Longing

by Espinosa, Maria

  Aaron’s father had never forgiven his refusal to go into the family business, a chain of clothing stores; but he helped his son financially, as did Eleanor’s parents.

  In the beginning Aaron wanted to live on what he earned as an artist. However, Eleanor was extravagant. The children needed private schools; she needed household help; she would shop only at the best stores, as her mother and friends did. Aaron began to accede to her extravagances. Slowly she undermined his power in the household. It was, Rosa thought, like waves lapping against a shore, eroding sand and rocks.

  But Eleanor could not erode Aaron’s secret power over Rosa. She felt as if her father’s inmost thoughts and feelings, whether spoken or not, were etched in her brain, and slavelike she acceded to his wishes, his beliefs. He remained enigmatic, mysterious.

  Eleanor’s confessions were not rational. They conflicted with each other. They seemed much more real.

  Despite all his words, her father did not share himself.

  Eleanor did, no matter how fragmentary her bits of sharing were. Eleanor’s essence reached out, mingled with her own.

  And that caused pain. Where were the boundaries between her mother and herself?

  “Sometimes in restaurants when I can’t eat all the food, I hide bits of it in my purse so as not to offend the chef,” Eleanor once confessed. “As a child I hid bits of food in my mouth for hours so that they would think I’d eaten it as I was supposed to.”

  Hiding herself. So concerned with what others thought of her. So vulnerable—and yet at times her nagging was unbearable. She violated Rosa’s sensitivities, Rosa’s calm, with that voice that bit into her nerves over tiny domestic details.

  Yet Eleanor was so sensitive to her own pain.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Aaron asked Antonio to visit his studio. Aaron had been up for hours. It was nine in the morning, and Antonio was still blurry-eyed.

  Antonio walked slowly around the room, fingering the work, absorbing the older naturalistic pieces made out of plaster, the graceful constructions of wire and metal, the bronze bodies with enormous torsos and small bird-like heads.

  “I can’t talk too long with you,” said Aaron, an impatient edge to his voice. “I’ve got to finish this model for a competition.” He gestured to the small suspension of wire and cardboard which was half-finished. It stood on a chest-high pedestal. “The winner will be commissioned to make a much larger version for the United Nations in Geneva.”

  Antonio examined the pieces.

  “Is very beautiful your sculptures . . . original . . . is very strong,” said Antonio in his broken English.

  “You like the work?” Aaron’s face lit up.

  “Ah yes, very much I like.”

  The boldness of Aaron’s sculpture seemed at odds with the character of their restless, apparently rather self-effacing creator.

  Antonio was irritated at having to deal with something in his father-in-law that he did not fully understand.

  Aaron made many models, smaller and then larger ones. Crude sketches hung on the walls. Perhaps Aaron was careless. Only with successive sketches did he refine his conceptions, thought Antonio. He thought of the Zen Buddhist writings he had studied years ago in Santiago. A brush stroke, a hammer blow should be precise. It should flow out of the crystal clear conception.

  “How do you earn a living?” Aaron asked.

  There was nothing of the diplomat about Aaron. How abrupt he was. He plunged in with no delicacy whatsoever—as if he were performing a delicate surgical operation with a meat cleaver. For an instant Antonio wondered what Eleanor had told her husband, then reassured himself that she surely would have been discreet as it was in her best interest.

  “I work . . . I used to work . . . You know about it . . . as a photographe and journaliste“ said Antonio, groping for the right words in English. “Do you see my novel? I give to Eleanor a copy. Is famous in Santiago. I do so many things in my life. In Chile I talk to the artistes on the radio.”

  “What do you plan to do here?” Aaron fingered a strand of wire on the half-completed model.

  Antonio wished he had a glass of wine. Wine gave him courage. With wine he spoke more freely, and the awful tensions in his stomach unknotted. He squashed out the end of his cigarette on the cement floor and lit another.

  “Is I come from a family of culture. Comprenez? I go to law school. But the study of law for me it has no meaning, no valeur.

  Aaron seemed about to interrupt.

  “Comprenez, Aaron? To be a lawyer . . . for me is not to live a life. My father he was a lawyer. My father’s father too. The studies they are too easy for me. The lawyer job . . . for me is no life, so I write a novella . . . you read the small book I write? I am looking for to help the people . . . to love the people . . . to help myself.”

  Aaron broke in. “That’s all very well. But Rosa’s not able to work while the baby is so little. There is money in our family. Both Eleanor’s family and mine have a great deal of money,” said Aaron, pride in his voice. “They’ve helped. But I’ve worked hard. I’ve been teaching for twenty years. Eleanor worked as a secretary for eight years.”

  “For you and me the work it is different, Mr. Bernstein. For you the working is making your sculptures . . . to sell them . . . to teach . . . to have the fame . . . is good . . . but for me no is so façile . . . I am feeling too much the needs of the people. I see too much into the people, and the people do not like that I see. I am looking for the truth.”

  Aaron nodded politely, but there was something contemptuous in his manner.

  Antonio’s mind clouded. Anger flared. “Comprenez, Mr. Bernstein, I marry your daughter because she is pregnant. You see I respond to the people’s needs. She is hystérique. She make that I lose my friends, my work. She cannot help me. She is too névrosée.” His voice rose. He clenched his fists. He wanted to pound them against Aaron. Aaron’s silence infuriated him still more. Aaron’s yellow-brown eyes shifted away from him. The man was a salaud. “I marry your daughter for the baby Isabel’s sake. Isabel she need a father.” He shifted to French. “Only the baby holds us together because we are not compatible,” he continued in a kind of panic. He found himself gripping the plaster leg of a figure so hard that it seemed about to break. His cigarette ash fell on the floor.

  “Watch out for the sculpture,” said Aaron.

  Long ago in Paris he imagined that Rosa’s father, a fellow artist, would extend sympathy and compassion, that he would look much older, with white hair and a beard. He would treat Antonio like a son, extend help with money, introduce him to publishers, encourage his writing.

  “I don’t quite understand all this,” said Aaron. He looked uneasy as he fidgeted with a pack of matches.

  Antonio had always been like a father to his younger brothers and sisters and even to Rosa. But where was his own father? His father died when Antonio was a child. He wanted to cry out, where is my father? Where is God? God, if there were one, laughed at him.

  “If is not for Isabel we never marry,” said Antonio, speaking in English again. “We are not suitable for each other. Is the story.” He moved very close, looking directly into Aaron’s eyes.

  Aaron stepped back. His face passed through a variety of emotions, but he said nothing.

  “Is I want you to realize the truth,” Antonio said. The ghost of Eleanor floated between them. Aaron’s eyes flickered with suspicion.

  “I have no money. I have no friends in this country,” Antonio continued. “I no speak the language well. Rosa and me . . .” He snapped his thumb and fingers together in a gesture of dismissal. “Is how . . . is the cry of the species . . . Perhaps you can advise me about the work.” His own voice took on a nasty, urgent edge. He suspects everything, thought Antonio. But he is too much of a coward to confront me about his wife.

  “Eleanor said you were thinking about opening a photography studio,” said Aaron. “That would take some capital. Any business where you are self-employed is risky
, especially for a newcomer.”

  “Is necessary the risk,” said Antonio. His voice was urgent.

  Aaron remained in an unnerving silence. His eyes kept shifting. He fingered the soaring shapes of grey material suspended with wire that he was working on. Aaron’s nails were squarecut, his fingers calloused. They were workman’s hands.

  Why didn’t he defend his own daughter? Aaron had no balls. He was no gentleman. Eleanor must be ashamed of him. Were he a man of honor, he would thunder, “How dare you speak of Rosa like that?” He would not allow a word to be said against his daughter. “Do you take no responsibility? You are not worth her little finger!” he might have said.

  In a former century they might have dueled.

  Groveling Jews. Manipulating Jews. Aaron never defended her, nor did Eleanor. Rosa was like a foundling. Clearly the parents had no confidence in their daughter, nor by extension did they have confidence in themselves.

  “Do you take no responsibility for her hystérie, Mr. Bernstein? Is you who raise her.”

  Aaron was silent.

  No balls.

  A bastard.

  No wonder Eleanor could find no strength in him, nor could Rosa or Jesse. He thought of Jesse, so withdrawn, and of Jesse’s young male lover, of whom he had heard.

  When a man’s work destroys people around him, it is satanic work, Antonio thought.

  Suddenly the absurdity of the situation struck him. He would write about it in his Memorias when he was old. He would write about how once he married a waif, a wealthy foundling. Perhaps then he would be living in Tahiti in view of a blue, blue sea. He would lie on the sand underneath a coconut palm, attended by beautiful, half-clad girls. This marriage would be a distant memory.

  He squashed another cigarette butt on the cement floor, aware that Aaron disapproved. The floor was so clean. “Please Mr. Bernstein, understand I care about Rosa. She is extraordinary. I want her to make something of herself. Is that she need me now. But after two or three years she no need me. Then she will to marry the captain of the military. Qui sait?” He laughed.

  In Antonio’s later recollection of their conversation, his memory, usually so keen, was blurred. What was it they had said? It seemed at one point Aaron’s eyes blazed and he had indeed shouted, “My daughter is far too good for you!”

  “Well, I leave her with you,” Antonio thought he said. Then he saw fear in Aaron. He knew he could make Aaron back down.

  “Eleanor thought that Juan Torres, who heads the Spanish Department at Athenium University where I teach, could get you a job as an instructor,” Aaron had said.

  “Is very good of Eleanor,” said Antonio. “Monsieur, I do the best I can. Always I earn the money for myself. But you understand, with a wife and baby is not so easy. A Spanish teacher does not make so much money, I think. A Spanish teacher he make money to buy a car and the furniture and a house and food and medicines for the baby?”

  “Maybe not at first.”

  “Then is we need your help.”

  Let them pay for the merde he’d suffered all his life. Let them pay him for taking their crazy daughter off their hands. Let them pay him for fathering a baby more maravillosa than the whole tribe of these sickly Jews had seen in generations.

  “Rosa she is sick,” said Antonio. “Is that she is mentally sick. Your American culture has made her sick. You have all made her sick.”

  “Wait a minute! You’re wrong.”

  “Is that she have too much talent.”

  Aaron started to speak, but Antonio cut him off. “Wait! I have not to finish. Before she live with me in Paris, I have many friends. I earn the money with jobs I get from my friends. I paint the apartments of my friends. I cook at their parties. I am doing the carpenter work. But Rosa she ruin that. She ruin my friendships with her hystérie.” His voice rose louder as he merged fact with fantasy. Then he lowered his voice and took a calmer but insinuating tone. “Is not her fault. Is her culture. The American culture it is pourrie . . . how do you say . . . rotten . . .”

  “Wait a minute!”

  “Mr. Bernstein, let us leave this story of the cultures for now.” Again Antonio’s voice grew softer, insinuating. “If I am working at the university, is that I need a car to get there, no?”

  “I suppose so. Although there is a bus.”

  “You take the bus, Mr. Bernstein?”

  “No.”

  “I need the money for to buy a car then. Can be your wedding gift?”

  Aaron looked stricken. He swallowed, glanced at the small clock on the telephone table by the door, and glanced back again at the half-finished model. “Yes, I suppose it could be,” he said. “I’ve got to get back to work now. I’ll introduce you to Mr. Torres after I’ve spoken with him.” His voice was rough, angry, impatient.

  The gnome in Antonio chortled as he closed the door carefully behind him and walked out of the studio into the garden where Eleanor was snipping at the first roses of the season to bloom.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Rosa walked down Central Avenue with her father, pushing Isabel in a stroller. The maple trees were pale green with feathery buds which shed onto the ground to give way to tender new leaves. It was hot, and she was covered with perspiration. Isabel, barefoot, in a sunsuit and floppy white hat, half lay against the back of the seat, as she could barely sit up yet.

  Aaron moved with long, rapid strides so that Rosa had to make an effort to keep up. He always seemed to be in a hurry.

  He was talking about his model for the competition. “There is something not quite right about it. I have to let it sit, and tomorrow I’ll look at it with fresh eyes. Your reactions as well as everyone else’s help me. I see the almost invisible responses in your eyes and muscles.”

  His voice vibrated anxiety, as if he habitually treaded on the edge of chaos. Only structure and order averted catastrophe. If one lingered too long, one might be overtaken.

  It was a brilliantly sunny day, but the soft warm air seemed poisoned with a dread, a tension that almost overwhelmed Rosa. Being with her father caused the tension to increase.

  Antonio’s presence alone brought relief, as if Antonio contained some elixir of wisdom and calm, despite his tumult. He seemed to contain his fears and to give out an intangible, nurturing substance, while her father diffused his own fears throughout the atmosphere and into everyone around him.

  “It will be wonderful if you win,” she said. “Imagine seeing your work in Geneva at the United Nations headquarters!”

  “A lot of very good artists are entering,” he said. However, she could tell he expected to win.

  Often when he sat down to eat with them, his expression would grow distant, he would start fiddling with matches or silverware, and she knew he was thinking about whatever sculpture he was working on.

  His brown shoes gleamed in the sunlight. There were specks of dust on them. He walked faster. She caught her breath, hastening to keep up with him. When the floppy sun hat fell over Isabel’s ear, she paused to right it.

  Large frame houses gave way to stucco ones and to the telephone building as they approached Main Street. At the corner was the bank, and opposite, the Shamrock Bar & Grill. She used to run beneath its eaves when she was a child, sniffing the beery smell inside on her way home from school.

  “What do you plan to do here?” asked Aaron. His voice cracked with tension. He was directing her, squeezing her into a vise, filling her with fear, blocking out all thoughts but the ones he wanted her to have—so part of her mind reflected fleetingly, barely brushing her consciousness.

  “I’m looking for a part-time job in a department store or maybe the library, if Mother can take care of Isabel for a few hours a day.” (That was the only acceptable answer.)

  “You can hire a babysitter.”

  “That would cost nearly as much as I’d earn.”

  “Really?” He sounded unbelieving.

  Always he ignored the reality.

  Old dreams rose up to torment her.
Once she wanted to be a dancer. The dream crumbled to dust, crushed by something within him. Although he admired dancers, this was not what he chose for her.

  Unreflecting, she’d gone to college.

  After her breakdown, after her stay in the mental hospital, Rosa studied dancing very hard for a year and a half, until one teacher told her, “You’re ready now to audition for Broadway shows.”

  This encouragement had no reality for her, somehow. Her parents—especially her father—seemed to treat her study of dance as an interlude before her return to her college studies. Although she had practiced three hours a day for the last eighteen months and she was now what her teacher termed “professional”, she shrank from the prospect of auditions. That world could not be real. That world was too glorious, too glittering for her to enter. An enormous barrier between her and the world of Broadway shows rose up.

  She loved dancing. Nothing on earth felt so good.

  Around this time she performed in a small concert given by a black man who taught African dance. While she was performing, she heard him say sotto voce, “It’s a shame about her arm. Otherwise, what a wonderful dancer she would be.”

  It had never occurred to her to discuss her arm with her parents. Somehow that lay outside the boundaries of permitted thoughts. Now for the first time she wondered if she had been correctly informed or if her arm could actually be reset. Was it too late to become a dancer? But there was Isabel. She and Antonio needed money to live. Besides, there were the scribbled notes she could not stop writing that demanded to be finished, to be formed into something cohesive. She felt as if she were at the beginning of a long journey with the chaotic writing that poured out of her. She had to learn to channel it so that it would reach other people.

  She had broken her right arm when she was seven and she had been told it could never be set. Over the years she’d learned to hide its slight crookedness until to do so was second nature. She rarely thought about her arm, but awareness of its malformation was lodged deep within her. Her African dance teacher’s comment shocked her—of course it was useless to attempt to conceal such a deformity. Like her body with its crooked arm, something was not quite right about her. She could not dance boldly nor could she live boldly because she needed careful camouflage.