Everyman Read Free Page B

significance eluded the nascent secularist—that, in fact, seemed ludicrous to him—even after his father explained why the Hasidim still wore what their ancestors had worn in the old country two hundred years before and lived much as they did then, though, as he pointed out to his father again and again, they were now in America, free to dress and to shave and to behave as they wished. When one of the seven sons of the diamond merchant got married, the merchant invited their entire family to the wedding in Brooklyn. All the men there had beards and all the women wore wigs and the sexes sat on different sides of the synagogue, separated by a wall—afterward the men and the women did not even dance together—and everything about that wedding he and Howie hated. When the diamond merchant arrived at the store he would remove his coat but leave on his hat, and the two men would sit behind the showcase chatting amiably together in Yiddish, the language that his father's parents, his own grandparents, had continued to speak in their immigrant households with their American-born children for as long as they lived. But when it was time to look at the diamonds, the two went into the backroom, where there was a safe and a workbench and a brown linoleum floor and, jammed together behind a door that never shut completely even when you had successfully struggled to hook it from within, a toilet and a tiny sink. His father always paid on the spot with a check.
    After closing the store with Howie's help—pulling the lattice gate with the padlocks across the shop's display window, switching on the burglar alarm, and throwing all the locks on the front door—his father showed up in his younger son's hospital room and gave him a hug.
    He was there when Dr. Smith came around to introduce himself. The surgeon was wearing a business suit rather than a white coat, and his father jumped to his feet as soon as he saw him enter the room. "It's Dr. Smith!" his father cried.
    "So this is my patient," Dr. Smith said. "Well," he told him, coming to the side of the bed to take him firmly by the shoulder, "we're going to fix that hernia tomorrow and you'll be as good as new. What position do you like to play?" he asked.
    "End."
    "Well, you're going to be back playing end before you know it. You're going to play anything you want. You get a good night's sleep and I'll see you in the morning."
    Daring to joke with the eminent surgeon, his father said, "And you get a good night's sleep too."
    When his dinner came, his mother and father sat and talked to him as though they were all at home. They spoke quietly so as not to disturb the sick boy or his parents, who were silent now, the mother still seated beside him and the father incessantly pacing at the foot of the bed and then out into the corridor and back. The boy hadn't so much as stirred while they were there.
    At five to eight a nurse stuck her head in to announce that visiting hours were over. The parents of the other boy again spoke together in Yiddish and, after the mother repeatedly kissed the boy's forehead, they left the room. The father had tears running down his face.
    Then his own parents left to go home to his brother and eat a late dinner together in the kitchen without him. His mother kissed him and held him tightly to her. "You can do it, son," his father said, leaning over to kiss him as well. "It's like when I give you an errand to run on the bus or a job to do at the store. Whatever it is, you never let me down. Reliable—my two reliable boys! I pop my buttons when I think about my boys. Always, you do the work like the thorough, careful, hardworking boys you were brought up to be. Carrying precious jewels to Newark and back, quarter-carat, half-carat diamonds in your pocket, and at your age that doesn't faze you. You look to all the world like it's some junk you found in your Cracker Jacks. Well, if you can do that job, you can do this job. It's just another