Read Online Lieberman's Day by Stuart M. Kaminsky - Free Book Online

again.
    â€œKids know?” he asked, moving to the table and sitting on the red-leatherette and chrome chair.
    â€œNo,” said Lisa. “I’ll tell them when they get up. I think I should let them go to school.”
    â€œYeah,” agreed Lieberman, accepting the hot cup his daughter handed him.
    â€œI feel guilty,” Lisa said, still standing, her arms folded over her breasts. “I’m feeling guilty that I’m not feeling more. You know if Carol will …?”
    â€œDoctor thinks so,” said Lieberman.
    â€œThe baby?”
    â€œLooks good,” he said, after taking a long sip. “No promises.”
    The phone rang suddenly, piercingly. Father and daughter looked at it without reaction for two rings and then Lisa stepped to the wall and answered.
    â€œFor you,” she said, holding out the phone.
    The long cord reached to the table, but the receiver had to be held firmly or it would, as it had more than a dozen times, go skittering and crashing back toward the wall as if it were tied by a thick rubber band.
    â€œHello,” he said.
    â€œAbe?”
    The voice was familiar. A man.
    â€œSyd Levan here. Say, I’m sorry to call you at home, a morning like this. Let me say how sincerely sorry I am for your family’s loss.”
    â€œThank you, Syd.”
    Syd was one of the morning crowd of old men with nothing more to do with their lives than hang around Maish’s T&L Deli on Devon. The group, known in the neighborhood as the Alter Cockers, consisted of Jews, with the exception of Howie Chen, whose family had owned the Peking Lantern Chinese Restaurant one block down just off California. Howie and his wife were the last of their clan in the neighborhood. Two sons and a daughter had all moved to California, where they were all engineers.
    Syd had been the one who had dubbed Abe’s brother Nothing-Bothers Maish back when they were kids on the West Side. That name had preceded the founding of the Alter Cockers, had gone back to the days in the ’40s when Syd had been a classmate of Maish’s back at Marshall High School.
    â€œWe’re at the T and L,” said Syd. “Maish is here. And he’s acting, if I can say it, a little meshugah. He’s got a right, considering. He’s got a right, but we’re …”
    â€œI understand, Syd,” said Abe, watching Lisa pour herself a cup of orange juice.
    â€œWell, that’s it,” Syd whispered. “He’s acting maybe not quite meshugah, but … He’s acting like it’s a day like any day, you know? And this is not a day like any other day.”
    â€œI’ll be there in ten minutes,” said Abe.
    Lisa reached over to take the phone and crossed the room to hang it up as Abe drained his cup and stood up with a sigh.
    â€œI gotta go,” he said.
    â€œUncle Maish went to work?”
    Lieberman nodded and walked toward the kitchen door, his feet not yet fully warmed in his thick white socks.
    â€œIf I got murdered on the street, would you go to work?” she asked.
    â€œIf something happened to you,” Lieberman said, with a shudder he hoped did not show, “I’d find my own way to go crazy with grief. You tell Todd about David?” he asked, stepping past her.
    â€œHe has other interests,” she said. “Other distractions.”
    Lieberman stopped and looked at his daughter, who turned from him and sat in the chair he had just vacated.
    â€œOther interests?”
    â€œA woman,” Lisa said. “A new faculty member. Alice Stephens told me.”
    â€œAh,” said Lieberman.
    â€œAh,” repeated Lisa, raising her eyebrows. “I walk out on him with the kids, tell him I want a new life. He chases me, pleads, begs, humiliates himself for five whole weeks, and then goes out and …”
    Lieberman resisted the urge to check his watch.
    â€œYou think I’m being selfish,” she