“You okay?” Henry asked.
“Fine.” I put my hand flat on her back. Had she been religious? Jewish? Christian? Buddhist? Fast, so no one could notice, I traced a tiny cross on her back, then a Star of David, wishing I knew more symbols.
Four months later, Anne Cohen died.
I was on my way to sit shivah, having missed the funeral. Observant Jews bury their dead fast, and then mourn them for seven days. Doctor Cohen insisted on following the letter of Jewish law and buried Anne the day after she died, giving me permission not to attend. He said he didn’t want me to miss any classes. That was the day we were to be dissecting human hearts. Doctor Cohen said he knew how important the heart was.
Anne had died early Monday morning. Today was Sunday, the last day the family would sit shivah. I’d get to New York City in time to catch the final hours of official mourning, and then tomorrow I’d take the bus back to Boston.
The Greyhound bus sped down the highway. December slush covered the grass at the side of the road. I’d dreaded this ride, but resigned myself to it. Bus rides I didn’t need, but sleep I could use, desperately.
Hours of brain-numbing classes followed by hours of studying, day after day, month after month, had left me exhausted. Weekends were spent in the library with my study group. Henry, Ron, Marta, and I were now close as family, if one considered family synonymous with close.
Awake despite my profound fatigue, I numbly watched the passing view. We rode along a stretch of Connecticut road bordering the ocean, and I pictured myself drifting off to someplace new and free.
Mrs. Cohen had died just after Merry’s seventeenth birthday. I’d meant to go home for the celebration dinner. The Cohens had been planning to take Merry and me to Windows on the World, where Merry had always wanted to go. Apparently, our father had described it from some magazine he read. Gourmet? New York? What magazines did they carry in a prison library?
Merry wanted to watch the world light up just as our father had described. Doctor Cohen planned for us to eat at sunset, but I ended up having too much schoolwork and didn’t go. Three days after Merry’s birthday dinner, a stroke killed Anne.
I closed my eyes, trying to drag sleep to me. I wanted to be sadder. Mrs. Cohen had been good to us. She’d tried to mother me, but each time she hugged me, I became anesthetized. Hugging her back took all my willpower.
I remember Merry asking why I hated Mrs. Cohen. They think God patted them on the head the day they took us in, I’d said. I’d told her how phony Mrs. Cohen was, a real Lady Bountiful all puffed up with noblesse oblige. It was as though I resented Mrs. Cohen for helping us after I’d spent so much time plotting to get her help. Jesus, I’d practically pimped out poor Merry to be cute enough to engender Mrs. Cohen’s care.
Once I got us there, and Merry was taken care of, I think I took a breath for the first time since Daddy killed Mama. I off-loaded Merry to Anne. I off-loaded our father by making us orphans. And when Anne tried to be my mother, I off-loaded her.
Maybe Anne’s incredibly patient niceness brought out my meanness toward her. Maybe she made me feel safe enough to act angry, but how horrible that I chose to lash out at her. I counted headlights to calm down. I scratched out a silent apology to Anne.
Maybe I owed myself an apology also. Anne had been my last and only chance to be mothered, and I’d thrown it away.
Doctor Cohen, Saul, Amy, and Eleanor sat on wooden boxes sunk into the deep Cohen carpet. Vague memories surfaced from Mama’s unveiling.
Doctor Cohen rose and took my hands. “Lulu. Thank you for coming.”
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for the funeral.”
He dismissed my concern with a wave. “This place was filled until yesterday. Be happy you’re here when it’s peaceful, just family.”
I looked around for Merry.
“Your sister’s in her room watching the children,” he said as if he’d read my mind. “She’s been a godsend.”
I nodded, kissed him perfunctorily on the cheek. Saul-the-surgeon-son rose from his seat and hugged me. Had we ever touched before? “I’m sorry about your mother. She was a good woman,” I said.
“She was an angel.” Eleanor struggled to her feet. The Cohens’ daughter looked to be in the fourth or fifth month of another pregnancy. “Who’d know that as well as you and your sister?” She shook her head. “An angel.”
Saul’s wife Amy’s tears wet my cheek as she put her face to mine. “We missed you at the funeral.”
“Lulu couldn’t leave school.” Eleanor’s tone left no doubt that I’d shown my true colors.
The apartment seemed devoid of oxygen, a vacuumlike warren of rooms overstuffed with expensive furniture. The same couches and chairs from when we’d moved in. I’d been shocked when my childish plan to get Mrs. Cohen to take us had worked. Of course, I was grateful. I’d have been insane not to want to escape the misery of the Duffy-Parkman Home for Girls. Another wave of shame, even stronger than on the bus, overcame me. I wished my gratitude had morphed into the love for which Anne Cohen had seemed so hungry. I wished I’d told her how much I loved the room she’d set up for me. I wished I’d shaken the feeling of being Project Lulu—an identity I hated as much as that of the murderer’s daughter.
Merry and I had little privacy until we took a walk the next morning. People raced down Broadway with copies of the Sunday New York Times tucked under their arms, rushing to get home before the arctic air froze the fresh, warm bagels they carried like edible treasures.
“You left me alone. It was horrible being at the funeral without you,” Merry said.
“Doctor Cohen said it was important I stay for classes.” I turned my head, daring Merry to challenge me. She stared back, her purple-and-black-lined eyes saying bullshit. She shook her hair off her face. Merry looked shockingly different from the last time I’d been home, back in August. Silky, dark waves had been replaced by blond-streaked, ironed-straight hair. A shredded satin blouse fell off her shoulder. She looked like she’d stolen the outfit from the GoGo’s last concert. Had Mrs. Cohen let Merry out of the house like this on a regular basis? Was slutty now the look for high school seniors?
“Right,” Merry said. “You couldn’t leave school for your foster mother’s funeral.”
“You don’t know what medical school is like, Merry.”
“You don’t know what it’s like for me here.” She grabbed my arm. “What am I going to do? What will I do this summer? What about college? Where will I go on breaks?”
“Calm down, Mer. Do you think he’s going to throw you out? Not pay for your college?”
“Do you think I can live alone with him? God, how creepy can you get?”
Despite her ratty hair, Merry looked like a kid. Tears clung to her lashes, and mascara dirtied her pink cheeks.
“Why? What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Can you imagine being in that house without Anne? He never wanted us in the first place, you know that.”
“It’ll only be a few months. After that, I’ll come back for the summer. You’ll have me with you, I promise.” Even as I spoke, the world darkened.
“You need to come home every weekend,” Merry said. “Otherwise, I swear, I’ll go crazy. I could barely stand one week alone with him. At night, when people left after sitting shivah, it was like living in a monastery with vows of silence. I’ll run away. I’ll find someone to live with. I met some guys from Columbia and NYU at a party last month.”
“Hold it right there.” I held up a hand. I hurried ahead and walked into a coffee shop, Merry following. I fell hard on a stool at the counter. I grabbed Merry’s arm and pulled her down next to me.
“Stop pushing me around,” she said. Hail hit the coffee shop windows with icy pops.
“You’re not moving in with anyone.” I held her arm. “Are you seeing someone?”
“I see lots of guys.”
“You know what I mean. Are you sleeping with anyone?”
Merry picked up a sugar
packet from the metal rectangle holding a neat pile. The counterman came over and wiped the area next to Merry’s elbow with a dirty rag. “Hey, you girls ordering anything or just using this for your coffee klatch?” he asked. “This isn’t a living room.”
“Two coffees.” The place reminded me of Harry’s back in Brooklyn. Two malteds, I wanted to say, one vanilla, one chocolate.
Merry rested her head on her arms, her hair spilling on the counter. She turned toward me, looking like a sleepy five-year-old smeared with her mother’s makeup. “I’m seeing one of the guys from Columbia. I could stay in his room.”
“Right. You’re going to live in some guy’s dorm.”
Merry sat up and walked her fingers up and down her chest. My fingers itched to pull them away.
“Listen,” I said. “We’ll work this out, I promise. Leave everything to me. You only have a few months till you graduate.”
Merry shook her head. “I don’t know if I can make it that long.”
I took her hand away from her chest. “You’ll make it. When you need to, you can come up to Boston.” As I spoke, Boston’s freedom shrank away.
Henry Yee gave me a quiet smile as I punched one of his pillows into a more comfortable shape. His room had become my salvation since Anne Cohen died. I didn’t know if I’d started seeing Henry out of attraction or because I needed a peaceful place to study on the weekends that Merry visited. My dorm room had become her escape, and when she was there, the walls closed in on me.
Henry stroked my arm as though touching a present.
“You have lovely skin.” He touched his chunky fingers to the tops of my meager breasts and smiled. “Perfect.”
Henry deemed perfect those things most men found wanting. My girlish breasts, the almost-black eyes that most men found spooky, my boyish, straight hips—perfect, perfect, perfect according to Henry. What one guy had called my friggin’ inability to express anything that’s not a goddamned fact seemed catnip to Henry. We both valued having a significant someone who didn’t care that we spent ninety-nine percent of our waking moments buried in a stack of books. We were simply grateful to share sex and watching Saturday Night Live.
I laid my head on Henry’s fleshy chest. He talked about going to the gym, swimming, lifting weights, but we both knew his words were hollow. It didn’t matter to me—his endomorphic body comforted my ectomorphic build.
He nibbled his way down my body in his usual fashion. Henry and I made love as I imagined middle-aged married people might. Nothing outlandish. No surprises. We were satisfied.
“I’ll rub your back, and then you do me,” Henry said. He rolled me over and massaged my back the way I liked, long, deep strokes. I groaned. We took turns erasing the week’s tension from each other’s muscles. I hoped I could stay awake long enough to give Henry a compensatory massage.
We’d been together four months, since January. So far, we’d gone to one movie and eaten out twice, and on both our so-called dates we’d doubled with Ron and Marta, who’d also connected in a medical school quasi romance. Like ours, their relationship consisted of sex, studying, and watching television while eating cheap takeout.
Henry and I had the advantage of having meals sent over by Henry’s mother. I loved Mrs. Yee. She could barely speak English, but she’d smile and say Nice girl each time I came over. Then she’d feed me. My ideal situation might be living with a deaf or non-English-speaking family.
After I stroked Henry’s back for a few minutes, we had our meat loaf sex, kissed, and snuggled into our separate sides of the bed. As usual, we fell instantly asleep. Seven hours later, when the alarm went off, I surprised Henry by climbing on top of him.
“We only have half an hour before we have to leave,” he said.
I didn’t insult him by mentioning this wouldn’t take but a few minutes. “Think of how much more relaxed we’ll be during the test,” I said as I slipped him inside. We had an exam, organic chemistry, that morning. I didn’t worry about using sex as a study aid; we often used each other that way. I’d bet half our class had paired off because the orgasmic endorphins helped us memorize how the pneumogastric nerve was distributed.
It was after nine on Monday night when I finally dragged myself back to my dorm room. I’d meant to call Merry the night before and make sure she’d gotten back to New York safely, but I’d forgotten, and then one class had followed another in an unceasing round, ending with study group.
My life chased itself in a circle. Stultifying words and pictures piled up in my brain and my notebooks, jamming my circuits until I released the facts and images during tests and in anatomy lab. That day Henry, Ron, Marta, and I had labored over the tangled mass of nerves in our cadaver’s neck. Twiggy, we’d named her. She’d died of anorexia, or so we’d surmised using the scant differential diagnostic tools available in our circumstance. Twiggy’s body became an Erector set in our hands.
I took the elevator up to the fourth floor. Cabot’s medical student dorms were worn and seedy. Scruffy carpeting the color of vacuumed dirt lined the hallway. Doors and halls were devoid of decorations. Female medical students had a series of single-occupancy cells where we lived like nuns who screwed. I’d wake at odd times to hear Irene next door humping and thumping away, the thin walls pounding rhythmically, until upon reaching orgasm, she’d shriek theatrically. I was glad the feral Irene only occasionally attracted partners willing to visit her room.
Incense, marijuana odors, and the vision of Merry stoned on my bed assaulted me when I opened my door. “What the hell are you still doing here?” I asked.
Merry turned her head from where she lay on the bed, her pot-red eyes barely focusing on me. Rick Springfield crooned from the tinny speakers of my tape player. Red sweatpants—my favorites—and Henry’s gray University of Michigan sweatshirt, which he kept in my room, engulfed my sister. She’d propped the dirty soles of her little feet on the wall, tapping to the beat.
“I couldn’t face it,” Merry said.
“Face what?” I wanted her out of my room.
“Everything. Doctor Cohen. Eleanor coming over to look daggers at me and making me babysit for her kids. Daddy’s letters begging me to come because I haven’t visited in three weeks.”
“I doubt that happens all in one day.” I picked up the empty tub of ready-made onion dip and a half-empty bag of Doritos and slammed them in the trash. “And you’re not responsible for our father.”
I didn’t look forward to spending precious sleep hours cleaning up Merry’s mess. “Have you been alone in here all weekend?”
“Daddy doesn’t have one other person in the world, except me. In addition, for your information, no, I wasn’t alone all weekend. I met someone nice from the floor below.”
“That’s the guys’ floor.”
“Isn’t that the point?” Merry laughed and reached into a king-size bag of M&M’s, coming up with a handful so large she had to jam it into her mouth.
“Does this guy know that you’re still in high school?”
She rolled over on her side. Her deceptively innocent look and dirty-girl attitude made a perfect odalisque. Compared to Merry, I was an Amish schoolmarm crossed with Grandma Zelda.
“I don’t think he’d care either way.”
“How about some self-respect?” I waved my arms around the room, indicating everything—the pot, her skankiness, the crappy food she’d been living on. “Not to mention showing some respect for me, for my space, my stuff.”
“Your space? I need to show more respect for your stuff? You don’t realize how lucky you are; at least you have this fricking room. What have I got?” Merry’s voice got louder and shriller. “Nothing. I come to see you, and I get about fifteen minutes of Madame Medical Student’s attention before you leave.”
“I’m studying. I’m working.”
“You’re screwing Henry. Can’t you give it up one night?” Merry tucked her knees under Henry’s sweatshirt, her voice turning plaintive. “Will you stay here tonight?�
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“No, I can’t. Not when you make my place look like this. This has to stop. I never know what I’m going to find here, who I’m going to find here, and I’m not planning to wake you up from some weed haze before I can get into my own bed.”
My words seemed to melt Merry. She fell on her back, letting the bag of M&M’s drop to the floor. “All I have is you, Lu. Sometimes, I can’t even breathe unless I get high or have someone with me.”
I scowled but held my tongue, sighing and then stretching out on the bed beside her. She rolled over and put her arms around me.
“It’s okay. You’ll be okay.” I felt her heart beating.
“Daddy’s going to be upset; this is my third weekend not seeing him.”
“Is that what’s bothering you?”
“You don’t have to say it like that. That’s just a part, and anyway, isn’t that plenty? I have to worry about him being all alone and sad waiting for me, and then him getting mad.”
“Just forget about him. Stop going.”
“You make it sound so simple.” Merry pulled away. “I can’t do it like you. I can’t just shut him out.”
“Learn how.” I got up and began gathering empty food wrappers. “For your own self-preservation.”
“You just wish I’d stop seeing Daddy, so you could stop thinking about him.”
“There’s not much chance of that.” I savagely folded a pizza box and stuffed it in the trash can. “Not with you always talking about him and bringing him in the room whenever you come.”
Merry swung her feet off the side of my bed. “Daddy’s always in the room, Lu. You forget that saying he’s dead is just a frickin’ story. Not talking about him isn’t going to make him any less alive.”
“Seeing him isn’t going to bring back Mama.” I bent down and picked up another dirty sock.
‘If that’s why you think I see him, you’re clueless,” Merry said. “Don’t you want to know why I see Daddy?”
The Murderer’s Daughters Page 12