by Anna Solomon
He was sorry. He saw her winging, a cormorant, and he saw her standing, a stump at the edge of the far woods. His vision seemed at once to contract and grow stronger, so that he saw, at his feet, through a pool of water gathered in the pink crease of the rock, how the pink was made of white and gray and red, how the individual nubbles of white grew upon the gray and the gray upon the red. Susannah. He could not look up again to find her everywhere and nowhere. He had withheld affection from her, thinking it would toughen her up. He had feared if he loved her fully that her grief would become his own.
“Josiah!”
He scanned the water again, turning wildly, his sun-bleached eyes leaping with worms. He parsed out wind on the surface from a woman breaking through. Nothing.
“Joe!”
He felt mocked. He spun to face the trees. Had Caleb been watching him all this time?
“Over here, dummy!”
Susannah, out beyond the dock. Treading water. Waving. She was not coming from any direction he had expected her to come from. She must have swum straight across the bay, all the way to Crane Beach or Hog Island. More than a mile each way, and against the wind all the way back! Josiah started to laugh, a helpless, choking, hysterical laughter that heaved him forward, elbows to knees, then knees to rock. It took all his strength to lift his face to her, to lift an arm and wave. He was too pained by his laughter to call out. Susannah dropped under the water, stopping his heart. Then she was swimming toward him, her sharp, fine elbows pointing to the sky.
Thirty-two
It was Lucy’s idea that the children should use Mrs. Greely’s piano for their lessons. Emma did not want them going to Mrs. Cohn’s house, and besides, transporting them there would have required a coach, so a deal was struck: each Saturday Mrs. Cohn would come to Leverett Street and, on the Steinway Mr. Greely had given Mrs. Greely as a wedding gift, teach the children and Mrs. Greely how to play. The piano was a black-painted upright with vines carved into its front, through which you could see the hammers strike and retreat.
The first Saturday, Lucy sat beside Mrs. Greely on Mrs. Greely’s cat hair–covered sofa as Jeffrey made his first tentative pokes at the keys. She had seen Mrs. Greely only once, on her way to the woods one night. Mrs. Greely had been leaning out an upstairs window without any clothes on, her breasts swinging like sinkers. Lucy had run. But up close, apart from a jiggle in her chin and her long white hair, the woman did not appear crazy: her skin was smooth and pink, her cheeks almost plump, her eyes sparkling. After Jeffrey went Liam, then Janie, then Maggie, then Anne, and all the way down to Joshua, who giggled as Mrs. Cohn showed him how to hold his wrists. Lucy winced, waiting for him to be admonished. It was her turn next. But Mrs. Cohn giggled back, and Lucy, bewildered, jealous, went outside to the porch, where she found Emma sitting by herself on the top step, her back to the music, like a guard dog.
“I don’t want my lesson,” Lucy said.
Emma looked up. “Are you sure?”
“I don’t think I’ll be any good at it.”
Emma nodded. She looked surprised, and also, Lucy could tell, pleased. Lucy sat down next to her. And so it went. During the fourth lesson, from their spot on the porch, Lucy and Emma listened to Janie, who had a natural talent, it seemed—already she was playing something recognizable as a song. It was almost October, the shadows purpling across Mrs. Greely’s cluttered yard, the flame-colored leaves of sugar maples drifting steadily down from the woods. Mrs. Cohn had had the piano tuned and it sounded so nice Lucy regretted, a little, not taking the lessons herself. She might be a natural, given her resemblance to Mrs. Cohn in almost every other way. She handed Emma one of the pears Mrs. Cohn had brought with her that morning, and bit into another one herself. Emma had told Lucy the story now, of the night they found her in the orchard. Still, Lucy saw her go pale when Mrs. Cohn lifted the sacks of fruit from the trunk of her uncle’s car. Mrs. Cohn had been learning to drive so she could make the trip to Lanesville by herself. “They’re overripe,” she apologized, setting bag after bag on the ground. “I forgot about them this year.”
“Sweet,” Emma said now, as juice dripped down her forearm into the sleeve of her dress. “Too sweet.”
Lucy nodded. The pears were too sweet, and a little mealy, but they would make good perry, she hoped. She peeled skin from hers with her teeth, and chewed that for a while before biting into the juicy part. Slowly, she made her way around the fruit like this, before she spoke the words she’d been rehearsing all morning. “Mrs. Cohn’s parents want to meet me.”
Emma wiped her arms on her skirt. She faltered with the right one—it hadn’t broken, but was badly bruised. “I guess that’s not surprising.”
Lucy waited. A loud, dissonant chord came from inside. Mrs. Greely.
Emma squinted into the yard. “Would you like to meet them?”
Lucy shrugged, her blood pounding.
“You can.”
Again Lucy shrugged. She thought she would cry if she started to talk. She couldn’t have said why. She wasn’t old enough yet to know that having choices could be as hard as not having them. She did want to meet her grandparents, of course she did. How could Emma not know that? Lucy squeezed the pear and it fell instantly apart, mush oozing through her fingers. In moments like this, Emma’s grip on Lucy made Lucy want to escape her, too. Last week, in Emma’s book, Lucy had found the address for Peter, a post office box in Quebec City, and, with the help of the postmistress, sent a postcard (Are you still their? Your sister Lucy) but immediately after she wondered if the postmistress would mention it to Emma and then she realized, if Peter wrote back, that Emma would see his response first. And she might show Roland, which would defeat the whole exercise. What are you, planning to go to Cah-nah-dah? Ha.
And just to send the postcard had cost a penny, so she was even further now from her ticket to Quebec.
Emma squinted into the yard. She gazed up at the trees. She turned at the sound of a chipmunk. She looked everywhere but at Lucy.
“I do. I want to go,” Lucy said. “I haven’t had any grandparents,” she added, meaning it as a kind of excuse or apology but hearing, as it came out, how it might hurt Emma further. Emma got letters from her own mother once a month, but none of her children had ever met her. Lucy wiped the mess she’d made of her pear on the underside of Mrs. Greely’s stair and Emma didn’t scold her. She didn’t seem to notice, or even to have heard what Lucy had said. But she had. Emma was thinking about how for so long she had let herself believe that she had saved Lucy from her beginnings—she had taken the girl’s maturity personally, felt deserving of her peculiar contentment. But Lucy was no happier than anyone else. She must have known, even before she saw Beatrice Cohn, that she had been abandoned, unwanted. If she had seemed happy, it was out of desperation. If she had been protective of Emma it was so that she would be protected. Her extraordinary love was her need.
Emma threw what was left of her own pear into the trees, then said, “I shouldn’t have done that. That was very rude.”
“To Mrs. Cohn?” Lucy asked.
“Oh. No, to Mrs. Greely.”
Which gave Lucy an excuse to slip off and look for the pear, which she pretended took a long time, which was plausible because the ground was buried in leaves.
Thirty-three
Lillian brought three gifts. First, a trio of rings her own mother had given her, not the finest pieces but they would mean something, she hoped, and they sparkled like a young girl should want, one ruby, one emerald, one sapphire, each with a tiny diamond at its center. The bands were gold and skinny, good for young fingers that didn’t puff or swell. When Lillian’s father had given them to her mother after she closed her shop, Lillian had thought, Why bother now? Why not give her something when she could still appreciate it, wear it out to parties? She was partially right—her mother had lived only two more years—but mostly wrong, she understood now, not only becaus
e her father hadn’t had the money before that time but because he hadn’t yet felt the need to give them. Last week, in the office of her analyst, Dr. M., Lillian had come to the realization that gifts were mostly for the people who gave them.
During her first session, lying on his couch, Lillian had waited for Dr. M. to tell her something. She had grown impatient. It seemed he should have answers. But by now, her fourth visit, she was used to the fact that he mostly asked questions, which she then tried her best to answer. It turned out she knew a lot about her own life, which shouldn’t have surprised her, she supposed, but did, which was another thing, perhaps, to discuss with Dr. M. But for now she was agonizing over what to give the girl. It was nearly her first thought when Henry told her. A granddaughter! The details about pear trees and robbers slipped right past her. A gift! Might a dress be more appropriate than jewelry? Or maybe a beautiful box, to hold trinkets? Dr. M. interrupted her to ask, “Is it possible with these gifts that there is something else you mean to say?”
She could not think how to answer his question. She went on to describe her mother’s rings, and in describing them to decide they were right. But later, it struck her that Dr. M. was wrong. She didn’t mean to say anything. She meant to change the girl in some way, leave a trace of herself, a mark.
This was the sort of thing she wasn’t sure she even wanted to know about herself. It led to all the dresses she’d given Bea, the hairpieces and stockings and assorted undergarments she likely never wore.
Lillian had not told Henry about Dr. M. She was fully clothed on his couch, of course—though she had wondered, the first time, she could not deny wondering. She was a woman, he was a man, here was a couch, he gestured for her to lie down. It was impossible to know what was expected of her! But that was not the point. The point was money, or rather Henry’s way of thinking about money: Either you bought a thing with your money or you saved it. If you paid for a service, it should be necessary, or at least measurable in some way—school for Bea, Fainwright for Bea, the hair salon for Lillian, who was too old for all the rest. If Lillian wanted to fix her nose, as she’d been talking about since the war, Henry would pay for that. But how could she argue that going to Dr. M. was necessary? She wasn’t clearly troubled. What proof would she have that it had worked? In Dr. M.’s office on Clarendon Street, amid the heavy furniture, behind the heavy door, reclining on his couch, Lillian forgot to hold her stomach in. She entered a loose, woozy state, as if she could be anywhere, anyone. This sensation crept up on her outside their sessions, too, Dr. M.’s baritone singing into her thoughts, But why? Why did you lie to the women at the club? Is that really so? And what is it you dream?
The second gift was from Estelle. Estelle had been unsurprised that Lillian and Henry weren’t bringing her to meet Bea’s baby, but not unhurt. She had given a twenty-dollar bill to Lillian that morning, and asked her to please pass it on to the girl. Lillian had protested—it was nearly a week’s wages—but Lillian held firm. So Lillian had that, too, though she’d stuck it in a little box with paper and a bow to make it look less crass than paper money.
The third gift was a doll. In the car with Henry and Albert, on their way to meet the girl, clutching her gifts, Dr. M. asked, Are you sure? The doll had been Bea’s, one of many Lillian had given her, though Bea had never especially liked dolls. This one had been sitting for years in her old bedroom, looking at the window. It was a collector’s doll, more valuable perhaps than the rings, with pale, porcelain cheeks, rosebud lips, blue eyes, yellow hair. For the trip to Gloucester, Lillian had put it in a white dress and tied back its hair with a pink ribbon. She held it in the crook of her elbow. But as the car neared Niles Beach, she started to doubt the wisdom of her choice, not just now but twenty years ago, when she’d given it to Bea. Not only did the doll look nothing like Bea, it was the very opposite of her, in every respect.
Lillian looked at the side of Henry’s face. His cheeks had slackened since the news about the girl. Even his chin looked more relaxed. He tapped his fingers on his leg. The worst gift Lillian had ever given Bea came back to her now. It was the day of Bea’s discharge from Fainwright. In a new mink coat Lillian waited, torn between satisfaction and alarm: Bea was done with this; but what would she do now? What could she be? At last Nurse Lugton appeared at the door to the reception lounge, holding Bea’s hand, and Lillian led Bea out to a waiting car as darkly tinted as the limousine that had disappeared her to Gloucester. Bea did not look at her. She looked out her window. Lillian applied lipstick, which cracked at once—it was deep winter by then. As the car left Fainwright’s grounds and pressed toward the city, she said, “Don’t worry. Estelle made you soup. I bought you a new robe.” She paused, looking out her own window, at black trees half etched with snow. There had been a storm, but the sky was blue. The robe waited at home on Bea’s bed, wrapped in tissue and ribbons. It was long, and mauve, and made of cashmere—Lillian had spent a full week shopping for it. She had missed her last visiting hour with Bea so she could find her the perfect robe. Outside the car, the trees began moving fast. She rested a hand on her daughter’s leg and urged, “Darling, it’s from Milan. It’s soft enough to wear all day.”
What did you want from her?
I must have wanted her to stay.
Now, again, a car. Trees. Hedges. Then they had turned up Ira’s drive and Lillian, reaching automatically into her handbag, realized she had forgotten her lipstick.
“I don’t have my lipstick,” she said. “I left it in my other purse. I planned to wear that purse but then I changed my dress. I’m so stupid! How could I have forgotten? I never forget. How do I look? How do I look?” And Henry, looking at her carefully—always, he looked carefully, when other women’s husbands glanced or ignored—said, “Beautiful.” And Albert, turning in the front seat, said, “He’s right.” But Lillian didn’t even know why she’d asked because she could never believe them.
Why not? Why can’t you?
“I can’t get out of the car,” she said. “I won’t, I can’t. I can’t look like a dead lady when I meet her. She’ll be frightened! She’ll hate me. How could I forget? I had days to prepare. . . .” And so on, until the driver pulled the car to a stop and Lillian, seeing her granddaughter’s face, so like her daughter’s face had been at one time, childish and bare, inquisitive and brave, waiting for her life to begin, was quieted by her own tears. The doll was wrong, she understood, because it symbolized a baby. When Albert opened the door for her, she left the thing in the car.
• • •
Lucy had not seen a grown woman cry openly, but that was what her grandmother did now. At last week’s piano lesson, Mrs. Cohn had taken her aside to say, “My mother means well, but she can be a little standoffish,” so Lucy, once she figured what standoffish meant, had prepared herself for that. But not for this: the woman’s shoulders jumping under her coat, tears dripping from her chin. Most disconcerting, she didn’t bother to cover her face with a handkerchief. (Lillian had left that, too, in the other purse, with the lipstick.) She stared at Lucy as if hungry for her. Lucy might have yelped had soft hands not enveloped hers then—Mr. Haven’s, cupping and smoothing Lucy’s hands as if they were rare jewels. She had never known a man to have hands like her grandfather’s. He murmured something about pleasure, then disappeared, leading Mrs. Haven away from the group, then Mr. Cohn was introducing himself with a warm, easy smile. He did not refer to their first meeting on Leverett Street—instead he began to ask Lucy entirely normal questions about school, which had started up again. And what grade was she in, and who was her teacher, and what was her favorite subject? Mrs. Cohn had said Mr. Cohn was not her father but Lucy couldn’t help searching his face for some evidence to the contrary. His features were sharp, his ink-black hair combed into neat waves, his eyelashes dark as a woman’s, his cheekbones tall. Lucy wondered if her own cheekbones could be described as tall, if maybe this was why she had succeeded as a boy in the quarries fo
r as long as she had.
“I’m very good in math,” she said hopefully, but Emma’s clear disapproval—at Lucy’s boast, at her secret, deep hope, which shamefully Emma could see—made Lucy close her mouth, and Mrs. Cohn, who had been standing next to Lucy all this time without saying a word, appeared to be in some kind of shock, and the four of them stood around in a stunned sort of shyness for a moment until Emma asked Mrs. Cohn how Mr. Hirsch was doing and Mrs. Cohn answered that he was well. Actually—emerging from her daze—he was very well. He was walking again, not far but walking. He was up on the terrace, eager to meet Lucy. And to see Emma, she added. She took Mr. Cohn’s hand, as if for balance. At last Mr. Haven led Mrs. Haven back into the circle. Her eyes smudged with makeup, her hands trembling, she held out a blue velvet box to Lucy.
Lucy looked to Emma, who nodded.
Inside the box were three golden, sparkling rings.
“They’re lovely,” Lucy said. And they were. Janie or Anne or Maggie would gasp. They would flap their hands on their wrists, commanding everyone to ooh and aah. But Lucy’s thought was that the rings must be worth something—maybe a lot. “Thank you,” she said.
Mrs. Haven drew a ragged breath. “You . . .” She paused. Lucy waited. But her grandmother said nothing more. She handed Lucy another box, wrapped in a satiny, dark blue bow, then closed her mouth, swallowed audibly—a wet click—and, almost as if unbeknownst to her, began to smile. It was a tight smile at first, but soon her lips parted to reveal her teeth, and then her tongue, and then her obvious delight.
• • •
Lucy would wait to open the second gift. She was being ferried up to the terrace, where Mr. Hirsch sat, a lumpish man with a blanket on his lap. She felt tired suddenly, walking toward him. So many people to meet, and for what? She had wanted to come, but wasn’t sure, now that she was here, what was happening. Did they expect she would visit regularly? Be part of the family? She couldn’t tell what that would mean, or even what sort of family this was. There were no other children, as far as she could tell. Cousins had been mentioned, but weren’t to be seen. The brothers’ surnames didn’t match, nor did their appearance: Mr. Haven had a thatch of coal-colored hair, Mr. Hirsch one white wisp winging at his ear. They were rich. Richer than anyone Lucy had ever met. And they were Jews. Lucy had never met a Jew, though apparently, at least somewhat, she was one.