by Joshua Cohen
What a view, what a nightmare, Joysey and west, the Palisades; a mountain risen from the receding of the waters below, only to be frozen by those above, that crystalline breathless sustenance of window—glassing the gaping mouth of house and, too, the unspoken dreams of those who live within. Who lived. Understand, this is how we once spoke of dream, both as a visitation of the night and as the mark we hoped to make upon the forehead of the day. Of what did I dream now not a concern of the prophets but of the failures among us, those who would never own to a home. Above the window there’s a banner, cardboard, one end of which hangs low to the sill from a tack that’d lost its dig into wall. Mind it. In retrospect, this banner reads like crank prophecy, as if the first words mumbled after a darkened sleep.
Mazel Tov, it says—It’s A Girl!
As the sun makes her face, the woman rises slowly, failing to countenance a litany of joint ailments from the weakly kneed chair—don’t get up for her sake; no, really—she’ll be fine. His mother, with her dress taken in too tight under the breasts, the wig askew and all too black, makeup smeared as if yet another face fallen from the face she leans to light His own, to kiss Him awake upon the lips.
Come downstairs, the hallway calls in a voice, if not hers then whose—it’s brunch.
Better, it’s that dream Ben’s been having, that’s been having Him: one eye fluttering, one two three then, poof—she’s gone like never was. Only a wisp of skirt, a flash of heel, a taste of tongue, then nothing…His sisters, too, and father, them and their promises made. Any other morning upon waking—to rise an immediate rush down the hallway to their room as if expelled from the Paradise that is sleep, banished forcibly forever from its rest and so condemned to wander an eternity down the deserted halls past the mirrors and windows draped, and the framed photographs, too, and the shoescuffed, handprinted walls whiter than ash being the death of ash, the rooms of His sisters their doors shut, locked even and the carpet between them what’s patterned in stellated hexagons of blue on white down to its other end and the humpbacked trunk that floats there, the treadle sewing machine antique and decoration only aside the top goatskinned, meeklegged table topped with a vitric but plastic vase of baby’sbreath, its icewhite blooms seasonally intermarried with an abundance of lavender hydrangea made in Asia, crowded around with the silence of unread books, a stray shoe this loafer, a pair of His father’s old glasses, wireframed round and without lens, a forgotten, shattersheathed thermometer, a bowl of shells from beaches south…then, a quick last left to the door and He’d open it into another temperature zone, the alternate universe of a thermostat no one was ever allowed to know, let alone touch. It’d be freezing in there; His breath would come like shvitz, to take the air like faces. To lie down at the edge of their bed, which is made and empty, which was always made and always empty, and there on the pillows that still smell of her hair, His mother’s skin’s comforter, too, discomforting, in that it still feels like her legs and arms, to pray for sleep again. This was a week, had been. His sisters would have been up for hours. His parents, forever.
And then to sleep there at the foot of their sleeps between their twin nightstands topped with more books, yearold magazines, and the forfeited frontpage of the newspaper, their wedding photographs and telephones their cords tangled with those of the lamps and the 06 blinking 59 clocks, it’s another dream: to lift the shroud on another night, this different from all other nights…a maid’s wifely sheet, He peeks—and there’s a woman, standing just outside the lone wide window of His parent’s room, this great green monster in the robe His mother mourned the night when she, and that other time that, the once then don’t forget…O to be born too late for memory, waterswaddled, as naked as metal. Liberty’s her name. He stands on His Island next to hers. They match. Are twins. They’re just friends. Good friends. They’ve been married by the moon. Tell the truth, they’ve been forbidden from each other. It wouldn’t work, won’t, not to say it never does.
A love, it’s this…Ben and her, they never touched, they couldn’t have, can’t: His arms are too short and hers, they’re holding stuff. A book. A torch. Commandments. In reward for their keeping, an icecream cone of ten scoops, their flavor’s bronze, and its melt, molten—who knows to ask, who would ask to lick. Anyway, she couldn’t speak, never did. She’s without tongue as if guilty, He can never look her in the eyes. His are shut, He’s sleeping. Still. To be born too late for waking. Sh. He’s pretending. All night, they’ll drift further away from one another, then far beyond the dream. And then one morning—her crown will be the sun. A gloriole. Another day.
To sleep here always, forever in your own bed—your childbed, your deathbed; to rise up and lie down day after night in His own room as if in the very house He’d been born in, on its table a floor below. And that it is. Joysey or near enough, still within its jurisdiction, the judging throw of a stone from a strong hand, of an arm outstretched to Manhattan and its water iced. To wake always and run to Ima, which is what He would’ve called Hanna, to hug at her breasts and kiss upon them nipples, never again. Forget any finding His father already left for the office, Israel in depositions early, high in Midtown, trying every courthouse from Centre Street down to Camden, a dreaded arbitration in Secaucus; out to try a client in Coney Island seeking to sue Berlin for nightmares at midcentury…then, His sisters—never again to tug their hair in a row down the hall: I’ve got your nose, a quarter from His ear. Home is where the heart is, it’s said, and there imprisoned, criminal, beaten. The doors to the outside have been locked. Ben lies in His bedroom, and even sleeping aches. In what seems His house to the final detail, the most thoughtful ornament, the voweled adornment last. Down to the lost sock strewn His room, His nursery’s what they’d called it, His parents, it should be, should’ve been, way back Turnpike to the Parkway south and exits further—a bedroom that’s His and isn’t, relocated a mile or so north of the Great Hall at the edge of the Garden, an Island ringed in ice, with a sheet of freeze paving from here to shore in reflection of the appled lights.
Ben’s slept naked, His Klansmensch uniform’s been washed, bleached of vomit, dreck accumulated, has been dried, pressed, is hung in one of Israel’s garmentbags, draped over the hutch of the desk too crowded with clutter to work: birthcertificate, photos for a miscarried passport—this uniform the only estranging item, the only touch not to be found in the original remade.
All of a sudden, hazily, halfway between eyes shut and up, there’s a hold of alarmclocks, thirteen of them ringing halls at once—and so, finally, to rise Himself to silence. His sisters’ schoolday warning, to begin their waiting for the coldest shower. Ben’s shvitzy, feels like oy. He rolls around, grinds the sheet of a foreskin into the bedsheet, fumbles for the glasses He’d been born with. He finds them, stumbles out the door toward the sirens, hanging a right and into the bathroom first, His and His alone intended, even if His sisters would still be alive and requiring an emergency toilet, in which He proceeds to wipe eighteen minutes from the earth—life’s ritual already, routine. He pisses salutiferously, to greet the day with health, this steaming stream, to foam wild drops on seat and floor the purest white. To shower in an excess of scald, hot water over then lukewarm, to towel Himself; hot water the one true luxury in the Israelien house: how they’d bought a dysfunctional heater from a relation, Hanna’s, an uncle; with fourteen then fifteen before one in the house, pleasurable showers had been miracles, like sunrises—you had to get up early, or else outgrow them. To the mirror, now, to shave the face of its growth. He slices Himself, wads, washes. Adolescence is to remain with Him, a shadow’s shade. Pimples congregate, constellate as acne. He airs His pores to puss then sucks His fingers. No shame in that, no loss—all will have stubbled back by nighttime. He doesn’t yet scrub His teeth, abstains from flossing—that’s left for after brunch. What’s cooking, what’s not: there’s another noise from downstairs, between the smashing rings, the ding ding bells, an oven’s timer’s rattle…
And that burni
ng smelly taste, a crash of tongue in mouth.
In only a robe, His mother’s and her voice, then that ringing still. Ben heads downstairs, stopping on the way in the rooms of His sisters, vacant, and then that of His parents, too, to silence their alarms—rooms all empty now of nothing save them, that that gave these possessions their utility, their use and so, their meaning: personal effects already unpacked, replaced, dusted more inclusively than Wanda ever was able, was ever bothered: their teddybears, who remembered their plush petnames; pillows hugged into the shape of hearts, desktops of plastic dinosaurs, above a shelved abundance of junior encyclopedias, dictionaries; on the walls, their school certificates and diplomas with the signatures of adults responsible, principal, superintendent; posters and playbills from the shows up on Broadway, they loved them; like that spectacle with the cats, and that sad extravaganza, Phantom Fiddler on the Roof of the Opera. A silence totaled with His parent’s and their unit, Hanna’s—Israel never used an alarm, could never sleep; he used a clock to tire not to rouse. Ben makes His way down the hall to the stairs, which darken, why so closed, so much space and claustrophobic—with its windows draped in tarpaulins, no views afforded of outside, He’s kept slept from any vista.
And so with a trepidant hand, Ben lifts a shroud and through its pane below beholds…no, let’s not think about that just yet—hymn, let’s eat first, get a little food in us and, nu, then we might be in a position to think things through, a city…clearly. All the photographs along the stairwell have been draped as well, along with the mirrors, as if in mourning—then that other sound again, which rang itself between the shrilly weltering calls, still rings: on the way down the stairs, that din, the hum, of noises, alarms lesser in volume if more immediate in threat: the sounds of drilling, of hammering, sawsawing…at the foot of the stairs, this team of workers redrilling, rehammering, reawing, some; others resanding, restaining, repainting; in the kitchen as Ben greets them without word, only the mute of a nod unre-turned, them in their overalls, with their muscles and dim, seriously straining faces—rerepainting, as Hanna’d just done it, had had it done what, six months ago, maybe seven; some of them working as high as prosecutable up on the forbidden rungs of stepladders, others taking their breaks with schnapps, cigarettes, and foreign food. That’s that smell, the smoke. He walks along the kitchen edge, past the furthest island counter, the bathroom and its soft cry, a ply of whimper…there’s a rap, stifled—He tries the door, it’s locked.
Who’s there?
It’s a ringing to drown a moan, then at that other door, but which, too many—there’s a knock, knocked sharp and mean. And not at the side or porch, but at the front, which is never and peculiar, and so leaving the handle and the end of that hall, its door down toward the garage, Ben makes to answer through the kitchen, around its unperturbed workers, the long way, the touristic, scenic route…He can’t bear this gettingbearings, but its freedoms are intriguing. Nothing much has changed, though: His house had always been a switchboard, the nexus of all calling. Always strangers getting in touch, checking up and catching. I’m here to install, I’m here to fix, I’m here. Though Ben had only known it for a week, it’s His, this kitchen He’s wandering through, His mother’s Hanna’s open to disarray, the innards of each drawer spilled, exposed if meticulously—scandalous, that there’s nothing much to hide…a quick ragging, a rash of appropriate towel. It feels almost too—what, an excess perfected, of what even the most attentive maternal might accomplish, almost an onscreen test kitchen, like up on the television, now again set high above the livingroom, the den, without signal. I’m here to hook up, I’m here to put you online, I’m not sure why I’m here. Dingdong cable babble. A store display of home appliances, it retails as, and so to make it home again He passes His hands over it, the formica just wet from sponging—sponged by the same brand used exclusively in the Israelien household, endorsed posthumously by Hanna, only ten shekels, and only at Wiltinghills. Then the cabinets, opposite the counters milk, opposite the counters meat, with the middle mediating digestion of the pareve prep marble, once again stocked with sticky wicks with candles at their melt, the spices to the right and left, the Kiddush of the cups—the fourteen of them then the fifteenth, His, to’ve been gifted to Ben though only after that pleonast procedure, graillike lost the bris. As if to say, thanks for letting us cut you kid, here’s a cup for your troubles, as silver as money…a yarmulke, don’t wear it all out in one place—you’re good people, you’re golden, let’s do this again. Arranged as if never moved upon their wedding present tray: the large cup hath His father, His mother’s lesser cup, which’d both come with the set, initialed, dated, then the twelve ones in declining size of His older sisters; guests had drunk their Kiddush from ordinary glasses, impressively fluted within the cabinet next. Israel, he’d make the prayer—would bless the bushels crushed, drink then pour out the wine to His mother, and only then to the cups of His sisters, who’d argue about who’d get poured first, would ambush their father with viney whines, but first was always Hanna; they all wanted the wine that’d touched his lips, needed the exact liquid that’d tasted mouth and then receded, Aba, kvetching with such determination it’d been difficult to second guess, or twelfth.
In reflection, He goes to take His from the shelf, the smallest of them all at rest upon the highest. Just about to reach, there’s again that announcing flurry, a ring of fingers many and funning: dingdong the knockknock of a little fisty joke.
Ben makes His way from the kitchen, past the dishwasher running bum chug and warm, the dryingracks, then the toaster and the breadbin; ignoring the workers as they’re ignoring Him, as they’ve been ordered, not to speak, avert their eyes and mouth—how they’re behind schedule, everything took longer than expected, the plumbing, the wiring, you’re not the only one with problems. Him to stop, too, alongside the pantry, which is having its door hinged on screws gone stripped to nails: with Him old enough already to have favorites, they’re all already stocked, cereal flakes sogproofed, puffed rice and sugared wheat boxed nicely neat, nutritious; a worker’s hauling in the fridge, the upstairs unit, with another following him with two troughs of what was in it, should be still; photographs depicting their arrangements on the shelves mounted due diligence in an album lying open on the stovetop. Milk went bad. And so to mother another carton one percent. He makes His way around the recessed table: salt, pepper, then the holder which sister—Isa, Asa—had made for napkins, baked from the clay from which we all are formed: a worker walks over, around Him, and unobtrusively grabs a handful from a bag, arranges them white and fanned as Ben turns into the hall to the front, finally opens the door unlocked.
The alarm’s been reinstalled but not yet set.
And there beyond the mat that says Shalom, streaming down the stoop and out into the lawn’s snow disturbed only by their shuffling, waiting nervously after their sure troop up the path as if they’re nearly adjusted already, they’re having to be—to the Island, their new boots just broken in and the weather that’s flogging, the death and its memory’s enslavement—there’s a cluster of boys, the oldest of the group of 12-&-unders, about to become barmitzvah, sons of the commandments, give them time. They’ve been woken only to be rescheduled, assembled, then remanded this morning to welcome—they’re dressed appropriately, be sure of that; each of them holds a metal glint, a shovel or a spade.
One of them, he’s the smallest, the littlest of them all with it makes sense the largest, roundest head: he heads the group, his hands in mittens in his pockets, that head a conceit beaked freakishly high…you haven’t been introduced yet, my apologies—then the rest still massing impatiently behind him, so many now, it seems that they’re thousands and more seething from slat to slate up through His frontyard from the fence and its tiny sidewalk strip, the slabs poured only yesterday and already frozen dry: boys uniformed in thick down coats and woolen hats, mittens, gloves, and scarves—they’re here to pay a courtesy call, we were just in the neighborhood.
F
rom them that smallest one steps forward onto the mat, wipes his feet, shakes from himself the fallen snow.
He offers out his mitten with a smile—and Ben, He can’t help it, grips and pumps.
Shalom, he says.
What I mean is, good morning.
Behind him, the boys jape quietly to themselves but together it’s a roar, an avalanche. And soon, they’re heeling up the snow and hissing smoke…yelling Over here louder, each time more willful, dropping flies and pants and pissing from their snips their names and other cursive curses into the whiteness underfoot: the culprits are soon smacked down with shovels to collapse, to make their angels in the day’s light, young and yellow; others, they’re tossing balls and sledding on their shovels back down toward the fence, through its opened gate and further sloping over asphalt toward the Great Hall: a few snowballs hit the siding, spangle windows, around the opened door, and the kid still standing there turns from Ben, glares back at his friends with a yarny finger to his lips, shrieks for quiet, silence; almost immediately, they all turn whispering and sullen mulling: their faces redden, nip blushed, though that might only be the cold. Another moment stilled, and one taller, skinnier kid, him more mature than the others, or only more obeying, respectful of authority, it’s said, or only open to suggestion, he sighs and with its coughing end kicks his shovel down. At this, they all fall in, arrange themselves and with only scattered moans and demonstrative grunts stoop to their first load, tossing the snow to the lawn’s edges, over the picketfence the length of half a block and off the curb, begin their disordered clearing.