Гарри Кемельман: Wednesday the Rabbi got wet

And also, he loved the things he sold, although he did not smoke, he delighted in the smell of the tobacco when he slid open the door of the cigar showcase, or the feel of a briar pipe as he passed it across the counter to a customer; the delicate shape of the flagons of perfume and the new line of men's toiletries packaged in masculine solidity; the cameras, the pocket radios, the clocks and watches; the colorful boxes of candies, and the mechanical pencils and ballpoint pens in their special rack; the sunglasses, and the new display of rubber gloves that had come in only last week, the rack cleverly designed so that as one flat box was drawn out, another automatically took its place; the expensive line of French soaps; the tiny scissors and nail clippers, all in gleaming chrome; and best of all, the special patent medicines that a pharmaceutical house had made up for him under his own label.

Also he liked the people who came into the store, but ha liked the idea of the counter between them, because while amiable and friendly as became a good retailer, his professional status required that he not be too friendly, that was the beauty of it, that he was not just another tradesman like the grocer or the hardware man, he was a businessman and a professional man, a member of the corps of doctors and scientists and researchers who were engaged in the healing and care of the sick and like them with a diploma and a degree and a license to practice with all the duties and responsibilities thereunto pertaining.

At eight-forty, the first customer came in, and Marcus Aptaker came forward to greet him, his face automatically assuming the retailer's smile of polite inquiry.

Did you eat someplace?" demanded Mrs. aptaker, her son, on his return from the temple, had said he didn't want breakfast, that he wasn't hungry.

"No, but—"

"But me no buts. How do you think it makes me feel when my own son won't accept food from me? So you've become pious and my dishes aren't kosher? All right. I'll give you some cereal and milk in— in— the mixing bowl. It's glass, so you can eat anything in it. Isn't that right?"

He did not have the heart to point out that the spoon was not glass and hence, from his point of view, not kosher, but he reflected that the injunction to "Honor thy father and mother" was of equal importance to the dietary laws, so he said. "All right, I guess since it's glass, I can eat from it."

He poured the dry cereal into the bowl and added milk.

"A couple of eggs, Arnold? I can make them so you could eat them from the shell, that would be all right, wouldn't it? And a cup of coffee. If you want. I could give it to you in a glass."

"Sure, Ma, that'll be fine."

"All your meals you can take here. If you're worried about my pots and pans, I can cook on aluminum foil like I did when my uncle stayed with us a couple of days, he was as bad as you, and I got enough glassware, pie plates, custard cups, you could eat from them and not have to go hungry, or go to the grocery and get something to eat from a paper bag like an animal."

"Sure. I don't mind if it's not too much trouble for you, and if Dad doesn't mind my eating separate food while he's eating. You know how he is."

"Yes, I know how he is." She sat down across the table from him. "I know how he is, but do you know?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, do you know that your father is sixty-two years old already? And every day, winter and summer, in some of the worst storms, he goes to the store, he opens every day, and he works long hours. Even when it's McLane's day, your father opens and then instead of coming home as soon as McLane gets there, he's apt to hang around all morning, then he goes at night to close. Ross McLane works a forty-hour week, but not your father, the other stores in the area close at eight or nine, but your father keeps open till ten every night, and you know why? Because he feels it's his duty, his responsibility, the others close earlier and earlier because they're afraid— so many holdups by these dope addicts—"

"Has Dad ever been held up?" he asked quickly.

"Once, but they caught them. Your father feels he's safe because we're on the Salem Road and lots of traffic, he never asks how I feel."

"Well, gee. I don't see what I can do."

"You don't see what you can do? Well, to start with you could go in and give your father a hand while you're here, just so he can feel you're still his son and a member of the family, then you could come and live here in Barnard's Crossing, the same job you're working at in a stranger's store, you could do in our store, and then, in time, you could take over the store the way your father did from his father, that's what you could do."

"I'm not coming back to Barnard's Crossing, that's definite," he said stubbornly. "I’ve made a life for myself in Philadelphia. My friends are all there."

"But before that, your friends were all here. You were born here. You grew up here."

"That doesn't mean I have to die here."

"Living in Barnard's Crossing is like dying? It's so bad here?"

"That's not what I meant. Look, Ma, in Philly I got a job. I work forty hours a week, and the rest of the time is mv own."

"But you're working for somebody else and just for wages."

"So what? But when I'm through for the day, I'm free."

"Listen, Arnold, a nurse takes care of children and a mother takes care of children. When she's off duty, the nurse is free, but the mother is never free. So is it better to be a nurse or a mother? Here, you'd be working for—"

"Here. I'd be working for the store. When I was home. Dad cared a lot more about the store than he did about me," he said bitterly.

She nodded. "It seems that way sometimes, that's because a store, if you take care of it, it takes care of you. Your father lives from that store, and your grandfather before him. You remember him, your grandfather?"

"I was just a little kid when he died, but I remember him."

"He was quite a man, your grandfather, he was a pharmacist in the old country, and when he came here, he was highly respected. Do you have any idea what it meant in those days to be a pharmacist, and even more, to have been one in the old country? All the other immigrants were tailors and cobblers and peddlers, ignorant men, most of them. But your grandfather had been to the gymnasium and to a technical college. Nowadays, to own a drugstore, maybe it isn't so much. People think of it like any other business. How much does it take in? What's the net profit? But in those days it was a profession like a doctor. You stayed open till midnight every night, not so you could make a few more sales, but because you had a responsibility to the community. Your father was brought up with that idea, the store isn't just a store to him, that's why he stays open later than any other drugstores in the area, and on Wednesday nights, when all the other stores close early on account the doctors take Wednesday afternoons off, he keeps open till his regular time."

"Yeah, I know, sixty, seventy hours a week," he said bitterly. "And he expected the same of me, and when I took time for a little fun, wham! he fell on me like a ton of brick."

"You also took money from the cash register, Arnold," she said sorrowfully. "That's one thing a storekeeper can't allow, not even from his own son. It's like making a hole in the bottom of a boat."

"I was going to put it back."

"That kind of money you never put back. You lost it gambling and spending on your fancy girlfriends. Those were not nice people you were running around with over in Revere. It would only have got worse."

"I never spent more than I could really afford, that IOU Kestler kept pressing me for, that had been hiked, all I owed was fifty dollars and they made it a hundred and fifty—""You see the kind of people you were mixed up with?"