A Place I've Never Been

by David Leavitt

  The soap operas, however, were most important, in particular The Light of Day, which was Lena’s favorite. It seemed to make her genuinely suffer, this show; if on Friday the heroine was left dangling from a small plane while a villain crushed her fingers with his shoes, there would be no living with Lena that weekend. What had drawn them to the show in the first place was a story line that occurred in the mid-seventies, concerning a sweet girl nun who found herself torn between her faith and the pleas of a handsome, severely smitten Jewish boy determined to woo her away from the convent. Anxiety bled with a little bit of love was the formula of this soap opera. If love for the nun started Rose and Lena watching, anxiety for her fate compelled them to keep watching—especially after the nun went off to a war-torn Central American country to do good works, and wound up being kidnapped by guerrillas. The cycle was eternal, and designed to addict: an adored heroine had to be in trouble if you were going to care about her at all. Soon Lena and Rose became experts, they predicted things long before they happened: too much happiness meant something terrible, a psychopath, a car accident. Vague tiredness boded terminal illness or unwanted pregnancy.

  For years, day after day, The Light of Day evolved. Hairdos changed, as did clothes. Occasionally new actors would replace old ones, the transformation explained by a quick car accident and facial reconstruction. The show seemed never to have begun (though Celia knew it had, once, before her birth). Apparently it would never end. And there was no assurance that the characters’ suffering would end, either. Whereas in a movie you could pretty much assume a hostage taken at the beginning was a hostage saved at the end, here torture, detainment, misunderstanding might drag on for months.

  The year Celia was applying to colleges, Lena became preoccupied with the fate of a couple on the show, a girl named Brandy and a boy named Brad. They were in love, but a series of miscommunications mostly engineered by an evil older woman named Mallory had led each to believe the other was cheating. Finally Brandy called Brad and left a message on his answering machine: “If I hear from you tonight, I’ll know you love me; otherwise, I’ll assume you don’t.” Then Mallory stole the tape. Brandy assumed Brad didn’t love her, but of course, Brad had never heard the message. Mallory continued to stir up trouble until finally Brad, despairing, sure that Brandy didn’t love him, allowed himself to be seduced by and then to become engaged to Mallory. Brandy, in the meantime, kept almost finding the incriminating tape, which Mallory had saved and hidden inside a jade statue in the museum where Brandy worked. This jade statue seemed to have mysterious powers. Then Mallory started putting drugs in Brandy’s coffee, slowly addicting her, making it look like she was going mad.

  All through this Lena roiled in bed, shuffling and moaning: “Oy, oy!” She said it was killing her; she said it was giving her an ulcer. “If I have to die soon,” Lena said, “let me at least die knowing that Brandy and Brad got back together.” So Rose wrote a letter to the show, and showed it to Celia first, to make sure the grammar was perfect.

  Dear Sirs and Mesdames [it read]:

  For many years my mother, Mrs. Lena Lieberman, aged eighty-nine, and myself have been loyal viewers of your show, The Light of Day. We have seen the characters through thick and thin, good and bad. Lately, however, my mother has been very disturbed by the extended troubles being suffered by Brandy and Brad. Surely seven and a half months is long enough for such a sweet and loving pair of young people to have to endure the evil doings of Mallory, not to mention painful and unnecessary separation! Life is short, as we all know. I myself lost my husband in 1959, and watching the travails suffered by Brandy and Brad, I can only think what a shame it is that they are wasting their youthful years apart when very likely anything can and will happen to them in the near future. Youth is golden, and should be enjoyed. If you don’t mind my quoting the name of a rival (and in my opinion much inferior) program, each of us has only one life to live.

  Sirs and mesdames, let me come to my point. My mother is an old woman not long for this world. She is sick, and her anxiety for Brandy and Brad is making her sicker. I doubt I am exaggerating when I say it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. A life is at stake here, and that is why I am writing to ask you, with all speed, to bring Brad and Brandy back together, marry them to each other, punish the wicked Mallory. Only knowing they are reunited in matrimony will my elderly mother breathe easy, and die peacefully.

  Yours sincerely,

  Rose (Mrs. Leonard) Hoberman

  Celia didn’t think much about the letter except to wonder whether her mother really was as far gone as she sounded, or whether this was some joke going on between Rose and herself. She was busy with her college applications, and filling out scholarship forms, and entering competitions (the Optimists’ Club Speech Competition, theme: Together we will …; the Ladies’ Auxiliary of B’nai B’rith; Young Women of Merit Awards), doing everything she could to scrounge up all the money she’d need for school. When she got the letter informing her of her acceptance, she couldn’t wait for the elevator; instead she raced up the stairs, shouting, “Ma! Ma!” But her mother didn’t hear her. She had a letter of her own. “Celia!” she said breathlessly as Celia ran into the living room. “Listen, listen! It’s from the show!”

  “Ma, I’ve got great news!”

  “Listen to this letter, you won’t believe it!”

  Dear Mrs. Hoberman:

  I received your letter, and was sure to share it with our writers and cast, all of whom join me in wishing your mother a speedy recovery. While it is our policy never to reveal what’s going to happen on The Light of Day in advance—even the actors only see the scripts a few days before shooting—I believe I can assure you that all is going to work out for Brandy and Brad, and that Mallory will receive her comeuppance.

  In conclusion, let me say that viewers such as you and your mother mean everything to us here at The Light of Day; we hope you’ll accept the enclosed autographed photo of Mark Metzger (Brad Hollister) and Alexandra Fisher (Brandy Teague) as a token of that appreciation.

  Very sincerely yours,

  Donna Ann Finkle

  Public Relations Associate

  “It’s amazing,” Rose cried. “They listened to us! They answered!” And Celia, all at once, fell silent in her rapture, for she understood, as if for the first time, how rarely her mother had been listened to, and how even more rarely answered.

  “Now, I’m sorry, honey, sit down and tell me your news.” But Celia was quiet.

  “Celia. I’m waiting.”

  Celia sat next to her mother on the sofa, indifferent to the crunch of plastic underneath her. For a year now she’d anticipated the moment she’d receive this letter, she’d imagined herself tearing open the envelope, reading the words “We are happy to inform you,” then throwing her arms up to the sky, because they signaled the end of one life—a life of stuffy entrapment, washed-out colors, dirty air—and the beginning of another, a glamorous life, a glorious life, a life of books and green grass and ivy-covered walkways. But now, sitting with her mother while Rose clutched her own letter, Celia saw that it wouldn’t matter; she saw that though she might walk through those halls, she’d do so as a ghost, a guest, a stranger, the same way she walked the commodious halls of her Westchester and Long Island relatives. How could college make a difference when her mother was still here, trapped in where and who she was? No matter what, Celia knew, she too would always end up back in this apartment, on this sofa. Never listened to. Never answered.

  “I got in,” she said hopelessly. Her mother turned. “You did what?”

  “I got in.”

  Then Rose screamed in a way that reminded Celia of the noises Great-Aunt Leonie’s parrot made. “You got in! She got in!” And jumping to her feet, Rose called toward the bedroom: “She got in! Mama, Celia got in!” She opened the window, leaned out, screamed so all the neighbors could hear, and the Hasidic boys across the street: “My Celia, Celia Hoberman, is a scholarship girl! She got in!”<
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  Three months later, in August, Brandy married Brad. Mallory, exposed and humiliated, left town, swearing she’d be back to get even. Rose took Celia up to New Haven. Everything according to clockwork, except for Lena, who didn’t die until two years later, and by then Brad was an alcoholic failure, and Brandy a famous TV talk-show host, played by a different actress and carrying the child of a mysterious stranger named Señor Reyes.

  Celia came down from New Haven when her grandmother died, even though it was the middle of exam week. Her Westchester aunts and uncles were sitting in the living room, looking uncomfortable and crowded. Rose was serving them cups of tea. Without even saying hello, Rose instructed Celia to bring a plate of cookies in from the kitchen. Celia took off her coat and got the cookies. “You remember these cookies, Belle?” Rose was saying to her sister. “Seidman’s Bake Shop? It’s still around. The neighborhood hasn’t changed that much, in the end.”

  “They’re delish, honey,” Belle said.

  “You know, Celia’s in the middle of exams at Yale. Tell Aunt Sadie your major, honey.”

  “Art history.”

  “Not too many career options there!” Uncle Louis said.

  “My Marc’s majoring in economics and political science at Brown,” Aunt Belle said. “He’s planning on law school.”

  “Now that’s a sensible major.”

  “Bring some more tea, Celia. The funeral’s in half an hour.”

  Celia went back into the kitchen. Her mother followed her, closed the door, and dropped herself onto a chair, looking defeated and collapsed.

  “I feel so ashamed,” she said. “I feel like such a failure.”

  “Don’t feel that way, Mama,” said Celia.

  “I do. They pity me.”

  Suddenly Rose fell to the floor, weeping. “Mama,” she cried, clutching Celia’s knees. “Mama.”

  “Mama, no,” Celia said. “I’m Celia.”

  “Mama, come back,” Rose called into Celia’s scabby knees. “Come back, Mama. Mama.”

  III

  Lunch is still ten minutes off when Celia and Seth get back from the pool, so Alex takes them on a tour of Il Mestolo. “It was a wreck when we bought it,” he explains as he leads them down stony corridors to the room where Sylvie has set up her spinning wheel. “Then slowly, over the years, we worked on it, picking up furniture here and there at estate sales. It wasn’t until Francesca was born that we put in electricity and got a phone.”

  There is a huge bathroom, the size of a bedroom, with a toilet built into a marble bench, and a tub on claws, big enough to hold a family. Much of the furniture Alex made himself, in his shop in the barn—fanciful sofas and beds with elaborate animal carvings in the moldings, down-stuffed cushions wrapped in brightly colored cotton fabric. But it is the girls’ rooms that take Celia’s breath away. In each is a handcarved sleigh bed of dark cherry, above which Alex has painted a mural. The background of the mural in Adriana’s room is sky blue, the letters of her name, spread out against it, festooned with birds—every imaginable bird, each species distinct and colorful and exact. “Francesca,” by contrast, floats in an undersea green, surrounded by fish. “Like the Grotto of the Animals,” Alex says, as Celia stares admiringly. “Outside Florence, in a place called Castello. A little leftover of the Mannerist period. You go into this grotto, and what you see is a stone-carved catalogue of the birds of the air, the beasts of the land, the fish of the sea. This is my slightly less ambitious version.”

  There are differences between the rooms. Whereas Adriana’s is neat and filled with toys—as many handmade by Alex, Celia notices, as bought at town shops—Francesca’s is a mess, the covers thrown off the bed, underwear tangled on the floor, Bon Jovi and Guns ’n Roses posters thumbtacked into the great sea wall. The posters make Celia flinch with pain—a defacement—but Alex is blasé. “The worst thing in the world,” he says, “is to tell children how to lead their lives. Their rooms belong to them. The murals are my gift, to make of what they wish. I’ve always thought it a mistake to expect appreciation from your children. You’ll never get it that way.”

  From the kitchen, Sylvie calls out, “Al-ex! Lunch!” so they head outside to the table under the grape arbor. Seth has told Celia that at formal Italian meals, the eldest guest is always seated at the host’s right, so she is surprised when Sylvie—who clearly knows better—seats Signora Dorati at Alex’s left. The old woman once again flutters her fan frantically, her face tight with distress. Celia is seated between Ginevra and Fabio. Ginevra, she knows from Seth, is a famous poet, although not a very productive one: two slim white volumes over twenty years, published by the best literary house.

  While Alex fills glasses with wine, Adriana and Francesca, freshly dressed, their hair still wet from the pool, emerge from the kitchen, bearing huge, steaming bowls of pasta. Ah, pasta! Celia has always loved it, and now, as she spoons penne into a bowl handpainted by Alex with purple garlic bulbs, she sees that Sylvie is an expert. The tubed maccheroni are luminous with bits of sausage, basil, tomato, glints of yellow garlic. What a far cry from the spaghetti and meatballs of her childhood, the overcooked, mushy noodles swimming in a bright red bath of watery, sweet tomato sauce, the whole plate periodically dented by boulders of ground beef and bread crumbs! Her mother used to sing a song as she cooked it, to the tune of “On Top of Old Smoky,” her voice loud in the cramped, steamy kitchen:

  On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese,

  I lost my poor meatball, when somebody sneezed.

  It rolled off the table, and onto the floor

  And then my poor meatball rolled out of the door …

  Celia puts down her fork. Oh, her poor foolish, sad mother! She is overwhelmed, suddenly, by the poverty of her childhood, by all she didn’t know, all she didn’t even know to ask. Here, of all places, in Chiantishire, sitting at this perfect table with these beautiful people under a grape arbor on a gloriously sunny spring day, she is haunted.

  “The weather will be bad tomorrow,” Ginevra says. “I can feel it.”

  “How?” asks Seth. “Today is beautiful.”

  “Today beautiful, tomorrow hot, humid, uncomfortable. My mood always tells me. I’m getting depressed.”

  “Ginevra can recognize the bad weather coming,” Fabio says. “And she’s right much more than the newspaper.”

  “Well, I’m not going to haul in the garden furniture yet!” Sylvie says, still stroking the small bulge in her breast. “Anyway, Ginevra, why should we listen to you? You’ve been in a bad mood since you lost your manuscript. I don’t trust your senses so much.”

  This last remark is greeted by a tense silence. Ginevra puts down her fork and rubs her forehead.

  “Really, Sylvie,” Alex says.

  “Well, it’s not like a death,” says Sylvie, her back tensing defensively. “I’m tired of avoiding the subject.”

  “I just don’t think one should refer to tragedies … quite so casually—”

  “No, Alex, never mind,” Ginevra says. “It’s all right. I don’t know if Seth told you, but I’m sometimes a poet. Sometimes, because I don’t write very often—I have great blocks. And last year I was working on a poem, a long poem, which I loved like a person. I loved it so much I carried it with me everywhere. And I lost it. So for a year I’ve been in grief, and everyone is silent about my poem as if it were my lover who is gone.”

  Again, a tense silence stretches out. “That must have been terrible,” Celia says at last.

  “Terrible, yes,” Ginevra says. “I suppose. Yes.”

  “Ginevra is a wonderful cook,” Seth says now, brightly, to change the subject. “You know, Ginevra, Celia’s very interested in Italian food. Maybe you could give her lessons.”

  Ginevra looks at Celia and smiles. “Are you ready to be an obedient pupil?” she says. “Because the Italian kitchen, it is only about obedience. Obedience to the old ways.”

  “Ginevra is a perfectionist,” Fabio says. “Last week in Rome, she ma
de a duck. And she drove miles and miles to a little village in Lazio to buy the duck, because it had to be just so. And then she spent an hour picking through the vegetables at Campo dei Fiori because they had to be just so. And then she spent three hundred fifty thousand lire for caviar and tartufi even though she cannot pay her house. And then—”

  “Basta, Fabio, basta—” Ginevra covers her mouth, laughing.

  “No,” Sylvie says. “Not basta. Go on.”

  “And then she made the duck, and we ate, and it was the most delicious duck we ever taste, and we tell her, ‘Ginevra, it is marvelous,’ but she takes one taste and says, ‘No, no, it’s awful, throw it away, throw it away,’ and starts taking our plates from us. She is mad!”

  Ginevra is still laughing. “I told you, the fourth taste wasn’t right!”

  “The fourth taste?” Seth asks.

  “There were supposed to be five tastes, and the fourth—”

  “Che cosa?” asks Signora Dorati, bewildered, and Alex offers her a quick summation in Italian, at the end of which she laughs halfheartedly. She has not touched her pasta. He pours more wine for himself and her.

  A barrage of heavy-metal music stuns the atmosphere; apparently Francesca has put on one of her Bon Jovi records.

  Sylvie puts down her glass, closes her eyes, and rubs her temples. Francesca, nonchalant and challenging, comes out of the kitchen, picks up some empty bowls, goes back in.

  “Alex,” Sylvie says, “can’t you do something?”

  “Do what? You do something for once.”

  “You’re useless,” Sylvie says. Then she turns and shouts, “Will you please shut that dreadful noise down?”

  “All right, all right!”

  The music is turned off, not down, the needle pulled from the record with a violent scratch meant to be heard.

  There is a quiet which feels dangerous, like the moment after the screams of someone dying have finally stopped.

  “So, Celia,” Sylvie says, with a smile that seems to cost, “tell us about yourself. Where did you grow up?”