From The Kenyon Review, New Series, Winter 1987, Vol. IX, No.1
In 1959, when my wife’s grandmother died, I was thirty years old, made $110 a week, had two children, and lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Eastchester, New York. The children, a girl four and a boy two, slept in the bedroom, and my wife Sarah and I, in the living room on a Castro convertible that when folded out stretched from one end of the room to the other.
Our fifth floor apartment backed up on the Harlem Division of the New York Central and nights when I couldn’t sleep, I would sit by the living room window on a hard kitchen chair, hands folded in my lap, and watch the trains rumble by. Sometimes, with a pleasure I wouldn’t admit to, I’d play a child’s game and count the freight cars. In between freight cars, I’d think and fantasize about many things: my wife, my children, the dead end that my life had all too quickly become. I was working in a men’s clothing store and hating every second of it. But what I thought about the most was what I had the least of: money. I thought about making $300 a week and when I got tired of that, I thought about having $15,000 in the bank. That was it. That was as far as it went. Those two fantasies were the perimeters of my galaxy.
When my wife’s Uncle Eddie called to say that Grandma Eda had died in her sleep the night before, I went out to the local liquor store and bought a bottle of New York State champagne. I had only drunk champagne four or five times before in my life, and it was the first bottle I had ever bought.
“It’s not,” my wife said sharply, “the kind of thing we should be celebrating.”
“She was ninety-five,” I defended myself. “You and I should live to be ninety-five. We’re not celebrating her death. We’re celebrating our change in fortune.” I opened the champagne with a flourish, letting the cork smack up against the kitchen ceiling, carefully filled two orange juice glasses halfway, and moved a glass toward my wife.
In a gesture of total disdain, Sarah picked up her glass, walked over to the sink and poured it out. “No thank you.” She put the empty glass back on the table. “I’m not drinking, Noel. Grandma might have been ninety-five, but she was alive yesterday and today she is dead and I’m not drinking to that.”
“Okay.” I thought about the champagne she had poured down the sink. “Look, I’m sorry about Grandma. You know that. I liked her and she liked me. I think she was the only member of your family that liked me. Can I tell you something? I hate living on a budget. I hate this apartment. I hate scrounging for rent every month. I hate my job, and I don’t think you should have poured the champagne down the sink. I’m bored with being poor and if Grandma’s death is going to give us some money for the first time in our lives, and I’m saying it instead of thinking it, what’s so terrible about that?” I took a sip of champagne. “It’s nice. It makes your nose tickle, but it’s nice. I’ve heard more than once, and you’ve heard too, that Grandpa came to this country with suitcases filled with gold and diamonds and $200,000 in cash.” What I had just said kept on jumping around in my head. “Have you ever seen it, Sarah, the diamonds, the gold?”
“Of course not.” Sarah stared with anger.
“When Uncle Eddie called, did he say anything else?”
“He wants everyone down there Wednesday night.”
“Who’s everyone?”
“All the grandchildren.”
“I’m going for a walk.”
“Don’t wake me.”
I put the champagne in the refrigerator. “Is that all he said? That he wants everyone down there Wednesday night?”
“He said he wants to distribute some of Grandma’s belongings. Does that make you happy?”
“Yes,” I said going out the door. In the elevator my mind wouldn’t work. I tried to imagine what a drawer full of diamonds looked like, and I couldn’t. I tried to imagine what a gold bar would feel like, and I couldn’t. And I tried to divide the number of heirs, five, into $200,000, and I couldn’t do that either.
My wife’s grandmother, Eda, came to America from Russia when she was twenty in 1884. Two years later, she was married by arrangement to Isaac Brodsky and moved into his family home on Tremont Avenue across from Corona Park in the Bronx, where she lived until her death. All I know about my wife’s grandfather Isaac, who died long before I came into the family, is that he never worked a day in his life, and was rumored to have great wealth. Grandma Eda, in the first four years of her marriage, had three sons: my father-in-law, Samuel, who died in 1954, a bankrupt haberdasher; Sarah’s Uncle Irving, also dead, who left a flourishing jewelry business to his children; and Uncle Eddie, who never married, but was very much alive, and, like his father, had never worked a day in his life. Samuel Brodsky had two children: my wife Sarah and her brother, Leon. Irving Brodsky had three children: two sons who owned the jewelry store, and a daughter who was married to a podiatrist. So what I had difficulty figuring out in the elevator, if $200,000 was an accurate figure, was $40,000 per heir, plus the diamonds and gold. It was more money than I ever dreamed of having. Thinking about it gave me a sharp pain in my left eye that I paid no attention to.
The funeral was Monday morning and that afternoon, without saying anything to Sarah, I began making plans for Thursday, the day after the “will reading.” I started looking at used cars and quickly narrowed my choice down to a sleek 1952 Hudson, brown exterior with a natural leather interior and a wood dashboard, and blinker lights on the top of the front fenders. The salesman said if I moved fast I could pick it up for $850. I said I was a salesman also, and I would be in Thursday with cash. He nodded. I was sure that when I started laying out single $100 bills on his glass table I would be able to pick up the Hudson for $700 or $750. I had never owned a car before and anticipating it filled me with pleasure. I also looked at a two-bedroom apartment in the front of the building; $28 more a month and for an extra $10 you got a garage space. I told the superintendent that I would let him know for sure on Thursday, but it looked like a sure bet. I was always late with my rent and he looked at me suspiciously.
“Hit the numbers?” he said.
“No,” I said looking him right in the eye. “I have come upon an inheritance.”
The only other thing I did was buy a bottle of French champagne.
On Wednesday night, with the bottle of champagne chilling in the refrigerator, Sarah, her brother Leon, and I headed for Grandma’s. Leon drove. He owned a new hydromatic Oldsmobile Ninety-eight that was as long as a city block. Sarah sat next to him, and I, as always, in the back. Leon was five years older than I, divorced, a stockbroker, and he bought a new car each year. His favorite line was, “When the ashtrays fill up, I know it’s time for a new car.” He was very successful and liked flashing his commission checks at me, usually for more money than I made in a year.
Leon and I never said much to each other. I didn’t like him and always felt uncomfortable in his presence. When he wanted to tell me something, it was never directly to me, but through Sarah. The three of us could be having dinner together and he would say to his sister, “Noel should make a will. Not to have a will these days is a crime, even for somebody in Noel’s position. It’s a regular criminal act.” Lowering his voice, “God forbid something should happen.”
“Noel,” Sarah would say, “Leon thinks you should have a will . . .” or,
“You should tell Noel it’s not too early for him to be thinking about starting a college fund for the children. There are all kinds of available plans. Tell him to stop down at my office and I’ll point him in the right direction. Some of the plans carry a life insurance policy, so if something happened,” lowering his voice, “God forbid,” lowering his voice to a whisper, “at least the kids’ tuition would be paid. Tell him it’s the adult thing to do.”
Noel,” Sarah would say, “Leon thinks you should be thinking about a college fund for the children . . .”
Mind you, I’m sitting there moving the food around my plate while all this is going on. Was he kidding me? Life insurance! College fund for the kids! Half the time I walked around with just loose change in my pocket.
Whenever we went out for dinner Leon always picked up the check. “I got it this time,” he would say winking at Sarah. Leon always got it. I never paid or offered to pay for dinner. He had a billfold that opened up like an accordion displaying at least a dozen credit cards. “Let’s see, which one should I use this time?” He would finger one card, put it back and pull out another and toss it on the table on top of the bill. “Tell Noel not to worry about me paying all the time. I charge it up to business and it comes right off the top. Maybe someday Noel will come into the market. Ha, ha. What a joke.”
One of my fantasies I didn’t mention before was punching my brother-in-law Leon Brodsky in the nose, but nothing ever came of that.
The whole time driving to Grandma’s that night, Sarah and Leon talked about Grandma’s life: when she first came to the country, when she first got married, all the many dinners they had had at Grandma’s and things like that. Never once did the subject of money or diamonds or gold come up. Sitting in the back, as usual, I didn’t say a word, as usual.
Grandma lived on the second story of a two-story house. There were tenants living on the first floor whom I had never seen or heard. Leon opened up the front door with a key that he had, let Sarah in, followed her, and I followed him. Upstairs everyone was waiting for us: Irving’s three children—David, Steve, and Rose—their respective spouses, and Uncle Eddie. Grandma’s apartment consisted of a kitchen, dining room, living room, hall-way and bathroom, with three bedrooms which I heard were there but had never seen. The living room was spacious, with oversized windows looking out on Corona Park. It had been furnished around 1880, and, as far as I knew, in eighty years not a vase had been added, not a chair had been moved. The dining room was dominated by a large oak work table, large enough to seat at least two dozen people comfortably. The center of Grandma’s house was not the living room, but the dining room table: a table that had been used for thousands of occasions previous to this—holiday dinners, bar mitzvahs, brises, but certainly never for anything like the distribution of Grandpa Isaac’s mysterious fortune. Everyone was standing around the dining room table in somber anticipation. My wife’s family didn’t like me. If I had to guess, it was because of lack of money. They had it and I didn’t. To be Jewish and poor was in their eyes somewhere between being intolerable and embarrassing. I nodded and said hello to everyone. My hands were ice cold. (Were ice cold hands a dead giveaway to greed?) I walked over to Rose’s husband, Jake, a podiatrist with a pencil-thin mustache.
“What do you think?” I said.
“I think the south of France this summer.”
“I mean about Grandma’s death.”
“Sad. Sad.”
I lowered my voice. “Over the years I’ve heard all kinds of rumors about Grandpa coming to this country with suitcases filled with diamonds and gold.”
“They’re not rumors,” Jake whispered back.
“Have you seen them?”
“No. But I haven’t seen Grandma’s bedroom either. They’re there.”
“How do you know?”
“What do you think they have been living on for the last hundred years? This family hasn’t worked in a century. Think of it.”
“I heard gold bars . . .”
“Nuggets,” Jake corrected me. “They’re nuggets.”
Eddie called everyone to the table. Eddie didn’t like me either, but it had nothing to do with money. Eddie didn’t know the difference between a dime and a twenty dollar bill. Soon after I married Sarah he told me why.
“Noel,” he said, “you’re the only person I have ever met in my life who can’t speak or read Hebrew. I am shocked and hurt for Sarah by it. If Grandpa were alive and knew what I know about you, it would kill him.”
I had no comeback to that. Eddie was a gaunt man, and if he ever stood up straight, would be six feet tall, but folded over the way he always was, if he came to five and a half feet it was a lot. He weighed about 120 pounds and always seemed to have bones sticking out of his clothing at the wrong angle. Eddie was sixty-five years old, a fanatically religious Jew who had never worked a day in his life and had never been to Manhattan. I know how preposterousth at sounds, a man living in the Bronx for sixty-five years not being in Manhattan once, but it’s true. I once offered to drive him there, but my offer made him more suspicious of me than ever.
“What would be the purpose of that?” He asked me from a distance. Eddie always kept a distance from me as if I were a carrier of some virulent communicable disease.
“To see the city. I’ll be with you every moment. I’ll borrow a car, and we’ll drive around. Manhattan is nice, Uncle Eddie.” I tried to be reassuring.
Eddie shook his head. “My father was in Manhattan when he first came to this country. He told me it was filled with hooligans and many non-Jews.”
The five heirs took seats around the dining room table with Eddie at the head and the respective spouses sitting in a secondary circle. There was a bottle of awful, homemade kosher wine on the table. I knew it was awful because I’d had it before. When everyone was seated, Eddie started with a prayer and then asked each grandchild to read in Hebrew from the Book of the Dead, starting with Leon, who was the oldest. Leon read Hebrew like he was on stage: a loud dramatic voice that fluctuated with each sentence. After Leon, Sarah read. I always liked listening to Sarah read Hebrew. Even though I didn’t understand a word, her pronunciation seemed excellent and she read slowly and (to me) eloquently.
After the prayers, and after each person had had a sip of wine, Eddie got up, left the room, and came back with two stuffed shopping bags which he carefully put next to his chair. He asked Leon to help him, and the two of them left and returned a moment later carrying a very old and worn trunk. I tried to swallow but couldn’t. My heart was beating wildly. I wished I had a glass of water. I wished I hadn’t given up smoking. My hands were in my lap. My left foot started to fall asleep and I pinched my leg trying to prevent it, but it didn’t help. I glanced at Jake who first nodded and then winked. How many diamonds could fit in a shopping bag? The gold nuggets were obviously in the trunk. Maybe they were gold bars after all. I wasn’t sure what a gold bar looked like, but I didn’t think it would be the kind of thing one would put in a shopping bag. Was there money, and if so, where? Eddie began speaking in a low, halting voice.
“The night before Grandma died, she asked me to distribute her belongings to the children. She spoke to me many hours that evening and I made notes.” He opened up the Talmud and removed three sheets of folded yellow paper. “Over the years Grandpa and Grandma collected great wealth which I am going to distribute tonight according to Grandma’s last words. Let us start.”
“Leon,” he referred to his notes and reached into one of the shopping bags, “as the oldest, Grandma wanted you to have this.” He placed a white teacup in front of Leon. “This teacup was given to Grandma by your Great-grandfather Chaim, when Grandma left for America. It was her most treasured possession, and she wanted you to have it.”
“Rose,” Eddie reached into the shopping bag and placed two matching combs in front of Rose. “Your Grandfather-in-law Moishe gave these combs to Grandma on her wedding day. They originally belonged to your Great-Grandmother Rachel. As the oldest granddaughter, Grandma wanted you to have these.”
“Sarah,” Eddie reached into his shopping bag and placed a plain brown handkerchief in front of her. Sarah picked it up, studied it, and smiled at Eddie.
“It’s very nice,” she said to Eddie. “Thank you.”
Eddie smiled back at her. “I’m glad you like it. Grandma was very specific that you were to receive that. She said that it brought her good luck all of her life, and she hoped it would do the same for you.”
“Thank you again.”
“David . . .” David got the handle of a knife and Steve a worn tie Grandpa used to wear. The first distribution of Grandma’s wealth had been made. I wanted to cry.
Eddie started up again, using the same sequence of distribution. Each presentation from the shopping bags had a story: some major, some minor. A tea kettle that Great-grandma used in Odessa went to Rose; a thimble that Grandma used in sewing her wedding dress went to Sarah, an old Bible to Leon, another teacup, this one with a broken handle, to David. Eight, nine, ten rounds were made. I began to lose track and interest.
Eddie had finished with one shopping bag and was working on the other. He opened up the trunk. I glanced at it. It seemed to be filled with linens and neatly folded curtains. My mind wandered. I thought of the French champagne chilling in our refrigerator. I would return it tomorrow. There was a lot of chatter going on around the table: wisecracks among David, Steve, Rose, and Rose’s husband, Jake. All the heirs had their stipends piled up loosely in front of them, and Rose and Steve, fooling around, were switching gifts.
“I’ll give you a spoon and teacup for one iron,” Steve said.
“No deal,” Jake said, “Not unless you throw in the knife with a handle.”
“Did I get that? I got a handle without a knife.”
“That’s what I meant to say.”
“I hope you’re more accurate in your podiatry,” I said.
“Noel,” Sarah turned around, “that was not nice.”
“Wow!” the podiatrist said, “Sarah’s Noel’s hostility is showing.”
Eddie, oblivious to all the chatter going on about him, kept on reading from his notes and distributing Grandma’s belongings.
Perhaps it was the fifteenth or twentieth round. I don’t know. I had stopped caring and lost count. I don’t know what I was feeling. Disappointment, anger, stupidity, relief? I don’t know.
“Sarah,” Eddie peered into his shopping bag and moved some things around, “Grandma wanted you to have this ring. It was the only thing her mother, your great-grandmother, saved from the pogrom in Krakow in 1831.” Eddie placed a diamond ring in front of Sarah.
Sarah picked it up, studied it, placed it down carefully and smiled at Eddie. The room had become instantly silent. “It’s very nice,” she said to Eddie. “Thank you.”
Eddie smiled back at her. “I’m glad you like it. Grandma specifically wanted you to have it.”
There is a tendency to exaggerate in situations like this, so let me be precise. The diamond that Eddie had just given Sarah was as big as a medium-sized matzo ball.
Eddie went back to his shopping bag to distribute Grandma’s last few possessions. Nobody was paying any attention to him anymore. All eyes were on the diamond. Jake, the podiatrist, was the first to speak. “My God, it’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“David,” Rose spoke to her brother the jeweler in a quiet voice, “why don’t you ask Sarah if you could check it. I can’t believe it’s real.”
“Yes. That probably would be a good idea.” David rubbed his hands together. He was in his late twenties but already had a paunch. He reached over and carefully picked the diamond up. “Sarah, do you mind if I look at this for a moment?”
“Couldn’t it wait until Uncle Eddie is finished?” she said.
David shook his head.
“Eddie doesn’t know what’s going on,” Jake said. “What’s the story David? Is it for real?”
“Take it easy,” David said under his breath.
“Is it real?”
“Jake, they weren’t making fake diamonds 150 years ago. Of course it’s for real.”
“Jesus.” Jake and Rose crowded around David.
David pulled a jeweler’s loupe out, held it up to his eye, and studied the stone, turning it from side to side to side. “It’s beautiful, just beautiful.”
“How big?” Jake asked.
“I don’t know. Big. But more important, it appears damn near perfect.”
“How big?” Jake insisted.
“As a guess, I’d say twenty-five to thirty carats.”
Jake started walking around the room.
“I think, David,” I said, “you should put Sarah’s diamond down and we should listen to Eddie.”
Jake, back at the table, looking over David’s shoulder, waved his hand at me. “How much do you think it’s worth?” he asked David.
“Come on, Jake, I have no idea. It’s worth a lot of money. A lot of money.” David, in what had to be a very practiced habit, dropped his jeweler’s loupe out of his eye, and caught it with his left hand. He put the diamond back in the middle of the table. Leon reached over and moved it into Sarah’s pile of combs, teacups and dishes.
“It’s Sarah’s,” Leon said, speaking for the first time.
“Throw me a number,” Jake asked David, “a ballpark number. How much do you think it’s worth?”
David whispered, “I have no idea. Really, I’ve never handled a stone this large. It would probably have to be cut many times. I just don’t know.”
“David, stop jerking us around. Is it worth $5,000, $15,000, throw us a number for Chrissakes.”
“I’d say,” David took a deep breath, “its wholesale value is between $40,000 and $60,000. Maybe . . .” a long pause . . . “maybe a lot more.”
Jake whistled.
Eddie had finished distributing Grandma’s belongings, and had opened up the Talmud and was reading and praying silently, totally unaware of the scene around him. Every now and then he would muddle a word or a sentence out loud.
I stood up and got one of the empty shopping bags. “I think Eddie is tired. We probably should be going.” I handed Sarah the shopping bag. “Put your grandma’s things in here, Honey—”
“Wait a minute,” Jake interrupted loudly. “Nobody’s going no place until we settle this thing.”
“Jake’s right.” Rose said.
“Settle what thing?” I asked.
“The diamond.”
“Jake, what’s the matter with you? Eddie says the diamond goes to Sarah. It was Grandma’s specific wish.”
“You think that would hold up in a court of law?”
“A court of law? What the hell are you talking about?” I exploded.
“Eddie doesn’t know he’s alive,” Jake shot back.
“Sarah,” Leon spoke, “tell Noel to stay out of this.”
“Noel, Leon says you should stay out of this.”
“Oh.” I sat down deflated. I stared at the back of Leon’s head. Someday, Brother-in-law, I’m going to knock your nose into your face.
“Jake, you sit down too.” Leon was taking charge.
“I don’t feel like sitting down. I feel like standing.”
“Jake,” his wife Rose spoke, “take it easy. We’ll work this thing out. Watch your blood pressure.”
I stood up. “Sarah, take your stuff and let’s go.”
“If you leave,” Jake said, “I’ll have you in court at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“In court? What the hell are you talking about, Jake? Sarah, let’s go. So long, Eddie. So long, everyone.” Eddie, in the middle of a prayer, didn’t look up.
Jake walked over to the door, blocked it, and folded his arms. “Nobody’s leaving until we figure out how we’re going to split the diamond.”
“The diamond belongs to Sarah.” For the first time, I raised my voice.
“Leon,” Jake said to my brother-in-law, “maybe he shouldn’t be here.”
I started to move toward Jake, fists clenched.
Sarah stood up and spoke to me quietly. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to knock the podiatrist’s teeth around,” I hissed.
“This is Grandma’s house, Noel. We don’t do that in Grandma’s house.”
“Take it easy, Noel,” Rose said, “watch your blood pressure. Let’s see if we can resolve this.”
For fifteen or twenty minutes, the argument raged. It was me against the family: Rose, her two brothers, and Jake. I pounded the table, yelled and hollered, and a dozen times told Sarah to pack up her things. Sarah never moved. Jake threatened me with at least six lawsuits.
“There’s not a court in the world where this would stand up,” he said repeatedly.
“What stand up? The ring is Sarah’s. That’s what Grandma told Eddie. Right, Eddie?”
Eddie, still in the middle of a prayer, never looked up.
“Noel,” Rose said, “there is only one way to deal with this fairly. David will take the ring—”
“David will take the ring!” I shouted, “David will not take the ring.”
“Will you calm down and listen to me? David will take the ring. He will have it properly appraised and will sell it under the best possible terms, and whatever he gets, split the money five ways.”
David and his brother nodded. Jake smiled. Leon and Sarah remained impassive. Sarah’s attitude was killing me. “No,” I said. I felt like I was beginning to lose ground. “Absolutely no.”
“You’re not being sensible, Noel,” Jake said.
I closed my eyes. I was going to knock his teeth around. If I punched Jake in the mouth, would Eddie look up? “For the last time, the answer is NO.”
“I wouldn’t charge for my services,” David threw in.
Was he kidding me? “Sarah.” I looked at the table; I knew what I was going to do. I was going to grab the diamond and run like hell. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. I started to make my move when Leon stood up.
“I have made our decision. Sarah, tell Noel I have made our decision.”
“Noel,” Sarah spoke to me, “Leon says he has made a decision.”
Leon stood up and looked around the room: at Rose, at David, at Steve, at Jake, at Eddie, and nodded his head up and down. “All of you, with the exception of my sister, Sarah, and Eddie, are a great disappointment to me. Someday you will realize there is more to life than a dollar bill.” With that, Leon began placing everything on the table into the shopping bags. “You have the ring,” Leon said. “Rose, David, Steve, the ring is yours. We’re taking everything else.”
“Leon, that’s ridiculous,” Rose spoke, “we’ll sell the ring and split the money.”
“No,” Leon said, “ABSOLUTELY NOT. The ring is yours. We don’t want any part of it. We’re taking everything else.” He finished placing all the miscellany in the shopping bag. “Let’s go, Sarah. Tell Noel we are going.”
No one spoke for a long time in the car going home. We sat as we always sat: Leon and Sarah were in the front, and I was in the back, anxious to get home to a beer and watch the trains. Leon broke the silence close to our apartment.
“I feel very good about what happened,” he said, “very good. How do you feel?” he asked Sarah.
Sarah shook her head, not answering.
“Ask Noel how he feels. Ask him if he feels good also.”
She didn’t ask, and it’s a good thing. I think I would have strangled her brother.
Ten years have gone by, and much has changed. A few months after the family meeting at Grandma’s, I quit my job and bought, for no money down, a practically defunct Army and Navy store in Tuckahoe, New York. Business was difficult at first, but after a time I began to make a modest amount of money. I sold mostly dungarees to working men, and in the early sixties I started wearing dungarees myself. They looked good and felt comfortable. I told my friends that someday everyone will be wearing dungarees. They all thought I was nuts. I sold my business for $20,000 in 1962 and became a partner with a manufacturer of dungarees. I am not going to bore you with details, but in a very short time I became a very rich man. We left our apartment for a split level home with five bedrooms. I have lost contact with my brother-in-law, Leon. He lost all of his money in the stock market, remarried, and manages a discount store in the Midwest. I never punched him in the nose and take no pleasure in his misfortune. I never speak to or see the rest of the family. Eddie finally left the Bronx and moved to Israel, where he is now. He never did make it to Manhattan.
In 1969 we moved again, to a hundred-year-old house on seventy acres of land with a swimming pool and tennis court. One day, before moving, my daughter Beth, who was fourteen, and I were in the attic of our old home trying to decide what to throw out and what to take. Every decision was a wrench. My daughter came upon two old shopping bags stuffed with miscellany. She began pulling things out of them: a teacup, combs, ties, a Bible, spoons, forks, a handkerchief, the handle of a knife.
“Daddy, what’s all this?”
“That,” I said, “is your legacy.”
