Short Stories: Five Decades by Irwin Shaw

my mother said, “vegetables are very expensive. I paid twenty cents for a head of cauliflower yesterday …”
    “It wasn’t any good, either,” my father said. “I don’t like cauliflower. It reminds me of cabbage, somehow.”
    “When Mr. Shapiro died of cancer, it took him two years to die,” Mrs. Shapiro went on, trying to please us. “I had eight thousand dollars. I had rheumatism and high blood pressure and I couldn’t take care of the store any more.” Once more she begged our faces for that crumb of pity. “I took the eight thousand dollars out of the bank and I went to Mr. Mayer and I said, ‘Mr. Mayer, you’re a big man, you have a fine reputation, I am giving you a widow’s life’s savings, invest it for me so that I have enough to live on. I don’t need much, Mr. Mayer,’ I told him, ‘just a few dollars a week until I die, that’s all,’ I said, ‘just a few dollars.’”
    “I know Mayer,” my father said. “He’s not doing so well now. The Trust Company’s in receivership now.”
    “Mr. Mayer,” Mrs. Shapiro said with passion, her fists quivering on her little thighs, “is a crook! He took my money and he put it out in second mortgages. Eight thousand dollars’ worth of second mortgages!”
    She stopped. For the moment she could not say another word.
    “Today,” my father said, “even first mortgages are no good. Nothing’s any good any more.”
    “In the last two years,” Mrs. Shapiro said, her eyes filling with tears, “I haven’t got a penny out of them … out of eight thousand dollars’ worth of second mortgages, not a penny …” A little rag of a handkerchief came out and wiped at her eyes. “I used to go to Mr. Mayer and he’d tell me I’d have to wait. How long can I wait? I don’t have with what to eat now, as it is! Can I wait longer than that?” Triumphantly she wept. “Now Mr. Mayer won’t see me any more. They tell me he’s out when I go there. It doesn’t do any good to go there.” She stopped, wiping her eyes. We sat, uncomfortable and still.
    “I’m going to the houses where I have the second mortgages,” Mrs. Shapiro said. “Nice houses, they are … like this. With rugs and curtains and steam heat and something cooking on the stove that you can smell inside. I have the second mortgage on houses like that, and I don’t have enough to eat …” Her tears soaked through the rag of a handkerchief. “Please,” she cried, “please … give me something. I don’t want the eight hundred dollars, but something. It’s my money … I have nobody. I have rheumatism and there’s no heat in my room and there’re holes in my shoes. I walk on my bare feet … Please … please …”
    We tried to stop her but she kept on, crying, “Please … please … just a little bit. A hundred dollars. Fifty. My money …”
    “All right, Mrs. Shapiro,” my father said. “Come back next Sunday. I’ll have it for you then …”
    The tears stopped. “Oh, God bless you,” Mrs. Shapiro said. Before we knew what she was about she flung herself across the room and was on her hands and knees in front of my father and was kissing his hand wildly. “God bless you, God bless you,” she cried over and over again. My father sat through it nervously, trying to pick her up with his free hand, looking pleadingly at my mother.
    Finally my mother could bear it no longer. “Mrs. Shapiro,” she said, breaking in over the “God bless you”s, “listen to me! Stop that! Please stop it! We can’t give you anything! Next Sunday or any Sunday! We haven’t got a cent.”
    Mrs. Shapiro dropped my father’s hand. She stayed on her knees in front of him, though, looking strange there in the middle of our living room. “But Mr. Ross said …”
    “Mr. Ross is talking nonsense!” my mother said. “We have no money and we’re not going to have any! We expect to be thrown out of this house any day now! We can’t give you a penny, Mrs. Shapiro.”
    “But next Sunday