38
Irving seldom attends synagogue, even during the High Holidays. He doesn’t like the way people look at him. It has been twenty-plus years since he was in the news for being a slumlord, and although he knows he should be grateful that he wasn’t promoted to murderer, he still bridles at the unfairness of the term. He didn’t make his properties slums. That was on the tenants. He remembers the place where he and Birdy started out, thirty-five years ago, that terrible little apartment over near Pimlico. It was worse than anything he ever rented out, but Birdy somehow made it clean. Down on her hands and knees with Pine-Sol, every day, on those splintery floors, that curling linoleum. If they had had marble steps, she would have scrubbed those, too. The people he rented to, they didn’t have it in them to clean like that. And don’t get him started about lead paint. His first son, Eric, was born in that terrible apartment, probably licked the walls, and he went to Wharton.
But it is officially a year since Birdy’s death, so he goes to synagogue to light a yahrzeit candle, say kaddish. The rabbi smiles, hopeful.
“So maybe we’ll be seeing you here more often?” the rabbi asks. But it’s Irving’s wallet he likes, not Irving.
“Sure,” Irving says. What does it cost, a kind, assuring word? Almost nothing.
He doesn’t drive directly home after leaving shul, decides to take a trip down his own memory lane, starting with that wretched apartment near Pimlico, not far from that psychic, the neighborhood’s one constant. Then he heads north on Park Heights Avenue, as so many of his people did, first to Pikesville, then Owings Mills, then Reisterstown. Reisterstown Road—how changed it is. So many memories. He was a good husband to Birdy—an excellent provider who never loved another, although he enjoyed what he considered an essential release with the occasional woman. He and Birdy had three accomplished children, eight grandchildren. She was a firecracker, full of energy to the end. If one of the two of them was destined to have a heart attack in the middle of the night, there’s not a bookie in town who wouldn’t have said Irving was the odds-on favorite. But it was Birdy. A lot of people thought the nickname was Bertie because her name was Beatrice, but how did that make sense? She was “Birdy” because she had that aspect to her—a round, plump body, which was mostly breast, propped up on tiny stick legs. Her voice was like a bird’s, too, sweet and high.
How he loved Birdy. He cheated on her no more than three or four times, always one-offs, opportunities not to be disdained, sort of like having a slice of cake when you weren’t that hungry, but your mother-in-law kept pushing, pushing, pushing. Birdy never knew. At least, he doesn’t think she ever knew. Surely, she wouldn’t have stayed if she suspected an indiscretion on his part. She was a confident woman, sure of her worth, happy every day. The night she died, he swears he heard her giggling at her dreams.
Then—gone. And only fifty-five. Just one of those things, the doctor said.
It was about a week before she died that Irving ran into Barry Forshaw, flush with success, thanking him for the referral. How close he had come to saying, What referral? He hadn’t sent anyone to Forshaw, never would.
Was that the slip-and-fall?
No, the medical malpractice case. That’s where the dollars are. She’s an odd duck, your friend. An enigma. She could have—well, obviously, I can’t say more.
An enigma. Irving’s mind ran rapidly through the women he knew who might hire a personal injury attorney. He didn’t have many female friends, so that made it easy, and fewer still would have heard the name “Barry Forshaw” from his lips. He used to complain about him to Ditmars. Forshaw had been a genius at going after landlords with nuisance suits. Irving had sat in the Ditmars kitchen, grousing about Forshaw, thinking it was empty chatter, nothing more.
Pauline, he realized. That bitch. She must have sued over the daughter’s disability, and, given Forshaw’s glee, done quite well. But the state had custody of the daughter, so how could she be entitled to money? If she was entitled, he was, too. Even her evil lummox of a husband always gave Irving his share. She still owed him for that life insurance policy.
And in the numb shock that followed Birdy’s death, Irving’s rage sustained him, gave him purpose. He had to find out how Pauline Ditmars had gotten yet more money, and where that money was. Once he did, he would blackmail her, her with her new life. If she didn’t give him a cut, he would reveal her past to the new husband, tell the state she was double-dipping. He had her coming and going.
Until she went, stood up on a beach one day, walked away from that new family with barely a backward glance. He should have realized she’d make mincemeat out of Adam Bosk soon enough. It’s what she does. He remembers a song that his daughter played on her stereo maybe fifteen years ago, about a man-eater. Funny to think that Sheila is now the mother of three and God knows what those kids play on their stereos.
He pulls into his driveway. It’s a nice house, a brick Colonial. But it was already too big when it was just the two of them, and it’s way too big for a man living alone. He needs to unload the place. He’s been putting it off only because the kids are sentimental, but he’s ready to downsize. For their thirty-five years together, Irving and Birdy’s life had been a series of upgrades. That terrible first apartment, then their first house, then to a house that was big enough for each child to have a bedroom, and finally this place. He’s not old, not really, but he sees where he’s headed, a process of diminution. Everything will get smaller, except his belly and his bank account. And then one day, he will die, and his money will be split among the children and the grandchildren, so his money will end up smaller, too. He loves his kids, but they’re wasteful.