by Karen Bender
It was evening when they moved in, and the stocky palm trees flanking the entrance were lit, like celebrities, by a milky light. Things flowed into the apartment magically and found their places: an old TV, Vivien’s chipped, amoeba-shaped coffee table, a green loveseat, a card table to eat on, plastic plates. Lena set Spot carefully on the sofa and made him a bed from a salad bowl lined with a blue washcloth.
Everyone moved around the apartment with care, as though they would all vanish if they stepped in the wrong place. At last, there was nothing more to do. “We have to go,” Lou said.
The four of them stood in silence. Everyone looked confused.
“Where will you be?” asked Lena.
“At home,” said Ella. “Just down the street.”
“Okay,” said Bob, his shoulders tensing, as if he were preparing for something awful. “Okay.”
Lena rubbed her palm in circles over his bristly hair. “Bye,” she said.
Ella could not speak.
“We’ll talk to you later,” said Lou. And he grasped Ella’s hand.
Ella let him lead her down the stairs. They headed home. The sky washed around them, a hubbub of silver clouds and stars, and the other houses on the street, buildings of lime green and rose and yellow, looked like little frosted cakes, delicate and sweet. Ella felt in a great hurry to break free of her confusion; she was afraid that her own house had disappeared. Then she and Lou stood on their lawn, sunk in shadows, and tentatively walked forward and opened the door. Ella trembled at the sight of the dark hallway. But the house was merely empty, and there was only the unfamiliar sound of peace.
Thirteen
ELLA AND LOU watched each other to learn how to live in the empty house. It was thirty-five years since they’d been alone here, and their voices rang through the rooms as though they belonged to giants. Lou took great delight in disagreeing with Los Angeles Times editorials. “Look at this jerk,” he said eagerly. “Thinks we should charge money for walking on the beaches.” She listened, understanding that he needed to protest something, but she heard a curious sweetness in his voice.
They felt compelled to become new and different. Ella developed an urge to redecorate. She began with a pair of ceramic salt and pepper shakers she found at a local yard sale. The shakers were blue cows wearing ballerina tutus, and she was captivated by them. When she placed them on a shelf above the oven, the room was completely changed. She bought more shakers, focusing on the animal theme, and built a special shelf for them. Soon she had shakers in the shapes of elephants, bears, cats, rhinos, and, for variety, Notre Dame.
Lou had long been interested in World War II generals; now he focused on how he would have escaped from Germany in 1939 if he had had to. He gave Ella a gold chain from May Company that she was to pawn for escape money if the Nazis ever took over America. He developed a secret alphabet, coordinating letters with shoe sizes; his messages resembled complicated order forms for his store. Somehow, this pursuit increased his confidence in himself. At breakfast, he and Ella, filled with shy pride, would discuss their new interests.
Some nights they sat out on the chaises and speculated about Lena and Bob. “What do you think they’re doing?” Ella asked Lou.
“At this moment,” he said, “eating slices of bread.”
“I’ll bet they are getting crumbs all over the carpet.”
“I’ll bet,” he said, generously, “they’re trying to use plates.” Guesses, bits of longing, drifted into the night.
Lena called at her scheduled times. At first she was stilted, polite. “May I please speak to Mother,” she’d say.
“Honey, it’s me,” Ella said. “Are you having a nice day?”
“Fine.”
“Anything to report?”
“Fine. Bob wants to say hello.” There was a rustling.
“Hello,” Bob said and breathed heavily; he never knew what to say.
One day, Lena called with important news. An orange cat had wandered into their apartment. “Mother,” said Lena, excitedly, “it liked your lima bean soup!”
“Is that so,” Ella said.
“Its name is Simone,” Lena said. Her voice had become flutelike. “Ask me about her day.”
“Um. Does she have fleas?”
“She made a meow that sounded like hello.”
“Sweetie,” Ella said, “are you out of milk? Look at the bottle. Shake it. I can pick some up.”
“Ask something else.”
“I don’t know what.” Ella sensed surprise at the other end. “Did you leave towels in the—”
There was a thudding, disappointed silence. “No!” said Lena. She had discovered the pleasure of hanging up.
Lena and Bob’s independence had been carefully planned. Pamela, a post office retiree, was Lena’s new next-door neighbor. Paid off with a weekly strudel from Ella, she promised to knock on Lena’s door every morning to make sure she and Bob were awake. Lena would call Ella at eight-fifteen in the morning and three in the afternoon, and Ella would drop by after dinner to make sure they had locked their door.
Ella made other drop-in visits to Lena and Bob, on the theory that such visits would keep them alert. On one visit, she could hear the cheerless voice of a game show host as she climbed the stairs. Ella put her key in the door.
Lena and Bob were sitting on the couch, wearing only T-shirts, their big legs open and their hands in each other’s laps. Lena was ruffling Bob’s pubic hair, and his hand was in Lena’s rusty curls. Their faces were peaceful. They were smoking cigarettes and sitting in a cloud of smoke.
They looked at Ella and removed their hands from each other’s lap. They seemed embarrassed for her, not for themselves.
“Mother, learn to knock,” said Lena. She spoke quietly, but Ella stepped back as though Lena had shouted.
“I just stopped by,” she said. Neither Bob nor Lena said anything. “I didn’t know you smoked,” she said.
“Now we do,” Lena said, and lifted up a coffee mug filled with cigarette butts.
“When did you learn to do that?” asked Ella.
“Bob taught me. On our wedding night.”
Bob blew an affectionate, furry stream of smoke in Lena’s face.
“Like the movies,” Lena said, with a giggle.
“What do you mean, like the movies?”
Lena released a long, thin line of smoke. Bob generously offered his half-smoked cigarette to Ella. “Here.”
“This is not a good activity,” said Ella. “I propose a new habit. How about chewing gum?”
They slumped back into the couch, sulking. “I like smoking,” Lena said.
Ella went into the bedroom. “Time to get dressed!” After tossing shorts at them, she quickly inspected the apartment.
There was a pool of urine under the bathroom sink. She wiped it up and switched off the electric heat. She picked up slices of baloney from the hallway floor, the damp towels on the kitchen table, the open jar of peanut butter sitting on top of the TV set. Lena and Bob padded behind her, feet crackling along the plastic tile.
When Ella opened the refrigerator, she was surprised to see a full bottle of milk. “How did this get here?” she asked.
“Bob bought it at Lucky’s,” said Lena. “The register man was named Harvey. It was thirty-five cents.”
Ella smelled the milk; it was fresh. She took a deep breath. “Bob. Very good,” she said. A smile spread across his face.
Ella closed the refrigerator; she felt out of place. Lena picked up a ball of pale orange cat fur from the carpet and presented it to Ella. The fur smelled dank and soulful. “This is from her tail,” Lena said.
“Where is this animal?” asked Ella.
“She went to work,” said Bob.
The two of them had an earnest look as they held out the ball of orange fur. “We wanted to show it to you,” Lena said.
Vivien moved quietly into the curve of her own life. She and Mel bought a home in Palms. Mel got his first job, as an assistant r
abbi at a Reform temple. Ella wasn’t sure what his day-to-day duties were, but she enjoyed announcing her son-in-law’s position to friends or customers at Lou’s Shoes, as though it gave her access to a holy place. Vivien was, for a short time, a regular on the West Coast ballroom dance contest circuit, and then found a job teaching the waltz at a Hollywood dance studio. Vivien had become a capable adult—and this made Ella both exuberant and a little lonely.
Ella visited Vivien and Mel’s new white-carpeted home cautiously. It was set in a large pattern of green yards and tract homes. Vivien had planted in front a row of stubby palms, round as gangsters, that were lit at night by small blue lights in the lawn. While Lena accepted any furniture Ella gave her, Vivien took as little as possible, even though her house was largely unfurnished. She apparently had in mind an elaborate decorating scheme. It took her a long time to furnish the living room so that more than two people could sit in it. When Ella walked through Vivien’s home, she could envision how nice it would look with some of her furniture. She suspected that Vivien accepted the few items she did only to placate her, and then probably hid them in drawers when Ella wasn’t visiting: potholders, a few lace doilies, mother-of-pearl napkin rings.
One day, Vivien offered to take Ella to tea. There was no special occasion for the invitation; it was not Ella’s birthday, not Mother’s Day. “Why?” Ella asked.
“Does there have to be an occasion?” Vivien said. “Can’t I take my own mother to tea?”
Ella consented and spent the entire morning getting dressed for the date. She tried on and took off a linen suit, a lace blouse, a feathered hat, before she settled on an appropriate outfit. To her surprise, she wanted to impress her daughter.
Vivien drove them to Bullock’s, and they took the elevator to the tea room, on the top floor. Ladies in pastel dresses, their hair in neat buns, chatted in quiet voices.
Vivien moved with a lithe step. “Good afternoon, Miss Vivien,” the hostess said, and led them to a table by the window.
“Who’s Miss Vivien?” asked Ella.
“I’ve been here with the other dance teachers. This is where we come when we want to treat ourselves,” she said. They examined their menus. Ella had had no idea there were so many different kinds of tea. Vivien said, “Oh, let me order.” To the waitress, she said, “We would each like the oolong.”
Her daughter had brought her to this lovely place; she knew how to order exotic tea. The waitress brought the tea, as well as pastries and tiny, perplexing sandwiches. Ella slowly sipped the strong black tea and warily regarded the little sandwiches on her plate.
“This reminds me of where I met your father,” she said. “The Treasure Trove at Johnson Massey.”
“I remember that story,” said Vivien, eating a sandwich made only of bread and butter. “You sold tchotchkes?”
“Not tchotchkes,” said Ella. “I sold objets d’art, made of jade, gold, silver. To Boston’s finest clientele . . .”
It occurred to Ella that her daughter would never have purchased any of the objects in the Treasure Trove. She might even have laughed at them. Vivien found meaning in teas with peculiar names, and the rhumba, and the fact that her husband could address an audience in Hebrew. If Vivien had been a customer at the Treasure Trove, Ella would not have known how to speak to her. Ella carefully picked up a sandwich, but her fingers felt fat and childish, and she laid it back on the plate.
But there was this, too: she had created a daughter who was at ease in this elegant room. Vivien understood that she had every right to be here. It was as though that quiet wish had leaped out of Ella and formed itself into her daughter. She reached forward and touched Vivien’s hand.
“Have more,” said Vivien. She lifted her china cup. Her face was flushed with eagerness to please her mother. “The cucumber’s especially good.” Ella picked it up delicately and bit into it. It was a perfectly ordinary sandwich.
“Delicious,” she said.
Lena decided to give a dinner party; she announced her plans in stages. First, there was a card. She walked the two blocks from her new apartment to her parents’ house and thrust her invitation under the door. It was addressed to them in purple crayon and said: Dinner. Invited. Please! There was no date; there was, in the corner, a carefully drawn postage stamp. Ella stood in the doorway, examining the invitation, and then glanced at the empty summer street before her; the green leaves were shuddering all at once.
Next, there was a call. Ella was on the patio with Vivien, whose long legs were stretched out on a chaise longue; she was painting her fingernails bright gold. The phone beside them rang. “I’m having a dinner party,” Lena said, and hung up.
“Who was it?” asked Vivien, fluttering her fingers.
“Your sister,” said Ella. “Look.” She handed the invitation to Vivien and called Lena back. “Honey, a what?”
“Who’s this?” Lena asked, primly.
“What’s this about a dinner party?” Ella asked.
Lena hung up. Ella dialed the number again. “Lena, what’s going—”
“I can only talk to you if you can come.”
Carefully: “When is it?”
“Soon.”
Lena hung up again; it was her favorite demonstration of her new freedom. She would bang down the phone with a juicy, reckless joy at any point in a conversation—when Ella asked whether she had thrown out the brown bananas or whether she had left the wet towels on the living room floor.
Vivien was reading at the invitation. “Eat before,” she said.
“Do you think this was that man’s idea?”
“’That man’?” Vivien laughed. “Bob?”
“He couldn’t be”—Ella didn’t know what word to use—“social?”
Vivien undid a rhinestone clip from her glossy red hair. “That king of debonaire?”
They looked at each other. Vivien took a deep breath. “Well,” she said, “she should have a party.”
Ella again dialed Lena’s number. “Lena, who’s coming to this dinner party?”
“You. Daddy. Vivien. Mel. Simone.”
“Simone?” Ella said.
Silence. “You know. The cat that I like.”
“Uh-huh,” said Ella. “Did the cat get an invitation?”
The voice trembled. “No.”
“Well,” said Ella, annoyed by the burden of the dinner party she was now going to have to finance and arrange, “that was your first mistake.”
“But”—Lena’s voice became high-pitched, insistent—“she sits on my lap and I pet her. Why can’t I have a party—”
Even Vivien could hear the tone of Lena’s voice; it made her sit up, sorrowful, alert. “Tell her I’ll bring a Jell-O mold,” she announced. “Lime and cream cheese. Tell her—”
“Mother!” Lena shrieked. “I’m giving a dinner party and you have to come!” She hung up.
Vivien was pregnant. Ella found out when she and Vivien were shopping at May Company one afternoon. They were shopping, lazily, for table linens. Vivien was quiet; she picked up napkins and set them down after a cursory glance. Suddenly, she plunked down in a chair and began fingering her stomach.
“Are you okay?” Ella asked.
Vivien put her hand over her mouth, closed her eyes, and swallowed. Then she looked at her mother with a stern expression. Ella placed her palm on Vivien’s forehead, and Vivien said, softly, “I’m pregnant.”
Ella felt the air rush out of her. She plunked down on a chair beside Vivien. “With a child?”
Vivien looked at her wryly. “What else?”
Ella realized that she had not allowed herself to think of a grandchild, the way she had not allowed herself to fantasize about Vivien’s future many years before. “Sweetheart, how wonderful! How far along are you?”
“Three months.”
Ella got up and hugged her daughter with fervor. “What are you going to name it?”
“I haven’t picked a name,” Vivien said.
“I can help
,” said Ella, happily. “What about Loretta? I heard that name in a show recently. Or—”
“I’m afraid to name it.”
“Why?”
Ella knew why as soon as she asked the question. Vivien looked at her with pleading eyes and shook her head. A bell rang somewhere in the store.
“I didn’t plan it,” said Vivien, almost apologetically. “It just happened.”
“No time is the right time,” said Ella.
“I’m not asking for much,” said Vivien. She sat up, suddenly argumentative. “I want it to be okay. Boy or girl. I can’t let myself think about anything else. I look at you and I don’t know how you did it.” She stopped, embarrassed.
“Let me think,” said Ella. “Loretta. Or Cherise. Or—William.” She was charged up with ideas. “I see this child as a—a great inventor. Or movie star. With you and Mel as her—or his—parents, how could it not be?”
Ella cut the air with her hand like a debater. She found herself in the odd role of trying to convince Vivien that her pregnancy was a wonderful thing. But Vivien was studying the floor, with the tense quiet of a competitor reluctant to reveal an advantage.
Her daughter wanted a child who was smart and beautiful, yet she was afraid to yearn for that. Ella could tell that Vivien’s hope for her child was bordered by a distrust that she herself had not had.
Vivien took a lipstick from her purse and applied it with neat strokes. Then she said to Ella, “What do you think is going to happen?”
“It will be just wonderful,” said Ella, and she meant it, though she was aware of the tinge of uncertainty in her own voice.
That night, Ella dreamed of Vivien’s child. She dreamed that it was born from herself. It was a girl, and at birth she was clothed in a lace pink dress; an hour later, she was walking around, speaking in elaborate sentences. The little girl regarded them all with a haughty expression, as though she could not quite believe she was one of them; she swiftly rejected any name that they offered her. Ella awoke violently from this dream. It took some time for her heart rate to return to normal. For a moment, she tasted the sour nausea of pregnancy; then she knew she was imagining it.