Face Tells the Secret

by Bernstein, Jane

  When I got home, Mom and Harley were sitting together at the dining table, picking at the remains of lo mein and chicken and cashews. I no longer protested when Harley brought Mom dinner, but did not sit with them either, which was so much better for everyone. I snipped the tags off the clothes I’d just bought and draping them over the bureau in her room, catching occasional phrases, concert hall acoustics. Directional microphone systems. To get rid of booming. So speech sounds less hollow. Directional microphone systems. Harley spoke only to ask, “Is the soup too cold, can I warm it up for you? Here, let me get you a fresh napkin?” He did not shift in his seat, try to change the subject or say, “You told us already,” as I might have. He did not wince when she boasted of her intelligence or cover his face when she talked about making a middle-aged man cry. Early in our relationship, he’d told me his only desire was to serve me. I’d been appalled. I wanted a partner, an equal. Not a slave. Now, though, I saw how relaxed he was tending to my mother. How comforting it must have been for her to have someone in the role once filled by my father—chauffer, housekeeper, tutor to the dense, ungovernable child who’d landed in their household.

  I was returning the scissors to the kitchen drawer as Mom was telling Harley about her secretary, Dottie, and Morris, her husband. When she said, “He was a terrible cook, but I never complained,” I fell into a familiar annoyance, as if she were fine.

  Yes. You did complain, I thought, sinking into Harley’s leather chair.

  

  I made another appointment with a doctor. Two hours before we had to check in, Harley arrived with tea and pastries. As soon as Mom finished breakfast, he began rushing around the house. “Hurry,” he told her. “You don’t want to be late!” This, as it happened, was true; even when there was no urgency, she couldn’t bear being late. “Get the car!” he called to me, and I raced out, drove the car to the front of the house, returned to get my mother. When I saw her dressed in the clothes I’d left out for her—the elastic-waisted pants and zip-front top—I thought, what have I done? How could I have been so disrespectful? “Quick like a bunny!” Harley said, holding out his arm to aid her on the steps. Quick like a bunny? I was laughing hard, and also wishing someone would sew shut the giant hole inside me.

  On the drive, I turned on the radio and was surprised to hear the opening chords of “Sympathy for the Devil.” It was the intro to a story about the Rolling Stones’ arrival in China. The traffic inched down Fifth Avenue toward the medical center. Stalin was poisoned after all, a reporter told us next. My mother gazed out the side window. In Haifa, the number 37 bus was blown up and fifteen people were killed, eight of them children under the age of eighteen. A Druse girl of twelve, a Christian girl of fourteen, and the rest Israeli students.

  “Haifa,” said my mother. “That’s in Israel.”

  I turned the radio off and waited.

  “When are you taking me home?” she asked.

  “As soon as we’re done here,” I said.

  I took a ticket at the parking garage and the gate opened.

  There were so many segments to our journey, so many chances for her to balk—walking from the parking space to the garage elevator, from the elevator to hospital entrance, past the wheelchairs in the lobby, unused except for one. Helium balloons were anchored to the armrest with ribbons. Slouched in the seat was a shriveled woman with tubes in her nose, clutching a bag marked Patient Belongings.

  Mom seemed not to see this woman. She walked past, saying nothing. She seemed not to notice the resident whose chest hair sprang from the V-neck of his scrubs or the nurses in their smocks, squeezed into the elevator beside us. We made our way into the waiting area for General Internal Medicine, noisy from the loud, mounted TV no one was watching. My mother was given a laptop and asked to complete a survey before she saw the doctor. We took the two vacant seats beneath the TV and when she told me she wanted to go home, I read the first question to her,“Over the last two weeks, have you felt down, depressed or hopeless for most of the time?”

  Oh yes, I thought. You have no idea.

  “No,” she said.

  Over our heads, the chipper cohost of a morning show was chattering about therapy dogs. I entered my mother’s response and went on to the next question, “Over the last two weeks, have you felt little interest or pleasure in doing things for most of the time?”

  I saw myself sitting at my work area, emptied out, so distanced from what I had been or what I once made that I wondered if I too had some dementia. To look at labels or posters I’d designed and have no sense of where they came from. To find that ability, talent, is as ephemeral as love; there, whether you want it or not, and then gone.

  “No,” said my mother.

  An obese man approached very slowly, with a wobbly, boneless gait, and a T-shirt that read, Now I Know Why Some Animals Eat Their Young.

  “My current life is ideal for me,” I read. “Strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree or disagree, slightly agree, strongly agree.”

  “Yes,” said my mother.

  She was full of pep.

  She was never down in the dumps.

  Had lots of energy.

  The man lowered himself into the chair across from ours, his body like a mound of Jell-O, spilling over the sides.

  “In times of trouble or difficulty, how many people do you have near that you can readily count on for help—such as offering you advice, looking after your belongings (house, pets, etc.), for a period of time, running errands for you, watching children, giving you a ride to the hospital or store, or helping out if you are sick? (O, 1 2-5, 5-9,10 or more.)”

  My mother looked at me.

  “I know,” I said. “It’s complicated. Let me read it again. In times of trouble or difficulty, how many people do you have near that you can readily count on for help…”

  No matter where I was, Harley would come to my aid if I asked for help. He would pay my plane fare, retrieve me from the shoulder of a road in Saskatoon, sit in a doctor’s office with me. He could not be happy with me, but if I was stricken by disease, he would wheel my chair, feed me pureed food, empty my bedpan. He would tend to my body selflessly. The other piece, the part I called me he could not see or understand, would never acknowledge.

  I was reciting the numbers—zero to one, two to five—when I realized my mother had walked off. The obese man pointed with his thumb, and I hurried down the corridor and saw her bypass the bank of silver elevators and enter a surgical unit. I raced over and tried to edge her back to the waiting area, swearing the doctor was ready to see her.

  At the elevators, she stepped between a mother and son. “I want to go home,” she told them. They were the same height and heft, same blotchy skin and tsibble nose, same oversize black Steelers jersey. “Take me home now.”

  They regarded me, these two. I said, “Okay, Mom,” and meant it. “We’ll get you home.” The relief I felt was amazing. “As soon as we can.” I called the nurse from the parking garage to explain what had happened. Then I went home and booked our tickets. “We’re all set,” I said, then slept very deeply that night.

  On the morning of our departure, I was awakened by my mother’s brittle cry for help. The sun had just come up. I thought of the speckled egg that had fallen from its nest, how weightless it had felt in the palm of my hand. I thought of the mother bird expelling it, then a day or week later, the nest falling from the tree, toppled by a predator or the wind, the whole event of no consequence, unnoticed until I’d reached for the newspaper and seen it.

  By the time I made it downstairs with my own packed bag, she was standing beside her suitcase at the front door. Our flight to Newark was not scheduled to depart for four hours, but my parents had always left excessively early. Years before, leaving early was lifesaving. Now, decades after the dangers had receded, the instinct remained: they’d been the guests who showed up for parties when the hos
ts were still in the shower, the travelers who spent all day at the airport, as if the terminal was the first fun stop on their holiday.

  Harley let himself in through the back door and escorted my mother to the kitchen table, where he’d set out her tea and pastry. He took me aside while she was eating. “You need to stay until everything is settled with Mom. No matter how long it takes. She’s the only one that matters. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. Everything is under control.”

  “Listen, Harley—” I said.

  “Don’t.” Harley threw his arms around me with such force my knees buckled. “Don’t.” He buried his head in my chest, pressed hard, and began to butt me. “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,” until the word began to feel like a rock. I struggled to get free, feeling just then that my life and all its drama was as hollow as the egg. “I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t want to hear it.”

  Harley began to cry.

  “Let’s go!” called my mother at the door with her suitcase.

  The taxi dropped us curbside outside Departures. My mother would not let me take her suitcase, though it was from the era before wheels and she was not strong enough to carry it herself. I said, “Fine.” She grabbed the handle, walked a step, rested; walked another step, rested, until in irritation, I snatched the bag and marched into the terminal. When she caught up, I saw the red ribbon snaking down to her chin.

  And did I have a tissue, a napkin—something to hand my aged mother? After rooting around in my purse, all I could find was a treated cloth used for my sunglasses, soft but unabsorbent. She took the cloth and ran it across her face.

  In the women’s room we stood together at the sinks. With her crazy hair and bloody nose, she looked as if she’d gone through the windshield of acar. People approached—I could see their reflection in the mirror—then turned away. I wet a paper towel for my mother and when she would not take it, I tried to blot her face. She smacked me in the chest with the back of her hand.

  “You need to cut that out, or I’m going to leave you here and go home,” I said.

  My mother started for the door.

  “Fine!” I called. “It’s not like I want to drop everything and go to Israel with you when you’re being so mean. Because I don’t. At all. Ugh,” I said to the woman glaring at me at the next sink.

  My mother walked out. “Have a good trip!” I called after her.

  I lingered, washing my hands like a surgeon. Then I raced to catch up.

  At our gate, we collapsed in molded seats beside travelers going to Orlando. The floor and seats were piled with blankies and Disney Princesses waving their wands across vinyl backpacks, limp-limbed stuffed bears, neck pillows, body pillows, chunky plastic baby paraphernalia, mothers on cell phones grinding Cheezits and Cheerios into the carpet as they paced. Hello Kitty’s hydrocephalic head floated past on the side of a wheeled suitcase. What a lot of endless toil it was to take care of these little ones, what a lot of lost sleep, how unquenched my desire to have one of my own. I thought of Harley saying, “You’re only as happy as your least happy child.” Maybe that was the problem. Maybe, because I had no kids, I was only as happy as my least happy mother.

  The Other One

  Eight

  I’m standing in front of my mother’s Bauhaus building in Tel Aviv, on the corner of Rehov Nordau, a broad street with benches and palm trees in the median, waiting for her to find her keys. A Billy Crystal movie is advertised on a small billboard. Across a busy road is the beach.

  “You got an apartment on the beach!” I say, puzzled, then briefly amused. My mother continues rifling through her purse.

  It’s late afternoon and chilly. The traffic is heavy on Ha’Yarkon, the busy cross street, but Nordau Street is quiet. A boy, standing to pedal a heavy bike, barefoot, rides by. Two old women, arms linked, veer toward the edge of the sidewalk as they pass. When I hear the jingle of keys I lift my mother’s suitcase. She slaps my arm. I drop the bag. I want to go home. It’s her voice, I realize, her song that’s gotten stuck in my head. The desire to be home is now mine. Already I feel it. My house, my language, my work, in an office redolent with espresso, and not the fetid odor that assails me when we step inside the building.

  My mother is weak and needs to rest after each step. The hall lights flicker on, casting a dim glow in the broad stairway. I move my bag. She curses these particular steps, places her palm against the wall, climbs, curses, rests. I take her bag. We climb the next step. The smell gets worse. I know in a way where it originates. This was the story of my life, that I was irritated by the spiny seed of knowledge inside me and yet remained clueless, oblivious.

  When we reached my mother’s door the rotten smell was so strong I held my breath as she worked her key into the lock, afraid of what we’d find. The stench was terrifying, as if we might find a decomposing corpse inside, instead of rotting garbage in open bags. Organic waste, left to bake in the morning sun in this closed-up apartment. My mother nudged me forward, grumbling, and I stepped inside.

  Because I was like my mother, the shocked self revolted at the sight and smell of her abode, an essential piece detaching like a helium balloon set loose. I looked at the chaos, the living quarters of someone who was disturbed, and remembered my father vacuuming, a section of the long cord folded like a lasso in his hands as he ran the upright back and forth over the flat carpet, singing a liturgical tune in a bold voice, as if certain no one could hear him over the rumble of the machine. A stab of anguish rose—who was this man I called my father?—and then my attention returned to the cascading piles, newspapers, unopened mail, equipment, clothes.

  The trickle of blood etched Ma’s cheek. I cleared the seat of a chair for her, found a towel that wasn’t too rank and drenched a corner with warm water, wanting to clean her face but worried she would sock me. “Your nose is bleeding.”

  She took the towel and dabbed at her face. “It happens.” She looked at the towel and then at me. “What are you doing here?”

  “Helping you settle in.”

  “That’s nice, dear,” she said, suddenly tender. “Maybe another time. I’m not feeling myself.”

  “That’s not so easy, Mom. You moved to Israel. You never said why.”

  “You mean the Arabs? There will never be peace. They’re a primitive people who know only hatred. An eye for an eye. To them, women are shit. They take better care of their donkeys.”

  “Please! Don’t say such racist things.”

  “I’ll say what I damn well please.”

  My mother had always been harsh, but I’d never heard her speak like this. Was it something that happened with age, some hidden racism emerging like worms on a rainy day?

  “Fine,” I said. It wasn’t fine.

  She stood slowly, put her hand against the wall and went into a living room cluttered with towers of stuff, an astounding amount of it on the desk, on the bamboo-framed sofa, on the floor. Only one chair was clear, and she worked her way toward it and lowered herself into the seat.

  How long had she lived this way? I thought of our weekly phone calls, all the times I’d suggested a visit. Never once when she turned me down had I imagined her alone in this chaos.

  When her head began to loll, I bagged the garbage, double bagged it, my head turned away. The blood beneath her nose had begun to thicken. I dared to open the refrigerator. The white cheese had turned pink and the yellow cheese dappled and blue. Inside the jar of marmalade was a fuzzy amoeba-shaped organism, straight from a horror flick. It seemed to grow before my eyes. The pantry shelves were sticky, the lids to every jar congealed with muck. The oil was rancid. Bad smells wafted up from the drain and hovered beneath the sink, behind the fridge, inside the drawers.

  I opened the window and stepped onto her small balcony. Outside was a steady buzz of motorbikes on Ha’Yarkon and across the road the Mediterranean. A market was on the corner. Surely Ma had so
me shekels in her wallet. If I took a few, I could get us something to eat.

  The zip of the change purse roused her. “What are you doing in my bag?”

  I waited without moving. A moment later, she fell back asleep, her head bobbing, as if she were a drunkard.

  The market was small and well-stocked. I picked up a box of tea that was possibly chamomile (picture of a plant with small white buds), and what I assumed was goat cheese (sway-backed little creature in the field). Also rolls and garbage bags. Giant radishes bloomed from a bin, rosy and beautiful. I stopped to admire them. Once, when I still believed I could get Harley to understand the ways I’d wanted to be known by my lover, I’d cried, “I want to stand naked!” Studying the radishes, I felt as if my wish had been fulfilled, but not in the way I had intended. I was illiterate, ignorant of the native language. I had no understanding of the culture, no clear plan.

  “Heh,” Harley had said. “Be my guest!”

  I handed a bill to a sullen-looking cashier with a thick black eyebrow slashed across his face and hoped it would cover my purchases. He gave me a scornful look. I glared back: Who are you to stare? You’re a pariah! Everybody hates you. Everybody in the whole entire world!

  I took the wad of bills he returned as change, stuffed it into my pocket and left the store. It was true, this adolescent taunt. Everyone hates you!

  Instead of going back to my mother’s apartment I crossed the highway and walked out to the beach. It was dusk, and lights from the hotels to the south had begun to twinkle. A couple of boys were digging furiously, as if they had to finish their urgent job before nightfall. The waves were small and regular, with a thin line of foam that washed onto the sand. I continued down to the water’s edge and listened to the lapping of waves. I knew that as long as there was a moon, the tides would change, but I did not understand why that was so, did not understand anything, really, not when my mother had gotten this apartment, why she had moved here, or if the sea across the road had been a factor.