Free Evergreen by Belva Plain Page B

read. In the Old Country it wasn’t essential for a girl to learn, although some did, of course. So Joseph had to read the paper in the evening, because his father wanted to know what was going on in the world. But it was difficult; Joseph didn’t read Yiddish very well and he knew his father wasn’t satisfied.
    For a while Pa had struggled on in the tailoring shop, hunching lower and lower in the yellow flame from the gaslight, for even at noon the daylight was shut out by the fire escapes outside the window. When it was evident that he could work no more they had closed the shop and his mother became the unacknowledged breadwinner.
    The store was the square “front room,” with the counter running across the back and the large brown icebox standing at one side. In the two rear rooms separated by a dark green cloth curtain, they lived, their arrangements the same as they had been in the tailor shop two blocks away. The kitchen table was covered with oilcloth once blue, now a spoiled gray. Here they ate and here his mother made the potato salad and the coleslaw that went into the brown refrigerator in the store along with the soda bottles and the milk. Bread was stacked on the counter; coffee, sugar and spices stood on the shelves; crackers and candy were in boxes and barrels on the floor, along with the pickles floating in their scummy brine. A bell jangled when the doorwas opened. In the summer you didn’t hear the bell because the screen door’s spring was broken. His father never knew how to fix anything, so the door hung open. Curving bands of yellow flypaper hung from the ceiling fixture, and huge black flies collected on it, disgusting flies, black and wet when they were squashed, bred in the horsedroppings on the street.… Strange that his father, who was so fastidious, didn’t seem to mind them, Joseph thought, until he realized that the old man didn’t see them.
    From six o’clock in the morning until ten at night his mother stood behind the counter. Not that they were so busy; it was just that one never knew when someone might come in to buy. Sometimes the jangling bell would ring past ten at night.
    “Oh, Mrs. Friedman, I saw the light, I hope it’s not too late. We’re out of coffee.”
    For the neighborhood it was a convenience, a place where one could go at odd hours to pick up something one had forgotten, after the markets had closed and the pushcarts were covered with tarpaulins and guarded for the night. A small convenience. A small living.
    “Max Friedman,” read the sign above the door. It should have read, “Katie Friedman.” Even at the age of ten Joseph was able to understand the tragedy in that.
    He had a snapshot of himself sitting in front of the store, the first picture taken of him since his infant portrait when he lay naked on the photographer’s fur rug. He was twelve years old, in knickers and cap, high shoes and long black stockings.
    “How solemn you were!” Anna said when she saw it. “You look as though you had the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
    Not the weight of the world, but a great one, nevertheless. For that was the year when he went from childhood to adult knowledge in one night. Well, make it two or three nights, at the most.
    Wolf Harris came into the store one day where Josephwas helping after school. He was some very remote relative of Solly’s on the other side of Solly’s family. He was eighteen and aptly named. His nose was thin; his large mouth was always drawn back in a scornful smile.
    “Want to make some money, kid? Mr. Doyle wants a kid to run messages for him.”
    “Doyle?” Pa had come from his chair next to the stove. “Why should Mr. Doyle need my son?”
    “Because. He needs a boy he can trust to deliver stuff on time, not to lose things. He’ll give him a dollar and a half a week to come in after school every day.”
    A dollar and a half! But Doyle was rich, Doyle was from Tammany Hall. He was Power, Government, Authority.