Louie was breathing hard, talking a mile a minute. When Louis Kramer was troubled, independent thoughts crashed into each other like bumper cars. It was that way since they were kids, two grades apart, walking home from school in East New York.
Lou was the talkative one, forever pestering his older brother with questions that followed no narrative pattern. Do you think I could take that kid who cursed me out in gym? Why do you like the Yankees and not the Dodgers when we live in Brooklyn? What should I tell mom about that D, the one I got in History?
Morris would listen until he’d had enough. Then he would hold up one hand like a stop sign. “Don’t worry about it, Louie, OK?”
Lou hated to admit it, but as long as Morris was around, he felt calmer, safer, better.
“Mo, listen, I’m a little concerned here,” he said. His hushed voice meant he was using the pay phone near the bathrooms at Kelly’s Pub, a few feet from the back room table that for years had been unofficially reserved for Trib printers.
Morris didn’t respond. Lou kept talking.
“Some of the guys are here. Red, Tommy Isola, couple of others. The word going around is that Brady’s a maniac, swearing up and down that he’s not going to let the unions shut the paper. Tommy’s heard that they’ve got a shitload of scabs to drive the trucks, even more after what happened last night.”
“Lou, just because he says he wants to put out the paper doesn’t mean he puts it out,” Morris said. “He didn’t put it out last night, did he?”
“Yeah, but they’re saying the cops are going to make sure the trucks get out tonight, that the Mayor won’t let them turn the other cheek and let the drivers do—well, you know, what they do. As long as Brady keeps the paper open, whether it gets out or not, we’re in a bind, with the lifetime job guarantee thing.”
“So…”
“So a couple guys are saying that we might have to…”
“Who said that?”
“Naw, forget who. It’s just…”
“No way.”
“Yeah, but…”
“You hear me, Lou? No friggin way do we cross anybody’s picket line!”
Lou took a deep breath. “Mo, I’m not telling you that I think we should cross.”
“Good, Louie, because you know me well enough to know I’m not going to do that.”
“I know, Mo. I know. But I’m just telling you that these guys are wondering what’ll happen with our deal if we don’t. Some of the guys want to meet this afternoon. You should get down here, soon as you can because they’re pushing me for answers and I keep telling them, ‘Talk to Mo.’ They’re not going to listen to what I say like they do with you, you know what I’m saying?”
“I do, Louie.”
Lou waited for his brother to offer something more. Uncomfortable moments passed.
“Louie, don’t worry,” Morris said.
“OK, Mo,” Lou said. “But please come, OK?”
Morris hung up the phone and returned to his seat on the couch. He picked up the Sun again but his mind wandered far from the sports page. He would never admit this to his brother, but this time Morris Kramer was worried.
Chapter Seven
Morris was dozing when Molly returned from sitting with Becky. His snoring served as a soundtrack to the radio news anchor. Part of the newspaper lay precariously on his lap. The other part had slipped onto the worn lime carpet.
She knew better than to rouse him. If Morris was lights-out before noon, he must have been exhausted from sheer tension. Long ago she had come to realize this was how her husband believed he could not only contain his emotions but also defeat them.
Morris’ mother had taught her to let him be when he was stressed out. The day before they were married, more than forty years now, Morris told his mother he needed a nap at ten in the morning. He didn’t wake up until the morning of the wedding. Molly called a half-dozen times before taking the bus over to the Kramers’ apartment in East Flatbush. She was suddenly panicked at the thought of Morris fleeing Brooklyn to become—she didn’t know—a stowaway on a slow boat to Jerusalem.
“What should I do, Mrs. Kramer?” Molly said.
His Russian immigrant mother, so tiny that her apron sagged well below her knees, smiled and told her that Morris had been sleeping away stress since he was a small child.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Morris’ mother said. “He’ll wake up, God willing, and be happy to marry you.”
As far as Molly was concerned, Morris was still content, if not blissful. In relaxed moments he could admit to her that their marriage could have turned out much, much worse. She took it as his best compliment.
Molly decided to let Morris sleep another few minutes. She dialed Jamie’s apartment. The answering machine picked up after four rings. She hung up without leaving a message.
“Who’re you calling?” Morris asked from the sofa, roused by the dialing.
“Jamie—he’s not home.”
She heard him mumbling.
“You want me to call back and leave a message?” she said, stepping into the living room. Molly was small in height and body type, standing maybe an inch and a half over five feet. If she weighed more than a hundred pounds, that was after her biggest meal. She wore her straight graying hair in a bun. Often she looked like she was smiling because she was squinting—never comfortable wearing the glasses that dangled from her neck on a chain.
“You would think he would call on his own,” Morris said. “You would think he would know what’s at stake here.”
“Why do you think he wouldn’t?”
“Who knows with him?”
Molly shook her head and left the room.
She confided in Becky that she had all but given up on Morris ever forging a closer relationship with Jamie. “I wish I could do something,” she’d say. “But it’s gone on for so long—since Jamie was a boy—and all I ask is that they don’t fight in front of me.”
When Jamie lived at home, Morris’ long work hours and union responsibilities had helped in that respect. But weekends became especially difficult during Jamie’s teenage years. Avoiding one another was next to impossible in a five-room apartment on the second floor of their two-family home—no matter how hard they tried.
Jamie could lock himself in his room for hours, watching basketball games on the black-and-white portable television and reading comic books starring The Amazing Spiderman and other Marvel superheroes. Morris would retreat to the bathroom and sit on the toilet for the better part of an afternoon with his newspapers. Confrontation was still inevitable.
“Dad, I have to go,” Jamie would yell from the hall.
“Damn it, just wait a while, it won’t kill you.”
Jamie would sink to the floor, falling against the wall, rapping his knuckles on the door after every passing minute until Morris emerged, red-faced and mumbling son of a bitch.
Who knows with him? There were times when Morris felt as if he’d been asking that question from the days he schlepped his frail and allergy-afflicted son from one doctor to another.
Jamie never cried, as best Morris could recall, even as other kids wailed all around him. He had narrow brown eyes that