The Corps of the Bare-Boned Plane

by Polly Horvath

  This had come on the depressing heels of a talk one of my fellow conferencers had had with me at another interminable cocktail party when she was trying to convince me in a coquettish way that what I needed was a woman to share the island with. I had mistakenly told her I lived alone there, and she had picked up the ball and run, in my consideration, sadly afoul with it. A woman to iron my shirts, she’d said, pointedly staring at what peeked out from beneath my wool sports coat, for I like cotton shirts and I don’t know how to iron or want to learn and have always figured shirts aren’t really visible under a jacket and tie anyway, so I arrived everywhere sadly wrinkled. Since most of my fellow academics are similarly wrinkled, perhaps not so badly, but certainly not crisp and polished, I never felt particularly noticeable until this woman suggested that I’d be less wrinkled if I married. I bought drip-dry shirts after that. I didn’t like them as well, they weren’t as comfortable, but they didn’t invite comment. Then she said I must have someone to cook for me, too.

  “You women!” I sputtered indignantly. “You spend half the time at conferences banding together and sharing information about chilly climates. How you’re done out of your due at your place of work, how the men still say ‘he’ when they should say ‘he or she’ and on and on, and then when it comes to the cocktail party you get drunk and revert to something your mothers would be ashamed of, telling someone that he needs someone to cook for him. Well, I am astounded. Astounded and astonished. Astonished and astounded!” And then I temporarily forgot her altogether as I pondered the difference between astonishment and astoundedment. Astonished was perhaps just surprised while astounded implied some kind of moral judgment attached. A disapproving version of astonished. You could be happily astonished but could you be happily astounded? I didn’t think so.

  This little outburst, as you can imagine, even if I hadn’t drifted off in thought as if the woman simply weren’t there, had cut the conversation short or, at any rate, shorter. This new tack in the conversation had left her breathless and appalled but it had upset me far more. I didn’t exactly panic, but it did cause me a certain amount of unease. I did not want to become like those people who were found dead under twenty years’ worth of old newspapers. I did not want to start collecting cats and then slide down the slippery slope of just opening another tin of cat food for myself in the evening. I didn’t feel better until I saw the Kraft commercial and realized here was a meal I could make and eat, to be as nurtured and nurturing as the tow-headed brood and their no doubt overly involved mother. And that, menu wise, was that.

  But now I knew my perfect menu would no longer do. If I was going to be a good guardian and a good host I was going to have to do better. This stressed me. It meant I was going to have to think about something that I had no interest in, that wasn’t profitable to me or my studies. But I did it anyway and that was how I came up with Mrs. Mendelbaum. That is, I came up with the happy thought that I had the money to hire people to think about things for me that I didn’t want to think about myself. That I needn’t have food on my brain if there was someone else around who did. A cook was the answer.

  The night I was writing the advertisement for the cook, I heard Jocelyn sneezing over and over. She may have been sneezing repeatedly before then, perhaps I only tuned into it now as I tuned into their need for a more varied diet. At any rate Jocelyn confessed, when prodded, that she was terribly allergic to dust. That was when I noticed the dust bunnies everywhere, the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, the dirt on all the floors. When Meline screamed “MOUSE” from the bathroom, I realized something would have to be done about that, too. Until then I had let the mice have their way. They seemed to want to come in in the late fall when it was growing cold outside, and at first I had found this very annoying. I didn’t want to share my space with any living creature, and mice were noisy in their own way, but dealing with them required more energy and ingenuity than I had, so I simply set traps in my bedroom and the kitchen and let them have the rest of the house. After all, it was a big house, room for all. Most of the time I forgot to empty the traps. I really was the most deplorable housekeeper no matter how you looked at it. And for some reason all the drains in the house backed up, particularly after a hard rain. I looked at the kitchen sink, with six inches of backed-up water in it, and thought, What is one supposed to do? So I amended the ad I was writing from cook to cook/housekeeper—some rodent control required; and the first one to answer the ad was Mrs. Mendelbaum.

  MRS. MENDELBAUM

  EVERYONE HAD DIED. All of them. Ganz kaput. Now I needed the money and something, I think, else. What else I am not sure, so I answer the ad to find out. Either find out or take care of it without finding out. Does it matter? The helicopter leaves me there alone looking at it. It all sparkles, the ocean, so many windows in that big house. What did I know, then? I thought this Marten Knockers would be some alter kucker in a condominium. Did I think he would be living alone in such a big place? How should I know such things? I had never answered an ad before. Cooking or cleaning I had done, yes, for my own family. For my husband and four sons. Now all dead. A person with maybe not such big expectations I could cook or clean for. But this? Who knows what such a person living all alone in such luxury would expect. A g’vir. Gut far him! He should eat so well with some fancy-shmancy cook.

  This is my adventure. My first adventure alone. Without Ansel, what did I care how it turned out? Still, such a big house, it was not feeling so much like my little adventure. It was feeling like maybe my little fraud. But oh well, I should worry, probably he wouldn’t hire me anyway. Probably I would not be here after the interview. Er zol vaksen vi a tsibeleh, mit dem kop in drerd; ich hob es in drerd. He’s probably looking for some hotsie-totsie girl living here all alone.

  Then, so fast he hires me. Does he ask me questions? No. Does he ask to see references? No. He tells me he has no interest in such things and he wants to be done with it, so he hires me. Like that. A man should take some trouble unless, of course, he doesn’t care who he hires because he wants not just a hotsie-totsie girl but to get out his ax! Such an isolated place. So easy to bury them on this farkuckt island. Perhaps, perhaps I am not the first! Who else would live so alone? A butcher knife I keep by my bed after that. But no, meshugeh he turns out to be, but not in that way.

  After that I call my friend Sophie Babilinska, who lives across the hall from me, that she should send my things with this helicopter pilot Sam. And to tell the landlord my apartment can be let. Sophie warns me, a crazy thing, she says, an impetuous thing, moving to this island when I know so little about my employer. I think, of course, Sophie may be right, but ech I say and turn deaf ears. “I haf a new beginning in my life and we should all haf that. After all, what do I have left, Sophie? Shmek tabik.”

  “Your husband is rolling in his grave, mark my words, Zisel,” says Sophie.

  “He should roll in his grave when he didn’t roll in his life? Trust me, a roller he wasn’t. I have work to do. I cannot think of the past. I have eleven bedrooms to keep clean.”

  “And who is this alter kucker? What kind of a house has eleven bedrooms?” asks Sophie.

  “A rich man’s. What do you think? Just send my things.”

  “Why don’t you come back for them yourself, then?” asks Sophie.

  “My new employer needs my services immediately,” I say. This sounds good, I think, but I think, too, it is not right that he should demand I immediately cook and clean and not leave the island. I do not know that he is only thinking to himself, he wants nothing to do with such business, he has hired me to cook and clean, let me start cooking and cleaning. Yes, a butcher’s knife next to the bed.

  “Your services, oy vey, I shouldn’t ask,” says Sophie, who is Polish but speaks German, Yiddish, and English, too. I take her to the Jewish Community Center with me on Fridays to help make the challahs. Sophie is good with bread.

  “Get your mind out of the gutter, Sophie,” I say. “Es past nit. Who would want us at ou
r age in such a way?”

  “Believe me, plenty,” says Sophie. “There are some men, even dead they want you.”

  “In your dreams,” I say. I have been in Canada for many years, so a few expressions I know. But still I think in other times, in other languages. I exist sometimes, I think, here, sometimes in the past, the time, for me always, of my heart. It was as Ansel said to me when he died, these days are not our days, when we had our boys, growing up, that was the meat of our life. Now dinner is over, not even dessert to look forward to, all finished. What is between now and nightfall? And here on this farkuckt strange island, no TV, no shopping, no movies, where we cannot see others living their lives, no connection to other people, always before I have lived among many people, like drops of water in a big wave. Here, there is just us. Everyone extinguished, kaput, everyone we had loved, our pasts, gone. Who would have thought you could spend your life collecting people to have them all gone, to be again completely alone? Who tells you it will be this way? Who should know?

  “He could be one of them,” said Sophie. Sophie believes Nazis are in big homes in Canada. Made rich by stealing from the Jews. She does not even dare say “Nazis” but whispers “them” in case they are listening.

  “Sophie, you see Nazis everywhere. They’re dead. All of them. All the Nazis, all their victims, the whole business kaput,” I say to her.

  “Some things are never kaput,” says Sophie and hangs up.

  And so my things come and I meet these two girls, these wisps who do not even make noise. Who barely notice my coming. Who have been so quiet I did not know they were here. So I make dinner from what I can find, which isn’t much, let me tell you. A freezer full of hot dogs! So many boxes of mac and cheese! Enough already. I have that tsedrait helicopter pilot deliver some meat, some potatoes, some carrots. No more hot dogs for you, Mr. Fancy Pants, I say to myself as I cook. Then they eat.

  “Thank God,” says Mr. Knockers, “I can get back to work.”

  “Thank God,” say the girls.

  “Thank Got,” I say for reasons of my own.

  JOCELYN

  AT THE FIRST Mrs. Mendelbaum–made meal, Uncle Marten pointed to his plate and asked, “What’s this? It’s brown. It seems somehow browner than most foods. It’s awfully brown for a food. Are some foods browner than others? Is it a meat? It is. It is a meat, by God.” He was poking it with his fork in a curious, detached way that my mother wouldn’t have approved of. My mother was British and had brought me up the way she had been brought up. My mother taught my father table manners as well because she said his had been sketchy when she married him. I never noticed because by the time I was old enough to notice, my mother had his under control. But sometimes she talked to me about it. The manners he had when she first met him. And how she had had to work a miracle to get him to even sit up straight at table. But now he did, back straight, feet flat on the floor, napkin on lap, no dilly-dallying. Eat your food in a businesslike way, wipe smudges off your mouth with the corner of your napkin, don’t drink or talk with your mouth full, take small, tasteful bites, say please and thank you, ask for things to be passed, no elbows, no rude noises, no mention of what one was eating, all conversation should be impersonal, anecdotal, and of interest to all, and always, always remember that Britain is better than Canada and much, much better than the United States of America, where restaurant portions are too big, people talk too loudly and too much and at inappropriate times, and all the inhabitants wear white shoes.

  “What is this fascination with white shoes that they have? And gym shorts and gym shoes and little white socks when they go out? If they’re so obsessed with the gym, why are they all so fat?” my mother said to me and variations on the theme. By the time I was nine I was suspicious of Canadians and absolutely terrified of Americans. Their influence was pandemic. My mother said if it wasn’t for the Americans, Britain would still have red phone booths. She seemed to find the passing of the red phone booth a particularly worrisome sign, as well as the destruction of hedgerows and the building of that big monstrous Ferris wheel that ruined the London skyline. As if it were no longer necessary to take England seriously, she said scoldingly, as if it were now all one big theme park.

  I looked down the table at Meline. She was sitting on one of her feet, twirling her hair between her fingers and occasionally putting her finger experimentally into her potatoes. I suppose that’s just another thing that Americans do. I watched Meline to find out what other quirks Americans had that my mother hadn’t had time to tell me about.

  “The meat is brisket,” I said briskly, answering Uncle Marten’s question about the brown meat. I knew that I didn’t have my mother’s British accent, but I had her inflections, more British than Canadian, and I chopped my words out more precisely than the rest of them. It’s a form of respect, really, not to drag your speech on and on as if everyone wants to hear the sound of your voice. “And the potatoes are kugel. It’s a kind of pudding. I ran into Mrs. Mendelbaum before dinner and she gave me the menu.”

  “Well, imagine that!” said Uncle Marten, snorting indignantly. “She did not give me the menu. Oughtn’t she to have given me the menu? Never mind, on second thought, I’d much rather not know.”

  “This is supposed to be pudding?” asked Meline skeptically. “This isn’t pudding. Someone is going to have to explain to Mrs. Mendelbaum what pudding is. This is more like hash browns or scalloped potatoes or something. But it isn’t pudding. Maybe you didn’t understand. Her English isn’t that good. Maybe she said something else.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Like ‘budding.’ Maybe in German hash browns are called budding.”

  “It isn’t supposed to be a sweet pudding. It’s a savory pudding,” I said, cutting myself another tiny bite of brisket and popping it into my mouth and wondering when this interminable meal would be over.

  “Savory?” Meline said. “As in ‘to savor’? I don’t think anyone is going to savor the idea of some potatoes masquerading as pudding and coming along on the plate next to the meat when anyone could tell you a pudding is supposed to be served at the end of the meal. And sweet.”

  “Well said,” said Uncle Marten, tapping on his wineglass with his butter knife for emphasis. It rang nicely and he did it several more times, apparently enjoying it and looking abstracted. Then he rang his water glass. Then he got up and went to the china cupboard muttering something about looking for a tumbler that was made of plain glass rather than crystal. Meline and I watched him bemused. It was like living with an impulsive two-year-old.

  “As in ‘not sweet,’” I said. I really didn’t care what they thought of savories because their opinions were, I was sure, beneath my concern. I was sure my mother would regard them the way she did the women in her quilting society who used paper napkins. “Didn’t your mother ever serve you a savory?”

  “I don’t know anyone who has ever served a savory, or, at any rate, called it that,” said Uncle Marten, back at his seat and eating his brisket with gusto now. He explained to us about some family of tow-headed boys in a commercial. That he could even see the Kraft commercial mom serving it to her witless but (he had since decided) secretly evil brood. The very blandness of those blond-headed boys, with their milky skin and snub noses, their uniform bland expressions of delight at dinner, haunted him. He had been brooding about them for weeks and he began to see their blandness as a mask, covering up their true natures, for who could really be so bland? No, they were demons in his daymares, devils smiling for the camera and then going out nights to perform ritual sacrifices. By now, he admitted, he was terrified of them and, whenever they surfaced in his thoughts, tried to put them immediately back out. Was he serious?

  “Your mother was extraordinary, dear. I could tell from her Christmas cards. She really believed in all this nonsense, I think, about savories and dry sherry and all that British stuff that everyone else back there in Britain threw away with the dinosaurs. She really seemed to think that the pre
servation of such things would save the world. Well, bless her, bless anyone I say who thinks they have a formula for saving the world.” He muttered this last to himself, examining a little bowl full of purple sauce that he apparently hadn’t noticed before.

  “Beet horseradish,” I said, smiling politely but mentally rolling my eyes. Canadians were turning out just as my mother had warned me. I must redouble my guard.

  I grew up on a thousand acres in Saskatchewan where my father was a crop duster and my mother oversaw the farm. I was homeschooled and seldom met anyone but the farm workers and an occasional Canadian guest whom my mother had approved. But it took so much to approve one of these, with such a powerful nationality strike against him to begin with, that they were few and far between. Mostly we had other Britons visiting us because my mother belonged to a traveling aid society for visiting Britons. She put people up for a reasonable rate in the guest cottage she had made my father build in his practically nonexistent spare time. My mother had no spare time either and she had no sympathy for anyone else having or wanting any. The society preapproved all its members in advance, of course. When my mother filled out the application to be a member herself and was asked what kind of people she would not be comfortable housing she had typed in, “We don’t want any serial killers. Or those of a criminally bent nature. No one who snores. And of course no Americans.” She knew we could not hear a snorer from the guest cottage, but she disapproved of snorers on principle. To her they represented a sound sleeper, and a sound sleeper was someone who enjoyed his sleep a little too much and was therefore apt to be lax in his other personal habits as well. One should sleep lightly, she said, if at all.