One night he confessed he had a male lover. They had just finished dinner. Eleanor picked up the custard cups and mechanically stacked them on the sink. The silence was broken only by the clinking noise of the china.
“Who is he?” asked Eleanor at last.
“A hustler,” said Jesse. “His name is Joe.”
Aaron, his face contorted with emotion, rose from the table and strode out to his studio.
“Where did you meet?” asked Howard.
“In the Village.”
“Do you love him?” asked Howard, his eyes softening in sympathy.
“Yes,” said Jesse.
Later Jesse and Eleanor sat alone in the brightly lit kitchen. “How long have you known that you were … this way?” she asked.
“Ever since I was five or six I’ve had erotic dreams.”
“But you’ve gone out with girls.”
“It’s not the same.”
For the next few days, there was terrible silence between Aaron and Jesse. After a long talk late one night with him, Howard removed himself even more from family life and barely spoke to his brother, although they had always been close. Jesse wandered around the house so silent and depressed when he wasn’t playing the piano that Eleanor grew anxious and urged him to see a psychologist, fearing that like Rosa he might break down.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” he said. “I’ll be okay.” He gave her an awkward hug.
“But I do worry.”
“If I want to see a shrink, I’ll see one back at college.”
He was not handsome like Howard, she thought, although her heart went out to him at this moment. He looked so Jewish with his black hair, his thick features, and his glasses.
The next day he brought his lover home.
Eleanor found the young man rather fascinating. He was of slight build, with pale skin, liquid eyes, and dark silken hair. She served them tea, and Joe talked about his childhood, how he been shifted from one foster home to another.
Aaron did not emerge from his studio until late that night, long after Joe had left.
She met Heinrich a few weeks later, after her sons had returned to their respective schools. He counseled acceptance and love. “I wish Aaron could be as broad minded,” said Eleanor.
“It’s easier for me. Jesse’s not my son.”
They were walking along Eighth Avenue near Penn Station in an area of cheap hotels, run-down stores, and garment outlets. An icy wind was blowing. Rain began to fall, and soon they were soaked. “Let’s get a room,” she said.
It was a dingy room with a glaring overhead light and wallpaper with a pattern of faded gray stripes. They undressed. Currents of change, of inevitability were unspoken in the air. In bed they lay next to each other very still, not moving for a long while. She tentatively fondled his penis, but it wouldn’t come to life. Limp and pink, like rotten fruit, she thought. He sat up, moving a bit away from her. “Tell me, Eleanor,” he said, “What happened with Antonio?”
She couldn’t speak, but she had to speak. There was no escape. She had held it all in for so long, she felt she would burst if she didn’t speak of it to someone. Fateful words poured out of her. He did not move a muscle while she spoke, but gazed straight ahead. Her words fell into a vast silence. “Say something,” she begged when she had finished speaking. She gripped him for reassurance, but he broke away. Then he lit a cigarette. Offered one to her. The radiator hissed steam. From the hallway she heard the sound of voices.
“You set up the situation,” he said. “By inviting him into your room.”
“I didn’t dream he would act as he did.”
“I warned you.”
“How could you have known?”
“I know you too well, Eleanor. I feel as if I know him, too.”
“Heinrich.” She lurched towards him.
“Ouch! Watch the cigarette!”
“I love you.”
“It’s no use. We can’t revive the past”
Or your cock.
The pale ghosts of Antonio and Rosa hovered in the air. They dressed silently, their clothing still soaked with rain. In the hotel lobby they kissed goodbye
Half-blinded, she walked through the streets, heedless of the rain and cold and the dangerous neighborhood. Rain turned into snow. Her shoes were soaked through with water, and her feet were freezing cold, but she walked on and on. Around eleven that night, she took a taxi back to Pennsylvania Station, caught the last train, and upon reaching home, collapsed into bed with fever and chills. Aaron brought her cups of tea and dry toast.
A week later she totaled the car. Again it was raining hard, and she was driving too fast. As she slid through a yellow light, another car hit her from the rear. She heard the crash as the car skidded and swerved out of control, and she hurtled forward, only partly restrained by the seatbelt. Behind her there was a jumble of metal and broken glass, and she smelled smoke.
Antonio laid his head on her lap. “My mother, my wife,” he sobbed. Eleanor was sitting on a red velvet chair. She wore a cream-colored slip of pure silk. Her hair flowed over her shoulders, brown as it had been when she was a young girl. Antonio reached up to caress her left breast. He pulled the strap down over her shoulder. “Ah, how beautiful the slip. Is new, yes?”
“We are going to Munich,” he said. She could not refuse because he had already bought tickets.
Night. A fast moving train. Private compartment with purple plush seats. They were lying on a narrow berth, and they were making love. She grabbed his bony buttocks, pulled him further inside her, and finally climaxed. Then calmness and a profound sense of well-being filled her.
“You are a devil,” she said.
On a far shore beneath a night sky rained fire, and Aaron’s hands were closing around her neck.
She awakened, struggling for breath. Her neck hurt, as it had ever since the car accident. Far off sounded the whistle of a Long Island Railroad train. Aaron stirred in his sleep and reached for her. She pulled away, turning from the odor of his breath, and adjusted the brace her orthopedist had told her to wear, even at night.
CHAPTER 29
IN THE WEST
Antonio, Rosa, and the baby left Paris. They moved to the town of Sausalito on the coast of northern California, which he had heard of from Chilean friends. “It’s beautiful here,” Rosa wrote during their first few weeks. “The air has a golden glow. The ocean, the sky, and the mountains nourish us. Hundreds of boats harbor here. On weekends their sails billow out across the water. San Francisco is just across the Bay.”
Antonio found work helping a wealthy Cuban build a new house. Isabel thrived in the California sun. For a while, all was well. But just as in the hollow of a blue sky lie the seeds of something ominous, just as with the calm before a storm, so it seemed with the three of them in the land of the west. They had rented a cottage surrounded by trees in a ravine. As the days shortened and it grew colder, the house became gloomy.
In November when the rains began, Antonio was laid off.
“Please send more money. A thousand dollars. It’s urgent,” wrote Rosa. Her fingers felt stiff with cold. Antonio stood over her in the dim electric light. She shivered.
“Underline ‘urgent,’ petite.”
They still spoke to each other in French, as they had in Paris.
“I hate asking them for money.”
He pulled out the linings of his pockets. “I have nothing.”
“I could get a job.”
“Your job is here with the baby.”
As if sensing the tension between her parents, the baby began to cry. Rosa rushed into the bedroom, picked up Isabel, and brought her back into the living room, cradling her, humming softly to soothe her.
Antonio’s gaze softened. “Truly, you love the baby.” He took her from Rosa’s arms and held her. “Now finish the letter, petite.”
“I hate asking them. I wish … I wish you could find a job.”
“Because of you I am here. Because of you an
d the baby. In Paris I have no problems. I am foutu here in this fucking country. Your parents are rich. They should help. They fucked you up. They have made you impossible. Because of you I lost my friends, my connections in Paris and we come here. Because of you I am in this mess. Now finish the letter!”
He stood over her, too close, and she breathed in fear as she wrote. She was always on edge, tense, ready for flight. He was drinking far too much and spent hours each night at the local bar.
Late one night she called her parents from a motel, awakening Eleanor from a vaguely disturbing dream. “Isabel is sick with an ear infection. Antonio threatened me. When I started to pick up the phone, he yanked the cord out of the wall. I ran out of the house with Isabel. I’m scared about her. If the infection isn’t treated, it will affect her hearing. Please come, Mother.” Her voice caught in a sob.
“Who is it?” asked Aaron, roused from sleep.
“Who else but Rosa?”
Eleanor told him the situation. “Perhaps she and the baby should come back here.”
“No,” he said quickly. “We can’t have her here with us.”
“Maybe we should take Isabel…”
Her words trailed off. She had a vision of the infant in her arms as she sat in their garden. “We could care for her,” said Eleanor wistfully. (“She looks a little like you, Madame.”) But Rosa adored the baby more than anything on earth, and to take Isabel away would devastate her. If only, Rosa, you could have felt for me even a bit of the tenderness you have for Isabel.
Ignoring his objections, she flew to San Francisco and helped Rosa find another house to rent, this one sunny and spacious with gleaming hardwood floors and a view of the Bay. She watched over Isabel while Rosa looked for work and made arrangements for childcare. Meanwhile, Antonio foundered, working part-time in the kitchen of a local restaurant. While Rosa was out during the day, he sometimes came to visit Eleanor. The two of them would sit in the living room in Rosa’s newly rented house, sharing a bottle of good Chilean Cabernet or Heineken beer along with tidbits—feta cheese, Prosciutto, and other delicatessen goodies that Eleanor procured.
Isabel was still recovering from her ear infection. One afternoon when she woke up from her nap, Antonio was there. He watched while Eleanor put drops in the baby’s ears. The baby was so sweet. She caressed the baby’s soft hair while Isabel, after the initial shock of the drops had worn off, made little gurgling sounds. A wave of love for this creature swept through Eleanor. “Pumpkin,” crooned Antonio, taking the baby from her and holding her close. Then he set her down on the bare wooden floor, where she began to crawl. “The baby needs a family. You must help Rosa.” He looked away, then said quickly, “I wish that you and I meet many years ago. With you, I could build a life.”
“I love Isabel because she’s yours.” Illicit words. Illicit thoughts.
“Love her for who she is,” he said in an impassioned voice. “All babies they deserve the love. But she is special. She understands. The babies understand far more than we realize.”
Later he said, “Isabel, she needs a father. She needs that Rosa and I are together.”
At night, Rosa wept with longing for him.
Eleanor prayed for their well being to a god whose existence was uncertain.
But Rosa flared up over trifles. Eleanor’s attempts to help Rosa turned into pitched battles. Rosa had found work as a clerk-typist, but her salary was not enough to cover everything.
“Draw up a budget,” said Eleanor. “Let us know what your monthly expenses are.”
“Why?”
“So when I ask my own mother to help you, I’ll know what you need.”
“I can’t do that,” Rosa said furiously. “I have no idea what they’ll be. Why don’t you believe me if I say I need a certain amount? Don’t you trust me?”
“It humiliates me to ask for money. I feel ashamed when I have to ask your grandmother.”
“Bullshit! I don’t know why you feel ashamed! I don’t feel ashamed to ask for Isabel, because I love her.”
“I love you, too, my dear.”
“Not in the same way.”
Eleanor wanted to scream with frustration.
“I feel so close to you at times,” Rosa said, looking down at her hands. She twisted the gold wedding band. “My own self gets swept away. I feel filled with you, and then I feel crazy.”
A wave of sadness swept through Eleanor. How much she missed her own mother as she used to be.
CHAPTER 30
RUTH
“Oh how good it is to see you, my dear.” Ruth greeted Eleanor with a kiss. Over the years, she had developed a degree of senility. Despite the fact that her memory so often and painfully failed, impeccable habits held her together so that she retained a gracious bearing. An extraordinary woman, people said of her. Ruth had a clear sense of how the world ought to be, and she possessed a firm ethical structure. Thank God, thought Eleanor, her mother had a sense of humor.
Since Eleanor’s last visit, her mother seemed to have shrunk even more in size. She walked hunched over almost double with the aid of a cane. Her white hair was immaculately waved. Her few possessions were in perfect order in this small apartment with its green plush carpet and a view of Lake Erie. The furniture—a sofa, a coffee table, several chairs, a bookcase—were polished antiques.
“How are we today?” asked her nurse, who had entered the room softly in her crepe-soled shoes. She placed a tray with tea things on the little rosewood table beside Ruth.
“I’m fine, thank you,” said Ruth with a certain hauteur. “That will be all for now, Lucy. I’ll ring the bell when I need you.”
“Now tell me about yourself, my dear,” she said as Eleanor settled down into a rocking chair she remembered from her childhood. Ruth rested her gout-ridden foot on a leather bolster. “Is Aaron still working for the WPA?”
Eleanor laughed. “Mother, that was over thirty years ago.”
“Oh, dear me,” she said, barely ruffled. “My memory is rather like a leaky bucket. Tell me about Howard and Jesse? Does their school offer Latin?”
“Mother, they’re both in college.”
“How time flies. What are they studying?”
A little while later, like a dowager queen with her distinct and cultivated enunciation, Ruth would repeat her questions.
“I do hope that Rosa marries soon.”
“She married a man named Antonio.”
“How lovely! I would like to send them a wedding gift. Now who is Antonio? … Would you pour us some tea. I take mine with just a little milk and two lumps of sugar… You must refresh my memory. Do I have any great-grandchildren?” A look of fleeting sadness passed over her face.
“Yes, you do.” Patiently Eleanor told her about Isabel, as she had innumerable times before.
Towards the end of Eleanor’s visit, her mother, who had dozed off, opened her eyes, pointed to an empty space in the corner, and said, “Please put more wood on the fire, young man.”
“Mother, there’s no one there,” whispered Eleanor.
“Please ask that nice old gentleman over there to speak more clearly. I’m having trouble hearing him.”
Eleanor wondered if she, too, would someday become senile. There were times she awakened not knowing where she was or even who she was for an instant. Were these foretastes of the future?
Mother and Father, will I join you? At times I seem to glimpse you both. I see Father smiling gently. I feel your presence, Mother. You are wearing the beautiful starry dress that you wore long ago. You are both glimmers of light through dark clouds of pain that swirl through me.
CHAPTER 31
ROSA IN MARIN
Dad’s manner was eager, almost servile. Yet underneath ran a current of something malign. His face could be like a mask, with an uncanny quality of seeming to change altogether during unguarded moments. Who knew what was he was thinking beneath the surface? Like a tiger, he would shield his claws until my guard was down.
; I used to think he was deliberately cruel. Now I see that if he had allowed himself to see what was truly going on inside, his structures would have cracked. They were as fragile as glass. His feelings flowed like treacherous undertows in which we all found ourselves submerged.
In his fifties, he was still handsome. His hazel eyes would shift nervously, never looking directly into mine. Loud voice with a mid-western twang. At times, the words of an alien persona would break through, perhaps that of his father or an artist he admired. Coming from him, the words would sound unnatural. “What a charmer she is. So feminine,” he said of Isabel. As a child, I had believed the way to win his love was to be like a boy. “Surprise! Wrong game! I tricked you.”
As an artist he had integrity. He would work as if in a trance, craving the perfect form of a metallic object in space, the perfect shape of a woman’s haunch, adherence to an inner vision. It was this core, struggling for expression in a world he perceived as hostile, that aroused my sympathy.
You both visited, staying at a nearby inn, not long after we arrived in California. One day we all drove to Stinson Beach. Dad and you, Mother, were in front, while Antonio, the baby, and I squeezed into the back seat of your rental car. I held Isabel close, as if she were a lifejacket. We drove along a winding road edged on one side with cliffs. Field grass waved in the wind, amidst bright purple patches of heather. Far below lay the sea.
“Does it rain in summer?” asked Aaron.
Silence.
“I say, Antonio, est-qu’l pleût en l’été ici?”
“Presque jamais avant Octobre.”
“The heather makes me think of Scotland,” you murmured.
“Did it come from Scotland?”
“Monsieur, it comes from the moon.”
I giggled, but no one else laughed.
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