Shakespeare's Kitchen

by Lore Segal

Jimmy stepped out the front door, locked it and walked round to the back where tree, bush, and grass already shaded toward night. It intensified the yellow of the tea roses, developed the blue component of the reds to purple; the whites had become transparent, ghostly. Overgrown sprigs reached for Jimmy’s trouser legs, barbed branches grabbed his hair like the shoots that grew into the hundred-year-high wall of thorns in which Sleeping Beauty’s would-be lovers starved to death, dozens—hundreds—of beautiful young princes though some might have got stuck because they were too stout, or inclined to tell jokes that never worked out, or too shy to get the conversation going.

  The garden gate needed oiling. Jimmy walked out onto the playing field. People were still about. He walked watching them play the old game of two against the middle. He couldn’t tell, at this distance, what the thing was the one on the left tossed to the one on the right, over the head and just out of reach of the middle one, who leaped and leaped and presently caught and put it on his head—a baseball cap. He ran with it toward the right thrower who was running to meet him. Jimmy watched the two approach each other over the darkening expanse. Jimmy never mentioned, even to Ilka, that watching the two put their heads together he had experienced the same deep charm he felt before the Metropolitan Museum’s iron-age sculpture of what’s hardly more than a stick figure resting a hand on the shoulder of just such another. The descriptive tablet says they’re battling, but Jimmy understood it as a gesture of affectionate friendship, of one saying something the other understood. The figures on the meadow parted. The other thing Jimmy was going to be embarrassed to remember was his elation at the elegant choreography of their running side-by-side toward him. At a point, still running, they parted, approaching him in a pincer movement, and Jimmy understood he was about to be mugged. The boy on the left hurled himself against Jimmy, knocking him onto his right knee at the precision moment in which the one on his right, who turned out to be a girl, yanked his briefcase with a clean jerk from underneath his arm. Jimmy turned and watched them running, side-by-side, bearing away the briefcase with the letter to Paul Thayer that Jimmy had forgotten to drop into the institute mail chute.

  Jimmy and Ilka moved into their new house in September and Maggie was born the first of November. “We’re never more than half awake. It’s a luxurious sort of underwater motion.”

  “I remember,” Eliza said. “I remember.”

  “Why am I standing in the hallway? Ah! That’s the baby crying. I go in. I pick up the baby. It’s 2 A.M. and the lights are on downstairs in poor Jimmy’s study. We’ve asked my mother to come and help.”

  Ilka’s mother came. Now when Ilka went in to check the baby her mother Flora was always already there, whether it was two in the afternoon or night. Ilka’s mother fed the baby and bathed the baby. She pushed Ilka out of the way with her elbow and would have taken Maggie out of the pediatrician’s arms if the doctor hadn’t pushed Ilka’s mother out of the way to put the baby into Ilka’s arms. Ilka, who liked her mother better than she liked the doctor, was sorry for Flora, who was embarrassed and said, “I mean I thought because Ilka is wearing her brooch …” Ilka’s mother was stunned when Ilka and Jimmy eventually suggested she might want to go back to New York. “We’ll come and visit for the winter holiday,” promised Ilka.

  The institute needed Jimmy to drive to Washington. Leslie called Ilka and said, “Might it be a good idea to have him out of town while we meet about his retention?” Ilka thought that it was a good idea.

  Leslie said, “I’ve accepted Ilka’s request to disqualify herself. I see Zack’s hand. I see Alvin’s hand, I see Yvette, in that order.”

  Zack said, “Is it the sense of this committee that Jimmy is organizing this conference?”

  Alvin said, “Well, he’s had his way to find around the institute.”

  “And lost our directories,” Yvette said.

  “Is it the sense of this committee that Jimmy is writing a book?”

  “It’s still simmering,” Yvette said.

  “Because he’s had a conference to organize,” Alvin said.

  “He’s had a baby,” Joe said.

  “It’s not a baby, it’s a book he contracted to have.”

  “Don’t we know we ask our young people to commit themselves to what is impossible to accomplish.”

  “And to which they contractually commit themselves.”

  “And which every one of us around this table has at one time or another accomplished.”

  “And never in the time specified. How can we fire poor Jimmy after wasting two years out of his life …” Alvin stopped. Everyone’s ears pricked up at a tiny but distinct sound like a vase breaking in a distant room.

  Zack said, “Amazing! We say, ‘Let’s give this incompetent time to prove himself.’ The incompetent proves himself to be incompetent and we worry about wasting his time! While Jimmy’s chums congratulate themselves on the milk of their human kindness, they might ask themselves if it mightn’t be humane to relieve the young man of the awful experience of not being capable …” Zack, too, stopped. The members of the committee who sat with their backs to the window saw the white wall blush, saw the members across the table raise their eyes to the window, and looked around and saw the sky flare with a sudden wartime redness that went as suddenly out.

  “Interesting,” said Joe, “that we leave out of the equation how very well Jimmy writes. Don’t we know that writing takes as long as it takes? Is there anyone around this table who didn’t know the time Jimmy projected for the completion of his book bore no relation to the time it might actually take him, but was predicated on the time we required him to say that he was going to take, in order to give him a job?”

  “He agreed contractually,” said Zack.

  Here’s where Nat Cohn turned purple, got up, shouted, and sat down.

  Leslie said. “I see Alpha, then Yvette …” It wasn’t until Leslie passed the blank papers up both sides of the table that there was a knock on the door. Leslie frowned at Wendy, “We’re in committee, I told you …” Wendy kept standing in the doorway. Leslie said, “Would you all excuse me,” and went outside.

  When the bell rang Ilka put the baby into the crib and went down the stairs. Outside the door stood two policemen. The baby, Ilka thought, remembered she had set the baby down in the crib in her room at the top of the stairs, and said, “My mother!” subliminally wondering how the Concordance police could have jurisdiction over a calamity that would have to have happened in New York. The little Spanish policeman was Juan Jose who had come with Officer Right when the institute copier went missing. His upper lip had always looked naked to Ilka as if it must once have had, or ought to have, a mustache. And the other policeman was too young—a big, boy policeman who looked underdone as if he had raw sex on his mind. Ilka said, “My husband?” Officer Jose asked if they could come inside. It took a time for him to step far enough into the hall for the big boy policeman to be able to get far enough in to get the door closed behind them. The two policemen filled the little hallway. They looked gently at Ilka, which frightened her. “It’s my husband!” They did not deny it. Officer Jose said the car made an explosion and seemed to be pointing in a southerly direction. Ilka said, “It made what?”

  If she had understood what was intended by the edge of the seat of the chair chafing the back of her knees Ilka would have been glad to sit down. “Lady,” the little Officer Jose kept saying, “Miss! Lady! You make yourself sick, lady.” Ilka sympathized with the two policemen’s not wishing to be in the same room with her noise and would willingly have undertaken to stop screaming if she had been at leisure: Ilka had latched onto the notion of a mistake. Disasters in a Spanish accent did not have to be real. Ilka stopped screaming and asked for the number.

  “Lady? What number?”

  “The number, the number,” Ilka said irritably, “of security.”

  The Spanish policeman told Ilka a number. He wrote the number on the back of the paper that had Ilka’s name and address on
it. Ilka dialed and said, “This is Ilka Carl,” and gave her address and said: “Would you please send a …” and stopped. She had been going to say ‘send a real policeman,’ meaning a weighty, elderly white policeman. “Sorry!” she said to the small Spanish policeman, and hung up, and said again, “I’m sorry,” however she continued for the rest of the evening to wait for the bell to ring and Officer Right to come in and Jimmy’s car to not have exploded. Now Ilka remembered the baby in her crib at the top of the stairs, who must have heard the screaming. Ilka said, “Excuse me,” to the two policemen and ran up the stairs.

  The baby, Maggie, had lately learned how to sit, but not, once she sat, to lie down. Her enormous eyes stared between the slats of the crib. Ilka took the little girl up and wrapped her in her arms, and that was when Ilka swallowed. What Ilka swallowed was the fact that Jimmy was dead and she said, “Poor daddy’s car is broken. Come and say hello to the policemen,” in the normal voice that would henceforward emanate so curiously out of her throat and mouth, and then the doorbell rang. Ilka met the boy policeman galumphing up the stairs.

  “Miss, where do you want we should put it?”

  “Put it?” asked Ilka.

  “Put him,” said the policeman.

  “Ah. Where do you think?”

  The boy policeman waited for Ilka to do the thinking. “Put him … put him in the big bedroom?”

  Ilka hid in the kitchen with the baby, chattering about juice and the whereabouts of the pretty blue bottle and whatever the matter could be with the silly nipple that would not and would not go on the silly bottle, but the baby kept turning her head around and her gaze fixed in the direction of the closed door on the other side of which the two male voices were trying to figure a method by which the stretcher might be maneuvered in the front door and angled up the narrow stair. Ilka went to the kitchen door to say, “Maybe just put him in the study downstairs,” but the stretcher was stuck on the banister. Officer Jose, who was backing up the steps, must be at the head end. He said, “Move, lady, please,” and to the boy at what had to be Jimmy’s feet, he said, “Left! You go left, and lift, I told you. Move back. Back and lift! Higher.”

  Ilka returned to the kitchen and fed the baby, and presently she heard the men’s footsteps coming down the stairs. When Ilka went to carry the baby up, the two policeman stood by the hall mirror and turned their startled, apologetic faces as if Ilka had caught them out. Ilka understood that they were not going to go away. “You can sit in the living room,” she said to them, but when she came down they were huddling in the kitchen. “It’s all right,” she told them, but they scuttled out into the hallway and huddled in the curl of the banister. Ilka asked them if they would like a cup of coffee, but they shook their heads vigorously, in unison. Later Ilka happened upon the big boy policeman peeing in the bathroom. He said, “Oops,” and she said, “Sorry.” When the doorbell began to ring, the young policeman detailed himself to let people in. Joe and Jenny Bernstine came first with horrified faces. The young policeman opened the door to the Shakespeares. Eliza was weeping. Ilka moved into the other woman’s arms. Leslie asked Ilka if she would like him to make arrangements.

  “Arrangements. Yes. Please! He’s upstairs on the bed.”

  “Who is upstairs?”

  “Jimmy. In the big bedroom.”

  “What do you mean? In this house? They brought him into the house! Christ!” Leslie’s mouth made a thin, ferocious line. Not an attractive line. “Ilka, go answer the door. Let me deal with this.”

  The Stones had arrived, and Alvin and Alicia, and Zack and Maria. Ilka saw Leslie talking to the little Spanish policeman. Ilka saw Leslie sitting at the phone on the console in the hall and said, “Leslie. Thank you.” Leslie rapidly dipped and shook his head, rose, took Ilka’s hand and kissed it. “I’m going to see the coroner. If you give me addresses, I’ll call his family.”

  Ilka knew Leslie had left the house. Nancy Cohn stood in the window crying bitterly. There was food on trays and in baskets. “Thanks,” Ilka said. “Where is the baby?”

  “Bethy has taken her to play out in the yard, O.K.?”

  Ilka kept saying “thanks” to people. “Does anybody want some coffee?” she asked them.

  Everybody said, “No thanks.”

  Leslie said, “I would very much like some coffee.” Leslie had returned? Ilka was in the kitchen filling a kettle with water, measuring coffee, when Officer Jose came and stood in the kitchen door. He asked Ilka if she minded if he studied his book for this exam a week from Tuesday, to make sergeant. Ilka took him into Jimmy’s study and cleared Jimmy’s papers onto a chair. Ilka walked upstairs. She went into the bedroom. That was Jimmy under the white sheet. Ilka didn’t recognize the sheet—it was not one of her sheets. Would Ilka have turned the sheet back if the very large, embarrassed boy policeman hadn’t stood in the door and asked if she minded if he watched the playoffs, his favorite team? His brother’s best friend was a rookie fullback. Ilka minded very much, but couldn’t think if that was right or not. She couldn’t figure out why Jimmy’s being dead under the alien sheet should prevent a bored boy from watching his brother’s best friend on his favorite team. She said, “Get yourself a chair out of the baby’s room at the top of the stairs,” but the policeman said, “That’s O.K.” Ilka understood that he wanted to be a minimum of bother. She understood that her presence prevented him from turning the TV on, so she went out of the room. The TV stood on the dresser. It troubled Ilka that the boy would have to sit on the edge of the bed to watch. Would he budge Jimmy’s legs under that sheet to make room? As long as Ilka lived she wondered about not having turned the sheet back to look at Jimmy when he was dead. And she tried imagining a way for the young policeman to have sat on the edge of the bed without having to move Jimmy’s legs.

  It wasn’t till evening that the coroner’s men came with a folded stretcher. Leslie walked outside and closed the door and talked with them and came back in and said, “Ilka, take the baby into the living room.”

  “No!” shouted Ilka. “I want to stand here!” Ilka stood at the bottom of the stairs. She shivered and someone put a sweater around her shoulders. “Thank you,” she said. The phone rang. Someone handed Ilka the receiver. Ilka’s friend, Carter, was calling. “Just happened to be thinking about you,” he said, “wondering how you’re doing.”

  Ilka said, “Jimmy died.”

  “We have a bad connection,” said Carter on the other side of the continent. “I don’t understand what you are saying.”

  “Yes, you do,” Ilka said, “Jimmy is dead. They’re bringing him down the stairs.”

  “Christ!” Carter said. “This is embarrassing.”

  “No, it’s not! It’s not embarrassing! Why is being dead embarrassing!” howled Ilka as the two men lifted Jimmy over the banister. They got him angled out the door, carried him down the path and out of the gate. They put him in the back of the coroner’s truck and drove away.

  OTHER PEOPLE’S DEATHS

  Everybody Leaving

  The coroner’s men put James in the back of the truck and drove away, and the Bernstines, once again, urged Ilka to come home with them, at least for the night, or let them take the baby. Again Ilka was earnest in begging to be left right here, wanted the baby to stay here with her. No thank you, really, she did not need—did not want—anybody sleeping over.

  The friends and colleagues trooped down the path, the Shakespeares, the Bernstines, the Ayes, the Zees, the Cohns, and the Stones. Outside the gate they stopped, they looked back, but Ilka had taken the baby inside and closed the door. They stood a moment, they talked, not accounting to themselves for the intense charm of the summer hill rising behind Ilka’s house, of standing, of breathing—of the glamour of being alive. Leslie asked everyone to come over for a drink.

  They moved along the sidewalk in groups and pairs. Dr. Alfred Stone walked with his wife. The report of the accident had come in the very the moment the committee was about to vote on Jimmy’s retention.
Alpha had called Alfred. It was he who attended at the scene. Dr. Stone was arranging the sentence he ought to have spoken to the widow when he arrived at her house or at some moment in the hours since. Everybody stopped at the corner. Ilka’s door was open. The two policemen who had spent the day trying to be inconspicuous were finally able, now that the body had been removed, to go home. The smaller, Spanish policeman walked out the gate, but the big young policeman turned and waved. Ilka must be standing back in the darkness. The two policemen got into the police car and drove away.

  Inside her foyer Ilka closed the door and leaned her head against it, devastated at everybody’s leaving.

  Words to Speak to the Widow

  At the Shakespeares’ there was the business of walking into the sitting room, of sitting down, of the drinks. “A lot of ice, Leslie. Thanks.” “Martini, please, and hold the vegetables.”

  Joe Bernstine smiled sadly. “I wonder if we retained Jimmy.”

  Leslie said, “Alpha will schedule us a new search committee.”

  Nobody said, We could hardly do worse than poor Jimmy.

  Jenny Bernstine said, “Ilka is being very gallant and terrific.”

  Nobody said, She didn’t cry.

  Alicia said, “Ilka isn’t one to throw her hands up.”

  “Or the towel in, or the sponge,” said Eliza. “Joke. Sorry.”

  Alicia said, “Ilka is not one to drown in her sorrows.”

  “Well I’m going to drown mine,” Eliza held her glass out to Leslie, who refilled it.

  Alicia said, “We live on borrowed time.”

  Alpha asked her husband, “The policeman said there was fire?” and the friends’ and colleagues’ imaginations went into action to dim or scramble or in some way unthink the flames in which Jimmy—the person they knew—was burning. They wanted not to have an image of which they would never after be able to rid themselves.

  Dr. Stone replied that there was fire but Jimmy’s body had been thrown clear. The fall had broken his neck.

  The flames were gone. The friends envisaged the unnaturally angled head with Jimmy’s face.