The First Desire

by Nancy Reisman

  “Does Celia know?” Sadie said, which seemed an insipid thing to ask, given Celia in the yard. But the truth was Jo didn’t know. Celia might have been in the yard since dawn, might not have looked in their father’s room.

  “You didn’t tell her?” Sadie said.

  “No,” Jo said. “I guess not.”

  And various men began to arrive at the house: first thin, tidy Dr. Moscowitz, whose kindness Jo found suspect and detestable. And then the Lipsky brothers, Seymour and Ira, and their ominous elongated car. Sadie was in the yard, touching Celia’s shoulders and talking into her ear and kissing her cheek, as if Celia were a child, kissing her and leaning close that way. And Celia seemed to lean her head back against Sadie’s for a moment. Then Sadie patted her and turned and reentered the house. She glanced at Jo but did not stop in the kitchen, did not also sit with Jo but went straight to the parlor, where the doctor was waiting, and then to the telephone, and made some calls of her own. Then she walked upstairs, and Bill went out to stay with Celia, and put his arm around her, and Celia leaned her pink-scarfed head against his shoulder.

  The air thickened with strangeness: the Lipsky brothers waited in the parlor, breathing parlor air and probably smudging the furniture with their fingertips. There was the sound of a car, a woman’s fast solid heels: Lillian Schumacher. You could hear her feet on the stairs and then through the upper hall and then not. Jo sat with cold tea, and the foot traffic out to the yard passed her—now Sadie out to Celia, Bill back to the parlor and the Lipsky brothers, and no Irving anywhere—and the same pair of birds called even in the rising heat, and the skin on her fingers crawled and she went to the sink to wash again. Lillian Schumacher was upstairs, no one had questioned her, no one had stopped her, not even Jo, it had happened so quickly. Jo roused herself to walk up the back stairs, to the hallway. She could see into her father’s bedroom and Lillian was there, at her father’s bedside, holding his dead hand and stroking his dead forehead and talking to him, saying This too you had to do alone? How stubborn you are, Abe. She hadn’t wanted him to be alone, at the end, didn’t he know that? You can make peace now, can’t you? She used the word love. It was dizzying, nauseating to watch, and why this moment of Lillian talking to Jo’s father struck Jo as the portal into grief and the surer knowledge of his death, she could not say.

  IN THE PARLOR the Lipsky brothers went over arrangements with Bill, and Sadie stood on the front porch with Dr. Moscowitz.

  “Please accept our condolences, Miss Cohen,” Seymour Lipsky said. His face was a mask of exaggerated sympathy. “We’re so sorry about your father. He was a wonderful man,” Ira Lipsky said. Seymour moved toward Jo and placed a hand lightly on her shoulder. “Perhaps we can sit together for a while and go over some things with the Feldsteins.” She thought then of his unsavory hand, the hand of the mortician, this hand that washed and repaired the dead for burial, that also touched, she supposed, his wife, because there were Lipsky sons now also in the business, imitating but not matching their father’s bedside manner.

  And then Sadie returned without the doctor, and said, “Oh Bill.”

  “I’ll put on tea,” Jo said. There was Celia to retrieve from the backyard, and Irving?

  “Do you know,” Ira Lipsky said, “how soon the young Mr. Cohen will arrive?”

  Sadie vanished in the direction of the yard, and the Lipskys repeated their question about Irving, also saying that Jo would have a chance to view her father again if she wished, but of course not at the house: did she want to see him here again before they removed him from the house? Because they did need to go ahead with that quite soon. “Mrs. Feldstein will speak to your sister,” Ira Lipsky said, and waved at the dense air where Sadie had previously stood.

  Jo pictured Celia leaning her scarf-covered head against Sadie. “Excuse me.”

  AND THEN she was in motion, her body taking her away from the room, from the house itself. She glimpsed the foyer, the green of the lawn, the shining black panel of the Lipskys’ hearse, and then a wheel of trees, which dropped behind her as the Lipsky brothers and the house dropped behind her, and her body moved of its own accord through the blanching sun and hard shadows while the city clung to outmoded faith in solidity. Nothing seemed to be itself: the street signs reverted to slices of metal, patterns of black on white, the cars on the block remarkable for their residual carness in the face of this division of light and shadow, the inevitable breakdown to blue rectangle and black circle and distorted glassy reflection. The moments seemed both to stall and to accumulate, as if the new order consisted of blue rectangles followed by mustard ones and cream ones and gray ones, the reflections shifting to the sides of the street, the flat sides of buildings and the static objects and moving figures on the far side of glass, and the brilliant lists of numbers and the wheedling ponderous letters—SALE— calling but not trilling, the doorways insisting on their own rectangular shapes. Then she too was on the other side of window glass, in shade, and her skin prickled, her face and neck gone damp, sweat like a living thing rolling down her back.

  It’s the sweat that startles her into more awareness. There’s a basket in her hand: she has taken a basket. In front of her a pile of papery yellow globes, and she picks one up. An onion. And she is Jo. A woman holding an onion. Around her there are other women, picking up other objects. Vegetables. Fruit. The onion curves against her palm and there’s a small noisy breeze, an electric fan. The market believes it is a market. The purpose of onions eludes her, and then she remembers, but does not know the purpose of this onion. She has no onion things in mind. But the market believes in itself, and perhaps she should believe in the market: perhaps she has marketing to do. She stands in the small aisle and other women move past her, past the bin of onions, and she turns her head. At the end of the aisle, watching her, is Eli Abramowitz. And now the onion seems heavy, droppable. With effort she sets it down on top of the other onions, and Eli says, “Jo? Something you need?” And the onion rolls and settles lower in the bin.

  Eli too is roundness on top of sweating roundness: belly and spectacles and bald head. She would like to sit on the empty crate beside the stacked cabbages, pale green and purple cabbages leaning into each other. “I forgot my list.” She takes a step toward the crate, finds her knees bending and Eli says, “You want to sit, Jo? I’ll get you a chair.” Then there is a kind of gliding, vegetables and stacked cans and loaves of bread gliding past her, women’s dresses and pin curlers glide past, and she is in a chair by the window, near a sign that says BEANS and another that says COFFEE. A younger woman’s face appears, its own set of roundnesses: big eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, the light reflecting off the lenses and color from the street passing across them, the eyes like green fish moving in and out of view below the surface of a pond.

  “Miss Cohen?” It’s Sasha, the youngest Goldbaum, Sasha Abramowitz now and for a couple of years. The skittish girl Eli married, the girl who is no longer skittish and no longer a girl. Her green eyes swim like fish; her belly is a swollen moon. “Miss Cohen?”

  She offers Jo a glass of water. Small patches of sweat spread over Sasha’s white blouse, below the armpits, at the top of her belly. Jo takes the glass and drinks and imagines the water moving down her throat, trickling quietly through her ribs. She is exhausted. She thinks of cabbages. Women move slowly in the heat, singly or in small knots, and the market seems hushed, though it could be that she is hushed and the store is itself. The world seems to exist between the wooden chair and COFFEE sign and the cabbages, between the whirring electric fan and the sunlight wavering over the glass, patterning the linoleum floor. And Sasha says, “Sit as long as you need, Miss Cohen,” and for a brief time Jo’s life is Sasha and water and wavering light. For a moment she feels no longing. Then longing returns, and she cannot distinguish between longing and the memory of longing: they seem a single trembling.

  “Mrs. Feldstein is on her way,” Sasha says, the green eyes swimming.

  “I’m so sorry,” Eli s
ays.

  And there is the moon of Sasha’s belly, and the sign reading COFFEE. Beyond the window, Elmwood Avenue, sun reflecting off a string of cars.

  CHAPTER 22

  Goldie

  1947

  Even after the war, letters arrived regularly from Sadie—the graceful script itself a constant thread—faithfully reciting the news of the family and of her weekly activities, some temple women’s luncheon, some fund-raiser for refugees. There was pleasure in receiving the letters—they made a kind of light, serialized story— and Goldie would put aside her other tasks and pour a cup of coffee and read them slowly. But for all their charm, Sadie’s letters revealed little: at first she did not even mention their father directly, only “the family” or “the store.” And while this didn’t surprise Goldie, neither did it stop her from looking for clues. In truth, if Sadie conveyed any greeting from him—a hint of apology— Goldie would have made some kind of effort. But Sadie conveyed nothing, once mentioning that the war has taken its toll on all of us, Papa is tired, and nothing more. Goldie did not ask.

  It wasn’t simply her own stubbornness or pride, but something deeper and more difficult to name: she was fairly sure there’d been a shivah. Irving once said as much, a glib remark on a postcard of the Peace Bridge. And it occurred to her that other than occasional childhood birthday cakes, this had been the only family ceremony marking her life. The thought of it left a harsh metallic taste in her mouth. And so Goldie did not mention their father in her letters back to Sadie, and did not ask leading questions—instead describing the shorebirds and the light on the water and the ways in which the sea differed from the lake. She enjoyed painting; she missed playing the piano; over time her cooking had improved. There were, of course, worlds of things Goldie did not mention: her relationship with Ted (a twice-a-week arrangement that suited her), her tendency to wear shoes only when absolutely necessary, her job waiting tables. But between Goldie and Sadie, among all the delicate noncommunication there resumed the occasional suggestion of a book one or the other had read and liked, and they took up the old habit of talking through books. Their preferences were more marked now and in some ways predictable: Sadie liked sagas and grand romances, Goldie preferred serious plays and poetry, but there was a care with this as well. Occasionally Sadie sent a small package of books, and once she included poems.

  This was more than Goldie had expected, really, and also less, because of the silence beyond Sadie: it was as if Sadie herself was combating silence, making her small persistent noise to prevent the silence from taking hold everywhere. Goldie was not ungrateful, but she rarely heard from Irving and never from Jo or Celia. Their lives she knew only through Sadie’s bright sketchy summaries, with rare after-the-fact exceptions. Celia seems better now (but what had she been like before?) . . . I was worried but she is better . . . I cannot tell you much about Jo and Celia of late except that they are here at Lancaster and nothing has changed (since when?).

  She’d wanted something else, had vaguely imagined another gesture of care emanating from that house, more than Irving’s annual scrawled postcards. But could you expect anything from Celia beyond Sadie’s p.s. Celia sends her love? Celia and Irving had been irresponsible children; what were the chances they’d become utterly different adults? And Jo? She’d been quarrelsome, ungenerous. A troublemaker: from the time she’d learned to walk, Jo had tried to separate Goldie from their mother and yoke her to Celia, and sometimes it had worked. More often Goldie had looked after Jo, both of them unhappy. Years ago, all years ago, yet Jo’s was not a loving nature, and how much did anyone’s nature change? Sadie’s letters would have to be enough.

  GOLDIE HAS the morning free, she’s cleared the kitchen table and set up her watercolors—trickier to use than they seem; she’s working on a small beachscape, including a house and suggestions of sailboats offshore. And when Sadie’s telegram arrives the typed form seems to Goldie like a shell on the beach, something small on the vastness of the coast, then larger as you reach for it and hold it close to your face, vast as you nearly spiral into its color and line. ABE COHEN DIED PEACEFULLY, as if Papa or Father might be confused with someone else. Then: SHOULD DELAY FUNERAL FOR YR ARRIVAL?

  In the case of her father, the difference between dead and not dead is confusing. There is finality, an end to the smallest hope, but that hope was gone years ago, wasn’t it? Perhaps not. Yet the loss is now confirmed, and public, and she is not alone in surviving him. She doesn’t even know who he is anymore, or was, only who he seemed to be years ago: a man perpetually turning away. Now a blankness.

  The kitchen table is covered with paper, her brushes lean in a jar of water, daubs of paint drying on a saucer. The beachscape recedes to a sheet of paper marked with color. It occurs to Goldie that Sadie is requesting her presence, something Sadie has not done before: she’s not asked anything of Goldie, really. And Goldie must respond. A fear comes on then: she pictures the lake just before ice, gray black and unyielding. There is a heavy dropping sensation in her legs and belly and chest. She cannot imagine leaving town limits—her body will not have it. The cold wave goes through her, and a faint droning begins, a panic not unlike the panic from the war. For that moment it seems as if by leaving Venice Beach, she’ll cause the town to wither and vanish, and she’ll be unable to find it again. In fact, she does not even want to leave her apartment. It will be difficult to go to work today; she’ll have to coax herself. But first there is the question, and she must answer the question. She does not know what to say to Sadie, and not knowing, she slices an orange. And now the air in the apartment smells more like orange and less like fear. For a moment she sits in the kitchen with the telegram and the watercolors and the sliced fruit, waiting for the presence of mind to call Sadie. This she has never done, though she cannot say why: it isn’t just the money. Finally, she lifts the telephone receiver and asks for a long-distance operator.

  The woman who answers the telephone is not Sadie. She is Southern maybe, Negro maybe. She speaks through the operator’s line, saying Mrs. Feldstein is not at home, but Goldie puts the call through anyway. I am her sister, Goldie says, in California.

  “Miss Cohen?” the woman says.

  “I can’t be there for the funeral. Would you tell her that?”

  “Yes, Miss Cohen. I’ll tell her that.”

  “Don’t delay the funeral on my account,” Goldie says. “I’m Goldie.” But her own voice seems flat and remote. Then the woman on the phone asks if there’s anything else, and the question’s confusing: Goldie can’t imagine anything else, even what anything else might include. “No,” she says to the woman. “I don’t think so. No.”

  And the woman on the phone at Sadie’s house tells her, “I’m sorry about your father.” The woman says, “You’re all in my prayers.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Lillian

  SEPTEMBER 1947

  After six weeks, only six weeks, there are mo-ments when the voice that intrudes has the huskiness not of age but of desire, containing in it flirtation, a low, quiet Do you? The full conversations have dropped away, and remaining is this question with its suggestion of pleasure and anticipated pleasure. A strange bittersweet echo. Two weeks ago she heard a man buy a newspaper, a young man whose voice had a pitch similar to Abe’s—Thank you, he told the paperboy—and the old phrase flooded back, rooted itself in the present. Echoing when she butters toast in the morning, as she unlocks the cash register, as she pauses to cross Elmwood, the phrase sometimes paired with a flash of Abe’s face. Like a photograph surfacing from another decade, the face younger than the recent familiar Abe. Do you? he says, nothing more. Just a fragment, but perhaps it’s the fragment that lay at the heart of their relationship. Perhaps the exact center of her life with Abe was a moment in her flat, one day when Abe was happy and amorous and asked Do you? after whatever intimate comment she’d made. What had she said? She liked some way he touched her? She wanted him to stay?

  Mostly what she conjures is the sound
of his breathing, thick at night, or his exasperation about Irving (My Irving loves cards too much. Whiskey also) or his daughters (Celia, sotto voce. Then a quick shake of his head. And later, perhaps by an hour, Jo. A sigh). Lillian can easily recall the recent pleasure of a mild evening, a walk, their early desire partly but not wholly eclipsed. But now this, passion-soaked, unwilled, present though the man is not. Had he spoken those words in that tone since the war began? She thinks not. The Abe of fifteen years ago, saying Do you? in that particular way, will likely be with her for some time. She ought to prepare herself for the recurring shock of him appearing—handsome, still middle-aged—and speaking one small phrase, for the single glimpse of him before he vanishes.

  The recent Abe was more contemplative and sad. “Do not think you are free of the Old World,” he’d told her. “You are not free of the Old World.” He was thinking of Russia, Poland, a litany of other countries. And he may have been right: because she did not know those countries, she thought of her life as separate. At times they seemed mythic planets, though here was Abe, and here was Bertha, grief-stricken by the war and all that preceded it. Abe did not refer to her personal world, and yet that was here too, her own small history, her own small regrets, much of it connected to him—who, though dead, nonetheless continued to seduce. Do you? Perhaps—this is the part she cannot remember, the shifting part—after the question he reached to kiss her, or smirked and held back until she could not bear the waiting, for the kiss or for him to enter her. She can picture the scene unfolding: the younger Abe addresses some other, younger Lillian. It was that Lillian he kissed, a vanished Lillian she cannot pretend to be. And the coy Abe does not acknowledge the Lillian she is now. He can neither kiss her nor acknowledge that he won’t. He simply repeats Do you? without self-knowledge, ready to proceed with the already vanished seduction. And as she buys her own morning paper and counts her bus fare, Lillian cannot stop him, can only wait for him to briefly fade out. As when the recording ends and the needle lifts.