CHAPTER 33
CONFLICT
One cold winter evening Eleanor’s hair caught fire. It happened as she was leaning over the card table by the fireplace, dressed in a long silvery green hostess gown. She was setting down the plates for a cozy dinner with Aaron when her hair swung too close to the lighted candle.
Suddenly her hair was ablaze.
“Aaron!” she cried. Her voice sounded faint, as though it were coming through water. Everything was moving in slow motion as Aaron wrapped his arms around her—ever so slowly it seemed—pushed her back against the damask curtains, and beat out the flames. When it was all over, the smell of smoke filled the room. She looked down and saw that her beautiful gown was scorched, and she fingered her singed hair.
“Why is it you burn yourself? Is that you want to burn away the pain inside?” asked Antonio over the phone, his voice intense with concern. “Is not necessary to hurt yourself.”
She dreamed that she was walking along a country road at night and she was trying to find her house. But she had no idea where she was or from where she had come. There was a vague feeling of having lost something. Where was her leather shoulder bag? Dark trees loomed up on either side, lit by faint starlight. When she awakened, she felt bitterly alone. Aaron had already gone to his studio. It seemed that all her life she had been seeking a kindred soul. The image of Antonio as she had first seen him in a tweed jacket with a scarf around his neck came to mind.
In the summer Howard graduated from college and married a soft-spoken girl. They settled in Seattle. Jesse was studying music in Los Angeles where he lived with his lover, a tall gangly youth. Eleanor enjoyed hearing about their adventures over the phone. “You’re a fag hag, Mom,” teased Jesse. However, Aaron was still uncomfortable with the situation.
“He’s your son. You need to accept him as he is.” said Heinrich one evening when the four of them met for dinner. Although no longer lovers, Heinrich and Eleanor remained friends. The alliance between the couples went on as if nothing had ever happened. They had been close for so many years that they were like family. Did Erica know of their past? If so, she never revealed it.
But Aaron’s infidelities disturbed Eleanor far more, now that she could no longer keep pace. For years she had suffered many ailments. It all began, she believed, with the clandestine abortion she had endured for his sake. Then, too, ever since the car crash her neck had bothered her. Now arthritis afflicted her hip and knee. Generous shots of whiskey and brimming glasses of French wine helped dull the pain.
She began to crave more from Aaron. “I don’t want you to have affairs,” she whispered in his ear one night. “I know that you do. In the past, I had my own life too, but things have changed.”
“I don’t!” he whispered fiercely, leaning over her pillow, trying to silence her with a kiss. She twisted away, sat up, and turned on the light. “It has to stop, or I’ll leave,” she said, summoning up strength she didn’t believe she possessed.
Nothing more was said. But they began to spend more time together. Over time, their relationship underwent a subtle change, and a new kind of affection developed between them, deeper than before.
A cold raw day in late December. Eleanor found herself sitting in the passenger seat while Rosa drove a rental car through heavy freeway traffic to a chiropractor who was reputed to be a psychic healer.
“You’ve got to see him, Mother. He’s so good,” Rosa had insisted. “Dr. McLaren sees inside people as if he had an x-ray machine in his head. He heals by sending energy through his hands, not even touching you. When Isabel got so sick, he saw she was allergic to milk, which no doctor had suggested. He healed her. Now she’s okay, as long as she doesn’t drink milk.”
“Oh,” said Eleanor in disbelief. “I remember how terribly sick she used to get.”
“It was the milk,” said Rosa. “She’s also very sensitive to other people’s emotions.”
Eleanor rubbed her knee, which hurt, even with a brace. Her back ached, and her neck was unusually stiff. Perhaps it was the cold. These days she was nearly always in pain. “Is this really going to do any good? Maybe we should turn back. The traffic is so bad.”
“Mother, we’re halfway there. I made the appointment weeks ago. What’s the matter? Don’t you believe me? I want to help you, but you always treat me like I’m crazy.”
“Not at all, my dear. Anyway, as you said, we’re halfway there.”
Eleanor’s head ached. She feared her daughter’s temper, feared that if she aroused Rosa’s ire, her daughter might suddenly slam on the brakes and pitch them forward into the windshield
“Must you go?” Aaron had asked that morning in their hotel room.
“She’ll be upset if I don’t. You know how she is.”
At last they reached the chiropractor’s office. He was a slender man with a flushed complexion and deep blue eyes. “Come in, Mrs. Bernstein. Rosa can come, too, if you like.”
“I’d like see you alone.”
His treatment room contained a massage table and a couple of chairs. On the walls hung photos of mountains and ocean, along with a Chinese acupuncture chart that showed numerous meridians running through a male body.
“What brings you here?”
“I have a bad back,” she said. “My knee bothers me, too.” She didn’t mention her arthritic hip, her neck injury, or the vaginal discomfort during sex. If he truly had x-ray vision, he should perceive all this.
He asked her to remove her shoes and her woolen cape and to lie face down on the table. Gently he massaged her shoulders, then asked her to turn over. She felt a soft flowing current through her body and sank into a deep dark space. When she awakened, he was standing at her feet with his hands raised a few inches above her stockinged toes.
“How do you feel?”
“A little different. As if my body were lighter.”
“I worked on clearing blockages in your energy field. I’d like to see you again in a week.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. We’re leaving in three days.”
She thanked him and left, disappointed that he hadn’t discerned her other ailments. Although she did indeed feel better for a few hours, the next day the pain was as severe as it had been before.
Rosa sobbed, “You reject everything I try to give you, Mother. The healing. Everything! I can’t handle your visits! You’re so goddamned condescending! Every time you come I go through a crisis. I lose a friend. I fight with Isabel. Something bad happens.”
Tears rose in Eleanor’s eyes. Ash from her cigarette fell on the painted blue kitchen table. The tea kettle whistled. Rosa went to the stove and poured the boiling water into a teapot. An aroma of peppermint filled the kitchen.
“Oh, Rosa, I don’t want it to be that way.”
“I’ve asked you not to visit,” Rosa went on. “But you ignore me. You never listen. I love you, but I need space. I can’t handle either you or Dad. There’s so much hypocrisy. So much covered-up shit.”
She put a glass tray with fish into the oven. “Once after you left, I slept for two days with the electric hair dryer going. It had the kind of hood they used to make. I put it around my head to keep my scalp warm, and it comforted me.”
Eleanor’s vision blurred. She gazed at her pack of Marlboroughs on the table as if it were a foreign object she’d never seen before.
“We wanted to see Isabel.”
“You’re staying at the Claremont, the most elegant hotel in Berkeley, while Isabel and I are on Welfare. Don’t you find that incongruous?”
“No one asked you to go on Welfare.”
“I had to.”
With your ability…”
“Shit! I clean houses. I don’t get a dime from Antonio!”
“I never had this difficulty with my mother.”
“She never screwed your husband.” Rosa’s eyes blazed. “You act as though nothing ever happened.”
“Antonio was diabolic,” murmured Eleanor. “Truly diaboli
c.”
“You invited him into your room.”
“He shouldn’t have told you.”
“Why not? I sensed it all along.”
“I wish you could understand and forgive.”
“How can I?”
Anguish gripped Eleanor’s heart. At the same time pride dictated her actions. She had always feared Rosa—something mysterious, awkward, and naked about her. “With love comes forgiveness,” she whispered.
The odor of fish filled the kitchen, and Eleanor felt slightly nauseous. Why did Rosa always cook fish with garlic?
Isabel came home from school. She flung her backpack on the living room floor, ran into the kitchen, and greeted them. Sensing the tension, she plunked herself in Eleanor’s lap, took a strand of her grandmother’s hair, and twisted it around her fingers. “Do you want to hear a song I just learned on the piano?”
“Yes, dear,” said Eleanor. Her face softened.
Isabel played as well as she could, trying to make everything all right for her mother and grandmother. She loved her grandparents, but she hated it when they said bad things about Rosa, and she always defended her.
A little while later Aaron joined them. While Rosa finished preparing dinner, Isabel entertained her grandparents. How darling she was in her blue jeans, her lavender T-shirt, with her long silky hair. They beamed at her. “Look! I’m learning Hebrew!” She brought her Hebrew books into the living room. “See Grandma and Grandpa, I learned the alphabet, and I can write in Hebrew and read a little, too.”
“That’s nice,” said Eleanor. An almost imperceptible shudder ran through her body. “Why Hebrew?”
“Children need a belief structure. They need to connect with their roots,” said Rosa, coming in from the kitchen.
“Why Hebrew?”
“We’re Jews.”
“Not really.”
“What else are we then?” Rosa flushed with emotion.
“Only by origin,” said Eleanor, filled with malaise as memories of boarding school arose.
“My mother used to light Chanukah candles,” said Aaron. “She wasn’t religious, but she enjoyed the ritual. Her mother—your great-great grandmother—was quite religious.”
“I like Hebrew classes,” said Isabel while they were eating dinner. “I might become a rabbi,” she added defiantly.
Eleanor twisted her napkin between her fingers. “I don’t know why a religious structure is needed … delicious fish,” she said, although in truth she didn’t particularly care for the codfish, which Rosa had baked in breadcrumbs and smothered in tomatoes.
Aaron returned home, and Eleanor moved to the Huntington Hotel in San Francisco. She found it deeply restful to stay there. Alone, she cast off her identity of wife and mother. And should she want company, it was not lacking. In the dining room, she might strike up a conversation with a British novelist, a faded film star, even a European prince.
She had recurring fantasies, just as she’d had many years ago, of living alone in a strange city, free of family burdens. When she was alone, she drew people to her and the unexpected happened. If she were truly alone, she felt she might find something that had eluded her all her life.
CHAPTER 34
BALBOA BEACH, MARCH 1975
I knocked at Antonio’s door, but there was no answer. This was a small beach town with only a few bars, and I decided to search each one. People knew him, as I figured they would. Gradually I pieced together bits of his life. He had just moved. He was working in the kitchen of a local restaurant, someone said.
Then we saw him signaling to us from the corner. “Rosa! Isabel! They told me you were here.” He was still handsome, a commanding presence although he had visibly aged. He picked up Isabel and held her for a moment in his arms. “M’hija!”
He had just gotten off from work.
As we walked along the street, a bystander would have seen a small girl with dark blonde hair in a Dutch bob, dressed in jeans and lavender sweatshirt, a skinny man of medium height with sharp features, his hair the color of the child’s, and a woman with long black hair blowing in the wind, white sweater, jeans, and heavy walking shoes. There was something striking about the two adults, as if each were charged with extra voltage. Something charismatic in a much gentler way about the little girl. One wanted to watch all her movements. Something invisible about her charmed and invited a caress.
Isabel and I were both weary from traveling. Backpacks strapped to our shoulders. Dressed in warm clothing, because it was cold and overcast. We’d taken the Greyhound from Oakland to Santa Monica, spent the night in a hostel, then hitchhiked down the coast.
“Hitchhiking’s dangerous,” he said as we walked. A fresh ocean wind blew against our faces.
“There was no bus.”
I didn’t tell him about the man who had picked us up along a deserted stretch of highway. No sooner had we settled in our seats than he started to talk about the allure of little girls.
“What kind of work do you do?” I asked, attempting to divert his thoughts.
“I’ve always wanted to see a little girl undressed.”
I froze. “Well, I mean work,” I repeated. “What do you do for a living?”
“I’m between jobs. Used to work in a paper factory.”
“Our friend is waiting for us in Newport. If we’re late, she’ll be worried and call the Police.”
“Relax,” he said. “Nothing to be afraid of.” His voice seemed to hold a tinge of cruelty. I began to talk feverishly about poetry, about the creative process, addressing him as if he were a fellow poet.
Picking up the thread, Isabel elaborated about her sixth grade project. “We made little books, and we tied the pages together with yarn. Mine was a story about my kitten. She’s all gray except for a white star on her forehead,” said Isabel with an air of innocence.
“Do you write?” I asked. Anything to distract, disarm.
“I wrote a couple of poems once when I was stationed at Fort Ord.”
“Oh, what were they about?”
“Getting stoned.”
“That’s cool. Have you written anything else?”
“Naah. Writing doesn’t interest me.”
He put his cigarette down in the ashtray, where it smoldered.
“Where did you grow up?”
“Louisville. … She sure is cute.”
“Do you live near the beach? Do you like to swim?”
I kept watching for a traffic light. At last we saw one in the distance. It turned yellow, then red. As he slowed to a stop, I cried, “We’ll get out here. Come on, Isabel!” Flinging open the back door, I leapt out while Isabel clambered out the front, clutching her backpack in her arms. When we were safely on the street, she handed him a five dollar bill someone at the hostel had given her. “Thanks for the ride.”
He zoomed off. Isabel grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Whew!!” We laughed and roared in relief. At that moment by the ocean in the chilly air, we felt our power as well as our vulnerability.
Now we were approaching another bar on the outskirts of town. “We will have a drink,” said Antonio, ushering us inside to the large, dark interior. At that time of the afternoon it was empty of other customers. Antonio ordered two beers and a Shirley Temple for Isabel. In the corner was a multi-colored neon-lit electric organ. Isabel gazed at it in fascination.
“Can my daughter play?” he asked the bartender.
“Why not?”
Isabel sat down at the splendid instrument, and the bartender showed her how to work the pedals and make it sound like a piano.
“Cute kid,” he said.
Isabel turned to us. “This piece is called ‘Emerald Lake’. I composed it.”
Then she began to play. It was a harmonious piece in a simplified vein of Chopin. As she played, Antonio looked happier than I’d seen him in years.
“M’hija. The musician. Is good you give her lessons.”
“She takes ballet and studies Hebrew, too.”
> “Is good.” He took a sip of his beer. “Where are you staying?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can stay with me,” he said gruffly. “But my apartment is very small. I wish you’d let me know you were coming.”
“I wrote you a letter.”
“I never received it.”
“I would have called, but you have no phone.”
“Why did you come?” he gave me a hard look.
All the chaos and fear I felt choked me up. About being alone in the world. Anguish of waiting for phone calls and visits from my married lover. Being anxious all the time about money.
“A woman from Welfare came by last week, and somehow she found out I’d been making money under the table. Now they’re threatening to cut me off.”
In my heart I felt that if only I saw him, balance would be restored. Things would be all right. He would send out protective vibrations as he had before Isabel’s birth.
He ordered another beer for himself and contemplated my situation. “What proof do they have?”
“I don’t know. I always get paid in cash.”
“Bah! They have no proof. They can do nothing. … You’ll be all right,” he finally said, as if willing this outcome to manifest.
“I did put a little money in the bank.”
“A gift,” he said. “Someone gave you a gift … Listen. … How well our daughter plays.”
Later on, shouldering Isabel’s backpack, he led us to his new place, which was right by the beach. It consisted of one room with bare light bulbs, a mattress with box springs, a worn rug over linoleum flooring. The kitchen contained a table and a couple of chairs. Although he’d only been there a few days, he’d already unpacked his few possessions.
He took the remains of some stew out of the refrigerator, sniffed it, and threw it into the garbage.
“We need to buy food,” he said. “Do you have ten dollars?”
It was dusk as we walked to the local Safeway. We made our way past houses that fronted the ocean. Isabel, impatient with our slow gait, skipped and ran ahead. “Paul Newman’s beach cottage. Worth half a million,” said Antonio. He pointed to a pale blue clapboard dwelling on the right. “So many rich people live here.” He felt more comfortable around the rich.
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