"There's not a day passes over her head she don't offer to go to live with my sister in Ohio, when I know just how that one month of visiting her that time nearly killed her."
"Funny visiting an own daughter could nearly kill anybody."
"It's my brother-in-law, Clara. My mother couldn't no more live with Isadore Katz than she could fly. He's a fine fellow and all that, but she's not used to a man in the house that potters around the kitchen and the children's food and things like Isadore loves to. She's used to her own little home and her own little way."
"Exactly."
"If I want to kill my mother, Clara, all I got to do is put her away from me in her old age. Even my sister knows it. 'Sammy,' she wrote to me that time after ma's visit out there, 'I love our mother like you do, but I got a nervous husband who likes his own ways about the housekeeping and the children and the cooking, and nobody knows better than me that the place for ma to be happy is with you in her own home and her own ways of doing.'"
"I call that a nerve for a sister to let herself out like that."
"It's not nerve, Clara; it's the truth. Ruby's a good girl in her way."
"What about you—ain't your life to be thought of? Ain't it enough she was married off with enough money for her husband to buy a half-interest in a ladies' ready-to-wear store out there?"
"Why, if I was to bring my little wife to that flat of ours, Clara, or any other kind further down-town that she'd want to pick out for herself, I think my mother would just walk on her hands and knees to make things pleasant for her. Maybe you don't know it, but on your Wednesday nights up at the house, she is up at five o'clock in the morning fixing around and cooking the things she thinks you'll like."
"I'm not saying a word against your mother, Sam. I think she's a grand woman, and I admire a fellow that's good to his mother. I always say, 'Give me a fellow every time that is good to his mother and that fellow will be good to his wife.'"