Face Tells the Secret

by Bernstein, Jane

  I said, “Yes. His back has been killing me.”

  I was paying Nomi when a woman walked in, holding the hand of a pale, skinny girl with a mass of auburn curls and big discolored teeth. The girl grabbed my wrist with surprising force and said in an urgent way, “Going home? In a car?” Her mother pulled her away, and I took the card from Nomi and went downstairs, disturbed by the incident and the girl.

  I put the card on Les’s desk and went back to work. We had many beautiful boxes to design. We had “our nurses,” a consortium of caregivers from various professions whose logo we’d designed a few years back, who now needed presentation items for an upcoming conference. Les and I had been asked to think beyond the daisies and ribbons and remember the men, who were twelve percent of their membership. “The men!” I’d cried out. “We will not forget the men!”

  “I love our nurses!” I said, because Les was not so keen about this bread-and-butter work, while I liked the nurses. They were enthusiastic. Everything pleased them. If I got all agitated I’d be unable to think about the nurses! I needed to keep it together for the nurses, to be vigilant when driving. Careful on the steps. No more talking while walking. I held onto the bannister when I took the stairs; kept my eyes on the ground. Even when I was not thinking of this shadowy twin, I felt vulnerable, unsure, as if the history that had been taken from me was a rug, yanked from beneath my feet. Don’t fall, I told myself when I ran in the park. With every step: Do not fall. This whispered caution was beneath every action. No one will pick you up.

  When I came home from work, I heard the strains of “Bat out of Hell” while I was walking down my driveway. The vent in the basement glass block was open so I traced the source to Harley, who liked Meatloaf. When he first confessed to this, I thought he was talking about the entrée meatloaf and not the sweaty singer who went by that name, soft and white as a grub. Meatloaf was one of those American food items, like Velveeta and Marshmallow Fluff that I’d never tasted, though I’d lived in the U.S. nearly my entire life. Harley refused to believe it was possible. “You’re adorable,” he’d said, laughing and hugging me, then disappearing into a dark room. Now he was blaring Meatloaf as a way to fool me into thundering downstairs. My anger would be met with his delight. Hon, I’m so happy you’re here! For so long, that delight had confused me, made me feel like a harsh, puppy-throwing woman.

  I unlocked my front door. Upstairs, everything was as I’d left it. The day’s mail was still scattered on the floor, my sweater draped across a dining room chair, the newspaper open on the kitchen island beside a mug half full of leftover coffee.

  The silence worried me: when there were no sounds coming from the basement, I opened the door to the basement a crack and listened. Took one step down, barely breathing, sniffed, waited, sniffed again, relieved that I did not smell gas.

  The email from Galia began this way: “You don’t believe I’m coming to Pittsberg, well I have my ticket ha ha.” Details followed: At the end of the month she’d be joining her two friends who were renting an apartment near the Ross Park Mall.

  She was right, in a way. I wrote back to tell her I was here for anything she might need and to invite her for dinner. “Looking forward to seeing you!”

  I did look forward to seeing Galia. Her email brought to mind the way she’d chided her mother in Hebrew the first time I’d visited then gestured with her chin to me. It had made me feel she had something to tell me that her mother withheld. I was curious to know what it would be. “Curious,” the word I used when I told Mindy about the photo of the two small babies, all wrapped up. “I’m kind of curious.” You’d think I was talking about an episode from a mini-series on TV and not my own life.

  Mindy was energized by my story and puzzled that I hadn’t called Ronit to ask about the picture. She couldn’t bear not knowing, even for an hour. It was impossible to explain, even to this closest friend, the body knowledge I carried, that these kinds of questions were dangerous and created rifts. I didn’t want to be cast out of Ronit’s garden, exiled from this family I was just now meeting.

  I was easily distracted. When our client with the energy drink for mature consumers showed up for a morning meeting—a tall, hefty young man in a lavender dress shirt and jeans—I found myself more interested in the luxurious cotton and gorgeous color of his shirt than marketing strategies or competition for shelf space. In penance, I stopped in a convenience store that afternoon and studied the drinks in a smoky refrigerator case. The cans were no longer a uniform size, and the bottles, most of them plastic, had become as bloated as Americans. The contents looked radioactive. I picked up a bottle of turquoise blue water. “Who’d want to drink something like this?” I asked myself.

  “I would,” a girl piped up. She had black hair, tiny bangs that left her broad forehead bare, a ring in her septum, holey tights, biker boots.

  “Can you explain why?” I asked.

  “It looks good.”

  Years back, I’d asked my parents to have dinner at my house, and my father said, “Don’t give us any of that toe-few.”

  I felt like my father when I put the turquoise water back in the case, confused by change, haunted by the other one, the one we could not see, insistent despite our efforts.

  My cabinets were empty, and there was no real food in the refrigerator, so after work, I stopped at the Giant Eagle and went down every aisle, tossing napkins, toilet paper, and paper towels into my cart, and tenderly setting tomatoes and bananas in the baby seat. It took two trips to haul everything from the garage onto the kitchen floor, and when I stood to switch on the light I saw birds of paradise in a shapely glass vase with pebbles at the bottom. They were so poignant and attentive looking, with their long stalks and sharp beaks that I had to remind myself they were not sensate. Their feelings could not be hurt. They did not care if I loved them or let them wither. There was no reason why the sight of them made my heart ache, or why, knowing who’d placed them on the kitchen island, I could not pull the flowers out of the vase, snap their stems and toss them into the garbage.

  Beside the vase was a ring box. When I flipped the top, I saw a diamond, nestled in its satin cushion. I turned away. Wrong! I thought. On every level. We were not together. Further, not that it should have mattered, if he’d actually known anything about me, he’d know I was the kind of person who linked diamonds with oppression. Bejeweled engagement rings were symbols of a life I’d never wanted. Harley needed a woman who wanted to be pampered and cared not a whit if he had access to her inner life or she to his.

  The house was cold. I knew I shouldn’t touch the ring. I turned up the heat, began to put the groceries away, then surprised myself by slipping the ring from the satin crease. It fit perfectly. I stretched out my arm the way my third-grade teacher had done when she was showing off her diamond. For a moment I felt as if the only thing that kept me from feeling loved was my own stony resistance. Say yes, I thought as I perched on the edge of a stool. The yearning welled up with unexpected ferocity. It wasn’t Harley, or the diamond, or the public statement that someone loved me enough to slip it on my finger. It was the love itself I wanted.

  I walked into the living room and stood in front of the leather chair so I could remember life with Harley. Then I put the ring back in the box and went downstairs.

  Harley stood when he heard my footsteps and turned to face me. His gaze was blurry with affection, a sweet half smile on his handsome face.

  “Enough,” I said. “You need to pack up and leave right now. Tonight. This is sordid.” I put the ring box on the door he was using as a desk. The knob hole had been plugged with a rolled-up takeout menu. “You can’t live in someone’s basement. It’s too weird.”

  “I know,” he said. “You’re right.”

  I dared not move, lest his urge to say something authentic passed.

  “Remember how you used to talk about wanting us to build something together? I took it lit
erally. I know it’s kind of dense, but I kept thinking, why do we need to buy a second home and furnish it, or whatever it is other couples do? Isn’t living with each other pleasure enough? Waking beside each other? I couldn’t understand that it wasn’t a second home you wanted, it was substance. Depth. But as you’ve pointed out numerous times, for someone so good at planning other peoples’ futures, I have a stunning inability to think about my own. I admit this.”

  “Thank you.” It was flattering to be quoted directly, but I had left the milk and cottage cheese on the kitchen counter and was feeling impatient.

  Harley held up a hand. “Hear me out. I know you’d like it better if I was some happy-go-lucky, life-of-the-party guy and all that, but that isn’t me and never will be. So I worry a little more than the average guy, I admit it. But I’m also more caring and loyal. Everything I do, from the moment I wake up until my head reaches the pillow, is for you. Your wishes are paramount in my thoughts. And when we’re apart, and I need to make a decision, I always ask myself: What would Roxanne do? And you know why? Because of your principles. Because I admire the hell out of you.”

  “If you loved me so much, you’d stop extolling my virtues and listen to what I want. But you never have. And now you’re smiling. Why are you smiling? There’s nothing to smile about.”

  “’Extolling my virtues.’” He gave me a moonstruck look. “I love the way you talk.”

  “That’s nice, but you’re not actually listening.”

  “I am listening.”

  “Really? Then what is it I want?”

  “For me to leave.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Immediately. Not tomorrow. Now.”

  “And this is truly what you want?”

  “It is truly what I want.”

  Harley’s shoulders sagged. “What are you doing, babe?” he said, as if I were a toddler with her hands in the peanut butter jar. “What’re you doing?” No anger. Just the soft puzzled voice of eternal forgiveness.

  “You got yourself a beautiful new condo. Many rooms, cathedral ceilings. Your mail is probably piling up. You need to pack up your stuff now and move back. Now. Are you listening to me at all?”

  “It’s really over for you, isn’t it?” Harley lowered his face, massaged his brow for a moment. “I’m devastated. Just…just stunned.”

  “Do you know how many times we’ve had this exact same conversation? Many times. Many, many, many times. So many. I can’t do this anymore. It’s exhausting and bad for both of us. And the truth is you’re an intruder, and you’ve broken into my house. If you’re not out tonight, I’m calling the cops.”

  Harley covered his face and began to sob.

  “Please, Harley. Don’t.”

  “Do you know how I kept myself alive when you were gone? By thinking about you. Waiting for you to come home so I could get the chance to prove that I finally understood what you wanted. I booked a trip to Bermuda at a five-star hotel. I bought the ring. I believed you’d give me a chance. I’m sorry. I just don’t understand why I’m being punished this way when all I’ve ever done was love you.”

  At that moment, I didn’t either.

  He pushed the ring box toward me. “Take it.”

  I pushed the box back. “I’m going out for an hour. When I come home, you better be out.”

  I grabbed my keys and jacket, got into my car and drove. The traffic was light when I turned onto the parkway west, heading to no particular destination. After a few minutes, I found myself on the same stretch of highway along the Monongahela River, that I had driven with Harley the day he’d asked me to look at the condo. Everything I’d let myself believe was false: It wasn’t the last favor Harley would ever ask; he hadn’t bought that condo; I wasn’t the only offspring of Morris and Leona Garlick.

  This was confirmed when my birth certificate arrived. Harley was gone by then, his basement setup so completely dismantled that the whole episode seemed like a delusion. I imagined telling someone that a man had lived in my basement. Right. And the CIA transmits messages through the fillings in your teeth.

  The baby with my birthdate, born to Leona M. Garlick and Moritz Garlick in Tel Aviv, was named Rose. Under “number of live births” it said “two.” The immigration records, which I’d gotten earlier, stated that Dr. Leona M. Garlick and Moritz Garlick entered the United States with only one child, a girl of twenty-nine months named Roxanne.

  Roxanne Garlick: My name had always been something of a struggle for me. In childhood, there had been the expected taunts: “You stink, Garlick,” which left me breathing into my cupped palms, never knowing if it was my name or me. Later, came The Police, with their hit single, and scores of boys sinking to one knee, wailing, “Rox-anne!” and begging me not to put on my red dress and take my body into the night. All grown up, I learned to say my name, and quickly add: “It’s okay, you can laugh.”

  The trivial hardships I had endured as Roxanne Garlick were not on my mind when I studied these documents. It was the second baby, born with me, and the harshness of that x in my new name, instead of the soft, sinuous s had they chosen to call me “Rosanne.” We will send you into the new world with everything in the past crossed out, it seemed to say. X you will have no religion, no culture, no holidays, no history. X to delete your sister. X to invent yourself, to mark your place on earth.

  Galia was coming soon. In the meantime, I took that harsh x to work, where it joined up with other x’s, first as a cross-stitch border, and then as a possible design for shoulder bags and handouts for the upcoming nursing conference. Because I remembered the men, I went beyond hand-holding, and dancing women; beyond children, ducks, flowers, butterflies, and trees seen in classic cross-stitch and made cars on a train, and elephants in a line, one trunk linked to the next, everyone connected. After I made my cross-stitch muscular, I sat with Les to show him what I’d planned for the nurses and to relax with a little hate-fest.

  It was a bitter afternoon. Outside our huge windows, rattling in their frames, the sky was milky gray. We hated lilac; we hated fonts without serifs—Arial. Geneva. We hated quilted bags and fleur de lis, chamomile tea, P.T. Cruisers. The phone rang. We loved Kayleigh, who picked it up, saying, “Intelligent Designzzzz.” She was so genuinely nice we no longer quarreled in front of her.

  “I just learned my name is really Rose,” I told Les.

  “Rose Garlick?” His nostrils quivered from stifled laughter. “Quite the moniker.”

  “You think I might have changed my last name when I got married, but nope, never considered it. Not for a moment. And you know why? Because Roxanne O’Malley just wasn’t me. Obviously I thought Roxanne Garlick was me, but I was wrong about that, because it’s not. I’m Rose Garlick. I mean, really. It’s like naming your daughter Vulva.”

  Les crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “My name is Sheldon. Sheldon Chietz, a.k.a. Sheldon Shits.”

  “You just made that up to take the stink out of Rose Garlick.” I started to laugh until my ribs ached and it was no longer funny. I said, “Okay, we’re renaming our company. We’re getting rid of the whiff of fundamentalism once and for all and calling it Garlick & Chietz. How memorable is that?”

  “Sheldon Leslie Chietz. Fat boy. ‘Shel-don!’” he called in falsetto. “‘That cake was meant for company!’” Then straightening and transforming himself into a tough guy. “‘I wouldn’t go in there, dude. ’Cause Sheldon Shits.’”

  “Not sure I’ll work that into the logo,” I said.

  Les held up a hand and said, “Enough,” then scuffled his heels on the floor and wheeled his chair away from me. “Subject closed.”

  Watching him, I realized I’d known his name had been Sheldon Chietz, in the way I knew my own history, no actual facts, only an air, an awareness, a snippet of unnamable something overheard, dismissed, tucked away.

  Twelve

  Galia
emailed to ask if she could she bring her friends to dinner. Of course! I responded, then fell into a state of panic. What would I make them for dinner? What would I wear? In anticipation of my dinner with my young Israeli guests, I became self-conscious and stood in front of my full-length mirror for long periods of time, trying on clothes and planning menus. Grilled fish? I tucked a black shirt into jeans, pulled it out so the tails hung long. Changed out of the jeans and tried flared wool pants. Lentil salad with cumin? Roasted vegetables? I experimented with scarves—around my head, my neck, my waist. No matter how I rolled or wrapped these scarves, I ended up looking as if I’d been wounded in battle.

  When the phone rang, I hopped over the heaps of clothing scattered on the floor and answered breathlessly. Dina was on the other end. She’d seen my mother standing alone on Nordau Street. “Oh, Roxanne, it was not so nice, the clothing. For such a great intellectual as your mother to be dirty that way? It is so pity.”

  I unwrapped the scarf still tied around my head and thanked her for telling me. “I’ll talk to Sunny.”

  “Roxanne,” said Dina in a hurried whisper.

  I braced myself, waiting for her to ask when I’d return to care for my mother, to say, without words, “What kind of daughter are you, after all she’s suffered. Have you no heart?”

  “I met a man, the most handsome, you would not believe! I like him very much. Half the year, he live in Canada, and you know, already we are planning a trip to see you, the two of us. We are very excited.”

  “That’s terrific!” I worked my way back to my bedroom, confronting the mess I’d made. I could throw on a Clash T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, for all they’d care. “Where does he live?”

  “Winnipeg. You’ve heard of this city?”

  “Sure, of course.” I lacked the heart to tell her it would be easier to meet in France. “I have a guest room. You can stay with me.”