But she was there, seemingly to stay. Within days of moving in, she began negotiating her way out of her lease, and a week later, we borrowed Drew’s car and used it to move over the bulk of her possessions, everything save the large pieces of furniture. The house, my house, once so beautifully spare, so perfectly balanced, filled up with her things. Her art occupied the television room. Her clothes invaded my closet. In the kitchen went her stage-V espresso machine, along with the pots and pans that had once been the tools of my trade. Though she assured me that she would get rid of anything I didn’t want, all signs indicated otherwise. I girded myself for an onslaught of redecorating.
“Can I ask you a question?”
I hurriedly turned the thesis facedown, swiveled around in my office chair. “Yes?”
“I seem to remember a carpet in the upstairs bedroom.”
“... right.”
“Did you do something with it?”
I paused. “I moved it to the library.”
“That’s what I thought. Cause the one in there isn’t the one I remember, either.”
“That one, I had to get rid of it.”
“What? Why?”
“It ... it got a cigarette burn. It had a hole in it.”
“When did that happen?”
“During the party. Also a wine stain.” I spread my hands to show her how big.
“I don’t remember that.”
“You’re probably just not remembering.”
“Okay, but I still don’t see why you had to throw it away. Those are fixable problems, and it was a beautiful carpet. Wasn’t there a pair of chairs, too?”
“I didn’t want to deal with the hassle. And I didn’t throw it away, I sold it.”
“The chairs, too?”
“Those, they’re being cleaned.”
“I don’t understand why you would bother with one but not the—”
“Look,” I said, “I’m in the middle of work.”
“Oh. Sorry.” She shut the door.
A few nights later she buttonholed me on my way to the kitchen.
“Can I talk to you about something for a minute?”
“... all right.”
She led me to the living room. “It’s the curtains.”
“Curtains.”
“I told you before that the front of the house needs more light. I mean, honestly. You can’t prefer it the way it is.”
“It doesn’t bother me.”
“It’s like a crypt. The eyestrain alone is going to kill me.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “Read someplace else.”
“Where?”
“The kitchen. Upstairs. I don’t know. Buy a lamp. I’ll buy you one.”
“The light’s not the only thing, it’s like arctic in here. Look at this,” she said, tugging at her scarf. “This is indoors.”
“That’s why I put the heater in the TV room.”
“I can’t spend all my time up there.”
“I really don’t know what to tell you. The system is old; it was like this when I moved in here.”
“Can I at least get someone to give us an estimate?”
“It’s not something I want to spend money on.”
“It doesn’t cost anything to get an estimate.”
“There’s no point in getting an estimate if I know—”
“But you don’t know,” she said. “That’s why you need an estimate. ”
“I know—”
“Please don’t get upset.”
“I’m not getting upset.”
“Okay,” she said. “But, I mean.”
Silence.
“What,” I said.
“Can we finish talking about the curtains?”
“I thought we were finished.”
“Just, hear me out. That’s not going to cost more than a couple hundred dollars. Think about it: wouldn’t it be nicer than the blackouts? Restoration Hardware makes a toile, it’s kind of creamy—”
“Will you please leave it alone.”
“I can’t understand what you’re—”
“I don’t want people looking in.”
“Who would be looking in?”
“Anyone.”
“Joseph. Seriously, you really ... but—but—wait. You’re getting upset again.”
“I’m not getting upset.”
“I can see you getting upset.”
“Mina.” I pressed my fist against my mouth, and a vein of fire coursed up the side of my face. “I don’t w—I can’t deal with this right now. I’ve got work to do, I’m not feeling my best—”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. Would you please excuse me, please.”
“Joseph—”
I locked my door and sat motionless at my desk, listening for the sound of her retreat upstairs.
What was she getting at? Why that line of questioning? Why so many questions about the chairs, the carpet? Did she know something? Was she trying to smoke me out? I told myself to be rational: she wanted to put her stamp on the place. Still, if she kept it up I’d surely crack. I’d never been good at what most people consider small talk, and now it felt deadly. If she kept harping ... For a moment I considered ending things with her. But how could I? After so many months, I had earned her back. That was what I had wanted. I was supposed to be happy. And grateful. And she had supported me for two years, no questions asked. And yet there I was, contemplating throwing her into the street. After what she had just been through, what she had sacrificed—for me.
On balance, I thought, it would be easier on both of us if she just went away.
In the window I saw my reflection. The area under my eye was florid, shiny, like I’d slept too long in one position.
24
Welcome back,” said Linda Neiman.
“Thanks.”
She made no attempt at tact, ogling my face for a good three or four seconds before inviting me to sit and wheeling over to her drink station.
“Coffee?”
“Please.”
While her back was turned, I loosened my shirt collar (overwarm again) and felt to make sure that the gauze hadn’t slipped. It was still there, which meant that either she was staring at the dressing itself or the redness had spread beyond its edges, which I doubted could have happened in the hour since I’d put it on. Either way, I thought it took remarkable gall of her to stare. She’d probably been stared at her whole life. I didn’t tell her that, though. I wanted to, but I didn’t. I smiled and said whole milk would be fine, thanks.
As she fixed our drinks, we chatted about happenings in the department. It struck me that once upon a time I’d been sitting in this exact chair, getting spit-roasted by the same woman who now set out two mugs emblazoned with the Harvard seal, passed me a tin of almond-fennel seed biscotti, and asked if I knew about the upcoming Anscombe colloquium.
“Technically, of course, you’re still not enrolled. But I suppose I wouldn’t feel obliged to call campus police.”
“You’re too kind.”
“That’s something I’ve never been accused of.” She smiled and laid her hand atop a stack of printed pages. “Right. Let’s talk turkey. This is really you?”
“Indeed,” I said.
“Because reading it, I can’t help but wonder if someone came and replaced the Joseph I know with a robot who looks and sounds like him but is a halfway decent and efficient writer.”
Trying to capture Alma’s voice had been a challenge. It had a lightness to it, a musicality and playfulness befitting her voice in life, quite in contrast to the turbid stuff I’d spent years churning out. In doing the translation I also had to overcome a pervasive fogginess, one I could drive out for only a few minutes at a time, and then with fierce concentration. I was doing the same now, trying to appear alert and nonchalant rather than drained and anxious.
“People change,” I said.
“Well, let me be the first to say it: I may hav
e misjudged you.”
I made a conciliatory gesture.
“I will say that parts of the argument feel antiquated to me, such as the section on action theory. A lot has happened since mid-century. Still, I’m interested in seeing where you go from here.”
Though I had already finished translating most of the second chapter while waiting for her to read the first, I didn’t want to give the impression that my new work was coming to me too easily. I said I could get her the next section by mid-February.
“I look forward to it,” she said.
I asked if I could still qualify to graduate in the spring.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. One page at a time, mm?” She smiled, raised her mug to me. “For now it’s enough for me to feel gratified that there are still some things about the universe I don’t fully understand.”
MY RELATIVE GOOD MOOD was dashed that afternoon when I came home to find a stranger standing on my front porch.
Heavyset, with smooth, sallow skin and heavy bags under his eyes, he presented with a peculiar combination of youth and age. A dingy brown scarf overflowed the collar of his oversized nylon jacket; on his belt he wore a beeper.
“Can I help you?” I said.
He stared at me for an interminably long time before asking to speak to Ms. Spielmann. His tone was robotic, an impression bolstered by the color of his eyes-bluish-gray, what people call gunmetal.
“She’s passed away.” I paused. “I live here now.”
He nodded once.
The wad of gauze on my face felt gigantic; it was difficult not to turn away.
“Was there something I could do for you?” I said.
He came down off the porch, a photograph in his hand.
It was a snapshot of Daciana, faded and badly creased. I was startled to see that in her younger days, she had not been entirely unattractive. A tad horsey around the mouth, but far from the meaty fortress I had known. I set down my lambskin bag, pretending to examine the photo for much longer than I needed to but not nearly long enough for me to explore every branch of a rapidly expanding decision tree. On the one hand, I could say that I was new here and had therefore never known Daciana. This would seem to nip any problem in the bud, but it also had the potential to backfire severely. If, for example, she had talked about her new employer. Getting caught in a preemptive lie could raise all sorts of questions that might otherwise go unasked. On the other hand, I could allow that I did in fact know Daciana, but had (a) not seen her in a long time (a lie somehow less damning than claiming to have never known her in the first place) or (b) had seen her on the day she showed up to work and had paid her as usual and sent her along on her merry way. The advantage of (b) was that it accounted for the possibility that someone had seen her car in the driveway; the disadvantage was, obviously, that it linked me to her in time and place. On the other hand, I might not have anything to be concerned about at all. It wasn’t the police at my door but a stranger. Her son, I assumed. He seemed about the right age. Andrei? And I understood then that if he was her son, then she was his mother; together they made a family, one that I had destroyed. Families were not abstractions, they were made of real people; but that did not factor, it could not factor, in the present calculus, and so I wrenched myself back toward a more constructive line of thinking. Whoever this person was, he was clearly not the police. Come to think of it, it was possible he hadn’t yet reported her missing. Perhaps he didn’t live with her, and had come home only recently to discover her gone. How old was he, exactly? Old enough to have moved out? I couldn’t refine my initial impression of him any further without looking up from the photo, which I didn’t want to do because I could feel him waiting for me to speak. Even assuming the worst—that he did live with her, and that he’d known of her absence since that very morning—would a young man really know his mother’s work schedule, down to the hour? What child pays that kind of attention to his parents? (And how hard had she worked to give him a life here? And how many toilets scrubbed? And how many loads of laundry washed, dried, fluffed, folded?) Moreover, that it was specifically him standing here and not the police could mean that he had talked to them but that they did not consider me a person of interest; therefore, I had nothing to be afraid of. On the other hand, that might just reflect ineptitude on their part, a slow or lazy investigator. Neither the police nor her son (if that was in fact who he was) had any reason to suspect me at all, and if they or he somehow discerned that I was lying, that might rouse them or him to full attention. On the other hand, why in the world would I ever want to hurt Daciana? What did I stand to gain? She was a housekeeper. (A hardworking lady with a library card, the modern embodiment of the American dream.) On the other hand, if it emerged that Eric was missing as well, that lit a fire under the idea that people had a tendency to disappear around me. On the other hand, nobody had contacted me about Eric, which might mean that his disappearance had gone unnoticed—which made sense, given the kind of person he was, the kind of circles he probably ran in. On the other hand, I had to assume that he had at least a couple of friends, other losers or girls he’d picked up and dropped much in the way he had that awful night that I couldn’t bear to think about now. No man is an island, I thought, and then I thought about my first Harvard roommate, a gay theater junkie named Norman Slepian who liked to tell people that he was an island, as in “Norman is an island,” and though it was outrageous and inexplicable to be thinking of him then, I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to him. We had gone our separate ways after freshman year. And but back to the present: Eric was gone. Someone would know. When they could not find him, would they assume that he had skipped town? Would they call the police? It was a giant leap to assume that anyone could/would connect Eric with me, and me with Daciana; what happened happened rather more out of serendipity than due to any planning on my part. On the other hand, I still had so many other hands to consider, and this boy—this man-boy—he was waiting for an answer, and I was operating in a complete vacuum, right out on the brink of plausibility, all of these pluses and minuses racking up in my white-hot brain in the space of twenty long seconds. I had to say something.
“Right,” I said. I flapped the photo, handed it back to him. “My housekeeper.”
“It’s my mother,” he said.
The decision tree began to collapse.
“Ah,” I said. “It took me a second. How old’s that picture?”
“She hasn’t been home in three weeks,” he said.
Another branch collapsed.
“Oh, no,” I said. “I hope everything’s all right.”
He licked his lips. They were horrendously chapped. “Did she come to work that week?”
“When are we talking about?”
“About three weeks ago.”
A third branch.
“Gosh. Well, I—I hate to say it, but I actually had to let her go a little while back. I was sorry I had to do it, but—”
“How long ago.”
“Beg pardon?”
“How long ago did you fire her.”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that I fi—it wasn’t like that, it’s more a question of cost, the economy being how it is right now, but, uhhhh. Maybe six, seven weeks?”
“So she wasn’t here.”
“When are we talking about, again.”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Well, then, I suppose not, no, I don’t think so.”
Silence.
“Is everything okay?” I said.
“They found her car,” he said.
A fourth.
“Oh, no. Oh, that’s, that’s ... So you’ve called the police, I assume.”
“They’re looking for her.”
“I see. But you don’t know where she could’ve gone.”
“No,” he said. “Do you?”
My right eye socket pulsed. “I don’t know why I would.”
“Maybe she said something to you the last time she came to work.�
��
“I don’t think so,” I said. “If she did, I’d’ve forgotten by now.”
“Okay,” he said.
Silence.
His face shimmered and danced before me.
“She was a very nice lady,” I said.
“She might still be alive.”
“Well, yes. I’m sure she is. I mean, hope so.”
He said nothing.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean—I’m sorry. It’s upsetting to hear, is all. I hope she’s fine. I’m sure she’ll turn up. You don’t know anything else?”
“No.”
“Well. Please, do let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
“Can I get your number?” he asked.
“Well—uh, sure. Sure.” I reached into my pocket, found an old grocery store receipt. “I, uh, I don’t seem to have a—”
He held out a pen.
“Thanks.” I used my leg as a desk. “Please do let me know what happens.”
He said nothing.
I gave him the receipt, raised a hand. “Take care.”
“My pen,” he said.
It was a cheap ballpoint, not the kind of thing people are particular about getting back. His asking for it made me nervous. As he took it from me, the briefest flicker of a smile passed across his face. It left as quickly as it had come, and he walked away without looking back.
“THAT SOUNDS LIKE IT WENT WELL.”
“Hm?”
“I said it sounds like it went well.”
“What does.”
Yasmina glanced at me over her shoulder. “Your meeting with Linda?”
“Right,” I said. My mind was still replaying that little smile of his, the way it blinked on and was gone, like a blown lightbulb. “I guess it went pretty well.”
“Don’t get too excited, now. It’s only your entire academic future.” She gave the pot a stir, covered it, reduced the heat. “This has to simmer for a half-hour.”
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