A Week as Andrea Benstock

by Lawrence Block

  “Come on. Were there many Jewish kids there?”

  “There were enough. Don’t look at me like that, I don’t understand the question. I never counted, for God’s sake.”

  “But you weren’t friendly with any of them.”

  “I was friendly with a few. I wasn’t close with any. There weren’t many girls I was close to, Jewish or otherwise. Look, some of the Jewish girls tended to hang out together. They did terrific ethnic things like joining the Hillel Society at Haverford and having a seder every year with an actual rabbi to preside over it.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “I didn’t say there was.”

  “No, you didn’t, did you? Did your friends have the same attitude you did? That maintaining your Jewish identity that way was a dull Mickey Mouse thing to do?”

  Her mouth snapped open and she almost spoke. But the words stayed bottled up. She put one hand over her stomach. For a moment her brain filled with the sudden unbidden image of a baby with its umbilicus wrapped around its throat but the image flashed away as abruptly as it had come.

  She was not sitting over coffee with Winkie and Dana, not now. She was not at the Greek’s or the Dive. Nor was she at the bar of the Kettle or San Remo or the Riviera. She was in her apartment on Kenmore Avenue, with her built-in kitchen and her Danish furniture and her casement windows, and words could no longer be spoken without having been weighed first. The automatic responses were safe, whether they’d been learned or were inborn, but before fresh conversational ground could be broken one had to consider. One heard the words first and then one spoke them.

  “I’m sorry, Andrea.”

  “What for?”

  “It was just the tone you used, it got my back up.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “What are you looking for, a cigarette? Here?”

  “Thanks.”

  Let it drop now? He would probably follow her lead if she wanted.

  But she said, “I felt more Jewish there.”

  “Sure, because of the contrast. I never felt whiter than when we went to that jazz club on William Street. I wouldn’t say I was uncomfortable exactly. Maybe I was uncomfortable but on top of that I was aware of being Caucasian in a way I’m usually not.”

  “That’s just part of what I meant. There was more.”

  “Oh?”

  “I felt more aware that I was Jewish but at the same time I felt less Jewish.”

  “You lost me.”

  “Because being Jewish was something that made me unique in my particular group of friends, so I was aware of it, but once you get past the fact it stops mattering because I was the same as they were and felt the same way—”

  She went on a bit, talking as much to herself as to him, talking perhaps to Winkie more than to either of them. And when she stopped talking he assured her that he understood what she meant. She wondered.

  There was clean linen on the bed. She lay under the top sheet letting her eyes accustom themselves to the darkness. He drew back the sheet, slipped into bed beside her. She turned toward him, suddenly breathless, and when his arm went around her she felt herself rocked by a great wave of relief, relief from a tension she had not consciously felt.

  “Oh, my darling!”

  “Hello there.” He kissed her forehead, traced his lips through her hair. He put a hand on her shoulder, ran it down along her side to her waist.

  “Getting fat,” she said.

  “Just a little.”

  “Well, I’m just a little pregnant. Pretty soon I’ll look like a pigeon.”

  “I like pigeons.” His hand moved to her stomach. “Tell him to kick, will you? I never get to feel it.”

  “You’ve felt it.”

  “Not in any very dramatic way. C’mon, J-R. Right through the goal posts.”

  “Wait a minute. There! Didn’t you feel it?”

  “No.”

  “God, that was a good one, too.”

  “I can’t believe you’re not making this up.”

  “Maybe it’s just easier to feel on the inside.”

  “Well, there’s not much I can do about that, is there?” He rubbed her belly, rhythmically. “I love you very much, Andrea.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she said, “Your mother swears you started kicking in the third month.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “I don’t think so, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. She also told me when you said your first word and took your first step.”

  “I didn’t realize you spoke to her that often.”

  “I think she likes me more now that I’m pregnant.”

  “She’s always liked you. Did she mention what my first word was?”

  “No, and I was careful not to ask.”

  “Probably a good move.” His hands moved on her body. “If there’s such a thing as prenatal influence, I have a fair idea what Jeremy Robin’s first word is going to be. Unless I start stuffing towels in your mouth every night.”

  “Was I terribly loud last night?”

  “Let’s say you were audible.”

  “Oh, dear. Must I hide my face from the neighbors, do you think?”

  “Let’s say a delicate blush might not be out of place.”

  She drew back and squinted, trying to make out his features in the darkness. “You don’t really think anyone could hear me, do you?”

  “Are you embarrassed? Yes, I guess you are. I suppose it’s remotely possible that the Gilchrists could hear you. I assume they can hear us because of the ease with which we hear them, but they’re downstairs and doesn’t sound travel up? Like heat?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Anyway, they’re not all that hard to hear.”

  “She isn’t, you mean. I never hear him at all. Mark, for all we know she could be alone in there.”

  “Well, she wants someone to bite her breasts, and I’m taking the giant leap of assuming it’s him.”

  She started giggling. “Aren’t we terrible? To talk like this? I guess she does want her breasts bitten, though. It seems to be an essential part of their lovemaking.”

  “That it does. And it seems he has difficulty remembering, because she has to tell the poor bastard over and over again.” He moved on the bed, pressed his face to her breasts. “Shall I nibble?”

  “Don’t you dare. They’re so damned tender.”

  “Also large. Not that they weren’t always, but this is a nice bonus.”

  “One of the little fringe benefits of pregnancy.”

  “Fringe is a nice word.”

  “Oh, that’s lovely, darling—”

  Their lovemaking proceeded gradually in the pattern that had slowly evolved between them—sporadic conversation accompanied by caresses that built up excitement in gentle tentative stages. The banter between them functioned almost in the manner of a stage magician’s misdirection, focusing the attention of the brain while the body was stimulated in spite of itself. She adored this tender and friendly way they had of making love; it was so much more intimate than anything she had ever known.

  Until at last he lay atop her, between her legs, her breasts crushed just the least sweet bit painfully beneath his chest, and he was inside her and it all became wordless between them. And all the words went out of her mind as well.

  It was so good, so very good, and at one point it came to her that perhaps this was all there really was. When you passed a certain age you could not be as open and honest and certain and true as you might have been in earlier years. Those options ceased to exist for you. So God gave you lovemaking to take their place, and in the dark cave of the marriage bed you and the one you loved could be all those things again, to and for each other, justifying in the minutes preceding sleep all the small deaths and failures of the day.

  His lovemaking was long and thorough and gentle, his climax powerful and seemingly whole.

  She didn’t come. She didn’t always, especially lately duri
ng her pregnancy, and it truly was not necessary for her to come. At those times when she wanted to she nearly always did, and at other times, like this night, she felt no need for orgasm, no emptiness for lack of it.

  He didn’t ask if she had come. He said nothing beyond stating his love before turning to his side and slipping into his sleep rhythms. She was grateful for this.

  Ten, fifteen minutes later, when she was on the very edge of sleep, her body twisted suddenly as if she were swerving to keep from falling. Her heart was beating violently and her temples pulsed with some unknowable fear.

  She lay where she was until she had her bearings. She must have slipped into some dream, and in the dream she must have fallen. Or else she had simply shifted position in her half-sleep and had incorporated the act into a spontaneous dream. All that was disturbing was the anxiety which had accompanied the incident, that and the realization that she was not going to be able to fall asleep again, not for a little while yet.

  Mark lay sleeping in his usual position, lying on his side facing the windows, one arm gripping his pillow—to assert possession or to express insecurity? She sometimes wondered. His chest rose and fell with his deep regular breathing. She laid a hand lightly on his upper arm, just wanting to touch him for a moment. He did not stir. She got quietly out of bed and tiptoed from the room, closing the door carefully behind her.

  She moved through the apartment, turning on some lights, finding her cigarettes, lighting one, walking toward the window before remembering that she was naked. She got her robe from the bathroom and put it on and then walked to the window and smoked her cigarette all the way down, counting the infrequent cars on Kenmore Avenue. In the time it took her to finish the cigarette, not a single person passed by on foot.

  She wanted something but couldn’t decide what. Not coffee—it didn’t keep her awake, but seemed a ridiculous beverage to drink when one could not sleep in the first place. A glass of milk? Good for the baby, certainly. A glass of warm milk, carefully heated on the stove in a saucepan? Everything appealed about it but the thought of actually drinking it.

  Whiskey, of course. It was a night on which one ought to be sitting up into the small hours, drinking whiskey with old friends, telling old lies and older truths, knowing they’d all be safely forgotten when dawn came with sermons and soda water. Whiskey by the glass in a snug Village bar around two in the morning in the middle of the week, with the tourists all back at their hotels and the day-trippers back in Queens and Brooklyn and nobody around but the handful of regulars committed to serious drinking.

  Not that she often had all that much to drink. But it wasn’t a matter of quantity. It was more a question of attitude.

  She found the scotch, carried it into the kitchen, took a large rocks glass from the cupboard. Just as she was starting to tilt the bottle she changed her mind, put the glass away, selected an orange juice glass instead and filled it almost to the brim. Then she capped the bottle and put it away and carried her drink into the living room. She sat down in the wing chair and held the glass to the light, approving the mellow color of the whiskey.

  Cheers, Winkie. Requiescat in pace. Olev hasholem.

  She drank about an ounce of whiskey and felt it burn its way down her throat. Warmth spread in her stomach and she fancied she could feel the warmth slipping into her blood, moving through her body, bringing life and quickness to her toes and fingers. For a moment there was a sensation of heaviness in the center of her chest and then that passed and there was nothing but the warmth and a feeling of comfort.

  She thought of Winkie and tried to think of other deaths. Grandparents, the parents of some of her friends. A classmate at Bennett, barely known to her, existing in memory as no more than an occasional bloodless smile in the hallways, tossed during their third year through the windshield of her father’s car. A boy a class ahead of her in Sunday school who had died of a blood disease of some sort, presumably leukemia but that, too, had been a word one never heard spoken aloud. How old had she been when he died? Eleven, maybe. Eleven, perhaps twelve.

  What was his name?

  She drank more whiskey. She thought of a poem of Dylan Thomas, who had himself died before she’d ever been to the White Horse, damn him for being so inconsiderate. He’d written that there was no death after the first one. Well, neither was there any death before the first one.

  Oh, Winkie. For Christ’s sake, Winkie, why?

  Eileen would never swallow pills and wish the dawn away. Eileen understood enough not to seek to understand too much. She knew intuitively when to avert her eyes, and when to blink. She could survive, bending but not breaking, like that fable about the tree and the reeds.

  And Andrea?

  She had been a friend to Winkie, finding the role a perfectly natural one, and now without any strain she was a friend to Eileen. They were so very different, those two friends of hers, different in such a variety of ways that neither could gladly have suffered the other’s company. Winkie’d find Eileen boring and mindless and predictable. Eileen would see Winkie as snobbish, weird, undependable.

  So what did it mean, that she herself was capable of friendship with both of them? She frowned inwardly, chasing the thought, trying to catch its tail. Did the two of them represent disparate aspects of herself? Or different stages of her life? Or did they combine to prove that she herself was undefined, an empty slate, a mirror that served only to reflect whoever posed before her?

  Whiskey clarified and distorted at one and the same time. Like the shop in Through the Looking-Glass, where Alice could see what was on the shelf above and the shelf below, but not on the shelf she was looking at. Alcohol’s insights came obliquely, and when you reached for them you were grabbing empty air.

  Her glass was empty. Odd, because she didn’t recall finishing her drink. And she had put the bottle away because she had decided to have one drink and no more. She walked very steadily, got the bottle, poured her glass half-full, replaced the bottle and went back to her chair. She lit a cigarette and found one already burning in the ashtray. She stubbed it out very carefully, very very carefully.

  Two months ago. What had she been doing the night Winkie had died? What day of the week had it been? She closed her eyes and tried to calculate but gave it up as impossible. And it didn’t seem worth the trouble of checking the calendar.

  Some conversations, solitary dialogues, while sipping scotch from a juice glass:

  “Winkie, why?”

  “Oh, put a cork in it, Kleinman. Didn’t you always know I would do it? Face it, I wasn’t put on earth to be somebody’s grandmother. Nobody wants a madcap grandmother.”

  “You had plenty to live for.”

  “I had plenty to live up to and plenty to live down. I would have had to grow up, kid. And if you grow up you can’t fly, Wendy. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

  “You’re making me laugh, damn it.”

  “Well, I could always make you laugh, Andrea Beth. That’s what each of us loved about the other. And what’s so bad about laughing, huh? Tell me that.”

  “Who’s gonna make me laugh now, Winks? You tell me that.”

  And:

  “The thing is, Winkie, you keep dying. You died a little bit when we moved to New York, and then you died again when I came home to Buffalo.”

  “Home to Buffalo. Remember that phrasing, Andrea Beth.”

  “Stop it, you’ll make me miss the point of this. Then you died really two months ago, and then you died again when I found out about it this afternoon. And here we are having this conversation.”

  “Spooky, huh?”

  “Why weren’t we friends in New York?”

  “Because we reminded each other of college.”

  “Is that the only reason?”

  “Oh, I wound up in Yorkville and you wound up in the Village. I got involved with the Time-Life crew and you were hopping Village saloons.”

  “I didn’t ask what happened. I asked why.”

  “Being
dead doesn’t mean knowing all the answers. It means you don’t get called on quite so often, that’s all.”

  “Winkie, I keep losing more and more pieces of you.”

  “But I’m not completely dead, right? Right? I mean am I right or am I right, Kleinman?”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “I always was. ’The part of me they could not kill/ Lives on to orrrrrrganize.’ Remember when we sat up until dawn singing Wobbly songs? Remember how that idiot Giddings wanted us all to join the IWW when I told her they still existed? Then she heard they were on the Attorney-General’s list and how would she explain it to her mother? Do you remember all that?”

  “Oh, God. I remember everything.”

  “Course you do, Kleinman.”

  “It’s Benstock, now.”

  “That’s right. I keep forgetting.”

  And again:

  “Winkie? I just realized something.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to have a son.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “You just know these things, that’s all. And—”

  “Remember when we went to that kindly old abortionist in Reading?”

  “How could I forget? And—”

  “Let me finish, please. Death has its privileges. You were busy being a tower of strength afterward, and I told you how I asked the doctor whether it would have been a boy or a girl, and you got these huge saucer eyes and were all prepared to nurse me through a complete emotional catastrophe, and I told you he said it was neither, it was a dachshund? Remember?”

  “I thought I was going to die laughing.”

  “Well, if you gotta go—”

  “But this is important, Winkie. I’m going to have a boy, I know it, and that’s what I want. I thought it didn’t matter but I was wrong. It matters. I want a son.”

  “Okay.”

  “Because a son is better off.”

  “Okay.”

  “Because girls keep killing themselves. Sometimes all at once and sometimes a little at a time but either way they just, they just keep on killing themselves—”

  “Don’t cry, Andrea Beth. Please don’t cry.”