Stanley Elkin - Mrs. Ted Bliss

“Ted, what goes into one pocket from this black market,” Dorothy would tell him, “goes right out the other with what I spend in Clorox and Rinso.”

“Dorothy, it’s almost 1943. It’ll only be a year the war will be over.”

But Ted Bliss’s formula for a short, three- or four-year war was off the mark, of course.

It was November, and the news from the fronts was bleaker and bleaker. Loss of life in the Pacific and Africa was already too heavy. In Europe, our troops hadn’t really engaged the enemy yet. What happened when they finally did was awful to contemplate. What might have been acceptable in a lightninglike war where you got in and got out was one thing, but to continue to be what not even a year ago the papers had already begun to describe as a “war profiteer” was not something Ted Bliss particularly relished, never mind he was making money hand over fist. Also, word was getting out that the quality of his meat (even though everyone knew there was a war on, and that the government was buying up the best cuts for the boys) was going downhill fast. Plus his real fear of the toughs with whom he had to do business. And his fear, too, of the G-men whose pledge it was to shut down operations like his, find the perpetrators, lock them up and throw away the key.

Him? He did these things? The Hyde Park Merchants’ Association prez? Some merchant. The merchant of Venice!

Also, there was no denying the fact of how uncomfortable he’d made Dorothy and the children by shlepping them out to the sticks and making them live in East Kishnif the better part of a year.

“I’m going to sell this place,” he announced to his family one day in late March.

“You are?” Dorothy said.

“Just as soon as I get a reasonable offer.”

“That’s swell, Dad,” his son Marvin said. “I really miss my friends back in Chicago. I don’t fish. You won’t let me hunt. There’s nothing for a boy my age to do up here.”

“Well, you’ll be home soon enough. I’m sorry. I didn’t look before I leaped. I just didn’t think. I didn’t realize how unhappy I was making you all. I thought you’d adjust, but, well, you didn’t. So I’ll wait till I find the right buyer who will give me my price, and then just sell the place.”

Marvin and Maxine ran up to their father, threw their arms around his neck and kissed him. “Oh, Daddy,” Maxine said, “it’s just exactly what I wished for.” Ted Bliss hugged his two children, then leaned over and pulled Frank up on his lap. The toddler squealed in delight.

“Well, Dorothy,” her husband said, “did I give you what you wished for, too?”

“Just what I wished for. You really did, Ted. Hey, thanks a million,” said Dorothy, who knew his nerve had failed and just why, and who had been counting the minutes and hours and all the days, weeks, and months till it would.

And who knew, too, who knew nothing of business and wouldn’t even learn to write a check for at least another forty or so years that he’d already found his buyer, and that it was Junior Yellin, and that whatever the price was they agreed on would be many thousands of dollars less than what Ted had given for it in the first place.

So Hector Camerando was her black market. But one she would hold in abeyance for a while yet, not out of the same cop fear and nerve failure to which Ted, olov hasholem, had been subject (and which she didn’t hold against him, honest to God she didn’t, not for one minute), but because, exactly like Ted, she was waiting for her price, too. And she had to wait because, quite simply, she didn’t know what it was yet.

Had Frank or Maxine wanted for money she’d have withdrawn cash from her S&L and given it to them, whatever they needed. And if they needed more than she had in her account would have closed the account and withdrawn it all, and pressed the money on Camerando, begging him on their behalf to lay it off on the safest, surest, high-odds, long-shot greyhound race or jai alai game he could find, and put it all down for her kids. And if she lost, she lost, he wouldn’t hear boo from her. She wasn’t, she’d have told him, the most educated person, and wasn’t, she’d have admitted, a woman with anything like the sort of knowledge of the world a person her age by rights should be expected to have, yet as God was her witness she’d never bother him again, even though she knew going in there were confidence games — this could be one, she understood that — different scams that occurred, that suckers were born every minute, that you couldn’t get something for nothing, that even widows and orphans were vulnerable, especially widows and orphans, often the first to get hurt, but no matter, if worse came to worst, all he could expect from her was gratitude, thanks for having gone to the trouble.

Though thank God they didn’t. Frank or Maxine. Want for money. They had enough. If not rich then certainly comfortable. Even, comparatively speaking, well-to-do. Her son was chairman of the sociology department at the university. Throw in the royalties from the sale of his textbook (more than three hundred university adoptions to date, plus the book was practically required reading and was on almost all the freshman sociology course reserve lists, plus there were copies in almost all the public libraries, plus there were plans for the book to go into a third edition) and you had all the makings of a nice nest egg. Maxine was no slouch either. Her husband had been with the same insurance company for many years and in virtually every one of them was in the running for its highest-earning agent.

So there was plenty to be thankful for, touch wood. The children all had their health. They weren’t lame, they had no blood or muscle diseases, they didn’t smoke or take drugs, and they were all careful drivers. Donald was smart as a whip, on the dean’s list at his school. Judy was pretty. James, who worked for his father, was learning the business. Barry was an automobile mechanic, but to look at his fingernails you wouldn’t guess it in a million years. So maybe he wasn’t as book smart as his cousins — well, look who’d raised him after poor Marvin died — but he was good with his hands, well, he got that from Ted, and Mrs. Bliss would bet you anything he’d have his own shop one day. Not like most garages, but spic and span, and who’s to say, maybe he got that from his grandmother. Well, they were all good kids, she had nothing to complain of in that department. They were all of them making their way.

She didn’t play favorites. If she had them she’d never admit it, or ever acknowledge, even to herself, which grandchild she’d miss most if all, God forbid, were suddenly taken away. In the love department she was strictly a stickler, steady in her loyalty as the biggest patriot. That was one reason, over the years, she sent everyone the same gift. Never mind age, grades, the value of the dollar, never mind anything, everybody got the same, fair and square, even Steven, no exceptions. What was good for the goose was grease for the gander. Long ago, before Ted passed even, she’d developed a sort of sliding scale based on the particular occasion. Bar and bat mitzvahs, twenty-five dollars; Hanukkah gelt, five dollars; birthdays, ten; grade school, high school, and college graduations, eighteen (for life and luck). For their weddings she gave all her children and grandchildren one hundred dollars, for their anniversaries fifty. Everything equal, no one should think they had an advantage over anyone else.

Well, almost everything equal. To a certain extent (this puzzled the kids, but she never explained her reasons) she made individual exceptions. Barry, for example, had never gone to college. Should he be penalized for not graduating, which would put him eighteen dollars behind his cousins forever? At thirty-four, brilliant Donald was still a bachelor. Wasn’t that heartbreak enough, did he have to suffer financially, too? So, to make a long story short, the upshot was that when she saw him she sometimes slipped Barry a few dollars on the side until he was even with the rest. And she gave Donald extra money, too, a hundred more than his married brother and cousins, and so on and so forth until everybody was all caught up with everyone else. She kept strict accounts and recorded every transaction in a little black date book. You’d think she was saving receipts for the IRS. To tell the truth, it was a big pain in the neck but, what the hell, it was only money, and what else did she have to do?