Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots

by Jessica Soffer

  As I was walking out the door, my mother called to me. “Lorca?”

  I stopped, turned around.

  “I must have done something very right,” she said. “You’re the best little listener.”

  I sprinted all the way to the bookstore, which was no big deal except that there had never been more people on the street and that made it impossible to run. They looked at me like they didn’t know which direction they should go and then they didn’t go in either one. They just stood there, with bags of groceries held out like broken wings. Eventually, I started running in the street, staying close to the parked cars and scooting back up on the curb when I saw the lights of a bus.

  I burst into the store with my hands tingling from the cold. I raced toward the stairs and noticed that the elevator doors were open, about to close. A walrus of an old man was fiddling with the buttons. I got in.

  “Terrible weather,” the walrus said, firmly reparting his hair with both hands. His belly was so big that he leaned back even when he didn’t.

  They taught us in school that if you’re ever in an elevator with a pervert, you should shake and scream like you’re covered in ants. They said, “Preserve yourself, not your dignity.”

  Right before I got out of the elevator, my heart started purring. Just for a second; I couldn’t help it. Sometimes, no matter how hard I tried to keep my hopes down, they popped back up like a turkey timer.

  He was gone. Blot was gone. I could see that before I stepped out of the elevator. I didn’t even have to move my head. His desk was right in front of me. No coat. No stray pens or tissues. There was a neat stack of books and a legal pad and his empty teacup, cleaned. I thought, Maybe there’s a note for me. But there wasn’t. Of course there wasn’t.

  I was standing directly in front of the elevator, blocking everything, and the walrus had to say, “Excuse me, miss,” twice to get me to move.

  I told myself Blot didn’t really want to go with me. I was awful. He’d been laughing at me the whole time. I was part of some bet. That didn’t happen just in movies. That was my first thought. Even when I looked at the time and saw that I was forever later than fashionably late, I couldn’t convince myself that it was just that: it was as simple as him waiting for me and then leaving. In my head, it was something so much worse. He knew about my cuts. He hated me. He hated me. He hated me. This had all been some kind of setup and here I was, falling for it.

  I could have been on the couch, eating sorbet. This was what happened when I got hopeful.

  I walked over to his desk. I wasn’t going to do anything ridiculous like try to smell a pencil he might have touched. But I wanted to be close to him. He had paper clips stuck to a black magnet in the shape of a house.

  Go home, Lorca, I thought. Enough now. That’s enough. I was about to leave when I saw a Zagat from 1986 on his stool. There was a blue Post-it note sticking out. I reached for the book to see if the note was for me. I couldn’t believe this. I told myself to slow down. It was like eating a cupcake: you had to eat the bottom before the top. I didn’t want to rush everything and have nothing left. I stopped myself. I counted to three before moving an inch.

  One haricot vert.

  Two haricots verts.

  Three haricots verts.

  Okay. Enough. I couldn’t stand it. I opened the book.

  There it was. A restaurant called the Shohet and His Wife at 424 Amsterdam Avenue. The review started like this: “Upper West Siders don’t come here for the ‘frightening décor.’ It is a testament to the food of this ‘outstanding,’ ‘family-owned’ ‘Mediterranean plaza’ that customers get past the door. But once they do, they ‘can’t get enough.’” On the Post-it, in boy handwriting: Owners: Joseph and Victoria Shohet, 203 West 112th Street.

  Something dropped inside of me. Disappointment that I hadn’t expected. He’d found it. We wouldn’t search together. It hadn’t even started before it ended. Still, I thought of my mother. I was one step closer. I could see her perfect face. When I imagined it, it was full of sympathy, full of tears, and she was younger. Life with me hadn’t aged her three thousand years.

  I looked around for Blot one more time. Then I left the Zagat on the stool. I wanted to come back for it. I wanted him to be here.

  When I got outside, it had started to rain, and I thought, Of course it’s raining. I thought of putting my face to the sky and opening my mouth but then I thought, Don’t be melodramatic. From the time I was seven years old, I’d stuck my fingers in restaurant candles whenever my mother turned her head. I’d felt totally alone and unexposed even if we were smack in the middle of Le Bernardin, getting an extra six courses because of her. And even if she’d caught me, she’d never call me on it. My life wasn’t a movie.

  I walked north. I looked down and watched water flick up against my shoes like angry bees.

  And then it came over me. The urge. It was like feeling starved, suddenly. This time, it was my feet that hadn’t moved fast enough, that had done nothing right. I wanted to do something terrible to the flabby tops of my feet.

  There were certain things I could do that helped, briefly.

  For example, I could swallow fifteen times, as fast and as hard as possible. Like a sick cat. One. Two. Three. To fifteen. It made me feel parched and lighter. Like I couldn’t coax out the blood if I tried.

  If the craving was for something other than blood—for, let’s say, the dull aching pain I’d get from banging my head against a cinder block or on the corner of an open drawer—I could hold on to something as tightly as possible until my hand just couldn’t take anymore. The exhausting feeling was sort of the same as whatever might have come from banging.

  Neither one of these things ever worked for long. Still, I told myself to quit it. Walk, Lorca. Go. Don’t think about it.

  I didn’t plan where I was going, but I wasn’t surprised by where I ended up.

  Victoria

  I HAD BEEN DREAMING of our daughter, but what she did in the dream other than just be there, I couldn’t tell you. The thing was, the wonderful thing was, she was with me. I wasn’t alone.

  I woke up to Dottie’s mouth by my ear.

  “Come, my darling. Come, Toya,” she said.

  Everything will be all right, I wanted to say. I wanted to be talking to Joseph.

  I wanted to tell him I had never loved anyone else, and never would. I wanted to talk to him about our life, how fantastic it was. I wanted to reminisce. I wanted to ask him to forgive me for being gone in that final moment. How long did that mo-ment last?

  I allowed Dottie to coax me into the bedroom, into a chair that knew my shape. There were strangers in my house. Anyone could come. Words in whispers. I looked at the clock: 10:56. I couldn’t recall when this day had begun.

  Then I needed to sign. Our lawyer. He was wearing jeans.

  “Victoria,” he was saying. “I am so sorry.”

  Our accountant. His hand on my knee.

  “Victoria,” he said. “I am so sorry.”

  Soon afterward, or not so soon, Joseph’s friends were opening and closing the fridge. How could they have known so quickly? Didn’t they sleep? Typical Iraqis, always waiting for a reason to party—especially on a Friday. After that, there was the clinking of glasses, the run of the faucet, water boiling, the smell of roasting lemons. A young woman, maybe a sixteenth of my age, lipstick on her teeth, introduced herself as the social worker from hospice.

  “I could be your grandmother,” I said, realizing the terrible taste in my mouth. She gave me a cup of tea, a very sincere look on her face.

  Dottie said to her, “We have everything under control, thank you.”

  I asked myself, Did we? I would have to write a eulogy. Wouldn’t I? I had no idea.

  I wrapped my arms around Dottie. She hugged me back, then released me, stood up, and went to my nightstand. She removed a photograph from a frame: Joseph and me—our wedding, at the bakery near MacDougal Street. Just a few years before we’d moved here, to this a
partment. She laid it face-down, retiring it.

  I knew just what she was doing. She didn’t like lingering sadness. She’d pin it on me, say it was to keep me from stewing. But I could stew. If I wanted, I was allowed to stew my head off.

  I knew tomorrow she’d want us to start taking ballroom dance.

  I wanted to say, Don’t, Dottie. Please. Mind your business for once. The words didn’t come out. She walked around the bed. I watched her place Joseph’s silver pen and money clip in her robe pocket like they were hers, casual as can be.

  What are you doing? Please. I didn’t say that either. She picked up another framed photo of us. We were in Anguilla. I wondered if she’d steal that as well. No. She put it in his nightstand drawer. It closed with a click.

  The social worker glanced at Dottie and then at me. I couldn’t imagine I could look any more pathetic than I did, but I tried. I needed her help. I couldn’t stand up for myself. I couldn’t stand up at all.

  “I think it’s best,” she said to Dottie very slowly, as if talking to a temperamental child, “that you leave the reorganizing to Victoria. It is a very long, personal process, which she can begin when she’s ready.”

  “Oh, no,” Dottie said in a high pitch. She took the rosemary lotion that I used on Joseph’s feet. She rubbed some into her hands and then slipped the bottle in her pocket.

  “You understand,” she said to the social worker, “I’m helping, of course. It’s not good for Victoria to see all these things now. They will make it harder for her.”

  Words were stuck in my throat like apple skin.

  “Why don’t you come over here,” the social worker said to Dottie. She patted the ottoman by my feet. “I think you can be more helpful by just being with your friend now.”

  I would have thanked her if I could have.

  “Of course, doll,” Dottie said and waltzed over. Her hips went pop pop pop. Sometimes, if I was in the mood, I’d tell her that she’d strut right into her grave. That was the kind of thing that made her feel like a million bucks.

  “Your husband will surely miss you,” the social worker said, squeezing my arm. I wanted to ask her to tell me more. I craved the reassurance more than ever, knowing that never again would he tell me anything. Not one single thing.

  “Yes. He’ll miss us,” Dottie said. Her eyes were closed, wrinkly and small.

  She had no right. No right at all. I wanted to look straight at her and say, Excuse me? I was his wife. He would miss me, yes —the certainty was growing in me by the second—and this house I’d made for him. I tried not to hear Joseph’s voice. Dottie’s all alone, he’d say. The least we can do is make her feel welcome.

  No, thank you, Joseph. The unwelcoming starts now.

  I heard a clanking, something banging against the front door. I wanted to say, Watch the painting! I didn’t say it. I heard men’s voices. I stuck my head out. There was a stretcher. A white sheet. My body lurched. All my organs stopped short. Dottie grabbed me, put my head to her chest. Good God, that was my husband on there. I wanted to say, No! Let me keep him. Let me be with him forever. I cannot be alone. I cannot live without him. I said nothing of the sort. I was a coward. I’d always been a coward. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. Instead, I whispered that Joseph had wanted to be cremated, and the social worker nodded at me and then at Dottie, as though the two of them had already discussed it.

  “Don’t look, Victoria,” Dottie said. “This is not something we need to see.”

  I nodded. I believed her.

  Finally, everyone left. The apartment lifted, exhaled. Dottie had been the last, of course, but I’d been angry enough to make her empty her pockets at the door. Lotion, money clip, pen, after-shave, handkerchief with frayed gray edges.

  “I just don’t want you up all night,” she’d said loudly.

  “Right,” I said. I couldn’t fight with her. “Okay.”

  “I was protecting you,” she said, “by taking those things.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I know.”

  Once she was gone, there was silence everywhere. In the kitchen drawers, between the sofa cushions, in the empty teakettle. You’d think it was because Joseph was gone, but Joseph had never been noisy. It was Dottie. She had been here for years, every day, reading her magazines, making calls to her cell phone company to ask useless questions, using hair remover on her top lip. Tapping her foot, rubbing her eyes, yawning with the screech of a cat. Now I was tiptoeing through the rooms, cautious not to startle myself. I kept thinking of the white sheet, feeling like it was wafting toward me and then over me, and then suddenly, like it had been vacuum-sealed, it suffocated me. I kept thinking of his toes sticking up, but the truth is, I didn’t see them. I never saw his toes. I didn’t see anything but the dark abyss of Dottie’s bosom.

  Joseph would have loved that story. Dottie ruined your death, I’d say. She ruined it with her huge old-lady bosom. And he’d laugh that chubby, delicious laugh. What did you expect? he’d say. What did we expect, my love?

  Now I waited for something to happen. I stood with my hands on the kitchen counter. I was aware that I was still not crying, that I was uninjured, that I was alone.

  But of course I was not alone because here was all of Dottie’s crap. Her Reader’s Digests on the kitchen table, her array of nail polish and nail polish remover. The Yellow Pages, which she had left open, had a blue pen—my pen, my missing pen—sunk into the binding. There were cans of Diet Coke—all open, all hers—abandoned. Her things, her shit, everywhere. In the living room, a scarf, a towel, and a package of scented tissues. Between the cushions on the couch was a tube of her lipstick and a compact. I walked through the apartment, gathering item after ridiculous item. A ripped-out quiz, for instance: “What Celebrity Are You Most Like?” I collected it all and put it into a large white shopping bag. There.

  This was my home. I did not want to smell her lipstick, the awful perfumey-ness of it. I wanted to make my own mess. I wanted to sit at my kitchen table and spread out my New York Times without having to move her shiny fashion magazines. I placed the white bag of crap by the door. It made me feel better, to see her on her way out. Everything else in here was mine or Joseph’s. Ours.

  Alone in my living room, I imagined my own death. It might happen now, this night. My face would smack onto the floor, cracking my cheek, swarming it with red as if a cranberry had been squashed inside. I’d often wondered about dying alone, knowing that Joseph wasn’t getting any better. But I could not die alone, because Dottie would be reading People in my La-Z-Boy. She would flail about for the phone, her robe twirling around her like a dog chasing its tail. No, no, doll, she would say, voice quivering. No, you don’t. You’ll be just fine. You’ll see.

  Men with scruffy faces and cold hands would hoist me onto the stretcher and shove me into the ambulance like a pizza going into the oven. A Jamaican woman at the hospital would ask me my name and date of birth and next of kin.

  No one, I would say. There’s no one.

  No one longing to cradle me while the warmth of life began flickering out. Alone, I’d be, in a bed with sheets stiff with bleach and a faint smell of apple cider vinegar and no heartbeat beside mine fierce enough to jolt my heart back into action.

  I sat down on the floor. Aches and pains and unhappy cracks.

  Out of the sky, the buzzer rang. I jumped, clutched my chest. “Shut up,” I said, breathless. “Shush.”

  I didn’t need to answer. I was in mourning. Whatever it was, even a gift basket or condolences from some old acquaintance, could wait. But it rang again. And again. The word emergency passed through my head but I remembered: The emergency had come and gone. There was nothing left to get hysterical about. Buzz.

  “Oh shit,” I said, finally getting up, not because I cared who was downstairs but because the sound of the buzzer was like an explosion.

  “Hm?” I said, just about crashing into the Talk button, out of breath, resting my head on the cool wall.

  “U
m,” said a little voice. “I’m looking for the restaurateurs,” it said shakily. “From the Shohet and His Wife? We’re interested in having some masgouf—”

  “What?” I laughed. I cut her off. “No,” I said. “That’s hilarious. Masgouf? That’s been done for years.”

  “Oh,” the voice said. “Okay. Thank you.”

  “Wait,” I said, my throat suddenly pulled into a dry knot. “Are you? Who are you?”

  I inhaled, held it in my mouth.

  “It’s just that I’ve heard a lot about it,” the voice said earnestly, in a way that was totally unaware of the squall happening in my head. “I heard it was delicious.”

  My heart dropped. Of course, I thought, waving my hands in front of my face.

  “Oh,” I said.

  And then, because I was always proving something to someone, I said, “It was delicious.”

  I didn’t bother to apologize. I thought someone should apologize to me. I walked away, hoping the buzzing wouldn’t begin again. But when it didn’t, I stopped in my tracks, waiting, even hoping. No one might look for me, need me, ever again. Except for Dottie, who didn’t count. There was nothing meaningful in that. The buzzer might remain unbuzzing until someone replaced me here, and there was something worth buzzing about, someone.

  I walked through our rooms. Of course I thought of our daughter. Our things, things that I’d once feared would matter to no one, our way of living, might matter to her. We kept dirty laundry in the guest-room bathtub. We left jazz playing for our lemon tree. We had two little fish and when they died we removed them but continued to change their water and put food in the tank. If it mattered to anyone, it would matter to her.

  When I went, everything would be delivered to the Salvation Army. Someone else would sit on my sofa, use my jewelry box, fiddle with the knobs on my insured, antique Toastrite without knowing a thing about me. She was my only something. I’d never forgotten her; I had just put the memory somewhere, behind a box, below some clothes. Every once in a while, though, I’d move the dust. I’d come across it and it would just about make me shake. Refusing to love something is the same as loving it. “A quiet conscience,” we used to say in Baghdad, “sleeps in thunder.” I hadn’t slept in decades.