Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“A brilliant boy,” Ma said. “He leads his class.”

Sol cleared his throat.

“Yes, Sol,” Ma said. “I’m listening.”

“I been thinking, Ma,” he began in a low thoughtful voice, twisting his heavy gold ring slowly around on his finger. “I ain’t a good boy.”

“That’s not such private news.” Ma laughed at the expression on Sol’s face. She pinched his arm. “You got a good heart, Sol,” she said. “My baby Sol, with a heart like a house.”

“I have done things, Ma,” Sol said slowly, choosing his words with great care, “that were not so good.”

“If we were all angels, we wouldn’t need airplanes,” Ma said with finality. “Let me look at the chicken.”

She went over and looked at the chicken. “That butcher!” she said. “He is selling me eagles.” She closed the oven door and sat down again.

“I have done things,” Sol said quietly, “that God wouldn’t like.”

“I think God has other things on His mind, these days, Sol.”

“Ma,” Sol said, not looking at his mother, “Ma, would you light candles on Friday night and make the prayer?”

There was silence in the kitchen, broken only by the small crackle from the oven, where the chicken was browning.

“I haven’t lighted candles for a long time, Sol,” Ma said gently. “Ever since the day I married your father. He was a Socialist, your father.”

“Would yuh light ’em now, Ma?” Sol pleaded. “Every Friday night?”

“What is it, Sol? Why should I light candles?”

Sol took a deep breath and stood up and walked back and forth in the kitchen. “Violet,” he said, “Violet’s goin’ to have a baby.”

“Oh!” Ma gasped, fanning herself. “Oh! Well! That blonde girl! Oh! A grandchild! Oh! Sol, Baby!” She grabbed Sol and kissed him. “My Sol!”

“Don’t cry, Ma. Ma, please …” Sol patted her solid wide back. “It’s all right.”

“It’s about time, Sol. I thought you’d never …” She kissed him on the forehead and smiled widely. “I thought Violet was beginning to look very good in the breasts. Congratulations from the bottom of my heart. We’ll name him after my father.”

“Yeah,” Sol said. “Thanks. How about the candles now, Ma?”

“What do you need candles for? I had five children without burning a single candle.”

“Violet’s different,” Sol said uneasily. “She’s not like you.”

“She is just built for children,” Ma declared. “She is built like a horse. When I had you I weighed ninety-five pounds. Including you. She doesn’t need candles.”

“You don’t know, Ma.” Sol looked intently into his mother’s eyes. “Today Violet slipped in the bathtub.”

“Well?”

“She coulda killed herself. As it is, she fainted.”

“So you want me to pray because your wife doesn’t know how to take a bath. Sol!” Ma waved him away. “Every day millions of people fall down in bathtubs.”

“Lissen, Ma,” Sol said, holding both her hands. “Nuthin’ can’t happen to Violet. And nuthin’ can happen to the kid. See, Ma? We been tryin’ to have a kid for five years now and …” He stopped.

Ma shook her head in wonderment. “That big blonde horse.”

“We want that kid, Ma. We gotta have that kid. Everybody should have a kid. What’ve I got if I haven’t got a son?”

“Sssh, Baby,” Ma said. “Sure, you’re right. Only don’t yell. You’re too nervous to yell.”

“All right, I won’t yell.” Sol wiped the sweat off his forehead with a blue silk handkerchief with a green monogram. “All right. What I want to say is, Violet’s dumpin’ herself in the bathtub was a omen.”

“A what?”

“A omen. It’s a …”

“I know.”

“It shows us we can’t take any chances, Ma.”

“Loose in the head, my baby Sol,” Ma said. “Too much night life.”

“We got to pray to God, Ma,” Sol said, “that nuthin’ happens to that baby.”

“If you want to pray to God, go ahead and pray. Did I make the baby?” Ma asked. “Let Violet pray.”

Sol swallowed. “Violet’s not fit to pray,” he said gently. “She’s a first-class girl and I would lay down on railroad tracks for her, but she ain’t fit to pray to God.”

“That’s no way to talk about your own wife, Solly,” Ma said. “Shame on you.”

“I love her like she was my right arm,” Sol said. “But she’s not a very good woman, Ma. What’s the sense in kiddin’ ourselves? Violet has a weak character, Ma, and she has done two or three or five things.… Give Violet four drinks, Ma, and she says ‘Yes’ to the man from Macy’s. She’s young, she’ll outgrow it an’ settle down, but right now …” Sol nervously lit a cigarette. “Right now, Ma, Violet’s prayers’d carry top weight in the field.”

“Sol, Sol,” Ma said gravely, “why can’t you pray?”

Sol sat quietly, observing his cigarette. The blush came up over his purple collar, like dye soaking in cloth. “I am not one hundred percent perfect in any respect, myself,” he said. “First of all, Ma, in my business if yuh don’t tell the customers dirty jokes, yuh might just as well apply to the WPA.”

“You should’ve been a doctor, like I said.”

“I know, Ma,” Sol said patiently. “But I’m not. I’m a man who has to play in cheap night clubs in Philadelphia and Lowell, Massachusetts, and Boston, weeks at a time. Yuh don’t know how lonely it can get at night in Lowell, Massachusetts.”

“A lot, Sol?”

“A lot, Ma, a lot,” Sol cast his eyes up at the kitchen ceiling.

“A boy with a face like yours.” Ma shrugged. “Girls’re funny.”

“If I prayed, Ma, the words’d stick in my throat.”

“So you want me. I don’t even believe in God, Baby.”

“That’s all right, Ma,” Sol said. “You’re a good woman. Yuh never hurt anybody in all yer life.”

Ma sighed hugely. “I’ll have to go down to Mrs. Aaronson and get her to teach me the prayer. Sol, darling, you’re a nuisance.”

Sol kissed her, his eyes shining.

“I got to see what’s happening to that bird,” Ma said, bending over the chicken. “I’ll pray that it’s a boy,” she said, “while I’m at it.”

Every Friday night the candles were lighted and Ma steadfastly said the old words: “ Burach ee, burach shmoi, Burach ee, burach shmoi. Burach ee, burach shmoi. Burach ata adanoi eluchainu melach huoilom. Chaleck necht shil shabos. ” And then she prayed for a boy.

It was on a Friday night that Sol and Violet brought the baby over to Ma’s for the first time.

Sol held the smiling and pink and robust boy in his arms as if he were wood.

“See, Ma?” he said, holding the baby out.

Ma put her hand out slowly, and gently rubbed the little soft head. “Hair,” she said. “He’s got hair.” She chuckled and took the baby’s hand out and kissed it. “Take him into the bedroom, Violet,” she said. “I’m busy here for a minute.”

She turned and lighted the seven candles in the window, one by one.

“The last stronghold of religion,” Lawrence said. “All of a sudden. This house.”

“Shut up,” Ma said. “City College philosopher.”

And she said, “ Burach ee, burach shmoi. Burach ee … ” as the candles burned.

A rline opened the bedroom door and softly went over between the twin beds, the silk of her dress making a slight rustle in the quiet room. The dark shades were down and the late afternoon sun came in only in one or two places along the sides of the window frames, in sharp, thin rays.