Free Saving Grace by Barbara Rogan

it—or did Lucas reckon him stupid as well as corrupt?
    But he had to remain calm. People were watching. He told himself that he was an honorable man, and honorable men cannot be humiliated. Nevertheless, he couldn’t stop himself saying bitterly, “Lucas didn’t have the balls to confront me himself. Tell him I thought he had more guts.”
    “You should leave now, Mr. Fleishman,” Buscaglio said with an insolent look.
    Luis Gonzalez jumped up and came around his desk to stand beside Jonathan. His face was red. “Mr. Fleishman is an honored customer of this bank and he has every right to be here.”
    Jonathan clasped his shoulder. “It’s all right, my friend. Let them look. They’re just wasting time and money.”
    “My time,” Gonzalez said, “my tax money. I’m sorry, Jonathan, this just burns me up.” He turned to Buscaglio. “I grew up in Eastborough, and all my life this borough has been run by crooked politicians who got fat off the people. Nobody ever did a goddamn thing to them. Finally we get someone decent, someone who cares about our problems, and that’s who you go after. Lady, you want to do some good, why don’t you go after the drug money that flows like water through this borough? Why don’t you go after the dealers who sell crack to our children?” Why don’t you one-tenth of what this man has done?”
    Jonathan could have kissed him.
    Jane Buscaglio shrugged and picked up a ledger.
     
    * * *
     
    Clara sat at the kitchen table in the light, bright house that was built on water and wrote in a crabbed, uneven hand:
     
    Dear Tamar,
    How are you? And Micha? He should get out of the army. Seven years, enough already. He should go to college, get a real profession.
    And you, my daughter, I’m very proud they made you chief of surgery. Maybe now you’ll think about what I said, about coming to America. Here such a respected doctor could live like a queen, with a beautiful house and fine things, good as your brother. What you got there on the kibbutz? A couple rooms, a few sticks furniture, not even your own telephone or car they give you. I ask you, this is fair?”
     
    Of course it wasn’t fair. What was the good of being a doctor if you had to give away all you earned? Helping others was very nice, but first you got to help yourself. Okay, so the kibbutz put her through medical school, very nice, but was that a reason they should live off her the rest of her life?
    It was a terrible thing to work and work and never see the good of it, terrible and unnatural. Clara knew. In Poland, her poor mama and papa had struggled from dawn to late at night just to survive; from year to year they never saved a penny. Here in America, if a person worked hard, he made money; and if he was smart and saved, he could have anything. A person was lazy, didn’t want to work, he stayed poor—that was his choice. That was the American way, and it was fair. Jonathan worked hard and he grew rich. Tamar, in Israel, worked just as hard, had even greater responsibility, and what did she own? Nothing. Not even her little house was hers; everything belonged to the kibbutz. Very nice, she had respect; but respect you can’t sell, you can’t eat.
    Clara sighed. No point getting aggravated. Tamar wouldn’t listen, never had. She was as stubborn as her father.
     
    “Everyone here is fine, thanks God. Gracie sees a young man, nice Jewish boy, runs a newspaper in the city. I don’t know if it’s serious. Jonathan don’t like him, and what’s not smart is he shows it. I told him, Lily too: you say black, she’s bound to say white. Gracie’s just like you and your papa, contrary to the bone. Don’t know what’s good for her. Lives in an empty room like a bedouin. Now she says she won’t go to college, even though Harvard and all those ivory schools want her. Says they’re ‘elitist.’ Just like your papa, him with his socialist mishugas . But that’s how it goes in families. One side gets the sense, the