The Rest of Us: A Novel

by Lott, Jessica

  “How are you? Are you eating good?” she asked Rhinehart.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Like what?”

  “Sometimes a piece of meat, or some fish, vegetables. That sort of thing. Very balanced. I try and eat early.”

  “What kind of vegetables?”

  “Beans. Cauliflower.”

  She sniffed in approval. “You should brown it in the bacon fat. That makes it taste the best. But not too much, just a little. Take care of yourself. You get to be my age, and you’ll see the truth in that.”

  She did look as if she were going to last forever.

  Rhinehart’s eyes were coasting around the room. “The place looks great. I don’t know how you’re able to keep it so clean.”

  Chechna took this to mean he thought she was taking shortcuts. “I get down on my knees and scrub! Me.”

  Rhinehart smiled. “Well, you’re doing a bang-up job.”

  “Have you lived here long?” I asked.

  “Too long! If I was smart I would have bought the lot next door. I would have made a fortune with it! But we didn’t know then. People didn’t buy things like that.”

  Rhinehart was telling me about his childhood apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, maybe thinking I had forgotten. But I remembered the story, as well as the café upstate where we’d been having breakfast, still rumpled from his bed, when he told me. “The couple that lived downstairs, in back of the hardware store, owned the building. Yushef and Esther. They were nice, used to invite me in for cocoa and that sort of thing.”

  “They always thought they were better than us,” Chechna said. “Once they moved to Saddle River they were ashamed of Greenpoint and didn’t want anyone to know. They said they were from Manhattan!”

  I thought of my father’s house with the clapboard siding and the crab apple tree that spit its hard green fruit onto the cracked patio every other year. “I couldn’t imagine growing up in an apartment.”

  “A railroad apartment, no less. It used to have coal heat. In those old places, you brought the coal up on a dumbwaiter, and in the hallway was a little gate I used to swing on.” He flapped his hand back and forth. “How I loved it! The kitchen had a cutout so that you could see down the length of it, through the bedroom and into the living room. I slept in there on a foldout. Chechna used to cup her hands and make the sound of a fire truck on Sunday mornings.”

  Chechna said, “He never wanted to go out and play! Wanted to sit around all day and help me make kielbasa. A boy! Eh.” She waved her hand front of her face. “Maybe something happened when his mother was struck by lightning. To her eggs.”

  Rhinehart said, “I never knew she was hit by lightning!”

  Chechna, sensing she had him on the hook, spoke to me. “Back in those days, after the lightning hit you, they buried you in dirt up to your neck to let all the energy seep out.” Her eyes glittered, and she dipped her head in a deceitful way when she talked.

  I was touched by Rhinehart’s eagerness, like a boy’s. He was shaking his head. “Amazing! Was this when Mama was a girl?”

  “It’s all gone now, Rudy. Dead and in the ground. Who cares?” To me, she said, “He always loved the past.” She was gripping my knee, and I could feel her fingernails through the fabric. “You’re going to take the pictures of my neighbors, right?”

  “Yes. Are they coming here?”

  “Yeah, yeah. They’re putting their faces on. Sue thinks she’s a beauty, even though she’s got two hairs left on her head.”

  Rhinehart had extracted a photograph from his wallet and was flicking it with his thumb, waiting for Chechna to finish advising me on how to position the two fake poinsettias she had bought at a large store she couldn’t remember the name of. It sounded like a Walmart, even though she insisted it wasn’t. “Target?”

  “No, no! It looked like Krone’s Department Store but with an Oriental name.”

  I had no idea, and she was the type of person that got angry if you guessed wrong.

  I started taking what I told Chechna were “test shots,” but really I wanted to capture the long windowsill crammed with fake plants still wearing their bows. I took a few candids of Rhinehart and Chechna on the couch as he passed her a photo of a woman in a long-sleeved black dress. It looked like it was taken in the 1940s. “Do you recognize her?” he asked.

  Chechna seemed alarmed. “Why would I know this person? Where did you get this?”

  Rhinehart ran his finger under his watchband—a sign that he was uncomfortable. All the years we’d been separated, and I still retained the ability to decode his gestures.

  “Well,” he said, slowly. “I found her address recently with some of my mother’s things. I wrote her to see if maybe she knew us from Ukraine. She sent this photo of her mother.”

  “Really?” I said. He hadn’t mentioned this on the train.

  Chechna’s eyes were open, incredulous, or maybe it was just the trouble with her eyesight. She squinted, pretending to study the photo, which she probably couldn’t see that well. “I don’t know this woman. She looks like she’s at a graveside. Give me another picture to see.”

  “I don’t have any others,” Rhinehart said.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Marta. I think she might have been one of my mother’s sisters. Her daughter’s name is Lyuba.”

  “Lyuba! I know Lyuba,” she said to me. She generally avoided eye contact with Rhinehart, or maybe it was just that I was new. “Lyuba was a loose woman. She bedded all the men in the town.”

  “Was she a prostitute?” I asked.

  She ignored me. “She was sleeping with the seamstress’s husband and he killed himself with liquor. A lot of men did in those days. Lyuba drove him to it, pestering for gifts. Here—I’ll show you a real picture.” Suddenly excited, she went over to the corner hutch and from behind a row of ornamental eggcups carefully extracted a framed wedding photo. She handed it to me. A small squat woman held a ribbonny bouquet; there were ribbons woven into a crown on her head and in the bosom of her dress. She had heavy features and thick ankles. Next to her was a boy her same height, but skinny, his dark hair oiled and combed close to the skull. There were several other girls and boys in white. Everyone looked about fourteen.

  “Who’s getting married?”

  “That’s me!” Chechna said. “What a beauty I was.” She pointed to the nervous-looking man. “That was my husband, God rest. The patience of a saint. All he wanted was to eat his varenyky with the brown sauerkraut and read the evening paper. Never ran around. Never in his life touched a drop of liquor.” She went down the list of bridesmaids. “This one moved away. This one had an abortion. This one killed herself with liquor. This one you couldn’t trust, she’d steal out of her own mother’s coffin.” Her eyes were glistening with the old offenses. “After my dear aunt died, she snuck down into our apartment and helped herself to the best things, the lacework, everything. That’s Lyuba there, you can tell by that whorish eye. She’s looking at Alexey. On his wedding day!”

  Rhinehart said, “Lyuba would be my age, not yours. What I showed you was a photo of her mother, Marta.”

  “I didn’t have no Martas at my wedding. I would have remembered that!”

  “You got married in Brooklyn,” he said, pointing to the inscription on the matting. “Marta and her daughter never left Ukraine. What I was wondering was whether you knew my mother’s sisters. Back in the old country.”

  “Your mother had sisters, sure. Three of them.”

  Rhinehart shifted his weight to the edge of the chair. “What happened to them?”

  “What happens to all of us. They died.”

  “Did any of them have children? Was one of the sisters named Marta?”

  “Maybe. I can’t remember no more.” The effort looked painful, and she stood up and carefully returned the photo to its original place. “This Lyuba ask you for anything? Money, gifts?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “I’d be careful, a so
ft-headed boy like you. There are a lot of people out there who’ll be more than happy to help you part with your money. The other day a colored boy came here selling candy. I saw him peeping around the door. I slammed it in his face!”

  I cringed. “Okay—we ready for the portrait session?”

  Chechna picked up the heavy phone alongside the couch and dialed the neighbors. I watched Rhinehart wander over to the bookcase, reading the spines of the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. He was nibbling a Danish butter cookie. I signaled to him that they were old.

  “Sue,” Chechna shouted into the receiver. “The girl’s here to take your snapshot.”

  Sue was also yelling. I could hear her voice from across the room questioning my credentials.

  Chechna seemed to forget I was standing there. “How do I know? She says she’s done it before.”

  • • •

  They arrived three minutes later. Sue, who really was bald, and Harold, who had dressed in a brown suit jacket and yellow tie. Below the waist, he had on sweatpants and vinyl slippers.

  “What’re you wearing that for?” Chechna said.

  “Why do I need to get all dressed up? Only the top half is going to show.”

  Chechna turned to me. “You’re only taking pictures of the top half?”

  “I hadn’t planned on it, but I can.”

  Sue said, “That’s what I told him! But did he listen? No.” In the light I could see thin filaments of white hair covering a very pink skull. It looked delicate and vulnerable, like an infant’s. She’d lost most of her eyebrows, too, which she’d redrawn with blue pencil.

  Harold said, “What does Mimi want with a picture of our lower parts?” He’d already seated himself on the couch, while Sue was giving me instructions. “We want something nice. Classy, you know, like at one of those portrait places. We’re sending it to our daughter in Florida.”

  Aside from Harold’s outfit, and being this close to Rhinehart and his past, it was a relatively standard job for me. I let Rhinehart explain my credentials. With all these people and their directives, Chechna’s apartment was even more cramped, and I was having difficulty figuring out how to set up. Rhinehart moved the armchair into the dining area to give us more space and said, in a lowered voice that startled me with its sudden intimacy, “I’ll bring your lights in. Tell me what you need.” Chechna shadowed him back and forth to the bedroom to make sure nothing got knocked over.

  The first few shots I took were in front of the fake fireplace. Sue used to be a floor model at Harrods, and she was a natural at posing—legs crossed at the ankles, back straight, chin up slightly, with a pleasant but slightly vacant smile. In her expression, you could see the vestiges of her young, vain self.

  Harold’s smile, on the other hand, seemed aggressive, like he wanted to bite you, and it didn’t help that his dentures didn’t fit his jaw. I suggested he keep his mouth closed.

  “Not smile! Who ever heard of this?” Chechna said. She was at my elbow, holding a Hummel figurine that she planned to swap out for the candlesticks so that we could have several different backgrounds. I longed to take a few shots of her.

  “My daughter likes it when I smile,” Harold said.

  “Then think of something that makes you happy, so it appears more genuine.”

  “I’ll think about my Jets.”

  “Tatie likes football,” Rhinehart said. I felt him near me, the heat coming off his body.

  “And this makes you want to smile?” I said. “Did you watch any of the games last season?”

  “We had a bad run. Some bad decisions on offense. But that Schottenheimer knows what he’s doing.”

  “Yeah, everyone knew what he was doing. A four-year-old could read those plays.”

  Harold laughed, and I took a few quick shots. I liked to talk to the people I was shooting. When Marty was around, he always wanted to talk to them, too, and I found the chatter outside my field of vision distracting.

  I’m sure I caught Harold with his mouth open, but most of the shots were good once his face had relaxed. “Okay,” I said. “I think we got what we needed.”

  I turned around and saw Rhinehart watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite decipher—appreciation, awe? It was a quiet look but intense and determined—it was sexual, and suddenly the air, in Chechna’s little apartment, seemed charged with it. I held his eyes, and we stared at each other. It was the look he used to give me in bed.

  “If you had one of those digital cameras, we could see if they were any good right now,” Sue was saying. “My daughter has one.”

  I turned back to her. “Film is much better quality. That’s why I use it.”

  “She’s right,” Harold said. “Those electronic pictures are junk. There are grainy spots on the ones Mimi sends.”

  “I explained that to you six times! It’s where she had to get it developed that once. At the CVS.”

  “All her pictures look like that, not just the batch from Thanksgiving.”

  As I loaded the black-and-white film, I was conscious of Rhinehart standing up, moving around. All at once, he was behind me, and still looking down at the camera, I leaned back slightly, my shoulders resting against his chest. I told him what I planned on shooting, and we whispered conspiratorially, low enough so Harold and Sue couldn’t hear. He had his hand on my upper arm, radiating energy, and when he removed it, it felt as if it had left a mark.

  I was wired from being so close to him, and went into the bedroom to get another light and to calm down. There I found Chechna. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her small, bent back half-facing me. A bottle of beer was on the night table. On her lap was my purse, and she was digging through it. My lipstick, eyeshadow, and keys were out on the bedspread. My face burning, I went back into the living room and whispered to Rhinehart, “Chechna’s picking through my bag!”

  He seemed amused. “Just let her be. She’ll put everything back. It’s worse when you interrupt. She accuses you of spying.”

  “But why is she doing that? Does she not trust me?”

  Mentally I was running through the contents, birth control, no, incriminating slips of paper? I probably had a bank statement. Would she be able to make sense of the numbers?

  “Don’t worry about it. She does it to everyone.”

  Harold and Sue were still standing by the mantel as I readjusted the lights and folded up the reflector. I was proud of being able to light better than the majority of photographers and lighting assistants working, thanks to Marty. It had been to the benefit of Sue and Harold, whom I’d given a much softer look.

  “I’ll be old by the time we finish this,” Harold said. “You’ll have nothing to take a picture of.” I’d accidentally been shining the strobe in his eyes, and he blinked like a cornered raccoon.

  Sue said, “When I was modeling I would have to stand for hours. Even when it was cold or what. I didn’t make a peep.”

  I took the camera off the tripod. “Okay, let me just get a few more shots. These are for my portfolio.” I wanted to take a full-length picture of Harold half-dressed, next to the Russian plates. I directed him to rest his hand on the back of a chair, a heavy Ethan Allen knockoff that was pulled up alongside Chechna’s dining table. He was surprisingly pliant, and when I directed him to gaze out the window, I got a man lost in familiar surroundings. Excited, I asked him to think of a memory he had of himself when he was in his thirties. He began describing Christmases when his daughter was young, and I was able to see a low-ceilinged living room almost identical to this one, a tree completely covered in tinsel, a gray carpet turned nicotine beige from all the cigarettes smoked there. Harold was in plaid pants, his thick brown hair brushed back from his skull. Now he was standing here, an old man remembering, and it was as if I were fusing his memory with my own vision. It came flooding in on me, this odd, familiar sensation, and I couldn’t believe there was ever a time when I wasn’t creating, or that I had thought for years that it wasn’t worth doing.

&nb
sp; As soon as that door opened, it shut again, and Chechna came back into the room, saying, “Why’re you sitting in my good chair?”

  “This crazy girl is taking pictures of Harold,” Sue said. “She says she doesn’t want me in them. Can you believe that?”

  Chechna was twisting her wedding ring. “It’s already half past four. I didn’t expect everyone to stay so late. I only have enough dinner for one person.”

  Rhinehart said, “Tatie’s just wrapping up.”

  I took a few more shots of the apartment and then, reluctantly, went back to the bedroom to retrieve my purse. It looked as if it had never been touched. I thumbed through the cash.

  At the door, Chechna got emotional, hugging Rhinehart forcefully. She reached up and held his face in her hands. Tears came into her eyes, “If this is the last time I see you . . .”

  “Don’t say that, Chechna. You’re healthier than I am.”

  “Promise me to take good care of yourself. We don’t know how much time is left us. And after I’m gone you will have no one. No wife now, no one. All alone.”

  I wouldn’t have expected Rhinehart to tell Chechna of his split with Laura. She seemed a woman to keep things from. There was something slightly manipulative about this scene, but Rhinehart was deeply affected. “I’ll call you the minute I get back to the city,” he said.

  • • •

  The express train sped down the tracks, tossing us in our seats. Alone together again, we were both quiet, shy. Rhinehart was staring out the window. When he began talking, it was about the carpet runner in Chechna’s hallway, a blue one with red markings like upside-down pinecones. I hadn’t noticed it. It came from one of the Pullman cars, he said, when Chechna was working on the trains after she first immigrated.

  “Did they give the rug to her after they took the train out of service?”

  “No, no. The railroad barely paid them. She stole it, most likely. The employees took everything—pillowcases, sheets. They bartered with the kitchen staff, who were smuggling out the food. For a week, I ate figs traded for a bunch of towels.” He smiled, but he looked tired as he pressed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.