Isabella’s children will never know their mother’s sadness. It would destroy them because she is their mother and you only get one mother in this world. The thing I think about most is why she chose us. It would seem obvious to say that she is the lucky one, but I’m not sure it isn’t the other way around. Her children’s laughter falls through open windows into the village street. The man she married is deeply in love. I wonder if he bit his lip when he first saw her.
I am taking a shortcut. I am threading my way through secret alleys. There are dogs lying perfectly still. There are bags of trash and empty oil canisters. There are waiters smoking with their shirts unbuttoned. Ciao they say because I smile at them first. I think most people in the world are decent if they’re not suffering.
It was hard for me to leave the house tonight. I couldn’t stop checking the gas knobs. They were all off, and there was no hissing sound, but I just couldn’t stop looking. And then I checked all the plug sockets and listened to the toilet in case something unseen was overflowing. And then when I did finally leave, I had to try the door handle ten times, just to make sure. The whole door is coming loose, but then if I leave the apartment three times a day, that’s 210 times per week the handle gets jiggled. Maybe Marco could tighten it up for me. I can see his hands upon the hinges like two horses.
My neighbor is used to the sound of me jiggling the lock. If I were ever being broken into, she’d never suspect. I buy her a bottle of wine every now and then. I wish she could find someone.
I wonder if Isabella found the photograph of our family in a thrift store in New York City. Perhaps the real Isabella gave it to her on her deathbed.
The mystery is how the photograph traveled from Argentina to New York.
It took only moments for Isabella’s husband to fall in love with her. And only a few moments for Isabella’s biological mother to set her down on the street and walk away forever. Perhaps, desperately, her mother now has something to hope for. Like a lighthouse, her child missing in the world is a light diffused by the fog of her own despair; a despair beyond sadness.
Isabella’s real mother felt her only power was to give up on everything, like Pontius Pilate washing his hands before the hot crowd. But her child went searching, and on a quiet Italian mountainside she found a future waiting for her.
I think we keep these moments of rejection and acceptance very close. I think we carry them always, like cracked shells from which a part of us once hatched.
I see Marco in the distance. He is holding two oranges. I can feel him without touching him. I stop walking. I want this moment never to end. I want to hold on in this still but falling world.
He sees me. We walk toward each other.
Sometimes the man with watery eyes calls on Isabella. She always asks him in. Her children sit on his lap and feed him little pieces of biscotti. They want to hear the story of the church, they want to hear the story of mama. They want to know everything.
THE MUTE VENTRILOQUIST
I.
Oskar was a Polish ventriloquist who lived in Drake’s basement. People thought he was mad and were afraid of him. Sometimes he went for long walks. He never spoke to anyone he saw but carried small bites in his pocket that he handed to passing dogs.
Those who didn’t know that Oskar was a puppeteer might have thought him mute. Nobody quite knew what to make of him because though he was the quietest resident of Greenpoint, with a small wooden puppet on his knee, the words and sentences flowed like water from a faucet.
Drake was an only child.
He lived in a brownstone at 999 Lorimer Street. Red paint peeled above the front door. The stairs groaned when Drake ran up and down them in his socks. His best friend growing up was called Kristine. She was very tall and flopped her legs when she walked as though stepping over something invisible. Drake liked to mimic the voices and sounds he heard coming from the man in the basement because it made her laugh. Sometimes, when he and Kristine talked in whispers on the steps, Oskar would suddenly appear with two plums.
As they put on the years like new coats, Drake and Kristine became strangers to one another. The intimacy of unbroken silence was replaced by the awkwardness of conversation. Words fell from their minds like a rain of hard stones, snapping branches of blind desire, trapping the fresh blooms of feeling within the darkness of meaning.
Twenty-five years later, Drake saw Kristine at a sales convention in Glasgow, Kentucky.
At first he didn’t recognize her because she was so much bigger. Then he felt suddenly very light. His breath quickened as though he’d been running.
With her body occupied by the journey of age, beauty had flooded her eyes.
There is little joy in those first moments of recognition—for the reality is that most encounters of such depth, most first glances of love come to nothing. And while the sincerity of that rare moment when your heart is bursting should be the signal to fling yourself on the ground in the path of this stranger, it’s the depth of such sincerity that paralyses you, holds you back from the silence of phrases like “hello” and “good morning.” And as they pass, granting only single, torturous details like fingers upon the handle of an umbrella, or a hair pin bearing the weight of a twist, or a wool collar beaded with pearls of rain—there is only one thing you could ever say that would be true, that would make them stop walking and turn to face you. But such a thing is unsayable.
And so love passes, leaving only bits from which we must construct our lives.
Drake approached the woman cautiously. She was seated on a folding chair. When someone passed, her arm reached out mechanically with a brochure for testing rings and hydraulic gauze. The lights of the convention center were very high up. The carpet beneath their feet was a tight brushed red. People had come from all over the world to compare filters and demonstrate new hydraulic methods by lowering small machines into buckets. People were invited to try for themselves after putting on a rubber apron.
When Kristine saw Drake, she dropped her stack of booklets. When he picked them up, he noticed a pair of very pretty shoes. She was wearing a company T-shirt and a shawl. When she pulled the shawl over her shoulders, Drake noticed marks on her neck, a faint mess of hands.
Drake stood looking at her. She arranged the booklets on her lap.
“You’re pregnant.”
They shared a quiet, romantic dinner at the mall. They found a table in a corner. Behind Kristine’s plastic chair were two machines. One was full of tiny rubber balls. The other was a glass case with a mechanical claw that dangled over slumped toys. Small bulbs in the claw machine made Kristine’s wedding band sparkle. When they finished supper, Drake stacked their plates on the plastic tray and carried it to the trash. Kristine watched.
Earlier, when he picked her up at the hotel, she had changed into a long-sleeved blouse and a skirt with flowers stitched into the hem. Her pocketbook had a gold chain strap.
Drake opened the door for her.
When he got in to drive, a car bell chimed loudly, as though calling back to the faint thud in his chest.
Drake spent the evening at her Holiday Inn listening to the child in her belly softly juggle its new limbs.
They ate peanut M&Ms and watched TV.
Later on, back at his own hotel, Drake stood at the window looking out at the parking lot. The cars below gleamed like unclaimed prizes. A few insects swirled the streetlights. Drake thought about all those years without her. When she looked at him, he felt like a clump of ice breaking under a stream of warm water. The years apart were like the clouds outside his window drifting against a pale moon. He traced their journey with his finger upon the pane. But they were very far away.
He tried to sleep but lay on his back listening to the muffled shouts from a television in the next room.
About three o’clock in the morning, he drove to a Super Walmart he had seen returning from Kristine’s hotel. He figured there were a few things she might need for when the baby came.
He was
half asleep when he dressed and couldn’t find his socks.
For three hours, Drake drifted through the aisles like the ghost from a life he wasn’t having. Everyone he passed seemed very friendly. A woman called Dorothy wrote him a list of things a baby might like to wear, or play with, or even chew on.
Drake also talked for a long time with a man called Kevin about young feet. Kevin was looking at shoes for his girlfriend’s kid. He said that you could tell a kid’s personality from the shape of his feet.
The two men sat in comfortable chairs they would never buy. Kevin ate chips from a large bag. Then Kevin admitted that he’d been coming to Walmart because he had lost his job as a night-shift packer. His girlfriend still didn’t know.
The next morning at breakfast with Kristine, Drake ordered a triple stack of pancakes, extra home fries, three Belgian waffles, sausage, bacon, oatmeal, fruit cups, tea, and a pitcher of OJ. The waitress said, “Are you serious?”
Drake pointed at Kristine’s stomach.
The sign for the Pancake Cottage was set very high up in the sky on a metal pole. The waitress said it was so that truckers could see it from the highway. She said that at night it was the brightest thing out there and drew people in from the darkness.
After breakfast, Kristine followed Drake into the parking lot so he could put the stuff in her car. She shook her head and said in a high voice, “Oh Drake, why did you do this?”
Then she wiped her eyes with a tissue, forced a smile, and said, “It’s really great, Drake. It’s all really helpful.”
She watched as he demonstrated the smooth action of the suitcase wheels.
“Now you don’t have to carry anything ever again,” he exclaimed.
She smiled politely.
A truck growled past slowly on its way to the exit. Its chassis tilted as the front wheels dipped through deep puddles. Then the growl of the motor faded as the truck stretched out into the open plain of a new highway. The puddles around them were wide and deep. A sneaker lay upright—half in the water, like a small animal dipping its head for a drink.
A forest lay beyond the restaurant. Slack power lines stretched between the trees like someone learning to write.
Shreds of cloud hung meanly on the far horizon.
Then, moments before she drove away, Drake rushed back into the restaurant and bought:
Five Hostess cherry pies
A six-pack of seltzer water
A box (the red one) of Ritz crackers
Bananas
A small polar bear holding a giant red heart that said “Kentucky”
Flares
A gallon of milk
He carefully set the brown bag on the passenger seat of her old sedan. She looked at it and said, “You’re going back to Brooklyn?”
Drake nodded.
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
She sighed and looked at the road ahead.
“Let’s say good-bye like we said hello,” Drake said.
Kristine looked at him without blinking her eyes.
“Just something from a song,” he shrugged.
As she drove away, Drake noticed how the paint had worn off the hood of her car. The roof upholstery was the color of a tongue and sagged. There were two uneven holes in the back shelf where speakers had been removed.
Two months after the convention in Kentucky, Kristine appeared at Drake’s front door. She was holding a suitcase of clothes and a lamp.
“Hello, Drake,” she said.
“That’s a nice lamp,” he said.
He took her suitcase. She carried the lamp inside. “It needs rewiring.”
The car-service driver waved. Drake waved back.
Kristine had run away from her husband. They lived in Franklin, Wisconsin. Kristine said it was famous for frozen custard. Her husband worked at the plant. He was a supervisor. They had bought an extra freezer for all the free custard they got.
She looked tired. Her wrist was broken and in a sling. Drake didn’t ask any questions. Her stomach was so large, it seemed as though she might tip over.
His living room became her bedroom. He changed his whole routine—even working different hours without telling anyone why. To the neighbors, Kristine called herself Drake’s housekeeper, but they knew—and, of course, the older ones appreciated the veil of modesty.
Drake liked to rub her stomach at night. He was amazed how people could grow inside one another.
In the evening, Drake put on Bach’s Goldberg Variations. One night, the child kicked. Drake danced around the room. Kristine laughed and said she’d never seen Drake so crazy. Then they held hands on the couch they would share that night as a bed.
On Sunday morning a week later, they sat up in their couch bed and ate popcorn. Drake asked Kristine if she remembered the mute Polish puppeteer who lived in the basement.
“I do,” she said.
II.
Drake told Kristine everything because she seemed interested.
His mother first took him to one of Oskar’s performances on his fourth birthday. They took place in out-of-the-way places like smoky gypsy basements with grand tables on which stood steaming bowls of stew with small legs poking through films of oil and onion skins.
At the first performance Drake attended, it was smoky and dim. A single stage light dangled above a straw ladder-back chair like an orange eye.
Oskar hobbled onto the stage led by his puppet. Oskar had dark skin that had come loose with age.
The puppet resembled an Indonesian boy-prince, bare from the waist up but with a jeweled turban wrapped about his small head and a crown of hair as black as a bird’s wing.
Oskar’s performances were unforgettable, though specific details remained a mystery.
His audiences included everyone from old homeless men to the sons and daughters of kings. One night, in the basement of the Tomkat factory in Long Island City, Japanese gangsters shared a table with the Hungarian king (then a teenage prince with an insatiable curiosity for the bizarre).
When the puppet spoke, it was as though he were talking to each individual person. The wisdom of the puppeteer came only through the puppet.
After Drake’s first performance, his mother took his hand and led him through the bewildered crowd to the stage. They climbed up and slipped under a violet curtain into a dark room that smelled like Bruson’s Lime Hair Tonic. Drake remembered sitting on Oskar’s lap. Oskar brushed Drake’s hair with his hand. Drake wondered why his mother had never taken him downstairs to see where Oskar lived.
Drake remembers his mother kneeling to explain that the man upon whose lap he perched could not speak, whispering to her son that the ventriloquist probably had something wrong with his own voice.
But Drake found nothing so strange about someone unable to find words for life. Children spend the mornings of their lives in a sea of imagination before being hauled out onto rocks by jealous adults who’ve forgotten how to swim.
Another performance took place in the Norman Avenue subway station at three minutes to six in the morning. Drake wondered how anyone could have known it was going to happen. When the puppet spoke and his wooden body rattled, a Chinese woman holding a bag of oranges let go of the straps. The fruit rolled onto the tracks. People looked and pointed as the oranges settled like balls on a roulette table. Trains pulled into the station, but nobody got on or off.
Eventually the police came. They listened for a minute to size up the old puppeteer sitting on an upside-down bucket. But after a few moments, the police found themselves mesmerized by what the puppet was saying. And the next day, they woke up and felt great joy at being alive. One of the policemen decided he was going to take piano lessons after all. The other asked his wife if she was still interested in having a child.
On the day Drake turned six, his mother tied several balloons to a parking meter outside their house. He felt too old but didn’t say anything. When his friends arrived, there was a party, a birthday cake, and presents.
> That evening, as she was popping balloons in the street, Drake said, “Why don’t I have a father?”
She sighed and untied the string and torn pieces of balloon. Then Drake fell down the steps and split his chin open. He opened his birthday presents when they got back from the old stone hospital four hours later.
Kristine wanted to know what she had told him about his father. Drake thought for a minute and sipped his tea.
“She said that he was gone and that was that. I assumed it was her first husband. She talked about him so much. There were pictures everywhere. I even thought we looked alike.”
It wasn’t until Drake was in college, years after Oskar’s last performance at the Greenpoint Working Men’s Horse & Pony Raceway, that Drake’s mother told him that actually Oskar was probably his father.
“Probably?” he had said. “What do you mean probably?”
Her jaw trembled.
Drake was furious.
Then she said, “My husband of fifteen years who you didn’t know had been dead five years, and I was very lonely. Oskar sometimes drank tea with me in the evening. I never thought we’d get married or anything. I mean, he was mute, but he was also different—something a bit funny about him. We saw each other often, and occasionally he’d stay the night.
“One day he found a puppet in the trash. Then he changed a lot. He became a different person—or more who he already was—not unkind or anything, but not really here.
“I didn’t want to interfere—and I was already pregnant with you by then, my little love. What a surprise you were—what a sweet surprise.”
Years later Drake’s mother got a disease.
Alzheimer’s is like having your entire life written out in chalk and then washed over by the sea at every tide.
A month before the birth of Kristine’s baby, Drake began to have dreams. He called them dreams because they happened at night, but they seemed too vivid to have been imagined. It was as though they were imagining him. That he was their dream.
The Secret Lives of People in Love Page 13