They were soon back on the street again, talking about lunch. Ken and Joanna decided on a favorite restaurant, hoping it still existed. They headed in its direction on a sidewalk next to the backs of buildings. “The library’s rear door,” Ken said, pointing. Sophie averted her gaze. They crossed the street at the traffic light.
That is, three of them did. Sophie, her head still awkwardly turned, got caught on the curb as the light flashed don’t walk. Her parents lumbered away. Other people bore down upon her, blocking her view. By the time the crowd rushed past, the cars on the street had begun to roll again, and she was forced to stand still.
That was all right. Standing still was what she was supposed to do when she became separated from a parent. “If both of us run around, you see, the chances are that we’ll never be in the same place at the same time,” her mother had explained.
“Like atoms,” Sophie said.
“I guess so … But if one of us stays put, the moving one will eventually cross the still one’s path.”
It made sense. Sophie had imagined that, in such an event, she would turn cool, a lizard under a leaf.
Instead she turned hot, even feverish. She sang “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” under her breath. The sign changed to walk. She sang “Rhody” backward. Her mother would soon cross her path. But her mother could not leave the stroller. The sign changed back to don’t walk. Her father, then. He would stride across the street, two leaps would do it, he would scoop her up, he would put her on his shoulder, though she was much too big for such a perch. She would ride there for blocks and blocks; the restaurant would have a peaked roof and a lot of panes in the windows; they always chose restaurants like that.
JOANNA HAD MANEUVERED the stroller rightward, had taken a step or two, had turned back for Sophie, not seen her, looked right, twice, and then left, down a pedestrian walkway, and spotted amid a crowd of kids around a mime the fair hair and multicolored backpack of her daughter. Her heart bobbled like a balloon.
“Where’s Sophie?” Ken said at her shoulder.
She pointed confidently and pushed the stroller close to the slanted window of a bakery. She’d lift Lily out and all three would have a good view of the mime—he was deftly climbing an invisible ladder—and of the delighted children, particularly Sophie in her new backpack and her old turquoise jacket, only that kid’s jacket was green and she was taller than Sophie and her hair was yellower than Sophie’s, much yellower. Only an unnatural parent could mistake that common candle flame for her dear daughter’s pale incandescence.
SOPHIE, TELLING HERSELF to stand still, was jostled from behind. She turned to object, but the jostler had disappeared. The sign changed to walk. Without forethought, though not unwillingly, she leaped into the street.
Sweaty, gasping, she fetched up on the opposite curb. She did not see her family. She saw strollers here and there, but none of them were Lily’s; they were the fold-up kind for regular kids. She saw a wheelchair. That wasn’t relevant, she scolded herself, brushing her nose with the back of her hand. Lily would walk someday. A jester with a painted white face seemed to wave. She ignored him. She drifted toward the center of the square. Earlier she had noticed a newsstand … a kiosk, her father had said.
The newsstand turned out to be a bright little house of magazines and newspapers and maps. A man wearing earmuffs sat at a cash register. The place shook slightly every few minutes: the subway was underneath.
There Sophie waited, alone and unknown and free.
By now her parents would have retraced their steps. They had already crossed her empty path.
She felt most comfortable near the far wall. Foreign newspapers overlapped one another. There were French papers. She recognized Le Monde from that trip to Paris. The World; her father, if he were here, would request the translation. There were newspapers from other parts of Europe, too—she could tell that their words were Spanish or Italian, though she did not know the meanings. In some papers even the alphabets were mysterious. Letters curved like Aladdin’s lamp, or had dots and dashes underneath them like a second code. Characters she had seen in Chinese restaurants stood straight up, little houses, each with a family of its own. Lily might learn to read, her mother had said. Not soon, but someday. Until that day, all pages would look like these, confusing her, making her feel more left out. Still, in a few years’ time she would be walking. She would stand close to Sophie. Maybe too close. What does it mean? she would whisper. What does it mean? she would whine, and pull at Sophie’s sleeve.
The man with the earmuffs gave Sophie an inquisitive look. She turned to study a newspaper. Each word was many letters long, and each letter was a combination of thick and thin lines. She knew all at once that this was German. Her father played Bach on his harpsichord, from a facsimile of an old manuscript; the title and the directions were in German. If Sophie stayed in this pretty little house for the rest of her life she could probably learn one or two of the languages whose alphabet was familiar. Here was how she would do it: she would read the English papers thoroughly and then, knowing the news by heart, she would figure out the words’ partners in the other papers.
JOANNA AND KEN were behaving sensibly. Joanna was waiting near the mime, who was now walking an imaginary tightrope. He stopped, alarm on his painted face. He was pretending to lose his balance. His stiffened body canted slowly sideways in discrete jerks like a minute hand until at ten past the hour he collapsed into himself and in a wink became a man hanging from a tightrope, left arm upward and unnaturally long, right one waving desperately, legs splayed.
Ken had gone looking for Sophie. He would follow their route backward to the museum, into the museum, from the Burne-Jones camp-counselor angels to the Degas and the Renoir. He would return to the library if necessary; Joanna imagined his tense interrogation of the man who inspected backpacks. The mime was collecting a thicker crowd; she had to crane her head to watch him. Sophie would enjoy this outdoor show once Ken found her, if she had not been snatched into a car, if she were not to end her life as a photograph on a milk carton. Joanna must not think that way, not not not; she must imagine normal outcomes like normal mothers, like mothers of normal children. The girl has wandered off, ruining our day because of some rush of curiosity, hyperintuitive they call her, I call her inconsiderate, doesn’t she know enough to make things easier, not harder, don’t we have it hard enough already with little Miss Misfit here, oh, my sweet Lily, my sweet Sophie, my darling daughters; and so I’ll gaze at Lily dozing and think of Sophie when she was an infant and slept on her side in her crib with arms extended forward and legs too; she looked like a bison on a cave. I remember, I remember … She probably remembers, she with the genius IQ who can sing songs backward. Ken loves to show off her memory and her queer talents, his prize onion. The mime’s pedaling to safety; he’s earned that applause. Haven’t I got coins for his hat? But I can’t leave the stroller, we can’t leave each other, any of us. Of course Sophie will remember to stand still as soon as she realizes she’s lost. Where would she go? She doesn’t know this town. She’s seen only the museum, she didn’t like it, and the library, she hated it; Ken was hurt. She liked the subway. All kids like the underground: sewers, buried treasure, zombies. All kids like trains. They want to be headed somewhere, inbound, outbound …
Ken’s face was putty.
“The library?” she needlessly asked.
“No,” he panted.
“Come,” Joanna said. “I know where she’ll go.”
SOPHIE, WRIGGLING ONE ARM out of the backpack, decided to start with the French newspapers. She was to study French next year any way, with the rest of the special class. But she was pretty sure that she wouldn’t soar with the new subject. She was tied to her first language, hers and Lily’s. Still, she’d learn the rules. She’d listen and sometimes talk. Now, staring at Le Monde, pretending that the man with earmuffs had gone home, she let her eyes cross slightly, the way she wasn’t supposed to, and she melted into the spaces between the paragraphs u
ntil she entered a room beyond the news-print, a paneled room lit by candles, walled in leather volumes, the way she had wanted the fifth-biggest library to look. Though more books had been written than she could ever read—she had realized that as soon as she saw Section 4 East—she would manage to read a whole lot of them, in golden dens like the one she was seeing. She would read as many as her parents had read. She would grow as large as her parents had grown. Like them she would study and get married and laugh and drink wine and hug people.
Steadied by this vision, she let herself look further. Her life would be lived in the world, not in this paper house. She foresaw that. She foresaw also that as she became strong her parents would dare to weaken. They too might tug at her clothing, not meaning to annoy.
Lily would never leave her. “She will always be different, darling,” her mother had said. At the time Sophie had thought that her mother meant we will always be different. Now she added a new gloss: I will always be different.
She felt her cheek tingle, as if it had been licked by the sad, dry tongue of a cat. At full growth Lily’s head would be almost level with Sophie’s shoulder. Lily would learn some things. Mostly she would learn Sophie. They would know each other forward and backward. They would run side by side like subway tracks, inbound and outbound. Coextensive.
She had to return to her family now; she had to complete the excursion. She shoved her free arm into the strap and settled the backpack on her shoulders. She walked past the man in earmuffs without saying good-bye.
KEN AND JOANNA bumped the stroller down the subway stairs. Ordinarily they would have joined the line at the token vendor’s booth to be admitted through his gate. Instead Joanna inserted a token and hurried through the turnstile. Ken handed her their little girl across the device. He pressed his own token into the slot and turned around and lifted the stroller above his head and burst through the stile buttocks first. They put Lily back into the stroller and rushed toward the ramps.
“Outbound?” said Ken.
“She knows better.”
On the ramp they had to arc around an old woman who had paused mid-journey with her trash bag on her left and her collapsible cart on her right. “That’s okay,” she called.
The inbound train had just left. The platform held five people who had missed it: three students, one bearded man, and a tall black woman—an islander, Joanna could tell; her regality proclaimed her origins, that magazine under her arm was probably in French.
SOPHIE WASN’T FAR BEHIND THEM. She had found the subway entrance as soon as she left the little house. While her father was bearing the empty stroller backward through the turnstile, she was beginning her descent from the street. While her mother was choosing inbound, Sophie was thinking about joining the line of token buyers, of promising to pay later. She decided not to risk conversation with the man in the booth. By the time her parents reached the inbound platform she was slipping underneath the turnstile. She started down the ramp.
She saw them before she reached the bottom. Her mother sat on a bench, holding Lily in her lap. Her father, standing, bent over them both. They looked like everyday people, but Sophie wasn’t fooled—her mother’s knees were knocked together under her coat and her feet were far apart, their ankles bent inward so wearily that the anklebones almost touched the floor. Without seeing her father’s face, she knew he was close to tears. An old woman with a cart leaned against the wall. As Sophie appeared the woman said, “Now your reunion,” in a conversational tone, though rather loud.
Ken turned and unbent: a basketball replay in slow motion.
Joanna took relief like an injection; pain was killed and feeling as well. She saw that the child had undergone some unsettling experience, but Joanna had no sympathy to offer now. Perhaps this once Sophie would be given the blessing of forgetfulness.
And indeed Sophie moved forward with a light tread, as if she had not just witnessed the future unrolling.
Lily attended slackly. But then she raised her mittened hand.
“Phie!”
DAY OF AWE
HE WAS THE LAST JEW in a cursed land.
A ruined country, a country of tricksters. Rich haciendas hid within the folds of mountains. Guns lay under crates of bananas. Even the green parrots practiced deception. They rested in trees, not making a sound; suddenly they rose as one, appearing and departing at the same time, leaving the observer abandoned.
The only Jew!
In truth, there was a second Jew: his son, Lex. They faced each other across the kitchen table. Lex seemed to pity the plight of his father: that on the eve of Yom Kippur there was no corner in the city where a Jew could pray for forgiveness with nine others.
“They all fled to Miami after the revolution,” Lex said. “Taking their money with them.”
Robert winced.
Lex said, “We’ll find you a minyan, Bob.” He looked at his father with compassion.
But was it really compassion? Or was it the practiced understanding of a professional social worker? Just as he had adjusted to his son’s use of his first name, Robert had reconciled himself to Lex’s womanish vocation. But he had not become accustomed to the nods, the murmured assents. He himself was an investment consultant.
“We’ve gone through the guidebooks,” Lex reviewed. “Shall we hunt down a Shapiro in the telephone book? A Katz?”
Father and son laughed. Their own name was Katz.
The little boy looked from one to the other.
He was a thin child despite a seemingly insatiable appetite. His name, Jaime, printed in Lex’s hand, adorned the crayoned scribbles taped to the refrigerator.
There they sat, in front of those unambitious efforts, in the scarred kitchen of a small house on a muddy street in the capital city of a Jewless country. Robert was still wearing his pajamas. Far away in Beverly Hills, the drawings of Robert’s granddaughter, Lex’s niece, also decorated a refrigerator. Maureen Mulloy, the signature read. Maureen Mulloy printed her washerwoman’s name herself. The Mulloys’ Mexican housekeeper hung up the artwork. Who else could do it?—Maureen’s parents practiced law twelve hours a day.
Jaime. It was pronounced “Hymie.” Robert speared a slice of papaya from the breakfast platter.
Lex was reading the telephone book. “No Shapiros, Bob. No Katzes, either. I’m not even listed—my phone belongs to the organization.”
Robert ate a slice of pineapple.
“I’m going to call the embassy,” Lex said.
“Ex,” said Jaime, slapping Lex’s arm. “Tengo hambre.”
“Qué quiero?” Robert attempted. “I mean, qué quieres …” Lex had already risen. He and Jaime stood side by side, composedly surveying the contents of the refrigerator, a slight young man and a very slight child. “Qué quieres,” Robert repeated, softly. His hesitant spoken Spanish was getting him nowhere with the boy. Why had he spent a month listening to those damned language tapes? Why had he come here, anyway?
Five days ago he had descended the aluminum steps of the airliner and stepped onto the tarmac, already blistering at two in the afternoon. He was used to hokey airports. He wasn’t used to the absence of jet lag, though—he seldom journeyed from north to south. The sun had stood still on his behalf. No need to nap, no need even to eat, though on the ride from the airport Jaime insisted on stopping for a tamale. “Ex, Ex!” he shouted, pointing to the stall. Lex pulled over. Robert smiled at Lex, indulgent parent communing with indulgent parent. But Lex ignored the smile. His attentiveness toward this soon-to-be-adopted son was meant to be approved, not joined.
The boy dropped consonants, confusing Robert. That first afternoon, Robert looked at a picture book with him. Vaca, cow, became aca; caballo, horse, callo. Little Maureen would become Een, he supposed, if the cousins—could he really call them that?—ever met. They might not meet for a long time. The family was scattered: Robert and Betsy in Massachusetts, their daughter Mulloy née Katz out in California, Lex here in Central America two years already, God knew h
ow much longer.
“I’ll stay until the adoption is final,” Lex said late that night, after Jaime had finally gone to bed. “That’s another six months. Afterwards …” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “I won’t go to Chicago, that’s for sure. I don’t want to be in the same city as Ron.” Ron was his ex-lover. “Perhaps Jaime and I will come back to Boston.”
Robert nodded. “There’s a bilingual program in the schools.”
“Spare us.” Lex rolled his eyes. “We’ll continue to talk Spanish at home,” he went on. “Jaime will pick up English at school, in play-grounds—as immigrant children have done for generations.”
He can hardly speak his own language, Robert didn’t say. He can’t count. He doesn’t know colors. “How old is he? Seven, you wrote? He’s … small.”
“We use the evidence of bones and teeth,” said Lex. “Central Americans are smaller than North Americans, and those with a lot of Indian blood, like Jaime, are the shortest. I’ll invent a birth date when I apply for his passport. I’m going to say he’s five. He’s about three emotionally—a deprived three. No one ever sent him to school. When I first met him at the local orphanage a year ago he didn’t talk at all. He’s matured considerably since being with me.”
Robert felt weary, as if jet lag had claimed him after all.
And so he had gone to bed, in the narrow room off the kitchen. His window faced an inner courtyard just big enough for a clothesline, a sink, and a single tree that bore hard citrus fruits. There the parrots hid.
After Sunday, Robert was on his own for a few days. Lex was working, and Jaime attended day care. Robert awoke each morning to the sounds of the two at their breakfast. He figured out most of what they were saying. Jaime repeated the breakfast menu, the few chores, the routine of the day care center. Then he repeated them again, and again. Between repetitions Robert heard the rustle of the newspaper and the slur of rubber wheels along a linoleum floor. Jaime was playing with his small toy car. He supplied the motor with his own throat. “Oom!” Twenty-five years earlier, Robert and Betsy had shared the Globe while, at their feet, two charming toddlers rummaged in a pile of Legos. Jaime wasn’t ready for Legos, Lex had explained. He wasn’t ready even for the starter set Robert had brought as a gift. Jaime didn’t get the idea of construction. He had probably never seen toys before the orphanage found him—maybe he’d played with a couple of spoons, or filled an old shoe with dirt. Maureen, Robert remembered with satisfaction and guilt, could already erect elaborate towers.
Binocular Vision: New & Selected Stories Page 2