He Had All the Breaks - 1969 and then Some - page 112

Accountant wouldn't be so bad. Blind to Jimmy's hunger for pharmacopoeia and blind to his
emaciation after six years as a speed-freak junkie dabbling in downers, Jeanette had spent
those years effervescing. She'd believed that Jimmy would snap out of it and go to his room
for a nice club tie and a Brooks Brothers shirt. Then he'd marry a nice Jewish girl and begin a
family. And why not, Mr. Smarty Pants?
WWJD? What Would Jimmy Do? Or say? Harold and Jeanette Levin died within a month
of each other some years later from old age and broken hearts—what Jimmy would have
called their usual routine. Harold was quiet, not so much unthinking but tuned out—like
Jimmy but with nothing else to tune into. Jeanette babbled to the end, her blue bouffant and
oversized costume jewelry sticking her in time like an old joke.
Jimmy would have summarized their life and demise in a unique blend of cold compas-
sion and liberal understanding: Yeah. That's cool. They never were really, you know, into much.
Jimmy's obituary came as another clipping in an envelope from Mom. It called him a col-
lege student and loving son, survived by his parents Harold and Jeanette Levin of dry goods
fame and longstanding philanthropic support of Jewish causes in Israel and the Jewish Coun-
try Club—not the upper-middle class reachers and schnorrers but the real hoi polloi club with
the old money and solid sterling silver and Lincolns, not Cadillacs, just like the goyem. In the
margin I wrote: Your son is making out like a bandit, considering how Jimmy Levin had all the
breaks .
I sent it back to Old Mom, and she agreed that it just goes to show you. She moaned and
remembered: What you had to go through . Parental kvetching gained depth in the 60s with far
more pitfalls for tender youth, what with the drugs, the war and loose shiksas.