The Two-Family House: A Novel Read online

  He was going over the numbers again when someone knocked. Abe poked his head in the doorway, still chewing the remains of his lunch.

  “Mort—we’ve got a meeting tomorrow morning. Bob Sherman set it up for us.” Bob Sherman, a name Mort hadn’t heard in years, was their father’s old friend. “Bob met somebody in Philly, guy making breakfast cereal.” Mort was still absorbed in the pages of his ledger.

  “Mmm,” he muttered. He had just found the error he had been looking for all morning. He wasn’t surprised: Abe had given one of the buyers a discount and had forgotten to record it.

  “This is a big meeting. Could you maybe look at me for a minute?”

  Mort forced himself to look at Abe. “What’s so important about this guy?”

  “What’s so important is that he’s the king of breakfast cereal. Cornflakes, wheat puffs, all that stuff.”

  “Cereal tastes like sawdust.”

  “You don’t have to eat it, for Chrissake! This guy wants us to package it.”

  “Hmm?” Mort had already lost interest in the conversation, his eyes naturally drifting back down to the comfort of the numbers on his desk.

  “In cardboard boxes, Mort! Millions of boxes! And the guy needs a new supplier.”

  Mort was unimpressed. “We don’t make boxes for that.”

  “We can make anything! We make shirt boxes for the laundries now. Why not cereal boxes?”

  “I suppose.”

  “You suppose? Mort, do you have any idea how big this could be? How much business we could get from this guy?”

  Reluctantly, Mort put down his pencil. He was used to Abe’s enthusiasm, the way he wound himself up over every new client and every new deal. But Mort could never connect with it. He was immune. It had been the same when they were boys. Being the older brother, and the one with more playmates, Abe was always the first to catch any childhood illnesses. Their mother’s policy was that if Abe caught something, Mort should be exposed as quickly as possible in order to get the whole thing over with. She had learned this strategy from her own mother, who swore by it. Somehow it never seemed to work with Abe and Mort. When Abe got the chicken pox, their mother forced Mort to sleep in the same bed with Abe. But Mort never got the chicken pox, and he was still resistant to Abe’s optimism.

  “Listen, I know you don’t like meetings, but we both need to meet this guy. He deals with big-time suppliers. What if he asks how many boxes we can get to him every week or how much the monthly shipping is gonna be on this?” Abe’s speech was coming faster as he reeled off the issues.

  “You don’t need me for that. You give buyers quotes for those things all the time.”

  “Yeah, but not with this kind of volume. These are gonna be big, big numbers.” Abe was pacing fretfully around Mort’s small office now, pointing at the ledger books and the adding machine to make his point.

  “So? Bigger numbers just have more zeroes. They’re still just numbers. Don’t worry so much.”

  “Don’t worry about the numbers? That’s a good one, coming from you!” Abe gave Mort a friendly punch to the shoulder.

  Mort rubbed his shoulder and frowned. “You really don’t need me for this. You’ll be fine on your own.” He bent his head back down over his book.

  “Come on, Mort. You know I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need you. The sign on the building says, ‘Box Brothers,’ and this guy wants to meet us both.” There was only one chair in Mort’s office and Mort was sitting in it, so Abe sat down on the corner of Mort’s desk. After a few moments Abe put one hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Nine-thirty tomorrow. Please?” Mort nodded silently, never looking up. Abe left the office and closed the door behind him.

  Abe hadn’t asked him to go to a client meeting in years, so Mort knew it was important. It might actually be the watershed deal his brother always seemed to be looking for. It wasn’t that the company was doing badly—their numbers were in good shape. But Abe was always looking for the next big thing.

  Their father had been the same way. People always needed boxes, he told them. When people are rich they bring home whatever they buy in them, and when people are poor, they use them to carry out whatever they have left. Before the war, boxes had been everywhere, hollow reminders of disposability and eviction. Some people even wound up sleeping in them. And once the war started, well, Mort wouldn’t admit it to Abe, but he suspected the business had saved both of them from conscription. Sure, Abe had his heart murmur, and they were both on the older side, but running a company that employed a dozen guys, all sole earners for their families, had to have helped.

  Their father always told them that the people getting rich weren’t the guys making boxes. They were the guys making the stuff to put in them. But Mort thought maybe his father had underestimated their product. A box could be hopeful, couldn’t it? A box filled with something useful, even tasteless flakes, could be important and maybe even make the box makers rich. Mort sighed. It would be a lot of work. And of course, it could only happen if someone paid close attention to the numbers.

  Chapter 7

  ROSE

  Rose felt strangely off balance for the next few weeks. Mort was paying a good deal of attention to her, and she wasn’t used to it. His interest unsettled her, and she couldn’t concentrate on her daily tasks.

  Before Mort, the only man in Rose’s life had been her father—a man who never wasted time on frivolous praise or affection. That was the only kind of man Rose knew. Rose’s father didn’t tell her she was pretty or intelligent because he knew she was both, and he found it unnecessary to make it a topic of conversation.

  When Rose met Mort, she saw in him a younger version of her father. Familiarity bred a certain fondness. But there was something else, something that drew her to Mort in spite of his overwhelming need for self-control and efficiency, and that was the effect she seemed to have on him.

  True, he did not shower her with flowery compliments or romantic gestures, but when she walked into a room, he could not hide his admiration. He was the first man to tell her she was beautiful, and though his voice reminded her ever so slightly of the tone her pediatrician used whenever he made a diagnosis, the compliment was praise in its most sincere form. If Mort took the time to say it, she knew that he believed it.

  And then there was the way the color rose in his cheeks every time she came near him. His emotional restraint, so visible in all other areas of his life, seemed to crumble before her. When he held her hand, she could feel it. When he kissed her, she knew. His desire for her was palpable, as real as any number in his ledger books. The fact that he could not control it endeared him to her immeasurably. When he told her he loved her, she knew she loved him too. Their wedding, though modest, was the happiest day of her life.

  Things began to change only after they had children. As soon as Rose became pregnant, Mort was clear about his preferences. Abe already had a boy, and Mort wanted one too. Did she think that’s what they were having? Wouldn’t the doctor have some idea? Mort became increasingly frustrated with Rose’s lack of certainty and her inability to decipher the contents of her own womb. When Judith was born, he was clearly disappointed. When Mimi came along, he was despondent. And when he first saw Dinah, swaddled in a pink hospital blanket, he told Rose she was their last. With every daughter she bore, he seemed to desire her less, and he was a little less kind. Over the years, she had grown used to the lack of interest he showed in both her and the girls.

  But the past few weeks had been different. Mort called every afternoon to ask how she was feeling. When he took her hand, she felt the same warm tingle she used to feel when they were dating. One night he took the girls for an unprecedented after-dinner walk to the corner candy store. His attention confused her, and she could not get used to it.

  Mort’s reaction to the news of her pregnancy had surprised her. She had been prepared for hostility, confusion, and silence most of all. Her conversation with Helen had subdued her anxiety, but she still wished there was som
e way she could avoid the subject for a few more weeks. She knew, however, that once she revealed her secret to Helen, she was obligated to tell her husband. She told him that very evening, as soon as he returned home from work, almost before he was fully through the doorway. With both eyes and hands absorbed in dinner preparations, she mumbled the news in a voice slightly louder than a whisper. Silence followed, and she was afraid to turn around. Her fears were confirmed when she heard Mort leave the room. She took the roast out of the oven and placed the pan on the stove.

  When she finally did turn around, Mort was walking back into the kitchen with all three girls. He was speaking in a loud, cheerful voice and smiling. “Girls,” he said, “your mother has some news for you.” Rose cleared her throat and told them about the baby. Cheers came first, followed by the predictable bickering over who was going to hold the baby first and who was going to be best at feeding and diapering. “You will all have a turn to help with him,” Mort had told them.

  This morning had brought the biggest surprise of all. Rose had walked to the front door with Mort’s suit jacket to help him on with it—something she had done every morning of their marriage. Usually he kept his back to her, buttoned the jacket up and left. But this morning, he had turned toward her after slipping his left arm into his sleeve. He turned so gracefully that Rose had actually imagined him for a moment as a dancer on a stage, moving toward her with effortless purpose. And at the end of his turn, this nimble stranger had slipped his left arm around her waist, taken her unsuspecting cheek sweetly in his other hand and kissed her lips goodbye.

  So unexpected was the combination of embrace and kiss, so tender the touch on her cheek, that when he was safely down the street and the girls off to the park, Rose sat down at her kitchen table, put her head down on the worn wooden top and cried. It started with a few tears—she had a lot to do that morning and she was determined not to think too much about Mort’s behavior. But as she sat, she found she could not stop. Tears streamed out of her as if she were a confused child, with no warning, and seemingly no end to their torrent. What had just happened? As she sat there wondering and rubbing her apron over her eyes, a quick knock came at the door. It was Helen.

  “Rose! Are you home? I have no raisins left and I need some for my strudel. Can I borrow some raisins?” Rose stood up from her chair—the door was unlocked and Helen was entering the kitchen. When Helen saw Rose’s swollen eyes, she gasped. “What’s wrong? Oh my God, Rose, what is it? Is it the baby?” Rose shook her head no, and Helen took a deep breath. “What, then? Oh honey, what’s wrong?”

  Rose wiped her tears with the back of her hand. “I’m fine,” she murmured. “Here, let me find the raisins.” But Helen would not let it drop. She grabbed Rose’s hand before she could slip away.

  “Is it Mort?”

  “Oh Helen.” Rose hesitated. She was embarrassed to speak of it, to admit that the smallest affectionate gesture from her husband had been so surprising that it had moved her to tears.

  “He … he kissed me. He held my cheek. He looked at me like he used to, the way he did when we were young.”

  “Ohhh,” said Helen. “I see.” She tried to hide her surprise. “Why don’t you send the girls up to us for dinner tonight? You and Mort can have some time to yourselves.”

  Rose couldn’t remember the last time she had looked forward to time alone with Mort, but now she didn’t hesitate. “All right,” she said.

  She spent the remainder of the afternoon preparing for dinner. She didn’t want to send the girls upstairs empty-handed, so she decided to bake something for them to take. It was so nice to bake whenever she wanted now, without having to worry about cards and rations. As she pulled the flour canister out from behind her spice rack, it toppled over and the lid popped off. Flour poured out onto the counter and floor, leaving a cloud of snowy dust hanging in the air. Rose frowned and took out the broom.

  Once the cake was in the oven, Rose tried to come up with something special to make Mort for dinner. What was his favorite dish? She honestly couldn’t think of one. Her husband never seemed to care much about food. Not like Abe, who was always asking for seconds. She envied Helen’s easy manner with Abe, how he grabbed Helen around her waist by the stove and hummed in her ear when she stirred something. No wonder Helen was such a good cook.

  In the end Rose decided on a chicken dish, one she learned how to make from her mother, with dried apricots and marmalade. “A little sweet to sweeten his disposition” her mother used to say when she cooked this chicken for Rose’s father. Maybe it would work for Rose too.

  “You’re being ridiculous,” she whispered to herself. Mort had been her husband for thirteen years, and she had eaten dinner with him almost every night of their marriage. Why was she so excited? She hoped the evening would go well. She hoped it would be different from the thousands of dinners that had come before it. Because if this dinner was the same, if the promise of the morning’s kiss was lost, the hope she carried would scatter and disappear, like the last puff of flour she had swept off the floor.

  Chapter 8

  MORT

  (September 1947)

  Ever since Rose told him she was expecting their fourth child, Mort had been bargaining with God. Somewhere in the dusty bottom drawer of his consciousness, he knew he had not been an attentive father or a loving husband. He knew he had failed. In the quiet of the night, with Rose sleeping beside him, he counted his sins as only a man obsessed with numbers could. He recorded each unkind remark, intentional slight and frown in imaginary columns, tallied the totals and found himself wholly in the red.

  Mort’s vision of God was the punitive Old Testament righter of wrongs. He convinced himself that with good behavior (as well as good bookkeeping), he could balance his divine account statement and show a profit of virtue. A successful son to carry on his name and his business would be his reward.

  So Mort took up the task at hand. He brought his daughters on walks to the candy store. He complimented his wife the way he used to when they were first dating. One morning, as Rose helped him on with his jacket, he decided to kiss her goodbye. As he turned to her, the look of utter disbelief on her face shamed him. He reached out to take her cheek in his hand. It was soft, velvety, like the outside of a peach. For a moment, he forgot about his nighttime tally and breathed in the scent of her.

  As the weeks went by, Mort decided it was easier to keep track if he assigned point values to specific actions. He fell into a nightly ritual of calculating his credits and debits, the good deeds and the bad, and silently congratulated himself as his column of virtuous living out-valued the row of unkind words and selfish actions that had so recently defined him.

  In his quest to boost his quota, Mort had agreed to an unprecedented outing with Abe’s family. The two families spent a lot of time together, but they rarely socialized outside their home. Mort was frustrated. Wasn’t it enough that he worked with Abe every day and spent every holiday with his family? Wasn’t it enough that he could hear Abe’s sons pounding overhead all day long? He had to go out with them on a Sunday too? But saying no for such selfish reasons would compromise his numbers so, reluctantly, he agreed.

  Helen had invited them to dinner at a restaurant in Manhattan, courtesy of her older brother Sol. Sol was the proprietor of a candy stand located in the lobby of a large office building on East Thirty-eighth Street. He sold candy bars, newspapers, cigarettes and cigars. Sol also had a notary license and was happy to provide his official stamp for anyone in the building seeking his services. This tidy enterprise earned him a respectable living. But Sol made his real money as a bookie. In the morning, a customer might slip him an extra twenty-dollar bill while paying for a newspaper to place a bet on a boxing match. An afternoon chocolate bar was an excuse to pick a winner in baseball. No one questioned the monetary exchanges or the visits to Sol’s stand. Someone paying close attention might have noticed that Sol rarely had to make change for his customers. But if anyone noticed, it never came
up. It was the perfect front.

  Though he was older than Helen, Sol had married for the first time only a few years ago. His son, Johnny, was two, and lived on a steady diet of chocolate bars and Sugar Daddy caramel pops. Mort thought Sol should take bets on when Johnny would lose all his teeth.

  To Mort’s way of thinking, Sol’s activities were clearly illegal. But Helen adored her brother and forbade anyone from talking about Sol’s side business. It was one of Sol’s customers, however, who presented the reason for their upcoming excursion.

  This particular customer owned an elegant Italian restaurant near the office building and found himself in debt to Sol after getting some bad tips on a horse. Rather than shell out the cash, he invited Sol for dinner at the restaurant. Sol graciously accepted. Knowing the size of the debt, he figured he’d be eating lunch there for a month if he went alone, so he invited Helen and her boys for dinner, and told her Mort’s family should come as well.

  The girls squealed when Rose told them about the invitation. Dinner at a fancy restaurant! In Manhattan!

  “Can we go? Can we?” pleaded Mimi.

  Eight pairs of eyes turned to Mort for approval. His initial reaction was to shake his head no. But he nodded his approval instead.

  “Will we get to take the subway?” Judith asked her father, obviously excited at the prospect.

  “I suppose so,” Mort said. He tried to smile. He noted, with satisfaction, that it was his third smile of the day.

  “Mommy says the restaurant will be very pretty and everyone will be dressed up. I’m going to wear my best dress and my pink hair ribbon and I’m going to carry my purse!” Mimi spun around as she described the details of her outfit.

  Dinah giggled and spun around as well. She approached Mort cautiously, and he patted her on the head.

  “Time for bed now,” he declared.

  As he got into his own bed that evening, Mort began to regret the process he had undertaken. It was only getting harder. The more interested he pretended to be in people, the more they expected from him. A smile one day led to an anticipated “good morning” the next. Just yesterday at work, his warehouse manager, Tom, had cornered him on his way out and asked him what his weekend plans were. Mort was offended. Tom had clearly mistaken his quiet “hello” at the coffee machine a few days earlier as an invitation to discuss all kinds of personal matters. Where would it end? At the rate he was going, he’d end up wasting half his workday with pleasantries and chitchat. The final straw was the dinner with Abe’s family. It was too much. Tomorrow, he’d tell them they weren’t going.