by R. L. Maizes
She had all but given up when she entered a secondhand store on Fifth Street in the East Village. Framed pictures of poodles and greyhounds decorated the shop walls. And then Penelope saw it: rattan frame stained deep brown, brocade cushions the color of sea foam. From one of the cushions, she removed a Tiffany lamp. She stood up a statue of Saint Paul that rested against the arm. Trying to walk around the couch, she ran into a rolltop desk and a dinette. When she sat on the couch, she discovered the seats were firm, and her feet fell squarely on the dusty plywood floor. Though minutes before she had been exhausted from traipsing all over town, suddenly she felt refreshed. She gazed at the cushions, taken with how sunlight streaming through the store window—sunlight that should have been blocked by the townhouse across the street—glanced off the fabric.
“Hello?” she called. Although the door was open, no one seemed to be minding the store. “Anybody here?” From the scratched glass counter, she took one of the store’s cards, its edges perforated and imperfectly torn. “Hello!” she cried out, louder this time, but no one emerged. Frustrated, she kicked Saint Paul, leaving a dent in his robes.
When she returned the next day, the door was open again, but as before, no one was there. She was surprised they didn’t worry about theft. She left a note on the counter, asking someone to call her. Although she gave the numbers for her home, office, and cell phone, she didn’t hear from anyone.
For the remainder of the week, her patients sat on a folding chair she brought from home. They squirmed. Their bottoms grew sore, their tempers short. No one felt comfortable enough to cry, and wasn’t the very point of coming to a therapist’s office to weep without apology? Several clients cancelled sessions, claiming to be ill or too busy.
The third time Penelope visited the store, a woman whose white hair was tied in a neat chignon greeted her. The shopkeeper wore Lee overalls and was dusting the old-fashioned cash register. Penelope was so relieved to find someone there, she got right to the point. “How much is the couch?”
The woman looked hard at Penelope and then at the couch. She shook her head. “I’m afraid it’s not for sale. Perhaps I can interest you in some antique coins or a first-edition Hemingway?” Using the sleeve of her cotton shirt to remove fingerprints from a crystal vase, the shopkeeper resumed her cleaning.
“What do you mean it’s not for sale? It’s right in the middle of the store.” It was all Penelope could do to keep from stomping her foot.
The woman set down the vase. “You are very observant. You will note the statue of Saint Paul is also in the middle of the store. So if it is something in the middle of the store you want, surely the statue will do. Think how much easier it will be to transport.”
Penelope approached the shopkeeper. “I don’t want a statue or a book or antique coins. I need a couch for my office, and I want this one.”
“Yes, I can see you want it. But we don’t always get what we want, now do we?” The woman began unpacking a large box of books, lining them on a shelf Penelope could have sworn had been full a moment before.
If Penelope hadn’t desired the sofa so badly, she would have broken something, perhaps the Tiffany lamp, and if they had met under different circumstances, she would have given the shopkeeper her card, as the woman was clearly suffering from some sort of mental disease. Instead, Penelope said, “Why would you have it out if you’re not going to sell it?”
“As to selling it, well, I had intended to, but then you arrived, and if I’m not mistaken, the couch got a little sad. It seemed to lose a bit of its sparkle.” The woman set a book on top of the box and turned back toward Penelope. “Let’s be honest. You make people cry.”
A chill went through Penelope. “How do you know—”
“Oh, let’s not worry about that.”
Penelope struggled to stay calm; she remembered leaving her contact information the last time she had been at the store and figured the woman had looked her up. “I don’t make people cry. I let them cry. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
Penelope clutched the back of a pine rocker. There was no point fighting with the woman, who obviously didn’t understand how therapy worked. “I lost my grandmother’s couch. I’ve looked all over the city for a suitable replacement, and this is the only one I’ve found.”
The shopkeeper rested her hand on the back of the couch. “Have you tried Macy’s?”
Groaning, Penelope leaned against the rocker.
“If you don’t mind, that’s an antique.” The woman sighed. She patted the top of the couch. “I’m not an unreasonable woman. And I’ve a fondness for grandmothers, myself. Perhaps I’ve been too hasty.”
Penelope slid her checkbook from her purse.
“It will not be an easy couch for you,” the shopkeeper said. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have Saint Paul?”
“I’m sure. How much is it?”
“In honor of your grandmother, you may have it. Perhaps you will make a contribution to the ASPCA.”
Penelope wondered if the shopkeeper, too, had lost a dog.
* * *
When Estelle Markowitz first saw the couch, she regarded it with suspicion, poking the cushions and trying not to be obvious about sniffing the fabric. But once she sat on it, she realized it was a definite improvement. The couch supported her back, and her feet rested comfortably on the carpet. She told Penelope she was thinking about going to the senior center to play mah-jongg, which she had enjoyed when she was young. And she said she might fly to California to see her youngest son’s new house. She didn’t know where these ideas had come from. All morning she had been stewing about the way her husband used to complain whenever she bought a hat. He begrudged me my one pleasure in life—hats! she had planned to tell Penelope. But now she was so pleased with everything she had to look forward to, she forgot to complain. She didn’t cry once. Not even when she talked about her dead husband, Sol. “He couldn’t help losing his teeth,” she said. “And he only played with his dentures because they weren’t a good fit. He wasn’t a cruel man.” At the end of the session, Estelle told Penelope, “I’m feeling so much better. I don’t think I’ll need any more appointments.”
Penelope didn’t know what to say.
When Tara came for her appointment, she told Penelope about Jackson, a boy she had met at the health clinic. Jackson had herpes, too. But when Axel found out she was seeing someone else, he came to her house with a bag of pot. Axel said they were both tainted, so what the hell, and mounted her on the coffee table. “You know,” Tara said, getting comfortable on the new couch, “Axel is a dickwad. I think I’ll call Jackson.” She told Penelope about the way Jackson stuck his head out of the window of the city bus and shouted, “Peace, Miss Tara!” and held up two fingers until she couldn’t see him anymore. She said she liked kissing him even though he had braces. “They’re the soft plastic kind, and he never has food stuck in them.” Then she hopped off the couch and left the session ten minutes early.
Although Penelope waited, poised with a full box of tissues, not a drop of moisture fell onto the new couch. Over the next few weeks, Jack Green, Roger Barber, and Brian Walston all discovered brighter outlooks and quit therapy. For the first time in Penelope’s career, her practice began to dwindle. She had to dip into her savings to pay her office rent, and some days there was no reason to go into the office at all. She blamed the new couch and decided to return it. But the store’s business card didn’t list a phone number, and when she made a trip to the East Village to arrange to have the couch picked up, the shop had vanished. She hired two college students to put it out on the curb. Though the men who had delivered it didn’t have any trouble bringing it in, the students couldn’t seem to fit it through the door.
Penelope spent more and more time at Murphy’s. After several drinks, she would lean over the bar, cursing her father and Dion. The next morning she would wake up with a swollen tongue and little memory of when or how she had made it home.
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sp; * * *
Six months had passed since Penelope acquired the new couch. Her appointment book empty, she lay around her apartment in sweats, newspaper spread out before her. She read the same sentence over and over, something about a water main break on Bleecker Street or a break-in on Water Street. Finally, she gave up and attempted to wash dishes that had sat in the sink for a week, hardened food particles clinging like an industrial epoxy to the flatware. Her apartment hadn’t been cleaned in months. Walking from the kitchen to her bedroom, she stepped onto detritus from two seasons: crushed autumn leaves and crystals of SnoMelt. Despite paying an exorbitant rent, she felt she had somehow ended up on the street.
Later that day, she visited Dion’s apartment. As soon as she inserted the key into the lock, Freud began to whine, and he nearly knocked her over when she stepped inside. Penelope buried her nose in his neck, inhaling a soup of fur and dust. She rubbed his ears, scratched his back, and played patty-cake on his belly. She fed him treats, delighting in his thick drool and the thumping of his heavy tail on the carpet. They spent the better part of the afternoon napping on the floor.
The next day, she had a ten o’clock, a referral from Estelle Markowitz. In the past, Penelope had looked forward to meeting a new patient, to commiserating as the patient related a tragic story. She had little to look forward to anymore. Patients so depressed they questioned the value of their lives, so anxious they rarely left their homes, found relief as soon as they settled onto the sea-foam cushions.
That’s how it went with the new client. Penelope doubted she would see him again. When he left, though it was still morning, tiredness overcame her. Her limbs felt like damp wood; her breath came in shallow huffs. She pulled herself from her chair, lay on the new couch, and fell into a heavy sleep. Awaking revitalized an hour later, she discovered the newspaper open to the classifieds on her desk, though she was sure she’d last been reading the obits.
She called to place an ad in the services section, promising quick results. The following morning, she joined the chamber of commerce and attended two meetings, handing out business cards. Over the next month, she had a website built that featured the new couch on the home page. People whose unhappiness had thrummed below the surface for years happened onto the site and felt a deep longing. As fast as she could open their e-mails, new ones filled her in-box, each message a plea for her first available appointment.
She no longer spent sessions saying “How awful” and “I’m so sorry” as she encouraged clients to examine their pasts. Instead, she had clients draw up “happiness blueprints.” She cried, “Try it!” and “Why not?” She began to view each patient’s unhappiness as a puzzle, and as she searched for solutions, she briefly forgot her own problems. The box of tissues was relegated to the closet. But the greater help she was to clients, the sooner they left her. Her practice was like a train station, with strangers always passing through.
Anticipating a visit to Murphy’s one afternoon, she went to retrieve her coat from the office closet. The next thing she knew, she was heading to the health club, the gym bag pulling her along. It didn’t surprise her to run into Estelle Markowitz training on cardio circuit.
After meeting with three new clients the following morning, she stretched out on the couch with a copy of Techniques in Short-Term Therapy. She had read only a few sentences before she became impatient. Signs of spring filtered through the open window. Central Park was lovely on such days, light glinting off the duck pond, city dwellers sprawled out on blankets, greedily consuming novels and sunshine.
She squeezed the key to Dion’s apartment, considering how much Freud would enjoy a romp through the park. It had been weeks since she’d run her fingers through his ruff. She wondered what Dion was up to, whether he’d met anyone.
The sound of a dog barking, high, sharp calls aimed at her office, startled her; the key slipped from her fingers. She hurried to the window, but the only dog she saw—a German shepherd, as it happened—was walking quietly alongside its owner. She turned back for the key, but it wasn’t on the couch. Lifting each cushion and then removing them all, she didn’t find it. It wasn’t on the floor, either. Kneeling to peer beneath the rattan frame, she discovered only dust. She emptied her purse onto the carpet, thinking perhaps it had fallen back inside. But the key was gone. The damn couch had swallowed it.
Sitting on the floor, she picked up a dried-out mascara brush and two sticky pennies from the carpet and dropped them back into her purse. A pen sporting her new motto, “Brief is better,” had rolled under her chair. Reaching for it, she pinched her finger under a caster. She cursed the chair and sucked on the bruise. In front of the couch lay her wallet. The photo of Freud and Jung stuck out between two bills.
She had lost Dion and Jung, and now without the key, she would lose Freud, too. She wept, her breath coming in coarse gasps, her vision clouding. As she groped the top of her desk for tissues, she remembered they were no longer there.
Finally, she stopped. Sounds—the bang and scrape of metal as one car after another hit the pothole in front of her office, the rustle of a pigeon’s wings when it took off from the ledge, the blaring of horns—entered her office, reminding her of a world outside herself. She began to put the room in order. Seeing Jung’s leash on its hook, she remembered all at once the shopkeeper’s suggestion that she contribute to the ASPCA. Best not to cross the odd woman, Penelope decided.
The shelter wasn’t far from her office, the brisk walk taking her past the Park Avenue tulips. It seemed to Penelope their colors had grown sharper, their edges more defined, since she had last seen them. When she arrived at the shelter, she was out of breath. She planned to avoid the kennels. Not ready to adopt a new dog, she didn’t want to be tempted. She would never be able to replace Freud or Jung, and even if a dog did manage to capture her heart, it, too, would die one day, leaving her alone. She told herself she would just make a donation and leave. But first, she needed to rest. In the corner of the lobby, she noticed an old sofa and headed toward it. Its well-worn cushions lay helter-skelter on an oak frame, and its back was elaborately carved with lions and wolves. It was a strange couch for a shelter.
Yiddish Lessons
A tragedy. A child who had just learned to walk, to say father, tati, that child died. An unnecessary death. A fall. Because someone left a window open and looked away.
* * *
My aunt Leah wore a blond wig. The other Crown Heights women wore black or brown wigs, styled close to the head, but Leah wore a movie star’s wig, long and loose. I thought she was beautiful. She was pale, and her fingers were slender. Her nose, which others might have considered sharp, I regarded as regal.
When I was growing up, I would sometimes mop her kitchen floor. She seemed too delicate to do it herself. Though I was only eleven and her brother’s daughter, she didn’t stop me.
“Mameleh,” she’d say, “bring the roast up from the basement,” and I’d go down to the freezer and lug the icy slab up the stairs. My hands ached from the cold, but I would have endured worse for the smile she gave me as I passed her on the way to the sink.
My own mother was nothing like her. Short and heavy, my mother wore her hair in a bun and covered it only when she went to synagogue. Leah wore dresses that belted at her diminutive waist, lively prints that fell like petals around her. My mother wore black pants two sizes too small, her belly protruding like a cartoon bomb, only the glowing fuse missing.
I was deaf to my mother’s requests for help. “Vacuum the rug,” she would plead Friday afternoon as the sun lowered and the Sabbath approached. A mere ten-by-ten square of carpet, but I wouldn’t do it. “Please, it’s almost Shabbos.” I would pretend I hadn’t heard, lying facedown on my unmade bed, reading Little Women. What did she have to bargain with? Kisses? I took her kisses for granted because they were as plentiful as the water that flowed from the tap.
As beautiful as Leah was, her husband was that unattractive. With his great round face and wispy hairs growing
from his chin, he resembled a boar. He would stuff an apple into his mouth and devour it, stem, core, and all. He never simply said my aunt’s name but instead bellowed it in an unrecognizable accent.
I could tell Leah had contempt for him. Although her own clothes were immaculate, she let his go for weeks without washing, grime building up around his shirt collar until it was as dark as charcoal. They had two children, a boy and a girl. The girl, Bruriah, looked like her father with fat cheeks and so many small, dark freckles it was as if someone had sprinkled her face with pepper. Whenever the ten-year-old approached, my aunt remembered an errand she had to run or that it was time to punch down the dough. With her fifteen-year-old son, Yankel, it was different. It didn’t matter that he, too, had a moon-shaped face. She adored him and would go so far as to interrupt her prayers when he entered a room.
Each day after school, while my mother answered phones in my father’s textile factory, I visited my aunt. Her children were off in their bedrooms, Yankel doing schoolwork and Bruriah drawing pictures of broken birds and dead flowers. I sat in the kitchen with Leah and bragged about my test scores and how I’d survived a game of dodgeball. She buttered thick slices of rye bread for me and served them with tea in a glass. I was built like my mother and got plenty to eat at home, but the food was a gift from her, so I devoured it, growing hungrier with each bite.
She began to teach me Yiddish, writing out sentences in lined blue booklets. Der feter iz fet. The uncle is fat.
Once, during a lesson, Bruriah ventured halfway into the kitchen, the toes of her scuffed Mary Janes on the linoleum, her heels on the hall carpet. She rocked back and forth, glancing at the half-eaten loaf on the table. “Can I have some, too?” Her voice was full of sorrow, her face swollen with dejection, anticipating the refusal she must have known would come, for even I knew, and I was just a guest.