“Dahlink, zis taste like heffen!” He would close his eyes.
“Tastes like heffen,” Hedy would tsk.
When Hank skied, he’d tuck an Anjou pear in the chest pocket of his jacket. Survivors commonly secret food. Food and diamonds, and one man I know, every morning a knife in his sock. When Hank would come into the lodge for lunch, he’d unzip his jacket, dive his hand in, and, voilà!, produce the pear like a magician. He’d smile at the pear, hold it up between his thumb and first finger, squint. Then he’d put the pear on his tray, composing Still Life with Pear and Styrofoam Cup of Chili. Hank was an orderly man. He cared how things looked. He liked to dress. He had an eye.
Hank was the only survivor our family had. I wanted to know about his mother, Anna, and what her porcelain store was like in Nowy Targ and the Morgenbesser Tavern his father, Leopold, owned, and how Anna found out the Nazis were coming.
“She told me and my brothers to go to Russia,” Hank said. “We would be safe there.”
It was winter. The four brothers set out on skis. The next morning, when they opened their eyes, they were looking into the barrels of German rifles. The brothers were loaded onto a cattle car. They didn’t have to wonder where they were going. Anna had told them what would happen if they got caught by the Germans. At night, when the train slowed, the brothers broke out.
“We were mountain boys. Dahlink, we run all day up za mountain. Is nothing. But the Nazis, they have guns.”
The Germans stopped the train. They flooded the mountain with searchlights and sprayed it with bullets. Hank kept running. When he was out of range, the Nazis sent dogs. Finally the Nazis turned off their lights. Only Hank and his brother Mundek were still running.
They recognized where they were. They headed home. In the morning Anna stuffed her remaining sons’ clothes with sausage and cheese.
“Go to Russia!” She pushed them out. “Find the Russians and don’t come back! The Russians are Allies! You’ll be safe with them!”
This time Hank was more cautious. He and Mundek knew the mountain. They’d grown up skiing to school and every weekend in Zakopane. On the third day they crossed paths with the Russians. But instead of being welcomed, they were stripped of their coats and boots. Hank and Mundek marched barefoot to a work camp in Siberia. When I look at pictures in the paper of Chechen detainees in a Chernokozovo “filtration camp,” I see the fear and misery on their faces. But I also see their high boots and downfilled jackets, and I wonder, How did he do it? How did Hank live?
When the Russian involvement in World War II intensified, Stalin decided he couldn’t waste manpower monitoring prisoners. Hank and Mundek were released to the British. The British sent them by boat to Palestine and then on to Scapa Flow, in the north of Scotland. There, supervised by General Bill Anders, they became part of “Anders’ Army” and joined a navy convoy.
“They give me one pair black socks,” Hank said. “One. I love those socks. Every night, in the sink, I wash them out.”
Hank trained as a medic, Mundek as a mechanic. When it came time to ship out, the brothers were put on different boats. While Hank was at sea, an American air corps captain was shot down. Hank dove into the water and rescued him.
Hank was assigned to care for the airman’s wounds. After the airman was sent home, a letter typed on stationery with a gold-embossed eagle arrived. “I don’t read English, dahlink,” Hank told me. “I have no idea what the letter say, but I think, Zis letter with za eagle, zis is important.”
When Hank’s ship docked in Glasgow, news arrived. Mundek had been killed. It was Yom Kippur.
“I went to shul to say yiskah for Mundek,” Hank said. “Then, during the service, I hear my name. I turn around. There is Mundek who has come to say yiskah for me!”
By the time the war was over, Mundek was dead. He’d been shot down in his parachute. Hank also learned the rest of his family had been killed. No one was left. Only two relatives in America he’d never met. He didn’t want to go back to Nowy Targ. Seven Jewish boys returned after amnesty looking for their families and were gunned down in cold blood. The war was over, but they were murdered by their neighbors.
Every day Hank lined up at the American embassy. Every day he was told the quota had been reached. Then he brought the letter with the eagle on it. The clerk read the letter. It was from the Secretary of Defense. It thanked Hank for saving the life of an American.
Hank was given a visa. He came to New York. Since L comes before M, he looked up the Lustigs instead of the Morgens. He went to live with Herman Lustig, his uncle in the restaurant business, instead of Herman Morgen, his other uncle in the restaurant business. Herman Lustig or Herman Morgen. You had to choose one. The Hermans didn’t talk. Somebody had given playing cards as a gift that said “Compliments of American Airlines.” Or one of the wives got a mink coat, and when the other wife saw it she said, “Is that nutria?” Someone left a wedding too early or stayed too late or pretended not to see somebody passing them on Broadway.
So we didn’t meet Hank until thirty-one years after he’d set foot on American soil. By then his hair was gray and because of this, although he was a cousin, we called him Uncle.
“I make za wrong choice,” Hank would tell my grandmother. “I should hof come to you.”
I was at the office the day Hank went in for exploratory surgery. The phone rang around eleven.
“Patty! He has cancer,” Hedy screamed. “All through his liver!”
A woman took the phone. “Are you a relative?” The voice was brisk.
“Yes.”
“You need to come to the Hospitality Room right away.”
When I got to the Hospitality Room, Hedy wasn’t there. I found her in the Emergency Room. She was gulping for air like a fish on a dock, her first panic attack. The doctor said she had palpitations. “How I can live wizout him?” she wailed.
In between chemotherapy treatments, those hope-logged rallies when his taste buds came back and the nausea disappeared and his energy resurged, Hank would ski. He was grateful for every reprieve. He’d come to our apartment for dinner, and I’d make cuke salad for him, and radiant, a human source of light, he’d scoop up my children and shower them with Pilot extrafine rolling-ball pens.
“Dahlink”—he took me aside on one of these occasions—“you know what I don’t understand? Why, out of everyone in my family, I was spared. Why should I be spared? For God to give me cancer? Can you tell me that, dahlink? Why me?”
The way he asked, it wasn’t hypothetical. Hank really thought perhaps I could help explain it. I couldn’t. How many people earn their fate? Suffering has never made sense. How should a survivor die? Quietly, at 104 in a soft feather bed? Or like my friend’s grandmother? Mrs. Johnson dropped dead in her kitchen reaching for a box of cornflakes.
Patty, dahlink,” Hank said a week before he died,
“Yes.” “you will take care of Hedy when I’m gone?”
“You won’t forget her?”
“I promise.”
Again the call at the office.
“Come!” she shrieks. I rush uptown. Hank is dead. In his room Hedy sits crying by the bed. He’s still in it, the sheet pulled over his head.
“Look at him,” Hedy says, ripping it down.
Hank is the color of a field mouse. His eyes are closed, but his mouth is in rictus. I want to touch him, but my hands won’t move. Silently I say, I love you. I’m sorry. I know you don’t want me to see you this way. I’ll forget I saw you this way. I’ll try. I love you. I will miss you, my darling dear. Thank you for being part of our lives.
Hedy comes to us for the holidays. We meet for lunch now and then. Soon she is saying how much she hates New York. Then she is saying that even though she hates New York, where else can she live? Florida is too hot. Canada, where she has a friend, is too cold. She doesn’t know anybody anyplace else. Why is she always trapped? Finally she sells her apartment for less than she hoped and moves to Tamarack, Florida. As soon as she
gets there, she hates it. It isn’t near the beach. She doesn’t drive. She sells the house at a loss and flies to Toronto, where the winters are too cold but the American dollar goes far. She finds a “friend,” but he lives with his forty-eight-year-old son who is “a horse’s you-know-what.” Everything is a doomed proposition, like garlic-flavored mouthwash. Everything is unsolvable.
A friend of mine is invited to a seder at a psychiatrist’s house. At the end of the seder the host hands each guest a gift. It’s a sheaf of paper, a photocopy of Schindler’s List, the actual document. My friend offers me her copy. It’s shocking to hold Schindler’s List. It feels wrong to have it. A document lives hung on gets passed out like a party favor. Still that doesn’t stop me from looking for the name Morgenbesser. There are two. Hedy is the last one alive who might know if these Morgenbessers were family.
I call her in Toronto. She calls a friend of Hank’s. The Morgenbessers on Schindler’s List don’t match our family’s given names. The names Hedy finds out, names I’ve never heard before, are the names of Hank’s brothers who were murdered in the snow and his sister who was exterminated.
Josef Morgenbesser
Brunek Morgenbesser
Nella Morgenbesser
The enduring image of someone you’ve loved is not necessarily your choice. It took fourteen years, but now when I think of Hank, I don’t see his face in a hospital bed. I see him coming down a mountain. It was easy to spot him. Not because of his bright red ski suit with the white armbands or his yellow jumpsuit with the matching yellow boots. What set Hank apart was the way he skied. The top half of his body stayed still. His hips barely shifted. He looked as if he were dancing down the mountain—a sophisticated dancer, the kind who feels the music and conveys that using only the most economical gestures. Hank skied a way nobody else did. Even on a packed slope, you could pick him out. And that’s how I can see him now, skiing and smiling, skiing to take your breath away. Hank made it look easy. I think he was a natural.
My gorgeous big sister
SCRAMBLED EGGS
I’ve flown to Florida to take care of my best friend, the person who sees herself as always taking care of me, my big sister. I dial up from the hotel lobby.
“Don’t be scared,” she says.
“I can’t wait to see you.”
“Room three seventeen.” She hangs up the phone.
I ride the elevator carbonated with expectation. What? What? The other two face-lifts I’ve seen had some mileage on them. My sister’s face-lift is in its second day.
I knock. “Let me in, whee-oop!”
The door opens a crack. A hand snakes around. I know those fingers! I recognize those freckles! I know those squared red nails!
The door inches.
“Just open it,” I say.
She does.
If someone fell from the top of the Empire State Building and landed on their nose, it couldn’t be worse. I search the face for something that says I definitely have the right room. Luckily, my sister is wearing her old Victoria’s Secret pajamas.
“I’m so glad you’re here.” She weeps.
“Wow!” I say.
“I had to do it.” Tears flow from what used to be her eyes. “I haven’t been able to look at my face while I brush my teeth for a year. Come.” She shuffles toward the bed. With enormous effort my sister feels backward for the edge, sits, then swings her legs over until she can lean against the pillows. She does this like a Balinese dancer, without changing the flex of her chin. “Put your fingers on what’s been done and tell me everything.” She lies there waiting. “I can’t seeeeeeee.”
I examine what used to be my gorgeous big sister. I put a fingertip on the ventral side of her chin and run it side to side, an inch and a half. It’s prickly. “There are stitches here,” I say.
I look her over, then pat along her upper eyelids. Her eyes, her big brown eyes that danced when she smiled, are slits tilted at forty-five degrees. They are sewn partially shut. The micro-opening looks like a split seam. It is completely filled by brown eyeball, like something that lives underground. I trace the corners of her eyes where the thorny black stitches stick out. Then I finger her ears all the way around. The stitches make it look as if they’ve been cut off then sewn back on. There are hundreds of these tiny threads inside her ears too. They look like the almost invisible black trico flies I use to catch trout.
In her head, like croquet wickets, are rows of metal staples.
“These are staples.” I drum my fingers all over her scalp. “And these are stitches.”
“What about the screws?” she says.
I find those too.
“What about my neck?”
“It looks gajus,” I say. “You’re down to one chin.”
“No. I mean this.”
We explore where the drain enters behind her ear. It’s threaded down and inside, embossing her neck. The drain looks like a subcutaneous choker. A bloody liquid drips from the exposed part into a clear plastic bulb. Her upper lip, which has been derm-abraded to remove tiny vertical lines that used to wick lipstick, is oozing a thick yellow mustache. Because of the derm-abrasion, her lip is so swollen her words come out muffled.
“I think he did a really good job,” I say. “The stitches are so neat.”
I put fresh ice cubes and water in the small bowl beside her bed. She tells me how to ice her, two folded gauze pads on her eyes and cheeks and one unfolded flat across her forehead. Ice rolled in a towel on her neck.
“There’s stuff on your tray,” I say.
“You eat it.”
The frittata is cold, so is the toast.
“Sure you don’t want some?”
“Can’t chew.” She starts to cry again. “I don’t know why I’m so weepy,” she says. “It must be the anesthesia. It took eight hours.”
My sister looks terrifying, and I don’t know what to do. She reaches for the envelope with the pictures she’d shown the doctor.
“I want to look like this,” she’d told him, fanning out photos from 1971.
“You will,” he’d promised.
I want to be in water,” my sister says through tears. I run her a warm tub. “Put some of that bath stuff in.” She points to one of those little hotel bathroom freebies. “It’s nice. I used it this morning.”
“You used this in your tub?” I ask.
“Uh-huh,” she says.
“It’s hair conditioner.”
“I couldn’t see.” She cries all over again.
I give her a bath, trying not to wet her hair, which sticks out in crazy greasy clumps. I rub her back with a soapy washcloth. “That’s soooo good,” she moans. Afterward I rub her feet and the lower part of her legs with hotel body lotion.
“See,” she says, “you are capable of empathy.”
The doctor employs a nurse to watch his patients at the hotel. She comes in now and tells my sister there’s a car downstairs to take her to the doctor’s office. Still wobbly, my sister readies herself for the ride. In other words, she slips her mules on.
“Don’t worry if anyone sees you in the lobby in your pj’s,” I say. “Really. There’s no way they’d know it was you.”
We close the hotel-room door behind us. The nurse is waiting. She is standing behind a wheelchair. The patient in it looks worse than my sister. This woman looks as if she fell off the Empire State Building, landed on her nose, then got run over by a Hummer. This woman had everything done my sister had done, plus wall-to-wall derm-abrasion. This woman is, quite literally, an open wound.
When we get to the doctor’s office, I blurt: “Why is my sister so asymmetrical?”
“Where?” He takes it personally.
“Her eyes, her jawline.” I’m not happy saying this in front of my sister, but maybe he can still do something. Am I supposed to praise a face that looks like a cake baked in an unreliable oven?
The doctor spins on his heel and storms out of the examining room. In a moment he is back, carryi
ng a Pendaflex. He takes out the “Before” pictures he took of my sister. “Your sister was always asymmetrical,” he points.
“I know most faces are,” I say, looking at my sister’s perfectly symmetrical Befores. Maybe we can’t see asymmetry in faces we grew up with, faces we love. It occurs to me then that the reason symmetry is so pleasing is, it’s the first thing we see. The first thing we see is our mother’s face smiling down at us. Before we even know what seeing is, we know what feeds us and holds us is the same on both sides. On one side there’s an eye. On the other there’s an eye. There are two holes in the nose. And the mouth tilts up on both ends. When babies nurse, when they look at your face, you see their eyes darting, checking this out. Back and forth, back and forth, the symmetry, everything equal. It’s reassuring hence peaceful. It’s balanced. It’s what we know.
I take my sister home and stay three days. I ice her, drive her to the doctor’s, rent movies she can only hear because she still can’t open her eyes. I monitor guests, field calls, talk to her patients, wash her, rub her, and bring her water. I save her from herself when she flaps her arms, throws a fit, and screams she’s going to wash her hair no matter what.
“I’m going to wash my hair! I don’t care! I don’t care!”
“Please.” I hold her arms down. “You’ve been through so much. You can’t blow everything for a shampoo.”
On the second day I ask her, since she can’t chew, if she wants eggs for lunch.
“Yef,” she says. Her speech is muffled because she still can’t move her upper lip. “Make them Mattie’s way.”
“What’s Mattie’s way?”
On her back, her eyes and forehead covered with gauze, blood dripping into the drain, lips too traumatized to move right, my sister gives instructions.
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