by Lucia Berlin
I was busy with the buffet and the punch. It was good, tons of food. No added salt. Mr. Tomanovich, Riva Chirenko’s son-in-law, was a help, standing at the head of the table hailing all the guests. Food good! Drink good!
It was a lot healthier when I used to see people as animals. Mr. Tomanovich a sweaty manatee. Now they are all diseases. Shingles or toxic shock. Mr. Tomanovich is hypertensive, for sure, with his red face and sweaty sickles around his powder-blue underarms. Potential glomerulosclerosis and renal failure. His wife, Riva Chirenko’s daughter, the yak … a hysterectomy in store for her, her pain is of the womb.
Riva Chirenko herself is beyond disease. You always hear about little old ladies. The big old ladies all die, that’s why, except for Riva, who is 280 pounds and eighty years old. Folds of red velvet spill over the plastic of her gurney. Red blood hums away. IVs drip steadily into the mesas on her arms. She looks like Father Christmas. White hair and eyebrows, rosy cheeks, white hair sprouting from her chin. She barks in Russian at her daughter, who fans her, soothes her brow with a cool cloth, sings to her in Russian in a mournful voice. Back and forth from the dining room, filling her red plate each time with morsels for her mother. Swedish meatballs, croissants with ham, roast beef, deviled eggs, asparagus, quiche, Brie, olives, onion dip, pumpkin pie, champagne, cranberry juice, coffee. It all just quietly disappears into Riva Chirenko’s amazingly tiny and pretty mouth.
“Where’s Dr. B.?” Mr. Tomanovich keeps asking. I have worked for him for two years and I never know where he is. Is he in fact declotting a Scribner’s shunt? Taking a nap? Sitting shiva? “He’s in surgery,” I say.
Riva Chirenko’s daughter, each time she fills her mother’s plate, touches Irena’s, her own daughter’s, hair and encourages her to eat. She says, in Russian, “Kushai, dochka.” Irena’s father, too, comes over from time to time and says,
“Tebe ne khorosho?”
They are saying, “Shape up, you little slut!” No, of course not. They are saying, “Eat, my little princess.”
The daughter, Irena, sits on the only chair in the dining room. An ugly plastic chair, all wrong. I want to throw it out, go rent her another one, buy one, quick. Her profile, with a long neck, is curved like an albino dinosaur, a marble cobra, an anorexic whippet. See, I’m sick. I make her sound grotesque. She is the most lovely creature I have ever seen. Pale green eyes, hair like white honey, like the inside of a pear. She is fourteen, in white, wearing the now-fashionable lace gloves with no fingers. Her bony hands lie in her lap like the little white birds you eat whole in Guadalajara … too much cinnamon. She wears white lace stockings with no feet. Pulsating blue traceries on her ankles. Her mother touches her pale hair. Irena flinches, does not acknowledge her mother at all. When her father does the same thing she doesn’t speak to him, but she bares her exquisite white teeth.
Dr. B. finally arrives. There is an uproar. Patients and their families flock around him. They adore him. He looks tired. Mr. Tomanovich gets his wife to translate. He has been waiting to show Dr. B. photographs of Irena in Hawaii. Irena had won the Skagg’s Drugstore Father’s Day Contest. An essay: “My Dad Is the Greatest!” A trip to Hawaii for her and her parents. Of course her mother couldn’t leave Riva Chirenko. Irena had entered the Skagg’s Mother’s Day essay contest too but she had only won honorable mention and the Polaroid that took all the pictures. Irena by a bird-of-paradise. Irena wearing a lei, in a sugarcane field, on the terrace. No beach. She hates the sun.
Dr. B. smiles. “You are fortunate to have such a talented and pretty child.”
“God is good!” Riva Chirenko’s daughter is always saying that. God brought them from Russia. God gave her mother the dialysis machine.
Dr. B. looks at Irena, sitting there, head high, scornful. Snowflakes flutter down. She raises her tiny white hand, for him to shake, kiss? It curves in the air, poised, curved. She turns into an Egyptian frieze. Dr. B. stares at her. He is transfixed.
“Have you eaten?” he asks. For God’s sake. That kid hasn’t eaten for years. Dr. B. goes to greet patients and guests. Irena turns her extended hand into a point toward the cloakroom. Mr. Tomanovich rushes to get her fur-trimmed coat, puts it on her. Her mother comes, buttons up the coat, frees her hair from the fur, strokes Irena’s hair. Irena doesn’t flinch, doesn’t speak. She turns to leave. Her father touches the small of her back. She freezes and stops. He removes his hand and opens the door, following her out.
I clean up the dining room. Most of the guests have left, were leaving. The dialysis patients still have another hour on their run. Some are vomiting, some are asleep. The tape plays “Away in a manger, no crib for His bed.” My own grandmother’s favorite carol, but it used to scare me because she always told me not to be a dog in the manger. I thought the dog had eaten baby Jesus.
The food had been just right. Nothing is left except two large Tupperware bowls that Anna Ferraza brought. A real flop. Strawberry Jell-O and cranberries, bitter as a bog. I leave it there. The color is pretty by the red plates, the poinsettia.
There are only a few nurses and techs left. Dr. B. is on the phone in his office. The Christmas tree in the middle of the big room has hundreds of bubble lights that gurgle and flow louder than the COBE II machines and it’s as if they are transfusing the tree. You can smell the green pine of the tree. Riva Chirenko’s daughter still fans Riva even though she is asleep. Finally she stops, stands. She is stiff and sore. Osteoporosis. Postmenopausal bone loss. She covers Riva with a soft shawl, comes into the dining room just as I’m leaving with a bag full of garbage. I realize that Riva Chirenko’s daughter has not had dinner. She kisses my cheek. “Thank you for the party! Merry Christmas!” Her eyes are green like her daughter’s. Joyous eyes. Not the sappy smile of abused children or religious fanatics. Joyous.
I empty the garbage and talk for a while with one of the techs, about saline, where to get his wife a sweater. I check with the answering service to see if there are any messages. Hyper-al orders for Ruttle, that’s it. Maisie, the operator, asks if I have tomorrow off. Yes! God is good, Maisie. She laughs. Not to me, he ain’t.
I go get my coat. I remember the cranberry Jell-O, realize that Riva Chirenko’s daughter will eat it, enjoy it.
RAINY DAY
Man, this detox gets full when it rains. I’m sick of being on the street, you know? My old lady and me went over to the bleachers … it’s nice—real quiet and lots of room. Then it started to rain and she started to cry. I kept on asking her, What’s the matter, hon? What’s the matter? You know what she finally said? “All the cigarette butts are getting wet.” Shit, so I hit her. She went nuts, cops took her to jail and brought me here. I can stand a drying out. Trouble is when I sober up I start to think. Alcoholics think more than most people and that’s the truth. I drink just to shut off the words. Shit, what if I was a drummer? Last time I was in here there was a Psychology Today, talking about skid-row drunks. It proved alkies thought more. Said they scored higher on tests than normal people and higher on retention. There was just one thing they scored bad on, couldn’t do worth a damn, but I can’t remember what it was.
OUR BROTHER’S KEEPER
When some people die they just vanish, like pebbles into a pool. Everyday life just smooths back together and goes on as it did before. Other people die but stay around for a long time, either because they have captured the public’s imagination, like James Dean, or because their spirit just won’t let go, like our friend Sara’s.
Sara died ten years ago, but still, anytime her grandchildren say something bright or imperious, everyone will say, “She’s just like Sara!” Whenever I see two women driving along and laughing together, really laughing, I always think it’s Sara. And of course each spring when I plant I remember the fig tree we got in the garbage bin at PayLess, the bad fight we had over the miniature coral rosebush at East Bay.
Our country has just gone to war, which is why I’m thinking about her now. She could get madder at our politicians, and be more
vocal about it, than anybody I know. I want to call her up; she always gave you something to do, made you feel you could do something.
Even though all of us continue to reminisce about her, we stopped talking about the way she died very soon after it happened. She was murdered, brutally, her head bashed in with a “blunt instrument.” A lover she had been going with had repeatedly threatened to kill her. She had called the police each time but they said there was nothing they could do. The man was a dentist, an alcoholic, some fifteen years younger than she was. In spite of the threats, and of other times that he had hit her, no weapon was found, no evidence placed him at the scene of the crime. He was never charged.
You know how it is when a friend is in love. Well, I guess I’m talking to women, strong women, older women. (Sara was sixty.) We say it’s great being our own person, that our lives are full. But we still want it, recognize it. Romance. When Sara spun around my kitchen laughing, “I’m in love. Can you believe it?” I was glad for her. We all were. Leon was attractive. Well-educated, sexy, articulate. He made her happy. Later, as she did, we forgave him. Missed appointments, unkind words, thoughtlessness, a slap. We wanted everything to be okay. We all still wanted to believe in love.
After Sara’s death her son Eddie moved into her house. I cleaned his house every Tuesday, so it turned out I was cleaning at Sara’s. It was hard, at first, to be in her sunny kitchen with all the plants gone but the memories still there. Gossip, talks about God, our children. The living room was full of Eddie’s CDs, radios and computers, two TVs, three telephones. (So much electronic equipment that once when the phone rang I answered it with the TV remote control.) His junky mismatched furniture replaced the huge linen couch where Sara and I would lie facing each other, covered with a quilt, talking, talking. Once one rainy Sunday we were both so low we watched bowling and Lassie.
The first time I cleaned the bedroom was terrible. The wall near where her bed used to be was still splattered and caked with her blood. I was sickened. After I cleaned it I went outside into the garden. I smiled to see the azaleas and daffodils and ranunculus we had planted together. We didn’t know which end of the ranunculus to plant, so we decided to put in half of them with the point facing down and the other half with the point up. So we still don’t know which are the ones that grew.
I went back in to vacuum and make the bed, saw that under Eddie’s bed was a revolver and a shotgun. I froze. What if Leon came back? He was crazy. He could kill me too. I took out each of the guns. Hands trembling, I tried to figure out what you did with them. I wanted Leon to come, so I could blow him away.
I vacuumed under the bed and put the weapons back. I was disgusted by my feelings and tried hard to think about something else.
I pretended that I was a TV show. A cleaning lady detective, sort of a female Columbo. Half-witted, gum chewing … but while she’s feather dusting she’s really looking for clues. She always just happens to be cleaning houses where a murder happens. Invisible, she mops the kitchen floor while suspects say incriminating things on the phone a few feet away. She eavesdrops, finds bloody knives in the linen cupboard, is careful not to dust the poker, saving prints …
Leon probably killed her with a golf club. That’s how they met, at the Claremont Golf Club. I was scrubbing the bathtub when I heard the creak of the garden gate, a chair scraping on the wooden deck. Someone was in the backyard. Leon! My heart pounded. I couldn’t see through the stained-glass window. I crawled into the bedroom and grabbed the revolver, crawled to the French doors that led to the garden. I peeked out, gun ready, although my hand was shaking so bad I couldn’t have shot it.
It was Alexander. Christ. Old Alexander, sitting in an Adirondack chair. Hi, Al! I called out, and went to put the gun away.
He was holding a clay pot of pink freesia that he kept meaning to bring to Sara. He had just felt like coming over to sit in her garden. I went in and poured him a cup of coffee. Sara had coffee going day and night. And good things to eat. Soups or gumbos, good bread and cheese and pastries. Not like the Winchell’s doughnuts and frozen macaroni dinners Eddie kept around.
Alexander was an English professor. He could drone on for hours, Gerard Manley Hopkins gashing gold vermilion. He and Sara had known each other for forty years, had been young idealistic socialists way back when. He had always been in love with her, would plead with her to marry him. Lorena and I used to beg her to do it. “Come on, Sara … let him take care of you.” He was good. Noble and dependable. But, if a woman says a man is nice it usually means she finds him boring. And, like my mother used to say, “Ever tried being married to a saint?”
And that’s just what Alexander was talking about …
“I was too boring for her, too predictable. I knew this chap was bad news. I only hoped that I would be around when he left, to help pick up the pieces.”
Tears came into his eyes then. “I feel responsible for her death. I knew he had hurt her, would hurt her. I should have interfered some way. All I cared about was my own resentment and jealousy. I am guilty.”
I held his hand and tried to cheer him up, and we talked for a while, remembering Sara.
After he had gone I went in to clean the kitchen. Hey, what if Alexander really was guilty? What if he had come over that night, with the pot of freesia, or to see if she wanted to play Scrabble? Maybe he had looked through the curtains on the French doors, seen Sara and Leon making love. He had waited until after Leon left, out the front door, and had gone in, wild with jealousy, and killed her. He was a suspect, for sure.
The next Tuesday the house wasn’t as messy as usual so I spent the last hour weeding and replanting in the garden. I was in the potting shed when I heard the bells and tambourine. Hare Hare Hare. Sara’s youngest daughter, Rebecca, was dancing and chanting around the swimming pool.
Sara had been upset at first, when she had become a Krishna, but one day we were driving down Telegraph and saw her among a group of them. She looked so beautiful, singing, bobbing around, in her saffron robes. Sara pulled the car over to the curb, just to sit and watch her. She lit a cigarette and smiled. “You know what? She’s safe.”
I tried to talk to Rebecca, get her to sit down and have some herbal tea or something, but she was spinning, spinning like a dervish, moaning away. Then she was jumping and twirling on the diving board, interrupting her chants with violent outbursts. “Evil begets evil!” She raved on about her mother’s smoking and coffee drinking, about her eating red meat, and cheese with retin or something in it. And fornication. She was at the very tip of the diving board now, and every time she hollered “Fornication!” she’d bounce about three feet up into the air.
Suspect number two.
I only cleaned Eddie’s once a week, but invariably at least one person came into the backyard. I’m sure people came in every other day as well. Because that’s how she was, Sara, her heart and doors open to everyone. She helped in big ways, politically, in the community, but in little ways too, anyone who needed her. She always answered her phone, she never locked her doors. She had always been there for me.
One Tuesday, out of the blue, the biggest, worst suspect of all showed up in the backyard. Clarissa. Eddie’s ex-girlfriend. Wow. I don’t think she had ever been near Sara’s house before, she hated her so much. She had tried to get Eddie to leave his mother’s law firm, come live with her in Mendocino and be a full-time writer. She wrote letters to Sara, accusing her of being domineering and possessive, and fought with Eddie all the time about his law career and his mother. Clarissa and I had been friends until finally it came down to choosing between the two women. But not before I heard her say a hundred times, “Oh, how I’d love to murder Sara.” And there she was, standing under the lavender wisteria that covered the gate, chewing on the stem of her dark glasses.
“Hi, Clarissa,” I said.
She was startled. “Hi. I didn’t expect to see anyone. What are you doing here?” (Typical of her … when in doubt, attack.)
“I’m
cleaning Eddie’s house.”
“Are you still cleaning houses? That’s sick.”
“I sure hope you don’t talk to your patients like that.” (Clarissa’s a psychiatrist, for Lord’s sake…) I tried hard to think of what questions my cleaning lady detective would ask her. I was at a loss, she was too intimidating. She really was capable de tout. How could I prove it though?
“Where were you the night Sara was killed?” I blurted.
Clarissa laughed. “My dear … are you implying that I am guilty of the crime? No. Too late,” she said as she turned and walked out the gate.
As the weeks went by my list of suspects continued to grow, everyone from judges to policemen to window washers.
The only thing about the window washer was the weapon, the pole he carries around with him, along with his bucket. It was scary, seeing his silhouette through the curtains. A big man, carrying a pole. I had wondered about him for years. He is a homeless young black man who sleeps at night on Oakland buses and sometimes in the lobby of Alta Bates Emergency. During the day he goes from door to door asking people if they want their windows washed. He always has a book with him. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Jim Thompson. Karl Marx. He has a nice voice and dresses very well, tennis sweaters, Ralph Lauren T-shirts.
After Sara paid him for washing windows she’d always give him some god-awful old clothes of Eddie’s. He’d say, Thank you, ma’am, real polite, but I used to be sure he threw them in the garbage on his way out. Maybe she was a symbol or something. A jumpsuit with a broken zipper the last straw?
“Hello, Emory, how are you?”
“Just fine, and you? I saw that Miss Sara’s son was living here now … wondered if he needed his windows washed.”
“No. I’m cleaning for him now, and do the windows too. Why don’t you try at his office, on Prince Street?”
“Good idea. Thanks,” he said. He smiled and left.