The bathroom seemed suitable. It provided privacy, quiet, and an alibi in the hour of need. But the lighting must have been different, because this time I couldn't make out the impressions left by the pen that had seemed so legible just a few hours earlier.
Some of Mom's makeup was on the shelf next to the mirror. I tried to shade in the impressions with her eyebrow pencil, but all I succeeded in doing was blacking out the first four or five words on the page. I then tried carefully drawing the edge of a lipstick over the page, but this didn't accomplish anything, either. Finally I sprinkled some pink powder blush over the lines and scratches - and this time I succeeded.
It was a letter to someone whose name had already been blocked out by the eyebrow pencil. I had an unconquerable urge to copy what remained, perhaps so that I wouldn't be tempted in the morning to think that it had never existed. I went to my room and came back with a pen and paper. After an hour of painstaking work I had deciphered almost all the words. I've kept the whole thing to this day.
"... even if you deny it, I feel that the lapses ... are longer, the hours stolen. Your impatience immediately rubs off on me: ... patience against your impatience. That's why I sometimes talk so much, laugh… things. So there won't be silence, so there won't be emptiness.
And so, worn out by the crazy telephone chase to arrange a rendezvous, confused by the encounter itself, and full of guilt about Ronny sitting home and waiting ... burst into tears.
So this is your big moment - you hold my cheeks in your warm palms, stare ... my eyes and touch me as ... know: with sensitivity, with understanding, and, most of all, with wisdom.
But it only helps a little, for ... already mature enough and know the truth - that beyond the denials, the attempts to hide it, the promises and vows, you are on your way out. It's not the first time, but it's the most painful one ... you have something that's impossible to learn and impossible to ask and impossible to understand, a kind of talent for love that makes you into such a wise lover, that so wonderful and wise a lover will never ... again.
... from your car, and I quickly ran home down the dark street, I knew I would have to be strong, to prepare myself for what was to come. "Farewell my wise lover," I thought as I ran, "lover who will never come again, oh last, wise lover ...”
There was nothing more. Perhaps no more was ever written; perhaps it was written in a different notebook. I thought about Dad chasing the length and breadth of America just to support us, and about the house, which suddenly seemed neglected, and about myself, never finding her at home.
When the anger subsided, the sense of revelation remained. Suddenly I understood that Mom had been more than those homey things, those protective, warm things I had become accustomed to seeing in her. She was also a person, a woman, a female like the ones I see at the tables in the library, whose décolletage I inspect as they bend over their books; or like the ones who look at me when I wander around after work, on the way to the station; or like the ones who stand in the streets around Times Square sheathed in short, short dresses; or like the ones who sit next to me on the bus, so careful not to let their thighs touch mine; or like Debbie, or Linda before her, or fat Lisa (the neighbors' daughter - I told you about her once, when I discovered the pubic lice and you gave me a bottle of copper solution); or the others whom it was easier or harder to lay, depending on the circumstances.
And everything all together was awful, terrible, and at the same time curious, and filled with despair. I put the notebook back where I'd found it and hid the page I'd copied in the gap between the dresser and the wall, behind a piece of wallpaper that was coming unglued. Afterwards I lay in bed, wakeful and restless.
*
The next morning I wanted to go back and reread what I had copied, but something stopped me. It was easier to make do with what I remembered, which had become a little fuzzy and not so organized. Dad was still asleep, overcome with that fatigue that people bring with them from long journeys. Mom was again busy doing something in the depths of the basement. Aunt Ida was wandering around in circles on the lawn. I took some honey cake and an apple out of the kitchen and quietly tried to make myself scarce.
On the way I again saw the brochure from The Society for Proper Nutrition and Care of the Body, this time in the garbage can in the garage. I took it out, folded it over twice, and stuffed it in my pocket. I wondered whether Mom had shown Dad the riddle, or had just told him about her winning the cruise. I turned over in my head the idea of suggesting that he buy an additional ticket and go with her. The possibility that the Caribbean cruise had been plotted especially to get back at her went from being a nocturnal musing to a daylight threat that plagued me all the way in on the bus.
She was already waiting for me at the library. No, not the monstrous Ms. Yardley, but the woman with the patched jeans, Miss Doherty, this time wearing a flared skirt and flashing me a smile of the whitest, prettiest, healthiest teeth I had ever seen.
"What now?" I asked, a little impolitely.
She bent toward me from within a cloud of the fresh scent of morning and said in this special voice, as if we were already good friends, "Listen, there's a book I must, simply must get hold of, and they want me to fill out forms and wait three days until somebody finds it and gives permission for it to be brought up from the basement, and meantime I'll be wasting several days sitting and waiting when I could be photocopying what I need and going home...”
"Where is your home?"
"Hackensack," she said, throwing me a straight glance behind which there was a trace of hesitation.
That was a surprise. For one, that kind of address didn't fit with the job she'd found for herself. And besides, there must have been at least five libraries between here and where she lived, no less good or accessible.
But I agreed to help, anyway. It turned out she hadn't filled out the forms. We stood there for fifteen minutes and answered a questionnaire about the purpose of the request, and the identity and education of the person making the request. She said she had a masters' degree in chemistry from Stanford, but that since it was tough to find work in her field, she was working for a company that assisted institutions and scientists who needed academic material but didn't have time to comb the libraries.
It's amazing how complicated things become simple when somebody personally takes care of them. I went to Ms. Yardley, who signed in the space that said "Recommendation of Catalog Librarian" without looking, so as not to miss a word of the new Publisher's Weekly that had arrived not fifteen minutes before. Then I went to the Security Department, where they checked the list of nutcases and didn't find any Dohertys, just one Duarte who in 1982 had eaten half a pound of leaflets off a shelf of brochures and had been immediately hospitalized. I photocopied the signed form on the second floor and went off to see Mr. K.
He sat alone, his collar open and his tie loosened. He was reading something, his brow furrowed. Behind his thick, round glasses were dark islands of fatigue. I thrust out my hand to knock on the open door, then stopped. Suddenly I realized that what looked like a careless pose was really the posture of pain, that the furrowed brow expressed concern. I felt out of place and, as usual, like I was beginning to stick too much. I tiptoed quietly away.
Miss Doherty was waiting in the Catalog Room. I gave her the form. She thanked me so sweetly that I felt badly for not having completed the task.
"There's still one signature missing," I was forced to explain. "Mr. K.'s. He sits upstairs, on the third floor. Wait a few minutes before you go up there...”
Worry seemed to cloud her face for an instant - or perhaps it was my imagination. She said hesitantly, "... and I can go up to him, just like that?"
"Yes," I said, and I guess I got a little carried away, "he'll be glad to help...”
"You know him well...”
"Sure."
She stared at me, biting her lower lip. Suddenly she said, "Maybe it's not worth bothering him," as she folded the form. "After all, I've still got a bunch o
f books from the previous list...” When she was a few paces away from my counter, she turned and said, "Thanks anyway," then vanished into the Reading Room.
There was something strange about this - or maybe not. I couldn't decide. In any case, a few minutes later I found an excuse to follow her. The excuse was to wade through a pile of old cards from pre-computer days. They were crammed into long wooden drawers; I had to read each card and make sure the information on it had been entered into the computer before the card was destroyed. "What's this spirit of volunteerism?" asked Ms. Yardley suspiciously. "There's no work in here," I explained, "and it's a shame for me to sit here and be bored when I could be making progress checking the cards."
She looked over the Catalog Room, which really was empty just then, and released me with a nod of her head.
I pulled out two of the most crowded drawers and set them on a distant table from where I could see Miss Doherty. I took out a fistful of cards and laid them out in front of me, spread out the computer list, and sat down to watch her.
She worked steadily, but it seemed her thoughts wandered elsewhere: her lips tautened and slackened in concentration. Her hair was disheveled. Her face was alive, glowing with some energy that made it so pretty I couldn't take my eyes off it. The whole time her hands were busy as if they were independent, detached from her head: they opened books, located articles according to the list in front of her, marked them off for photocopying with strips of colored paper that she stuck between the pages. After she had accumulated eight or ten books, she got up and carried them to the photocopy machine, which was being used by a boy in a school blazer. She put the books down on a nearby table and approached the photocopier. The boy became aware of her presence and smiled apologetically. She smiled back and waved her hand at him in a gesture that said, `Don't hurry.' The boy smiled at her again and walked around to the other side of the machine to collect the pages he had copied. For a moment he stood between us, completely blocking my view. When he moved - she was no longer there.
I got up so noisily that one of the librarians tapped on her counter in protest. I went to the photocopy machine and investigated it from all sides. The boy was still there, collating his pages.
"Whose books are these?" I asked, pointing to the pile that Miss Doherty had left behind. He looked at me blankly.
"Some lady," he said, nodding his head in the direction of the door that led to the stacks.
I went inside. I passed by the familiar signs: "Stacks - Section A" and "Authorized Personnel Only". Around a bend in the corridor, by the time clock and the employees' cards, I saw her.
I dropped back into the niche where the fire extinguisher was kept - probably the same one from which Ms. Yardley had laid an ambush for me the day she'd dragged me out of there to see Mr. K. Then I carefully peeked out. She was standing with her back to me, holding something square in her hand - a piece of cardboard, or maybe an envelope. It was hard to see in the dim light that filtered in behind us. I contained my curiosity and waited quietly for her to turn around.
She didn't turn around. Instead, she did the last thing I expected her to do: she bent over, grabbed the hem of her skirt, and pulled it up to her waist. She was the most sensuous woman I had ever seen. Her body still had the firmness of a pretty college coed, together with the ripe and elegant femininity of a fair lady from Hackensack. Her legs were long, slender, and tanned; and her buttocks, barely swathed in a pair of flimsy, transparent panties, were like the marble buttocks of a statue at the Metropolitan. Faint with excitement, I watched as she inserted the square, stiff object into the front of her panties, let her skirt fall, smoothed it down, and walked back toward the door. When she passed me I froze, not breathing. After she'd gone, I waited a while - then went back out.
She was already on the way to her table. I watched her gather all her books, surrender them to the reserve shelf, turn toward the door, and wait patiently for the guard to search her bag for stolen books. For a moment I toyed with the idea of going over to him and whispering, "The underwear, check the underwear," but that was only momentary mischief. Whatever she had hidden it wasn't a book, and anyway, the library managed just fine without my help. I went back to the cards, but I couldn't concentrate. The vision of her flashed before my eyes again and again. I asked myself what had excited me so. The transparent panties? The tanned legs, which ended in marble whiteness? Or maybe it was just the mystery of the stacks, with their musty smell and the blend of darkness and light.
I went on to think about what she had stolen. A page she'd torn out? But what would have been simpler than to fold it and stick it in her wallet? The binding of a book? No, the librarians at the Reserve Desk would have noticed if they had gotten a book back with no binding. A card? What kind of card could be too dangerous for a guard to see when he was checking her bag at the exit?
I remembered the way she had refused to go and see Mr. K. Somehow, that was even more suspicious, since whatever she had hidden in her underwear was likely to be her private secret (of course, I thought of Mom's notebook) while the reason she had taken off when I'd suggested she go up to his room to get his signature might have something to do with the library, or with Mr. K. himself. I wondered whether I should go tell him, and what the chances were that he'd pass it off, the way Mom had. Then I asked myself how it was that for seventeen-and-a-half years I had thought that all the biggest secrets in the world had centered around me, when in one week I had found myself caught up in so many other people’s secrets.
*
Like the books say, in the end it was all up to fate. It was toward the end of the day, the Catalog Room had already emptied out, and Ms. Yardley had disappeared into the ladies' room for her daily fifteen minutes of pre-exit preparation. Mrs. Kahn was struggling with some long and complex report that needed a signature, so I, of course, volunteered. I went upstairs with it and knocked on his door. This time he looked a little better. The same dark bags the color of worn leather were still under his eyes, but his eyes themselves shone.
"Tomorrow I'll have the answer," he said the minute he saw me.
"It's no longer important," I rested the heavy report on his desk. As he was reading it I thought: how do I get him to drop this agitator thing, now that I know it's something top secret that's related to Dad's work? "After all, it's only a washing machine...” I ventured.
"I'm not sure," he said. It was clear that the slide had awakened something stronger in him than the desire to explain to me the diagram on it. I felt I absolutely couldn't leave until I had discovered what that `something stronger' was. I sat on the edge of the chair opposite him. Not only did he not object, but he got up, came over to clear the chair of papers and books, then went back around to his side of the desk. Getting up had caused him some pain, and he grimaced as he signed the report.
"As for this matter of the...” I began, but he beat me to it and asked in Hebrew: "How long have you been here?"
"Six years," I answered in English, "before that we were in Africa."
"The Foreign Service?" he insisted on asking in Hebrew.
"Something like that," I said uncomfortably (we've never talked about this, but Hebrew is my mother tongue on paper only. I never learned it in any of the schools I went to, and I certainly never learned it from Mom, who has full command of Rumanian, French, and English, but who turns to Dad every time she has to fill out a form in Hebrew) "and anyway, I have to go back next year...”
For the first time the absent-minded look was wiped off his face, replaced by one of concentration and interest. "Go back?"
"The army."
He nodded in understanding. "What will you do?"
I shrugged my shoulders, embarrassed.
"You'll survive," he said.
"From what they show on TV it looks horrible."
"It doesn't necessarily have to be. You don't have to do that."
"But the Israeli army is different."
"I know," he said with surety, "I served in it."
/> "Did you make aliya?" I asked, barely concealing my surprise.
"No, just volunteered for the IDF. I served as a clerk, though. Something small and insignificant."
Suddenly I realized something, a small but important truth.
"I won't be able to be small and insignificant. I'll fit in so well I'll stand out, even if I hate what I'm doing...”
He opened the drawer and took out a small tray full of blue pills. "That has nothing to do with the army. The need to stand out is something unto itself."
Something about his tone of voice reminded me of the times Mom and Dad would leave me with you for the weekend, and the two of us would sit in your work room and talk. I thought back to one talk in particular, when we discussed all the things I'd have to get over besides my need to stand out: the tendency to stick to someone, for example, or the need to be liked. You'd explained that these were just different permutations of the same problem.
Mr. K. poured mineral water from a bottle, placed a pill on his tongue, washed it down with some water and wiped his mouth. For a few minutes we sat opposite each other without speaking. I didn't want to go yet. I tried to think of something to say to steer the conversation back to the slide, so that I could ask for it back without seeming overanxious. I remembered the riddle, and I recited it.
He covered his eyes with his very thin fingers and thought. After a minute or two he said, "Lemon is fruit. Honey is food. Sour isn't sweet."
"Are you sure?"
He thought for another minute. "That's the only solution," he said with certainty, and got up.
Reluctantly, I got up, too. He opened the door for me.
"I'll go with you, in case Ms. Yardley starts up again." He walked ahead with uneven steps, and it wasn't clear whether he was in pain or just impatient. I'd barely caught up to him by the time he'd reached the door to the Catalog Room. Before he left, he clasped my shoulder and said to Ms. Yardley, "He's all right, he was with me."
The Last of the Wise Lovers Page 6