Night Swim

by Jessica Keener

  Dam (blood)!

  Tz’Farday’A (frogs)!

  Kinim (lice)!

  Arov (wild beasts)!

  Dever (cattle plague)!

  Sh’Chin (boils)!

  Barad (hail)!

  Arbeh (locusts)!

  Cho-Shech (darkness)!

  Makat B’Chorot (slaying of first born)!

  “Slaying of the first born?” I asked. “I do not understand this.”

  I smeared my white linen napkin with grape juice.

  “You don’t have to understand it. It’s tradition,” Mother said. She kept her left hand under the table and pushed her empty wine glass toward Father. He filled it to the top.

  “It’s not tradition, it’s murder,” Peter said. “Let’s slay the first born, kill some children. Start a My Lai Massacre. One two three four, what are we fighting for?” He started singing the Country Joe and the Fish song, the one they sang at Woodstock.

  “Peter. Stop. That’s enough,” Mother said. “Of course I don’t mean that. I’m talking about rituals — foods, gathering together every year with the family.” She lifted her chin. “I believe those things are important.”

  “Change is better.”

  “You say that because you’re young, dear.”

  “Since when did you get old, Irene?” Father asked.

  “Old? What are you talking about?” Granpa said. “She’s perfect.”

  “Perfection is a lost horizon,” Father said. “Isn’t that right, Irene?”

  “Never mind. Let’s not turn this into a seminar,” Mother said. “Let’s enjoy each other.” She smiled at me but I saw a flicker in her eyes, like a small animal fleeing.

  From what? From what, Mother? What?

  These questions churned in my stomach as I slurped down matzo ball soup. I was a thin person with a fat person’s appetite. I ate gefilte fish, two chicken breasts, multiple helpings of noodle pudding, candied carrots. The Klines’ Irish housekeeper, a stooped woman in her sixties, whisked away our dirty plates. “You have enough, dear?” We ended the seder in a burst of traditional songs.

  “When Israel was in Egypt Land,

  Let my people go!

  Oppressed so hard they could not stand,

  Let my people go!”

  Afterwards, Elliot and Robert went to the TV room. Kenneth and Peter headed upstairs to Kenneth’s old bedroom to play guitar.

  “Sarah, will you come with me a moment?” Uncle Max said, rising from his chair.

  I followed my uncle to the basement where he had portioned off a part of the room for his sculptures: a clutter of small nude clay models, big-breasted women with thick thighs, which he lined on a table covered in an old painter’s sheet. I counted half a dozen nudes, some without arms and legs, a few lying down. One nude, the size of an upright watermelon, was perched on the floor and served as a doorjamb to the boiler room.

  “Take a look at my new piece,” he said.

  He switched on a floor lamp and putting his hand lightly on my shoulder, steered me toward the table. Then he stood in front of me, staring.

  “I was thinking of using you as a model,” he said, touching my neck. He explained how he wanted to do a nude of a younger woman. “Ask your mother. See what she says.”

  “I couldn’t do that.” I shook my head.

  “Think about it,” he said, nonchalantly reaching for a cigar from his breast pocket, setting it aflame with a butane lighter. “But I wouldn’t want you to be uncomfortable. It’s for art.”

  “I’m going up now.”

  “Yes. Let’s go up.”

  I ran back up to the first floor, to the powder room, and locked the door. Uncle Max followed behind but passed the bathroom and continued on to the living room where the adults had settled. He called out to Aunt Annette to see if she would play the piano.

  I calmed down in the bathroom, dawdling with the sink faucet, until the smell of my uncle’s cigar subsided. It was an odd request and he knew it. Art or no art. I wouldn’t do it. Upstairs, I heard Kenneth and Peter singing Bob Dylan songs.

  Corrina, Corrina, Gal, where you been so long?

  I ran upstairs to join them.

  Chapter Four

  Stupid Talk

  On the car ride home, Mother said something to Father about Uncle Max having trouble with the business. It was dark now, the street lights flicking past faster as Father headed down the hill toward our street.

  “I think he’s hiding something from us.”

  “Yes, yes, yes, I heard him,” Father said, irritably.

  “He’s concerned he might have to work for his money.”

  “He asked me to pose nude for him,” I said.

  “Really?” Mother turned. “I’m surprised.”

  “I said no.”

  “Good,” Father said. “I’ll give him a piece of my mind.”

  “Let’s just let it be,” Mother said. “You said no and that’s that.”

  “Guy’s a creep,” Peter said. “Dad, watch that car.”

  Father braked hard but not soon enough, lightly bumping into a brown sedan that had stopped at the stop sign at the bottom of the street.

  Father turned. “Everyone okay?”

  “He’s waving to you,” Peter said. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “Jesus Christ! I barely touched him.”

  “Leonard, lower your voice.”

  “Let me take care of this.” Father rolled down the window but didn’t get out.

  The man sauntered over and introduced himself.

  “Officer Riley.” He flipped open his wallet and showed his police badge.

  “Very impressive. Looking for an excuse to show your badge, Mr. Riley? Look, there’s no damage.”

  Peter covered his eyes.

  “We’re coming from the seder,” Elliot said, holding up a plastic frog. “Do you know about the plagues?”

  “Shh. Not now.” Mother waved a finger from her good hand, her right.

  The policeman leaned in. “Going pretty fast with kids in the car.”

  “Well within the limit.”

  “ — Leonard, please.”

  “Tell you what; you can bring that up at a hearing.” Officer Reilly flipped open a ticket pad and began writing. He was ordinary looking. Brown hair and eyes, thick wad of nose, small lips. “I’ll be right back.”

  The policeman went back to his car and sat behind the wheel to finish writing the ticket.

  Father tapped on the steering wheel. “Mr. Know-itall on his day off. You’d think he was writing the Great American Novel. Man’s got nothing else to do.”

  Mother’s face tightened in that old, familiar way. But when the policeman returned, she tried to smile. Robert started squeezing and opening his fists in unison. “I would like to go home,” he said.

  “You have a better rest of the night, sir.” The man handed Father a ticket.

  “I’m not through with you,” Father said. “You wait. I’m going to retrieve my camera and document this.”

  “Go right ahead,” the policeman said, smiling. “I’ve got plenty of time.”

  Elliot started humming one of the Passover songs, an annoying repetitive sound.

  “Forget it, Dad,” Peter said.

  “I won’t forget it. I want silence in this car!” Father slapped the dashboard, his face turning purple. Mother stiffened into plaster of Paris. Robert, too. Then Father put the car in gear and drove around the corner into our driveway.

  We couldn’t get out fast enough. Each of us clambered up the back stairs to the kitchen. Father headed to the den. I got to the second floor when I heard glasses, the clattering of Father making another drink. My brothers heard too and gathered around me on the second floor landing. We flattened ourselves on the carpet and looked down through the railing.

  Mother called to Dora to bring a cold glass of water. Dora walked across the hall to the den and returned to the kitchen, her face closed up like a cardboard box.

  “I’ll be fine,”
Father kept saying. He sounded stupid.

  We watched as he stepped backwards, then sideways.

  “You’re not fine,” Mother said, steering him into his office. The door shut.

  “He looks like he’s going to faint,” Robert said, beside me.

  Elliot was limp and silent.

  “What is she saying?” I wanted to know.

  “Come with me,” Peter said, getting up.

  We all followed him down to the basement. He had rigged up a sound system from Father’s office, feeding a wire through a hole in the basement ceiling and attaching it to extra stereo speakers. We heard Mother say: “Get ahold of yourself. I can’t take it anymore.”

  “You should have married a richer man.”

  “It has nothing to do with money. It’s your behavior.”

  I yanked the wire from the speaker. “Don’t listen to them,” I said.

  Elliot started crying.

  “It’s stupid adult talk. They don’t mean anything,” Peter said, wrapping his arm around Elliot.

  Robert’s shoulders bent inward. “You’re all stupid.”

  I agreed with Robert — even stupider as we crept back up and ran into Dora at the top of the stairs, waiting for us. She looked at Peter and me.

  “What did you do to upset your brothers?” She put one arm around Elliot and the other around Robert, who didn’t like to be touched, and brought them into the kitchen. “Nothing that some hot chocolate can’t fix,” she said to them.

  Peter and I mounted two more sets of stairs to his room. We shut ourselves in his closet, sitting on the floor under a forest of shirts dangling on hangers. “What’s wrong with them?” I didn’t understand my parents’ talk. It tangled like knotted strings.

  “It’s not your problem. Listen to this.” He sat crossed-legged and positioned his guitar over his knees, making sure the neck didn’t bang against the wall. His confidence, tinged with disgust, galvanized me. If he could dismiss them, so could I.

  “I’ll teach you some new chords.”

  I nudged closer to his knees and let him arrange my fingers on the frets. Cramped in this narrow space, the sweat under his arms smelled like wet cotton and rubber. But nothing was sweeter and safer. If I had a hammer —

  The metal strings thrummed a beautiful, round sound of The Weavers’ folk song. Peter strummed harder and our harmonies gelled “I’d hammer out love —” until our voices and Peter’s guitar formed a nest high in the trees, untouchable as I sang and my lungs vibrated with deep breaths and melodies and invisible wings. Whatever existed below me, in the lower floors, became inconsequential. No one interrupted. No one came up to tell me to stop.

  ~~~~~

  Days after the police incident, Mother developed a mild discomfort in her shoulder. The ache traveled up the left side of her neck and down her arm until it took over the house. The family doctor prescribed more pills to relieve the pain. She took green capsules three times a day: one with her coffee in the morning, one before dinner, and one before bed. At first the pills worked. Her tight-lipped smile softened. But the pain returned worse than before. When I came home from school, several times I found her lying on the living room couch sipping a drink, one arm draped to the floor.

  “Can I do something?”

  “No, hun. How was school today? Much homework?”

  Homework was not an issue for me. I got A’s. She knew that.

  “Same as always.”

  I waited for her to say something else but she seemed to be half-asleep. She tried to sit up. I reached over and helped her shift into a sitting position.

  “I’m in a terrible mess, aren’t I?” She shook her head and looked at me. I looked at the rug. Her pleading eyes discomfited me like getting snagged in a web.

  Steroid shots offered her temporary relief, but again the pain rebounded. She couldn’t bend over to tie Elliot’s shoes. That became my chore, as did getting Elliot dressed before school in the morning unless Dora intervened, which she often did, and marshaled us all out the kitchen door with slices of buttered toast in our hands. “Let’s go. Come on. All of you. I don’t want anybody late for school. Go on!”

  Mother visited doctors, took pills, tried different exercises. Nothing helped.

  “You’re going to have to have surgery,” Father said.

  She wore a neck brace. It no longer seemed unusual to find her upstairs in her bedroom sitting on a straight-back chair with a sling and rope contraption wrapped around her chin. The rope looped over the top of the door and was weighted down on the other side by a sandbag. In theory the sling was supposed to relieve the pressure in the spine, which had something to do with her neck pain. When she sat in this contraption, she braced herself against the back of her chair and talked through her teeth.

  Today, I stood in front of her inspecting the ropes and pulley.

  “What will you do if this doesn’t work? Surgery?”

  “I’m running out of options. Tell Dora to bring me up a drink,” she said. “Don’t forget a straw.”

  ~~~~~

  I went down to find Dora. The room that had once been Luanne’s and a little bit mine was no longer. Instead of Luanne’s scarf across the window, Dora kept her shade wide open to let sunlight in. Her spotless bureau top smelled of lemon wax. The gray linoleum floor shone like polished silver.

  I knocked. The door opened suddenly and fat Dora loomed over me. Her stout presence cast a wide shadow.

  “What is it, Sarah? Dinner’s not ready for another fifteen minutes.”

  “Mother wants her drink upstairs.”

  Dora nodded but looked disapproving at me.

  “What?” I said.

  “Money don’t solve everything,” she said and went into the den to make the drink.

  Did I say it did? My silent voice created waves in my head. I went to the kitchen window and looked out at the Fineburgs’ house. Mickey’s window shade was pulled half-way down. I heard Dora thumping up the stairs. She liked to make her all-knowing presence heard. I didn’t know what to do.

  Below, I saw Father walking up the driveway from the commuter train. He wore a long, black overcoat and carried a briefcase, the kind that stood upright on a tabletop and opened accordion style. He was proud of the fact that his briefcase was fifteen years old, as if holding on to old things proved something about his worth.

  “Everyone’s home,” I said, as soon as he walked in.

  “How’s your mother?”

  “In her sling.”

  He went to the hall closet and hung up his coat.

  “Mrs. Kunitz is upstairs,” Dora said, emerging from the hallway. “She’s going to have to have that surgery. I know it.”

  “Irene!” Father shouted from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Mrs. Kunitz can’t talk. She’s in her sling. You have to go upstairs.”

  “Christ!” Father said, trudging up the staircase.

  “What are you staring at, Sarah?” Dora said. “Go wash your hands. Get your brothers. We’re about to eat.”

  ~~~~~

  We took our seats at the table and watched Father and Mother slowly walk down the stairs together. Mother moved like an old, crippled person, straining to keep her back straight while Father held her elbow and guided her down.

  “I think the sling’s making it worse, Mom,” Peter said.

  Father led Mother to her chair and eased her down on the seat.

  “Your mother has a heightened sense of pain.” He looked apologetic, as if something about the pain in her neck was his fault.

  Then Dora walked in as if on cue and began serving. She put five chicken wings on Father’s plate, four on Peter’s and three on mine.

  “I’ll have another,” I said.

  “When you’re through with what you got, I’ll give you more. And, don’t forget to say, please.”

  I made a face. I didn’t know if she hated me because we had money or if she just hated me. I looked over to Mother for help.

  “Let it be
, Sarah,” she said. “There’s always more.”

  Chapter Five

  Adults

  I wondered what Mother was thinking about in her hospital bed. Tomorrow morning, the surgeon would fix her herniated spine. Was she scared? Was she looking forward to a new life after surgery? I finished my homework and piano practice. I took a shower, but I couldn’t sleep. In my flannel nightgown, I went downstairs and wedged myself between the bookcase and window in Father’s office. He was correcting papers.

  “The doctor says she’ll be home in four days. Twelve hours from now it will all be behind us,” Father said.

  “I can’t wait. I hope it fixes her.”

  “Me too, pumpkin.” He took off his reading glasses.

  I looked out the window where the cherry tree grew. At night, the branches looked arthritic in the darkness.

  “What are you working on?”

  “A story about love.” He handed me a paperback copy of King Lear. “The king has three daughters. He wants them to each prove their love to him. Think about that. How do you prove love? Climb mountains? Put yourself at mortal risk?” He stood and began to pace, walking toward me, then back to the desk.

  “At work you have to prove you’re worthy. No matter what you choose to do in life, princess, you’ll have to prove something. How do you do that?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Well, it depends. Sometimes you have to do certain tasks to please the king or the boss as the case may be. In my case, the person who wants to be pleased is the head of the department.

  “The boss is the person who gives you the money. Do you go along with the boss? I’ll tell you the answer,” he said, slapping down the book. “Some people do what the two elder daughters did. They do what they think the boss wants. A few do what they believe is morally right. Those few, a minority I might add, are ostracized, just like Lear’s youngest daughter. Are you getting the picture?”

  “What does your boss want you to do?” I asked.

  “He wants me to teach my classes his way and I’m not going to do that!” He shook his finger at the book.

  “Mr. Kunitz,” Dora said, walking in with a dish-towel in her hand, “Sarah needs to be in bed. She has school tomorrow.”