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kitchen and looked into the pots on the gas range.
    “No, I’ll make for myself. Here is some potatoes and carrots left over. I’ll warm them up.”
    “Warm up the hamburger in the oven. Momma made one for me, but I couldn’t eat it.”
    Rosenfeld pulled down the door of the broiler and glanced distastefully at the hamburger on the wire grill. “No, it burns me my stomach when I eat chopmeat,” he said, closing the broiler door.
    “How is your stomach?” she asked.
    He placed his hand underneath his heart. “Today I got gas.” He was moved by her solicitousness.
    “How are you feeling?” he asked her.
    “Like always. The first day is bad.”
    “It will go away.”
    “Yes, I know,” she said.
     
     
    He lit the flame under the vegetables and began to stir the mashed potatoes. They were lumpy. The remnants of his appetite disappeared.
Sophie saw the look on his face and said, “Put some butter in the potatoes.” For a moment Rosenfeld did not move, but when Sophie repeated her suggestion, he opened the icebox.
    “What butter?” he said, looking among the bottles and the fruit. “Here is no butter.”
    Sophie reached for her housecoat, drew it on over her head, and pulled up the zipper. Then she stepped into her slippers.
    “I’ll put some milk in,” she said.
    Without wanting to, he was beginning to grow angry.
    “Who wants you to? Stay in bed. I’ll take care myself of the—the supper,” he ended sarcastically.
    “Poppa,” she said, “don’t be stubborn. I’ve got to get up anyway.”
    “For me you don’t have to get up.”
    “I said I have to get up anyway.”
    “What’s the matter?”
    “Someone is coming.”
    He turned toward her. “Who’s coming?”
    “Pa, let’s not start that.”
    “Who’s coming?”
    “I don’t want to fight. I’m sick today.”
    “Who’s coming, answer me.”
    “Ephraim.”
    “The plum-ber?” He was sarcastic.
    “Please, Pa, don’t fight.”
    “ I should fight with a plum-ber?”
    “You always insult him.”
    “ I insult a plum-ber? He insults me to come here.”
    “He’s not coming to see you. He’s coming to see me.”
    “He insults you to come here. What does a plum-ber, who didn’t even finish high school, want with you? You don’t need a plum-ber.”
    “I don’t care what I need, Poppa, I’m twenty-eight years old,” she said.
    “But a plum-ber!”
    “He’s a good boy. I’ve known him for twelve years, since we were in high school. He’s honest and he makes a nice steady living.”
    “All right,” Rosenfeld said angrily. “So I don’t make a steady living. So go on, spill some more salt on my bleeding wounds.”
    “Poppa, don’t act, please. I only said he made a steady living. I didn’t say anything about you.”
    “Who’s acting?” he shouted, banging the icebox door shut and turning quickly. “Even if I didn’t support you and your mother steady,
at least I showed you the world and brought you in company with the greatest Jewish actors of our times. Adler, Schwartz, Ben-Ami, Goldenburg, all of them have been in my house. You heard the best conversation about life, about books and music and all kinds art. You toured with me everywhere. You were in South America. You were in England. You were in Chicago, Boston, Detroit. You got a father whose Shylock in Yiddish even the American critics came to see and raved about it. This is living. This is life. Not with a plum-ber. So who is he going to bring into your house, some more plum-bers, they should sit in the kitchen and talk about pipes and how to fix a leak in the toilet? This is living? This is conversation? When he comes here, does he open his mouth? The only thing he says is yes and no, yes and no—like a machine. This is not for you.”
    Sophie had listened to her father in silence.
    “Poppa, that’s not fair,” she said quietly, “you make him afraid to talk to you.”
    The answer seemed to satisfy him.
    “Don’t be so much in the hurry,” he said