Prayers for the Living by Alan Cheuse Page B

coffee lake inside me. But I don’t want to hurt her feelings.”
    â€œThat’s why you drink more coffee?”
    â€œThat’s why I’m drinking this cup. She’s very nice. She caters to us.”
    â€œShe has nothing better to do with her time. It’s not so busy now just before dinner.”
    â€œIt’s that late?”
    â€œIt’s that late.”
    â€œAfter this cup I should go home and make dinner. But tonight I could be a little late. I eat with nobody but myself.”
    â€œWe should eat together here.”
    â€œWhy don’t we do that? The car is going to wait for me no matter what. It can wait a little longer. You think it’s good here? Here I never thought of eating.”
    â€œIt’s the mall. It couldn’t be good, it couldn’t be bad.”
    â€œYou’re right. The mall is the mall. But we could try it.”
    â€œSure we could try it. I have nobody at the house now neither.”
    â€œSo when she comes with the coffee we’ll ask her for a menu.”
    â€œSure, sure, we’ll splurge, we’ll tell her. We’re having dinner. She’ll like it. It will give her something to do.”
    â€œYou don’t think she has a family of her own to think about? She’s going to be happy because we’re staying around to eat? Don’t kid yourself. I bet she’s a grandmother, just like the rest of us.”
    â€œYou want to ask her to sit down and tell us her story?”
    â€œDon’t be so sarcastic. I’ll bet she has a story just like I do.”
    â€œAbout her son the minister?”
    â€œOr her son the doctor.”
    â€œOr the janitor.”
    â€œDon’t be so cruel. There’s enough cruelty in this world. We all got grandchildren.”
    â€œExcuse me. I was making a joke. It’s true. All grandmothers got children.”
    â€œI’m glad she didn’t hear you. Some joke.”
    â€œYou’re miffed because I make a joke, Minnie? You would prefer that we don’t eat together?”
    â€œSit, sit. I prefer that we eat. I don’t want to eat alone. I’m enough alone. I was enough alone ever since Manny went to Cincinnati. I was alone. Mrs. Tabatchnick was alone. Mine only went to Cincinnati. Hers went to Europe already. To the war.”
    â€œTo the war?”
    â€œTo the war.”

    B UT THERE WAS a war on in Cincinnati, too, let me tell you. Manny took the train west, and it was a dark ride, at night, through the cities with the lights browned out, through the dark fields, the woods, over the eastern mountains. He felt so strange. Never had he been west of Sixth Avenue, and here he was on the other side of the mountains. For him it could have been at that time almost California, nearly Japan. But of course as it turned out he didn’t have to travel very far at all to begin his education into foreign ways. No, sir. No, sirree. It began on the train—he saw young boys his own age in uniform. Soldiers home from war or on their way to war. And for the first time in his life he paid attention to what was going on in the world outside. Before that, it had been his studies and Mama, Mama and his studies. So if in Europe they had been killing the Jews, that was in Europe, and he lived on Second Street, New York City, America. He had been born in the old country, of course, and the old rabbi had taught him in the style of the old country. And from studies to Mama, and Mama to studies, that you could say wasliving like he had never left the old country. But there was a part of my boy that was—still is—so American I can hardly tell you. Even if he lived the old country life he was living it on Second Street, in New York—and when he opened his eyes and saw what was going on around him, when he saw the soldiers, and talked to them about the war, and picked up—at long last, he put it in a letter to me soon after he got to Cincinnati—a