Never Too Late for Love (23 page)

She crinkled the newspapers, lay them on the floor beside
the bed and, almost simultaneously, they pulled the light chains of the lamps
on each side of the bed. He lay there quietly for a moment, hearing her sigh.
Then he turned, moved his body close to hers, and slipped an arm around her,
cupping one breast, toying with her nipples. He felt himself stir, an unusual
feeling these days, but he knew its signals.

Through it all, he must have loved her, he thought, wanting
to say it, just as he felt it. He was warm now, wanting, and the beat of his
heart crashed in his chest as he drew her closer to him and let his hand slide
down over her belly.

"I'm nauseous from the popcorn," she said
suddenly. As always, he froze momentarily and felt his ardour sputter and cool.

"Shall I get you an Alka-Seltzer?" he asked.

"Its all right," she sighed. "I'll be OK in
the morning."

He moved away from her and listened as her breathing became
more regular and she dropped off to sleep. He must have followed soon after
because the next thing he knew it was morning and the sun was streaming in
through the spaces in the blinds.

When Heshy Leventhal first announced that he wanted to
marry Pat Grady, his mother became instantly hysterical. He had, of course,
expected the reaction, but the suddenness, not to mention the noise of her
eruption, was beyond his most fearsome expectations.

"A Shiksa?" she screamed, the sound a shattering
thunderclap in the family's small Brownsville apartment.

"Sha. The neighbors," his father cautioned,
turning to his son.

"You're willing to disgrace us," he said, his
small myopic eyes misting behind thick rimless glasses.

"A Shiksa?" his mother screamed again, repeating
the word in an ever-increasing crescendo.

"I knew you'd feel this way," he mumbled. He had
told Pat that, come what may, he would stand up to them. The promise reassured
him, although his mother's wailing was enough to tempt fate.

"It's out of the question," his father said. His
mother had collapsed in a chair, her shoulders heaving. She buried her head
into the crook of her arm.

"Look what you've done to your mother," his
father admonished. He had always chosen the path of quiet reason. He was a
socialist. His father's words seemed to encourage his mother's hysteria, and
her sobs grew louder.

"My mind is made up," Heshy said.

"You couldn't find a Jewish girl," his father
said. He lifted his hand and pointed to the window. "The streets are
filled with Jewish girls. You couldn't find one. One single Jewish girl?"

"It just happened, Pop," Heshy said, reaching out
to touch his father's shoulder. The older man shrugged him away as if Heshy was
deliberately communicating some disease.

"I love her," Heshy said. The words seemed
hollow, almost foolish as they rolled off his tongue.

"Love!" his mother burst out. Her tears had
slowed and he knew she was getting her second wind. She was not one simply to
cry it out without words. "Love!" she screamed, looking at her son,
her lips curling with contempt and sarcasm. "This pisher knows about
love."

"We love each other," Heshy said quietly,
remembering his promise to Pat, trying to withstand the powerful intimidation
of the ridicule.

"And the children. What about the children?" his
father said, still relying on quiet logic.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

"This is the son you raised," his mother
screeched. He knew that, from now on, she would communicate with him through
his father, as if he was not in the room.

"It never works," his father said. "They
become Catholics. They'll take the children. They always take the children. And
the Catholics will hate them because they're part Jewish."

"They'll hate him anyhow," his mother said.
"She'll treat him like dirt," she intoned. "And it'll serve him
right."

"You'll like her, Mama," he said. It was a futile
remark, he knew, but his 'I love her' argument had little effect and he felt he
should try a new tack.

"He says I'll like her. How could I like her? I don't
ever intend to see her. I don't ever intend he should come into my house again.
I would rather they rolled me into the grave this minute than see her. And I
swear on my mother's memory, may she rest in peace, that the Shiksa will never
come into my house, ever."

"I'm sorry you feel that way," Heshy said,
feeling his own tears begin. A tiny sob stabbed at his chest.

"But I love you both."

"Love again," his mother screamed, the sound a
thunderdap.

"I think you're crazy," his father said finally.
He must have sensed that it was futile to continue a strategy of reason.

"This is 1951," Heshy said. "The world is
changing."

"Nothing changes," his father said. "Not for
Jews."

"When we let him drop out of college, it was our first
mistake," his mother said, continuing to ignore him. The remark seemed an
odd watershed in her hysteria. Actually, college was an enormous economic
hardship and he had taken a job as a toy salesman in Manhattan. Pat had been
the secretary to one of the bosses. Since then, they had always taken refuge in
the argument that his dropping out of college had somehow addled his brains.

"I'm sorry," he said finally, knowing, as he had
suspected, that it was beyond resolution. "My mind is made up." As he
turned to go, he heard the cacophony of his mother's last reserve, the
outpouring of a passionate frustration, plumbed from some powerful genetic
undercurrent.

"You're not my son," she screamed. "You and
your Shiksa died today. I curse you in my mother's memory." As he closed
the door, gently, because he was leaving in sadness not anger, he heard his
father's stern attempt to placate her. "Please, Dorothy. Don't say what
you might regret."

Pat Grady's experience was not much different.

"My father threw me out of the house," she told
Heshy when they met later. "He called you a bunch of Christ killers and
dirty kikes. My mother kept crossing herself and saying that your people ate
babies." Her eyes were swollen from crying and he held her tightly,
kissing her cheeks, tasting the saltiness that lingered there.

"You they called 'The Shiksa.'"

"Just that?" She paused and brushed his hair back
from his forehead.

"In their mouths, it was not a pleasant term. More
like a curse." He smiled. He loved her and that was the balm to ease his
pain. "So we're both orphans."

They were married in City Hall and, though he called his
father inviting him to the brief ceremony, he knew what was in store for him.

"You're killing us, Heshy," his father said, the
voice of reason barely recognizable. Heshy could imagine what the poor man was
going through with his mother.

"And mother?" he asked. His mother was bound to
inquire whether he had mentioned her.

The moved into a tiny apartment on the edge of Greenwich
Village, deliberately choosing a more diverse neighborhood than the
circumscribed ghettos of Brooklyn and the forbidding suburban waspiness of
Queens. The estrangement with their parents continued but they kept of them
informed of their lives nonetheless.

"I spoke to my mother today," Pat would report.

"And?"

"She's still babbling about going to Church and
praying for my soul."

"Tell her it's one of our boys that's hanging up there
on the cross."

"I'm sure she'd appreciate that. She refers to you as
'him.'"

"Better than kike."

"I could hear my father grumbling in the background. I
thought I heard him say 'Jewboy.' She smiled and patted his arm. "But you
know, I think she was glad to hear from me. I think if I said to her: 'Mom, I'm
sick. Mom, I need you,' she would break her neck to get here."

"Did you tell her you were pregnant?"

"Yes."

"I told my father," Heshy said. "And the
voice of reason prevailed."

"What did he say?"

"He said that now my troubles were just
beginning."

When Marvin was born, Heshy dutifully called his parents.
His mother answered the phone. He had not heard her voice for more than a year,
but the fact she had picked up the phone seemed like a minor victory. He
imagined that she might have been waiting for news, since he had informed his
father about the impending birth. Her voice was calm, not without a touch of
pathos. She had this ability to create an aura of pathos about her on the telephone.
I will not feel guilty, he told himself. It was his private incantation and it
had sustained him through this trying period.

"Ma?" There was a long silence.

"Who then?"

"You have a grandson."

He could hear a long sigh, then: "You want me to say
Mazeltov?"

"Of course."

"Mazeltov."

"His name is Marvin, after your mother. His middle
name is Patrick after Pat's father."

"A regular Abie's Irish Rose." He detected her
sarcasm, then the evidence of her repentance. Obviously, she knew she had gone
too far. "He's healthy?"

"Eight pounds."

"You were nine pounds." He smiled, waiting for
her to continue.

"And the Shiksa?"

"For crying out loud." He felt a sharp tug of
anger. "Her name is Pat and she's the mother of your grandson."

"To me, she's still a Shiksa."

"She's the mother of your grandson," he said,
enunciating each word slowly so that she would not miss his drift. Two can play
this game, he thought. Now the guilt ball is in her court.

"Be that as it may," his mother said, but he
could sense her grudging retreat. "At least," she said, drawing the
line, "I hope he's going to be circumcised."

"He was already. The doctor did it." He decided
to preempt her thoughts. "And no, he won't be baptized."

"Why not? They'll get him sooner or later." He
decided to ignore the remark and, instead, said good-bye, deliberately cold and
distant. He sensed that she wanted to continue to talk, but he decided that it
was her turn to suffer the agony of guilt.

"My mother came to visit me," Pat told him while
she was still in the hospital. She seemed glowing with happiness. A white
ribbon was tied around her hair and little Marvin's red pinched face was
nestled against her breast, greedily nuzzling the nipple. She looked down at
Marvin. "She says he looks Irish and made the sign of the cross over him
so many times, I thought she was the Pope."

"And your father?"

"He was outside looking into the nursery at the baby.
But he wouldn't come in."

"Do you think he really looks Irish?" Heshy
asked.

"Exactly like my brother Sean, my mother said."

"Poor guy. With a name like Leventhal."

On the day before Pat was to come home from the hospital,
she told Heshy that his parents had been there.

"I saw them. I was standing by the window when these
two older people came in. I was standing right next to them and they were
pointing and tapping at the window at your son."

"You didn't introduce yourself?"

"My knees were shaking. Besides, they were very upset.
Marvin was crying his lungs out and your mother complained to the nurse."

"Complained?"

"She insisted that the Leventhal baby was being
ignored. The nurse was fit to be tied. I heard her say: 'That stupid Shiksa
nurse.'"

"That's my mother."

"And she said one more thing."

"Can I guess?"

Pat smiled and nodded.

"She said: 'Thank God, he looks Jewish.'"

"You got that right."

"She didn't stop to see you?"

"One dumb Shiksa was enough for the day. Besides, I
hid in the bathroom."

A week after Pat got home from the hospital, Heshy's
parents arrived in their small apartment. Their visit was not spontaneous,
requiring some heavy negotiations and compromises on both sides between his
mother and him. Phone calls were exchanged and Heshy's reactions were heavily
laden with guilt. He knew his mother was sorely tempted to see the baby and
troubled in her heart that she was still allowing her pride to dominate her
desires. Naturally, his tactic was to make it appear that she was responding to
his entreaties.

"How can you ignore your grandchild?"

"He's only half mine."

"That is absurd," Heshy said. Finally, after a
long exchange in that vein, Heshy played what he sensed was his trump card.

"You want to deprive your own grandson of ever getting
to know his grandparents? Let it be on your head." It was a bullet to the
heart. Two days later, his parents came, laden with baby clothes, blankets,
rattles and teething rings.

"Just act natural," he told Pat. "No matter
what. Chances are she won't even acknowledge your name."

"As long as she doesn't call me Mrs. Leventhal."

"That's the last thing on Earth she'll call you."

"Or the Shiksa."

"In her heart, that will be your name."

The visit lived up to Heshy's expectations. His mother
briefly acknowledged Pat's presence with a thin smile and turned her attention
immediately to little Marvin, whose diaper she insisted on changing. Heshy could
see his mother was happy and his father beamed and winked at Pat, when his wife
wasn't looking. The high point of their visit was when little Marvin peed in
his grandmother's face as she changed his diaper.

"Well, you've been officially christened," Heshy
exclaimed. Pat kicked him in the shins, and Mrs. Leventhal ignored the remark.

"Boys do that," she said with some authority.
"My Heshy did that to me all the time."

The important thing to both of them was that the ice was
broken and the story of little Marvin peeing in his grandmother's eye became
part of the folklore of their lives.

As for Pat's parents, they melted in a different way. It
was Pat's father that could not stay away from his grandson, although he always
visited during the day when Heshy was at work.

"I noticed there are a bunch of beer bottles in the
ice box," Heshy said one day. "You feeding the kid beer?"

"You know the Irish and their beer. They start
young."

"You're kidding."

"Of course, you ninny, it's for my father when he
comes over to see the baby. He can't keep away from him." Heshy could see
that she was pleased, and he was happy for the reconciliation.

"He calls him Paddy," Pat said.

"And me?"

"You've graduated from kike to smart Jewboy."

"I can just see him in the saloon telling all the
micks about his daughter marrying this smart Jewboy."

"You're the smart Jewboy and I'm the Shiksa."

Perhaps it was the memories of those earlier days that
prompted Pat Leventhal to continue to reject the idea of moving to Sunset
Village. None of Heshy's mother's forebodings had ever come to pass. Actually,
the fact that they were named Leventhal set the pattern for their lives. When
the children were still in school, they moved to Jackson Heights. By then, they
had had another child, a daughter. They had lived in the same apartment for
thirty-five years. Heshy never made lots of money and often regretted that he
had not gone to college. But he made certain that both his children graduated.
They had a very small circle of friends and, although they did not practice any
religion, they were "the Leventhals." It was rare that she was ever
referred to as "a Shiksa." Even Heshy's mother ceased to use the term
and, when Pat would joke that "she was just a dumb Shiksa," the older
Mrs. Leventhal would counter with a strenuous rebuke.