“I didn’t see them.”
“Not even across the street?”
I glance at my father to see if I should be nervous, but his eyes are on the paper. “Should I be worried or are you just talking?”
“Worry about those fools?” He taps the sofa. “Relax a minute.”
I take a seat, watching my father’s eyes dart across the page. The radio, for once, is comforting: loud enough to absorb our silence but too quiet for my father to make out actual words and yell back at the news, wagging a finger in the air. Then he sets down the paper and walks into the kitchen. I hear the icebox open and close, and when he reappears he just stands in the doorway, cradling his beer, turning it around in his hands like he’s forgotten what to do with it. Then he says softly, “You’ve been acting funny. This about Gladys?”
This is so unlike him that I know Gladys is on the sidelines, nudging him to ask, and I can’t help it: I wonder if a new woman could be good for us. How comforting to have things back in order like when my mother was sick and the Party women took charge: dinner foil-wrapped and ready to slide into the oven, the sounds of a bridge game and neighborhood gossip rising and falling in the background as I drifted to sleep.
“Do you love her?” I blurt.
“No,” he says. “But I like her.”
“But do you think you could? Someday, I mean.”
He stares at me, as if genuinely registering my presence for the first time. “You want to know the truth?”
I nod and he sits back down and says, “Sometimes we’ll be out together, eating a meal or something, and I’ll be watching her mouth move and hear nothing she’s saying and feel like the saddest man in the restaurant. Sometimes I wonder if I was wired to love only your mother. But then I keep thinking, okay. Now’s the time for me to be back in my life.”
I’ve never heard him talk this way to anyone—certainly not to me—and part of me knows to let everything fall silent before the mood turns dangerously dark. I can already tell I’m wandering into mapless territory, where I can so easily step over some invisible border and start a whole new war, just like that. But I have too many questions. “Was Mom your first?” I say. “Love, I mean.”
He shakes his head. “But after her, the others seemed like rehearsals.”
“She was pretty, wasn’t she?”
He looks up, startled. “You don’t remember?”
I’ve spent my whole life trying to remember, I want to say.
Instead I say: “I was five.”
“You were five,” he says, as if it’s only now occurring to him. “No,” he says, slowly. “She wasn’t very pretty. Sometimes, at certain angles, she looked a little crazy. Like all her features, her long nose and pointy chin, had no business being together on one face. But then she’d look at you head-on and dazzle you.” He smiles, as if he can see something on the wall beyond me, some bright and endless reel of images, that will always—always—be invisible to me. “She had such a presence at the meetings. She knew how to be the most powerful person in the group by saying so little. You’d be talking to a room packed with people and she’d just stare at you, and all at once you’d feel drunk and oafish and full of hot air, even when you’d had nothing to drink.”
And then the question that’s been knocking around inside me for years comes tumbling out: “Do you ever think it isn’t worth it?”
“What?”
We’ve been talking so openly, but suddenly even saying the question feels too risky, as if someone might really be listening. “You know,” I say. “Have you ever thought, for just a second, of giving all this up and being—like everybody else?”
“We are like everybody else,” my father says quickly. “Everyone who matters.”
For a moment he doesn’t say anything. “You have to understand,” he says. “The Party was our life, your mother’s and mine. And after she died, the idea of getting out of bed and making coffee and going on with my day seemed . . . impossible. But everyone, they stepped in. The Party women caring for you, Lou and Alan coming by every single day, taking you to school, to the park on weekends. Everybody, all of them, they helped you with your homework, they taught you to read. I couldn’t do any of that myself.” He takes a slow sip of beer. “You can’t question the Party,” he says. “The moment you do—you fall apart.”
He’s sitting there, his feet tapping the floor to a sharp, even beat and his head squished against the cushions. I have this eerie and comforting feeling of seeing him at ten, twenty, thirty, shifting nervously on all the sofas in every apartment he’s lived in. All at once I feel his pain, his life, lean against my heart.
He clears his throat. “It’s probably past your bedtime.”
“Pop,” I say. “I don’t have a bedtime.”
But we both stand up and he puts his hands on my shoulders, steering me down the hall. “Let’s you and me pretend, just for tonight,” he says, “that I remembered to give you one. Okay?”
“Okay,” I whisper. And there’s a moment before I go into my room that his hands stay on my shoulders, just resting there: the heaviest, warmest coat.
I’M WIPING down tables the next morning when my father and Lou saunter through the restaurant doors. They seem all business, snagging their booth in the back without stopping to chat with the guys at the counter. “Hey,” I say.
My father doesn’t look up. So I walk over and say, “The usual?”
“Sure,” he says. “Whatever.”
And then he waves me away and turns back to Lou. They’re so focused on each other that it’s like I really am just a waitress to him, some flimsy, forgettable girl in a grease-stained apron with a too-hot pot of coffee. They just keep leaning in and whispering, and suddenly I’m so hurt I can taste it. I’m standing there, feeling like a bigger fool by the second for believing one real talk with my father means another will follow—and then I set the pot down right on their table, untie my apron and push through the glass doors.
“Running out again?” Alan’s behind me on the street, so close I can see a rim of sweat above his lip. In the sunlight he looks athletic, like the sweat came from a tennis match rather than working in a restaurant with a broken fan. But I’m already walking down the avenue too fast to answer, past the hardware store and the druggist and the bakery, my sandals loud on the pocked sidewalk. I know the last thing my father will do is tie on that apron, and yes, I know it’s wrong to make Alan take over my shift, but I keep walking. I turn up one block and the next, smelling everything at once: charcoal and hamburgers, eucalyptus trees, exhaust wafting out from the mechanic’s. I cross a boulevard, toward the larger houses set away from the road. Then down a side street, up another and past an intersection, until I’m standing in front of his door.
“Hey,” Hal says, opening it after my first knock. His face is pink, like he just scrubbed it. Behind him there’s a television flashing and a brown plaid recliner. I can’t make out the person in it, just a man’s arm, Hal’s father’s arm, reaching for a sandwich on the tray beside him. There’s a western on the screen, and beyond that, lemon-colored walls and thick carpet and the distant sound of a vacuum, humming away in a room I can’t see.
Then Hal steps toward me and closes the door on everything. “It’s good to see you,” he says, leading me out back. “You’ve got to see what we’ve done.” He lights the lantern and we climb inside.
The rest of the cinderblocks have been set along the sides of the shelter and the boards have been hammered down to create a floor. Canned food, candles and jugs of water rest against the wall. “We did a lot in a day, didn’t we?” Hal says, a hint of pride in his voice. “It’ll be finished by the weekend.”
“What’s the rush?” I say. “You’re really that worried?”
He pokes a finger through the buttonhole in his shirt. “My mom wants it done. She and my dad have been fighting and I heard him say he’d prefer to sleep in here. That was what he said, prefer. Like he was throwing her words right back at her.”
He looks up, and I’m afraid he might cry. He’s still going on about his parents, about their fights carrying all the way down the hall to his bedroom and how lately he’s been wanting to store his dishes in there so he can eat under the covers rather than facing the two of them together in the kitchen, and suddenly it’s like everything once fuzzy and glorious is coming glaringly into focus and there Hal is: some regular kid with regular problems, a goofy boy with a peeling nose and mayonnaise on his breath and half-moons of dirt beneath his nails. Even the shelter’s losing its luster, and I can see now what shoddy work they’ve been doing, the floorboards raised and uneven, the paint his mother chose a harsh and terrible green, like overripe avocados. I know that if I let him keep talking, this whole fantasy will topple over before it’s even had a chance to rise. So I rest a hand on his knee and feel the thick fabric of his shorts. “I’m glad I stopped by,” I say.
And then we’re kissing, hands snaking up his polo and my blouse, roaming across shoulders and backs and hip bones. Our shirts peel off effortlessly, as if more experienced people have entered the shelter and are doing all the work. Hal is bony and muscled, with faint freckles scattered across his chest. The lantern goes off and darkness fills the shelter. When the lights come back on again, his lips are even closer to mine.
“What do you want me to do?” he asks.
“I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.”
“Oh God,” he says. “Neither have I.”
“Well,” I say, not having a clue, “I think we’re supposed to start like this.” I pull him onto the floorboards and reach for his zipper. Hal rolls on top of me, pushes up my skirt. I stare at the food stacked beside me: tomato soup, tuna fish, cans and cans of Spam. I know what I’m about to do could taint me forever, and yes, I know I’m supposed to wait until I’m married and much, much older, but I can’t think of a single real reason to stop.
He touches my face, looks at me. “We don’t have to do this if it’s going to hurt so much.”
“I don’t feel anything,” I say. “I don’t even think you’re in there.” I tell myself to focus entirely on the Spam. “Try again,” I whisper.
He does, but before he even gets the smallest bit inside, his whole body shudders. He closes his eyes, and a second later he opens them so wide I can’t help but think of Alan Mandlebaum. “Oh,” he says, the word rolling off his tongue in three long syllables. And then I guess we’re done.
“Jeez,” he says, leaning back on the boards. He reaches for my hand, and for a minute we lie there silently. Then he sits up. “My dad could come out here any second,” he says. “Let’s go somewhere. Anywhere. My treat.”
I look around the shelter, taking in the wood floor, the lantern and piles of food. I’m thinking I could stay here a very long time, hidden and protected from the world. I could help Hal and his father repaint the walls an orange so bright and beautiful they’d forget about the dark. Hal and I could play board games and flip through the photographs in Life magazine, and when his father went into the house for more jugs of water, we could take off our clothes and try again so maybe the next time I’d feel something. But Hal has already zipped up his pants and is wiping the wet spot off my skirt with his hankie, and I think of my father inside Menick’s and know what I have to do.
“Alright,” I say. “I know a nice place.”
HAL’S MESMERIZED the moment we step inside, the way I must have looked the first time I saw television. Everything seems to fascinate him: the regulars at the counter, still talking about baseball; jar after jar of olives; even the glass dish of mints on the counter, chalky and dry as detergent.
“It’s just the two of us,” I tell Alan at the counter. “And I want a booth.” Alan leads us to one in the back. He slaps down two menus, avoiding my gaze. But I notice his hands are quivering. “Two Coke floats,” I say as he shuffles off.
From my father’s booth I hear Gladys’ deep laugh, the clink of ice in an empty glass. I wait for my father to look up and see me with Hal. He’ll pause for a moment: forkful of pie held midair, newspaper lowered and eyebrows raised. Then he’ll walk over to my booth, rest his hands on the table and before he can say a word he’ll take one look at me and know it’s too late: the doors of my life have already swung wide open, and there’s nothing he can do to kick them closed.
My father stands up and makes his way down the row of tables and booths in my direction. He’s walking swiftly, shoes squeaking against the linoleum, his shoulders erect and proud. In his fist is his crumpled napkin. When he reaches my booth, he moves right past, not even shooting me a sideways look. He stops at Lou Mandlebaum’s table, where he whispers something into Lou’s ear. Lou mumbles something back as they walk outside, and it’s then I see the cops waiting under the blinking Menick’s sign.
Right away the two officers approach my father and Lou. I can’t hear a word anyone’s saying, but it’s obvious my father’s yelling the loudest. He’s waving his hands in the air as if he’s capable of pushing things around in the sky, while the cops keep their hands at their sides. At first glance the officers look alike, but then I notice one is almost handsome with a black crew cut; the other less handsome but kinder-looking, with a mustache and shiny pink lips like a woman’s. I wonder if either man has a daughter and a duplex and a restaurant they eat at every afternoon. The man with the crew cut walks over to a squad car parked out front. He fishes for keys inside his pants pockets and unlocks the backseat. The man with the nice lips takes my father and Lou by the elbow and leads them to the car, but they whip their arms out of his grip. The man leans so close to them that his breath must be hot on their faces, and whatever he says makes my father stop talking altogether. The cop handcuffs them both and pushes them into the backseat.
The car pulls away from the curb, and here I am, same girl as always, except for the boy I barely know beside me. Hal is fiddling with the saltshaker, asking me what in the world is happening outside, as if I have any control. There is the squad car, making its way down the wide gray avenue. I try to picture my father in the back but it’s impossible: all I know for certain is that the last thing on his mind is what I’ve been doing with the boy in my booth. The car stops, makes a right at the light and then it is gone. There is Gladys, rallying everyone around the booth that is now hers. There is Alan, setting the half-made Coke floats on the counter. He’s walking toward Gladys, motioning for me to join him so we can make a plan for what to do next. It occurs to me that Alan’s the only other person who understands exactly how it feels to watch his father get cuffed and thrown into the back of a squad car, the only other person who will be waiting for a call from jail tonight. I know I have no choice but to leave Hal in the booth and join Alan: some choices are made for you and that’s that. I wish I could say Alan looks different to me at this moment, but he looks the way I’ve always seen him, the way I know I always will: nervous and sweaty, bewildered and pale. There is the glass case of Jell-O, going around in circles, like not a thing has changed. There is the radio, turned up for news hour. The Eisenhowers had the White House staff up to their country house today, and Fantastique, a tricot fabric made of DuPont polyester yarn, has just hit department stores nationwide. It’s fast-drying and wrinkle-resistant, the radio announcer says, so forget about the laundry and enjoy your day outside.
A Difficult Phase
Talia was in line at Café Noah when she noticed a man watching her. He was at the group table by the window, handsome in a nerdy, chaotic way, wearing a rumpled orange t-shirt and metallic glasses a shade lighter than his hair. He smiled. She smiled back. He smiled again, and Talia, interested more in the light buzz of flirtation than an actual conversation, gave him one last look, then tossed her change in the tip jar.
Out on Ahad Ha’am Street, people were clustered around little tables lining the sidewalk, sipping coffee and smoking leisurely though it was noon on a Wednesday. The sun was out after an entire April of rain, and as Talia rounded the corner, she wonde
red if she was the only person in all of Tel Aviv rushing back to eat at her desk, the only person who would have left the café so quickly when one day, she knew, these situations could magically stop presenting themselves. So she turned back—and saw the man in the orange t-shirt barreling toward her.
“Did I forget something?” she asked him.
“What?”
“In the café.”
“No,” he said. “You look familiar—Hebrew University?” and when she shook her head he said, “Maybe from the neighborhood?” Before Talia could think of an answer, before she could tilt her head and say “possibly” in an alluring and noncommittal way, rather than the truth, which was that, at twenty-nine, her career was shot, she’d moved back home with her parents in Rehovot, a half-hour south of the city, and the only reason she was even in the neighborhood was because she’d picked up fact-checking work nearby at the local paper they left out for free on trains and in Laundromats, Mr. Orange T-shirt blinked a couple times, then said, “Oh, fuck it. You were flirting with me in there, right?”
She had been flirting, and the realization made her feel better—at least it was interesting. Better than going back to her office, where a deadline and a morning’s worth of unopened emails loomed. The man looked about forty, with large blue eyes and pale, stubbled skin. Though they were standing still, he was out of breath, and his sense of personal space was off by a centimeter or two. She did a quick ring check and pegged him as recently divorced, the type who patrolled cafés for love during his lunch hour.
“It’s hard to tell,” he continued. “Maybe you were just being nice.”
“No,” Talia conceded, “I was flirting.” She’d said a lot of bold things in her life but never something so direct to a person she didn’t know, and it threw her so off-balance that when he started to walk, Talia fell into step with him. She was aware they were heading away from the paper, but she could feel the day breaking open. She liked that neither of them seemed to have a particular destination, that they were just ambling around, something she only did on vacation. They turned down a narrow street, and she watched two girls, quick and earnest, chase each other through a courtyard while an older man, several stories above, watered his plants. Everything felt squintingly bright and a little too in focus, as if she’d just stumbled into the daylight after a heavy night of drinking: the cloudless sky, the sparkly asphalt road, the squares of silver foil covering a woman’s hair in a salon window. At the corner Talia and the man made a right, then crossed a boulevard and walked up another road until they were standing in front of a junior high school. “I have to go,” he said, and Talia realized that on her supposedly aimless, carefree walk she’d actually followed this man back to work.
The UnAmericans: Stories Page 12