She Is Me

by Cathleen Schine

  The telephone beside her rang.

  “Daisy coming up,” said the clerk.

  Greta closed her eyes. Honey and milk are under thy tongue, she thought.

  The immense silence of the room released a small knock on the door and Greta let Daisy in. They stood facing each other. Greta, so bold in the bar, could not move. Should she read to Daisy from the Bible? A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse. She could read that. A spring shut up, a fountain sealed. She was feeling dizzy, her desire surely audible.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Hello,” Daisy said.

  Daisy looked so pretty. Her shoulders were bare beneath a rather bright yellow tank top. How could anyone wear that color and get away with it? Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor, she thought, in spite of herself.

  Daisy put her hand on Greta’s cheek and moved closer.

  You look so pretty, Greta wanted to say. You are so pretty. Like two young roes set about with lilies and liquor, like a goblet heaped with wheat, like soft white sheep and deep red pomegranates, like everything sweet and full and fragrant and abundant.

  “You’re . . . I’m . . .” she said instead.

  Daisy nodded in agreement.

  Greta knew she was putting her arms out, knew her hands closed around Daisy’s wrists, knew she pulled this woman to her. She understood that she and Daisy were lying on the bed, that she was in the ridiculous position of undoing a bra like a teenage boy. But there was nothing ridiculous about it. She was not a teenage boy. Her belly was not an heap of wheat. Daisy’s breasts were breasts, not roes, and no metaphors were needed. No metaphor would do.

  At last, she thought, and it was as if her entire life had been leading her here.

  “At last,” she whispered.

  “So,” Volfmann said, standing up from the table to greet her. “You’re late.”

  He ordered oysters and champagne.

  “You’ve been married, right?” Elizabeth asked, the champagne going to work immediately.

  “Many times.”

  “I think marriage leads to adultery,” she said.

  “Yes. Look at poor little Emma.”

  “Yes. Look at her.”

  They were silent for a few minutes.

  “I almost got arrested for shoplifting,” she said. He definitely wasn’t going to fire her. Not with oysters.

  “What did you take, Winona?”

  Elizabeth looked at him in dismay.

  “Nothing!” she said. “It was a mistake!”

  Volfmann took her hand in his and tried to calm her.

  “Okay, okay. It was a mistake . . .”

  She noticed his watch. It was one she had seen in an ad and admired. It cost many thousands of dollars.

  “Don’t lose that,” she said, tapping the watch face.

  “I’ll try not to,” he said.

  Elizabeth listened contentedly to the ringing in her ears. She ate oysters. They seemed to glide down someone else’s throat. Volfmann was watching her silently, which was a relief. Better than having him holler at her for writing trash. He was oddly attractive, with his manicured nails and jowly, masculine face. That frightened her. I’m an employee, she reminded herself. But did that make her safer or less safe? And did she want to be safe? Or had she come here to be dangerous? She couldn’t remember.

  “What did you want to talk to me about?” she said.

  He leaned forward in his sudden, avid way. “You’re the only one,” he said, “the only one who would understand . . .” He almost snorted in his intensity.

  Elizabeth was trembling. She felt his knee brush hers beneath the table. She was paralyzed by the heat rushing through her body. She watched his lips as they moved, slowly, in slow motion, sliding over his teeth, making the shape of an O, then sliding back, then again into an elongated O. She felt herself leaning forward to kiss him even as she deciphered his words.

  “Joseph Roth!” he had said.

  She stopped, her mouth an inch from his. Joe Roth? Wasn’t he a producer?

  “I’d only read The Radetzky March,” Volfmann was saying, “but this new translation of his stories . . .” Volfmann was bobbing up and down in his excitement. “Joseph Roth, man, he is great . . .”

  Rote, she almost said, once she understood he meant the Austrian writer, correcting his pronunciation. Joseph Rote.

  Her face was so close she could taste his breath as he spoke. She closed her eyes.

  “‘Stationmaster Fallmerayer’ . . .” he was saying.

  “Yes,” she murmured. “‘Stationmaster Fallmerayer.’ Delicious . . .”

  Greta was awakened by the phone. Panicked (who knew she was here?), she picked up the receiver of the hotel phone and listened to the dial tone in guilty confusion until she realized the ringing came from her cell phone.

  “Hello?” she said. She tried not to sound as if she had just been asleep, her face pressed into a woman’s belly.

  “Darling, at last. Josh finally gave me this number. You’re still out? I was so worried. All day I’ve been looking for you, you have no idea . . .”

  Greta listened to her mother and marveled at the young woman beside her. She stroked Daisy’s hair and kissed her back just below her nicotine patch.

  “Mama, I’m sorry you had such a bad day . . .”

  Then, because the patch was a silent offering and she knew it was, Greta kissed the patch itself.

  “Never mind that now. It’s too late for that. I found the doctor myself. I took care of it. I don’t like to take too many medicinals, but Kougi’s here, so I’ll try them, but imagine if I were alone . . .”

  “I’ll stay there tonight,” Greta said. “I’ll stay there every night if you need me, Mother.”

  She watched Daisy walk naked to the bathroom.

  “You? With your flu?” Lotte said.

  “Me with my flu?” Greta said, noticing the dimple at the small of Daisy’s back. She had stopped listening to her mother.

  “Who else?” Lotte said. “I don’t have the flu.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Cancer is not enough? When are you coming?”

  Greta watched Daisy approach from the bathroom, her body so unfamiliar, so familiar. Daisy held her arms out.

  “What time?” Lotte asked.

  “Greta,” Daisy whispered. Her voice was sleepy. She kissed Greta on her neck.

  “This is not Spain,” Lotte was saying. “We go to bed at nine.”

  Daisy slid into bed beside Greta, holding her, whispering her name over and over.

  “And the food?” Greta heard her mother’s voice as she hung up. “Very salty in Spain.”

  Lotte heard the bell. She didn’t even try to get up. She was taking pills, the size of them! For horses, they were so big. They made her sleepy. The pain was still there, in her jaw, in her neck, in her head when she took the horse pills. She just didn’t mind as much.

  “Darling,” she said when Greta came in. “The cell phones, they always cut you off, they should drop dead with that kind of service.” Her daughter kissed her and held her hand and spoke to her softly. There was no one like blood. Kougi was wonderful. But blood was blood.

  “Don’t cry, Mama,” Greta said.

  “I missed you,” Lotte said.

  “I missed you, too.”

  “I want to die,” Lotte wailed. She didn’t mean to wail. She didn’t want to die, either. But the touch of her daughter’s hand, the gentleness of her voice, the sight of her . . . “You look so nice,” Lotte said. “You had a date?”

  Greta looked startled, then laughed.

  “I don’t want to die,” Lotte said. “That’s the goddamned problem. I must be crazy, the pain I’m in, they should call Dr. Karoglian.”

  “Kevorkian. Mr. Karoglian was the Spanish teacher who accused me of cheating.”

  “That bastard.”

  “You’re a good mother, Mom. Going into school and fighting for me like that.”

  �
�You’re so lucky,” Lotte said. She was crying again. “You have your mother.”

  Greta got up to get her some Kleenex.

  “I don’t have a mother,” Lotte said through her tears. “I miss my mother.”

  “I am lucky,” Greta said. She patted Lotte’s tears carefully.

  Lotte grabbed one of Greta’s hands. She kissed it and kissed it. She held on to the hand with all her strength. “Very lucky,” she said. “Very, very lucky.” Greta gave a little laugh, and Lotte wondered if Greta thought she was still talking about Greta’s good luck. But Lotte was too tired and too weak to correct her.

  Over the Pacific Ocean, the sun lowered itself, slow and magnificent, and Elizabeth watched the color it left behind. Volfmann’s head was silhouetted, framed by red. It was beautiful. He was beautiful. It was passionate. He was passionate. The red turned to lavender. The air was cool. “Stationmaster Fallmerayer” was a story about falling in love, he said. About marriage, about adultery, yes, but really about love. She nodded in agreement. She said, “Yes! Yes!” He grabbed her hand, squeezing it, using the other to pound the table to make a point about Chekhov. The translator of the Roth had compared the story to “Lady with Lapdog.” “Yes!” Elizabeth said. “Falling in love. They fall in love. Like a thunderbolt.” No, Volfmann said, his voice rising. “Lady with Lapdog” was full of hope. Desperate hope. “Stationmaster Fallmerayer” had a cheap ending. A journalist’s ending. There was another bottle of champagne. They argued about endings. They argued about Henry James. Cheap ending, he said about The Spoils of Poynton. She disagreed with him. She forgot he was beautiful and passionate and thought, No, you’re wrong, that’s an undergraduate’s argument, and pressed her point. He capitulated. She rejoiced. The moon left a silver shadow on the Pacific Ocean. They returned to “Lady with Lapdog.” Love. Desperate hope. They agreed. He paid the check. She was exhausted. It was two A.M. Hours and hours past when she said she’d be home. She wanted to be in bed. She was too old to stay up all night discussing literature.

  “I have to go home,” she said.

  “Coup de foudre,” he said. “I love that phrase.”

  Elizabeth woke up late the next morning. She had a hangover. She plunked herself down on the front steps with a cup of coffee and read the note Brett had left. Tiny white petals drifted down from a small tree she did not know the name of. A hummingbird whirred by. The air was warming up and the light turning a softer yellow. She watched a black-and-white cat stalk an invisible prey. The note said Brett and Harry had gone to the beach. She imagined them on the sand, close to the crash of the waves. Harry would run in and out of the foam, tripping on seaweed, laughing. Holding Brett’s hand.

  She had taken Harry to the dentist a few days before. The dentist had addressed Harry with grave sincerity.

  “You are three years old,” he had said. “You’re a big boy. You have to stop sleeping with your pacifier. It causes cavities. And it gets in the way of the teeth that are trying to grow in.”

  Harry gazed up at him, wide-eyed.

  “Do you understand, Harry?”

  Harry nodded.

  “It’s very important, Harry.”

  “Okay,” Harry said.

  When Elizabeth took him out the door, he looked up at her.

  “I will not give up my pacifier,” he said. “I will keep it. Up to the day I die.”

  Elizabeth imagined Harry, an old man, brittle and bent, sucking on his pacifier. But the thought of Harry old and so eventually dying, even such an absurd thought as the ancient Harry with the plug in his mouth, made her queasy. She wondered if Brett had put sunscreen on Harry. Brett had the kind of skin that turned a lovely deep bronze in the sun. Elizabeth never tanned, always burned. The burns would peel, leaving pale, freckled skin ready to burn again. Harry’s skin was more like Brett’s, but even so, he needed protection. The sun caused cancer. It caused cancer that blossomed and spread. The surgeon with the miner’s lamp had saved enough of Lotte’s nose to paste a flap over, like a balding man covering his bare skull with several long strands. But the red had reappeared. The tumor advanced daily, inexorable rosy lumps bulging across the jaw of Grandma Lotte.

  Elizabeth went out the back door and got on her bike. She’d brought the bike from New York at some inconvenience because she thought she would use it in Venice. There were bike paths in Venice. It would be exercise and fresh air. She could put Harry on the back in his special padded safety seat. But this was the first time she had ridden the bike and she wobbled toward the beach.

  Brett can’t even remember to put sunscreen on Harry, she thought. Do I have to do absolutely everything? Is it a crime to go out for a few drinks and sleep late? Can’t he even take the child to the beach without making a fuss about it? She grew angrier and angrier as she huffed and puffed down the street. She hoped Harry and Brett had gone to the same place they usually went, just south of the last honky-tonk shop on the boardwalk, just beyond the hot-dog stand and the tennis courts. She was feeling a little desperate now, as if the skin cancer were racing her to the beach towel. She rode as fast as she could.

  “Mommy!” Harry cried, spotting her first.

  “Hey!” Brett said, giving her a surprised, happy smile, which changed immediately to a suspicious narrowing of the eyes. “Everything’s fine,” he said, his voice defensive.

  Elizabeth ran her hand across Harry’s smooth, unblemished cheek.

  “Time for some more sunscreen, sweetie?” she said. She didn’t look at Brett.

  “Daddy just made me,” Harry said. He started to cry. “Don’t make me. Daddy made me. Three times.” He pulled away from Elizabeth, rubbing his tearstained face with sandy fists.

  “Three times?” she said in her cheerful, encouraging I-know-you-don’t-want-to-have-a-tantrum voice. She gently brushed the crusted sand from his cheeks. “Well, that’s definitely enough times.” She hugged him. She looked at Brett. She smiled, full of gratitude, full of remorse. She hoped the gratitude showed.

  “I’ve been taking him to the beach every day,” Brett said, his voice hard and cold. “Does he ever come home with a sunburn?”

  eight

  EXT. OSTENTATIOUS HOUSE—DAY

  Barbie, Chuck, and REAL-ESTATE AGENT stand before an enormous faux-Spanish mansion. Barbie is beaming. Chuck, slathering sunscreen on his pasty arms and bald pate, looks at the big house with obvious worry.

  CHUCK

  Isn’t it a little out of our league?

  BARBIE

  This is our league . . . Beverly Hills . . .

  AGENT

  Well, Beverly Hills Adjacent . . .

  When Greta got in Elizabeth’s car to go visit Lotte, Elizabeth tapped Greta’s finger and said, “Hey! You get that ring at Fred Segal’s?”

  “Hmm? Oh.” Greta looked at the ring Daisy had given her. Imagine. Just like that. A beautiful tourmaline ring. A gift. A lavish gift. And a gift she actually liked. There were some advantages to this lesbian business.

  “I just saw one like it at Fred Segal’s. I tried it on and everything.”

  “Really? I just thought I needed to cheer myself up.”

  Elizabeth approved of that. That seemed healthy. Optimistic. But what an odd coincidence.

  “Daisy was there,” Elizabeth said. “At the store. She was on her way to a date. Did you know she’s a lesbian?”

  “Really?” Greta said. She hoped she said it. She thought she might have actually grunted in a self-conscious, guilty, revealing manner.

  “Really,” Elizabeth said. She stared at her mother’s hand. She wished her father had given her mother the ring. Or would he only have done such a thing out of guilt? Perhaps Brett would give Elizabeth a ring. Or Volfmann. She struggled not to blush at the thought of him. She remembered his face, through the alcohol, through her own excitement. He had leaned so close. The image of his animated face, his eyes blazing, kept grabbing her attention, startling her, as if she’d turned a corner and there he was.

  “Do you th
ink everyone leads a secret life?” she said.

  Her mother was silent. She twisted her ring.

  Elizabeth stopped at a light and leaned her head wearily against the wheel, accidentally honking the horn.

  “Where does privacy end and secrecy begin?” Greta said.

  Elizabeth sat between them. The three of them on the couch. Grandma’s big feet stuck straight out. Greta had taken her shoes off and sat cross-legged. Elizabeth thought, We are out of order. Mom should be in the middle.

  “Dirty bastard politicians . . .” Lotte was saying. “Lousy terrorists . . .” She moved on to salaries for baseball players (too high) and the yen (too low). “I like your ring, though,” she said, reaching across Elizabeth’s lap and grabbing Greta’s hand.

  Elizabeth saw her mother start at Lotte’s touch. Greta was so easily startled these days. There was a physical, animal quality to her fear, sometimes, that saddened Elizabeth.

  “Sporty,” Lotte said.

  Greta laughed. “Really? Which sport?”

  “I was a wonderful basketball player,” Lotte said. “Until that Ilsa Hochstedter knocked me down.”

  “When was that?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Seventy years ago. The bastard.”

  Lotte closed the door with relief. She walked stiffly back to her chair and fumbled for the remote control. She couldn’t find it. She smoothed her new, gorgeous linen tunic and wondered if it was worth getting up again to look. There was nothing to watch on television. There never was anything to watch. The misery, the violence . . .