by Alan Shapiro
One Friday, Julie (out of school with a head cold) was in the kitchen eating lunch with Miriam while Melba, on all fours, scrubbed the linoleum, a pail of soapy water beside her. Out of the blue, as if she’d noticed Melba for the first time, Julie said, “Mrs. Bradford, it’s lunchtime, don’t you want to eat with us?”
Melba never looked up, just went on scrubbing the floor. Miriam shushed Julie. “Just eat,” she said, “so Melba can finish up in here.”
Later, after Melba left, Miriam told Julie to leave Melba alone and let her do her job. “And don’t call her Mrs. Bradford, honey. Mr. and Mrs. we use with neighbors and Mommy and Daddy’s friends. You call Melba, Melba, okay? That’s what her name is.”
THEIR NEIGHBOR DOWN the street, Sigrid Rosenberg, showed up one afternoon to welcome Miriam to the neighborhood. Sigrid was a short woman with a pageboy haircut that gave her broad face and small mouth a pixieish air, like a middle-aged, slightly overweight Peter Pan. She wore a floral house dress with long sleeves even when the weather was warm. She lived by herself. She spoke with a faint German accent. She nodded approvingly at everything that Miriam had done to the house. Everything, she said, was “interesting, so very interesting.”
“So drab before,” she said, as they sat at the kitchen table, the two of them smoking. “Mrs. Gould, the widow, she didn’t care about how things looked; she really let the place run down. Who can blame her though, given everything she went through, and then, you know, what happened to her husband, I’m sure they told you.”
“No,” Miriam said. “No one told me anything. The realtor said Mrs. Gould had just gotten too old to care for herself. That’s why the family put the house up for sale.”
“The two of them,” Sigrid said, sighing, her right hand resting on the cuff of her left sleeve, “like me, survivors, though I don’t know from what camp, one of the Polish ones I think. Anyway, he worked in Zelda’s Bakery, near the synagogue. Not a friendly man, just quiet, minded his own business, didn’t bother anybody, and didn’t want to be bothered, either. One day, just like any other day, he comes home after work except he hasn’t even taken off his apron, still covered in flour and powdered sugar all over his hair and face, and he hangs himself in the cellar. No note, no nothing, just dead, caput.”
“Oh goodness,” Miriam said. “The poor woman.”
Sigrid lit another cigarette even though the first one was still burning in the ashtray. She smiled more widely now, as if she’d proven something, though Miriam couldn’t say what it was.
“That’s how it is sometimes,” she said. “Too much to remember, you can’t sleep, not even with the pills; what you won’t do to sleep—you have no idea. Anything not to think about how stupid it is you’re here, just you and no one else. Only you, but not your husband, not your brilliant son or daughter. Just you. What’s the good of that? What could that possibly mean?”
She was smiling at Miriam as she stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette and said, “I should be going. The house—may you live and be well here! It’s so wonderful to have some little ones in the neighborhood again.”
Miriam sat at the kitchen table for a long time after Sigrid left and tried not to think about what she had said. She tried not to think about poor Mrs. Gould and her dead husband and what all of them, Sigrid included, had suffered during the war. She wanted to push the thoughts away, but they felt, just then, immovable. She looked at the kitchen; she tried to feel the stable weight of the house around her. Surely nothing like what had happened to Sigrid and the Goulds, so far away in time, in another world, would happen here. Surely the new house would be her haven, her safe place. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow Sigrid had tainted that. How could she keep herself from remembering this conversation?
Sitting there amid her decorations and designs, she felt exposed, found out, as if a window she wanted to keep shut had been suddenly thrown open and anything now might blow in.
From that day on, she tried to be busy and not available whenever Sigrid called. She never told the family what had happened in the cellar. And she herself never stepped foot down there.
Scene IV
At ages seven and four, the boys still wet the bed. Most mornings, they came downstairs to their parents’ room where Ethan would get in bed next to Curly while Sam would slip into the crack between the two twin beds. Every now and then, not often, they’d find their parents in the same bed, and something in the way they lay there tangled together told them not to enter, and they returned to the damp sheets upstairs. On those mornings, there was an indefinable sadness in the house; the rooms grew spacious with loneliness. They didn’t know how or why. Their mother moved as in a daze to get them dressed, to make them breakfast; she was distracted, elsewhere, moving in slow motion, trudging it seemed across a foreign land, a desert, as if, if she paused even for a moment, she would collapse and die. Their father looked somehow defeated, like a center fielder who started running in at the crack of the ball, then realized too late that he’d gone the wrong way and could only watch as the ball flew over his head, beyond the outstretched glove. Mornings were like that when the boys found them in the same bed, although it happened less and less often. And then they almost never found them in the same bed. And almost anytime they wanted, whether they wet the bed or not, Ethan could get in next to Curly, and Sam could slip into the crack between the mattresses.
Scene V
Of the three children, only Julie wanted to go to summer camp. The boys were too young and besides both were bed wetters. But Julie couldn’t wait to go to Camp Winnipesaukee where several of her friends were going, and of course unlike her friends, she wanted to go for the entire eight-week session. Of course she boarded the bus happily, without a tear, without a wave good-bye—and of course she seldom wrote and when she did it was just to Sam, and when visiting day came four weeks later, and Miriam and Curly drove the three hours up to see her, what did she do as she came down the path with the other campers, all of whom when they saw their parents ran to greet them—what did Julie do? She smiled and waved and then ran right past them with another girl who wanted to introduce her to her parents whom Julie, of course, was happy, even eager, to meet.
Scene VI
In the summertime for the next few years, on the rare Saturdays when Curly wasn’t needed at the slaughterhouse, he’d take the family to the beach.
They’d carry their beach bags full of toys and towels over the hot sand to the middle of a mass of bodies. In the far distance where the shore curved sharply eastward out into the water, they could see the bright white roller coaster from the amusement park rise above the grassy dunes. All around them they could hear the tiny buzzing of thousands of transistor radios—“Young at Heart” on one side, and on the other “Hound Dog” or “Fly Me to the Moon.” They could hear children squealing in the surf and on the shore among the glistening teenage boys and girls parading back and forth. Overhead, contrails of jets too high to see would scratch a razor-thin white line across the sky, and slower planes closer to the ground would pass pulling banners advertising tires and restaurants. Everywhere, too, the odor of coconut oil and French fries, salt and sand. Everywhere laughter and small talk. Summertime, Miriam sang to herself, and the livin’ is easy.
Ethan would show Sam how to build a sand castle, which meant Ethan played with the pail and shovel while Sam looked on. Eventually, of course, Sam would want to do more than watch, and Miriam would have to get up and tell Ethan to share. He would stomp off in a huff, but sooner or later (usually sooner) he’d return and the boys would play together. Miriam would then lie back down next to Curly, her leg brushing his or his hers while men, even those with women, would look down admiringly at Miriam’s sleek figure, and women, even those with men, would glance at Curly’s chiseled frame.
The day was spacious, with nothing to do except lie there and be noticed while you noticed others. And yet at the end of it how tired they always were, but tired without the crankiness they often felt a
t home in the evenings, tired in a good way, a happily spent way.
On the drive home they’d stop at the Clam Shack on the bay and eat a huge bucket of steamed clams. Sometimes they’d surprise the boys and pull into the drive-in movie theater just past the shipyard, so close to the Baker’s factory that the car would fill with the fragrance of chocolate. Miriam loved how excitedly the boys would tumble from the car and run to the playground where other kids were playing while she and Curly would settle in, her head against his shoulder, his arm around her, and watch Carousel or Guys and Dolls or, her new favorite, The Best Things in Life Are Free—Curly holding Miriam as she sang along to “Lucky in Love,” or “Button Up Your Overcoat,” the two of them even singing together, “Take good care of yourself, you belong to me.”
Some days it was so easy to be happy it just broke her heart.
Scene VII
To keep her company while she cooked, she put My Fair Lady on the record player. The show had come through Boston a year ago, and she had been there at opening night. Curly of course, as always, was too tired to go. She went solo, the only one of her friends who went without her husband. There was Stanley and Dottie, and Harry and Gissy, and her, poor Miriam. She couldn’t really blame Curly, she knew that—after all, he was at the slaughterhouse by five each morning, and for the past year he’d been mostly working seven days a week. Someday, he said, all the hard work would pay off; he always promised that when he struck out on his own, they’d be living on easy street. Miriam was beginning to wonder. She tried to stay positive. She told herself that when their ship came in, they’d look back fondly on this time of struggle; they’d see it as the character-building phase of their relationship, like Eliza Doolittle’s years on the street, selling flowers, before Henry Higgins, the man of her dreams, turns her into the lady she was destined to become. Maybe, from the pinnacle of her future success, she’d see these years as the “good old days.” But right now, she couldn’t help but resent how hard Curly had to work and how little he got back in return. She tried not to blame him, but she could and did blame his father and his brother—God, how they took advantage of him—and sometimes, she couldn’t help herself, she blamed Curly for his lack of nerve, his inability to stand up for himself. But when she asked him about it, he called it love and respect. Where would he be without his father? How could he disobey his father? Didn’t his father give them the down payment for the house? It was like talking to a wall.
But all of that vanished utterly when she sang along to “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” While she sang, life itself became a musical in which everybody in the end got just what they deserved. She played the album over and over, and one day, after the third or fourth time, as she lifted the arm off the record to reset it, she heard Ethan singing from the next room. He was singing the same song; while Sam looked on, he was on the floor banging two trucks together as he sang, “I was supremely independent and content before we met. Surely I could always . . .” Barely eight and he sang like a little Eddie Fisher. She couldn’t believe her ears.
When Curly got home, she had Ethan sing for him, and tired as he was, even he acknowledged that the kid was good. Very good. Miriam was already plotting her next move. Ethan would have to learn to tap dance; he’d need acting lessons. He’d need coaching, direction. She wouldn’t be able to do this by herself.
SHE FOUND HIM a teacher. His name was Stuart Foster. His studio was on the second floor of an office building in downtown Boston, and every Saturday morning and Wednesday night she took Ethan there. Every Saturday morning and Wednesday night, Ethan didn’t want to go. They fought. She sometimes had to drag him kicking and screaming to the car. She didn’t care if he hated it; he had too much talent not to go. And someday he would thank her. Someday he would appreciate everything she did for his sake. Sometimes she would hear herself yelling at the boy and shudder at how much she sounded like her mother. But for Ethan’s sake she would shake off the feeling and not relent, because in her heart of hearts she knew that she was not her mother. She believed in Ethan. She wasn’t leaving her child for someone else to raise while she went gallivanting off to New York City. She’d never do a thing like that. This, she told herself, this was what a mother was, what a mother did. So every Saturday morning and Wednesday night they went, always, even during the summers. Sam and Julie would watch them go. They would watch them fight and go. They sang, too, but thank God not as well as Ethan.
MIRIAM’S FATHER’S HAIR was still jet black and combed straight back over his head. His hair was the hair of Brylcreem ads, shiny and full, though the youthful sheen and fullness only made his wrinkled face seem that much older. The kids stared at his hair every Sunday when they visited him in the living room of his shadowy apartment, while behind him and down a long, dark hallway his new wife puttered in the kitchen. She never turned around; she never came out to say hello. She was nothing but a stooped back in a bright kitchen down a dark hallway. They stared at the old man’s young man’s hair while their mother nattered on about the week, her plans for Ethan, who’d said what about him. The children noticed how odd her voice got when she talked to her father. Her voice got all . . . they didn’t know, they couldn’t really describe it . . . soft? girlish? somehow too eager to please? She sounded like kids in school with teachers they were afraid of. But what they were hearing wasn’t exactly fear. It was more like the teacher had asked a question and he was looking around the room for someone to answer it, and she had her hand raised, she was waving it in front of him, she was pleading, Me, Me, Me, but he was looking past her, he’d rather hear from someone else for a change, someone not so eager.
The old man just went on smiling and nodding, saying nothing, until finally toward the end of every visit she would say, Ethan, sing something for your Grandpa Maury, sing “Mom-e-le” for Grandpa Maury, and Ethan would glare at her as if to say, why do I have to do your dirty work? Then he slowly stood and sang. His voice was so beautiful. Even Ethan knew it. And while he sang, he forgot about his anger at being asked to sing.
When Ethan finished, the old man smiled and nodded. Miriam went on chattering. The kids fidgeted. They stared. Time stopped. Each Sunday, every Sunday, from one to three, time stopped, and every Sunday they were certain it would never start again. Leaving the dark apartment was like leaving a movie theater—the sun in their eyes too sudden and too bright, it took a moment to get used to it. On the ride home they’d complain, asking why did she make them come? Why can’t they stay home, he never talks and he’s creepy, and . . . “Enough already,” she’d say, in her normal voice now, her rushed, I-can’t-do-everything-by-myself voice. “You’ll go because you have to. Because I said so.”
Scene VIII
Zaydie died of a massive coronary in 1957. Without consulting Miriam, Tula put Bubbie in a nursing home. Miriam didn’t like the idea one bit, but when she called Tula to complain, Tula shut her up. She said that unless Miriam could afford to pay for live-in help, or could take Bubbie into her own home and look after her herself, she should mind her own business.
“What is it with you?” Miriam asked. “Why have you always been so hard on her, on everyone? She’s your mother, for God’s sake.”
“What do you know about my mother, or me?” Tula shot back.
“All she ever wanted for you was your happiness?”
“My happiness?” Tula said, laughing. “Wanted me out of the house is what she wanted—fifteen years old, I’m still a girl, a child, and she marries me to that—that butcher? That’s a mother?”
When Miriam said nothing, Tula went on, “Do you have any idea what that was like—we’re hardly off the boat, and I’m a girl one minute and a butcher’s wife the next? And why—because they couldn’t afford me? Too many mouths to feed? Is that all I was to them, a mouth to feed?”
“I didn’t know,” Miriam said. “I didn’t realize . . .”
“Everything,” Tula interrupted, “everything I’ve made of myself I made in spite of her, in spit
e of them. Don’t lecture me about who I owe what to. Mother, my ass.”
What could Miriam say? What else didn’t she know about? Who were these people she spent her childhood with? What was she supposed to do now, knowing this?
Even after Tula repeated, “Mother, my ass” and hung up, Miriam sat there, saying nothing, holding the dead phone to her ear.
ONLY A FEW months later, Tula, only fifty-eight years old, collapsed in the store. She couldn’t speak; she couldn’t walk. At the hospital, the doctor told Miriam that the stroke might leave some residual deficit, but there was no reason to think she wouldn’t recover most of her motor skills. By the time Miriam arrived, her mother already had recovered enough to grunt and wail but not yet to articulate even the simplest word. Half of her face was frozen but Miriam could tell from the other half that she was furious. Whenever the nurse entered the room, her mother growled; Miriam thought she was saying keep that bitch away from me. “Mother,” Miriam said, “everyone’s only trying to help.” But her mother refused to listen. She wouldn’t leave the IV shunt alone so they had to tie her arms down. It took three nurses to hold her still enough to do this. She wouldn’t eat, she wouldn’t drink; she thrashed her head from side to side whenever anybody so much as looked in her direction.