Joseph Heller - Closing Time

"Oh, baby, that's my good girl," he said with relief, and for a minute he looked happy. I think he actually smiled. "Claire, I'm tired of fighting it," he said right out, and then I swear I thought he was going to cry. "What's the use?" I remember his blue eyes, how pale they were, and I remember they were suddenly misty. He wouldn't let himself, not while I was there to see, but now I'll bet he did, at least a little, when no one was around to see, maybe more than a little, maybe all the time. What he did tell me was this: "It's been a lot of years now, Claire, hasn't it? I've made it to almost seventy, haven't I? Even Teemer thinks that's pretty good. I can't stand feeling nauseous so much, feeling weak now all the time. Sammy would like to hear I was saying nauseated instead of nauseous, but what does he know about this? It wasn't all that long ago I grabbed that guy stealing a purse and lifted him up onto the hood of the car. What could I do with him now? I can't stand looking so skinny. That's why I want to go back into the hospital so often. I can't stand having you see me this way, or the kids too."

"Lew, don't talk to me that way."

"Claire, listen good. Always keep lots of cash in a safe-deposit box in case you have to do something real quick. You'll find plenty in two of these. They'll seal the safe-deposit boxes when I go, so rent a couple now in just your own name in two different places and move some money into them. You know I always like to plan ahead. Give the children a set of keys so they'll have them, but don't tell them where they are until it's time. Let them find that out from the lawyers, and don't let the lawyers know everything. Never trust a lawyer. That's why I always have two. When they start trusting each other, get rid of both. There's a big piece of beachfront land we have on one of the islands I never told you about, and it's now all in your name, and there's another very good hunk of land out in California that you also didn't know about. Sell that one soon to help you with the inheritance taxes. You can trust the partner you'll find on that one. You can trust Sammy Singer too on things like advice when you aren't sure about the kids. And Marvin Winkler too. But hold on to the apartment house if you can. Don't give a thought to what we used to say about landlords. The coins from the laundry machines- those alone make that one worth keeping."

"I know that much, Lew. I saw that before you did."

"Sure. But tell me this if you're really so smart. Claire, if you have a million dollars invested in triple-tax-free bonds at six percent, how much income will that give you?"

"Annually?"

"That's my baby. You've got a head on your shoulders."

"With capped teeth. And a little face work too."

"So why can't you learn numbers?"

"Sixty thousand dollars a year, with no taxes to pay."

"Great. That's my sweetheart. And that's where the beauty of being really rich comes in. If a Rockefeller or anyone else has a hundred million in those same bonds, he'll make-"

"Six hundred thousand? That's some bundle!"

"No, a bigger bundle! Six million a year in interest for doing nothing, and no taxes, and that's better than you or I will ever do. Isn't finance wonderful? Now then, if instead of a million tax-free you have only nine hundred thousand invested at that same six percent-"

"Oh, Lew, for God sakes, give me a rest!"

"Think. Work on it."

"That's six times nine all over again, isn't it?"

"Yes, right, that's the only difference. So how much money will you earn at six times nine?"

"The kids will know."

"Forget the kids! I don't want you to have to depend on them and I don't want them to have to depend on you. People change, people turn crazy. Look at Teemer. Look at all the fuss and fighting that went on with Glenda and her sister over that farmhouse after her mother died. You remember what happened to my father with the ten thousand I borrowed, and you saw what happened to my mother's head before she even got old."

When his father loaned him the ten thousand dollars to start up the secondhand-plumbing business that then became our lumberyard too, the money he produced was all in cash, and none of us knew where it came from or where he kept it before he set the terms and had the papers drawn up, all official and very legal, so it would go to Minnie and then to all of the others if anything happened to him first. There had to be papers, and there had to be interest. The old man, old Morris, who was never afraid of anyone in his life, was afraid of being poor in his old age, and he was already over eighty.

God, how I remember that junkshop like it was only yesterday. It was small, small quarters, about the width of a truck garage, about the size of the restaurant in the city Sam Singer and I had lunch in, although the truck was always parked outside because there was always so much junk inside, and out in back. Heaps of metal, sorted into brass, iron, and copper, and a big scale large enough to hold a bale of newspapers, and so much dirt, filth. The clean newspapers were hauled from the cellars of the janitors all over the houses in Coney Island, who saved them, for a price, and these were put on the outside of the big bales. Inside them could be anything. At the end of the day, all of them-Lew, his father, the brothers, the brothers-in-law, and even Smokey Rubin and the black guy-they scrubbed their bodies and fingernails with cold water from the hose, a big industrial scrub brush, and lye soap. And I'd be waiting there all dressed up, ready to go out with him on a date.

His one fear was rats, not just the rats themselves, but the thought of them, in the army too when he was overseas, and then in the prison camp. In the slaughterhouse in Dresden it was all very clean, he said.

All of that, all of those people and all of that work, was as foreign to me as I'm going to find the Israelis if I do buy a house and ever start living there. Lew would have liked the idea of me in Israel, although I never could get him to go-I hardly ever could get him to go anywhere abroad where he didn't know the language and they didn't know who he was. It's just about the farthest part of the world I think I can find to live in and relax and maybe enjoy some memories while I try to experience some new kind of adventures in a place of old lore for me with people with a morale that has some kind of hope and meaning, I want to enjoy it.

I was brought up Jewish too, but my home life in a small family upstate was nothing like that one. My father was a bookkeeper. And then he was a bookmaker like Marvin's, and he gambled a lot, but he always wore a suit and shirt and tie and liked those panama hats and fancy black-and-white shoes they used to wear, I remember, with those large perforated holes. This big, loud, hardworking family of Lew's, with their Yiddish and Brooklyn accents, confused me and appealed to me. And so did that whole open, noisy, fast bunch of guys in Coney Island. I met him on a blind double date with my cousin, who lived there, and I was supposed to be with someone else, but once he made his play for me and let me know he'd kind of like to go on, no other fellow I ever met anywhere else ever had a chance. We were just the right type for each other. We never brought the subject up, but I guessed I would want to marry again, whether he would have liked the idea or not, and I think I do. We married young, and I've always been married, and I don't know if I can ever get used to living alone, but where am I ever going to find a guy who will fill his shoes?

"Don't count on me," said Sammy, when I poured all this out to him.

"You didn't have to tell me," I snapped. I have that habit: it sounded ruder than I'd meant. "Sam, no offense, but I could never share a bedroom with you."

"I don't think so either," Sam said, with his soft smile, and I was pleased to see his feelings weren't hurt. "He's going to be a tough man to replace."