28. Jason & Sadie
JASON & SADIE
Squeezed between nurses, PT specialists, and wheelchairs, Sadie and Jason rode an elevator to the fifth floor of the Yorkville Rehabilitation and Nursing Center.
Surrounded by beeping machines and the perpetual murmur of Law & Order, patients languished in dim lighting.
At the end of the hall, they found the PT room—and near the stress balls, Jack Schmidt.
Though it had been years since they’d last seen each other, and Jack had shriveled to half his former size, Jason recognized Jack immediately.
Sadie was amused by how harmless the little man looked in his khaki shorts, T-shirt, and Mets hat.
As he stretched his legs with a resistance band, she saw flabs of arm flesh riddled with melanoma.
He smiled widely as they approached, dropping the band.
“Correct me if I’m Wong, but that looks like the Wong family!”
Sadie tried not to choke. The nurse said they could take Jack to lunch.
“I took a fall. A bad one. At least I’m not dead like your pa!
” he said as Jason wheeled him to the elevator, and then he looked at Sadie and grinned.
“She’s a beautiful girl. A beautiful girl, looks just like Foo Foo.
And my boy Jason! You’re getting older. You look just like your dad.
” With his good arm he reached out and patted Jason’s stomach.
Jason looked down at himself, self-conscious.
“But you don’t sound like him,” Jack added. “You sound made for radio. Went to a fancy school and got rid of your Brooklyn accent, huh? Columbia, right?”
Sadie decided it was time to come to her father’s rescue.
“So, Jack, how long have you been here?”
“Two months? Three months? Who knows?” Schmidt raised his hands in the air. “My nephew had me committed. You’re young, but wait and see. You’ll start going backward until you’re in the cradle.”
They took the elevator to the cafeteria on the sixth floor and found seats at an empty table.
In the corner, a few seniors played dominoes and checkers.
Sadie wondered what her grandfather would have been like at Jack’s age, had he survived.
She’d heard that Richard had been gregarious, an extrovert—cruel when he wanted to be, charming when he needed to be.
The nurse brought them each a tray containing a ham sandwich, a plastic bag of apple slices, and a chocolate Ensure.
“What about Foo Foo? Your mother okay?”
“She’s doing well. She’s living in Chinatown.”
“God bless her. You know I loved eating at your mother’s. Chow mein, lo mein, shrimp in that cream sauce—Foo Foo was the best cook in Brownsville. Now I eat garbage,” he said, pointing to the tray.
According to Jack’s nephew, who had answered his uncle’s old number the prior week, Jack had lost all his money in dicey real estate moves. He’d had to sell his house and move in with the nephew, who had taken care of him until Jack fell on the street and broke his hip.
“That house, your house in Brownsville. Your house in East Flatbush too. I found them for your dad!” Jack exclaimed. “Did you know that?”
“Yeah, he was grateful to you for that.”
“Well, I never had anything against the Chinese,” Schmidt said with an innocent shrug. “And I knew how to hook Richie up with the right people. Some owners didn’t want to sell to a Chinese back then, can you believe that? But times have changed. Now the Chinese own half the city.”
Sadie glanced at her father and tried not to laugh.
Of course, a millennial had to put up with this sort of Greatest Generation blather if she wanted access to the past. “That’s actually something we’d like to talk about,” Sadie said, scooting her chair closer to Jack and lowering her voice.
“I wanted to ask you about the buildings on Livonia—78 and 80 Livonia Avenue. Do you remember when my grandfather bought them?”
“Oh, I didn’t sell him those. Arnie Cohen gave them to him. For zilch. The neighborhood was falling apart by then.”
“But then he sold them off, in 1978. To this group called 78 Livonia Avenue LLC. Do you remember?”
It took Jack a moment. Then the grin disappeared from his face.
“Oh.” A piece of ham was caught in his fingers like a detached tongue. “That?” His eyes rolled to a corner of the room, searching for his nurse. “I can’t talk about that.”
“Why not?”
Schmidt frowned.
“Your grandpa would turn over in his grave.”
Sadie thought of the times she’d gone with her mother to synagogue for the High Holy Days, the way the Jews would rock forward and back while knocking their fists against their chests: For sins we have committed against you under duress or willingly…
For the sins we have committed against you with knowledge and with deceit…
For the sin we have committed against you by a bribe-taking or a bribe-giving.
It was a prayer that could last for ten minutes—a plea for forgiveness for every possible transgression, and it was said repeatedly during Yom Kippur.
“Teshuvah,” Sadie remembered. “That’s how you say it, right?”
The word Teshuvah impacted the old man. He blinked, placed the tongue of ham back on his plate.
They waited in silence.
Jack tapped the table with his pointer finger, as if he were trying to make a more emphatic gesture but lacked the strength.
“There were some bad people in the game.” He glanced at Jason. “People thought I played dirty, but nothing like these guys.” He looked around, but no one was in earshot. “Your dad was in a fix, so I gave him their number.”
“There was a fire,” Sadie asserted. “People died.”
“Died?” Jack scowled. He looked like he was going to spit on his food. “No one died!”
“An older man. Three people were hospitalized for serious injuries. And everyone else lost all they had.”
“Load of shit. They would have emptied the building first.”
Jason rummaged through his bag, took out the folder, and handed Jack the petition from Lina Rodriguez Armstrong and the other Livonia Avenue tenants. “All these people were still living there. They refused to leave.”
Jack took the petition and squinted at it with his Steeplechase grin flipped completely upside down. Sadie took out her Olympus and hit the record button.