Beth plucked a fresh towel from a pile on the bureau, threw it onto the foot of Louise’s bed, and took a bar of pink scented soap from a white soap dish. “So? Who do you guess? Who called?”
“Kevin Morris.” A boy Louise had known in high school, tall, blond, good-looking, aloof.
“Ho, ho, ho, don’t you wish. Try again.”
Lenny? But she didn’t say his name. He was in California. He’d written her a few letters, really funny letters. After her leg was amputated, she wrote and told him she wasn’t the girl she once was. He appreciated that, wrote back, but the last letter had been almost a year ago.
“Guess!”
“Barbara Freelock. Margaret. Susan. Oh, stuff it, Beth, tell me who.”
“Frank and Myra Weiss,” Beth said, dipping the cloth into the basin of warm water.
“The Weisses? Mr. and Mrs. Weiss?” Louise flapped her swollen hands in the air. “Frank and Myra?”
Beth began washing Louise’s neck and face and arms. She smiled. “Yes, Frank and Myra. How many Weisses do we know?”
“Why? Why are they coming?” She pushed Beth’s ministering hands away. “Who called them? Why are they coming?”
“To see you,” Beth said. “Don’t you want them to come? Take it easy, if you don’t want them to come—”
“It’s all right. I was just surprised. After all this time.”
“Well, it is sort of a surprise,” Beth said, again washing Louise vigorously, passing over the scarred history of Louise’s body as easily as she had once skated down the street. “You know Ruth Petty from Ma’s job is Myra Weiss’s sister. Remember? I guess Ma mentioned that you were sick, and probably Ruth told Myra. So she called and said they’d stop in for a while to see you.” Beth’s hair swung over her face. Her cheeks shone with health and lies.
Sick. Just stopping in. Dropping in. Casually. Because she was sick. After two years, just stopping in?
Why didn’t they tell her the truth? Oh, if only they’d tell her! What relief, then; the future known, accepted, acknowledged. Your Future Is Safe in the Friendly Hands of Death. Hello, Death. Listen to me, open the door, let me in. She thought of the absence of pain, the end of debt for Ma, freeing Ma and Beth to live again without secret sorrow, without lies. But hope flew up, buzzed its way into her mind, like a mosquito, tiny but full of poison. Couldn’t be kept out. “Beth, why are they really coming?”
“I just told you. To see you.”
But you promised. You promised never to lie to me.
Once, with a glance, she could have made Beth stammer; with a word, burst into tears. As skinny girls of six and eight with tight stiff pigtails, hands crossed and clasped, they had sworn themselves to truth forever. “No lies, no secrets, the truth, the whole truth, only the truth,” Louise had chanted. “Okay, you say it now, Bethie.”
“No lies, no secrets, the truth, the whole truth, only the truth.” Beth’s face had been solemn, moist, red with fervor.
Their father had lied to them, lied to their mother, had a secret life, had many secrets, had left them all to go to Arizona with another woman and her son. “And remember, we hate Daddy,” Louise had instructed.
“Yes, we hate Daddy,” Beth repeated.
Every day Louise had herded Beth protectively home from school, touching from time to time the thin coldness of the apartment key which hung on a leather thong around her neck. Ma worked as a punch-press operator in the Mica insulator factory and didn’t get home until close to six o’clock. In the silent apartment, Louise leading, Beth following, they hung up their dresses, smoothing them carefully so they could wear them one more day, put on jeans, and then set the table and put three washed potatoes in the potato baker on top of the stove.
Chewing on raw carrots and soft white bread, they would rush down the stairs to play on Carbon Street until they spotted the hurrying, smiling, bulky figure that was Ma. She had never lied to them, either. No lies, no secrets, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth for Ma and her girls. Till now, when the lies and half-truths, the evasions and secrets spun through the apartment like spider’s filament, toughly frail, almost invisible, swaying in the slightest breeze. Louise longed to gather it all up, crush the frail webs in her hand, yet the thought of it made her heart beat up sickeningly into her throat.
Frank Weiss.
Louise had worked in his law office the summer she was fifteen, the job connection made through Ruth Petty, Ma’s friend from work. Heat. The air conditioner whining, rug casting up static sparks at her legs, Venetian blinds on the window overlooking South Salina Street always half closed. Louise at fifteen, buoyant, naive, yearning, waiting. She had run errands, carried coffee in cardboard containers from the diner across the street, dusted desks, answered the telephone when no one was around, taken messages, read here and there in the law books, called Beth three times a day to be sure she was okay.
“Mr. Weiss—” she said.
“Call me Frank,” he said. “I never had a daughter.” He hugged her. He was three times her age, dapper, with a jaunty bouncing step, a small wiry brush mustache. She liked and feared his hugs. She felt him watching her. She began hunching her shoulders protectively around her breasts. She was uncomfortable with him, but when she was away from him, he appeared in her mind gentler, finer, wiser, more interesting.
She told her friend Martha, “I have a thing for older men.” Martha stared at her, fascinated. Louise was inspired to go on. She gave a sophisticated sigh. “It must be a father fixation. I’m probably looking for a father substitute. I suppose all my life I’ll be helplessly drawn to older men.”
In fact, she was relieved when the summer was over, she had collected her last paycheck, and could mention Frank Weiss with a small knowing smile, instead of having to see him every day. And then, that winter, turning sixteen, she met Lenny Cormac. He was a friend of Martha’s older brother, Billy. Lenny went to Syracuse University, he was a sophomore, wore size 13 sneakers, carried around a copy of War and Peace which he said he was reading for the fifth time, talked a blue streak, kissed Louise like mad, and one night said, “Listen, do you want to try? I mean, listen, I’ve slept with one girl, so I know something, but I won’t kid you, I’m no big swordsman. I mean, that is—you understand?”
She had been startled, delighted, strangely tender. She had thought about it. It wasn’t love, but it was experience. She had had so little. She was restless, had crazy moods, could go into mad giggling fits with Beth, or else ignore her for a whole day. “Oh, quit bothering me. You’re always following me around! What are we, Siamese twins!”
She decided to find out what sex was all about from Lenny. He shared an apartment with three other SU boys on the fourth floor of a decrepit brown building on University Avenue. It was a dingy little place. The bathroom—little hairs stuck in the soap, grime encrusted on the faucets—was revolting. Lenny’s room was more like a closet, no windows, a cot covered with a brown blanket, a wooden desk he’d bought at the Salvation Army downtown, and a bookcase perched on top of the desk. Posters of Greece and Italy, full of light and sun, covered the peeling walls. Jeans and shirts hung limply from hooks on the walls.
They took off their clothes and lay down on the cot. “Okay, what now?” Louise said, agreeably. They both started to laugh. They really got hysterical. Every time they seemed about to stop, one of them would say, “Okay, what now,” and they’d be off again. They shouldn’t have laughed, they couldn’t do anything. Nothing happened! She was just as glad. His belly was so white.
Boys were supposed to be upset about things like that, but Lenny didn’t seem to care. They got dressed and drank coffee in the kitchen, then went out and ate hot dogs and French fries at the Carroll’s on Marshall street. Every once in a while they’d look at each other and burst out laughing.
About a month later she’d gone down on the icy sidewalk on Salina Street. For two years there’d been doctors, drugs, hospitals, operations. The thought of the money dazed her. Wh
en she tried to talk to Ma about it, she was cut off at once. “Shh! Money! What’s money?” Ma’s voice was always quiet. “I’m surprised at you, Louise.”
“But, Ma, I want to know.”
“There’s nothing to know. For once, leave the money figuring to me. You just rest and get better.”
“Get better?” Ma’s hands were squeezing each other, squeezing each other bloodless, her bitten-down fingernails were gray as clamshells.
“That’s right. Rest, rest, rest. Take care of yourself, that’s all you have to worry about. Okay? Okay, Louise?”
“Okay, Ma.” How could she argue with Ma? Hadn’t she always done what Ma wanted, been Ma’s willing partner, helper, good right hand? No lies, no secrets … Money had never been a secret before. Now money couldn’t be mentioned. Money and death—the forbidden subjects. Neither word was allowed to pass anyone’s lips. Only in her dreams did Louise speak freely, shouting into empty rooms, Tell me the color of that cat’s skin. Why is she dyed green?
“I dreamed about a green cat last night,” she said, as Beth went on washing her body with the patient care of a mother.
“Oh, that reminds me, I had the funniest dream. I don’t even remember what it was, something about stuffing myself into a cookie jar, I think! But I woke up laughing from it. Do you ever wake up laughing from your dreams?”
“Beth—” Louise grabbed her sister’s hand. “Bethie—”
“Yes?” Beth smiled, her eyes suddenly cautious.
“Won’t you … will you …” Say it. Louise, you’re dying. Three words were all that was necessary, three words to purge her of fear and uncertainty, of hope and envy more poisonous than the cancer. Three words to tear up the lies that lay between them, sticky as spider’s webbing.
“You’re sweating.” Beth pried open Louise’s fingers to release her hand. She rubbed her chest, her hand moving round and round over the white letters, WHO ME? “The heat’s getting you, isn’t it?” Round and round her hand moved, and she drew in several deep sighing breaths. “It’s getting me, too, I think.” She went to the bureau for the can of white baby powder. She sprinkled baby powder on Louise’s arms and leg, and over her back and belly. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. Good. Thanks, Beth.”
The day passed slowly. She found it difficult, almost impossible to read anymore. Sometimes she felt the pain gathering itself, coming like a wave from afar, growing in intensity, speeding up, hurling itself against her. There were drugs to take. She dozed. She woke with sourness leaking from the corners of her mouth.
Then it was almost time for the Weisses’ visit. “Beth,” she called. “Bethie.” She pushed the knob on the little bell Beth had bought at the drugstore. “Beth.” And when Beth appeared, “A kerchief. A kerchief for my head, please.”
Beth tied a pretty blue-figured silk scarf over her head, behind her neck. She washed Louise again, changed her nightgown, and rubbed lemon-scented cologne stick along her arms and behind her ears. “I’ll make up your eyes,” she said, hurrying out for the little mascara kit. Working with her tongue caught between her lips, Beth dabbed light blue on Louise’s eyelids, mascara on her lashes. “There! Gorgeous. Oh, you have gorgeous eyes, not bug eyes like mine.”
“Let me see,” Louise said. “Bring me a mirror. Do I look like a clown?”
“You look—perfect,” Beth said, turning away, her words falling away, reaching Louise as if shouted from a distant shore.
“I want a mirror.” Mirrors told the truth. But just then the doorbell rang. A harsh buzzing. “It must be them. Oh, Beth, take this junk off my eyes!”
Beth clicked the plastic kit closed. “I’ll do no such thing.”
“Beth—please!”
“You look fine. It’s becoming. Don’t worry! Come in,” she called. “Just walk in, Frank and Myra.”
The sound of the door opening. “We’re in.” That was Frank.
“Straight ahead,” Beth called, going to Louise’s door.
Louise sat up straight. How strange that her heart was rocking inside her like a sign in a high wind. She thought she felt it banging against her ribs.
“Louise, dear!” Myra Weiss, bending over her, kissing her cheek. She was all angles and bones, very plain until she smiled. Her smile brought Louise a gust of hope that sent her heart rocking again. Myra’s smile was generous, truthful.
“Myra, Mrs. Weiss—” Louise held onto the offered hand. She spoke rapidly, in a low voice. “What did Ma tell you about me?”
Myra extracted her hand, turned to Frank, saying, “Here, Frank, come over here and say hello to this girl.”
“Well, well, long time—how are you, Louise?” He extended his hand, as if to shake hers, a look of confusion and distress passed over his face, and instead he bent toward her and kissed the air near her cheek.
They chatted, somehow. Myra talked about swimming, wasn’t the heat beastly, their sons were going to camp next week, and what shows did Louise like to watch on TV?
Frank said he hoped Louise would work in his office again next summer. When Louise didn’t answer, Myra said quickly that Louise was too old to be an errand girl, and anyway, she was bright and should go to college. The lies and smiles spun around her, sticky, trembling, sinister. Myra was restless, walked around the room, looked at everything on the bureau, straightened a picture on the wall, never settled down once. Frank rocked back and forth on small feet encased in soft black leather boots. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt, a silky black tie. Myra wore a sleeveless yellow, daisyprinted dress.
Louise smiled and smiled, How nice of them to come see her. Yes, yes, she loved visitors. Well, no, she didn’t get that many; in fact, very often, most often, none at all. No, it seemed her friends were very busy. Sometimes, yes, the days were long when you had to spend them in bed. Oh, yes, she did sleep a bit, quite a bit. Yes. Yes.
At last Myra looked at the tiny gold watch on her wrist. They bent over her again, murmuring good-byes, take care, you’ll be up and around in no time; at the door they lingered, looking back at her, then seemed to give, in unison, an extraordinary sigh of relief. “Well, good-bye. Good-bye! We’ll drop in again.” Then they were gone.
Louise lay back, exhausted, depleted. The past was a dream, the present a lie, the future, emptiness. If only she believed in God. Could she wind belief around her heart like a bandage, take it like a pill, inject it like a drug? If God was there (she imagined Him in hospital green, stethoscope dangling on his chest, reassuring smile showing beneath professionally blank eyes; God, Super Doc) He would X-ray her bones and find the marrow dissolving; X-ray her heart and find despair.
She dozed off, moaned, slept fitfully. When she woke, her mother was sitting on the side of her bed, a mustache of sweat over her upper lip. “It must have been a hundred degrees in the shop today,” Ma said. “Was it awful here?” Her strong bare arms were moist.
“Ma, I was just dreaming about ocean water,” Louise said. “A dream about being on the ocean. Remember when you took me and Beth to Atlantic City? And I went down in the glass bell under the water? The Wonderful World of Under Water, I think they called it. Remember?” Louise laughed. “Beth was too scared, so you had to stay on the boardwalk with her. And nobody else was going down that time. So it was just me and the man who ran it, and as we’re descending, I kept saying, ‘Well, where’s the fish? Where’s the Wonderful World of Under Water? I don’t see anything!’”
Her mother started laughing, rocking back and forth, her arms around herself. “And you didn’t know that everything you said was booming right up into the air through a mike, or something of the sort, booming right into the air where everyone could hear. ‘Where’s the fish?’ you kept saying.’ “This is a cheat, I want to see fish!’”
“There were no fish,” Louise said. “No fish at all. They’d gotten smart, they weren’t going to live around a dumb diving bell that messed up their lives.”
Ma laughed softly. “That poor man. You must have
ruined his business for the day.”
“Ma, I’d like to go to the ocean again.” As she said it, Louise was overcome with longing for the sea, for water blue as a child’s crayon drawing: diving into the blue water, swimming naked among the silvery flash of fish, bare arms, two strong healthy legs, just she and the fish in the ocean.
“The ocean? You mean a cruise, honey?” Ma bent toward Louise, spreading out her hands. There was grime under her nails from the shop. “We’ll do that, you’ll be well by then. Next summer, we’ll go on a cruise. I’ll start saving up for it, beginning this week.” She began to plan how much money she would save each week, what clothes they would take, how long they could spend. “I’ll save up my sick days, and we’ll add that to my vacation time. Oh, we’ll have a wonderful time, like the old days.”
“Oh, Ma.” Louise was sweating. “We’ll never go.”
“What?” Her mother, yanked from the dream, appeared dazed.
Louise turned her head, staring at the window, seeing dim Miss Moonface swimming in the glass. She tore the kerchief off her head, crumpling the silk in her hand.
“What is it?” Ma said, leaning forward, alert at once. “Are you in pain? Lou.”
“No. Not pain. Not that way. Ma—” The day had been lie on lie on lie. The weight of the lies bore down on her. She was breaking under them. The lies were killing her. She couldn’t keep hope away. She wasn’t strong enough by herself. The hope that the lies they told her were true, that she would be healthy again, that she would be nineteen next year, that she would make love and go to the ocean and learn to dance on one leg, that she would get a job and read books and eat chili and travel to sunny California. “Tell me the truth,” she groaned.
“The truth?” Ma’s lips trembled. Her hand was on Louise’s arm, pressing, pressing, her eyes were wet, begging. Don’t make me say it.
Dear Bill, Remember Me? Page 13