Winter Eyes

by Lev Raphael

  “It’s okay,” Sasha kept telling him when he made mistakes, and Stefan didn’t mind so much that his parents were right there. He didn’t know why, but his mother had taken the bus up with him and his father for this lesson. She had on a soft yellow dress that made her look pretty and young, and his father wore a light summer suit and light shoes—it was almost a kind of holiday.

  “That was very nice,” his mother said quietly when the lesson finished, smoothing her hair. Stefan flushed with pride.

  “He’s good, Sasha,” his father added. This was too much for Stefan, who wanted to hug everybody and laugh. Instead, he held a music book tightly, almost crushing the pages together, and moved to sit in Sasha’s chair.

  “Sasha?” his father asked, and Sasha began to play something Stefan didn’t know—it was ugly, but not really, with a stubborn melody: nervous sort of music. Stefan watched Sasha’s still, closed face, while he glowed with praise, with the joy of having played again. To have his parents both there with him when he thought he’d never see them again was—

  He didn’t know what it was, except big enough to keep him from thinking why really his father had disappeared those few days. It would be nasty to ask now that everything was good again, nasty even to think about it.

  “I’ll know when I grow up,” Stefan promised himself, pushing the problem as far away as he could.

  Sasha finished; the piece was by a Russian composer whose name Stefan couldn’t say—it almost sounded made up.

  “Let’s go have lunch,” Sasha suggested, and they were soon out in the sun, strolling along to a nearby Italian restaurant. Stefan walked ahead; he kept turning to see where they were, usually not far. His mother walked in the middle.

  At the dark crowded place—it was too dark for Stefan—Sasha told a long funny story about a pupil’s mother who wanted the girl to play harder pieces than she ever could. Sasha had tried explaining to the woman who kept saying, “But she’s very myoosical.”

  His father talked a lot about problems in his department at school. Stefan didn’t get most of that, so he just ate his salad and soup and looked around at other families, other kids, and then dug into the main course, which looked a little wet, but Stefan wasn’t going to complain. His mother hardly said anything, a little like she was giving all of them the silent treatment. She didn’t look mean, though, just quiet.

  Stefan didn’t like it that after dinner Sasha didn’t come home with them—he wished Sasha could always be at their house. They walked home since it was a nice night, cool, and lots of people were out. His mother was between him and his father and Stefan kind of thought they were taking care of her, but he didn’t know how or if it was true. His father said things to her in different languages; she just brought out yes’s and no’s and not much more.

  “She talked so much last week, at night,” Stefan couldn’t help thinking, looking up at her still, even face; he wondered why she didn’t say anything. Once, when they crossed a street, she took his hand—he was so surprised he pulled it away, and then felt bad, and let her take it. And he walked a little closer to his mother.

  When he was getting ready for bed, his father came in, turning down the radio.

  His father took the desk chair and sat on it, looking as big as a judge.

  Stefan sat on the bed, clutching his pajamas—he was embarrassed to change in front of his father, whose eyes were now squinty, like that nasty Mrs. Lewis who’d stopped him on the way to the bathroom last year in first grade.

  “Why do you think I went away?” his father asked suddenly. Stefan caught sight of Scotty on the desk behind his father and thought of the cuff link inside. He shrugged.

  “No, really,” his father said, leaning forward.

  Stefan couldn’t help shrinking back.

  “What did your mother tell you?”

  “Nothing.”

  That seemed to surprise his father, who gazed off into a corner of the room. When their eyes met it almost hurt Stefan.

  “You don’t know what it’s like.”

  Stefan gulped, afraid of what was coming.

  “Before you were born I almost thought.…” His father shook himself, said good night and left without asking what Sasha had told him, which was a lot—it would’ve been hard to lie without getting caught. His father had a way of just staring if he didn’t believe what you said, just staring until you told the truth. But his father didn’t scare him tonight the way he used to before he went away—Stefan didn’t know why that was; his mother did scare him, though, because she was different.

  Stefan went to bed after he turned off the radio, wondering if his mother was still talking to herself at night, and what she said.

  Dinner Monday night was pretty quiet until his mother announced: “I want to go to school.”

  Stefan looked up. His school was closed now; he didn’t understand.

  “School?” his father asked, eyeing her.

  “I don’t do anything—I want to do something.”

  Stefan thought of how she was always straightening and dusting and washing.

  There was a silence and then his father said, with a funny smile: “But you have a degree from—From back home.”

  “I’ll get another,” she shot back, chin up. “Well…what do you think, Stefan?”

  He didn’t know what to think, and almost said that to test how much courage he had.

  “See?” Stefan’s father said. “Your son is surprised too.”

  “It’s neat,” Stefan mustered, and his mother nodded fiercely. Dinner went on just as quiet as before except once or twice his father muttered “school” under his breath like it was a joke. Stefan pictured his mother at a desk like his with a whole lot of other ladies—but they’d be too big to fit. Stefan stifled a giggle, pretending it was a cough, and then really did start coughing so bad he had to get some water.

  Why would you go to school if you didn’t have to, unless you were a teacher?—and sometimes he didn’t think his daddy liked going there either, even though he didn’t have to do homework, real homework; looking at somebody else’s work couldn’t be as hard as having your own to do. And his father didn’t even have to go every day or stay all day either—Stefan was in school more.

  If his mother went to school she wouldn’t be home as much. Maybe she didn’t want to be.

  Suddenly Stefan felt real scared—what if his daddy had gone away because of him? And his mother too? What if it was all his fault what happened? He’d never thought that before; it could be why everyone was so strange, why Sasha didn’t tell him the truth.

  “But I didn’t do anything,” Stefan whispered.

  Stefan couldn’t concentrate at all the next lesson. Sasha corrected him very patiently, but after only about twenty minutes. Sasha put a hand down on his.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Sasha’s hand was so big; Stefan wished he were big, so he could play without any mistakes and people wouldn’t lie to him or tell him to wait for anything.

  “You’re shaking,” Sasha said, putting an arm around his shoulders. “What happened? Is something—” Sasha hesitated, “—something wrong at home?”

  “He doesn’t like me,” Stefan muttered.

  “What?”

  “That’s why he left—he doesn’t like me.” It sounded so much like the truth Stefan wanted to cry, but that didn’t make you feel better, and only babies cried anyway.

  “Why do you say that? Come, let’s sit on the couch and you can tell me.”

  “The lesson—”

  “You can learn that line next week. Now tell me.”

  Sasha’s big pale face was so kind, like one big smile. It came back to Stefan how once he used to think Sasha was like a magician, mysterious, but he didn’t think that now, not really.

  “That’s why he left,” Stefan insisted.

  “He loves you.”

  “Who says?”

  Sasha frowned. “I say.”

  “He never does.”


  “Your father isn’t like that; he wouldn’t say it.”

  “He says other stuff—lots.”

  Sasha shook his head. “It’s different to say you love someone. Harder.”

  “But he’s my daddy.”

  “I know,” Sasha nodded.

  “And he went away.” Stefan felt real nasty, like he’d stuck a stick down an ant hole to break it all up.

  “People have to go away sometimes. Love has nothing to do with it.…”

  Stefan stared at Sasha until Sasha glanced away.

  “And Mommy’s going too,” Stefan produced, triumphant. “She’s going to school.”

  Sasha smiled.

  “No, really,” Stefan pressed.

  “When?”

  Stefan shrugged. “She didn’t say, but she is.” He was sure his mother would do it, though he didn’t know why yet; her face had been too steady when she mentioned it, like when something hurt and you didn’t want anyone to know.

  “I wonder why she—” Sasha broke off and went to make tea and get chocolate milk for Stefan.

  His mother was going to take a test to see if they would let her in—not at his father’s school but another one downtown. It was still strange to Stefan that anyone would want to go to school when they’d already been there, but his mother said lots of people did it, so he guessed they knew why. Maybe when you were older, fun was different than when you were still in school. He hoped he would never want to do it, though. “Once is enough,” he’d told Scotty.

  His mother was talking more—she had all sorts of papers and booklets she even read at dinner, read to them, but mostly to his father who explained whatever she didn’t understand, which was hardly anything compared to the stuff Stefan missed: like “credit.” He thought that was when you didn’t pay for something, but it was also what they gave you for taking courses; maybe it was like a pass to take more, like sending in jar labels to get a cup with a neat picture on it. The questions he asked seemed to annoy his father, who even said once, “Please—we’re figuring this out,” so Stefan only asked his mother when they were alone.

  Sasha brought his chocolate and some cookies.

  “What will she study?” Sasha asked, settling into his chair.

  “School, I guess.” He hoped she didn’t have any mean teachers like Miss Zimmer. Were teachers ever mean to grown-up students? Maybe they couldn’t be.

  “Will she take your father’s classes?”

  “She’s going to another school.”

  Sasha fell silent.

  Stefan downed his milk and fiddled some with the glass while Sasha sipped his tea.

  “Well,” Sasha brought out, smiling. “I think this is a good thing. It will give her something to do.”

  That word again—why did people have to “do” things more than they did already?

  “You must help her,” Sasha announced.

  “Me?”

  His uncle nodded very slowly. “She’ll be nervous, and there’ll be all that work she’s not used to.”

  “But she works at home.”

  Sasha laughed. “It’s not the same, you know that. What about cleaning your room and doing arithmetic homework? Aren’t they different?”

  “They’re both yucky.”

  Sasha came over the night his mother went to take her exam to keep Stefan company. It was beginning to be vaguely reassuring to Stefan that adults had to take tests and worry about them too, just like kids. Even Sasha and his father were nervous and it wasn’t their exam. His mother was quiet and a little sick-looking when she left for the bus; his father had a night class and would be bringing her home.

  So he and Sasha watched TV, Sasha looking at his watch now and then to say things like: “She’s just starting,” and Stefan felt almost like he was with his mother—tests scared him too. Sometimes he even went all blank and didn’t know anything he could put on his paper.

  “Of course she’ll pass,” Sasha assured him. “She was a wonderful student back home, she went to the university before—And our schools were much harder than yours here. Your father says so, and he would know.”

  Harder? Stefan quailed; if schools were harder in Poland he bet the teachers were meaner.

  Later his mother came in talking: “It wasn’t bad—it really wasn’t bad,” she kept saying, perched on the arm of the couch, hands smoothing her skirt, straightening the collar of her blouse: restless, excited. Her face was as red as if she’d been in a cold place and her eyes were very big.

  “It was an essay—” Here she went on to tell about the test in detail, hardly any of which Stefan understood, but he knew from her voice and hands and eyes that she was happy.

  His father stood in the arched living room doorway, smileless, looking very serious in his blue three-piece suit.

  Sasha leaned to take his mother’s hand. “So it was good?”

  His mother grinned and it sounded to Stefan like what she said next was the same as before.

  His father went to change.

  “Are you thirsty?” Stefan asked; he always was after a test. She smiled and he went to the kitchen to get iced tea; he hoped this was what Sasha meant by “You must help her”—would he have to vacuum too and things like that? When he brought her the tea she was still on the couch arm, but saying something different.

  “….and of course the coffee wasn’t very good (thank you) but I thought if I could make myself sit down and actually drink it I would relax and he said, ‘Are you taking the exam too?’ and he was even more nervous—he couldn’t drink anything.” She shook her head, sipped from the glass.

  “Not even bad coffee?” Sasha murmured.

  “Not even that.”

  Stefan sat further from his mother than before; she was so strange tonight—all speeded up and beautiful, and it awed him.

  “He told me how important it was for him to pass and come back to college to go on to business school and he was so nervous it worked on me much faster than the coffee because I had to be less nervous than he.” She glowed now. “And I did. I helped him be less nervous too.”

  Stefan wondered who she was talking about.

  “He’s very nice,” his mother added in a different voice—one he didn’t know.

  “Who is?” His father walked in and stood near her, put a hand on her shoulder.

  “I should go,” Sasha said, adding a kiss and a “Congratulations.”

  “Who’s nice?”

  “Leo. A student I have met.” She rose to walk Sasha to the door. Stefan followed; the good-byes took a long time, he thought. When Sasha finally left, his mother turned from the door looking closer to the way she usually did: pale, quiet.

  Stefan tried to think of something “You must help her” to say, but nothing came because his father stood there in the foyer like a guard with a gun, so Stefan just hugged her real quick when he said good night. He didn’t hug his father.

  It was a good thing for his mother if she was so happy, but not a good thing for his father; Stefan couldn’t tell why, unless his daddy thought she might be going to school to get away from them.

  He knew that every summer for years Sasha had been going to Rockaway where he was the only roomer in a house near the beach owned by a woman whose husband had left her a piano she didn’t play. The piano was small, Stefan remembered from a day visit last year, and a little buzzy, but Sasha didn’t seem to mind giving up his Baldwin.

  “It’s a relief not to have lessons. All that running around.” Sasha told him the three months off were perfect; in the first he got used to the change, in the second enjoyed it, and in the third waited to go back. Sasha returned brown and shiny; Stefan remembered one summer—he must’ve been little—when he was afraid to say hello to Sasha because he looked so different.

  “Won’t you miss me?” Stefan asked near the end of his last lesson before Sasha left for the summer. The ride to the beach seemed hours long to Stefan, long and hot, through places he didn’t know that just made him tired, and last year the
y only went twice.

  Sasha shook his head. “I won’t miss you at all.” Stefan didn’t know what to make of the grim words. “Because you’re coming to stay with me.”

  “What!” He grabbed Sasha’s arm.

  Sasha nodded. “As soon as school is finished.”

  They didn’t really go anywhere summers, except for little times, because his father taught during the summer too, and Stefan had envied kids who wrote about places when they had “What I did last summer.” His father said in the summer you could “take advantage of the city,” but to Stefan it was mostly nasty and hot, and even though he liked museums, they sometimes made him tired because there was too much to look at and not enough places to sit down, and the bathrooms were scary and far away.

  Sasha stood to turn up the small air conditioner.

  “It’s not a joke?” Stefan had to ask.

  “No joke. Your parents think it’s a good thing.”

  Sasha had two rooms at Mrs. Mannion’s, so it would just be him and Sasha all summer.

  “It’s like a birthday,” he breathed.

  Sasha closed the piano lid. “People have many birthdays,” he said. It sounded so nice Stefan didn’t ask what it meant.

  He could hardly wait for school to end; he tried doing his work faster to make it go quick but he couldn’t; the days were sticky, and as annoying as flies you couldn’t catch. There were lots of fights at school and kids forgot their homework; Miss Zimmer even yelled at them once for not listening—that just made things hotter. His father was in a bad mood most of the time; his father would come in from class pulling off his clothes as he headed for the bedroom.

  “Why doesn’t Daddy take off his tie before he gets home if it’s so hot?”

  His mother looked up from a book list. “I don’t know,” she said. “He doesn’t.”

  Looking at his father drag at his tie, forehead dark and shiny, made Stefan uncomfortable. He tried staying out of his daddy’s way without making it look like that’s what he was doing, just in case his father got mad and decided not to let him go stay with Sasha. Stefan was afraid to choose anything he wanted to take—it might be bad luck, and also he didn’t know how, really. He guessed his mother would do it when he had to go.