Rachel was trying to count buttons, but the sound of breaking startled her. Her lip pouted and trembled, but something kept her from letting out the upsetness inside her. Pillowing her head on her arm, she curled up on the floor and tucked her thumb in her mouth, piles of buttons surrounding her like cairns.
Visha collapsed onto a kitchen chair and stared at the wall, black eyes blank. She felt frozen now, her limbs numb. If Rachel had thrown a fit, if Mrs. Giovanni had come calling, Visha might have broken down like a crazy woman. Instead she sat still as a ghost, sounds from the hallway and stairwell and out in the street muffled by the surf in her ears.
Visha had no sense of how much time had passed before the apartment door creaked open and Harry slunk into the kitchen. Placing his warm palm on her cheek, he murmured, “Visha, my Visha, what’s wrong?”
From the place where his hand touched her, a trembling started and spread over Visha’s skin and through her muscles until her hands were quaking. As if released from a spell, Visha jumped out of the chair, backing away from her husband.
“What’s wrong? You have the nerve to ask me what’s wrong? I know everything! She was here, in my own kitchen, that Italian whore! All your promises, they were lies. All lies!” Behind her she felt the cold rim of the sink. She reached back and down, her hand closing on the knife, the blade slimed with vomit. Clutching the handle in her fist, she stepped closer to Harry. Her hand jutted forward. The knife caught his arm, splitting skin. A streak of red blossomed under his sleeve.
Harry grabbed her wrist, raising her arm and the knife away from him. “You crazy bitch!”
“You bastard, you liar!”
Rachel, hearing her parents scream and struggle, came running into the room. In her haste, she kicked a pile of buttons. The tiny disks skittered across the kitchen floor. She saw the blood on her father’s arm, the knife in her mother’s raised hand. Her lip trembled and a wail erupted from her throat. Now Mrs. Giovanni, drawn by the yelling, appeared in the doorway. She couldn’t see the knife, knew only that Harry and Visha were fighting—and no wonder, after what that man had done. She came into the kitchen to grab Rachel’s hand and pull her toward the hallway, thinking at least the little girl shouldn’t see her parents like this. Suddenly, Sam burst into the crowded room, panting from playing in the street. He froze for a second, confused by the commotion. Harry twisted around to see what was happening. Sam saw the flash of a knife, his mother’s distorted face. He lunged forward, hanging on his father’s arm. Rachel twisted away from Mrs. Giovanni and ran to her mother, grabbing at her skirt. Visha lost her balance, pitched forward. Harry yanked his arm away from Sam.
The arm, relieved of Sam’s weight, shot upward. The knife, clutched by both husband and wife, swung through the space between them. The blade nicked the side of Visha’s neck under her ear. It seemed a scratch, nothing more. Then a fountain of blood pulsed against the kitchen wall. Harry, stunned, stepped back. The knife clattered to the floor. Visha sank to her knees, swallowing Rachel in her skirt. Sam beat his fists against his father’s chest until Harry swatted him away, his grown man’s strength landing the boy hard against a wall.
“Murder! Police!” Mrs. Giovanni screamed. She ran from the room, her words echoing down the stairwell.
Harry looked around wildly. He dashed into the bedroom, grabbed a box from under the bed and began shoving things into it. Sam crawled across the kitchen. Snatching the dishtowel, he pressed it to his mother’s neck. It was soaked and dripping moments later when his father came back, the box under his arm.
“Papa!” Sam called. “Help us!”
Harry sized up his wife, his children, the pattern of blood on the wall. He wasted no scrap on sentiment. “Take care of your sister, Sam. You’re the man here now.”
Harry turned and flew down the stairs, running into the street and ducking into an alley before the policeman came from around the corner, whistle blowing.
Visha tilted over onto the kitchen floor, head turned to the side. The spreading pool of blood lifted the scattered buttons. They bobbed like tiny white boats.
Rachel swallowed her screams with gasping breaths. She put her hands on her mother’s white cheeks. Their eyes met. Visha spoke, but the words were a burble. Rachel tried to read the shape of her mother’s mouth. Then the mouth stopped moving and her face went still, the eyes black buttons on the far shore of a terrible sea.
Chapter Two
IT LOOKED LIKE THE RADIO WEATHERMAN GOT IT RIGHT FOR once—it was going to be another scorcher. Even at six-thirty in the morning, the humidity was as stifling as a wool coat out of season. I’d only walked three blocks from the subway and already sweat was beading up behind my ears and dripping down my neck. I dreaded to think how bad it would get as the day wore on.
Finally, the Old Hebrews Home rose up ahead of me. As I waited to cross the street to work, I contemplated the building, so out of place among the modern apartment blocks that had gone up all around it, as if some medieval European citadel had been dropped on Manhattan. I wondered, not for the first time, if it had shared an architect with my other Homes. Whose idea had it been to construct these castles for the keeping of orphaned and geriatric Jews? Perhaps they were showing off, those prosperous bankers and department store magnates who sat on the building committees and boards of directors. For them, the peaked roofs and rounded turrets must have seemed monuments to their magnanimous charity. Or maybe they were feeling besieged, the rich Jews of New York, unwelcome at the yacht clubs and racetracks no matter how flush their pockets, their wives excluded from the society pages, their sons turned away from the Ivy League. I supposed they thought they were doing us a favor by surrounding us with fortress walls. Growing up, though, those walls felt designed to pen us in, not keep us safe.
The lobby of the Old Hebrews Home was cooler than outside, the high ceilings and marble floors holding back the heat. I waved to the receptionist behind her desk and to the switchboard operator in her cubicle. My shoes clicked past the piano, a gleaming baby grand donated by some famous conductor. I usually took the stairs, broad and curving like the stage set for a musical, but I was too tired today. I’d slept badly last night, tossing alone in the sheets, screams from riders on the Cyclone interrupting my dreams. I was about to press the button for the passenger elevator when the doors slid open. I didn’t recognize any of the residents who exited. Without my uniform, they probably assumed I was a visitor, someone’s dutiful daughter dropping by to check on her parents. They shuffled down the corridor to wait for the dining room to open at seven, the smell of coffee and eggs already in the air. Like me, they’d probably been awake since five, but while I’d spent the last hour nodding on the subway, they’d been sitting in their rooms, dressed and alert, watching the minutes tick past until they could come down for breakfast. I promised myself that when I eventually retired, I’d sleep late every morning, have my coffee brought to me in bed.
I rode up to the fifth floor and ducked into the nurses’ lounge, eager to peel off my sticky street clothes. Early as I was for shift change, I thought I’d have the room to myself for a few minutes, but there was Flo by the open window, white cap teetering on her teased beehive.
“Look who’s here,” she said, extracting a Chesterfield from her pack and flicking at it with a gold lighter. Leaning her shoulders out of the window, she aimed her exhalation at the sky. “I love a smoke on a hot day, don’t you, Rachel? Cools you off somehow.”
“If you say so.” I joined her at the window. We traded drags, her lipstick migrating to my mouth. No breeze came up on the rising heat, just the hiss of stopping buses and the occasional blast of a taxi horn. “I heard it’s going to be a scorcher.”
“Looks like it.” She finished the cigarette, ground the butt on the sill, and tossed it out the window. “Mr. Mendelsohn died last night.”
“Oh, Flo, I’m sorry to hear that. You’d gotten close to him, hadn’t you?”
She shrugged. “Occupational hazard.” She tried to
sound tough, but I heard the catch in her voice.
Some of our patients fought tooth and nail against the end. Absorbed in their own suffering, they took their bitterness out on us: impatient, demanding, full of complaints. Not Mr. Mendelsohn. During the months he’d lingered on Fifth, he’d become a favorite of the nurses, thanking us for everything we did for him, grateful for our kindness. Though it had been nine years now since the war ended, he was my first patient with those numbers tattooed on his arm. I’d hesitated, when I bathed him, as my sponge passed over his inked skin. “Don’t worry, Rachel, it doesn’t hurt,” he’d reassured me in his wheezy voice. Something about his accent made me feel very young. When I asked what I could do to make him more comfortable, he said all he wanted was to look at the sky. I opened his window wider, shifted his bed so he could see the clouds. At night, Flo told me, he’d watch for the moon, naming its phases as it passed over the city.
“Heart stopped in his sleep,” she said. “Best way to go. He deserved it, too, after everything he’d been through.”
I nodded. “Is he still in there?”
She shook her head. “The on-call doctor signed off on his chart. They came for his body early this morning. I guess you’ll be getting a new patient today.”
“Gloria said they’ve been calling up from downstairs all week, wanting a bed.”
“Speak of the devil,” Flo whispered as the lounge door opened and Gloria Bloom came in. She always wore her uniform to work, stockings and all. I’d never seen her in anything but white from head to toe, her only adornments a thin wedding band, a sensible watch, and the rhinestones on her cat’s-eye glasses.
“Good morning, Rachel. Clocked out already, Florence?”
“Just about to, Gloria.” Flo crossed the room to the time cards. “Should I get yours, Rachel?”
“Sure, thanks.” Flo clocked herself out and me in while Gloria retrieved her cap from her locker and pinned it over her gray bun.
“You’ll be along soon, Rachel? We have to prepare Mr. Mendelsohn’s room for a new patient.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I change, Gloria.”
As the door closed behind her, Flo muttered, “No respect for the dead.”
“You know that’s not it. She’s just doing her job.”
I went to use the restroom. Flo, eager now to be headed home, had changed by the time I returned.
“Don’t forget your cap,” I said.
She laughed, lifted it off her hair, and stowed it in her locker. “I’d forget my own head if it wasn’t screwed on. Oh listen, I’ve been meaning to tell you, my kids haven’t stopped talking about that day with you at the beach. All I hear is, ‘When can we visit Nurse Rachel?’ Think you could stand to have us all over again sometime?”
“Sure, it was fun. Let me check the schedule.” I went up to the calendar on the wall where Gloria wrote in our shifts, twelve hours on every other day, extra days off popping up as unpredictably as Jewish holidays.
Flo came to look over my shoulder. “How much longer is that roommate of yours going to be out of town?”
I flinched, keeping my face to the wall so Flo couldn’t read my pained expression. It still took me by surprise, sometimes, to have my own lies parroted back to me. “A few more weeks,” I said.
“Where’d she go off to again?”
“Miami, to visit her uncle. Look, I’m not seeing a good day. Anyway, with this heat, the beach will be too crowded. I’ll let you know.” I felt bad for the cold turn my tone had taken. I wondered if she’d noticed it, but she was shutting her locker and lighting another cigarette.
“Want me to leave you a few?” she asked, tapping at the pack.
“No, thanks, I don’t want to get in the habit. You shouldn’t smoke so much yourself. Didn’t you read about that new study they did, with the mice? How cigarette tar gave them cancer?”
“Go on, they’re good for me. Keep me slim. Calm me down. Pep me up. They’re little miracles.”
I had to smile. “Whatever you say, Flo.”
Finally alone, I kicked off my shoes and hiked up my dress. My thighs above the stockings were pink and damp. What a relief to unbutton the garters and roll them down my legs. I left them puddled at my feet as I pulled my dress carefully over my head. My slip was wet from perspiration. Irritated, I plucked the fabric away from my skin as I crossed the lounge, the soles of my feet sticking to the floor.
In the mirror above the sink, I saw that my penciled eyebrows were smeared from wiping sweat off my forehead. It annoyed me that Flo hadn’t said anything. Without the weight of brows or the frame of lashes, my black-brown eyes loomed too large, making my face look blank as a child’s doll. Shrugging off my irritation, I lifted my gaze to my hair. After all these years, I still couldn’t believe it was mine—piles of deep red locks shot through with gold and garnet strands that crackled like embers. I couldn’t count how many women had stopped me on the street over the years to comment on its color, how many men I’d heard mutter to no one in particular Will ya look at that head of hair? It was, without a doubt, the prettiest thing about me.
I turned on the cold tap, leaned forward, pressed my cheek against the porcelain basin. The water felt wonderful splashing over my face and down my neck. I breathed in short gulps, like the bowled goldfish children win at Coney Island. An electric fan on the table was swinging back and forth. I went to stand in front of it until the chill of evaporating water gave me goose pimples. After treating myself to a generous dusting of talcum powder, I put on my uniform, bleached and starched from the cleaning service. Buttoning it up the front, my hands paused to spread over my breasts. My touch must have reminded them of the pleasure they’d been missing; beneath my palms, the nipples puckered.
Sighing, I straightened the collar of my uniform. Just a few more weeks, I told myself. Rummaging in my pocketbook for the wax pencil and a hand mirror, I drew in my eyebrows, jaunty arches that gave my face an alert and compassionate expression. I pinned on the white cap, buttoned white stockings into dangling garters, laced white shoes. Arranging my things in the locker, I shut it with a clang.
Gloria looked up as I approached the nurses’ station, those cat’s-eye glasses balanced halfway down her nose. “Lucia, you can go now,” she called over her shoulder to the other night nurse. “Rachel, would you get Mr. Mendelsohn’s room ready for our new patient? When you’re done, you can set up the cart for eight o’clock rounds.”
I went down the long corridor of the fifth floor. The patients’ doors were propped open to coax a cross breeze from the windows in each room, but the air moved sluggishly, weighed down with moisture. Mr. Mendelsohn’s room was at the end, next to the old freight elevator. The night janitor had already done his job: the floors shone from a recent washing and the room smelled of disinfectant. Still, there was the mattress to turn, the bed to make, the nightstand to restock. The cards from Mr. Mendelsohn’s children and grandchildren were still taped to the wall. I pulled them off one by one, thinking again how amazing it was that he’d had the foresight to send his children away before getting away had become impossible, the good fortune to have a relative in New York with the clout to sponsor them, the luck to get them papers despite the quota. Flo said it made her believe in miracles, but I didn’t see it that way. For one person, one family, to have survived only reminded me of the thousands, the millions, who hadn’t. I recalled the suffocating hush in the movie theater when they ran newsreels about the camps, those desperate eyes staring out of skeletal faces.
I pushed the bed back into place, put the visitor’s chair against the wall, pulled the card bearing Mr. Mendelsohn’s name from the holder by the door. I wondered how many times I had done this in the year since I’d been working on Fifth, but it wasn’t a number I wanted to tally. I’d only transferred up here for the schedule. Downstairs, where each day was divided into eight-hour segments, I’d enjoyed rotating through the various shifts: morning, evening, night. But after moving out to Brooklyn, I figured the lo
nger but fewer days on Fifth would save me hours I would have spent on the subway. This summer, though, rattling around the apartment by myself, I wondered what I needed them for.
I’d liked working downstairs. I could still picture it. In the dining room, breakfast plates would have been cleared by now, a few residents lingering over their cooling cups of coffee, newspapers folded open to the obituaries. In the bright solarium, gregarious men were shuffling cards for canasta while chattering women stacked mahjong tiles. I imagined them dealing past the empty seat where the new patient destined for Mr. Mendelsohn’s room once sat, the absence explained with a glance at the ceiling and the familiar phrase “Gone up to Fifth.” Later, there’d be a movie or a lecture, dance lessons or book club, the rabbi on Saturday, visits on Sunday, distractions to pull their thoughts away from the inevitable. Because, as pleasantly as their days downstairs rolled by, residents understood the companionable activities would last only as long as their health allowed. When they became senile, bedridden, terminal, they’d be wheeled into the freight elevator and brought up here. Unless some crisis required hospitalization, Fifth was where they’d die.
“The room is ready,” I told Gloria, back at the nurses’ station. “Should I start on the meds?”
“Yes, please. I’d like them finished before the doctors come up for morning rounds.” She fished a jangling key ring from her pocket and opened the medication room. I rolled in the cart and began setting up—the little cups of pills in neat rows, syringes in parallel lines, charts following the order of patients’ rooms up and down the corridor.
Orphan #8 Page 3