The house stayed quiet. Pictures flickered across the television set. The first rays of sunlight snuck in through the shutters and tiny dots of light could be seen on the living room table. It was a few minutes after six o’clock a.m. Roy usually gets up around this time. I wanted him next to me—to talk to him. I walked hesitantly toward the telephone, picked up the handset, and dialed. After two rings I heard his voice, surprised and tense.
“Roy, it’s me.”
“What happened?” he asked with concern.
I was silent for a moment, the words stuck in my throat.
“Eva, what happened?” There was definite anxiety in his voice.
“Everything is fine.” I tried to calm him down. “I just thought maybe you could come over for a few minutes.”
There were several seconds of silence and then, “I’ll be right there.” And the line disconnected.
Time crept by at a snail’s pace. I sat on the sofa and waited. My eyes rested occasionally on the television that was still on, but I didn’t see a thing. Finally, I heard Roy’s car in the driveway. When I opened the door, I saw a look on his face that I had never seen before. It was complete panic. He came inside and quickly scanned the room.
“What’s going on, Eva?” he asked. I think he saw something in my face, because in an instant, he took me in both his arms, and in a softer voice, he asked for the third time, “What happened?”
I don’t know if it was his soothing voice, the touch of his arms on my skin, or maybe the tension that had built up inside me, but I burst into tears. Roy held me close. My head was on his chest while his hand caressed my hair. He tried to hush my sobbing, but that only served to increase my tears. We stood there for several long minutes before I finally began to calm down a bit. Roy led me into the living room and gently sat me down on the sofa. His arms continued to hold me, and I silently thanked him for that. It was nice to feel him close. I put my head on his shoulder and absorbed the heat that radiated from it. The sun had already lit up the sky, but the house was still dim. Roy was quiet, waiting for me to speak.
“Yesterday, when we were in Mickey’s store, I felt like something happened to me. I can’t explain exactly what, but it felt like I had to get to know him better. That’s the reason I went back inside. Do you remember the painting that was hanging on the wall? His father painted it.”
I thought I could feel his body grow a bit stiff, but he didn’t say a word and continued to hold me.
“He told me that his father was a boy when World War II broke out. The Germans caught his parents and imprisoned them in a work camp. What is so strange to me is that he talked as if he himself had been there. He stammered, and I could hardly hear what he was saying. At one point, he even began to cry. He didn’t hear me anymore; he forgot I was there. Last night, I couldn’t fall asleep and was watching television—a program about people who had been through the Holocaust. They showed a picture of Mickey’s grandfather and mentioned his father. Roy, don’t you think that’s weird?” I pulled away from his embrace and turned to him. I couldn’t read the look on his face.
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
I was hesitant to share the chain of coincidences that had befallen me lately. I didn’t know how he would react. Roy was a man of facts. Even at his job, he gathered evidence, analyzed it, and drew conclusions. If I told him about the creatures hanging around my house or about my unfounded feelings, he would ridicule me or maybe even distance himself from me, and I couldn’t bear that thought.
“I don’t know either. Maybe I’m just imagining things.” I tried to make the tone of my voice cheerful. Roy noticed the difference in my mood and moved away from me a little.
“Would you like something to drink?” I asked, trying to break the ice that had begun to form between us.
“No,” he answered. “I have to get to work.”
He began to make his way toward the door. Before he left, I asked him what he was doing with the index card he took from Mickey.
“I’m working on it,” he answered and closed the door behind him.
For the rest of the day, I couldn’t stop thinking about Roy—his hug, how safe I felt in his arms, how he came when I needed him, how he caressed my hair and calmed me down with his low voice. My hand reached for the telephone at the end of the table and punched in Roy’s familiar number. After the first ring I hung up—perhaps I was confusing Roy’s friendly hug with thoughts of a different nature.
At the end of the work day, I arranged my desk and gathered up my things. Donna walked by my desk and suggested we meet to decide our next steps, but I was tired from the sleepless night and declined her offer.
I got home and collapsed onto the bed, completely exhausted. The knock on the door fished me out of the depths of slumber. I dragged myself to the door and opened it right before Sarah was about to knock again.
“You disappeared on me,” she declared.
“I didn’t mean to, I’ve been really busy,” I said apologetically.
She went ahead and went to sit on one of the chairs in the kitchen, but not before she placed a plate of cookies on the table.
“I came to visit you the day before yesterday, but you weren’t home.”
“I was in Chicago.” She was quiet, waiting for me to continue. “Roy and I are looking for the tenant who lived here before us. A check arrived for her and we want to give it to her.”
“That’s why you went to Chicago?”
“It turns out that the check came from a company in Chicago, so we went there to investigate.”
“And what’s the name of this woman you’re looking for?”
“Sonia—Sonia Schwartz.”
Sarah got up from her chair.
“Are you going?” I asked, disappointed.
“Yes.”
As she left, again I thought I saw a hidden smile creep over her face.
14
It was now August, the height of summer. The air was dense and stifling. The weather forecaster said it hadn’t been this hot for twenty years. There was no escaping it. Even the air conditioners didn’t help. The electric companies were so overloaded that there were blackouts from time to time, during which it was impossible to work. People walked around the office in a daze; there was little conversation. The work rate dropped and everything basically crept along slowly. People shut themselves up in their houses seeking any source of shade and respite from the heat. I also preferred to stay at home. I was upset, I couldn’t seem to relax. It was difficult to drag myself to work in the morning, and in the evenings I came home tired and worn out, not speaking to a soul until the next morning. Sometimes the sound of the neighbors’ sprinklers in their yard and the kids playing penetrated my walls. Sarah called every once in a while and invited me over to her house, but it seemed like she was relieved to be turned down. Donna completely disappeared—we didn’t speak outside of work. On television, they promised that there would be relief from the hot spell next month.
I hadn’t heard a thing from Roy. In the weeks following the trip to Chicago, it felt like he was avoiding me. He didn’t return my phone calls, and after several failed attempts to make contact with him, I decided to give up. Spending long periods of time at home didn’t make matters any easier. The feel of his hug was evaporating, although it was still fresh in my memory. Why did he run away from me? We’ve been friends for nearly a decade and this is the first time he’s cut off all contact with me for so long. Maybe I hurt him somehow—maybe something scared him. I panned through my memory, but couldn’t find any justification for his behavior. Finally, I couldn’t hold back any longer.
It was early evening, and I knew that Roy usually tried to make it home in time to have dinner with his family. I called his home phone number. My heart was beating so fast I almost hung up. I heard Barbara’s voice, his mother, on the other end of the line. A slow and firm voice.
“Barbara, it’s Eva.” My voice shook.
“Eva.” Her voice was co
ld.
“Is Roy home?”
I don’t know why, but Roy’s mother never particularly liked me. She was always polite and courteous, never hurt my feelings, but when our eyes met her look was cold and distant.
“Oh. How are you, Eva?” she said. Before I could answer, she called out to Roy and told him I was on the phone.
It seemed like an eternity passed before I heard his voice. Like he was trying to put off the conversation for as long as possible.
“Hi, Eva. How are you?” he asked with a serious voice that made me want to hang up right then.
“I’m OK,” I answered. “And you?”
“Everything is fine,” he answered.
There was an uncomfortable silence. In the background, I could hear the rattling of plates and his mother announcing that dinner was ready.
“I understand you have to go,” I said, breaking the silence.
“Yeah.” He answered, but he didn’t make any effort to rescue us from the lagging conversation.
“I hadn’t heard from you in a while, and I got worried,” I said carefully.
“Everything is fine. I’ve been under a lot of pressure at work and haven’t had time for anything else.”
“Are you mad at me?” I tried.
“No,” he answered immediately. He didn’t volunteer anything else.
“Listen, Roy, I understand that something happened, but I don’t know what.” I was on the verge of tears, my voice shaking, and I couldn’t continue.
“I’ll come over after dinner, OK?” Roy said in a low voice. “In about an hour.”
“OK, see you then.”
It was almost two hours before I heard the rattle of his car’s engine. I opened the door even before he knocked. He had to duck down a bit in order to get through the front door. He filled the entire entrance. He was wearing a blue shirt and jeans, and when he turned toward the living room, his steps were hesitant. He avoided looking at me directly, and I was surprised. Usually, when we met, he would smile his familiar smile and make some kind of movement with his hand—sometimes ruffling his hair, other times stroking my cheek with his fingers. These were gestures that became a kind of ritual every time we met, until we barely even noticed them.
Roy held a brown envelope in his hand. He sat down on the sofa, gave me a quick blue-eyed glance, and told me to sit down next to him.
I sat down in my father’s easy chair, some distance away from him. The collar of his shirt was turned inside, and I was almost tempted to fix it. His hair was unkempt, and I could tell that it was his own hand that made it so. When he was embarrassed or felt uncomfortable he would use his hand to mess up his hair. I waited for him to begin speaking.
He was quiet for a couple of minutes and then said, “I’m sorry I haven’t spoken to you for so long, but there was a reason for it.”
I waited for him to continue. His hand incessantly fiddled with the envelope, crumpling it between his fingers. His continuing silence began to alarm me. Roy was not himself; he was tense and uncertain.
“Listen, Eva, I want you to hear me out.”
It was obvious what I was about to hear. It had always been a fear of mine, but this time my fear became real panic. I always took Roy for granted, couldn’t picture my life without him. My moods, my demands for time away—all these never put any distance between us. He couldn’t be anyone else’s boyfriend. He was always available for me any time—he was the one thing that gave me security and kept me balanced. Now I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. I was sorry to have called him. I was like the defendant who wishes the trial to continue so he doesn’t hear the verdict that would clearly announce his guilt.
Roy opened the envelope and took out the yellow index card. The next words he said completely surprised me and proved me wrong.
“This is the card we took from the store,” he stated.
“Yes, I know.”
“Do you remember that something had been erased and Michael didn’t know why?”
“I remember.”
“Well, I examined the card.”
I still didn’t know where he was going with this.
“At first I tried to scratch off the dark part with a file, but whoever erased it was trying very hard to hide what was written. When I saw that this was unsuccessful, I asked a friend of mine for help. He works at the lab and has a modern device that can identify the original even if it was erased or blurred. In any case, I got the answer two weeks ago.”
His voice got softer. His body moved on the couch as if he was about to bolt. His hand shot out to his hair and messed it up.
“Can I have a glass of water?” he asked.
I came back from the kitchen and held out the glass of cold water. Roy drank the entire glass in one gulp. He then got up from the sofa and began to walk around the room. I watched him in amazement as he touched this object or another. Finally, he came back and sat down again on the sofa. He held out the yellow card to me. I took it from him and brought it closer to the light to read the writing clearly. In an unfamiliar handwriting, under the line that had been erased, someone had written the name “Maria Brown.” Looking at the writing, reading it again and again, I didn’t know what to deduce from it. I held the card out to Roy and said, “I don’t understand.”
Roy moved closer to me, took my hand in his, and said, “Eva, I think Sonia Schwartz is your mother.”
The laughter that shot out of me was like lava erupting from a volcano.
15
I dreamt about my father that night. His image was so clear and alive that when I woke up, I expected to see him standing next to me.
In the dream, I saw him on one of the nights he went to the weekly men’s meeting. George came to pick him up in his car. When George came into our house, he had short horns on the top of his head, and his teeth protruded out of his mouth when he spoke. He looked at my mother, who was standing in the kitchen cooking. In the dream, he had bulging black eyes and his lips were stretched into a smirk. He moved closer to my mother, who was standing with her back to him, and reached out to her hair. My mother didn’t move, remaining with her back to him. His hand continued from her hair to her back, and his smile grew into a roar of laughter. Suddenly, he grabbed her shoulder and spun her around to face him. A scream escaped me when I saw my mother’s face. It was black and gaunt. Her cheeks were elongated and she had sprouted rounded horns. Her smile was wider than George’s and the laughter that spewed out of her mouth was deep and slow. My shocked expression moved to my father, begging for his help, but he remained standing without moving, just staring as the actions played out before him. I shouted, “Dad! Dad!” but my voice wasn’t heard. He continued to stand still. I ran to him, scared, my whole body shaking, and hugged him, but his body was transparent and I found myself hugging my own body. I ran out of the house and saw my father’s shiny car pulling out of the driveway, leaving George’s car behind.
I woke up all at once. My body was drenched in sweat. My breathing was rapid and my chest rose up and down at an accelerated rate. I sat up in bed and looked for my father, but all I saw were the familiar objects in my room—the clothes on the chair, books aslant on the shelf, and the dusty guitar leaning against the wall. At that moment, my yearning for my father was so acute it was painful.
Our relationship had always alternated between closeness and distance. We were connected by thick flexible cords that could neither be detached nor ripped apart. Sometimes we were close and sometimes distant. Sometimes I felt safe and loved, and sometimes he pushed me away with a glance or a look. All this created the expectation and hope that one day the distance would disappear, and I would be secure in the knowledge that his love wasn’t dependent on anything.
The morning after the dream, I felt weak. Donna asked me what was going on, but I avoided her. I also kept my distance from Roy. I was mad at him; his behavior that night outraged me. In my opinion, he was patronizing me. How did he reach the conclusion that the woman who lived in th
e house before us was my mother? It didn’t make any sense. There had to be a more reasonable explanation for the coincidence of the two names on the index card, and I decided to check it out for myself. In any event, I planned to contact Mickey. For some strange reason, a stirring inside me made me want to hear more stories about his family.
I set up a time to go see Mickey at the end of that week without telling Roy or Donna about my trip. This would be the first time I would drive such a great distance alone. There were moments when I debated inviting one of them to join me, but I felt the need to keep Mickey’s story to myself; I felt that it was something related only to me.
Mickey gave me a warm reception. He planted a kiss on my cheek and sat me down on an easy chair I don’t remember being there last time. He served me a glass of water and apologized that he couldn’t offer me something hot to drink. He pulled some cookies out of a tin that was sitting on the brown bureau and told me that his mother heard that I was coming and baked these kichalach. He explained that kichalach means cookies in Yiddish.
The cookies were delicious, crunchy, with just the right sweetness. I was at ease. The atmosphere was pleasant even though the place was small. The pile of papers that was on the table had grown smaller, and now there were only a few sheets.
“I apologize for the way I acted before,” he said. “Sometimes I get too deep into the story.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I still don’t know the whole of it. My father didn’t really like to talk about what happened there.”
“So then where did you hear the story you told me?” I was interested.
“Some of it I heard from my mother and some he talked about, but as soon as I asked him a question about what he went through in the camp, he immediately shut down and said that he doesn’t remember any more.”
“What do you think happened?” I continued probing.
“I don’t know, but it’s clear to me that horrible things happened to him.”
Life in a Box Page 9