by Robin Greene
k
I awake with my book still open on the bed and my bedside light still on. I check the clock, but the illuminated numbers don’t register. It’s late Thursday before midnight or early Friday morning. I close the book, careful to place a bookmark between its pages, switch off the light, and fall into a dream—or more accurately, a memory of a dream—where I’m a young girl swimming at Rockaway Beach.
The orange sun illuminates the lower sky and bleeds into the Atlantic. The horizon has surrendered to its magnet and is yanking the sun to some impossible, invisible place. Someone is calling to me, and as I raise my head, I see my mother on the beach sweep her arm toward me, gesturing to get out of the water. I will ride the next wave closer to shore, then the next one, and the next one, until I land on the beach. I duck beneath the approaching foam crest and feel myself forced forward among seaweed and salt. The water is warm, but as I break through the surface into air, I’m cold, very cold.
My bed is wet. I’ve had a dream. I’m in Queens, it’s the middle of the night, and Dennis is snoring in his bed, against the opposite wall. He’s a mouth-breather with a deviated septum, so when he tries to breathe through his nose, he makes an awful sound. The cold wet I feel is urine; my bed is soaked.
I get up quietly, feel my tears come. I’m too old to pee my bed. I enter my parents’ dark room and go over to my father’s side of the bed. “Daddy,” I whisper, shaking him gently. He turns toward me, opens his eyes. Everything rests in softest shadow, but for a streak of slanted streetlight entering through the window and marking the wood floor near my mother’s bedside.
“What do you need, sweetie? My father’s voice is thick, smooth.
“I’m wet,” I say. “I need help.”
My father nods and swings into action. Covers off, feet on the floor, he wears only his boxer shorts. We walk from the room into Dennis’s and my shared bedroom. My father goes to my bed, lifts off all the wet linen and the blanket—which is dry. He puts the blanket on our nearby toy-chest and balls up the wet sheet and stuffs it into the large hamper in our bedroom closet. Next, he opens my dresser drawer and pulls out a fresh nightgown. He lifts off my old nightgown, and, while my arms are still raised, lowers the fresh new one over me. It smells good. I feel soft, dry, comfortable.
Standing by the toy-chest, I feel my pink winter quilt, grateful that it isn’t wet. In the hall, my father turns on a light and finds fresh sheets. He also finds a waterproof liner—not a sheet exactly, but it’s a rubbery plastic thing, covered in flannel—that he’s used before.
I wait on the side as he makes up my bed. He says nothing, but he’s not full of judgment. He won’t punish me, tell me that I’m a bad girl, or that I’m too old for such accidents. His motions are generous, kind. There’s no sharpness, no incriminating shame or subtext to the way he tucks in the sheet corners or opens the closet. Only the soft shadows of my father’s gentle love.
“I was swimming at the beach,” I whisper, standing by him. “In a dream.”
My father lifts me onto the cool, dry bed. He’s placed the rubber sheet beneath the fresh cotton one.
“At first, the water was warm, but then Mommy called me, and it happened.”
He kisses my forehead. His lips are warm. “Go back to sleep, sweetie. I love you.”
I wrap my grateful arms around his neck, put my cheek against his scratchy cheek. “I love you too, Daddy.”
In bed after my father leaves, I try to stay awake because every time I close my eyes, I’m swimming at Rockaway Beach. I slip from my lovely bed, the rubber sheet feeling a little stiff, and pad barefoot, quietly to the bathroom, to sit on the toilet to pee. Which I do, and then close the door before I flush. In bed again, I try to have a different dream, but the ocean persists.
I pray to God to keep me dry. If Dennis knows that I have peed my bed, he’ll tease me until I cry. My father, I know, will tell my mother not to reprimand me, so it is only Dennis I must worry about.
I sit up in bed, watching the shadow animals on the wall as each passing car on Francis Lewis Boulevard throws shapes against it. They look prehistoric, large crane-necked creatures with huge eyes. They move across the wall, then disappear. I count them, give them names like Jekyll, Star-Face, Mister Monster…
By morning, I’m asleep. It’s Saturday. Dennis has rolled the portable TV on its cart from our parents’ room into our room. He’s set it up by his bed, and the sound is very low.
“Can I watch, too?” I ask, coming awake.
Dennis smiles, pats his bed. I wrap my pink quilt around me, carefully getting up from my bed so as not to crinkle the rubber sheet, and join Dennis. We sit together, backs against the wall, and watch the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
k
Morning. Friday. As the memory of my dream starts to fade, I rise, do my morning routine, and go upstairs to my study to write. My dream has taken me to a creative place.
Turning on Morning Edition in the bedroom, mostly for some noise in the silent house, I’m now writing about my dream—enjoying myself, fingers tapping out words, the screen filling with gray-black, simple-bodied Calibri.
Then the phone rings. I turn around to see my screen: Mom; I think of not taking the call, letting her leave a message, postponing whatever bad news awaits me. This call will ruin my day, I think selfishly but then answer.
“Hey, Mom. Good morning. What’s up?”
“Caught you at a bad time?” she asks, but this courtesy, I recognize, will likely be the preamble for another request for money.
“Writing, Mom. Just working on stuff.” I hit Control Save and lean back in my chair, no longer looking at the screen but instead out the window, blinds open, to see the top of our Bradford Pear, a tree we planted as a family when the boys were small.
I drift back. We’d driven Jethro, our large Chevy van, to a commercial nursery in Angier, NC, about forty-five minutes up Ramsey Street, and put this and a second Bradford Pear sapling into the back on a sky-blue tarp. Our two boys sang old Beatles songs on the way home.
“You want me to call you later?” My mother asks. And I realize my silence.
“No,” I say, “it’s okay. We can talk. What’s up?”
“Long story, Rae,” my mom begins and pauses.
I don’t encourage her; a few seconds follow, perfectly timed for a drag on the cigarette she no longer smokes.
“Dennis,” she begins, pauses again. “He went back for his post-op check-up, and they found that his lungs weren’t clear. Blood clots—in his lungs. They went in again, had to. I almost can’t take it. But it was a procedure rather than surgery. And the good news is that they got them out. Dennis is okay. Recovering at home. On new medication.” Pause yet again. I look at the computer screen, distracting myself by looking at the subject, verb, prepositional phrases, and other grammatical elements of the last sentence on the screen.
“You there?” my mother asks.
“Of course.”
“I thought I lost you. Dropped call. Anyway, you know that I asked you for money last time, Rae?”
“I remember, Mom.”
“Well, it wasn’t enough. I hate to ask this. You know I do.”
I don’t jump in but rather check out a sentence I’ve typed on the screen: There the boy slept, unconscious of the scene around him. “There” is used as an adverb. It can never be the subject of the sentence. I don’t like the sentence and tell myself I’ll have to revise it. It puts me a bad mood, in fact, suggesting other bad sentences that will need revision.
I get up and begin pacing—first my study, then into the hall to Cal’s old bedroom, to Will’s old bedroom, and into the master. Jake is on the rug, open-eyed, alert, but not moving.
“I need $500, Rae. We have no money for food, gas. Could you lend us that? Aunt Lena—I’ve spoken with her—has her own problems. I have no one, no one to ask. I didn’t want to make this call, Rae. But I have no one.”
“I don’t have that kind of money, Mom. I can’t help.”
This is what falls from my mouth. Two simple sentences: subject-verb, with a contracted verb and the adverb “not” used twice. Both sentences are lies.
I’ve taken off my slippers, and I’m doing a sort of slow Buddhist-style walking meditation, painstakingly planting each foot—toes, balls of the feet, arches, heel—on the hardwood floor. My walk is like a sentence, I think.
“But I can’t get to work, Rae. You don’t understand. I need to buy food and gas to get to work.”
I sigh. And quickly in that single breath, relent. “Mom,” I say, “I’ll wire you $200. You don’t have to pay me back. But that’s it.”
“Make it $300; I’ll pay it back,” my mother’s voice insists.
“No,” I say firmly. “$200. No loan. I’ll get dressed, go to Western Union. The same deal as last time, yes? Any location in Tamarac—they’ll call when the money arrives, yes?”
Silence for a moment. I hear my mother thinking, then, “Thank you. If it’s all you can afford. Thanks, Rae. I appreciate your help.”
I take a very slow step and struggle to find my balance. “Call me in two hours if you don’t receive the money.”
“Okay, Rae. I’m sure I’ll get the money, and yes, we’ll speak again soon. You know I love you. Very much. I always appreciate your help. We all do.”
“I love you, too, Mom.”
“Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.” I slow-walk back to my laptop, save without reading over what I’ve written, and close down the machine. I’m done writing for now. I go to the bathroom for a quick shower, then dress. In a few minutes, I’m backing Ruby out of the driveway, off to the Western Union counter.
Returning within a half-hour—no glitches, money taken off my debit card, forms completed in triplicate, receipt in hand—I realize that I’m pretty beat, even though it’s still early. I unlock the front door, Jake greets me, and we both go out into the sunroom, where I collapse on the couch. Jake sprawls on the carpeted floor by me; the morning is cool, but already the day’s heat is beginning to intrude. I feel my heart race, a pressure, a tightness in my chest, a shortness of breath. I close my eyes, expecting tears, but nothing comes.
I think of my mother’s suffering, her desperation. Why didn’t I give her the entire $500? Why did I lie? Yet why did I give her anything when I’d promised myself never again to give her money? I feel horrible, guilty, and there’s no one to talk to. So, I just sit.
twelve
My brother started gambling in college when he joined his fraternity, Pi Lambda Phi. At least that’s the story my parents told me. I don’t remember much because I was so busy with my own crazy adolescence, and neither my mom nor dad ever wanted to talk about Dennis’s gambling problem.
I remember once coming home after high school. Dennis had recently been home from college—he attended Drexel University in Philadelphia—for Thanksgiving, and Mom had just discovered that some of her good jewelry was missing from her lingerie drawer. Two detectives sat on the couch in our formal living room. We never entertained there, and for many years, we keep plastic slipcovers over the couch’s blue silk upholstery. At some point, however, the plastic was removed, and though the furniture was very outdated, the couches hadn’t faded and didn’t show wear. My family always relaxed in the den, decorated in Early American style, where we usually sat in front of the large TV console.
I joined the group in the living room and watched my mom’s face as she realized that my brother, not a stranger, had stolen from her. No break-in had taken place because there’d been no forced entry. And the thief knew where to look—and had expertly hidden the crime, closed jewelry cases, drawers, stuffed underwear on top of missing things to disguise the theft.
“No, we don’t want to press charges,” my mom told an overweight detective who sat uncomfortably in his tight uniform.
“Edna,” my dad said, “maybe that’s not for the best.”
But my mom gave my dad a look, and he shut up.
“My wife is right. This is a family matter. We’ll talk to our son, detective.”
Unable to put two and two together, I asked what was going on, but my dad only turned to me and said, “Later, Rae. Go to your room. This doesn’t concern you.”
“But…” I began. Then my mom looked up at me, her face stained with tears—mascara and eyeliner bleeding—so I walked first into the kitchen to get a couple of cookies, pour a glass of milk, then retreated to my bedroom.
The next day, a Saturday, my father took me aside during breakfast—my mom still asleep—and told me that Dennis was gambling at college and that this was the second time he’d been caught stealing. He was a political science major, and a group of them had joined a fraternity in September. There was a dog track nearby, and the fraternity brothers would regularly go there to gamble. Dennis had also stolen some of his tuition money they’d put aside in an account to which he had access. How much he had stolen, I wasn’t told.
We sat in the sunny kitchen at the table. Outside, I could see that Meadowbrook Pond had partially frozen over. My mom and my brother were late sleepers; usually my dad and I shared breakfast together. When my mom woke, she’d usually eat with Newsday, the Long Island daily, as her only companion. If left alone, Dennis would sleep until noon.
My dad worked most Saturdays and always left for the store by 9:15. Typically, I walked to the synagogue for the second Shabbat service at the Orthodox temple. At this point, I considered myself an atheist, but I enjoyed the ritual of attending the service and the community of prayer.
“What did he take?” I wanted to know. I’d made French toast from yesterday’s challah, and a mound of slices lay on a plate in the center of the kitchen table. I stabbed my fork into a couple, putting them on my plate. Although we no longer kept a kosher house, vestiges remained: my plate was a dairy, not a meat, plate. The same with the silverware. We had meat and dairy service and kept them separate—long-held habits from our earlier, more religious days.
“I’m not sure. Mom doesn’t want to talk about it. She told me not to tell you. Just to say that the incident is over. She’ll handle it. It won’t happen again.” Although my dad was a big eater, he stood up from the table, with many pieces of French toast left on the plate. He wore a pink button-down shirt and a pair of gray wool slacks. He picked up his suit jacket, hung over a side-chair, and carried it to the hall closet in our large foyer, where he put it on, along with his heavy cloth overcoat. “I’m off,” he said, buttoning up and walking over to hug me. He bent down, planted a kiss on my cheek. I was wearing my flannel nightgown and wooly sock slippers. “Love you. Don’t mention what I’ve said about Dennis to Mom. She’s already upset.”
I gave my dad a brief hug. “Have a good day. What time you coming home?”
“Early. Seven. We finished inventory yesterday. No need to stay late. Probably going out with Evelyn and Frank. Dinner, then cards at their house.”
I walked over to the front door, feeling the winter chill as I opened it and then again as the storm door slammed shut behind him. I watched my dad walk down the concrete path, then the brick steps that led to the driveway. He unlocked the door, got into his Buick Skylark. I stood in the doorway, looking into the empty suburban street, where, after backing out, my dad put the car in drive. I knew that he’d follow our street to Hungry Harbor Road, which would take him to Sunrise Highway, and then the Van Wyke Expressway to Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills. He’d park the car behind the store next to the delivery truck in the small parking lot and walk through the store’s back door to open up.
When we still lived in our Dunhurst apartment, Dennis and I would often accompany our father to the store on Saturdays. We’d get dressed up, me in a frock with white laced bobby socks, Dennis in a suit, often with a bowtie. We’d drive the half hour down Francis Lewis Boulevard and connect to Queens Boulevard. On these days, our mom would get a break from parenting, and our paternal grandparents would have an opportunity for a day-long visit between customers.
In the store’s downstairs, Henry, a Black man and the store’s only employee, would be responsible for applying gold-leaf to the furniture or for loading the truck for deliveries. Henry also ran errands, cleaned, retagged lamps and sale items. Lamps often went on sale, and when that happened, there’d be an exotic jungle of them clustered together on a large table in the front of the showroom.
On some Saturdays, if the store wasn’t busy, our grandmother would take us on the F train to Manhattan. We’d often go to Radio City Music Hall to see the show and movie. We watched How the West Was Won, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Ben Hur on the huge screen. I remember sitting in the theater’s red-velvet seats, Dennis on one side of my grandmother, me on the other, and excusing myself to go to the bathroom—the expansive white marble steps to the ladies’ room seemed grand; the toilets, divided by the same white marble slabs, were large, imposing, like relics from the Roman Empire. Women would gather in front of the entrance mirror in the anteroom, preening themselves like swans, leaning forward to touch up makeup and hair.
The Rockettes, already anachronistic, would lift their legs in their preshow chorus line extravaganza, and I’d listen to the strange clacking of their shoes hitting the wooden stage. They, along with the preening women in the ladies’ room, made me feel alienated, genderless—though I couldn’t express that. But I’d feel neither female nor male, as if growing up as a woman or man might not be possible.
Even on a Saturday afternoon, even if it wasn’t seasonally appropriate, my grandmother would wear her long fur coat. She’d paint her lips bright red and wear a pearl choker. A heavy-set, large-boned woman, she had a complaining voice that suggested: Beware, this isn’t good. The “this” might refer to her life as a woman or a wife, for I knew at a very young age that she and my grandfather weren’t happily married.