What Is Missing

by Michael Frank

  “Right … Jeremy.”

  He laughed. She laughed.

  Henry stood up. “I’m sorry.” He extended his hand to the girl. “We didn’t expect…”

  “It’s all right. I’m macrobiotic. I’ll just have a glass of wine. I’ll sit on the floor if you don’t have a chair.”

  “We have a chair,” said Costanza. She went off to find a chair, also a plate, cutlery, a glass, and a napkin.

  “Is wine macrobiotic?” Andrew asked.

  “My little brother, Andrew, the nutritionist.” Justin went on to introduce the others. Then he dropped into the open chair next to his grandfather.

  “So what happened to the fagele?” Leopold asked with his usual bluntness.

  “He has another fagele now.”

  “Pity.”

  “Yes and no.” Justin smiled at Zoë.

  Leopold said, “I don’t mind if you like the boys, Justin. Just so you know. I’ve been reflecting. The world is a looser place than when I grew up. I mean, think of what my people would have said”—he glanced at Lorna—“a fellow like me with a lady like her.”

  “Because she’s black, you mean.”

  Leopold said unhesitatingly, “Yes, that’s what I mean.”

  “Well, I’m with Zoë now.”

  “I see,” Leopold said. Then: “Actually, I don’t see.”

  “I like girls and boys, Grandpa.”

  “I like boys and girls,” said Zoë.

  “Kismet,” said Henry from the head of the table.

  “Where does that word come from, anyway?” said Andrew.

  “I believe it’s Arabic,” said Henry. “It has something to do with the will of Allah.”

  “First baptism, then Allah,” Leopold said. “What’s next?”

  “Dinner,” said Costanza.

  * * *

  The salad, the spinach pie, the stuffed grape leaves, the olives, the Greek cheeses Costanza had paired with pears, apples, and quince paste—all of it was light, bright, and disappeared so quickly that she had to replenish the bowls and platters twice from the ample provisions she and Andrew had brought back from Astoria. Leopold never opened his deli sandwich. Zoë the macrobioticist suspended her rules beyond just the wine and dug in with appetite. Without David there, Justin seemed more relaxed, much more himself. And Andrew retreated into high observing mode, as though he were making photographs just by looking around the room.

  For Costanza, the evening had the feeling of a turning point. The ordeal of the past month seemed on its way to coalescing into an experience that would situate itself in her past. It would be the cycle that she had tried, a trial that had failed, the failure that, in time, she would learn to live with. Despite Leopold, she did not yet know what she would do next. What she and Henry would do next. But the fact that her mind could expand to accommodate the mere idea of next was a sign that something was shifting.

  Only when Costanza started to clear away the dinner dishes did Henry notice, and comment on, something that Costanza had observed much earlier in the evening: Lorna was wearing a bright diamond on the ring finger of her left hand.

  “Father, is there something you and Lorna have to tell us?”

  “I wondered when you’d ask.” Leopold took Lorna’s hand in his. “And, yes, it means exactly what you think it does. Exactly what such rings always mean.”

  The old man was beaming and flushed. “Lorna and I hope that you will be free on the second night of Passover, which is a Saturday this year. Saturday the fourth of April.”

  “Saturday is the fifth,” Lorna corrected him gently.

  “The fifth then. Rabbi Mendelstein is coming after sundown, and there will be music. A trio, I heard them at the senior center. And—despite tonight, which has been delicious—deli. I like the idea of deli at a wedding instead of at a shivah.”

  “I’m baking the cookies myself,” Lorna said. “I’m starting way ahead.”

  “The freezer’s so full we had to toss out all the ice!” Leopold said gleefully.

  “Is this where you’re meant to say mazel tov?” asked Zoë.

  “Exactly where,” said Justin.

  “If only we had some champagne,” said Costanza.

  Lorna said, “I put two bottles in the refrigerator when we arrived.”

  After Andrew and Lorna retrieved the bottles and glasses, Henry raised his glass to the new couple. His toast seemed genuine and also a little wistful. (He couldn’t help but wonder, Shouldn’t I be the one getting married?)

  Afterward, and with some difficulty, Leopold stood up. “I too have a toast. To this lovely family of mine. And also, to all the splendid women here tonight, Mademoiselle Zoë and la bella Costanza.” He turned to Andrew. “Not to worry, birthday boychik, your day will come.” Then: “And of course to Lorna, who has brought so much light back into my life.”

  Glasses touched; champagne was sipped. Leopold teetered slightly, then dropped back down into his chair.

  “Father, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” But Leopold didn’t look fine. His face, flushed earlier, was now beaded with sweat. “It’s just kind of warm in this hotel. Maybe we could open a window.”

  All eyes were on the old man. “What is it?”

  “Hotel?” asked Andrew.

  “What hotel?” Leopold turned to Lorna. “My dear, may I have some of those things in the bowl?”

  “What things, Leopold?”

  “The things to put in my thing. My receptacle. Because it is so hot now. The cold things. You know.”

  “The ice cubes?”

  “Yes, those things. Les glaces—no. Les glaçons. To put in my thing.”

  “To put in your water?”

  He nodded. Lorna started to pick up two ice cubes with the tongs that were hanging over the rim of the bowl. Leopold, bypassing her, reached over and with great concentration managed to pick up a single cube and drop it into his glass. It was the only sound in the room. Ice against glass. Ping—and then silence.

  “What’s wrong with everyone?” Leopold asked.

  “Nothing,” said Henry in an artificially calm voice.

  Leopold reached for a second ice cube. This time he missed the glass entirely. The cube skittered across the table and dropped on the floor. He looked up. “An old man losing his aim. It happens.”

  “Father,” Henry said. “Can you tell me what month it is?”

  “Well, it’s April, of course. ‘Chestnuts in blossom,’” he sang. “‘Holiday tables under the trees…’” Leopold looked up. “But where are the trees?”

  Henry disappeared from the table and returned with a ther- mometer.

  “I don’t need that.”

  “With all due respect, Father, yes, you do. Open up.” Henry inserted it into Leopold’s mouth, felt his forehead, and waited.

  A minute passed. Everyone at the table was still and silent.

  The thermometer made a high-pitched beep. Henry took it out of Leopold’s mouth. “103.2. Where’s my phone?”

  * * *

  The next morning, on five hours—fewer—of sleep, Andrew splashed cold water on his face, pulled on his running clothes, and headed over to the park. He circled the reservoir four times, coming in and out of awareness of the sparkling February morning, the slowly rotating panorama of park and city, the steely-gray water. He had a single goal: he wanted to stop wondering whether his grandfather was about to die.

  Leopold hadn’t died—yet. In the ER they’d given him Tylenol and oxygen, and within half an hour his temperature had come down, he’d stopped sweating, and his mind cleared. When a chest X-ray came back showing probable pneumonia, they hooked him up to an IV, gave him antibiotics, and admitted him. Henry, Costanza, and the boys went home; Lorna chose to sleep in the reclining chair by his bed.

  By seven o’clock that morning Lorna called Henry with a report: Leopold had slept well; his temperature had stabilized at around 99.5; there was no further sign of delirium; he’d fallen back asleep and w
as sleeping still. All this Henry had written in a note and left in the kitchen before going back to sleep.

  Toward the end of his fourth lap, Andrew slowed down to cool off. Although he was calmer now, the run and the minimal sleep and lack of breakfast were combining to make him feel light-headed—so light-headed that he thought the young woman walking toward him, in a plaid jacket and red knit cap, was a carbon copy of Charlotte.

  But no carbon, and no copy either. It was Charlotte herself, in town, like Justin presumably, for the long weekend. They exchanged a formal hug, a few pleasantries.

  Andrew noted that her hair had grown out and that she had added a second piercing to her left ear. She was very, maybe even problematically, thin, and to him, as ever, lovely; but it was impressive what some time and distance could do. At first it felt almost (almost) like catching up with an acquaintance, not his former girlfriend of nearly a year.

  But something altered when he told her about Leopold. Her face softened and she listened carefully before saying, “Leopold is incredibly special to you. Losing him is going to be hard.”

  Andrew willed himself not to tear up. Becoming emotional in front of Charlotte was the last thing he wanted to do. “He’s not dying. I refuse to believe he’s dying.”

  “Well, maybe not now…”

  “Not ever, would be my first choice…”

  She touched him gently on the shoulder. Despite himself, he registered her touch. And Charlotte registered him registering it.

  “You know, Andrew, I’d really like it if we could find a way to be friends. I value you a lot, as a person.”

  “When a girl says that it’s deadly.”

  “Not this girl. I’ve learned, I think from going away to school, that it’s important to hold on to the best of our past.”

  “There’re a lot of guys who might say, uh, ‘fuck you’ to that.”

  “Yes, but you’re not one of them.”

  Andrew was beginning to shiver. He rubbed his arms to try to warm himself up. “If I’m the past, then is there a present that you want to tell me about?”

  “Only if you’ll tell me too.”

  “There’s no one yet.”

  Her turn. “We met at school. He reminds me a little of you.”

  “So you’re over your mean period.”

  “It looks that way. I think you’d like him.”

  “Yeah, right. Of course I would.”

  She slipped her hands into her pockets. “There’s a party at his place tonight. You should come.”

  “I don’t think so, Charlotte.”

  “He has nice friends. There’ll be some girls…”

  “Please.”

  “I don’t know what else I can do.” She paused. “I’ll text you. Anytime from eight o’clock on. And when you see your grandfather, please give him a huge hug for me.”

  * * *

  At home Andrew stood under a long scalding shower and then took himself to his favorite East Side diner, his longtime refuge from all things upsetting, and ordered a mound of scrambled eggs and a cup of coffee. He thought about all the meals he’d eaten in this diner and its cousin on the West Side and how they shared a common theme of escape: from overbearing Henry, from probing Judith and snarky Justin and, now, ailing Leopold and—how to think of her? Rejecting? Love retracting?—Charlotte. What an odd, but also quintessentially New York, practice it was to have to nurse one’s hurts in a public place, and in this particular sort of public place, with its greasy booths, chipped linoleum tables, and cartoon mosaic of the Parthenon.

  Andrew was not naïve. He knew Leopold was old and that his time was finite, but knowing that in an abstract way was very different from stepping into the hospital room and seeing his grandfather lying in bed, his round white head nesting in a pillow, his mouth hidden behind an oxygen mask, a snakelike IV biting into his forearm. Wisps of oxygen, escaping from the sides of his mask, sent tiny translucent question marks into the air and made it seem as though Leopold were secretly cadging a cigarette. Smoking had in fact some years back, before Nina died, been his secret vice, but Leopold was well beyond that kind of thing now. Now he looked like a noble old tree that had been felled. The bones in his face seemed highlighted, something out of a sketch drawn by one of those sidewalk caricaturists who go for the bold, vicious, or summarizing stroke. His pallor was awful. Twenty hours earlier Leopold had been singing about Paris; a night in the hospital had transformed him into a preview of the corpse he would one day become.

  Andrew lingered for a moment in the doorway, then stepped into the room where Lorna too was horizontal, or nearly horizontal, in a big tub of a vinyl chair that reclined to provide her with an approximation of a bed. When she saw Andrew, she pulled herself upright and stretched.

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Comme ci, comme ça.” She made a little accompanying gesture with her hand.

  “Any developments since last night?”

  She shook her head.

  “And you? How are you doing?”

  “I’m fine. Well, truthfully, I’m feeling a little claustrophobic.” She glanced at Leopold. “It’s not because of him, mind you. But this place. You see I nursed my mama through a long—a long time.”

  “Why don’t you go out for some fresh air? I’ll sit with him for a while.”

  Lorna brightened. “I’d like to buy him—us—some fruit. And maybe a few cookies to have with tea this afternoon.” She glanced over at Leopold. “He likes oatmeal chocolate chip.” On her way out the door Lorna said, “Don’t pay any attention if he calls the nurse and asks to go home.”

  Andrew sat down in Lorna’s chair and experimented with its reclining feature. It was surprisingly comfortable. His brain told his hands that he ought to bring himself upright again, but his hands disobeyed. Within minutes he was asleep.

  * * *

  “Boychik!”

  Andrew’s shirt made a tearing sound as it peeled off the vinyl upholstery. He looked around, disoriented.

  “You come to visit me and you pass out. Be careful, they’ll shove an IV into you.”

  Leopold was sitting up in his bed. He had put on his glasses. He looked more like himself.

  “Sorry, Grandpa,” Andrew said groggily. “I was up late last night, remember?”

  “No, I don’t remember. Or, rather, I choose not to.” Leopold paused. “Lorna tells me I thought I was in a hotel and I sang like an off-tune Frank Sinatra.”

  “It was a nice song…,” Andrew said consolingly.

  “Such a gute neshoma you are.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know that one.”

  “Look it up.”

  Andrew patted his thighs. “I seem to have left my Yiddish-English pocket dictionary in my other jeans.”

  “It means ‘good soul.’”

  Andrew smiled at his grandfather and felt his heart constricting. “They explained to you why you were like that? That it was the fever that made your brain not—work so well.”

  “Yah, yah. It was the behavior of someone else. A me I don’t know—a me I don’t want to live long enough to know.”

  “Please don’t say that.”

  “It’s the truth. You must not be afraid of the truth. If my mind goes…” Leopold shaped his hand into a gun and held it to his temple.

  “You don’t own a gun, Grandpa.”

  “This is America. You can buy one easy as a pack of chewing gum.”

  Andrew obliged his grandfather with a laugh.

  “You know, your father will be the one in charge, when the moment comes. He’s a very commanding sort of person.”

  “This is news?” It was curious how readily Andrew could take on Leopold’s Yiddish-infused lilt.

  “So you can make a joke,” Leopold observed.

  “In the right circumstances.”

  “Another. Ha.”

  A small silence opened up between them. “Sometimes I wish I took after him more,” Andrew said pensively, “in that way.”

 
“You want to command, join the army.”

  “I mean, take charge more, be more … I don’t know … forceful.”

  “But you are not like him, in that way.”

  “And many others.”

  Leopold’s head tilted to an angle. He looked busy. Busy thinking. He straightened his glasses. “With fathers and sons—I well know—it is not always easy.”

  “I don’t know when it has ever been easy. Not for me.”

  Another silence opened up between them. After a moment Leopold said, “Minnie, one of the ladies in my book club, told me a good one last week. Do you know why grandparents and grandchildren get along so well?”

  Andrew shook his head.

  “They share a common enemy.”

  Andrew laughed ruefully.

  Leopold looked at his grandson through a pair of dirty lenses. “Something particular has got you down, I sense.”

  “I went for a run this morning. I ran into Charlotte.”

  “The reader.”

  “She doesn’t read anymore, but anyway, yes.”

  “She’s back?” Leopold said almost hopefully.

  “Oh, sure. She’s back. Back in New York, torturing me on her way to hang out with her new boyfriend. She’s even invited me to a party at his house.”

  “Ach.” Then: “You should go.”

  “Why should I go?”

  “To show how fine you are without her.”

  “But I’m not.”

  “Fake it.”

  “I think it may be too late for that.”

  “Then you show her there’s been a change.”

  “Since this morning?”

  “Change is not about putting in time. Change is about understanding. Insight.”

  Andrew sat back in his chair. “Where did you learn to be so smart about girls?”

  “What girls? I had two before your grandmother. Belle Levitsky, whose papa hated me, and Rose Cohen, who preferred my best friend. Then I married Nina and now comes Lorna. That’s not much of a school.”

  “You did okay.”

  “It’s the women. They made it okay. They made me the best that I could be.” Leopold paused. “Did the reader do that for you?”