by Alan Shapiro
But even the most faded or obscured, when focused on individually, seems certain of attention, hopeful; each curve or line, slanted forward or back or perfectly balanced, each self-important little dot, if taken one by one, seems like a fantasy of worth that all the other fantasies over and around it cancel out. A mysterious sorrow rises within her from she doesn’t know where. She could be hurtling through outer space, between stars and beyond stars, out past the farthest galaxy, the whole visible universe behind her shrinking now to nothing but a dim speck in the blackest night.
Tears running down her face, she can’t look away until the activity director, touching her arm, says, “Come on, Miriam. It’s time to go.”
MIRIAM DOESN’T REALIZE that Catherine Olsen, the woman across the hall, is losing her mind till she starts showing up two or three times a day in Miriam’s apartment, not knowing why. A retired high school English teacher, genteel, soft-spoken, but always a little flustered, as if startled by everything, Catherine always asks, “Oh my, you didn’t call me, did you? You wouldn’t know what I’m doing here?”
One morning Miriam is straightening up a little before going down for breakfast when she hears something behind her and turns to find Catherine standing in the doorway of the living room.
She jumps when she sees her. Her surprise surprises Catherine who steps back and says, “Oh my, I’m sorry. I just . . .” She is wearing an old cardigan, her arms folded, her fingers fretfully pulling at the frayed edges of the sleeves.
“Can I help you with something, Catherine?” Miriam asks.
“No, no,” she says as always. “I’m not sure. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Would you like some tea or coffee?”
“Oh my, no, of course not.” Then she chuckles, “My goodness, the thought of you making tea for me. That’s rich.”
Miriam has no idea why that is rich, but she laughs as if she does. Catherine is looking around the room, at the books in the bookcase, at the desk scattered with bills and coupons.
She inspects the bookcase, running her finger down the spine of book after book. She says, “I started a book club here when I first moved in, but now I can’t remember a single book we ever read. I miss it, though, the talk, the socializing. You’re a reader, aren’t you?”
“Oh well, you know, sometimes.”
Then Catherine goes over to the desk and examines the papers strewn across it. She leans up close to the computer screen and squints at the lines. Then she stands there, confused, trying to think of something. She looks around at all the things, the couch, the end table, the coffee table, as if some object might recall what it was she’s come here for.
Finally Miriam says, “Um, Catherine, if I can’t help you with something, I really would like to get back to work. I have a few things to do before breakfast.”
“Oh, of course, dear,” she replies, mortified. “I’m so sorry for the bother. I just don’t understand what’s happening to me.”
Every day after this, Catherine appears unannounced in the living room, confused about how she’s gotten there, certain she’s come on some important errand she cannot recall. Miriam, of course, is annoyed at first but after a while she doesn’t mind the intrusions. She even looks forward to them. She likes being needed again. Almost like being a mother.
One day, Catherine notices on the coffee table one of Sam’s poetry books. Miriam had told her more than once that her son was a published poet. She had often shown her the very book she’s holding now. This time Miriam doesn’t say “Only my son’s” when Catherine asks, “So, you read poetry, too?”
As Catherine rambles on about her years of teaching high school, Miriam finds herself thinking how terrible it must be to feel your mind disintegrate, to be aware of the disintegration yet unable to do anything to stop it. She pities Catherine, this frail, handsome, helpless woman. And then finds herself recoiling from the pity. After all, she is several years older than Miriam. And from what Miriam has gathered, it seems that Catherine has had a relatively happy life. Her daughter visits her once a week. She often brings the grandchildren with her, though they never stay very long. Once or twice a week, a late-middle-aged woman picks her up and takes her somewhere for the afternoon. Before and after retirement, Miriam imagines that Catherine’s life has been a happy one. She has money—she can tell that from the clothes she wears and how she speaks—her husband must have been successful, and like most couples they must have traveled everywhere. They must have done things together. And her daughter, God, her daughter seems so happy to see her every week, her daughter seems to really enjoy her mother’s company. Her daughter is part of her life.
She remembers how, when Ethan was dying, she couldn’t see a homeless person in the street and not think, “Why the hell do they get to live and my child has to die, someone with so much good to offer to the world?” She never likes the thought, she knows it isn’t fair, but still she can’t stop thinking it, just as now one moment she finds herself feeling sorry for this distraught, befuddled old woman, anxiously at loose ends, seeing herself die piecemeal, day by day, and the next moment she thinks, wait a minute, the hell with you, what about me?
ONE DAY CATHERINE invites Miriam for tea, though when Miriam arrives, Catherine doesn’t remember having invited her. She is wearing nothing but a bathrobe and her hair is unbrushed and wild.
This is the first time Miriam has been inside her apartment. The living room is small, like Miriam’s. Family pictures adorn one wall: in what seems like the oldest of them, Catherine as a young woman stands beside a tall man Miriam assumes is her late husband. He’s wearing a white suit and a straw hat—a boater (Sam would have loved that one); he has one foot on the fender of a 1940s Buick that looks spanking new, and one arm around his handsome wife. Through the trees behind them there is lake water, and white sails on the lake. Next to it is a picture of Catherine holding a baby in one arm while her free hand rests lightly on the baby’s stomach. She looks contentedly into the baby’s face. Her daughter. Her beautiful daughter who visits every week. Miriam studies the infant face as if its sheer contentment, sleeping in her mother’s arms, might tell her something about her own child, her daughter, and where she is and why it is she never wants to see her mother. She looks from picture to picture, from birthdays, to anniversaries, from holiday to holiday, vacation to vacation: the girl grows up, marries, has children, and the children grow from babies to toddlers, toddlers to boy and girl, and then her husband ceases to appear in any of the pictures, and in all the ones remaining with her daughter and her daughter’s family, Catherine looks out at Miriam, confused, distraught, as if to say what difference does it make what kind of children you have, or who your husband was or where he did or didn’t take you, you still end up like this.
Miriam points to the picture of her and her husband posing nearly sixty years ago, before that brand new Buick. “Is that your husband? Were you two on your honeymoon?”
“My what?” she asks.
“Your husband.”
“My husband,” she says, mystified. “My husband. I should think I’d know who my own husband is.”
Holding her own arms, Catherine begins to pick at the threads of her frayed robe. She looks at Miriam without seeing her, she looks like a panicked child abandoned by her parents, in the middle of a strange city. Miriam shudders.
Not knowing what else to do, she takes Catherine by the arm and leads her to the bedroom and sits her down at the dressing table in front of the mirror. Catherine looks at the frightened and disheveled woman looking back at her. “Let’s fix your hair, dear,” Miriam says. “Maybe you should do hers first,” Catherine points at the mirror. “She needs it more than I do, I should think.” The sight of that other woman seems to calm her down. Miriam takes a brush and runs it through the wirey hair. She sees Catherine’s face in the mirror and her own hand resting on Catherine’s shoulder, while her other hand brings the brush down over and over. She sees Catherine’s face tighten in discomfort and then
relax as the brush works gently through each kink, snarl, and tangle until after a while there is no resistance. Miriam brushes and keeps on brushing. Catherine closes her eyes and starts humming to herself a melody Miriam knows but can’t quite identify.
She doesn’t realize she has closed her own eyes, too, until she hears Catherine say, “Thank you, dear, for coming by. We simply don’t do this enough.”
“Is there anything I can do for you since I’m already here?”
“No, dear, no,” she says. “I think I may lie down. I don’t know why I’m suddenly so tired.”
LATER THAT EVENING, on her way out for supper, she finds Catherine in the hall with her bathrobe open, and only one slipper on her foot, her eyes frantic, her cheeks flushed. She has soiled herself. Her legs are streaked with shit. Miriam’s eyes burn with the stench. “Catherine,” she says softly, one hand on her elbow, “come inside, darling; someone might see you. You don’t want to be seen like this. Come, let’s clean you off.”
“I can’t, it seems, oh dear, you wouldn’t know where I am, would you?”
“Sure dear, you’re home, at Emerald Shore, you live here, across the hall from me. I’m Miriam, remember?”
“Are you my daughter?”
“No, dear, I’m your friend, I’m Miriam. I’m your neighbor.”
“I should think I’d know my own address.”
“Come, I’ll show you. Here, this is where you live. Here, in this apartment, right across the hall from mine.”
Miriam leads her inside into the bathroom where she takes off her soiled robe and nightgown, and gets Catherine in the shower. She slips out of her housedress and underwear and enters the shower, too. There is no other way to get her clean. It can’t be helped.
How small Catherine is, not much bigger than a child, an ancient child, with flat dugs, and wrinkled thighs and belly. Gently as she can, she runs the washcloth over Catherine’s front and back, and between her legs. Her hands are diffident at first, uncertain, shy, but Catherine oohs and ahhs with pleasure, like a little girl, a child, being bathed by her mother, and then begins to sing in a high fluttery voice: “The water is wide, I can’t cross o’er, and neither have I wings to fly, give me a boat that can carry two, and I will row my love and I.” Was that the song she was humming earlier? Water runs down both of them now, loose gowns of water flowing over their faces, Miriam can hardly see what she is doing, but she doesn’t need to see; it is like the older woman’s body leads her hands where they need them to go, where the hands themselves need to go but don’t know it till they get there; Miriam doesn’t think about her children and the nights now more than half a century away when she would bathe them briskly and efficiently, eager to get them into pajamas and off to bed so she could have a little time alone. She doesn’t think of Curly and the chore of washing him those last hard years, the unresponsive body so male, so heavy, so resistant to her will. She doesn’t think child or mother, wife or daughter. She doesn’t think at all. It is like her name, her history, and everything that makes her who she is has been washed away with the shit and piss. She is just one creature, hobbled and old, washing another creature, even older and more hobbled, and even after there is only a soapy fragrance all around them, she continues to draw the washcloth everywhere over the other body in rhythm to the song the other sings.
A few days later, the manager informs the residents that Catherine has been moved to an acute care facility and will not be returning to the community.
EACH MORNING, NO matter how poorly she has slept, or how tired and achy she is, or how often she’s told her son that she wants to die, Miriam makes her bed. She smoothes out the bottom sheet, then spreads the top sheet over it, then spreads a blanket over that and pulls tight, tucking in the corners; then she fluffs up the pillows, and over the pillows and the mattress drapes a comforter, which she pulls, pats, and neatens until the bed, revealing no trace of her tossing and turning, looks brand-new, like a showroom bed in a fancy store. Hungry or not, she eats a little breakfast, unconsciously, insensibly, a cup of coffee and a piece of toast, and then she thumbs through the paper, does the crossword puzzle, and afterward washes the cup and plate and wipes down the counter until it’s immaculate.
She makes herself presentable because she always has done so: she puts on makeup, does up her hair, chooses what dress or shirt and slacks to wear, and which accessories. At lunch, she sits with Charlotte Voss, a new resident, who moved into Catherine’s apartment, and whose husband, too, has recently passed away, whose daughter had died from cancer many years ago, and whose son is a computer whiz.
Sometimes during lunch, while she and Charlotte trade stories from the past, Miriam feels as if they’re characters in a play, performing themselves; it’s like she’s floated out of her body into a ghostly audience where she watches these two old ladies, these charming and poignant “old potato pickers” (that’s what Curly would have called them), each taking turns telling stories, each appearing to listen to the other until it’s her turn to tell the story she’s calling up inside herself the entire time the other speaks. Miriam tells her about her successful mother and her husband, who had been so good-looking as a younger man; she tells her about Ethan and his theatrical career, his unforgettable voice, and how, if only he’d gotten this or that break, just once, so much of it is luck, how big a star he would have been. She tells Charlotte about Julie and how smart she is, her political passions, her job as director of a major university library, the various degrees she’s earned, and about Sam and his childhood quirks and eccentricities, the tucked-in shirts, the shoelaces, the hats, she should have known from day one he’d turn out to be a writer. And what a poet he’s become. And such a good boy, a real mensch. He takes good care of her. She even talks for the first time about Stuart and what a way he had with the piano and the shows they put on together and how good he was with Ethan. Telling stories now to Charlotte, she feels as if her past is something that had happened in another world, not just another time, more like a dream than a play she’s only now recalling, a dream that hardly had to do with her at all. What a musical it would have made. A hit, for sure.
After lunch, she reads in her recliner or watches her soaps. Sometimes she goes back to the dining hall for supper; sometimes she doesn’t bother. She misses Catherine. She misses Catherine terribly, but will not talk about it, not to anyone. What good would it do? Everyone’s got trouble enough, she thinks. What was it Bubbie used to say? “Oh my little shayna punim, don’t be so sad—someday you’ll see if everybody put their troubles down on the sidewalk, so you could see them, you’d pick yours up and run.” No, she won’t make a fuss. She won’t have anyone feeling sorry for her; she’ll go as always to the poker game on Tuesday nights and on Wednesday nights to bingo. She’ll sit with her friends and kibitz, because that’s what she does, that’s who she is. Nobody will say “poor Miriam” when her name is mentioned.
AT BEDTIME SHE folds back the comforter, folds back the blanket and top sheet, and gets into bed, the arthritis in her back, her hands, her hips, promising another restless night, resulting in another painful morning, when she’ll nonetheless drag herself up and make the bed and eat and make herself presentable and tell her son “How should I be?” when he calls to ask her how she is.
I want to thank several dear friends and family for help with this book over the many years that it evolved: Pam Durban, Daniel Wallace, Tom Sleigh, and my beautiful and brilliant wife, Callie Warner. I need to single out two friends in particular, Jill McCorkle and Allan Gurganus, without whose insight and encouragement this book would never have gotten to where it is. I also want to thank my agent, Janet Silver, for her wise counsel, on and off the page, and my editor at Algonquin, Chuck Adams, for his faith in the book and his indispensable guidance.
BROADWAY BABY
Life vs. Art: A Note from the Author
Questions for Discussion
LIFE VS. ART
A Note from the Author
In both m
y poetry and my prose, my personal life has been a source of subject matter. But in saying that, I feel it’s important to point out that personal experience is not art, and art is not personal experience. For one thing, personal experience does not happen in sentences and paragraphs, or lines and stanzas. For another thing, even in a story that follows closely something that may have happened in life, the writing of that story always requires a selection and arrangement of detail, and thus is always as much invented as recalled. While autobiographical detail often finds its way onto the page, my loyalty in writing poetry and fiction (nonfiction is another matter) is to the story itself as it evolves, and not to the actual events that may stand in back of this or that scene or stanza. In Broadway Baby, for instance, I have drawn on certain facts of my personal life. Like Ethan, my brother David was a Broadway actor, a song and dance man, and like Miriam’s parents, my mother’s parents were divorced in the 1920s. My family lived at the same time and in the same place as the Gold family in the novel. And like Hank Gold, my father spent most of his working life running his father’s slaughterhouse. But while some external facts are similar in some ways, the internal lives of the people in this book are completely imagined. What they think and feel and often what they do issue from the dramatic necessities and pressures of the story as it unfolds. The story itself determines how the characters develop. I took my cues from what was happening on the page, not from anything that has happened in the world. And even where there is some correspondence between real and imagined life, that reality is transformed into art, into linguistic forms and patterns that I hope illuminate experiences that otherwise, in the world itself, are muddled and confused.