I didn’t talk to my friends, said Chaim. They did not want to hear it.
But on the subway home he thought it was not quite true. Berel had wanted to hear it, and Dvora, and even Sima. Yet Sima knew almost nothing. Her willingness to listen had softened his need to talk, had relieved him of the burden of having to say anything, as if the only reason to tell her was to make sure she would believe it. But if she already believed, he was absolved of the obligation to speak. Almost a healing silence, as if she knew with medical precision where not to cut.
On the subway he felt thinner, cleaner, a new man. But Sima did not look up when he came home. He went into their bathroom, washed his hands, rubbed them hard with his wife’s embroidered towels. While brushing his teeth he hummed to himself an American song, words he half remembered from a tape Basia had put on in her room. And I seem to find the happiness I seek. The rhymes so clean and easy. When we’re out together dancing, cheek to cheek.
AFTER DINNER HE STAYED in the kitchen, reading a Yiddish weekly that Pavel had left for him and sipping tea. He slipped a spoonful of jam into his mouth, rolled it around under his tongue.
I need some things, said Sima, her voice sharp. She had appeared at the doorway of the kitchen without his noticing her arrival, her dark robe tied loosely around her waist, her hair pulled back. On Ninety-third Street the drugstore is still open. We need Q-tips.
Chaim’s lips parted. There was a question in his mouth, but no sound came out.
And soap, Sima continued. Dial soap. The kind of soap we use is Dial.
I know what kind of soap we use, Chaim said, then regretted it instantly. He had showered at Basia’s hotel.
Sima looked at him, a kind of puzzled expression on her face. Please go, she said.
It was eleven o’clock at night. He wanted to ask, What, now? But as he thought the words he stopped them, and his face flushed with relief at having held himself back from what would have been a terrible stupidity, possibly something worse than what he had already done.
Words moved into his head, bubbled inside his chest. Please—I don’t know what you are talking about—let us think about it—you don’t know—I did not—my love, I have missed you so much, I only—it was about the music, it was something from my past—how can I—
He said: All right.
His mind turned blank as soon as he got outside, marched uphill to Broadway in the chill. Dial soap, Dial soap, he thought, the words bouncing in his head in an even rhythm, Dial soap, Q-tips, Dial soap, Q-tips. When he came back he sat in the kitchen for an hour, the pharmacy bag on the table in front of him, staring at the red and yellow lettering. He had a feeling he should be scared, but he was not. At last he got up to walk to the bedroom but stopped at his daughter’s door and pushed it open. Sima was lying in Lola’s bed, her arm thrown over their daughter’s waist.
LOLA HAD A RECORD that told the story of Mozart’s life, interrupting the narrative with music. A child who played his first chord at age three, who, under the tutelage of his father, had written his first compositions for piano at age seven, his first symphony at thirteen or fourteen—out of his body and hands had come these pieces that now flowed through the mouth and body of a singer, a pianist.
They gave their daughter piano lessons, though she struggled with them and would cut short her required half hour of practicing a day. She wasn’t a musical child, not a performer. She preferred stories, records, lying around listening to her mother tell tales of Siberia, tugging at Pavel’s arm for some story of escape, begging Chaim to describe what his mother had looked like. She did not understand what she was asking. When Berel was last in New York, after the first surgery, he had gone into a rage at Lola one night when she refused to finish what was on her plate. He had snapped at her in the middle of his own meal, and then, confronted with the child’s stunned face, shouted at Sima and at Chaim. Then he had gotten up and gone to the room he shared with Lola and closed the door.
It makes him suffer, unfinished food. Sima, tears in her eyes, had tried to soothe their daughter. And now his medication, it bothers him. He is sorry, Laiush, he is sorry.
Lola was forgiving.
ON SUNDAY CHAIM SAT on a park bench watching Lola roller-skate around the little median in Riverside Park.
After a few rounds she came and sat down. Next to him on the bench was his radio, turned off, and a magazine, unopened.
“Daddy,” she said.
He felt a little sweat come out on his forehead. Sima had spoken maybe twenty words to him in the last four days, and he had a sudden thought that Sima had told Lola that she was asking Chaim to move out, that Sima had told their daughter before telling him. Irrational, crazy, but the images of what might happen hurtled through his mind like a movie, Lola would ask him where he was going, when he was coming back, what could she do to make him and Sima live again in one bed—all things he knew from his workmates that children asked when their parents separated. What did one say? Everything would be all right, it was not Lola’s fault, whatever her mother told her she should listen.
“Yes, Laiusha.”
“Don’t worry so much.”
“Do I worry?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your mother and I are—we—” But he stopped. Perhaps Lola did not notice anything amiss. Sometimes when the air-conditioning in their bedroom broke down, Sima slept in their daughter’s bed too.
“Uh-huh.”
“So, everything will be—” He stopped again. His words sounded unfeeling, almost false but not quite. He did not feel the remorse or pain Sima thought he should feel—what, should he not live, after all he had lost, should he not live?—no, he felt instead the slightly sick feeling of having taken a risk that had failed, that twinge of fear right after being caught but before the punishment and suffering to come.
“Dad, okay. Don’t worry about me.”
He looked at her face, pink from exertion, her rough hair in a tight ponytail, only a few strands falling out. Dad. Had she used that word before? She must have. But he was used to Daddy. Come Daddy me a little, he would say when she was younger, even sometimes recently. I love it when you Daddy me.
“I don’t worry, Laiush.”
“Dad,” she said. “You are an orphan, and now Ma”—he saw her eyes water—“Ma is an orphan. I’m not an orphan.”
“Of course not.”
She stood up and teetered forward, motioned for his shoulder, then grabbed the back of the bench instead. “I’m going around another time.”
She wheeled off. He watched her waving her arms for balance, elbows straight, hands relaxed. “Lola!” he called.
“What?” Her voice pushed through a small breeze. And the cares that hung around me through the week.
You are my life, he wanted to say. “Be careful,” he called.
She kept skating, as if she had not heard him, her arms out at her sides for balance. Seem to vanish like a gambler’s lucky streak.
He called out again. “Lola, do you hear me?”
She turned and waved, then skated farther away.
“Be careful,” Chaim shouted. “Be careful.”
Stones
1989–2000
The Curtain
November 1989–February 1990
FELA DID NOT LIKE it, but she let her husband go. It was easier, now that the Iron Curtain was down, for him to visit Poland, and he had two projects: to visit his mother’s grave, and to visit his mother’s youngest sister, still living, at eighty.
Fela had sworn not to set foot in Poland again. And Pavel’s aunt, even if she was the baby of the family, had survived Russia by working as a professional Communist. That Pavel could choose to ignore this was a mystery. The Communist youth of her childhood were hard ones, impulsive, though frequently intelligent. They had been smart to hate Poland as it was. But to come back after the war! She had gotten a job, this aunt, she and her Communist husband, good jobs in the new Polish government, jobs they had lost in the purges of J
ews in the 1960s. When it came to Poland, a Jew was still a Jew, Communist or no. Well, she was an aunt. A remnant. It was important for Pavel to see her and the husband and the son, a professor who, with his Catholic wife, had come to New York once. Pavel had sent money for years; now, at the age of seventy-three, he and his cousin Mayer should go.
Three weeks, he said. Three weeks to do everything.
Why now? Why don’t you wait until you finish with selling the business?
I don’t know when I finish. How long can it take, with Kuba deciding this way and that? Better I go now, and when I return, then I feel relaxed to do it. Then I feel unafraid.
But November, she had tried. Why a winter in Poland? Why not wait until spring?
November is when Larry can take his vacation, said Pavel. And Larry wants to go.
Larry did want to go; it surprised Fela, but she kept it inside. Good for the men of the family to share something, she supposed. Though she didn’t know how their son would get along there, with no Polish, the Yiddish he knew useless, the German he had spoken in childhood almost completely forgotten. Larry couldn’t stand to depend on his father. He’d bought a phrase book and tried out his accent on her: Black coffee, please, he would say. No sugar. No milk. Toothpaste. Eardrops. Shoe shine. Gauze. Where is the bookstore? The bathroom? The phone? She hoped he would not come back speaking Polish. It wasn’t a language she wanted her children to speak.
FELA COULD APPRECIATE THE time by herself. She liked once in a while to be alone in her home, to organize, to wash and rehang the curtains so the home looked clean from the outside in. The outside came first; then one could do work on the inside. She had cloth Pavel had brought from the shop, and she planned to sew a new bedspread; she had evenings free to bake a few things to freeze for Pavel and Larry to take to work upon their return. Helen didn’t like to eat too many sweets. Fattening, she said, though she was always quite thin. Too thin, even now. Fela took Helen’s refusals to take home the cookies and cakes and raspberry strudels like a door in the face. Who didn’t eat food prepared by one’s mother?
Fela’s friends planned to invite her over, for coffee, for tea, for lunch, for dinner. No one believed a wife could survive without a man, though from what Fela had seen, it was the man who had troubles when he tried to do without the wife. It seemed the phone was ringing constantly. Pavel and Larry called very often; Helen called very often; her friends called all the time. Who knew she was so popular? she joked to Vladka Budnik. Pavel would have to be on guard for her admirers when he returned.
But Fela was happy for company, and happy to bring the dessert, her specialty. An excellent cook she wasn’t, but as a baker she was gifted. Everyone said so—she could start her own business, make a killing by selling to the orthodox bakeries in Kew Gardens. But business she didn’t want. Work was all right, work in the home, work was for love; but business, that was something else entirely. Fela saw the troubles her husband had with his brother-in-law in making a business. It pressured the heart. Besides, the kosher bakeries liked only cakes made parve, no dairy. Fela did not like to substitute margarine or oil or the white packaged shortening that looked like shaving cream for butter. Fela liked butter. Butter and Coca-Cola: sometimes she thought these were her favorite foods.
Fela’s sister had liked butter too. They all did, the whole family in Poland, though of course then those desserts came only with meals made from fish. It never happened, never, that they ate their mother’s cream-filled desserts when there was meat for dinner. The home of Fela’s mother had been pristine, perfectly kosher, perfectly clean. Plates for dairy, plates for meat. And two additional sets just for Passover, hidden away for the rest of the year so as not to expose them to risen bread. If her mother could see the way Fela was living now, with the milk in her tea after dinner, the seafood she tried in cafés with her son, she would simply collapse. And the Passover plates! Now that the children lived on their own, Fela had abandoned the system. Separate dishes were for company; otherwise, she used the gold trim for meat, the flowers for dairy. And even these she allowed on occasion to be mixed.
Her sister had been even worse. Fela had inherited at least a fraction of their mother’s neatness. All the household rules had been less of a priority for Bluma, who had her own ideas. She had left before anyone else had thought to try. An idealist, a Zionist, and—though the family hadn’t been sure, they suspected—a passionate person. She had a lover she followed to Palestine in 1935; only Fela and another sister had been taken into confidence about Bluma’s secret plans. It had seemed desperate, unimaginably wild at the time—they were a good family!—but Bluma had survived, the only one but Fela among the children of their mother and father.
Fela’s sister hadn’t cooked; on the kibbutz she had eaten in communal kitchens. But at home she still baked. The same recipes, the same timing, the same ingredients, the same restraint with sugar and generosity with butter, but a slightly different tang to her cookies, something softer in her cakes. At home before the war, a similar phenomenon had occurred at the tables of the older sisters who had already married. A stranger wouldn’t have noticed, but inside the family one could tell the difference, one could identify each baker’s mark even on a plate where everyone’s pastries were mixed together. Each cake came with a sister’s own flavoring. The unmarried sisters worked at the store, selling linens and hardware; they baked for pleasure. And because of the pleasure, the family excelled. Now that Bluma had died, leaving only sons, it was up to Fela to take care of the family creations, the buttery progeny Helen refused to acknowledge.
Well, so what! Fela could bake by herself. It was a lot of work, but good work. Though now it was quite a bit, what with all the invitations. She felt people expected her to bring, because she always brought. So when Sima Traum called to invite her to coffee, Fela thought it best to say no.
My calendar is crowded, answered Fela. I have something tonight, and something next week—Mina, you know, is having a dinner—you don’t have to worry for me—
That’s not so busy, said Sima. I can come out there—
No, no, no, said Fela. But now that she spoke with Sima, she felt a desire for her company. Actually, since you mention it, I had a plan to go to B. Altman’s on Saturday. They have a special on a perfume I like. When you buy a small bottle, they give you a lotion, and some other little things.
See? said Sima. That’s a wonderful time. Saturday’s very convenient. And Fela, I am providing. Everything. Please.
I take the bus straight to you after I shop; I won’t have much to carry.
Good, said Sima. Good. See you then. But please, Fela, bring nothing. I will be insulted if you do.
IT WAS NOTHING TO carry, Fela said, no longer out of breath. Just a box of cookies and a few blueberry pastries wrapped in paper. She was sitting in Sima’s kitchen, her back to the window overlooking Riverside Drive. What Fela preferred was the view of Sima’s kitchen, the white-and-blue wallpaper, the copper containers for coffee and sugar arranged, in order of size, on high wooden shelves. They were in private.
I told you not to bring them, but of course I am glad. So delicious.
My sister’s were even more delicious. She really—but no, we were all good.
Who could be better than you?
I don’t like to compare, Simale, but really, she was excellent, when she put the time to it. Ah, Sima. It is said that the tie between sisters is the closest in the world, closer than mother and daughter. The tie between sister and brother, also close.
I don’t know, said Sima. But of course often I thought, perhaps it would be less—I would have company. I think, now, especially, since my father died, that to share would have—and of course Chaim has almost no one—
I feel like you are my niece or my sister, said Fela. Like Chaim is my brother. Pavel feels this too. Not just about you, about the Belsener people, the people from after the war.
I was just a child there, said Sima.
Still, said Fela. That is
why you and Chaim are so close.
Sima looked at her, then got up. Had Fela said too much?
I’m just bringing some lemon and honey, Sima called. Is it hard for you without Pavel? said Sima, reentering the room.
Hard? said Fela. It’s a rest!
Sima laughed. She placed a soft lemon on a board on the table and quartered it.
No, said Fela. Of course, I miss him. I worry. But—it’s not for so long. And it’s not the same when—
Sima interrupted. When you’re older? Please.
No, no, said Fela, sensing the beginning of a blush at her neck. No, I wasn’t going to say that.
Forgive me, said Sima.
No, no, said Fela. I was going to say—was Chaim your first, your first love?
Sima paused.
I don’t ask for you to tell me your life before him, Simale. Israel, who knows what they do there?
Sima laughed. It’s true. The army, no one escapes intact, you understand.
Fela understood. They both giggled, uneasily. Then silence. Sima looked like she was thinking, the folds at her mouth deepening.
Yes, said Sima. He was my first love. The words came out soft, almost strangled.
Fela felt a sudden remorse for having asked. She should apologize, she thought, for having tried to dig. But she didn’t. Instead she said, I had a husband. A husband before the war.
Sima said nothing, and Fela felt a small hot circle underneath her ribs, like a match had been struck and lit in the darkness of her chest.
He was my husband, but we didn’t have a wedding. You understand? I was sixteen.
Sima nodded, her mouth slightly open.
We ran to Russia before the Germans invaded the town. We had heard. Before they came in, we were gone. My parents, they must have gone crazy with shame. But it was only I, and another sister who left to Palestine, before, who lived.
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