overt reaction to Debbie herself, in particular the fact that she was Jewish. Con had not told him of her religious affiliation, but Mike, in an enviable demonstration of his detective skills — watching her decline bacon at breakfast — had figured it out.
Well, Con had chosen a Jewish woman as his wife, in defiance of his father’s wish. In the son’s view, father evidently didn’t always know best. But there were other instances, before as well as after, in which Con’s values clearly mirrored Mike’s. It was from his father that Con had learned to be cavalier about highway safety and traffic laws — particularly as they related to driving under the influence of alcohol. His first accident while intoxicated, when still a high school student and licensed for barely three months, had left him with a shattered knee; the last had cost him his life.
His mother had warned him numerous times of the danger of driving when drunk; but his father could “take it,” and he had taught Con disrespect for the law and its enforcers by example if not by explicit instruction.
Con had absorbed his father’s xenophobia and racism too. Mike knew this because Con frequently talked at home about his interactions with others. Naturally, if he performed poorly on any exam, he had to explain, because his parents had the irritating habit of asking why. Mike was satisfied to see the responsibility placed on an Asian professor’s teaching mixed classes, in which Asian students got the best grades. Gladys had doubts, and would look skeptically at her son as if to ask, “Is that what you really believe?”
But Con survived college and graduated. He had no ambition to educate himself farther, and he joined his father’s sales force. The commissions were generous and he presented himself well to potential buyers, wearing a business suit and letting it be known that he was college-educated.
Mike had had to accept Con’s marriage, not only because Con was legally entitled to choose his own wife, but because Gladys had actually liked Debbie from the start. And to all outward appearances the marriage was a happy one. Their firstborn son, Connor Junior, or C.J., was strong, athletic, and the kind of boy both father and grandfather liked to show off. Chris was different: he had little interest in physical prowess. When Con tried to steer Chris in a more “manly” direction by pressing him to play football, Chris hurt his knee, and things were never the same thereafter.
If Debbie’s indulgence of Chris before the knee injury caused a strain on their marriage, Con’s behavior in response to Doctors Prasad and O’Leary came close to rupturing it. To Con, leaving his son in the hands of those so-called doctors — he studiously avoided the term quacks — was nothing less than abandonment, criminal even. But Debbie had defended them; she accepted them as competent. It didn’t help Con’s cause that Chris had struck up a personal friendship with Doctor O’Leary, even playing checkers with him! Oh, that quasi-Irishman was a shrewd one! Chris was obviously too young to learn the lesson.
Mike knew the details, because Con had tried to share his frustrations with his parents, even at the cost of putting Debbie in a bad light. Gladys, unrestrained by her husband’s xenophobia, merely asked: “Did they take good care of Chris?” When Con hesitated, she knew all she needed to. Mike, though, repeatedly nodded in agreement with Con. He would have felt the same way.
Then there was the brief episode with Mr. Horowitz. Of course, all psychotherapists had to be of that ilk. Again, Mike knew exactly what Con meant; and again, Gladys simply shook her head.
And now, Doctor Kravitz! The name said it all. Yeah yeah, he was on call and it was an emergency, so there were no options. Maybe if Con had known into whose hands he would fall, he would have driven more carefully.
Doctor Kravitz had performed the ill-fated surgery. Therefore, despite saving Con’s life, Doctor Kravitz was to blame for Con’s death.
Yes, Con had paid with his life for trusting all the wrong people. His child would suffer a lifetime of disability because of Con’s defiant choice of that Jewish wife. He should have followed his father’s advice. Well, having established his independence, he would have to face the consequences of his actions, including his own death.
Mike was satisfied with his logic, and felt a load lift from his shoulders. All the agonizing, questioning, and rationalizing had funneled to the bottom line: Con was responsible for his life and therefore his death. Einstein must have felt the same satisfaction when page upon page of calculating, erasing, and recalculating finally came down to E = mc2 — whatever in God’s creation that meant. Thus off the hook, Mike turned on his side, away from the window, and gave himself up to sleep.
But still sleep was not ready for him. He stared wide-eyed at the door, then the ceiling, then the window, where all-night illumination still held sway. He replayed the chain of reasoning he had just completed, and unaccountably he did not arrive at the same conclusion. To be sure, Con’s self-destructive behavior was his own responsibility. But had not he, Mike, steeped his son in values that informed that very behavior? Wasn’t he the tree whose fruit had fallen close? He had the nagging suspicion that perhaps he himself bore responsibility for his son’s death.
And now he was fighting with his wife, his son’s mother, just when the two of them needed each other most. He had a lot to atone for.
The longer he ruminated, the wider awake he became. As the night gave way to dawn, he gave up on sleep and got off the bed. The night receptionist, who luckily did not recognize him, directed him to an all-night coffee shop, and Mike checked out of the motel.
He figured that both Gladys and Debbie were still asleep, and decided to get on the road before the morning rush hour. The moment he was back home, he called the dealership.
“Good to have you back,” said the cheerful voice of their receptionist. “Al’s wife had a baby boy. How’s your son?”
Mike searched for the words. “He didn’t make it. Tell the others I’ll be there in about an hour.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the receptionist said. “Will you be taking time off?” But Mike heard none of it because he had already hung up.
True to his word, he showed up at the dealership an hour later. Al, all smiles, was there to greet him. He handed Mike a cigar. “Saved just for you,” he beamed. “Best wishes and Hello from Jerry — and Barbara, of course! Eight pounds on the nose — that’s Jerry, not Barbara.”
Mike smiled. “I’ve heard of women losing weight after delivery, but never that much. Glad you made that clear.”
Al’s expression became earnest. “I’m so sorry about Con. What happened?”
“Auto accident. Surgery. Complications. Anesthesia. He didn’t wake up.” Mike said nothing about the events preceding Con’s ill-fated drive down the turnpike.
“When’s the funeral?”
“I don’t know. His wife’s the next of kin, and she’s Jewish. Gladys spent the night with her. She should be back this afternoon, unless she stays awhile. She got along better with the wife than I did. She even approved of the marriage. Everything OK with your wife and baby?”
“Oh, they’re doing great. But Barbara won’t be fasting this year; she’s nursing, and her nutrition’s important.”
“Fasting?”
“Yeah, next Wednesday. It’s Yom Kippur. I bet it’s on the store calendar. The holiest day of the year for Jews. That’s when they pray for forgiveness of their sins. Being hungry all day is part of the deal.”
“No kidding!”
“That’s not all. Some people — mostly old men — stay in the synagogue all day long, some never sit down. The rabbi and the cantor wear white; some of the old men in the congregation do too. It’s something to behold. Hey,” and Al jabbed Mike in the chest, “why don’t you come and see for yourself?”
“Would they allow an Irish Catholic in, especially on their Holy Day?”
“Sure. It’s not in the Jewish tradition to try to convert Christians, but they’re friendly folks and they like to welcome visitors. As a matter of fact, you might be called up to read from the Torah. That’s a special honor. Then they ask you for a donation, maybe fifty dollars or so. You folks have your Confessions, we have our Atonement. You can compare and decide which is more effective. It all goes to the same God, and His word counts, except He doesn’t tell us. That’s the price we pay for cutting out the middleman.” Mike was not laughing, so Al changed his tone.
“Come on, Mike, go with me!”
“I don’t have a white suit.”
“You don’t need one; that’s optional. And it’s not a suit; it’s a robe. But you would need a head cover, like a yarmulke, and a tallith — prayer shawl — wouldn’t hurt either. I have extras of both and you can borrow them. Then you, and Gladys too, can come over for dinner with us after dark. We call it breaking the fast, and it’s a meal, let me tell you. We act like we’ve paid our respects, and we deserve to have our stomachs filled and our sins forgiven. Especially important for car salesmen, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Would I have to fast?”
“No, just don’t bring food into the synagogue. No brown bag lunches on Yom Kippur. You stay as long as you want, and you can leave and return anytime. I don’t stay all day myself, couldn’t stand it. Even if I don’t eat or drink, I need a breath of fresh air every now and then.”
An hour later Gladys called. She was still at Debbie’s house. Obviously, after last night’s scene, being reunited with her husband was not a priority. She felt more at ease in Debbie’s company. The two women had discussed funeral arrangements and agreed that the service and burial should be held in Brooklyn.
“Do you need Mike’s OK?” Debbie asked.
“Technically yes, but I can’t imagine that he’d object,” Gladys answered. To Mike, on the phone, she said: “I’ll be home for dinner, but I don’t feel like cooking. Let’s go out.”
The conversation with Al Goldstone had left Mike strangely comforted. His restless ruminations during the previous night dovetailed uncannily with the description of the Yom Kippur service. He had gotten up that morning convinced that he had done much wrong in his life and needed someone to confide in. Father Larkin, spying on him through the screen of the confessional booth, didn’t seem like the right person. Better to go with Al to the synagogue, where nobody knew him, and pretend to be part, if only for a few hours, of a community engaged in ritual atonement. So he accepted Al’s invitation.
“Am I going too?” Gladys asked when Mike announced his intention over Chinese dinner.
“It’s up to you. I’ve heard that in a synagogue the women are seated separate from the men, so you’d have to entertain yourself. Maybe talk to your neighbor about the latest fashion or — here’s a better idea — what you’re making for dinner. All the women will be interested in eating after an all-day fast.”
Gladys made a face. “Since you’re such an expert on women’s interests, maybe you should sit with them instead of me. I’ll study up on baseball. I think it’s World Series time, isn’t it?”
“OK,” he said. “Just kidding. But remember, if you want to leave, for whatever reason, you can’t come to get me because you’re not allowed in the men’s section. We should arrange ahead of time when to meet for lunch.”
Gladys made a different face, irritation replaced by mirth. “You’re not fasting?”
“Of course not. That’s for Jews only. Ask Debbie. She should know, and I bet she won’t be fasting either; maybe from breakfast to lunch. In any case, we’re both invited to the Goldstones for dinner — breaking the fast, so to speak.”
Gladys giggled. “Can we break the fast if we haven’t been fasting?”
“We’re not really expected to. Al knows that. But it’ll be fun to have dinner with them.”
Gladys shrugged. “I’ll think about it. Can I come to dinner even if I don’t go to the synagogue at all?”
“I’m sure you can.”
In the end, Gladys decided to skip the Yom Kippur service. Mike was glad she did, because he wanted to talk about it as little as he could.