Our knees bumped into each other once or twice as we sat cross-legged, but I didn’t feel like scrabbling away, establishing a moat of personal space. It might have been because Alex had already begun to assume a sort of cousinly friendliness with me. He also carried an innate stillness about him. I unwittingly found myself comparing him to Daniel, who was energetic and restless even in quiet acts of intimacy like holding hands or embracing. Alex seemed content just to sit and stare at the darkening sky, and the glowing lights of the city. He leaned back on his palms, stretched his legs out in front of him, and gazed. Whether his mind was on the city, or back home with his anxious, orphaned mother in Michigan, he didn’t say. I didn’t ask.
“Are you sure I should be here?” he asks me now for the tenth time, adjusting his grip on the box.
I’d insisted that Alex come, because he had as much to do with the box, with the story, as anyone. Because Vivian is long gone, but he is here, with her genes and DNA spiraling away inside him.
“We love guests,” I tell him, trying to lighten his mood. “If my grandmother were alive she’d stuff you with food. I always used to tell people to only take about half of what you’ll want to eat, because she’d press more on you, no matter how many times you claimed you were stuffed. Prepare yourself to be grilled by my girl cousins if they’re here, only because they do that to every heterosexual male within a mile of me.”
“How do you know I’m not gay?”
“Well, then you have a marvelous alibi.”
“I’m actually not, but I could pretend, to fend them off…”
“Be my guest. Okay, here we are.”
Alex tips his head up, his mouth open slightly with a faint grin. “Wow. It’s great. Like something out of a movie.”
The white limestone building is in fact lovely and historic, but so are all these buildings on this block I’ve been visiting the whole of my life. I swallow a “thank you” because what, like I designed the thing? It’s not even my house.
I shove the door open and call out. Esme greets us, and doesn’t mention this tall, long-haired stranger I’ve brought in, though her gaze lingers on him for an extra second or two, and the box for a second or two after that.
“Dr. Joel is upstairs with him now,” Esme reports. “He is awake and fairly alert, but not in spirits.”
I lead the way up the steps, but after a moment notice Alex hasn’t followed me. I look back to see him rooted to the entry floor. He’s looking at a chandelier above his head, a dusty, fussy thing I’d forgotten was even there. “This way,” I prompt him, with a jerk of my head. Alex catches himself, and shoots me a small, shamefaced grin.
Joel’s head jerks up at my entrance to Grampa’s bedroom, and his gaze snaps right to Alex. “Who’s this?” he demands.
Something about Joel I’d forgotten: his manners seem to evaporate when tired, and he’s tired all the time as both a doctor and a father of baby twins. He’s been better about this since his residency years, but these are trying times all around.
“He’s a new friend,” I answer, adding, “He’s helping me with the book.” I look at Grampa Milo and wave. He raises his good hand, and glances at Alex with a questioning face.
Joel wrinkles up his head at Alex, as if he could read the answer on Alex’s face why this skinny slacker would be any help with the book. Today Alex wears black jeans, a T-shirt, and a plaid shirt open over that. It seems to be the only type of clothing he packed. Over the top of that, he’s got an old leather motorcycle jacket with visible cracks and scratches.
Then Joel shakes his head and rubs the bridge of his nose. “Not sure how much book work you’re going to get done today, kiddo.” He rubs Grampa Milo’s arm almost absently, as if his hand moved of its own accord, doing the reassuring while the rest of him was in Doctor Mode. “Don’t tire him out too much, okay? He’s only got a couple hours of lucidity at a time.”
A thud on the mattress draws our attention. Grampa Milo scowls, and thumps his own chest in an I’m here, right here, gesture.
I rush to say, “I’m sorry, Grampa, we don’t mean to speak for you, like you’re not here. Joel’s just worried for you, we all are. You took care of all of us for so long, and now it’s our turn. I know you hate it, but there you go.”
Joel and his long face stride out of the room, and I feel for him just then, what it must be like to never put aside “the doctor” to be just “the worried grandson.”
Grampa Milo looks at Alex with his tired eyes and waves his hand like a benediction.
“This is Alex. He’s from Michigan.”
Grampa Milo raises his eyebrows slightly. My talkative Grampa would normally be riddling Alex with questions by now, and no doubt asking if there were any Jews in Michigan. He used to ask this of any out-of-towner who should chance to cross our threshold. He’d be just curious, just wondering how our people were faring outside the big city, but something about the question always made me cringe.
He’s staring now with intensity at Alex, such that I follow his gaze instinctively. Alex turns to me, perhaps also wondering about the hard stare. It’s in this way that I finally look straight into Alex’s eyes, noticing for the first time their vibrant, arresting shade of green. I pull my attention back to my grandfather.
“We’ve got something to talk to you about,” I begin.
Alex nudges me. He’d set the box down on the floor by the bedroom door as we came in. He widens his eyes at me now, as if to ask, What, now, right now?
“Yes, now. Could you get a chair for me from down the hall?” I point with my thumb at the door.
Ordering people around is more Naomi’s thing than mine, but there’s a certain serenity that has come over me since I stepped into this room, and saw my grandfather with waxy skin and hair all tufted up because no one has bothered to run a comb through it yet.
I’m reminded of something I learned when my dad was sick, something I’d managed to forget, somehow. Sickness enforces a dismissal of things that don’t matter. By the end of my father’s life, it seemed the fact of his own death barely rattled him, perhaps because it had been advancing long enough to lose its terrifying mystery. Except, now and then, I’d catch him gazing at me with bottomless sadness.
Alex has by now returned, dragging a chair from the office.
“You see, Grampa, it’s like this. We found Vivian’s family.”
I settle into the chair, watching my grandfather’s face for shock, anger, distress. Instead, he nods with patient solemnity, as if he’d been waiting for this all along.
New York, 1999
Of course they know all about Vivian. It seems crazy now, to think that sixty years was long enough for every trace of her to drift away like ashes.
I look past my daughter and this man, this long-haired stranger with the unsettling green eyes, and look for her in the room. But she’s not here, still not here, not since the time I saw her dripping wet and blue, and I miss her; though I hardly believe this, it’s true. Maybe it’s because I need to see her one more time, whole and dry and okay, though of course I know Vivian is actually dead, and died long, long ago, and she was not okay when she died. No one who dies that young is okay.
Eleanor and this Alex from Michigan kid keep exchanging looks, and they seem to understand each other that way, which is interesting to me, even as I lay here mute and probably dying and almost too tired to care anymore about either of those things.
When they tell me that Vivian had a baby in Michigan before she died, you know I’m not even shocked?
Oh, Vivian, why didn’t you ever tell me? I could’ve helped you, I would have done something. I don’t know what, but something.
And this Millicent lady was Vivian’s daughter, and they think maybe… Eleanor can’t spit it out, poor kid, she looks like she’s going to vomit, and this Alex fella reaches out his hand to steady her with a touch on her shoulder, and I think good for you, fella.
I scrabble my good hand out of the bed sheets and I seize El
eanor’s hand. I squeeze as hard as I can muster and I look her straight in her golden brown eyes, those eyes like topaz, and I nod, hard. Yes, I know what you’re getting at. I get it.
Alex speaks up now. “There’s a test they can do these days, Mr. Short. It’s just a little blood test, and someone can even come right here and do it. They mail it in, and in ten days, we can know.”
Wonder of wonders.
I nod. Yes, we should, this test. We should know, though I feel like I already do. It makes so much more sense now, those last days I saw her.
Fat tears roll down Eleanor’s face. “I’m so sorry to do this to you, to make you think about things like this now…”
I shake my head at her. Not her fault. All mine, really. My fault from sixty years ago, but my fault all the same.
“How are you feeling, are you in pain?”
I shake my head again. I’m not, not the kind of pain she means, anyway.
The next few minutes overflow with anguish, Eleanor for seeing me so frail and sick, mine for seeing my loss predicted in the pain of her watery eyes. This Alex stands like a pillar of salt next to her, coming to life only when she says goodbye to me with a kiss on my cheek, smelling of her raspberry shampoo.
He picks up a box on the way out, and I wonder about that box, but of course I can’t ask.
And so I’m alone now, briefly, I’m alone so seldom anymore, always they’re keeping one eye on me for my moment of demise.
And then she’s next to my bed, and it’s my turn for tears to course down my old papery face.
She’s wearing a black dress, and a tiny hat with a puff of black veil; I hardly ever saw her in black. Her face is pale compared to the slash of red lipstick and her dark wavy hair, but otherwise she appears how she always used to. There’s no vicious smirk, no sneer or tease in her expression. It’s a softness I rarely noticed, even in 1936, and even then mostly when she didn’t think I was looking. Then she’d catch herself, and a hardness would settle into her features like she was made of marble.
Oh, Vivian.
New York, September 1936
Vivian had said she’d be wearing a green dress, and Milo kept jumping at every splash of green in his vision. This seemed hopeless; how did he think he would find her in this crush of humanity? There had to be thousands of people cramming together along the 72nd Street Lake in Central Park to see this Water Carnival mishegoss.
Milo had just thought it would be a nice place to spend time with her, being both entertaining and also free of charge, and furthermore, not intimate or scandalous in the least. Just two friends out watching some folk dancing, what could be more innocent?
He might never even see her in this mess, that’s what. Milo shifted the package in his arm, a little something he bought for her, considering her current situation did not seem likely to leave her much pin money. He’d wrapped up another surprise in there, too: the Playbill for The High Hat’s New York opening next week.
Milo had put his head down and polished off the song right that day, the morning after their night together, not sleeping or eating until he was finished and satisfied. He kept some of the words from their night together, but not all. Some of them, in the bright light of sobriety, were just wrong. Clunky, or too easy. But by the time he brought the words over to the theater, where rehearsals for other parts of the show were already underway, he and Allen could play it through without interruption, to the delighted appreciation of the cast and director, and Gordon, too, when they played it for him.
With the flush of accomplishment still high in his cheeks, he’d phoned Vivian up to take her to the movies to see Show Boat. His mother would never have approved, but he didn’t live at home, and he didn’t have to tell her he was taking a gentile girl to a movie. It was just for friendliness and appreciation, anyway. Once in a while he’d phone her up, or she’d phone him, and then they’d meet for a coffee, or a sandwich, or a show. This turned out to be a pleasant way to spend the summer, while he and Allen worked on the finishing touches of The High Hat and steered clear of each other at all other times.
But with their recent call, Milo had gotten worried. She’d confessed, due to his persistent asking, that the girlfriend and her new groom were due back home soon, and she needed a new place. Milo had already approached the director of the show about a job for Vivian and been turned out flat; her reputation preceded her.
“I suspect I can find a room in a boarding house somewhere,” she’d said with a sigh, sounding bored with the line of questioning. “Anyway, it would just be temporary, wouldn’t it? I have that feeling.”
Her voice sounded strangely serious on that last sentence, but maybe it was hard to tell on the phone. “Sure it is, you bet,” he enthused, wanting to buck up her spirits.
Milo didn’t dare tell Vivian, in case it didn’t work out, but if The High Hat was a hit, and he made some good dough off the royalties, he’d hire her as his own personal secretary. He might be the only person in Manhattan who understood her, maybe also the only one who cared.
So they talked a few minutes and then they made a date to meet in the park for this Water Carnival, where according to the Times, they’d built a stage right out in the lake, and all kinds of folk dancers were going to be hoofing it out there on the water.
Milo hadn’t noticed the lake yet, so busy was he looking for Vivian.
It was a husky alto shout of “Milo!” that drew his attention first, the voice with so much oomph it almost sounded like a man.
It was her swinging brown hair he spotted next, through the slanting golden light of the early autumn dusk. She was rotating her head this way and that, with a restless energy that seemed uniquely hers, even at that distance, through a crowd and with his squinty eyes.
“Vivian!” he called, and she turned and lit up like a photoflash. She barged her way through the crowd and threw herself into Milo’s chest. He caught her, steadied her. “You okay?”
“Never better. This is exciting! I’ve never been to one of these before. I can barely see the stage from here, but I got a glimpse. It’s amazing, it looks like a water lily, and there are reeds and bluebells made of wood… I hope no one falls off, and they have to fish them out! C’mon, let’s get closer.”
Vivian grabbed Milo’s hand before he could argue, and threaded through the mob. She kept up an animated chatter with the crowd as she went, “Lovely hat, could you excuse me please? So sorry, passing through, fine night, sir, isn’t it?” and people seemed to part willingly for her, as if she were moving up to her rightful place, which had been set aside by all of Central Park just for her.
As they approached the edge of the lake, the spectators were seated on blankets, or coats spread onto the ground for those unprepared, a small sacrifice on such a fine night, which still bore the faint tinge of summer, though it was closer to October, in truth.
Vivian somehow convinced a family to squeeze closer together to make room, and flung herself down on a square of trampled grass before Milo could get his own coat down.
“Vivian, you’ll tear your stockings, or muddy up your dress.”
“Oh, who cares? Sit down and enjoy. Oh look, they’re starting!”
Milo lowered himself to the ground, tossing his coat over the package for Vivian. It was just as well she hadn’t noticed it yet; it seemed a bad time to present it to her, in the throng. He should have guessed that free entertainment would have drawn them out in droves.
Milo propped himself up with his arm, positioned just behind Vivian so if she should tire, she could lean on him. She had the posture of a steel girder, though, and her face radiated interest with her grinning mouth open just slightly, with a childlike lack of awareness of her own appearance.
Following the singing was a modern ballet, then children who’d won prizes in a folk dancing competition: Russian, Polish, and Scottish dances. Milo felt himself watching something out of a fairy tale, all these dancers whirling improbably over a lake.
The fluid, rolling v
owels of Italian spilled out into the night to finish the program, courtesy of the singers of Coro d’Italia.
The crowd began to move in concert, as if of one body, but Vivian seemed content to let them go on without her. As they sat, they were surrounded by a forest of legs on the move. Vivian brought her face close to Milo’s; she smelled of roses. “Thank you for inviting me here.”
“Here,” Milo said stupidly, and without preamble, thrusting the package into her lap.
She tore open the brown wrapper, and then cocked her head. “Oh, Gone with the Wind! You remembered.”
“Yeah, you told me that you wanted to read it, once, at your place. I mean… your friend’s place.”
“Oh! Look at this!”
Vivian was holding the Playbill up, trying to catch the ambient light from nearby lampposts. She began to tear through page after page so roughly Milo thought she’d rip it apart. He wondered at this voraciousness.
“Well, where am I?” she asked him, her green eyes round and questioning.
“Where are you? Kid, I’m confused, what are you getting at?”
“In the Playbill, for our song. It doesn’t say my name anywhere. Maybe just on the sheet music?”
Milo’s confusion gave to way to a sickening dread.
“It’s not, actually. It’s my name, and Allen’s.”
“I thought it was our song. I helped you.” She lowered the Playbill into her lap, carefully, as one might a sleeping child.
Milo hadn’t noticed how thoroughly Vivian’s normal jaded pose had been overtaken by her childlike delight in the folk dancing and music, until that delight melted away again, leaving behind a fierce, brittle hardness.
“Yeah, you helped me take notes, you helped me once or twice with a word maybe, but look, if I gave credit to everybody who threw in a word now and then, every song would be split ten ways. Hell, Gordon’s Negro cook gave us a rhyme once in Hilarity.”
“You told me I saved the song, Milo. You said that to me.” Had he said that? It seemed possible. The memories of that evening were fuzzed up by gin and the momentous occasion of his first time in a woman’s bed, not to mention the thought of that evening—however pleasant—was always mixed up with Allen on the couch that afternoon. These were not things on which he longed to dwell.
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