Evan Hunter - Far From the Sea

“He moved to Miami because he wanted to,” David said.

“Sure, because his big-shot lawyer son had no time for him up in New York. You think I don’t know? I’m wise to you, Davey. You send the old man a box of cigars on his birthday, and you think that’s enough. Well, it ain’t. I’m the one who’s been wiping his ass ever since he moved down here. So now you tell me my son should’ve paid back the money, you think he doesn’t plan to pay back the money, these are rough times, we’re not all of us big-shot lawyers with fancy offices in New York, driving Cadillacs. You think I don’t know you drive a Cadillac? You think your father didn’t tell me? I’m driving a Chevy with the fenders falling off, I had to spend two hundred bucks for a new muffler, and you’re driving a Cadillac and complaining my son should pay back a lousy five hundred bucks when I’m shlepping your father all over the countryside! That’s what I call chutzpah, Davey, that’s what I really call chutzpah.”

“And don’t call me Davey.”

“What?”

“I said don’t call me Davey! Nobody calls me Davey! Not in my entire life has anybody called me Davey!”

“Calm down, willya? You don’t want to be called Davey, I won’t call you Davey. But don’t call me pisher , either, not when I’ve been busting my ass for the old man, doing what you should be doing for him. Look, he’ll get the money back, you think he won’t get the money back? What do I look like, what does my son look like, some kind of gonif ? He’s out of work just now, all I got is the pension, your father keeps buying stamps and plates and first-day covers, I had to spend two hundred bucks for a new muffler, he’s got more than he knows what to do with, your father, you think I don’t know? Who do you think drives him to the bank where he socks away the social security checks? He’s got four banks, your father! Four of them! He doesn’t need those checks, he just socks them away, you think I don’t know he’s clipping coupons and spending the money on all those stamps and plates? He’s got them stacked to the ceiling in his apartment, three locks on the door, it’s like Fort Knox , that apartment! You ever been in that apartment? Or are you too busy chasing ambulances in New York? Why don’t you move down here, you want to take care of him so bad? Why don’t you do that , Davey — I beg your pardon, sue me, I’m not supposed to call you Davey. Why don’t you move down here and drive him wherever he wants to go, and invite him to parties in Lauderdale where I have to come down and pick him up and take him back home again? You’re his son, why don’t you do that, huh? I tell a joke to cheer him up, next thing you know I’m getting mugged in a dark alley. Listen, who needs gratitude, who needs thanks? Take care of your own father, do me a favor, okay? Pay his bills, don’t pay them, who gives a shit? He’s your father, not mine!”

“Where do we send the Oscar?” David said.

“Sure, make smart-ass wisecracks,” Sidney said.

“Maybe you’d better go now, okay?”

“I’m going, don’t worry. Be sure to tell your dad you chased me out. He’ll be tickled to death to hear that. Tell him you chased his cousin out of the hospital. Is that what you want, Davey? You want me never to come back here again? How long you think he’s going to be in here? How long are you going to be here? What happens when you go back to New York? Who comes to see him then every Tuesday? Chase me out, go ahead.”

David sighed.

“I’m not chasing you out,” he said.

“You sound like it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you’re upset just now, don’t you think I know? We’re all upset. But that’s no reason to turn on your own family. No reason at all.”

“Okay, Sidney, I said I was sorry.”

“Forget it,” Sidney said. “I’ll come back Thursday night, the seven o’clock visit. I got things to do during the day, I got a life of my own, too, you know. It’s a long drive from Lauderdale, but the old man may need me.”

David watched him walking heavily down the corridor. For the first time, he noticed that Sidney walked with a limp. His anger was gone now. He stood watching his distant cousin as he turned out of sight around the bend in the hall, and he wondered why he’d been so angry.

And suddenly he was confused.

What of this man is me? he wondered.

The looks, he supposed. The Weber looks. He was taller, of course; his father was only five-eight, and David was five-eleven, the generational advantage. His own son had been almost — he closed his mind to the thought. But the dark hair and brown eyes, the “famous Weber nose,” as his Uncle Max called it, refined a bit in David, the Semitic curve smoothed out somewhat, but distinctive nonetheless. And the mouth perhaps, with its pouting lower lip, especially when his father was in a self-pitying funk about all the taxes he had to pay each year, the big entrepreneur whose successive businesses had collapsed even in the best of years, living solely on the money David — but that was another story. Clipping coupons, cousin Sidney had said. Clipping coupons from the investments in the irrevocable trust David had established for him fifteen years ago. “I worked hard for my money,” his father was fond of saying, but he’d been virtually penniless back then when David established the trust. “I worked hard for every nickel I’ve got.”

Perhaps.

Worked hard, and went under, each and every time.

David to the rescue — listen, what difference did it make? He’d have had to give half of it to Uncle Sam, anyway, so what difference did it make, really? The crochet-beading business, back in the twenties, before David was born, going very strong for a while, until the fashion changed and women wouldn’t be caught dead in beaded gowns. The pool hall on Fordham Road in 1936, when David was five and they were living on Jerome Avenue, in the shadow of the elevated structure. (“The wops there love to shoot pool,” his father said.) He took the train to work every day, banker’s hours even then; wouldn’t open the pool hall till noon and then left it in the hands of a “trusted employee” at five sharp. The trusted employee was stealing him blind; the pool hall went under in less than a year. And the parade of businesses after that, the shoe stores, first in Harlem (“The niggers love fancy shoes”) and then on Fourteenth Street (“Lots of spies moving in, they love fancy shoes”) and then in New Rochelle (“Lots of rich kikes there”) — his father’s prejudices were all-encompassing. “I’m a merchant,” he said about himself. “What else can a poor Jew do?” the appraisal punctuated with the self-pitying pout.

He formed the Weber Bureau of Clipping in 1938, when David was seven years old. This enabled him to work out of the new apartment they were renting on Mosholu Parkway. In those days, they changed apartments frequently. David later learned that this was his father’s way of beating the landlord. The Depression was still exacting its toll; the war in Europe — America’s economic salvation — hadn’t yet erupted. Most landlords offered a month’s free rent as an inducement to lease. They threw in all sorts of perks like a new refrigerator, a fresh paint job, sometimes even free gas and electricity for a month when you rented one of their empty apartments. The Webers moved every month. David had trouble remembering what his address was.

His father sat in the living room of the Mosholu Avenue apartment, scanning copies of all the city’s daily newspapers, searching for items about ordinary citizens. There were always items of local interest. He clipped out all the engagement notices, wedding announcements, obituaries, human interest stories, anything that mentioned the name of someone who lived in New York. He consulted the telephone directories for all five boroughs and then either wrote or phoned the persons the news items were about, asking if they’d like a clipping of what had appeared on them in the newspaper. The people would come to the house for the clippings, paying cash on the barrelhead. There was a steady stream of people to the front door of their apartment. (“Our neighbors’ll think I’m a courva ,” his mother said; back then David didn’t know the word meant hooker.) His father charged twenty-five cents for each clipping. He was forced to end the business when a six-foot two-inch, two-hundred-pound shvartzer appeared at the front door one day while his mother was alone, frightening her half to death. “I could’ve made a fortune with that business once the war started,” his father said. “All those kids being drafted, stories about them in the papers, I could’ve made a fortune.”