by Amy Lane
That New Year’s Eve, she asked to go with him, and he refused.
“I’m sorry,” he said, awkward with her for the first time since they’d started having sex. “This thing I do is very personal to me. I would prefer to be there alone.”
She seemed to acquiesce, but Carmen had stubborn moments.
He was not aware she had followed him until he stood, in the same corner, eyes closed, listening for bells that wouldn’t ring.
It was his grieving time.
Walter, she’s beautiful, not that you would care. But her soul is beautiful too. She is funny, and she argues with me in the fun way, and mein Gott, tateleh, my heart is just so lonely without you. And I’m sorry, but I need my people if I can’t have you. I need to go to temple and know the traditions. I need to gather with them and grieve at the terrible, terrible thing they survived. Please, Walter, I just need to know—
“Nathan?” Her voice snapped him from his reverie, from the place and the time when he felt closest to Walter, and he didn’t remember what he said to her, but it was angry and mean—when Nate was never mean.
He finished with, “Go to hell, you stupid girl! I don’t need you, and I don’t want you in my life!”
He had moved to an apartment in December, so she didn’t have to endure the glares of her landlady and so he could feel like an adult in the world, and the next morning, she was at his door.
She looked pitiful and bedraggled, and carried with her steaming bagels for breakfast and a small carton of fresh juice.
He had tossed on his bed that night, unable to sleep after being deprived of his conversation with Walter, and ashamed of his anger, but she didn’t ask for an apology.
“Here,” she said, handing him the bagel. “I know you didn’t eat. Please let me in. I have something to say.”
He nodded, and she walked purposefully into the studio apartment. He’d counted. Two steps to the table, three steps to the couch, five steps to the bed in the corner. If you walked into the bathroom and out again, it was ten steps total—he was sure prisons had bigger cells.
She’d spent an entire night when she had work the next morning sewing him curtains for his one window in the bathroom.
“The bagel is nice,” he said when they were seated at the table with breakfast. “Thank you.”
She nodded, chewing thoughtfully, then swallowed and sighed.
“I love you, Nathan. I look at our elders, the immigrants who survived the war, and I see plenty of people huddling together for comfort, but none of them for love. But I love you. And I think you love me. Now you didn’t ask our first night together, but you knew I wasn’t a virgin, and you didn’t judge and I thought that was nice. And Marion told me you were grieving for someone during the war. So here’s the thing: I can give you New Year’s Eve. I can. Whatever prayers you were saying for her, I can give them to you. But you got to give me everything else. I’ll let you go to Albany four times a year, and I promise not to go see who’s buried there, and you can go say your prayers on New Year’s Eve. But that’s all she gets. Can you live with that? Can you live with me?”
Carmen’s voice, which was Vassar by way of Queens, had hardened for a minute, no-nonsense, and her parents’ accents slipped through. But her hard tones crumbled, and her lower lip wobbled, and that surprising vulnerability—much like Walter’s—peeped through.
He took her hands. “I was asking permission,” he said, which was as much of the truth as he ever told her about this matter. “I was asking permission to be with you.”
Carmen nodded, pulling one hand away to wipe her face with the back of it. She’d worn no makeup this day, and her nose and eyes were puffy already from tears.
“Did you get it?” she asked, sounding like a child. Ah God. Walter, I can’t let her be hurt any more than I could with you.
But he couldn’t lead her on about his intentions, either. “I would need to be buried in Albany,” he said, feeling awful. She recoiled as though shot.
“Nate, that’s not even a Jewish cemetery!”
“No,” he agreed evenly, looking her full in the eyes. Carmen was anything but frum, but that didn’t mean she didn’t go to temple with her parents, and it didn’t mean she didn’t believe that being buried in a Jewish cemetery was integral to having a Jewish afterlife. So now she knew. If they married, it was for life, but not for death. His family, his faith, they could have him now, because he couldn’t make it alone. But he’d promised Walter they could be together. This was how.
She was going to say no, he thought, almost relieved, but then she nodded, wiped her eyes. “Maybe you’ll change your mind,” she said after a moment, and he opened his mouth to end it right there. “Maybe not,” she finished, reminding him very much of his own mother, negotiating with the butcher. “But if you don’t, that’s your loss. I’ll be spending the afterlife with family, our children, our parents. You’ll be spending it in Albany.” She sniffled, truly upset, but then she met his gaze defiantly, and for the first time since the war, he felt of worth. “I can make that bargain.”
Her voice broke, and she began to cry.
He pulled her against his chest and grabbed a paper napkin from their breakfast. She snuggled in, and although she didn’t quite fit, was too soft in some places and too bright in others, he took her anyway.
“I doubt you’ll be lonely,” he said. “Should we invite Marion to the wedding?”
They did, and they invited Hector and Joey, and Ouida, as well.
The night before the ceremony, which would be a modest one, with Carmen’s hand-embroidered chuppa as the only real bit of finery, Carmen went out with her friends for a “hen party” (Marion’s words). Nate hoped Carmen didn’t begrudge him his own friends from the war.
The four of them went out drinking the night before the ceremony, and Nate brought with him two of three packages—flat, taped together, cardboard, labeled Do not bend on both sides. The third of the three would live under his bed for the rest of his life, moving with him from apartment to brownstone, never to be opened.
Ouida spoke passable English and lived in New Jersey now and was one of the few women at the bar they chose. Nate, who had seen her shoot two lovers in the same week, did not marvel that she could frighten away any interloper with a sneer and a curl to her red lip. She seemed determined not to allow anyone to interrupt their celebration.
Although, as the bartender set down their second round of drinks, it was grimly apparent that nobody at the table felt like they were celebrating.
“So Nate,” Hector said, matter-of-fact, downing his Scotch with practice. He’d been going to college for the past two years, and he no longer resembled the young dockworker who would cut a rug in his zoot suit. Such a shame—Nate had been a little in love with that man.
“Yes,” Nate said, his usual quiet smile in place.
“This girl . . . I got to say, Joey and me, we’re pretty surprised it’s a girl.”
Nate swallowed, hard. He thought they might have been.
“Me as well,” he admitted, and he tried to evade Ouida’s perceptive glance as he stared at his own Scotch.
“You cannot compromise with your lovers,” Ouida said. “You can’t sleep with someone because of what they can give you, as opposed to what you should be giving them.”
Nate grimaced. Well, Ouida would know. “Guys,” he said, peering sideways at Joey and Hector. Well, if they weren’t as he suspected, would they even know what they were looking at?
He pulled out his packages and gave one to Hector and one to Ouida. “These . . .” He sighed. “These are parts of me I’m giving up, marrying Carmen. I need you to keep them safe.” He watched Joey snatch the package from Hector and then dig into it with eager fingers. Nate reached out and smacked Joey’s hand.
“If you value . . . anything, you won’t open those here,” he said, and Joey stopped, an expression of comic dismay crossing his face.
Hector turned to his roommate and patted his cheek, and
that was when Nate saw it: tenderness. There was tenderness in that gesture—not the brisk kidding of buddies, but gentleness, a certain affectionate understanding.
Nate knew then that his guess had been completely on target, and these men, who had shared his bunk back at Menwith Hill, were now sharing something completely different together.
He figured the pictures would be the closest thing to a wedding present he’d ever give them.
“Oh,” Joey said now, embarrassed. Then, being Joey, and having a heart as big as the world: “We’ll keep your heart safe for you, okay, Nate? Promise. You make Carmen happy; we’ll keep this part secret.”
Nate picked up his drink and held it aloft, nodding at each of his friends in turn. “To Walter,” he said softly, one of the few times his name would be said aloud from that moment on.
“To Walter,” they said, all of them with reverence.
They clinked glasses and drank.
Nate and Carmen were married the next day.
Fifty-nine years together—not bad, really. They’d been good years, mostly. Nate had his four trips a year to Albany and his one night at New Year’s, listening for bells that would have stopped tolling in 1945, if they ever had rung.
He didn’t tell Carmen about his almost-daily conversations with his dead lover. He kept Walter apprised of his children and his business, then his grandchildren, then his retirement. He told him about Hector and Joey, and how they passed away within a week of each other, and how their relatives were scandalized to discover that there was only one bed in their two-bedroom apartment and a series of decidedly uncomfortable photographs on the walls of the empty room, which they used as a library. He mentioned Ouida, who married one man and loved him until she died of lung cancer in the late eighties.
When Carmen passed away, Nate had been lost and sad. She’d been his best friend, his confidante in everything but Walter, and he’d missed her. He’d taken many portraits of her and their family as time had progressed, though. The Carmen of his memory was a grandmother, with a full life under her belt. The Walter he still loved was as young and as full of potential as Nate was, the unlived part of him, the part that lay boxed up under his bed in the black-and-white photos that his family would probably find at his death and wonder at.
But young or not, he was sure Walter had been trying to comfort him for the past six years since she’d gone. He’d told Walter that the hard thing was the thought that they wouldn’t meet in the afterlife, even to be friends. But then, she would have her family and her parents, and Nate’s family and parents. Nate would be content to have Walter in the afterlife, as he would have been to have Walter, and Walter only, in life. So in those years was a reconciling. Nate would have Walter, and Carmen would be surrounded by love. It was not everything, but it was all he could do.
This year he’d had the stroke.
And a certain amount of relief had dawned on him. All this time, dedicated to keeping Walter a secret in his heart, and now there was no way he wouldn’t be. Walter was his, and no one could take that away.
Nate sat, swathed in his heaviest coat and a leather hat with a lamb’s wool lining, and listened for the bells.
Blaine shook his shoulder slightly, trying to get his attention.
“You understand, don’t you, Zayde?” he asked anxiously, and Nate didn’t have to remember.
Of course I understand. Of course I do. I want this boy for you. I want your happiness. I want you to have all the things I did not, the things I kept secret from the world.
“It’s just that I love him.” Blaine’s voice grew thick, and Nate damned his inability to pat his grandson’s cheek. “I love him so much. And I didn’t even know, I didn’t even say the word gay in my head. But Tony—I mean, you’ve met him, Zayde. He’s something. He’s so proud. And I want to be like him, right? Proud and brave. You understand that, don’t you?”
I’m so proud of you. You’re so brave. Isn’t he brave, Walter? Don’t you think he’s amazing?
Yeah, Nate. He’s just like you.
Walter? Nate turned his head then, and there he was. He wore a camel coat with a little snap-brim news cap and had a tweed suit on under the coat. His eyes were that amazing turquoise that Nate hadn’t seen since.
You didn’t want the fedora? Nate asked, puzzled.
Walter shrugged and smiled shyly. I haven’t grown into it yet, he apologized. Maybe after a few years of us together, I’ll be big enough for the fedora.
Nate smiled at him, feeling tears behind his eyes. It’s your hat, tateleh. Heaven forbid you not wear the one you want.
Walter looked away wistfully, toward the sound of the revelers many blocks away. Have you heard them yet, Nate? The bells that ring for both of us? Because as much as I appreciated the dreidels on my grave site, I wouldn’t mind hearing the church bells.
No, Walter. My God, it’s good to see you. Nate wanted to get up and embrace him, but Blaine was asking him something first.
“You understand, right, Zayde?”
Poor boy. He sounded desperate, and Nate wanted to give him something, anything, before he went to hold Walter. It had been so long. He pushed and pulled at his lungs, at the muscles in his face, thinking I can do this, I can tell him! when suddenly, he heard them, the vibrations pulsing through the soles of his feet and up into the soul of his body.
Nate? Nate! Do you hear—
I hear them, I hear them! You were right! They’re ringing! I hear them.
Oh no! He needed to kiss Walter, right now, before the bells stopped. They had no traditions, not even a picture; they needed to do this.
But he couldn’t just leave Blaine, either.
“Zayde?” A sound of upset, of sadness in Blaine’s voice. Well, Nate couldn’t help that. This new generation had so many of the things Nate’s generation had fought for. Blaine could have this, Nate was sure of it.
“Alz,” he said, forcing the word with everything in his body. He smiled with all of his face when it should have been impossible and patted Blaine’s hand with his weak hand, as it grasped the strong one. “God give you alz.” All family, here and in the afterlife, so Blaine would not have to make the choice Nate had made years ago and was about to carry through.
Blaine turned shining eyes toward him, and Nate’s eyes closed. In a breath, then two, he was free of his body altogether. Strong and hale, he stood and stepped around Blaine to haul Walter into his arms. He smelled good—healthy—of milled soap and aftershave, and Nate buried his nose in those clean, orange curls and breathed again.
The church bells were chiming loud enough to drown out Blaine’s sobs. Tony was running down the block, the coffee in his hands, and Nate forgot about them, because they had their own life to live. Nate didn’t any longer. He had Walter, warm and willing, stubble rasping Nate’s cheeks as they tasted each other, devoured each other, held each other’s faces and kissed like starving men, feeding from the other’s soul. The kiss ended, and he pulled back, the heat from Walter’s body seeping through this frigid January morning, making him smile.
“Took you long enough,” Walter said, grinning to show he wasn’t mad.
“I missed you so badly,” Nate told him, closing his eyes against tears. No tears now. He finally had everything he wanted. He had alz.
But Walter’s lips were salty too, and Nate opened his mouth to his kiss, and the part of his heart he’d thought was dead, the part buried under the bed in black-and-white photos, was now alive, in breathing color. Around them, through their awakening senses, the sound of the long-awaited church bells baptized them with the sound of hope.
My grandparents were spies in the war.
I’ve said this more than once, both on my blog and in person, but I’ve always thought it’s an amazing thing. My children read about the war in history books and I get to tell them, “Your great-grandmother and great-grandfather both served in the OSS in WWII!”
And it sounds great!
But it’s also a little ambiguous.
My grandfather wrote two adventure stories based on his time with the OSS—but neither of them gave a whole lot of detail about what he actually did. In one story, he was flying from Europe to America or the Philippines with a plane full of photographs to be analyzed when he was shot down over Greece. He was rescued by fishermen who stole his wallet (I swear, this is the story he told on the DVD that the Living History people recorded) and lived for six months in Greece, covertly helping the Greek resistance. During that time, he delivered a baby next to the SS Headquarters on the island, and was hidden in a wheat bin when the officers came to ask what the ruckus was.
I mean, how could you not think that’s brilliant and amazing?
The real question, of course, is whether or not it’s true.
Given how many times Grandpa put that story into print or told the story on film, I’m thinking it was the truth—or at least part of the truth. Grandpa certainly worked for the OSS in both WWII and Korea, and he was definitely declared MIA during WWII. He used a code name, because when he and Grandma met, he told her that his name was Phillip, and her family was very confused when after the war, she married Kenneth instead. But when I was researching this very book, I saw a list of the OSS officers who were sent in to help reclaim Greece from the Axis during a very tricky political/military maneuver, and I saw the name “Alex Phillips.” You may wonder what this has to do with anything—but . . .
But seeing that Grandpa named his one son Phillip (and one of his daughters Monica Phil), it’s apparent he has a habit of naming his offspring after his code names.
And my mother’s name is Alexa Ken.
So you can see my skepticism with some of the cover story for why he was in Greece—but I don’t doubt that he was there, and given that he made his living after the war as a documentary filmmaker, I don’t doubt that he was a photographer during the war. So, in his honor, when I wanted a character who flew missions, I didn’t make that character a fighter pilot; I made him a photographer, and then I went about looking up how that photographer would take pictures from miles up in the air.