Free The Dream Merchant by Fred Waitzkin Page A

in a safe neighborhood with a good school system. That was important to her. Once the husband, Shimon, decided she could bring the kids to the States, she became fierce about her children. She wanted the best for them. The boy needed gymnastic classes, whatever they cost. He must have gymnastic classes. Believe me, there was never any question about whether she would bring her children. That was just talk for Jim, part of her act.
    I picked out their furniture, the silverware, the matching glasses, the children’s swings for the backyard. There wasn’t much money, but I tried to imagine what she would like. I can’t explain why I did it except he wanted me to. I wanted him to be happy.
    Did he tell you about her sister? Probably not. Mara’s sister came here four years ago and married an older man and then she dumped him. The sister is living in Miami. She has a young boyfriend with a flashy sports car and a house on Key Biscayne. So what do you think is going to happen to Jim after he marries her and she gets the green card? Haven’t you noticed the change in him? He’s worn out by her. He’s become an acquiescive person.
    Phyllis caught my eye, and I nodded to her; “acquiescive” was the right word for Jim. His top guys from the company sometimes talk to me, she continued. Jim doesn’t make business calls anymore. He doesn’t return their calls. He sits and waits for her. He dreams. What does she want with an old man who dreams about the past? Just the green card. Then she’ll walk out or she’ll kill him with all her love. What could anyone say about it?

 
    8.
    After a month in New York doing rewrites for an article, I was back in Florida visiting again. On the first night the girl made us barbecued chicken and a delicious Israeli salad, a welcome departure from pizza, which almost always gives me heartburn. She laughed and served us red wine. She was definitely settling in, no longer a visitor. During the gap of time since my last visit, little secrets had taken hold like seedlings, modest changes in their home (a new red-and-white-checkered tablecloth with a Walmart tag still fixed to a corner), suggesting plans and movements that I didn’t know about.
    My God, didn’t she ever notice that Jim was old? This question had begun to obsess me.
    Jim was dressed in sporty Bermudas and a tight T-shirt to show off his strong tattooed arms, but he looked tired and gray. Too much Mara. Too much sex, and no more lounging on his outdoor patio selling optimism. He had taken on the pallor of their drab walls and filthy venetian blinds like a sea creature blending with the bottom. Also, the creases in my friend’s face had deepened, and I flashed on my own dad’s face during his last months, thinner than Jim’s, but Dad’s creases were so deep that they could have been knife wounds—they frightened me. Meanwhile, the girl had stopped wearing so much makeup, which made her look even younger, more adorable and fresh.
    *   *   *
    The following day I was driving from my motel back out to Jim’s, musing about stories he’d been telling us, trying to connect the boy to the old man. As a kid Jim had called the shots in his house. There was no parent instilling the meaning of “no.” When he was ten, Jim went to the best department store in Edmonton and bought a flashy expensive suit to imitate his dad. The family was still very poor, without a lot of basics, but Jim’s mother didn’t say a word. He told us that when he was twelve he fell in love with a friend of his mother’s who had been renting a bedroom in their little house while her husband was away in the army. Jim thought about her incessantly and began bringing the woman wildflowers and then little presents from town. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. Some days Sally would ask her son to take out the dirty clothes and wash them. Jim would hunt for