Cold Type. Harvey Araton

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      Chapter Seven

      Morris was dozing when Molly returned from sitting with Becky. His snoring served as a soundtrack to the radio news anchor. Part of the newspaper lay precariously on his lap. The other part had slipped onto the worn lime carpet.

      She knew better than to rouse him. If Morris was lights-out before noon, he must have been exhausted from sheer tension. Long ago she had come to realize this was how her husband believed he could not only contain his emotions but also defeat them.

      Morris’ mother had taught her to let him be when he was stressed out. The day before they were married, more than forty years now, Morris told his mother he needed a nap at ten in the morning. He didn’t wake up until the morning of the wedding. Molly called a half-dozen times before taking the bus over to the Kramers’ apartment in East Flatbush. She was suddenly panicked at the thought of Morris fleeing Brooklyn to become—she didn’t know—a stowaway on a slow boat to Jerusalem.

      “What should I do, Mrs. Kramer?” Molly said.

      His Russian immigrant mother, so tiny that her apron sagged well below her knees, smiled and told her that Morris had been sleeping away stress since he was a small child.

      “You don’t have to do anything,” Morris’ mother said. “He’ll wake up, God willing, and be happy to marry you.”

      As far as Molly was concerned, Morris was still content, if not blissful. In relaxed moments he could admit to her that their marriage could have turned out much, much worse. She took it as his best compliment.

      Molly decided to let Morris sleep another few minutes. She dialed Jamie’s apartment. The answering machine picked up after four rings. She hung up without leaving a message.

      “Who’re you calling?” Morris asked from the sofa, roused by the dialing.

      “Jamie—he’s not home.”

      She heard him mumbling.

      “You want me to call back and leave a message?” she said, stepping into the living room. Molly was small in height and body type, standing maybe an inch and a half over five feet. If she weighed more than a hundred pounds, that was after her biggest meal. She wore her straight graying hair in a bun. Often she looked like she was smiling because she was squinting—never comfortable wearing the glasses that dangled from her neck on a chain.

      “You would think he would call on his own,” Morris said. “You would think he would know what’s at stake here.”

      “Why do you think he wouldn’t?”

      “Who knows with him?”

      Molly shook her head and left the room.

      She confided in Becky that she had all but given up on Morris ever forging a closer relationship with Jamie. “I wish I could do something,” she’d say. “But it’s gone on for so long—since Jamie was a boy—and all I ask is that they don’t fight in front of me.”

      When Jamie lived at home, Morris’ long work hours and union responsibilities had helped in that respect. But weekends became especially difficult during Jamie’s teenage years. Avoiding one another was next to impossible in a five-room apartment on the second floor of their two-family home—no matter how hard they tried.

      Jamie could lock himself in his room for hours, watching basketball games on the black-and-white portable television and reading comic books starring The Amazing Spiderman and other Marvel superheroes. Morris would retreat to the bathroom and sit on the toilet for the better part of an afternoon with his newspapers. Confrontation was still inevitable.

      “Dad, I have to go,” Jamie would yell from the hall.

      “Damn it, just wait a while, it won’t kill you.”

      Jamie would sink to the floor, falling against the wall, rapping his knuckles on the door after every passing minute until Morris emerged, red-faced and mumbling son of a bitch.

      Who knows with him? There were times when Morris felt as if he’d been asking that question from the days he schlepped his frail and allergy-afflicted son from one doctor to another.

      Jamie never cried, as best Morris could recall, even as other kids wailed all around him. He had narrow brown eyes that at first glance almost looked Asian. The pediatrician called them sleepy but Morris worried because that’s how his son acted most of the time.

      When Morris scored seats ten or twelve rows behind home plate at Yankee Stadium, Jamie munched on a hot dog during the first inning and fell asleep in the second. Granted, he was only eight, it was 1970 and the Yankees were lousy. But it was his first ballgame and when they got home, all he could say was, “Baseball stinks. Nothing happens.”

      “You think so?” Morris said. “What game do you like?”

      “Basketball,” Jamie said. “They jump really high. Walt Frazier is so cool.”

      At work that night, Morris recounted the unhappy experience to his brother.

      “Can you believe it, Louie?” he said. “I take him to see his first baseball game—Yankee freaking Stadium—and he tells me how he’d rather watch a bunch of schvartzers run around in their underwear.”

      “Yeah, Mo, I know,” Lou said. “But Stevie doesn’t like any sports.”

      “What are you comparing?” Morris said. “Stevie’s a little genius—his teachers have been telling you that since kindergarten. СКАЧАТЬ