“Mom, where are you?” I snapped, right in her face. I didn’t recognize my voice. The Vicodin was a bad idea. I’d lost control over my mouth.
Lili looked at us wide-eyed, but she didn’t say a word. She’d never heard me talk to anyone like this, and she was clearly frightened and embarrassed.
My mother got up, but she forgot about her TV tray, and her tuna fish spilled all over the arm of the couch. She looked as stranded as she had when I found her on the bluff in her blue coat. “I made a real mess,” she said as she started to pick up the tuna chunks with her fingers, but she only dug it further into the upholstery.
“Just let me get it.” My voice shook. I felt like one of those tired mothers you see in the grocery store who after hours of tolerating a whiny toddler finally snaps in front of a shocked (and rested) onlooker, in this case my own daughter. Yes, I’d lost my patience with my sick mother—unforgivable, yet Lili had no idea of the months I’d spent taking care of her, or of what had happened afterward.
I glanced at Lili, who looked as though she was watching the kind of sad movie where you feel for everyone.
My mother stood over me while I cleaned up, folding her hands. “Barbara,” she said when I finished. I looked up at her in her stained pants, on which I was now detecting the scent of urine. I pitied her and hated her at the same time.
She leaned down next to me and spoke quietly, her fish breath mingling with the smell of her. “I can’t answer your questions.”
“It’s the illness.” I couldn’t use the word “Alzheimer’s” with her.
She tapped her head with her index finger. “It’s so hard to keep track of everyone.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” I murmured. I stood up and led her to the sink to wash her hands. Lili’s eyes burrowed into us. I felt as exposed as I had when I failed to lock the ladies’ room door at a Starbucks properly, and a teenage boy burst in while I was squatting, my slacks around my knees.
After my mother returned to her room, I sat next to Lili. “Do you need anything?”
“I’m good.” She braided the fringes on a pillow I’d recently bought for the couch.
“Lili, I’m going to apologize to Grandma.”
She undid the braid and smoothed out the orange threads. “When did you start hating her?”
Lili’s question was a punch to the stomach. I swallowed my sigh. “Why do you think I hate her?”
“Maybe you have your reasons.” Her voice was tender and protective.
I listened to our breathing, savoring this sweet moment between us, although it was coming at my mother’s expense. “Lili, I don’t hate your grandmother.”
“Mom, I know this is hard.”
I could hear my mother running water for a bath, and I went upstairs to collect the dirty laundry. First I stopped in Lili’s room to empty out her hamper. My mother had made the bed with perfect hospital corners. Her suitcase was lying on the floor. I deliberated for a second before I unzipped the flap, releasing the scent of Chanel and stale urine. She’d neatly folded her yellowed silk panties. I’d wash them and return them and spare her pride. When I scooped the heap of filthy lingerie into my laundry basket, I noticed a photo face down on the torn gray lining of the suitcase. I should have walked away, but I felt entitled to violate her privacy.
I recognized the image immediately, although it took my brain a few seconds to place it. I stared at the photo of the girl in the print dress with the lake in the background, and turned it over to find two names scrawled in faded blue cursive: June and Norman, Summer, 1942. I’d always wanted to see a photo of my uncle. He was tall and lean. I wished he weren’t wearing that hat. I was dying to see his face. Had Neil or I or any of our children inherited his features?
I crept downstairs to Sam’s office and made a copy of the photo. I folded the paper, stuffed it in the side pocket of my purse, and hurried upstairs to return the original before my mother came out of the bathroom. I wanted to barge into the bathroom and demand that she describe Norman’s face in detail. I was dying to know who was under that hat and why she kept talking about him and how in God’s name the Shabbos goy had come to possess this photo.
Down in the basement, I put in a load of my mother’s dirty laundry with an extra dollop of detergent. Wavy lines began to trot across the lid of the machine. I was getting a migraine, and it was coming on fast. I felt nauseous.
I dialed Sam. “You need to come home.”
“What’s wrong?”
“You need to come home.” I’d never once called him during the first four months of my pregnancy with Lili, when I threw up all day long, or the dozens of times I was down with some nasty bug during my early teaching years.
“Is it Lili?” He sounded frightened.
“No, I’m sick.” I hung up. I hadn’t had a migraine since the day after the mikveh, but if this was anything like the last one, it would soon debilitate me. My body remembered my pain and confusion.
I went back up to the den. My mother was staring at her book, and Lili was playing a computer game on her iPhone. “I have a little headache, sweetie. Dad’s coming home to take care of us,” I mumbled, then walked upstairs and plopped down on my bed. I don’t know how much time passed before I heard Sam hurrying up the steps. He sat on the bed and pulled the covers from over my head.
“Can you put the laundry in the dryer?” I asked.
“Honey, the laundry can wait.”
“No, it can’t. Please.”
He looked puzzled, but he got up. “Okay, I’ll be back in a second.”
I held my head as if I could stop my brain from throbbing. Thinking of the photo made it worse, so I tried to stop, but I couldn’t. I had too many questions.
After a few minutes, a breathless Sam returned. “Let me go call Feldman and see if he can prescribe something for you. Are you sure it’s a migraine?”
“Yes, I’ve had one before.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“I was seventeen.”
“You never told me.”
“Never came up.” A small part of me still thought that he’d leave me if he knew everything I’d been hiding, just as I used to fret that the rebbetzin would kick us out of the shul. Once when Sam took Lili skiing, I watched all nine and a half hours of the documentary Shoah, and for weeks I kept hearing Claude Lanzmann saying, “If you could lick my heart, it would poison you.” Most of my heart was fine, but if Sam found the bitter spot, maybe he’d kick me out of our private shul.
He lay next to me until I fell asleep.
After a few minutes, I woke with a start. “Can you fold my mother’s laundry and put it back in her suitcase?”
Sam looked mildly amused. “Barbara, why are you so obsessed with the laundry?”
“My mother used to smell like Chanel.”
“Okay, sweetheart. Just get some rest,” he said.
When I woke up again, it was dark. I downed a Maxalt Sam had picked up at the pharmacy and went back to sleep. Shortly after midnight, my mikveh dream awakened me as Sam slept peacefully. This time a woman floats in the water while a skinny boy in a sunhat paddles around, splashing and laughing. Her face is always hidden. Tzippy and I burst into the sanctuary to tattle to the rebbetzin, but she is reciting the Shema—“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One”—so loudly that she can’t hear us, her hands covering her eyes so she can’t see us.
My pulse pounded as if it would burst through muscle and bone. I lay still for a few minutes, allowing my breathing to return to normal. When it did, I got up and vomited, thinking in my delirium that at any moment my mother would appear from the next room to sleep on the floor in case I needed her in the middle of the night.
The next morning I woke up to find Sam sitting on the edge of my bed.
“Hey.”
“How’s Lili?” I asked. The Maxalt had eased some of the pain, but mainly it just knocked me out.
“She’ll be fine,” he assured me in the voice he used to calm his clients.
<
br /> “She’s probably freaked out from yesterday.”
He kissed my forehead. “Let’s just get you better, and we’ll deal with all that later.”
“She asked me why I hated my mother.”
He shook his head. “This is all too much for you, sweetie.”
“No, I’m fine. I can handle it.” I pushed off the covers and went to the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth.
Sam followed me. “Why don’t you just stay in bed?”
“I need to check on Lili.” I stripped down and showered quickly, my scalp tender as I shampooed it. No way was I going to be the mother who lounged in her sickbed with dirty hair when her daughter needed her. I stopped at Lili’s room and checked my mother’s suitcase. True to his word, Sam had folded her laundry. I slid my hand under the clothes, but the photo was gone. Had I imagined the whole thing? Maybe it was the Vicodin. Maybe I’d watched too many episodes of House. That nasty Dr. House had hallucinations, but he was an addict. I’d only taken a few pills. Weak from losing so much fluid, I held the railing as I went down the steps. My purse was sitting on the table in the foyer. I opened the side pocket to find the copy of the photo safely tucked away.
Ashamed of my outburst the day before, I didn’t want to face Lili and my mother. I loitered for a minute in the hallway, growing more nervous by the second. The longer you stand on a diving board, though, the harder it is to take the plunge, so I stepped into the den.
They were sitting exactly where they were while we ate our lunch yesterday, before my tantrum. My mother held a book on her lap, and Lili was staring at the television, slack-jawed. They both looked up at me when I entered the room. Lili’s eyes welled up at the sight of me; fear had settled in the tightness around her mouth and forehead.
“Can I make you some toast?” my mother asked feebly.
God help me, but I wanted to ask her why she was so concerned about me all of a sudden. I didn’t. “Thank you, but I don’t think I’m quite ready to eat. When was the last time you took your medication?” I asked Lili.
“This morning. I’m not going to take any more. It’s making me weird.”
Me too, I thought, but now the Vicodin was out of my system, and my feelings were still out of control. “You sure?”
“I’m good,” she said, and returned her attention to the television, some talent show featuring a young girl who was scream-singing, the sound a drill to my eardrum. Tomorrow she’d have to start in on her homework.
I went into the kitchen, where Sam was grabbing an apple out of the fridge to stick in his briefcase. He was a loving caregiver during a crisis, but now he was eager to return to his S&P Index analyses and his racquetball game.
My head started to throb. “You need to stay until Neil gets here tonight.”
“But you said you were fine. I saw traces of the Sam who had offered me his hearty encouragement when I called him at the office in tears over one of Lili’s homework meltdowns.
“What about me seems fine?” I whimpered. I’d never used this tone of voice with him, and I could tell I’d startled him. I couldn’t stop myself from piling on. “I don’t ask for much.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “I get it, honey. Go back to bed.”
“I think I will,” I said. Lili had turned the television off, and she and my mother had been sitting in the den listening to our conversation. Perfect, now I’d unveiled myself to Lili as both a lame daughter and a lame wife.
I crawled under my covers with my clothes on and within seconds fell into a dreamless sleep. I awoke with creases on my cheek from the sheets. Voices traveled up the steps, but I couldn’t make out the words. I got up and splashed cold water on my face before leaving the bedroom. When I passed Lili’s room, my mother was sitting primly on the bed, staring out the window at the darkening sky. Her shoulders, always narrow, were the size of a child’s, and she hadn’t combed the back of her hair. She was a vulnerable old woman. Yet as badly as I wanted to forgive her, I couldn’t do it.
Sam made his special spaghetti sauce and pasta for dinner, but we talked little over the meal. I could tell that Lili was in less pain, but we were all tentative around each other. Nobody wanted to upset the crazy lady, me.
I was sleepy from napping too long, so I went back to bed after dinner and dozed until I heard a car door slam. I got up and walked to the window. Neil had his arm around my mother and was guiding her to his car, while Sam carried her suitcase. I tapped on the window. My mother turned around, and I waved at her, something I’d always fantasized about doing all those nights I watched her walk down the alley toward the Blue Dodge. She raised her hand as if to say, I’m okay. I’d never felt so alone in my entire life. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, but not since the day I kept her secret from Tzippy. I recalled that Caribbean cruise with Rose and Artie, and how after a few days of sea sickness, I’d almost jumped off of that ship, not caring that I’d never learned to swim well.
Sam and Lili liked to sleep in on weekends, but I woke up early, feeling relieved and guilty that my mother was gone. I made myself a strong cup of coffee and logged on to the computer. The summer between college and graduate school, I worked for a collections agency and became an expert at tracking down information on anyone, dead or alive. Technology might have changed, but I knew my way around an archive. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel made it ridiculously easy to find my uncle Norman’s obituary. My mother’s maiden name was Fischer, one of the few facts I knew about her history. I typed “Norman Fischer” into their Legacy site. Bingo.
The obituary was dated July 25, 1949. I read it aloud. “Norman Fischer, age 21, resident of 3050 Lake Drive, the former Von Guttenstein beer baron mansion, died on July 23rd from complications from polio.”
I reread the address of my uncle’s home six times.
Thirty-fifty Lake Drive. The Schines’ address.
I printed the obituary and held the paper in my hand, remembering the authority with which my mother had led me along the bluff and through the pitch-black mikveh, how she’d told me that the house she grew up in didn’t exist any longer. I’d reached the end of a mystery novel. When I added up all the clues, they could only have lead to one place. My fingers could barely manipulate the mouse as I read on in silence.
“Fischer was born on April 5th, 1928, and after polio paralyzed him, he nearly graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with a degree in United States History. He was awarded the Chancellor’s Research Award for his scholastic excellence, and as a polio survivor, delivered fundraising speeches for the March of Dimes. Mr. Fischer is survived by his father, Joseph Fischer, and his sister June Fischer.”
I read the obituary again and then let my eyes linger on the word “polio.” The owners had built the pool so the sick boy could soak his legs, my mother had told me. Norman. My grandfather had built the mikveh for Norman. The inside of my mouth turned dry as parchment as I pictured my mother smoking, sucking in her grief and letting it out, the air finding its way back into the cracks of my skin. Norman had been with us that morning, I’d felt him. And somehow the Shabbos goy was involved with my mother and Uncle Norman too. But how?
I found Andy Noffsinger’s address more quickly than I had Uncle Norman’s obituary. There were two listings for A. Noffsinger, business and home, both on the west side of town, maybe near Mr. Isen. Lili had taken piano lessons only a few blocks away when she was in fourth grade. I might even have driven past the Shabbos goy on my way to drop her off. I was glad when her piano teacher retired. The west side was only twenty-five minutes from us, but it felt like a different world, and that was before I knew that the Shabbos goy inhabited it.
I wrote Sam and Lili a note, “Went out to clear my head.” I thought about calling Neil to ask him what he knew about our uncle, but he would be overwhelmed with a grieving Jenny and my mother, and I was ashamed that I couldn’t handle her presence for a few more days.
The sky was magnificently clear. I listened to classical music to
soothe my nerves as I drove to see the Shabbos goy. I was again the young woman who’d marched over to his carriage house and kicked his duffel bag across the room. How had the Schines come to own my mother’s mansion? None of it made any sense.
The Shabbos goy lived in a modest rambler, but the lot was large and nicely landscaped. I didn’t know what I’d say or how I’d greet him, but something propelled me from the car to the walkway to his doorbell. My fingers trembled as I pressed the button. No answer. I poked my head around the side entrance to see if I could spot any movement, but the house was still. I rang the bell again. Still, no answer.
I returned to my car and punched his business address into my GPS. It only took me a few minutes to drive to his nursery, which was attached to a quaint building that looked like it had once been a house. I sat in my car and watched my mother’s ex-lover arrange pumpkins on the front lawn. He no longer wore a ponytail, but he was still lithe and moved with the grace of a younger man. I got out of the car and walked toward him quickly, before I lost my nerve.
He spotted me right away. He set down a large pumpkin and gaped at me. As I drew closer, he greeted me with his eyes, grayish brown and wide-set; he must have popped a blood vessel in his left eye, because red veins spidered out from the corner to his iris. Gray stubble grew in the cleft of his Kirk Douglas chin. The bones of his face were still chiseled and lovely, but his skin was craggy from years of working outdoors.
“You look just like your mother,” he said softly. “Same walk, same hair.”
A man with a bushy beard came over and handed him a cup of coffee. “Here you go, boss.” The Shabbos goy thanked him politely and returned his attention to me. I was grateful to have had a second to collect my thoughts. I took in a deep breath, heavy with the smell of mulch. He looked at me as he had so many years earlier, when I stormed into his apartment, or when Tzippy and I ran into the kitchen while he was putting kugels in the oven.
“How are you?” I asked. The words sounded silly, but I didn’t know where to start.
“Pretty good, I suppose. You?” He was going to take his cues from me.
Washing the Dead Page 14