Face Tells the Secret

by Bernstein, Jane

I kept my distance, understanding nothing. Sunny gripped Mom’s hands, listened, laughed, got Mom to show her the rest of the apartment. Later, they sat over tea while my mother held forth on the elastic constants of solid wood, on the engineering flaws in the Saarinen building in Holmdel, on her loyal secretary Dottie. She told Sunny she hated the sun, had no use whatsoever for the beach, not the slightest interest in taking a walk. Sunny listened to all this, laughed softly, palms together, bending at the waist. Then she put a hat on my mother’s head, made several admiring sounds, and helped her down the flight of stairs.

  Though Mom would not admit to liking her or needing anyone’s help, she did not balk when Sunny appeared. If anything, she became more compliant. I arranged for extra hours, covering the expenses from my mother’s account, to which I’d gained control by steering her to the bank, having her sign here and here and here. I felt corrupt, exploitative, relieved. Her disdain for me felt like a gift just then. She was in good hands with Sunny. All that was left was to ask Ronit what she knew about this sister. Then I could go home.

  

  When I arrived at Ronit’s on Friday afternoon, two days before my departure, Meir’s family was seated at the long table on the patio—his brother, wife, and two sons. The brother was tiny and dark, like Meir. The boys, long eyelashes, hair shorn nearly to the skull, were in constant motion, even while seated. They grabbed food off each other’s plates, butted each other’s shoulders. One boy clocked the other on the head with a spoon; the other stabbed his brother’s bicep with a fork. The adults ignored them, which seemed to work; while the quarreling was nonstop, it seemed devoid of animosity.

  I had asked Ronit not to make anyone struggle to speak in English. “Being at your table is enough,” I’d said. This was true: it was easy to be among this boisterous crew. Midway through the meal, Galia appeared in a tight T-shirt and khaki pants, her curly hair bundled in a charming, haphazard way. She kissed the boys and pulled a chair beside me. “So Vered,” she said with great seriousness. “You’ve heard of the Ross Park Mall?”

  This unexpected question made me laugh. “Sure. It’s in the North Hills, just outside Pittsburgh.”

  “My friends are selling the Dead Sea products and say business is good, they have space in their apartment, and I should come. What do you think?”

  I knew that after their military service, Israeli kids often traveled for six months or a year, and said, “Why Pittsburgh? Why not Peru? Or Thailand?”

  “My friend says two months at the Ross Park Mall and you can backpack for a year.”

  “You could stay with me and save even more,” I said.

  “You live near the Ross Park Mall?”

  “Not really. And I guess you’d need a car.”

  One of the boys came up behind Galia and began playing with her thick curls. Galia scolded him and he ran off. She went after him, growling like a movie monster. In a corner of the yard, she tickled him until he curled into a ball.

  By then, Meir and his brother had walked off and the women had begun to clear the table. I got up to help.

  Ronit was alone in the kitchen, filling a kettle. “This is so nice,” I said.

  She turned off the tap and looked at me with a universal “whatever” expression on her face. “You like tea?” she asked.

  I liked tea, I said. Then, “I like everything here—the food, the garden, sitting with your family. Last time I was here, you asked if I thought you were terrible. I never thought that. We had fun that summer you were in New Jersey, didn’t we? And we wrote to each other for a while, and then we stopped because, I don’t know, that’s what happens. And then there was nothing. I don’t remember hearing your name or anyone else’s after that. It was like a total blackout. I didn’t know I had a sister until a couple of weeks ago.”

  Ronit looked at me and then averted her eyes. She knew something. I could tell by the expression on her face.

  “You know how I found out? My mother told the doctor who examined her last month.”

  Ronit’s sister-in-law carried a stack of dishes into the kitchen. She saw the way we stood, placed the plates on the counter, and left.

  Ronit said, “And when you asked Leona?”

  “Nothing. Then a blast of anger. You know how all this makes me feel? Like a book with blank pages.”

  “Sit with her. You’re here. Maybe the time has come for her to tell. Sometimes it happens this way. People get old, they start to worry they’ll die with their story inside them.”

  “It feels like elder abuse when I try. I don’t even know this sister’s name. Do you?”

  Ronit squeezed her brow. “I’m sorry, Vered. I can’t remember. I wish your father was here.”

  “So do I,” I said. “Tell me what you know. Please.”

  “She was in a place, a—” Ronit struggled to find the right word.“—home for people like her. Your father didn’t speak much of her after his visits.”

  “My father visited her?” I recalled his open suitcase on the bed, each side neatly packed, the paper bands around the laundered shirts, each shoe in a cotton bag, but I had no memory of his absences.

  “Of course. He always stayed with us when he came to see her. He was a wonderful man, your father. We miss him still.”

  “Really? How often did he visit?”

  “Three times a year? Four? And then he didn’t come, and that was it. We were very hurt that no one told us he’d died. Marilyn Gorelick called his school, and then, what can I say? The years went by. It’s very sad because the two brothers could not have been closer. But after your mother broke with the family, there were very bad feelings. I thought you knew you had a sister. How would I think otherwise? But now look. After all these years, here you are, and that’s something, isn’t it?”

  “But why the break?”

  “Why. Because one said this and the other said that. After all they went through. Look, we are together after all this time. It’s the way it should be.”

  Ronit’s nephews thundered into the kitchen and I meandered in the garden, trying to process what she had just said. When it was time to go, Ronit linked her arm through mine and walked me to Meir’s car.

  “The summer in New Jersey?” she said. “Your father one afternoon takes me into his bedroom. ‘Ronit, I want to show you something.’ He closes the door. Takes from his drawer a book, and inside is a picture, a photograph. ‘Here,’ he says. He gives me this picture of two babies, very small, wrapped up, and when I look up to ask who it is, I see that he is crying. ‘Don’t tell Mama.’ This is what he says. I was young, and it was very upsetting to see him this way. ‘Don’t tell Mama.’ I’ll never forget.”

  Meir drove me home. On the silent, hair-raising ride, I kept seeing those two babies, very small, wrapped up. They were so vivid it was as if I’d seen the photograph myself. Just as haunting was Ronit’s memory of my father, his hand on her arm, his words, “Don’t tell Mama.” I knew these words, knew “Mama” was his wife, my mother. I knew this hand on my arm and the way I pulled away. I knew the sadness in his breathing, his eyes when he leaned across the table to ask about the other one, nameless as an embryo. I waved goodbye to Meir and entered my mother’s building. Two small, wrapped-up babies, I thought as I started upstairs. If she, nameless sister, was one, then I had to have been the other. I stopped, leaned against the cool wall, feeling like a dense, unteachable, child, so slow to process what Ronit had told me that I had never thought to ask this last question.

  Oh, I wish I knew none of this, I thought. Then I found a website for the U.S. National Archives, which had databases going back to the 1800s, and with barely any effort ordered my family’s immigration records. All this intimate information was just there. Everyone knows except me!

  Later, while cleaning out a kitchen cabinet, I found a cardboard box with a label in four languages, one of which was English. “Open this kit only
under clear instructions from the Home Front Command,” I read. Maybe ignorance really is bliss, I thought, and opened the top flap of the box. Inside was a manual with an illustration of a man whose face was covered by a huge mask and respirator, straps hanging from all directions. The mask, to be worn only when there were instructions from the “mass media,” had a drinking tube and filter. Also in the kit was a syringe, a “primary means of treatment in case of exposure to nerve gas.”

  I put the box back under the sink and left the apartment. I passed the elderly women on their bench, crossed the street to the beach. A couple sat in chairs at the edge of the water, holding hands. I walked past them, slipped off my shoes and put my toes in the cool, beautiful, oblivious sea.

  The morning of my departure, I walked across the hall and knocked on Dina’s door. How small she was in bare feet, even shorter than I, with that powerful head and lush black hair. She grabbed my hands when I told her I had come to say goodbye, and said, “Why are you leaving us?”

  I tried to explain that I had a business and responsibilities at home.

  “But we are here. Your mother, your family.” Her eyes brimmed with tears.

  “I know,” I said. “You’ve been such a great friend. I can’t thank you enough.”

  Dina let go of my hands and turned before I could finish. I’d remembered not to buy her a gift but managed to annoy her with my gratitude.

  “Goodbye,” I said to my mother when she and Sunny returned from a walk. “Do you remember that I’m leaving?”

  Sunny had taken her for a haircut a few days earlier and now the red ends and much of the brown was gone. She looked like a different woman, with her short white hair. Less agitated. Only her dark brows and stormy dark eyes were familiar. “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Pittsburgh,” I said.

  “Pittsburgh? I don’t know anyone in Pittsburgh.”

  I raised my hand. Then I gave her a box of Swiss chocolates, extra dark, the only kind she liked.

  I remembered not to kiss her goodbye.

  Eleven

  The trees were bare when I returned to Pittsburgh, and the late afternoon sky was dark. So was my house. I walked from room to room, switching on every light. The fridge was humming and the wall clock ticked. Strange, I thought, since the clock had no gears or wheels. Contrived. I climbed on a stool to set the proper time and felt how warm my house was. I hadn’t thought to lower the heat before I’d left.

  Don’t tell Mama. I heard my father say those words, his voice nearly inaudible, and Ronit calling him a wonderful man. It confused me, not the words, which I recognized as his, but to hear him described so fondly, when our only time together had been in the dining room after school, a workbook in front of me. His stale, unloved smell and his chalky sleeves.

  Okay, careful, I thought. Don’t extrapolate from noise. It was a favorite expression of my mother’s. I lowered myself from the stool. What I’d learned from Ronit wasn’t an artifact, like static; it was incomplete. Until the documents I ordered arrived, I needed to move on. I hefted my suitcase, dragging it upstairs, one step at a time. I did not feel it was possible, but I was old enough to understand that thinking “I can’t live like this” was sentimental.

  I unzipped my bag on the kitchen floor, shook the little burro out of a dirty sock and put it on the windowsill. In the corner of the floor was a laundry chute. I threw my dirty clothes down the chute and listened to them tumble into the basement. I loved this chute. Anything that got in my way went down—linens, books, shoes. Okay, I’ll throw this, I thought, rapping on the side of my cocked head, so all that grieved me might drip from my brain, out my ear, down the chute, and away.

  I dragged myself to bed, vowing I’d never return to Israel, and knowing I’d go back, believing I’d stop thinking about those two small babies and doubting it was possible. Such is my brain that I was able to hold onto all of these positions and still fall into the deepest slumber.

  Early that evening I woke, emailed Les to let him know I’d be back at work in the morning. Then found the remote and crawled back into bed. On a nature show, a cow expelled a calf. The mother licked the amniotic fluid and muck off its face and the calf got right to its feet. I was very moved, cried briefly, wanted to watch it again. Then I decided it was a message meant for me: Get up on your wobbly legs and move on. Moooove on, I thought, and flicked the remote, as if I could find on one of the hundreds of channels another cow giving birth.

  Just moooove.

  I slid out of bed and made my way to the basement to do my laundry, and when I opened the door, I saw a light had been left on. Wasteful, I thought, working my way downstairs. I needed to think more about the environment.

  A small living area had been set up in the corner between the workbench and furnace, with furnishings from storage. A trundle bed was neatly made. Marimekko sheets with bright little cars, a royal blue comforter that had belonged to Harley’s son. A door atop two file cabinets that I’d once used as a desk. An old chair on castors.

  Harley swiveling to face me. “You’re home.”

  I covered my face, as if when I opened my eyes he might vanish, and cried, “Go away!”

  Harley wrapped me in his trembling arms, tightening them as I tried to get free, murmuring in my hair, “I’m so happy you’re home safe. So incredibly happy. Why didn’t you tell me you were on your way back? I would have picked you up.”

  “Let me go. You’re smothering me!” I jabbed him with an elbow and finally got free.

  A blanket of fatigue fell over me. I looked at the klugey arrangement, made up of my stuff—the door as a desk, the file cabinets—and worried they were an early sign I’d end up a hoarder like my mother. I needed a chute to oblivion, where I could throw the clutter first, and Harley as a chaser.

  “You’re supposed to be in Sewickley.”

  “Oh, hon. Get some sleep, and we’ll talk in the morning. I have so much to tell you. But first get some sleep. I’m sure you’re exhausted.”

  “You’ve got to pack up and get out, Harley. I have nothing else to say.” I needed clean clothes. This seemed very important. “I have to do my laundry. If you’re still here tomorrow, I’m calling the police. Don’t talk to me.”

  Get out or I’ll call the police. What my mother had said to me. I threw the laundry into the washer, adding the towels and underwear left in the basket from before I’d gone away, concentrating hard on the wash cycle and temperature.

  Orange juice and milk was in the fridge. Also some foodish items of Harley’s—pre-cut celery and carrots on a Styrofoam tray, white around the edges; a bag of squishy, pre-sliced bagel-shaped bread; a crock of something called cheese food; a plate of glazed pastries of indeterminate age. I studied the giant raisin-studded blob and thought, who can eat this?

  Mom again, which rattled me. If I went back downstairs to rout out Harley, she would break through, and I would scream and threaten, “Get out of my house!” and he would clutch me in his arms, call me hon, tell me I’d changed his life, and I would weaken and fold.

  No, I wouldn’t. There was something wrong with him. Deeply, deeply wrong.

  And still, history said otherwise. History reminding me of all the past times I had approached him with such resolve and failed to seal the deal. History.

  Two babies all wrapped up, and one of them was me.

  When I returned to work, Kayleigh bounded over, tall, wholesome, ponytail swaying, nearly lifting me off my feet in her embrace, so, so, so happy I was home, she said, gesturing with her thumb at Les, who was lying on the floor to soothe his aching back.

  Later I gave them halvah, amused by their expressions as they sampled the gritty sweet, opened the few pieces of mail addressed to me, discussed upcoming projects.

  I did not go into the basement.

  How do you live that way?

  I knew it was twisted, closing the
door and leaving Harley in the basement. My instinct for getting on with my life, no matter what, was stronger than the voice that said, this is way too weird. Don’t we all make such decisions? It seems to me now that everyone closes the door on what is unbearable. Some ability to turn away allows us to live. At the heart of a good life is learning what to face head-on and what to ignore.

  How many people achieve that balance? What of a man who tries to erase his marital history by throwing away every object that bears his wife’s scent or carries her memory—photos, pillows, wine glasses, the plates they bought in Italy, their comforter? Not him; certainly not him.

  What of this same man, whose daily life is marked by violence? The Jerusalem coffee shop he’d frequented blown up. The city bus his son took regularly until he left for graduate school in Minnesota blown up. How should he live? How should anyone live? I imagine this man brushing his teeth, making coffee, going to work, his mind on meetings and promising collaborations. The second intifada erupts; his productivity increases. He tires of sleeping in a sheet in a stripped-down apartment with shadows on the wall where art had once hung and decides it’s time to date. The violence increases. His daughter helps him write a profile, not an easy task for this man, who no longer remembers who he had been before his marriage. Blood, splinters of glass, children ripped to shreds. He goes online, begins to court women. Is this oblivious, insensitive? Or is it life-affirming?

  How did you keep from hearing the footsteps in the basement? How do you continue to believe in your life’s work in such a fraught environment? What should this man do with his unspoken ache? Should he weigh it against the discord outside? Denigrate his own despair?

  In the end, I suppose, we acknowledge what we can, what will not demolish us.

  

  On my second day home, I stopped at the yoga studio one floor above us. Nomi, the owner, was sitting at a table by the cubbies for shoes, her small face framed with short wavy hair that curled at the brow and made her look like the etching of a Roman boy. I asked if I could arrange for a private lesson for a super stubborn man, and she said, “You mean Les?”