Second Generation Read Online Free PDF Page B

it appears. Your mother had no alternative, and in a manner of speaking, your father traded his edge for the divorce. He could have stayed on and run what the bank and the Whittiers took over, but Mark would have been out in the cold. Dan didn't want that. The truth is that he didn't want any of it. Something had happened to him. There's a community property in this state, and Dan could have come out of it with half a million, just in personal property, real estate, and such. He didn't want that, either, and he signed a release giving everything to your mother. No one forced his hand. There are no villains in the piece, not your mother and not Whittier."
"Yet you've just told me my mother destroyed my father."
"No one destroyed your father," Goldberg said with just a trace of annoyance. "I thought you knew all this. You saw your father last year. Did he look destroyed?"
"No."
"Well, that's it then. What Danny did, he did. Not your mother or Whittier."
"He was a rich man," Barbara insisted. "I know a little about community property. Whatever happened to his company, he could have remained a rich man. Why did he give it all to my mother?"
"I don't know." Goldberg sighed and shook his head. "Do you want dessert? You haven't eaten at all. Come on, have a piece of cheesecake." He motioned to the waiter.
"All right," Barbara agreed.
"Look, honey," he said, after he had taken his first bite of the cheesecake, "you're Danny's kid. He was like a son to me. But I don't know why he did what he did, and I don't want you to go home and throw this at your mother."
"I can't. She's not there."
"Oh? Do me a favor, eat the cake." She took a mouthful. "It's good, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is."
"Where's your mother?"
"She and John—her husband, Whittier—"
"I know."
"Well, they went east for my brother's graduation. John will be back next month. Tommy and my mother are going on to Boston for a while."
"You mean you're alone in that huge barn of a place?"
Barbara smiled for the first time since they had entered the restaurant. "Oh, no, Mr. Goldberg. You can't be alone in that place."
"Honey, suppose you call me Sam. I'm a little older than you, but we're practically mishpocheh. That's Yiddish for family. I know ten words of Yiddish, and that's one of my favorites. Now, why can't you be alone there?"
"Because John has six servants with nothing to do, and when we gave up the house on Russian Hill, mother took Wendy Jones with her. She was our nurse, and now she's old and nasty and nosy. Anyway, I'm hardly ever there."
"I'm nosy too. Why are you hardly ever there? What do you do with yourself? Run around, drink too much?"
"You're scolding me," she said in amazement.
"Yeah." He grinned at her. "I guess I am. Go on, eat the rest of your cake."
"I work at a soup kitchen," Barbara said. "I took today off. Most days I'm too tired to do much running around. I've been there two weeks, since my mother left."
"You work where?"
"The MWIU soup kitchen on Bryant Street."
"MWIU?"
"The Marine Workers, yes," Barbara said calmly.
"God Almighty! You mean Harry Bridges' outfit?"
"Yes."
"Does your mother know?"
Barbara smiled and shook her head.
"Well, she will, sooner or later, and sooner or later some wiseacre reporter will get on to you and spread it all over the front page of the Examiner , and that will certainly be a field day. My God, child, what has gotten into you? This isn't a lark. That's a brutal, dirty game they're playing down there on the docks."
"I only work at the soup kitchen. I'm not a communist. And they don't know my name. I call myself Bobby Winter. It's easier if I keep the first name the same, and that's what they called me at school, Bobby Winter, because I loved the cold winters there. So they won't find out who I am."
"Maybe not in the next ten minutes," Goldberg snorted. "Why? Because you think John Whittier did your father in? He didn't. I told you that."
"No. No, really."
"What do they pay you?"
"Nothing."
"What do you do there?"
"Mr.