“Tami!” Nachum glances at his wife, but Tami does not pay him any attention. He checks my reflection in the mirror. He looks like he wants to apologize to me but doesn’t know what to say.
“What does that mean?” Fanya asks. There is genuine hurt in her voice. If it were possible, I might think Fanya had never noticed Tami’s loneliness, or the discontent with which she drifts at the edge of every gathering.
“Fanya, the expert on love.” Tami all but spits the final word. Then she laughs harshly and says nothing more.
Fanya sits perfectly still. Her healthy face is ashen. The wind whips her hair.
Nachum is holding the wheel with both hands—perhaps the steadier grip will help him comprehend what is taking place in the car he steers. After a moment Fanya purses her lips. I recognize the haughty look she levels at the back of her daughter’s head. She has decided to dismiss Tami’s behavior as self-indulgent.
“Can you roll the window up further?” she asks Nachum.
He rolls the window halfway.
At one and the same time, Tami and Fanya speak. “More,” they say.
Hurriedly, Nachum shuts the window. We ride in silence.
Then, as though thinking better of her decision, Fanya speaks. Her voice is as smooth as it is venomous. “At least I have people who care about me. At least I’m not so unpleasant to be with that people stop issuing invitations because they can’t stand my sour face.”
Tami seems to grow smaller in her seat. She shrugs, as if her mother’s words don’t matter to her.
But Fanya is not finished. “You always were a bitter girl,” she says. “Now you’re a bitter woman.”
Without looking at me, Ariela knots her moist hand into the fabric of my T-shirt. I clasp the cloth-wrapped fist and squeeze.
Tami watches the view. She is a woman emptied of everything, barren of wishes.
There is nothing left to say. We pass dark green fields, orchards of low trees.
Then Tami speaks. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t even matter.” Her voice is hollow. “Like I might as well be invisible, like nothing I do or say makes any difference.”
“I don’t understand you when you talk such nonsense.” Fanya turns to me. “Maya, I do apologize.”
I nod my acceptance, but keep my face averted; all I want is to avoid scrutiny between here and the airport.
Tami gives a despondent laugh. Then, with peculiar brightness, she speaks. “Of course you don’t understand. You don’t understand your bitter daughter because you never loved me enough. Or anyone else.”
Fanya looks out the window, tight-lipped.
“Like Shmuel Roseman,” Tami charges. “Like him. When will you admit it? You don’t care about him, but you let him follow you everywhere.”
“What sort of heartless person do you think I am?” Fanya retorts.
Now it is Tami who says nothing. Nachum’s fists are balled tight around the wheel. Ariela and I stare straight ahead.
“Do you think I’m so very selfish?” Fanya insists.
“Listen to me, Mother.” Tami releases her seat belt and turns to face Fanya. “For once you’re going to listen to me. I am sick of you charming everyone to pieces. Everyone believes you’re the most gracious, kindhearted person in the world, and they adore you for it. Only I know it’s not true. I know that the minute someone really needs you, you’ll turn your back. You’ll tell them not to take things so seriously.”
“When did I ever—”
“When? What about when Rafi died? What about a thousand other times? What about my miscarriages, you came from Tel Aviv and you couldn’t even say—”
“What did you want me to say?”
“Anything! Anything, Mother. Anything would have done. It didn’t even have to be ‘Are you all right?’ Do you know what perfect strangers said when they discovered I had only one child and I’d miscarried? They said, ‘For heaven’s sake don’t give up trying, what if you lose your first to war?’ They cared enough to say that. You could have barged in, the way normal mothers and grandmothers do; ‘Try again, have another, help make up for the lost. The Germans may have had the final solution, but they won’t have the last word.’ You could have said anything, Mother. Instead of blowing everyone kisses and getting back on the bus. You could have stayed with me.” Tami’s words threaten to choke her but she continues. “I may be a bitter woman. But at least I don’t lie about what I am.”
“Tami.” Fanya pronounces her daughter’s name with bewilderment. “I gave you the best gift in the world. I showed you how not to sink yourself in mourning.” Her hands rise to her cheeks. “You were there, Tami. All those years, you were there, you saw what I saw. What else would you have had me do?”
I am aware of my own held breath, and Nachum’s and Ariela’s. The argument has turned a corner that only Tami and Fanya understand; no one else utters a sound. Tami glances up at her mother’s reflection as if she might be sorry, but there is no stopping the stream of words that comes from her mother now.
“Do you think I’m heartless? Is that it? Well, I’ll remind you of something. In case you’ve forgotten, I’ll remind you.” Fanya’s voice is ragged. “Do you recall what it was like when you were small? Refugees coming in like cattle. Like fleas, lice. They were . . . they were horrible, those people. Do you remember what a broken human being looks like, before he finds strength to start a new life?
“So many of them.” Fanya shakes her head; she might be trying to rid herself of a lingering dream. “So many. Their eyes empty. Or worse, their eyes full of what they’d seen. And your father, Tami, your father needed to give a hand to everyone. He couldn’t stand to see their pain without helping. All day long distributing food, all day long translating for refugees, all day long assisting their dolorous searches for people who were long since nothing but ashes. He sought out news of the friends we’d left behind in Amsterdam, too. He couldn’t get over the things he heard. Do you understand me, Tami? All day long your father took in what had happened in Europe, every day more. And when he came home, his eyes were empty, too. He was theirs, every waking moment. He was a softhearted man. And a softhearted man couldn’t withstand a thing like that.”
Fanya lifts her chin. “Every evening when he was due home, I dressed up in my best. Yes, that’s right, perfume in Israel in 1950. I ordered it from Europe and I didn’t care what anyone said. I even ordered it from Austria, let the gossips go to hell. I made a candlelight dinner, I didn’t care how I had to scrape or go without during the day. You have no idea how hard it was to find decent food in this country in those times.” She lets out a sour laugh. “Israel, home of the ingathered exiles.” For a moment she falls silent. Then she continues, her voice softened to a murmur. “Their sorrow almost broke him. He, with his guilt at escaping while his whole family perished behind him.
“Only I, I made sure he didn’t come home to a sorrowful house. Or to the least bit of ugliness. Or to a crying child.” She gazes blankly at Tami. “I was his bride,” she says.
Outside the car windows, farms line the highway on either side. The low sun flashes along ruler-straight lines of trees. I glimpse small tractors and pickup trucks, parked between the rows for the night.
“I married a softhearted man,” Fanya says. “Because of the way he used his hands, so carefully. Because of the way he looked up from under his eyelids when he spoke—begging my permission to tell me his thoughts. That was your father, Tami.” She closes her own eyes. “I never understood him. But I loved him.”
For several minutes Fanya sits motionless; the sound of the car’s engine asserts itself and lulls me half to sleep before she speaks again. “After he died,” she says, “there was such darkness. You were in high school, Tami, I’m sure you didn’t notice.”
Tami is speechless.
Fanya opens her eyes. She straightens sharply, as if roused mid-argument. “And would I have been more noble if I’d sacrificed my life to patching sorrows that are too big to be patched? Mo
urning the dead, mourning your father, mourning every bit of life that was taken from me? What kind of living is that? So Yad Vashem wants a mother to shed tears for her children until there are only stones left?” Fanya’s jaw is tight. “No, Tami. No, I will not let them take my life away from me. Do you understand? I will not let them take life away. I refuse to be anyone’s monument to tragedy. Like that”—Fanya tastes the word—“that black woman who came looking for Maya. I’m not like her. She wasn’t even a woman anymore, not even a person, she was a thing, Tami. A thing. A broken-off, dried-up shard of a person.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Tami inserts dully.
“She wasn’t religious,” I whisper, but no one hears me.
“Life is for laughter,” Fanya says.
Looking across Ariela’s smooth ribboned braids, I try to see in Fanya the wild weeping stranger of the chevra kaddisha man’s story.
“But I wasn’t trying to make you unhappy.” Tami’s words are a plea without hope. “I’m sorry if I was always too serious.”
“What?”
“Maybe I was always in your way with the things I needed, but I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry if I was too serious and you couldn’t stand it. I’m sorry if you always had to get away from me to do happy things. I wasn’t trying to take away your life.”
Quizzically Fanya raises her eyebrows. Then speaks with annoyance. “Who ever said it was your fault, Tami? This has nothing to do with you. Why would you think such a thing?”
I wait for Tami’s reply, but none comes. After a time she settles back into her seat, her mouth fallen open like a child’s.
“Fanya.” Nachum speaks up. “Couldn’t you have returned to Europe, if being here in Israel was so terrible? Amsterdam was your home, after all. Did you ever think of going back and starting a new life there?”
Fanya holds her head very high and says nothing.
Nachum watches her in the rearview mirror. He gives a low whistle. “All these years of talking about Europe, and you’ve never even been back to visit, have you?”
Fanya speaks slowly and with enormous dignity. “I could never go back to Europe after the war. Maybe if I had had Daniel with me, but we never did go. He said Europe was dead for him. And after Daniel died, I never wanted to go alone.” Her shoulders back, she meets Nachum’s gaze squarely in the rearview mirror. “I want to remember Europe the way I choose. They can’t take that from me.”
There is a long silence. The sun has set without my noticing; the roadside groves fade steadily into darkness. We pass down the highway at what feels like a tremendous speed.
It is Fanya who breaks the silence. “This morning Shmuel asked me to marry him.”
Nachum snorts with laughter. “Another proposal for Fanya? And it’s not the first from Shmuel, either. You’ve got to give him credit for being persistent.”
Fanya is looking out into the twilit fields. “I said yes.”
It takes a few seconds for Tami to speak. When she does, her voice cracks with incredulity. “But why?” is all she says.
“Because,” Fanya says. “Because it’s time. I don’t know if I’ll ever love him as much as he loves me, but it’s time to try again.” She chuckles to herself, then looks nakedly out the window. “I’m not getting younger, you know. Not that I’m about to roll over and give in to crow’s-feet, mind you. Still, be that as it may.”
All of us watch the darkening fields pass. Nachum, steering down the dim highway, lays a hand on Tami’s knee without a word.
At the airport Nachum unloads my bag, and we all walk together to the check-in area. The lines stretch back almost as far as the concession shops. Luggage carts trundle past, missing each other narrowly. For the past ten minutes Ariela has been complaining that she is hungry. Now she says she wants to go to bed, and when no one pays her any attention she starts to whimper.
“Stop it,” Tami says wearily.
Fanya, who has been silent since leaving the car, occupies herself with looking for the proper line.
“Stop it,” Tami says again after a moment. Then, abruptly, she stops walking, causing a man with a luggage cart to veer and nearly upset his load. She spins and, instead of facing Fanya as I expect, turns on Nachum. “I can’t stand it. You don’t care about me. No one cares about me. The only one who even notices me is Ariela, and she’d forget me if I were gone, too.”
“Tami, you know that’s not true.”
“You don’t even care,” Tami whispers. She takes a heavy step away, her body slouched in defeat. “Just let me be.” A second step, then a third. Then she is running. Dodging through the crowd, she weaves farther and farther away from us.
Nachum stands blinking, at a loss as to which to do: follow his wife, or do as she asks. And then, I see that Nachum is not lost, after all. I watch him spring into the crowd, shoving his way between carts and surprised tourists. As he disappears, I understand that Nachum is the one person who has not given up on Tami. He has only been waiting, all this time he has been waiting, for a chance to break down the doors and come looking for her.
Part Five
17
“Well, it’s not as painful as it looks,” she tells me as I enter. Her face is sharp, her eyes dark against ashy skin. An IV line feeds into the crook of her arm. Under thin white covers, her figure lies still.
She is smiling, a luminous frightened smile.
All this time, I’ve forgotten how beautiful my mother is.
“Come in.” Her voice rattles loose in her chest. “Sit.” As if we’ve simply been interrupted mid-conversation. She waves at the IV apparatus beside the bed. Ignore this, the gesture says.
The patch of sun between the window and my mother’s bed is a spotlight. I tell myself I don’t need to worry; I spent fifteen minutes checking and rechecking my makeup in the hospital’s first-floor bathroom. But I skirt the brightly lit area as I make my way to her.
Her cheek feels dry and papery under my kiss. The smell is a hospital smell, not hers. “Thank you for coming, Maya,” she says. Her body is slight; even through the covers I see the bony ridge of a hip. I look at her long, tapered fingers. At the short, tidy fingernails. Then back up, at the deep-set eyes, the cheekbones I’ve always envied—the face people have always remarked on. Classic. Timeless. If I had a face like that, maybe I wouldn’t wear makeup, either.
Her hair, usually dark and shiny, now paler and brittle, is gathered in a knot on top of her head. She likes the movie Good Morning, Vietnam, I recall for no reason. She likes Etta James. I want to step nearer. I want to kiss her again, or hug her. My mother hates peanut butter. She won’t wear high heels, she mocks people who spend three months in England and return with British accents. I want to sit on the edge of that narrow bed. I wonder what she would do if I climbed in.
I don’t move. I stand before her, clutching my suitcase.
“Faye is managing,” she assures me. “Her husband is helping at the Center. And the volunteers are doing just fine in my absence.”
I nod, as if the welfare of the Center were paramount in my mind.
A drop moves down from the IV bag. Another forms at the base, quivers there, then falls to the small plastic chamber that feeds the line. It appears to me that my mother is mulling something over. Then I understand she is only gathering strength to speak again.
I follow the line to the tender bruised patch on the inside of her left elbow, where it disappears beneath a strip of white tape. I see that the tape has pulled fine taut lines in the surface of her skin.
She takes a deep breath. “They paid for the private room,” she accuses. “Everybody at the Center, Maya. They held a fund-raiser. I told them not to, but they insisted. I’ve had my own room for three days now.” She makes a slight agitated motion with her right hand. I am mesmerized by the number of veins and tendons I see. “It’s a waste of their precious dollars.”
She waits; she seems to expect that this information will prompt me to immediate, outraged ac
tion.
“They wouldn’t even tell me how much it costs. But I found out.” She draws breath again, carefully, coaching the air on its journey to the bottom of her lungs. “From the nurses. I told Faye, It’s criminal. It’s a criminal waste of the Center’s money. After all my years of working to help.”
As my mother speaks, I touch my own face with my free hand. Pretending it’s an idle gesture, I brush my forehead, cheek, and chin; I recall my long-ago outrage when strangers assumed she and I weren’t related. Compared with her olive skin and purposeful jaw, my own features feel weak. Why would I ever have thought strangers would guess us to be mother and daughter?
But just as I tell myself we are nothing alike—just as I tell myself there has never been any golden thread connecting us—I see something. I see my mother’s bony hands tremble, then steady themselves. In the instant’s effort are mirrored all the months I’ve spent lying for her sake.
She looks at me hungrily. She seems helpless to leave the topic she has chosen. “A lot of good that did, telling them not to waste the money. Faye wouldn’t listen.” Tears of frustration brim over her lower lids. “Promise me you’ll talk to her now that you’re here.”
“I’ll talk to her,” I say.
“Call her today.”
“I will.”
I set my suitcase gently on the floor.
At the hallway station, the nurse, a small woman with obviously dyed blond hair, reaches up with both hands to release a barrette. “There’s been a vigil,” she informs me as her hair falls over her ears. “People here from Brooklyn every day. Every single day. For the entire two weeks. And from their part of Brooklyn it’s quite a trek to get to the Bronx.”
I stand against the chest-high gray counter. Two weeks?
Refastening the barrette, she continues in the admiring tones so familiar to me. “Whatever your mother does in Brooklyn, she’s got a fan club. They show up for a day or two at a time.” She adds with a hint of surprise, “They’re very polite.”
From a Sealed Room Page 38