by Lev Raphael
She was different. She spent a lot of time reading ahead for September; the living room was peppered with her books—but it didn’t really take her away. She answered his questions like she heard them better now. When he asked her why she wanted to do so much work, she told him it was like his piano and he began to understand. Also, the way his mother walked and stood and smiled was so much lighter he was convinced she had fun with all those hard-looking books. Once, when she wasn’t around, he picked through them, careful not to lose her place anywhere, but they were all much too old for him, full of words he could just guess how they sounded but not the meaning.
“Do you want to be a teacher like Daddy?”
She smoothed her hair back with one hand, the other fiddled with a book she opened and closed. She sat so straight in the fat brown chair it looked like a throne.
“I don’t know. I didn’t think so far ahead. Wouldn’t that be something.…”
He talked to Sasha in Rockaway twice on the phone before the end of the school year, feeling sad each time when he hung up, even though sooner and sooner he’d go out to be with his uncle the whole summer. The last Friday did finally come and Stefan wanted to pack his things for the next day’s drive before he ate dinner.
“There’s time,” his mother assured him, making him sit down at the table. His father was at school doing late work and Stefan chattered freely about going.
“… and there’s a piano there so I can keep playing.”
“I know. You’ve told me. I saw.”
“Can we pack now?” Stefan pressed after dinner.
“No dessert?”
He raced to his room before her, flung open the closet and began pulling things.
“Wait, why don’t you sit there and help?”
So she packed for him, asking sometimes what he wanted, neatly folding a huge pile of clothes into a not very big brown suitcase. Into another smaller one she placed books and Scotty and anything else he remembered.
“You can always call when you need something,” his mother said matter-of-factly and Stefan suddenly felt sad to be leaving, even though his parents said they’d come visit. He kind of wished his mother could come for more than a visit, but she had lots of work to do, and it would be better just him and Sasha, Stefan guessed. When she finished he wondered if it was dumb to take Scotty, and was thinking it over when his mother stood the bags side by side near his door and went out to the living room.
She was always reading now—all kinds of books followed her around the house—as soon as she ended one she began another, and sometimes she read a few at the same time. This particularly impressed Stefan, who didn’t know you could do that; he read his books straight through, even if he didn’t like them: it was “good discipline” his father said. He wished he was grown up enough so his mother could talk about her books to him like she did to that new friend of hers, Leo, who phoned her sometimes.
His father didn’t like discussing books when he wasn’t at school and didn’t have to. Stefan thought also that maybe his daddy didn’t like his mommy’s books, because he saw his father pick up one from a chair once like it was nasty and put it on the floor when he sat down. But Sasha said his father was always irritable at the end of a semester.
Stefan had trouble sleeping most of the night—he kept waking and thinking he needed something but didn’t know what and in the morning he ate breakfast only because he had to. The food didn’t look any good at all. His eyes felt scratchy and in the car he fell asleep, so he didn’t know if his mother and father talked any more or less than at the kitchen table. His parents both wore white; it was like being at the beach already.
All the houses on Mrs. Mannion’s street were wide and old with cracked steps and bushes; he almost didn’t remember which one it was, and then they stopped in front of a green one with a gray roof, white shutters. “This one is Sasha’s,” he thought, scanning the porch. Stefan waited until they were parked, and even then he was suddenly reluctant to leave the car, he didn’t know why.
He followed his parents up the broad high stairs, embarrassed, confused, almost like it was his first day at school. There were no lights on and it looked real dark inside, unless that was just because of the sun being so bright. His father knocked twice and called hello.
Maybe it’s a mistake, Stefan thought. Maybe he’s not here.
His mother looked down and up the hot deserted street. “Sasha?” His father opened the screen door and stepped inside. Overhead Stefan heard some noise and Sasha appeared at the top of the narrow stairs.
“I fell asleep,” he called, grinning. “Sorry.”
The little dark hallway was too crowded for all four of them; Sasha led them into a large fancy living room that was so thickly rugged and curtained and planted Stefan felt he was inside a pillow. He sat on the plainest-looking chair; it wasn’t next to any little table full of stuff he might break or knock over.
His father told Sasha all about the ride: which roads they took, where traffic was bad, where it was good, how long they’d been driving, even about an accident Stefan must’ve slept through.
His mother sat on a nearby chair which was all carved and red, nodding at Sasha and at him too, but he guessed she was really thinking about one of her books. The room was packed with all kinds of pictures and lamps and boxes like it was a store, but his mother didn’t seem to notice.
Sasha was wearing white too and already had gone darker from the sun. Stefan sat and listened to the men talk, full of this new room, of the beginning of his vacation—and of seeing Sasha again.
“Why don’t you try the piano?” Sasha asked him. Stefan started.
“Where is it?”
“Down there,” Sasha pointed, and Stefan trotted out to find it, stopping when he remembered where it was.
The piano stood in a bedroom. Stefan stared and stared at the shiny white piano opposite the large pink-covered bed. He couldn’t go in—it looked too private. He stood in the doorway upset; how could he ever come into this room and touch the piano? It wouldn’t be right. He turned away; there was something about this that made him feel all wriggly.
“I didn’t hear anything,” his father said as Stefan hovered in the doorway, embarrassed.
Stefan looked down at the rug. “I forgot it’s in somebody’s room.”
“That’s all right.” Sasha smiled. “I go in there all the time.” Sasha rose, but his father insisted that instead of listening to music they walk to the beach.
“I’m tired,” Stefan groaned, making himself yawn.
“Let him stay—he has all summer.” Sasha ruffled his hair. So he went upstairs to the room that’d be his and when he heard the screen door and then the creaking stairs, he realized that he was very tired. He went right into the combination bedroom-kitchen and curled up on the bed.
“We’re going now,” he heard his mother say, and it was dark in the room; he almost couldn’t see her.
“We went for a long walk,” she said vaguely, sitting on the bed. “Very long.”
Stefan wanted to say something about the work she was going back to at home, something that would help her.
“I miss you,” he said. “I mean—” He thought he was going to say “I’ll miss you.”
His mother leaned down and gave him a quick good-bye kiss and then left the room. He followed her out down to the porch, where Sasha and his father sat in blue-painted high rocking chairs.
“Good,” his father slapped the chair arms and stood. “It’s a long ride.”
Stefan hesitated and then moved to his father.
“Don’t get sunburned,” his father nodded at him.
And they were gone—the car just went straight down the street and turned right and that was it.
“You must be hungry,” Sasha said. “Mrs. Mannion made us a nice dinner.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived,” Mrs. Mannion said at the kitchen table, motioning him to sit. Stefan did, but he had trouble looking at the m
eat loaf she dished onto his plate: she was so pretty and pink—like her bedroom—or a toy—not like a real lady. Even her voice was pink.
Sasha dug in and Stefan tried eating; once he started it was easy and soon more interesting than Mrs. Mannion, or almost.
“You must feel free to practice,” she remarked after a short silence, “Whenever you like.”
Stefan coughed.
“Your uncle does,” she said with a smile at Sasha.
He watched Mrs. Mannion eat; there was something real slow about her. He’d thought she’d be old and skinny—somehow he didn’t remember her as blonde, and big where women were.
“Mr. Mannion used to play for me before retiring,” she said after another pause. She went back to her meat loaf.
Stefan flushed—it made him funny inside still to think of where the piano was.
“He’s dead,” Sasha mouthed to him, and Stefan was more interested in Mrs. Mannion; he’d never known anybody with a dead husband before.
“I enjoy when your uncle plays,” she said, bringing her napkin up to her mouth and making little dabs there. She rose with her plate and Sasha’s and sort of drifted across to the dishwasher. Stefan tried to finish quick.
“Don’t rush,” Sasha leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms.
“Perhaps a nice sit-down before dessert?” Mrs. Mannion suggested, and they proceeded out to the porch.
He liked Mrs. Mannion, even though she was a little strange. She called him “my dear” like it was his name. She got up real early, at five o’clock, to do exercises, she said, and went for long walks he didn’t know where, and was always lying down for naps.
“It’s hard work staying healthy,” Sasha winked.
Mrs. Mannion didn’t much like the beach; except for the exercises, she was very quiet, came upstairs only when Sasha asked her, so he and his uncle were often alone. Once he got used to the sun, Stefan spend hours every day on the beach, making sand castles—grown-ups were always coming over to help and he thought they had more fun than he did—swimming (Sasha had taught him last summer), and just lying on his blanket or chair. Sometimes he and Sasha went on the boardwalk to eat junk and play lots of games so they could win some kind of prize. They were right near a library so he had plenty of books to drag to the beach or out onto the porch; his favorite was The Three Musketeers, though—his own copy. He read it twice more the first weeks he was there.
There were other kids on the block but nobody asked him to play, and Sasha was enough. He practiced now every day and he was used to where the piano stood; having one whenever he wanted was the best part of being there with Sasha. The sound wasn’t very good—it was almost like there was sand inside, but after a while that didn’t matter.
Sasha seemed different here, besides not being so white anymore; his uncle was quieter, like someone who’d been tired out or sick and needed rest real bad. On the beach Sasha could lie stretched, big and silent, for more than an hour without moving, and when they went shopping with Mrs. Mannion or down the boardwalk or sat on the porch at night, Sasha said very little.
Maybe there wasn’t much to say since most days were alike. One night they were out on the porch listening to the radio inside which wasn’t much louder than the buzz of flies and things. The porch light wasn’t bright enough to read by, but Mrs. Mannion could see enough to knit (she was always stopping to start something new and then stopping that)—she knitted as slowly as she rocked, almost like she was asleep. Sasha was asleep—it was easy out here at night with every sound as dim and far-off and peaceful as the ocean. When the phone rang Sasha jerked up and went inside. The screen door was something else Stefan thought he would never get used to: even with oiled hinges it screaked and thwacked like it wanted to catch you, and at first it’d annoyed and almost scared him, but now he didn’t mind.
“Come talk to your parents,” Sasha called, but Stefan didn’t hurry; he could feel Mrs. Mannion’s long glance over the top of her knitting spectacles as he crossed to the door.
Sasha smiled handing him the phone but Stefan couldn’t. He told both of them he was fine. Sasha was fine, and the beach too. They were coming the next Saturday—all day.
“Don’t you want them to visit?” Sasha asked, smiling curiously when Stefan hung up.
Stefan couldn’t really answer; he did and he didn’t-—everything was so good just like it was. Even Scotty looked less faded. He blushed.
“I understand,” Sasha nodded.
Stefan wished he did.
“Your mother,” Mrs. Mannion said, when he was back on the porch, “Your mother is a beautiful woman.”
Stefan felt pleased and embarrassed at the compliment.
“She is,” Sasha agreed.
But Stefan thought Mrs. Mannion was maybe more beautiful.
“Very,” Sasha said, like he was wondering why.
It was not so bad when his parents came; he rushed down the stairs to them and knocked into his mother. Her white hat blew off and danced down the street; he and his mother chased it, laughing, but he caught it.
“Thank you, sir.” She took it from him with a little bow, her face red. And then she thanked him in Polish—“Dziekuje”—which sounded so pretty and soft to him: dzehnkooyeh.
“Your hair’s—”
“Different, yes—isn’t it pretty this way? Almost like Mrs. Kennedy.”
He nodded, following her back to the car where his father stood looking impatient.
His mother had Mrs. Mannion show her all over the house, even the cellar, and asked about everything like she’d never been there before or it was some kind of special joke she had all by herself.
They had a very small lunch. Sasha and his father talked about money for something new in the car and his mother and Mrs. Mannion talked about dresses.
Upstairs, when he was done changing, he went to knock on the bathroom door to see if his mother was in her bathing suit and ready. The door was open a little, and he saw his father pushing her against the sink, trying to kiss her. She slapped him and Stefan backed off, ran down the stairs feeling sick.
It was good they didn’t have to share a room, because Stefan had trouble enough after that Saturday falling asleep by himself. He lay in his bed listening to a tree that leaned near his window hiss and scratch; it was sometimes louder than all the things cricking and croaking at night in the little backyard. After a while in the dark he thought he could make out the wallpaper pattern even down to the last porthole on the sailboat that flowed in red-gold hundreds across each wall, and the refrigerator’s cranky groans began to sound like a person’s. He lay on his back, legs tangled in the sheets, smacking away the mosquitoes who got through his cloud of night repellent, feeling ugly about his parents. It felt like when he couldn’t stop looking at a man or woman without a hand or leg; his father had told him never to stare but he always did when he saw a broken person.
When his father called a week later to say they were coming out again on Saturday morning Stefan realized the summer was beginning to be over: he and Sasha had a little more than a month left before he’d have to go back to school, have to give up the beach and the piano downstairs and reading books on the porch before lunch and the way ice cream tasted on the beach after he’d been really thirsty. When he tried thinking of his street in New York it came to him all blurry like through an old screen window. It would be hot there and not clean and quiet. He’d miss the huge Saint Bernard next door that Mrs. Mannion had told him found a black kitten under a car and brought it home “very gently.” Now it carried the kitten around the honeysuckle-framed porch in and out of the sun—the heaving brown-and-white bulk with a scrap of black at its mouth. Stefan had visited there once or twice and watched the dog lick and lick its friend with a pink tongue as big as Stefan’s hands, bigger, and twice the size of the kitten. Stefan would miss watching the kitten wander around the Saint Bernard’s back, stumbling and confused.
He didn’t ever want to go home. Sasha now and then said th
ings like “It will be good to return,” with a kind of face like he’d just smelled something tasty, but Stefan didn’t answer. He read The Three Musketeers once more before his parents came. That Saturday morning he felt something peculiar when all four of them were upstairs drinking lemonade. His father looked all flushed and angry; they’d had a flat tire, and his father’s white shirt stuck to him in ugly wet blotches. Sasha offered to lend him a shirt but his father wouldn’t change, like he wanted to be uncomfortable.
“You don’t write,” his father said, holding the tall ice-full glass against his cheek.
“I call,” Stefan said lamely. How could he explain what happened when he put the white tablet on the table and found a sharp pencil, how when he thought of things to say—like he went to the library yesterday—he sort of dreamed about them, sitting there awake, and forgot the waiting page.
“Well I want you to write me a letter. Anyone can call, it’s too easy. You should learn how to write.”
“I can write,” Stefan sulked.
“Well then, write us a letter—I want you to promise.” Stefan looked at Sasha who was near the window and glancing outside at the tiny backyard which was Mrs. Mannion’s private place. His mother sat behind Stefan on the bed, reading a magazine she’d brought along.
“Why make a fuss? It’s so hot,” his mother murmured. Stefan waited for more, but the hot silence didn’t break. Finally Sasha said, “Shall we go to the beach?”
Stefan didn’t like the beach on weekends; sometimes it got so crowded he couldn’t find Sasha when he came out of the water, but wandered in the blaze of umbrellas and blankets and beach chairs, looking for him. He’d be too embarrassed to yell the way little kids and even some grown-ups did. The last time his parents were here and he kept looking for them, his father said “Did you get lost?” when Stefan finally got to them. He didn’t want to have that happen today.