by Lily Brett
“Have a couple of pierogi, ” Ruth said.
“Okay, okay, I’ll have one pierogi, ” Edek said.
He ran into the small bar. Ruth followed him. She sat at a small table against the wall while Edek ordered his pierogi from the bar. He came back carrying a plate of pierogi on a tray. The steam was still rising from the pierogi. They smelled good. Edek had ordered two meat pierogi and two potato pierogi.
“You don’t want one?” he said to Ruth.
“I’ll have some another time,” she said. Three minutes later Edek pushed the plate away from him. “That is it,” he said. “That is enough for me for a whole day.”
“Were they good?” Ruth said. Edek wiped his mouth with his napkin.
“They was out of this world,” he said.
Edek and Ruth walked toward the University of Warsaw. Edek was still walking ahead of her. They passed a men’s clothing store. “Dad,” Ruth called out to Edek. He walked back to where she was. “I’d like to buy you a coat,” she said. “Please, it’s cold now, and it’s going to get even colder.”
“You want to drive me crazy?” Edek said. “I do not need a coat. I told you before, this cold does not get to your bones. If you want to buy a coat, buy yourself another coat.”
“Well, can I buy you some gloves? Please?” Ruth said.
Edek sighed. “Okay, okay,” he said.
They went into the store. Edek spoke to the assistant. It seemed a long conversation to have about a pair of gloves, Ruth thought. She recognized some of the phrases. Edek was complaining about her to the shop assistant.
They settled on a pair of brown leather gloves. Edek looked quite pleased with them. He put them on straightaway. Edek walked next to Ruth for a while, admiring his gloves.
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L I L Y B R E T T
“Have you been in Warsaw before?” she said. “Did you ever come here, from Lódz?”
“Once or twice,” he said.
“You’ve never mentioned that,” she said.
“Why should I mention everything?” Edek said.
It was so hard to ask even the most innocuous questions about the past, Ruth thought. Any question about the past could unleash an unpredictable volatility in both of her parents. There were no simple questions or simple answers about their pasts. All simplicity seemed to have been erased from their experience. There was little that could be said without provoking an intensity that could be frightening to everyone in its orbit.
Ruth had learned at a young age that an ordinary query could produce a very bad reaction in both Edek and Rooshka. Ruth used to see the strain on her mother’s face as Rooshka struggled to contain the eruptions and explo-sions that she lived with. She saw her mother battle to keep them to herself.
To not let the tumult spill out and pollute and infect those around her.
“I don’t need to know everything,” Ruth shouted to Edek. He had rushed ahead of her again. She caught up with him. “I just want to know a few things,” she said. “Nothing too personal. Sometimes it seems to me that you don’t want to tell me anything. It almost seems secretive, as though you don’t want me to know.”
She felt upset. Why couldn’t he talk normally about a simple thing like being in Warsaw before the war? The answer was there, in those two words, “the war.” The war. The war changed everything. Made all simple things, complicated. Made all ordinariness extraordinary. Nothing was left that was not adulterated and tarnished.
“War” wasn’t even the right word. It wasn’t a war for Jews. It was murder. But “murder” and “slaughter” were not large enough words either.
“Genocide” sounded too antiseptic. “Holocaust” too tidy. There was no single word that was adequate. Even a string of the most powerful and potent and hefty words wouldn’t be eloquent enough.
“What don’t I want you to know?” Edek said with irritation.
“I don’t know,” Ruth said.
“There is nothing to know,” he said. He strode in front of her. Suddenly, he turned back. “Look,” he said. He was pointing to the end of a small T O O M A N Y M E N
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walkway off Krakowskie Przedmiescie. “Pontshkes.” At the end of the walkway was a small cake shop.
“Where can you see pontshkes?” Ruth said.
“In the window,” Edek said.
“I can’t see them,” she said.
“Maybe my eyesight is not so bad,” Edek said.
“It must be pretty good to spot a pontshke that’s more than fifty feet away,” Ruth said.
“It is more than one pontshke what I can see,” Edek said.
They got closer and Ruth saw that he was right. Half of the window was filled with fresh pontshkes. Edek loved pontshkes. The round, deep-fried doughnuts were filled with jam, and dusted lightly with icing sugar.
“Shall we buy one, Dad?” she said.
“Why not?” he said. “Just one.”
“Can you order a cup of tea for me?” Ruth said. “Ask them if they’ve got chamomile tea.”
“Why don’t you have a cappuccino?” said Edek.
“A cappuccino in Poland?” she said.
“Why not?” said Edek.
“I feel I need a chamomile tea,” Ruth said.
“Okay, okay,” said Edek.
Coffee was the last thing Ruth wanted. Her stomach still felt fragile and a bit acidic from throwing up this morning. She probably shouldn’t have had the muesli for breakfast. She probably should have had something less fibrous. But she had felt fine at breakfast. Unexpectedly fine.
A puff of icing sugar powder blew out over the table as Edek bit into his pontshke. “This pontshke is better than all the pontshkes in Acland Street,” Edek said, with his mouth full of pontshke. Acland Street was a street of cake shops, European cake shops, in Melbourne. “This pontshke is something out of this world,” he said. “It has got such a dark jam in it, not like that red jam they put in the pontshkes in Melbourne.” Edek looked happy.
“Have another one, Dad,” Ruth said.
“Okay, one more and that is it,” Edek said. Ruth looked at her watch. It was 10:30 A.M.
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L I L Y B R E T T
“I think we should catch a taxi to the ghetto wall,” Ruth said, when they were on the street again.
“Why don’t I give a ring to the driver who is going to take us to Lódz?”
Edek said. “He can pick us up a couple of minutes early and we can stop at the wall, on our way?”
“I don’t want to rush to the ghetto wall when we’re on our way to Lódz,” she said.
“Why not?” said Edek.
“It just doesn’t seem right,” she said.
“You can stay for how long you want,” said Edek. “You can afford it.
You can afford for the driver to wait all day.”
“I don’t want to do it that way,” Ruth said. “You don’t have to come with me, I’ll take you back to the hotel and I’ll catch a taxi.”
“I will come with you,” Edek said.
“We’re near the Marriott Hotel,” she said. “There’ll be plenty of taxis there.”
Edek ran ahead. “I will organize it,” he said.
Ruth took a deep breath. She was determined to get on well with her father. Determined not to be angry or irritated. If she ended up railing against him, it would be a sign, to her, that she had not matured despite all the trappings of maturity that a bit of money could provide.
All couples traveling together must experience friction, she thought.
She was glad that she was not more a part of a couple than she was at the moment. This coupling with Edek was about as much as she could tolerate.
Coupling? Why had she called it a coupling? Coupling had a sexual connotation she hadn’t intended. She felt queasy. She took a few more deep breaths.
She was outside the Marriott Hotel. She couldn’t see Edek. She looked in the door of the hotel. He was there, talking animatedly with someo
ne, the concierge, she thought. She decided to wait outside. Edek probably needed a break from her, anyway.
She stood outside the hotel and watched people walking by. She was glad to have a few minutes on her own. She was used to spending time on her own. She enjoyed it. She never complained about the loneliness that many single people complained of. She wasn’t that lonely. She liked being single. It allowed her to live in exactly the way she wanted to live. She T O O M A N Y M E N
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didn’t have to accede to anybody else’s needs. She didn’t have to explain or justify. She didn’t have to apologize. And she had as full and as satisfying a life as any married person she knew.
She read a lot. She unwound every night with a book. She read mostly nonfiction. Biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, accounts of a youth or an old age. She read political biographies and historical biographies. Sometimes, if she was very tired, she read a celebrity biography. Over the years she had accumulated a lot of information about a lot of people. It was not very useful information. She sometimes thought that she could have taught herself quantum physics or something equally intellectually challenging with the volume of reading material she had squandered on biographies.
She wondered whether quantum physics was intellectually challenging or merely a mathematical skill. She could barely comprehend ordinary physics. She had no idea what quantum physics was.
Ruth read for at least an hour every night. Reading relaxed her. It was as essential to her well-being as running and lifting weights. She looked after herself in other ways, too. She had pedicures and manicures. She had her eyebrows shaped and waxed and her legs waxed. She had her hair cut, and she had her hair colored. All of these processes and procedures had to be repeated regularly. This preservation and conservation may have appeared excessive somewhere else, but in New York, it seemed the norm.
Attending to this maintenance created a ritual and a pattern to her life.
The women who worked on her toes and fingers and brows felt like family to her. “Hello, honey,” was the way that Olga, who had been giving her pedicures for ten years, greeted her. “Hello, honey, how are you?” Olga would say and all of Ruth’s tension would melt at the sound of her thick Russian accent.
Christine, the Chinese woman who shaped and waxed Ruth’s eyebrows, was as blunt as any mother. “Your eyebrows look terrible,” she would say if she hadn’t seen Ruth for a while. Recently Christine had plucked a thick black hair from Ruth’s chin. “Chinese women don’t have much facial hair,”
she’d said, “but you are going to get more and more hairs on your chin as you get older. Make sure you pluck them.” Great, Ruth had thought. A beard. Another thing to look forward to. “I’ll pluck them, when I see them,” Christine had said. Ruth had felt mothered. The fact that she didn’t have to watch out for her own beard hairs had soothed her.
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L I L Y B R E T T
Ruth was rarely left with nothing to do. She read several newspapers a day, she went to the theater and occasionally to a movie. She saw friends every now and again and talked to acquaintances when she bumped into them. She was on the co-op board of the building she lived in and she attended all board meetings. And she worked. That constituted a life as good as anyone she knew. As good a life as anyone with a husband, two children, and a two-car garage.
Ruth had very little time to feel lonely. She made sure that she was out of town on days like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Days when everyone was out of town. Days when everyone was with family. She vacationed in cities where there was something to do. She sent postcards from these vacations. In the cards she described cafés and listed interesting museums.
Even after the most pleasurable vacations, Ruth looked forward to returning to work. She was happy with her life. She had Edek and she was grateful to have him. She had Max, and she had Bern. She had plenty.
Every now and then she contemplated getting a pet for company. But she always decided against it. She found it hard to feel attached to anything that didn’t have verbal skills.
Unlike many single people, Ruth didn’t mind going out with couples.
She didn’t feel left out. She mostly came home from these outings glad that she was on her own. The negotiation and discussion and compromise involved in being part of a couple seemed ill-defined and uncomfortable.
Ruth’s life was tidy. She paid her bills on time, got up exactly when she wanted to, and had only her own bad moods to contend with. She had routines she looked forward to. On Friday mornings, she had breakfast at Jerry’s, in Prince Street. Jerry’s had the best oatmeal in Manhattan, and it was a very large serving. She watched the wheelings and dealings of the New York art world while she ate her oatmeal at Jerry’s.
On Tuesday nights, Ruth ate at Il Carallo, a small Italian bistro. At Il Carallo, they steamed her broccoli with garlic and lemon juice and grilled her fillet of snapper with no fat. It was easy to be single, in New York. No one thought twice about a woman eating out, alone. Plenty of people ate out on their own. It was not considered a sign of loneliness or a sign of a lowly social stature to be dining by yourself. Women who ate in restaurants on their own had a sophistication about them, Ruth thought. She herself T O O M A N Y M E N
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never took a book or a newspaper into a restaurant with her. She was happy with her own thoughts for company.
She often daydreamed in cafés and restaurants. She daydreamed at home, too. Her apartment was a sanctuary, for her. An oasis of quiet in a noisy city. She had photographs of Edek and Rooshka in the living room.
Photographs of Edek and Rooshka at dinner dances, at the beach, outside their house. The photographs were photographs of a normal life. Edek and Rooshka were doing what normal people did. They were standing outside their front fence, smiling. They were sitting in someone’s garden. They were talking. In one of the photographs, her mother was laughing. All the abnormality was erased in these photographs. The nightmares were not there, the fear was not there. The tears were not there.
In a corner of the lowest rung of the bookshelves in her study, Ruth had a photograph of Garth. It was the only photograph of Garth that she had kept. He was smiling. Ruth knew he was smiling at her. She had taken the photograph. Garth’s large, dark, brown eyes were looking at her. There was a happiness in his being that was almost palpable. Once, she had touched the photograph and imagined that she could feel his joy. On the desk, in her study, was a photograph of Edek. He was smiling. It made her smile.
Everything in her apartment was in its place. And everything had a place. Her apartment was as well ordered as her life. On the first Monday of every month Ruth took Max out to dinner. Ruth brought a list with her to these dinners. It was a list of things to be discussed and straightened out.
A list of minor differences of opinion, unresolved disagreements, small conflicts, as well as points of praise, advice, and suggestions for the future.
It was a checklist to keep things in check.
Two years ago, Max had begun bringing her own list. She listed her grievances and her concerns. Ruth and Max discussed each item on both lists over hors d’oeuvres. They were then free to enjoy the rest of the meal.
And they did. They both looked forward to the dinners.
Ruth let Max choose the restaurants and make the bookings. Max had become a formidable connoisseur of New York restaurants. They had eaten at Bouley Bakery, Balthazar, the Blue Ribbon, Nobu, and other hard-to-get-into restaurants. They had eaten in the East Village, in Chelsea, and in Chinatown. One of Ruth’s favorites was the Ukrainian Restaurant on
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L I L Y B R E T T
Third Avenue. The decor was less decorous than it could be. Plastic flowers and plastic wood. The waiters had jaundiced complexions and nervous mannerisms. Ruth was puzzled by how at home she felt there. Ruth thought that these dinners with lists should be compulsory for married couples. She was sure that a monthly airing of everything that could be put o
n a list would lower the divorce rate.
When Ruth thought about her life, she thought that it was as fulfilling a life as any married woman’s. She had sex infrequently, but so did most of the married women she knew. In New York, it seemed, sex was not a high priority. At least not for married couples. People spent themselves at work.
Their passions were expended in the office and in the boardroom. When they got home at night, they needed to unwind in front of the television, before they dropped into bed, exhausted. Couples in their thirties made jokes about their lack of sex. It seemed to be an acceptable condition of married life in the city.
She must remember, she thought, to ask Max what was happening with the man Max had been going out with for six months. He was a married man, and Ruth had strongly advised Max to leave him. “He is a liar, he has to be,” she had said to Max. “He’s lying to his wife and if he can lie to her, he can just as easily lie to you.” Max hadn’t looked pleased.
Ruth suddenly realized that her father had been gone for over ten minutes. She went into the Marriott to look for him. He was just coming out. A man was following him. “I got a car,” Edek said. “It is not so good like the other one. It is a bit smaller.” He led her around the corner to the side street. “Look,” he said. He was pointing to a car. A Mercedes.
“We want to go to the ghetto wall,” Ruth said to the driver. “It’s not far.
It’s at 60 Zlota Street.” Edek repeated what she had said in Polish. The driver nodded. “Do you know where it is?” Ruth said. “Yes, I know,” the driver said. Edek repeated the question in Polish. The driver said, yes, yes, in Polish.
“Why were you so long?” Ruth said to Edek.
“I wanted to look around a bit at the Marriott,” Edek said. “It costs nearly the same as what you are paying at the Bristol, and to tell you the truth it looks a bit nicer to me.”
“Well, I’m happy with the Bristol,” Ruth said.
“The Marriott has a different theme in the restaurant every night,”
T O O M A N Y M E N
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Edek said. “One night is Polish, one night is German, one night Indian, one night something else.”