A House on Fire

Such a morning, Mr. Rabinowitz smiled as my daddy and I entered the dim little pawnshop, God is good, you should pardon my mentioning Him.  He leaned on the glass display case and winked at me, a shaggy haired little man with wire rimmed spectacles and a sparkle of mischief in his eyes.  He's neatly starched and pressed, just this side of elegant as a matter of fact, a regular Dapper Dan, I remember thinking.

Ida!  he called over his shoulder, Ida, come and see!  Guy's here and you should see he brings a lady with him and it's not his wife! 

Deaf I'm not, Rabinowitz, you old fool, a woman's voice calls back and it makes my daddy smile.

There's a slow, scraping sound and I see the top of a head coming through the doorway.  A midget, I think excitedly, but it turns out to be an old woman in a wheelchair.  She emerges from behind the glass cases, peering with sharp eyes and a curious expression.  Her thick silver-ish hair hangs long, straight and well past her shoulders.  A pencil is tucked over one ear and a pair of half moon glasses hang around her neck by a beaded chain.

Not his wife, you say? she demands, Oy, Rabinowitz, from your lips to God's ears, you should excuse the expression, where is..... 

Seeing me, her voice trails off.

Ida, Sy, my daddy says, still smiling, This is my daughter.  He looks down at me and gives me a gentle nudge forward.  This is Mr. and Mrs. Rabinowitz, he tells me, My very old and dear friends.

Shy you shouldn't be, bubbala, the old woman tells me encouragingly, Rabinowitz, bring the rugelach and honey cake!  Thin like her father the child is, you should pardon my saying so!

The four of us sat on wooden folding chairs around a scarred up card table.  I had my first bagel and my first taste of lox and cream cheese - the first became a lifelong love, the second something I've never again felt the need for - and then the honey cake and sweet pastries, all washed down with strawberry fruit punch.  It was a good day and it became a good memory.  I remember how at ease my daddy was, how he laughed and seemed so at home in the dim little pawnshop.  No one mentioned my mother until we walked back to the car and he suggested we keep the visit to ourselves.

She doesn't like Jews? I asked carefully.

She doesn't like different, he told me sadly.

A dozen years later, two young men - armed with handguns, high on cocaine and out of money for more drugs - decided to rob the pawn shop.  On a peaceful, mid-spring afternoon, they forced their way in, surprising Mr. and Mr. Rabinowitz and demanding cash and valuables.  Mr. Rabinowitz discreetly stepped on the silent alarm and opened the ancient cash register, calmly handing over the bills and still managing to shield his wife. They shot him anyway then pistol whipped the old woman right in her wheel chair and left her for dead.  According to the The Chronicle, the two thugs then made their way out the same way they'd come in and straight into a phalanx of uniformed police from the station directly across the street.  Rather than surrender, the drug dazed thieves fired on the officers and for a few brief seconds, Central Square turned into a war zone.  When the smoke cleared, both young men lay stone cold on the bloody sidewalk.  Inside the pawn shop, Mr. Rabinowitz was dead and Mrs. Rabinowitz was unconscious.  She died in the ambulance.

Until that April afternoon, I'd never known anyone who'd died a violent death.  I felt suffocated with shock and horror and my daddy, wrapped up in his own grief and devastated by the two bodies now lying in his morgue, could not offer much comfort.  It was a long time before I could walk those particular Cambridge streets again and even longer before I accepted the fact that life can be senselessly, unimaginably cruel.  I never came to terms with the random obscenity of murder.  Evil is sometimes in the luck of the draw.

We all live in a house on fire.  No fire department to call.  No way out.  

Tennesee Williams