The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg

by Deborah Eisenberg

  Oh, where on earth was Bill? Though actually, I was early. Because last week when I’d called my old friend Juliette and said I was coming to the city to see Nana, she said sure I could stay at her place and naturally I assumed I’d be hanging out there a bit when I got in from the airport and we’d catch up and so on. But when I arrived, some guy, Juliette’s newish boyfriend, evidently—Wendell, I think his name might be—whom she’d sort of mentioned on the phone, turned out to be there, too. Sure, let’s just kill them, why not just kill them all, he was shouting. Juliette was peeling an orange. I’m not saying kill extra people, she said. I’m just frightened; there are a lot of crazy, angry maniacs out there who want to kill us, and I’m frightened. You’re frightened, he yelled. No one else in the world is frightened? Juliette raised her eyebrows at me and shrugged. The orange smelled fantastic. I was completely dehydrated from the flight because they hardly even bring you water anymore, though when I was little it was all so fun and special, with the pretty stewardesses and trays of little wrapped things, and I was just dying to tear open Juliette’s fridge and see if there was another orange in there, but Wendell, if that’s what his name is, was standing right in front of it shouting, What are you saying? Are you saying we should kill everyone in the world to make sure there are no angry people left who want to hurt anyone? So I waited a few minutes for him to finish up with what he wanted to get across and he didn’t (and no one had ever gotten anything across to Juliette) and I just dropped that idea about the orange and said see you later and tossed my stuff under the kitchen table and plunged into the subway. When Juliette and I were at art school together, all her boyfriends had been a lot of fun, but that was five or six years ago.

  Happy laundry danced across the screen on a line. Little kids ate ice cream. A handsome man pumped gasoline into a car, jauntily twirled the cap back on the gas tank, and turned to wink at me. A different standardly attractive woman in a suit appeared. It was hard to tell on this ancient black-and-white set what color we were supposed to believe her hair was. Red, maybe. She was standing on the street, and a small group of people, probably a family, was gathered around her. They were black, or anyhow not specifically white, and they were noticeably fatigued and agitated. Their breath made lovely vapor in the cold. One of them spoke distractedly into a microphone. The others jogged up and down, rubbing their arms. Someone was lying on the pavement. The possibly redheaded newscaster looked serene; she and the family appeared to have arrived at the very same corner from utterly different planets by complete coincidence. She had a pretty good job, actually. A lot better than selling vintage clothing, anyhow. And maybe she was getting some kind of injections. Then it was the blond newscaster again, bracketing a few seconds in which a large structure burst slowly open like a flower, spraying debris and, kind of, limbs, maybe. The blond newscaster was probably getting injections herself. I’d been noticing lines maybe trying to creep up around near my eyes, lately. But even when I was a little child I felt that people who worry about that sort of thing are petty. Of course, when I was a little child I wasn’t about to be getting sneak attacks from lines anytime soon. Hi, Nana, I said, sure you’re okay with this stuff? But she just kept gazing at the images supplanting each other in front of her.

  One way or another it had gotten to be a few months since Bill had called to tell me about Nana’s initial stroke. I’d intended to come right out to see her, but it wasn’t all that easy to arrange for a free week, and Jeff and I were having sort of vaguely severe money problems, and I just didn’t manage to put a trip together until Bill called again and said that this time it was really serious. I reached over and rested my hand on Nana’s. Nana had pretty much looked out for us—me and Bill and Peter—when our mother got sick (well, died, really) and our father started spending all his money on cars and driving them into things. If it hadn’t been for Nana, who knows what would have happened to us.

  Nana gave my hand a brief, speculative look that detached it from hers, and then she turned back to the TV. From what closet had that old apparatus been unearthed? Nana had always gotten her news from the Times, as far as I knew, and other periodicals. I wondered what she was seeing. Was it just that the shifting black-and-white patterns engaged her attention, or did she recognize them as information and find solace in an old habit of receiving it? Or did she still have some comprehension of what was happening in front of her?

  Enormous crowds were streaming through streets. Refugees! I thought for an instant, my hands tingling. Evacuations! But a lot of the people were carrying large placards or banners, I saw, and I realized this must be one of the protests—there was the capitol building, and then something changed and the Eiffel Tower was in the distance, and then there was something that looked like Parliament, and then for a second, a place I couldn’t identify at all, and then another where there were mostly Asians. The apartment was stifling! Despite the horrible freezing weather I got up to open the window a crack. When I sat down again, Nana spoke. Her voice used to have a penetrating, rather solid sound, something like an oboe’s, but now there were a lot of new threadlike cracks in it—it was hoarse, and strange. I suppose you have no idea how I happen to be here, she said. This is where you live, Nana, I said, in case she’d been speaking to me; this is your home. Nana examined my face—dispassionately, I think would be the exact right word. No wonder my father had been terrified of her when he was growing up! Thank you, she said, apropos of what, who could say. She folded her hands primly and ceased to see me.

  My brain rolled up into a tube and my childhood rushed through it, swift pictures of coming here to this apartment with my mother and father and Peter and Bill—swift-moving, decisive Nana, smelling simply beautiful when she leaned down to me, and her big, pretty teeth, and all the shiny, silver hair she could twist up and pin in place in a second with some fantastic ornament. The ornate silver tea service, the delicate slice of lemon floating and dreaming away in the fragile cup, the velvet chairs, the painting of the mysterious, beautiful, leafy world on the wall that you could practically just enter…the light, as soon as you opened the door, of a different time, the lovely, strange, tarnished light that had existed before I was born…Translucent scraps of coming to see Nana went whirling through the tube and were gone. Nana, I said.

  Doll-like figures sprayed into the air, broke open and poured out blackness. There was a bulldozer, and stuff crumbling. Eileen came in. Would I like a cup of tea, she asked me. Thanks, I told her, no. She paused for a moment before she went away again, squinting at the screen. Well, who knows, she said. But I’m glad I don’t have sons.

  Nana had come into the world at the end of one war and lived through part of another before she left Europe, so she must have seen plenty of swarming crowds in her time and crumbling stuff and men in uniforms and little black pin-pricks puncturing the clear sky and swelling right up. Jeff and I don’t have a TV. Jeff doesn’t like anything about TV. The way the sets look, or the sound it makes, or what it does to your brain. He says he’s not so dumb that he thinks he can outsmart the brainwashing. He likes to keep his brain clean all by himself, and it does have a sparkly, pristine quality, despite the fact that it’s a bit squashed by events at the moment, which occasionally causes him to make remarks that could be considered vaguely inappropriate. For example, the other day we were going up in the elevator of the office building where Jeff and his team do their research, and there was a guy standing next to us, wearing a light blue kind of churchy suit, and Jeff turned and said, sort of to him, in a low voice, It’s sunset.

  The guy glanced at Jeff and then at his watch. He had really nice eyes—candid, I think you’d say. He glanced at Jeff again and said, Would you mind pushing seven? Jeff said, Yup, the sun is setting, you guys at the helm. He pushed seven and turned back to the guy. See it sink toward the horizon, he said, feel the planet turn? Hear the big bones crunch at the earth’s hot core? The woolly mammoths, the dinosaurs, hear that? The fossil fuels sloshing? Crunch, crunch, slosh, slosh, D
inosaur Sunset Lullaby? I nodded to the guy when he got out at seven, but he wasn’t looking. Normally, Jeff is very cogent, and he’s amazingly quick to spot the specious remark or spurious explanation, especially, these days, if I’m the one who’s made it. I don’t especially mind having a TV around myself, but my concentration isn’t all that terrific in certain ways and I really can’t get myself to sit down and follow what’s going on in that little square window, so maybe I’m not as vulnerable to assault as Jeff is. But if someone turns a TV on in a bar, for example, I don’t just have to run out screaming.

  So obviously, I never actually see a TV unless we happen to go out, which we really can’t spare the money to do these days, even if we were to feel like it (which Jeff certainly doesn’t). But TV or not, I had no trouble recognizing those faces appearing in front of me as I sat there next to Nana. I suppose everyone knows those faces as well as if they were tattooed on the inside of one’s eyelids. There they are, those guys, whether your eyes are open or shut.

  Gigantic helicopters were nosing at some mountains. I felt worn out. Flying is no joke at all these days! The interrogations at the airport, and worrying about the nail scissors, and those dull boomings, even though you know it’s only luggage getting vaporized, and then when you finally do get mashed into place on the clanking, rickety old thing, with your blood clotting up, and the awful artificial, recirculated whatever it is, air or whatever, who doesn’t think of great chunks of charred metal falling from the sky. Oh, well. I’d gotten to Nana’s in any case.

  A recollection of my father and Nana sitting in this room back when they were on viable terms, drinking something from fragile, icy little shot glasses, pressed itself urgently upon me. Though of course, when Bill finally did stride in, allowing his overcoat to slip off into Eileen’s hands, Peggy behind him, I was glad enough not to be sprawled out hiccuping. You beat me, Bill said, and kind of whacked me a bit on the back, that’s a first. Unfair, I said, when am I ever late these days? How would I know? Bill said. You live on the other side of the country.

  Peggy was carrying an enormous vase full of lilies, a funereal flower if ever there was one. Hi, Peggy, I said. Some flowers you’ve got there. Melinda here, too? Hi, Aunt Lulu, Melinda called from the hall, where she was studying the magical glade. I had a sudden memory of the guy who’d given Nana that painting—Mr. Berman. What a handsome old man! He was one of Nana’s suitors after she booted out Dad’s dad. Dad used to refer to Mr. Berman as the Great Big Jew. Mr. Berman was very nice, as I remember, and rich and handsome, but Nana was sick of getting married, so he moved on, and Nana never looked back, I think. It wasn’t in her nature.

  Peggy was staring at the TV. Goodness me, she said, and picked up the remote. A few sluttish teenagers flounced around a room with studio decor. That’s better, Peggy said. She chuckled wanly. I calculated: the big gloomy bouquet must have cost about what I make in a week. Hey, Melinda, I said, as she wandered into the room; they brought you along, great. My sitter’s mad at me, she said, they didn’t have any choice. She looked at me—Alternative? Sure, I said, that’s fine: they didn’t have any alternative. The hell we didn’t, Bill said. We could have left her on a mountain with her ankles pierced. Melinda swiveled her head toward him, then swiveled it back. Your father’s just being funny, I said. You thought that was funny, Aunt Lulu? Melinda said. Cute outfit, hon, Peggy told me, fanciful; the fun shirt is what? Pucci, I said, early seventies? An as-is—there’s a cigarette burn, see?

  Hey, Granana, Melinda said, watchin’ a show, huh. She peered at Nana scientifically and waggled her fingers in a little wave. Then she walked backward into the sofa and plopped down, showing her teeth for a moment as though she’d performed a trick. So what’s going on? she asked no one in particular.

  There were about five teenagers. One was a boy. They were all making faces and pausing for the silent audience to laugh, apparently. Peggy, who had a gift, rubbed Nana’s hands and sort of chattered. Nana looked around and spoke in the strange voice that sounded like it had been shut away, gathering dust. Everyone, she said. Hi, Nana! we all said. Hello, Lulu, dear, she said, are you here? She blinked once, like a cat, and yawned. It was an odd sight, our elegant Nana’s body and its needs taking precedence that way. She looked back at the TV, and said, What.

  What the hell is this? Bill said, squinting at the flouncing, mugging teenagers. He flicked the remote, and there were those familiar guys again, standing around a podium beneath a huge flag. Bill grunted, and set the remote back on the table with a sharp little click. He forgot about the TV and started ranging around the room, absently picking up objects and turning them over, as though he was expecting to see price tags. Poor Bill. He was frowning a frown, which he’d no doubt perfected in front of his clients, that clearly referred to weighty matters. Terrible, he was muttering; terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible. His feelings for Nana were complicated, I knew (though he didn’t seem to), heavily tinged with rage and resentment, like his feelings for everyone else. Our brother Peter was the quote unquote outstanding one, so Bill, as the other boy, had naturally suffered a lot growing up and was kind of arrested, being so compensatorily dutiful. He looked as if he was incredibly tired, too. Poor Nana, he said. Poor, poor, poor Nana.

  Trip okay, hon? Peggy asked me. Where are you staying? One-two punch, huh, I said. You’re so funny, Peggy said vaguely. You always make me laugh. She looked tired herself. Outside, someone was making some sort of commotion. Screaming or something. Bill went to the window and closed it. Listen, he said to me, thank you for coming. He had already acquired a drink, I noticed—how had he managed that? I’m glad to be here, I said; it’s natural, isn’t it? You don’t have to thank me. Good, he said. He frowned his frown again. I’m glad you decided to come. Because decisions have to be made, and I wanted us to be united. Against? I said.

  Against? he said. Decisions have to be made and I wanted you to be part of the process.

  I’ve had a lot of practice in not getting pissed off at Bill, who can’t help his patronizing, autocratic nature. I reminded myself severely (a) that he’s just a poor trembling soul, trying to keep himself together in whatever way he can, that I should appreciate that it was Bill, obviously, who was dealing with Nana’s whole thing here, and (b) that I wouldn’t want to start regressing all over the place. Thanks, I said. Thanks for including me.

  Bill nodded, I nodded.

  Thanks for including me, I said again. But I don’t have anything to contribute, remember?

  I never said that, he said. I never said that you don’t have anything to contribute. Be straightforward for a moment. Do you think you could be straightforward for a moment? That’s merely the construction you chose to put on a perfectly harmless suggestion I made once—once!—that you might try just a little harder, in certain circumstances. We’ll go into another room for a minute, shall we, you and I?

  Melinda and I will stay right here with your nana, said Peggy, who has a sort of genius for pointless remarks. Bill and I strolled down the long hall to the dining room. I don’t suppose you happen to know where the, um, liquor cabinet is, I said. What is it you require, Bill said, absinthe? There’s not enough stuff right over there on the credenza? Huh? I said. He said, That’s what it’s called, a credenza—is that all right with you? I said, Maybe you could be a little straightforward yourself. He said, Sorry. I’m under a lot of, um…

  Poor Bill. Obviously Dad wasn’t going to be pitching in here. Or Peter, who’s in Melbourne these days. Peter left the whole scene practically as soon as he could walk. When Peter was little everyone thought he’d be the one to find a cure for cancer, but he became sort of an importer instead, of things that are rare wherever he happens to be living, so he can be away all the time. From anywhere. Away, away. Away away away away away. Bill at least gets some satisfaction in thinking Peter’s work is trivial—which really makes Jeff snicker, since Bill works for insurance companies, basically figuring out why they don’t have to pay the policyholders. Now
, there’s something trivial, Jeff said. But then he said no, actually, that it wasn’t trivial at all, was it, it was huge. And that Peggy was even worse than Bill, because Bill was born exploitative and venal and he can’t help it, but Peggy actually cultivates those qualities.

  I remember once, in this very apartment, overhearing Nana telling my father that he was weak and that he resorted to the weapon of the weak—violent rage—and that he used his charm to disguise the fact that he was always just about to do whatever would make everyone most miserable. I provided you with grandchildren, Dad told her. Does that make you miserable? I thought that was what every mother wanted from her child. How can you complain about your grandchildren?

  How? Nana said. Peter is brilliant, but damaged. Lucille is certainly well meaning, and she isn’t a ninny, despite appearances, but she’s afraid of reality just like you. Only she expresses it in immaturity, laziness, confusion, and mental passivity.

  Well, that was a long, long time ago, of course, but I still remember feeling kind of sick and how quiet it was. It was so quiet I could hear the foliage in the painting rustle and the silvery dust particles clashing together. What about Bill, my father said. Surely you don’t intend to spare Bill? Even from behind the door where I was hiding, I could hear Nana sigh. Poor Bill, she said. That poor, poor Bill.

  Hey, that’s my brother you’re talking about, I told Jeff when he criticized Bill, but the fact is, I guess I did that thing that people say people do. Which is that one quality I evidently sought out in my lover is a quality that runs in my family—the quality of having a lot of opinions about other people. Low opinions, specifically.

  And Nana would have to recognize now, if she were only compos, that Bill had taken charge of her well-being all by himself, and that he was doing a pretty good job of it. Eileen, for example. Eileen seemed terrific, nothing wrong with Eileen. Listen! I said to Bill. Listen, I want to tell you this with complete sincerity: I know you’ve had to deal with a lot here, and I’m really, truly sorry I haven’t been much help. How could you have been any help? Bill said. You live on the other side of the country.