“I’m sorry?”
“I look frail? My color is bad?”
“That’s not what I said, Mrs. Bliss.” And this time she didn’t correct him either. “I’ve no expertise in these matters. It’s something else entirely. I don’t treat people if there’s a chemical imbalance. If they’re bipolar personalities, or suffer various mental disorders. I thought you understood that.”
“I was a little worried.”
“Well,” Toibb said, “worried. If you were only worried. Worried’s a good sign.”
“Well, when you said…”
“I have to be sure,” Toibb said. “Only if they’re at loose ends, sixes and sevens. Only if they have the blues or feel genuinely sorry for themselves. Otherwise…” He left the rest of his sentence unfinished.
Mrs. Bliss wasn’t sure either of them understood a single word of what the other was saying, but she felt oddly buoyed, even a little intoxicated by the sense she had that she was adrift in difficult waters. For all the times she had gone on picnics with Ted and the children to the Point on Lake Michigan, or out to the Dunes, for all the summers they’d been to resorts in Michigan City, Indiana, with their Olympic-size pools, or even, for that matter, to the one on the roof of the Towers building in which she lived, Mrs. Bliss had never learned to swim. She had taken lessons from lifeguards in the shallow ends of a dozen pools but without the aid of a life preserver she couldn’t manage even to float. Though water excited her, its mysterious, incongruous clarity and weight, its invisible powers of erosion and incubation—all its wondrous displacements. This was a little like that. The times, for example, Mrs. Bliss, giddy, alarmed, suspended in inner tubes suspended in life jackets, hovered in the deep end weightless in water, her head and body unknown yards and feet above drowning. This conversation was a little like that. She felt at once interested and threatened, its odd cryptic quality vaguely reminiscent of the times her Maxine or her Frank or her Marvin were home on vacation trying to explain to her the deep things they had learned in their colleges.
“…like the collapse of arteries under a heart attack,” Holmer Toibb said. “The heart muscle tries to compensate by prying open collateral vessels. That’s what we’ll work on. It’s what this therapy is all about—a collateralization of interests.”
“What heart attack?” asked Mrs. Bliss, alarmed.
“Oh, no,” Toibb said, “it’s an analogy.”
“You said heart attack.”
“It was only an example.”
There was little history of heart attacks in Mrs. Bliss’s family. What generally got them was cancer, some of the slower neuropathies. (Despite her sealed ear, Mrs. Bliss’s deafness was largely due to a progressive nerve disorder of the inner ear, a sort of auditory glaucoma.) Yet it was heart disease of which she was most frightened. It was her experience that things broke down. Lightbulbs burned out, the most expensive appliances went on the fritz. Washers and dryers, ranges, refrigerators, radios, cars. No matter how carefully one obeyed the directions in the service manuals, everything came fatally flawed. How many times had she sent back improperly prepared fish in restaurants, how many times were her own roasts underdone, the soup too salty? You watered the plants, careful to give them just the right amount, not too much and not too little, moving them from window to window for the best sun, yet leaves yellowed and fell off and the plant died. Because there was poison even in a rose. So how, wondered Mrs. Bliss, could a heart not fail? A muscle, wound and set to ticking even in the womb. How should it endure its first birthday, its tenth, and twentieth? And how, even after you subtracted those two or three years that the man in Immigration tacked on, could it not be winding down after seventy or so had passed? How could a little muscle of tissue and blood, less substantial than the heavy, solid, working metal parts in a courthouse clock, that you couldn’t see, and couldn’t feel until it was already coming apart in your chest, hold up to the wear and tear of just staying alive for more than seventy years of even a happy life? It was like the veiled mystery of the invisible depths between herself and her death in the water of a swimming pool.
He wanted to see her again later that same week, he told her, and sent her home with an assignment but, so far as Dorothy could tell, without starting her in on her therapy.
“Tell me,” Holmer Toibb said the next time she came, “what name is on your mailbox?” It was the first real question he’d ever asked her, and Mrs. Bliss, who thought it was for purposes of billing, which, since this was the third or fourth time they’d seen each other and he still hadn’t started to treat her, she rather resented. In fact, she was still stung by his heart attack remark.
“Mr. and Mrs. Ted Bliss,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss.
“And Ted’s dead…how long?”
“My husband passed away three years ago,” she said primly.
“Three years? He kicked the bucket three years ago?”
“He’s gone, may he rest, three years next month.”
“And does he get much mail at this address since he cashed in his chips, may he rest?”
Mrs. Ted Bliss glared at him.
He didn’t even pretend to acknowledge her anger. “What,” Holmer Toibb said, “he ain’t dead? Come on, Dorothy, it’s been three years, it’s not natural. Well, it is, actually. Many women keep their husband’s name on the box after they’ve lost them. Even more than three years, the rest of their lives. It’s guilt and shame, not respect, and it doesn’t make them happy. You have to make an accommodation. You want to show me your list? Where’s your list? Show me your list. Did you bring it?”
The list Toibb referred to was her assignment—a list of her interests—and though she had brought it and actually been at some pains to compose it, she’d been hurt by this disrespectful man and was determined now not to let him see it. If she’d been bolder or less constrained in the presence of men, she might have ended their conference right then and, scorcher or no scorcher, gone back out in the sun to wait for her bus. But she was practical as well as vulnerable and saw no point in cutting off her nose to spite her face. Also—she knew the type—he’d probably charge for the appointment even if she broke it off before it had properly begun. Who am I fooling, Dorothy thought, how many times have I put Band-Aids on after cutting myself clipping coupons out of the papers? Climb down off your high horse before you break something.
Mrs. Bliss reddened. “I didn’t write one out,” she told him, avoiding his eyes.
“Well, what you remember then.”
Dorothy was glad he’d insisted. She hadn’t been to school since she was a young girl in Russia and, while she still remembered some of those early lessons and even today could picture the primers in which she’d first learned to read and been introduced to the mysteries of the simplest arithmetic and science and historical overviews, or seen on maps a rough version of the world’s geography, education had been the province of the males in her family, and she could still recall her guilty resentment of her younger brothers, Philip and Jake, and how they’d been permitted to take books overnight to study at home while she’d merely been allowed to collect the books of the other girls in the class and put them back on the shelves each afternoon and pass them out again the next morning. She’d never been given anything as important as an “assignment.” Even when Manny taught her to make out her own checks and fill out deposit slips, list the entries and withdrawals in her passbook, even when he’d taught her how to work her solar calculator and balance her checkbook, he’d been right there at her side to help her. He’d never given her one single assignment. It was a little like being a young girl back in Russia.
So it was quite possible, now she had regained her composure, that even if he hadn’t asked to see a list of her interests she might have volunteered anyway.
“Cards,” she began.
“For money?” Toibb said.
“Yes, sure for money.”
“Big money?”
“Friendly games. But rich enough for my blood.”
“How friendly?”
“Friendly. If someone loses five dollars that’s a big deal.”
“Go on,” Toibb said.
“Cooking.”
“Mexican? Continental? Japanese? What sort of cooking?”
“Supper. Coffee, dessert. Cooking.”
“What else?”
“Breakfast. Lunch. Not now, not so much.”
“No, I mean do you have any other interests?”
“Oh, sure,” Mrs. Bliss said. “I’m very interested in television. We bought color TV back in the sixties and were one of the first to have cable. If you mean what kind of television I’d have to say the detectives.”
She had known while she wrote the list out that it made her life seem trivial. Even those interests she hadn’t yet mentioned—her membership in ORT and other organizations, things connected with events in the Towers, her visits to Chicago and Pittsburgh and Cincinnati—even that which was most important to her, her children and grandchildren, all her family. The trips, when Ted was alive, they’d taken to the islands and, one time, to Israel with a stop in London to visit Frank and his family Frank’s sabbatical year. (Her childhood, the years she’d spent in Russia, even farther than London, farther than Israel.) All these were real interests, yet she was ordinary, ordinary. Everyone had interests. Everyone had a family, highlights in their lives. She had considered, when she made her list, putting down Alcibiades Chitral’s name, the business with the car, the time she’d had to testify in court, but wasn’t sure those experiences qualified as interests. Unless Ted’s death also qualified, her twelve-hundred-mile crying jag on the plane to Chicago, Marvin’s three-year destruction. All the unhappy things in her life. Did they interest her?
“Other people’s condominiums,” she blurted. “Tommy Auveristas,” she said. “All the South Americans.”
“You know Tommy Overeasy?” Holmer Toibb said.
“Tommy Overeasy?”
“It’s what they call him. But wait a minute, you know this man?” Toibb said excitedly.
She’d struck pay dirt but was too caught up in her thoughts to notice. Not even thoughts. Sudden impressions. Saliencies. Bolts from the blue. And she rode over Toibb’s lively interest. Not her loose ends, her sixes and sevens, not her blues or sadness or even her grief. Maybe she wasn’t even a candidate for Holmer Toibb’s therapies.
I know, she thought, I want to go visit Alcibiades Chitral!
Speak of the devil, thought Mrs. Ted Bliss.
She had just left Holmer Toibb’s office on Lincoln Road and was sitting on a bench inside a small wooden shelter waiting for her bus. The devil who’d come into her line of sight just as she was thinking of him was Hector Camerando. Camerando from Building Two and his friend, Jaime Guttierez from Three, were two of the first South American boys she had met in the Towers. Mrs. Bliss, like many unschooled people, had an absolutely phenomenal memory when it came to attaching names to faces and, since in her relatively small world, her limited universe of experience, strangers were almost always an event, she was usually bang on target recalling the circumstances in which she’d met them. She’d met Hector through Jaime on one of the old international evenings that used to be held in the game rooms on Saturday nights. Rose Blitzer had thought him quite handsome, recalled Mrs. Bliss. Even Rose’s husband, Max, olov hasholem, had remarked on his smile. Dorothy sighed. It had been less than four years yet so many were gone. Just from Mrs. Bliss’s table alone—Max; Ida; the woman on coffee duty, Estelle. Ted. She didn’t care to think about all the others in the room that night who were gone now. (Not “cashed in his chips,” not “kicked the bucket.” “Who had lost his life.” That’s how Toibb should have put it. As if death came like the account of a disaster at sea in a newspaper. Or what happened to soldiers in wars. He should have honored it for the really big deal it was.) Let alone the people who’d been too sick to make it to the gala and had stayed in their apartments. Plus all those who’d been well enough but hadn’t come anyway. In a way even Guttierez hadn’t survived. Oh, he was still alive, touch wood, but Louise Munez had told Mrs. Bliss he’d taken a loss on his condo and moved to a newer, even bigger place in the West Palm Beach area that Louise told her was restricted.
And, if you could trust Louise (even without her mishegoss newspapers and magazines the security guard was a little strange), Hector Camerando was thinking to put his place on the market.
Mrs. Ted Bliss hated to hear about Towers condominiums being put up for sale. Everyone knew the Miami area was overbuilt, that it was a buyer’s market. But interest rates were sky high. It could cost you a fortune to take out a loan, and what you gave to the bank you didn’t give to the seller. That’s why the prices kept falling. Or that’s what Manny from the building told her anyway. Poor Rose Blitzer, thought Dorothy Bliss. As if it wasn’t enough that her husband had lost his life. Poor Rose Blitzer with her three bedrooms, two and a half baths, full kitchen, California room, and a living room/dining room area so large all she needed to have two extra, good-sized rooms was put in a wall. She must rattle around in a place like that. She’d never get back what they’d put into it before Max lost his life. (Crazy Louise was floating rumors.) But selling at a loss was better than renting or leaving it stand empty. Not that it made a difference to Mrs. Ted Bliss. She’d never sell her place. When she lost her life it would go to the kids and they’d do what they’d do. Till then, forget it. She and Ted had picked their spot and Mrs. Bliss was perfectly willing to lie in it.
But what, Mrs. Bliss wondered, was Hector Camerando doing on Lincoln Road? What could there be for him here?
Dorothy remembered Lincoln Road from when it was still Lincoln Road. From back in the old days, from back in the fifties, from when they first started coming down to Miami Beach. From when all the tourists from all the brand-new hotels up and down Collins Avenue would come there to shop—all the latest styles in men’s and women’s beach-wear, lounging pajamas, even fur coats if you could believe that. Anything you wanted, any expensive, extravagant thing you could think of—cocktail rings, studs for French cuffs, the fanciest watches and men’s white-on-white shirts, anything. Hair salons you could smell the toilet water and perfumes blowing out on the sidewalks like flowers exploding. You want it, they got it. Then, afterward, you could drop into Wolfie’s when Wolfie’s was Wolfie’s.
Now, even the bright, little, old-fashioned trolley bus you rode in free up and down Lincoln looked shabby and the advertising on the back of the bench on which Dorothy sat was in Spanish. Half the shops were boarded up or turned into medical buildings where chiropractors and recreational therapeusisists kept their offices; and in Wolfie’s almost the only people you ever saw were dried-up old Jewish ladies on sticks with loose dentures hanging down beneath their upper lips or riding up their jaws, and holding on for dear life to their fat doggie bags of rolls and collapsing pats of foiled, melting butter that came with their cups of coffee and single boiled egg, taking them back to the lone rooms in which they lived in old, whitewashed, three-story hotels far down Collins. Either them or the out-and-out homeless. It stank, if you could believe it, of pee.
What could a man like Hector Camerando want here?
He had seen Mrs. Ted Bliss, too, and was coming toward her.
Does he recognize me? They’d bumped into each other maybe a grand total of three or four times since they’d met. He lives in Building Two, I live in Building One. It’s two different worlds.
She waved to him while he was still crossing the street.
“Oh,” she said, “how are you? How are you feeling? You’re looking very well. I’m waiting for my bus, that’s why I’m sitting here. I saw you when you were still across the street. We’re neighbors. I live in the Towers, too. Dorothy Bliss? Building One.”
“Of course. How are you, Mrs. Ted Bliss?” Hector Camerando said.
“I’m fine. Thank you for asking,” Dorothy said, at once flattered and a little surprised he should remember her name, a playbo
y and something of a man, if you could believe Louise, about town. And just at that moment Mrs. Bliss saw her bus approach. She frowned. She distinctly frowned and, exactly as if she had suddenly sneezed without having a Kleenex ready, she hastily clapped a hand over her face. “Oh,” she said, gathering herself and rising to go, “look. Here’s my bus.”
Hector Camerando lightly pressed his fingers on her arm. “No,” he said, “I have my car, I’ll drive you.”
And wasn’t being the least bit coy or too much protesting when she told him that wouldn’t be necessary, that she enjoyed riding the bus, that she liked looking out its big, tinted windows and studying all the sights on Collins Avenue, that she loved how, on a hot afternoon like this, the drivers, if only for their own comfort, kept their buses overly air-conditioned. She loved that feeling, she said.
“I’ll turn my thermostat down to sixty degrees,” he said. “And at this time of day the traffic’s so slow you’ll be able to study everything to your heart’s content. Besides,” he said, “why should you pay for a fare if you don’t have to? Come,” he said, taking her arm once more and leading her away gently, “I’m just around the corner.”
It was his point about the fare that turned her. Mrs. Bliss was not a venal woman. That she cut discount coupons out of the paper or, because of her premonition that she’d be charged for the visit anyway, hadn’t bolted from his office when Holmer Toibb referred so disrespectfully to the manner in which Ted had lost his life, was testimony not to parsimony as much as to her understanding that money, like oil or clean water or great stands of forest, was a resource, too, and must not be abused.
His hand on her arm, Mrs. Bliss felt almost girlish (she wasn’t a fool; it never crossed her mind she might be his sweetheart, he her swain), moved by the pleasure of being humanly touched, and virtuous, too, proud of his physical handsomeness and of the scrupulous innocence of her reasons for accepting his ride. Though he was doing her a favor and she knew it, and she might even be taking him out of his way, and she knew that, she was not made to feel (as she often did with Manny) that she was being patronized, or that there was anything showy about this guy’s good deeds. Rather, Mrs. Bliss felt for a moment he might be doing it out of something like camaraderie.
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