Then the camera went off.
I decided that I loved her. I imagined having dinner at her table. I bet she’d never sit down. I bet she’d lean over people’s shoulders as though she were tending to plants, asking did they try it, like it, want more—and regardless, she’d heap another serving on top of every plate. I wondered how you said mangia in Arabic.
I thought about telling Blot all that, but just then I saw something that stopped me. A woman was about to enter a liquor store. Her long neck accommodated many rolls of a camel-colored scarf. She was tall and thin like a saffron thread, and though I couldn’t see the details of her hands, there was a feminine quality to them, as if her fingers were the slender tails of many cats. They curled around the doorknob and she slipped inside. Her dark hair was pulled into a bun, shiny like swirled chocolate butter sauce. The rounded part down the left side of her scalp was unmistakable. My mother.
Immediately, I felt the urge to explain to her, to justify myself. I was doing this for her, you see. I wasn’t having fun. I looked at Blot and said that I’d be right back, but when I turned around again, racing to the store window, she was gone. There was no one inside but an Asian man behind the counter. He was writing something, unbothered. I stood there, my breath fogging the glass. That’s why, I thought. That’s why masgouf.
“What?” Blot said, next to me now. “Celebrity sighting?”
“Yes,” I said. “Bobby Flay.”
“I’ve always wanted to try his blue corn pancakes with barbecued duck,” he said.
“Me too,” I said.
The lie about the sighting had come easily and I was grateful. I wouldn’t have known how to begin.
Blot seemed unbothered. He began walking north again, this time in the street. He tapped his fingers on car hoods as he passed them. He didn’t make a scene of it, didn’t hurt them, just did tap tap tap as if checking for animal life in a tree. Once, I’d closed my finger in a car door three times in a row. To this day, my pinkie looks more like a barkless twig than a pinkie. When Blot walked on the sidewalk, he tapped side mirrors one time per car. He noticed me staring.
“I don’t know why I do this,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets and shaking his hair out of his face. “Weird habit.”
“I eat cheese and watermelon,” I said.
“That’s Middle Eastern!” he just about shouted. “I read it in one of those books. It’s fate.”
I believed him, though I tried not to.
I kept waiting for him to get bored with me, to change his mind. It occurred to me that it was Saturday and he might suddenly have to bolt for a shmancy date or a concert. But he seemed to be enjoying himself, his tapping. I had a sense he’d act the very same way without me, which didn’t make me feel awful. In fact, it took some of the pressure off. I didn’t have to go through the ABCs of chitchat, which Lou said was every successful conversationalist’s go-to. A: ageism; B: belly dancing; C: cabbage diet. After a while, I tapped on the mirror of a parked car and he said, “Excellent choice, my dear.”
I could see him smile as he peeked into a minivan exploding with old files. He straightened and then tapped on the mirror. I wasn’t thinking about slowing down now—or about speeding up. I seemed to be managing the pace just fine. I wasn’t thinking about my mother either. I pretended to look at the trees, doors, dogs, curbs, roofs, street signs, stray pigeon feathers, anything—just so I would stop staring at him. But even in Manhattan, with its thousands of restaurants, windows, and lights, with its millions and millions of people, sometimes it’s impossible to distract your eyes from one totally amazing thing.
When we turned onto 112th Street, we became noticeably quiet. Aside from last night, I rarely came this far north. Here, the brownstones were bigger, rounder, redder, and more elaborate than the ones in our neighborhood. The stairs were stouter, sturdier. The doors looked like they belonged in a library. The windows had painted eyebrows and copper lids. One was covered in ivy. Another was made of two different stones, piled one over the other like sandwich meat. It probably never felt busy or like the weekend up here.
I pointed to a building with miniature Christmas trees lined in window boxes on every floor. They reminded me of sunken dwarfs in enormous hats.
“That’s it,” I said.
The Shohets’ building was the tallest. The Washington Irving. It had a wide, grand staircase and pudgy hanging lights. Iron balconies. A carving of a woman surrounded by curtains and flowers. The building looked like it should have a doorman but it didn’t. I was strong now and purposeful and tried to appear that way. This was what we’d come for, after all. Otherwise, there was no excuse. I crossed the street, and Blot jogged behind me. I was aware of the way I looked from the back for the first time in my life.
But it wasn’t just Blot making me anxious. This was huge. What if they just handed me the recipe? What if that was that? Then what?
I checked the buzzer again. Victoria and Joseph Shohet: apartment 3F. Front. There were Fs and Rs. I walked back across the street again to see if any lights were on. I turned around and Blot stopped short. He’d been on my heels. His face was washed out by streetlight. His eyes were wet and blistery from the cold.
“What?” he said, all dimples and innocence. “I’m just following you. You seem to have a plan.”
I realized that I didn’t. Of course I didn’t. All the research up to this point had been so abstract, far-flung even. When it started two days ago, it had been about one very specific thing, but it felt smoky now, like I’d planned it in my sleep.
We stood next to each other, looking up. I considered ringing the buzzer, trying to explain myself yet again. It wasn’t so complicated, really, except that it was. Anytime I said anything about my mother, I became a spinning dreidel. Blot used his finger to count up three stories to her window. He whispered, “Uno, dos, tres.” My skin went tingly.
“That’s theirs,” he said, still whispering. My skin curled again. I could feel his breath on my face. I wondered about the side of my nose. I pretended to be very focused to justify the tightness of my jaw. The Shohets’ apartment was dark. No one was by the window. They had long blue curtains, only one of them tied back.
“Hey,” Blot said. “Look.”
He inched backward and hunkered down on the bottom stair of a townhouse. He crossed his arms over his knees. I followed his eyes. Two women carrying more than they could bear hustled through the door of the Washington Irving. They were dropping things along the way, leaning back for balance and kicking open the door and letting it smack shut.
“I’ll get it,” one said.
“I’ll get it,” the other one said.
One was taller. She was wearing heels and a flowing bathrobe. Her legs stuck out, skinny, and her chest too, as she leaned over, dropping the bags by the curb. She stood, fixed herself, let out a huge sigh, and shook out her arms. She reminded me of a pigeon.
“My word!” she said, plumping her hair. “This is exhausting.”
The other one without a doubt was Victoria. I recognized her voice.
I stepped back into the townhouse shadow, feeling like I’d been caught. Blot shifted over to make room and I squatted next to him. No air moved between us.
“Do you think that’s her?” he whispered. “She looks Middle Eastern.”
My heart raced—and not just because of Blot. I imagined resting an enormous platter of masgouf on our dinner table, perfect slices of lemons like happy suns all around. White votives, my mother’s favorite, were lit and set in a straight line. Their wicks made snapping sounds and smoked.
The women came in and out, in and out, and dropped bags by the curb, bags messily wrapped with tape and on the verge of exploding. Victoria picked up some stray items from the stairs. Everything about her was quieter than the other one. She dropped a sweater and some socks and a scarf onto the pile. Then she reached into her own shirt, into her bra, maybe, and pulled out something. She folded it slowly and placed it on top of everythi
ng else. She put her hand down over it, as if waiting for a burner to heat up. She took it away suddenly, when the other one looked toward her. Then they both stood there, over the things. They looked at each other and then they looked down. They were out of breath. I could see their chests move into and out of the streetlight. They were older. Ancient, actually. For a second, it was like they’d killed someone.
Victoria looked across the street toward us, and I sort of ducked, though of course she had no idea who I was. Blot dropped all the way to the ground like a real pro. At first, she didn’t seem to notice. She was looking without seeing. Then, suddenly, her eyes clicked. She saw me. It spooked her. She put her hand to her cheek and then up in a half wave, as if admitting that she scared easily, and it wasn’t my fault. It was Victoria. It had to be. It wasn’t Violet from YouTube, but she looked like her. The color of her skin, like a grain, her strong eyes and nose. I knew.
“Holy cannoli,” Blot whispered. “This is intense.”
I wanted to say Victoria, but she was turning around already. They both were. The other one was paying no attention and nearly whacked herself against a parking meter. Blot whispered, “Ouch,” on her behalf. She fixed the tie on her robe into an even bow. Victoria guided her. They entered the building soundlessly. Victoria turned back for a moment and I thought she’d seen us, but she was just letting her eyes wander, as if scanning for the source of a strange sound or a burst of air.
“Dude,” Blot said. “I’ve got chills.”
Once they were gone, we waited for a light to turn on in the window, but it didn’t.
“I wonder what Joseph is doing,” I said, my voice sounding like a nuclear explosion. We’d been whispering for so long.
“Maybe he’s already in bed,” Blot said. I imagined a small old man reading, a bowl of ice cream on the nightstand, the covers pulled up to his chin.
“Maybe he’s sick of her cleaning out her closets,” Blot said. Don’t you dare, I told my mind when it leaped to us as a couple sixty years away.
I crossed the street. I told Blot to stay where he was and keep watch. I looked both ways. I looked both ways again. As it turned out, they weren’t her things. They were men’s clothes. Heaps of them. Nice things, too, clean-smelling, like rose water. I wondered what my father would have done with a wardrobe like this. He had a couple pairs of wool socks that he washed in the sink. My mother must have had one thousand camisoles. They all looked the same, but she said they were nothing like one another.
There was other stuff too—bottles of pills and sponges and things for taking care of someone sick and old. A seat to go on top of the toilet. I picked up a crumpled red corduroy shirt with snaps at the pockets and showed it to Blot across the street. He gave me the thumbs-up. It undid itself and threw off a stronger smell of lavender. It was for a large man—tall and heavy. I put it down again, just how I’d found it.
I picked up something else—that one item that Victoria had folded so nicely. It was a woman’s blouse, silky and white, with a small yellow stain on the collar. Over the right side of the chest was a huge, gaping tear. Someone had ripped it. It wasn’t done with scissors. Keriah. Bubbie had taught me about that. She’d taught me everything I knew about Judaism, which was basically nothing.
Now Blot came over. He couldn’t help himself.
“What’s the deal with that?” he said. Tears had risen into my throat. I told myself not to get ridiculous. Joseph was still alive. Maybe these weren’t his things. Maybe she’d gotten divorced, never changed the mailbox. Maybe that wasn’t her at all. Maybe it was another Middle Eastern woman in the building. Maybe she wasn’t even Middle Eastern. Maybe this was a ripped shirt. Just that. Why did I always get dramatic?
I hadn’t answered his question and somehow didn’t want to betray her. I didn’t want to cry either.
Just then light poured out on us from above. We looked up. It was Victoria’s apartment. We started to run, but we stopped. She couldn’t have cared less. Mindlessly, she was pawing a blue curtain. She rested her forehead on the window. I squinted to see if her eyes were closed.
I was still holding her shirt.
My whole body filled with sadness. She’d lost him. I told myself it was none of my business. That he could have been the rudest man who ever lived. Or maybe he was alive, knock on wood. Maybe he’d just lost weight. That was all. He was over his sickness. All better now. She was just reorganizing.
For a moment, it occurred to me that I might have it all wrong. I could have made something out of nothing. So I took a deep breath and checked the pill bottles. Each one confirmed it. Joseph Shohet. Joseph Shohet. Joseph Shohet. This wasn’t how I’d imagined it. They were supposed to be a happy, vibrant couple, thrilled to jot down a recipe for me, for my mother.
But Victoria had ripped the shirt down the right side. Her face, the way she’d looked for someone. I was right. I had to be right.
“What?” Blot said. I was trying not to lose it.
I refolded the shirt. I whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t know what else to say.
Blot was going through the things himself now. He lifted up a pill bottle and turned it over in his fingers. “Man,” he said. I could hear the pills shifting and shifting like bones in a coffin. He shook his head.
“I get it,” he said.
We started back toward the subway.
The snow was really coming down now and everything was a version of white—from the watery, pearlized pavement to the thickened branch on the tallest tree, as if all of it was encrusted with day-old fat. The sky was a dirty violet color, like a layer of dust on top.
We crossed the street, and something else not white caught my eye. A pink, laminated flyer, giant and bright, taped to the lamppost. It stood out against everything. I stepped closer and noticed a border of cartoonish dancing forks.
IRAQI JEWISH COOKING CLASSES, it said. TAUGHT BY CHEF VICTORIA. And then, scrawled in thick permanent marker: 203 West 112th Street.
“That’s Victoria’s address,” I said. “Right?”
Suddenly, I wasn’t sure. I checked the street sign: 112th Street, yes. I blew on the flyer, sending shoots of water in every direction. It was her picture too. She wore an outfit that looked more like a delicate arrangement of cabbage leaves than clothes and was holding a jar of spices toward the camera. Someone had told her to smile, I could tell. She was pretending to say Cheese!
Blot was behind me. “Damn,” he said. “It is.” He was nodding intensely, grinning.
The class was on Monday, the sign said. The day after tomorrow. At 7:00 P.M. sharp.
“That’s our in,” he said. “You’re golden.”
Now I saw that flyers were everywhere—fastened to hydrants, trees, a dilapidated For Sale sign. We crossed the street again, back toward her building.
The lights were off again at Victoria’s apartment. Her window rested black and shiny against the warm stone color of the building. I wondered if she was sleeping or if it was impossible to sleep at a time like this.
A few minutes later, we were still there, as Blot was taking down the number for a dog-walking job. A woman walked out of the building. Not Victoria, but the other one. She looked both ways before she descended the stairs. She held one arm out for balance and with the other one she held a large magazine on top of her head, like a shoddy roof. I had the urge to run to her, protect her from falling. It wasn’t clear if she was tiptoeing or just unstable on her feet. She moved like she believed she was being watched, though I was sure she hadn’t seen us. We were in the dark. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she stopped and readjusted her robe. A clump of snow fell from a branch and plopped onto her magazine, and she jumped, making a sound like she’d been terribly offended.
She leaned over the pile of Joseph’s clothing, opened a bag, and plucked up one item and then another, inspecting and then letting each thing fall to the ground, where it stuck like a lily pad. She did this over and over, rhythmically. Gradu
ally, she moved faster and faster, obviously searching for something. She grew frustrated, her movements shorter and more tense. Though it had seemed at first that she was simply perusing, it became clear that she had lost something and was determined to find it. I could see the snow collecting on her head. She attempted to fling her hair dramatically from her face, but the strands were too short and thin and she had to smooth them back with her hands. I noticed how pale she was. I imagined that in the daytime, her skin looked sickly and lined, like moldy fruit. In the streetlight, though, it glistened, like the inside of a McIntosh.
Finally, she found what she was looking for. She stopped everything. I thought I heard her gasp.
“Now what?” Blot started. I touched his arm. Shush.
The woman picked up a sweater and then, as if remembering herself, turned around and looked up toward Victoria’s dark window, dropping it to her side.
She made her way up the stairs, stuffing the sweater into the belt of her robe at the back. It moved side to side with her hips, and one sleeve dangled down, sinister, like the tail of a fickle cat.
“Well, all right, then,” Blot said, as if something definitely wasn’t all right but he didn’t know what. Neither did I.
When we were sure that she wasn’t coming back, we started walking again.
Later, I looked up Joseph Shohet online to see if there was anything about his death. There wasn’t. Earlier, I had done an image search and found a photo of Victoria and Joseph at a Middle Eastern food festival in Brooklyn ten years ago. Now I looked at it again. Of course it was her, the woman we’d seen. Maybe she seemed older now, but it was still her.
In the photo, they looked content, holding hands and with bent elbows so that the knot of their fingers was by their faces. If it’s possible to see conflict in a photo, you couldn’t see it in this one.
Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots Page 11