Evan Hunter: Streets of Gold

She drove me up to the little town in which her Tante Raizel had rented the kochalayn summer after summer when Rebecca was a child. She took me down to the river where she and Davina used to swim while her mother sat watching them from the bank, her shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She took me to the drugstore, where the proprietor still recognized her, took me to the luncheonette, where she ordered a celery tonic and a hot pastrami on rye, the way she used to when she was a kid. And then we walked up into the hills.

This was August, the end of summer was almost upon us. Rebecca said she had been doing a lot of thinking about us and the family and the lives we were leading. She said she knew how important the family was to me — the kids thought of the family as a dynasty, that was a very good thing I had done for the kids, instilling in them such a strong sense of family. But now, she said, the kids are all grown up, Andrew is off in India someplace, he’s almost twenty-one, Ike, I guess he’ll find himself one of these days, I hope he finds himself one of these days, and Michael’s at Columbia, he’s got his own apartment in the city, I’m sure he’ll be all right, though I know the city is terrible right now — would you like to sit, Ike?

We sat. The woods were still except for the incessant buzz of flying insects.

“I guess we could take David with us,” she said. “There are good schools over there. He’s seventeen, he can finish high school someplace over there, it won’t hurt him. High school is a bunch of crap, anyway. He won’t really be learning anything till he goes to college, if he decides that’s what he wants to do.”

“When you say ‘over there,’ what do you mean? Europe?”

“Yes.”

“You want to go to Europe?”

“Yes. Maybe Italy. Maybe we could sell the house in Saint Croix and find a little villa in Italy.”

“Well,” I said.

“It’s just that I think it’s time we devoted a little thought to ourselves,” Rebecca said. “You’re not tied down with such a grueling schedule anymore...”

“You mean I’m unemployed these days,” I said.

“Well, whatever you want to call it. We’re well off, Ike. We won’t ever have to worry about money, thank God. So maybe it’s time... well, we never had much time to ourselves. There was always the band and the children.” She hesitated. “I’m forty-two years old,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes,” she repeated, “and I’ve noticed how bored you are lately....”

“Bored?”

“Yes, and I don’t want to find myself becoming bored, too. I think... well... there are a lot of bored people, bored women, in Talmadge. I... guess you know there are bored women there.”

“Well,” I said.

“Well, Ike, let’s be honest with each other, okay? Let’s for maybe the first time in our lives be honest with each other.”

“I’ve always been honest with you, Rebecca.”

“Sure,” she said. “Ike, I know there are other women. When you were on the road all the time, I could ignore what you were doing because you were far away, and...”

“Rebecca, I’ve never...”

“Ike, please. There were women then, and there are women now, but now they’re very close to home, and I’m getting tired of looking the other way. I don’t know how much longer I can go on looking the other way. I’m not blind, Ike... forgive me, I didn’t mean to say that.” She paused. I reached out to touch her face, certain she was crying. She shook her head, telling me she was not. “I want to start again,” she said. “It’ll be easier this time. We’ve got money, we’re still healthy, thank God, we can go anyplace we want to, anyplace in the world. We can go to Greece, if you like, I did enjoy Greece, Ike, even though the fucking colonels are running it. Or we can spend part of the year in Europe and part of it in the Caribbean; it’s entirely up to ourselves, don’t you see? We’re free agents.” She hesitated again. “Ike,” she said, “I want to start all over again. Before it’s too late.”

“Rebecca,” I said, “I don’t know who’s been talking to you...”

“Nobody’s been talking to me, Ike. I’m not stupid. Those long telephone calls you take in the studio aren’t from Mark Aronowitz; he doesn’t call that often these days. And I’ve had a few calls at the house, too, you really should caution your ladies to...”

“Rebecca, there aren’t any...”

“Would you like me to provide a list? Please, Ike, I know exactly who they are; they all go out of their way to give me signals, they all want me to know that my husband is fucking them. Ike, I don’t want to make this a... a... recriminating sort of thing. I really don’t give a damn about your stable, I just want to get away from it. Can you understand me?”

“You’re mistaken,” I said.

“Your sons know, too,” she said.

“My sons...”

“They have friends, their friends talk to them. Ike, some of these women, Ike, they’re just pigs , really, it’s so beneath you. Can’t we please leave Talmadge? Can’t we go to Europe or someplace, try it for a year? Ike, don’t you see? There’s nothing to keep us here anymore.”

I thought, in the split second it took for me to steel myself for what I was about to tell her, I thought Yes, Rebecca, you’re quite right. There’s nothing to keep us here anymore. I’m tired of lying to you, Rebecca. I’m tired of lying to myself.

“The afternoon I was with Davina,” I said. “The afternoon we were alone together...”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Rebecca said.

“I want to tell you what happened.”

“I know what happened,” she said. “I’m not a fool.”

“Rebecca,” I said, “Becky, Becks...”

“Don’t say it.”

“I want out.”

“No.”

“I’m tired of lying.”

“Then don’t anymore.”

“It’s too late,” I said.

“I love you, Ike.”

I took a deep breath.

“Rebecca,” I said, “I don’t love you.”

My grandfather was almost ninety-three years old when he died. He might have lived to a hundred and three if he hadn’t been mugged on the Grand Concourse, in broad daylight, on the afternoon of June 16, 1973. My Uncle Matt had driven him from Massapequa the day before, and he had planned to spend the weekend with my parents; Matt was scheduled to pick him up again on Sunday night. On Saturday afternoon, having run out of De Nobili cigars, he had gone downstairs to replenish his supply. His attackers caught him as he was walking back from the candy store. He was never able to describe them to us; they had struck from behind, suddenly and without warning. They could have been white, black, tan, yellow, red, or any one of the myriad colors that had been tossed into the caldron that never boiled. They could have been the Irish he had feared and hated for most of his life, or the Jews he had come to partially understand, or the Italians he considered his own. Whatever they were, they were Americans. A woman from my mother’s building recognized him lying on the sidewalk as a patrolman went through his pants pockets searching for identification. She ran upstairs immediately and knocked on my mother’s door. By that time, an ambulance from Bronx-Lebanon was already on the way. My mother called me from the hospital, and I called a local taxi service and had them drive me to the Bronx. (The driver complained about having to go into the city on a Saturday night.) I got to the hospital at 7 P.M. My grandfather had just been brought down from the operating room. The surgeon explained that they had evacuated a subdural hematoma caused by the blows to his head. They had stopped the internal bleeding, and it now remained to see how he would respond.