Current Affairs

by Raskin, Barbara;

  “… and now I’ve got Amelia on my hands while I’m still free-lancing. I don’t see how it would hurt you to take care of her for five days. Really. You are her great-aunt, you know.”

  “Oh, all right,” I say. “All right.” My words are like broken dishes with ragged edges. “She can stay here, but don’t ask me to cover for you with the cops or your famous FBI or CIA, because I won’t do it, Shay. I mean it. I really won’t.”

  “Oh, Natalie, thank you!”

  Shay hurtles herself at me, knotting her arms around my neck.

  I inhale her essence. Her pretense.

  Sometimes when we were in high school Shay would wear one of my sweaters and then deny it. But I could always smell her spicy odor on my clothes. I once read somewhere about two sisters who shared a bedroom and years later discovered each had been devirginated on the other’s bed. I thought about that a lot, about what it really meant. But I could never decide if it was a story about love or loathing.

  Sometimes I hate myself more than I hate Shay.

  Mickey Teardash at least shows enough grace to call a taxi to take him and Shay out to Dulles. I have to admit he has more sensitivity to other people than Shay does. She’s a user; he’s just a taker. Amelia and I stand on the front stairs and wave good-bye until long after their cab has turned the corner and disappeared into Rock Creek Park.

  By four o’clock Sunday afternoon the city feels deserted. Most of the media elite and Democratic leaders have left for Atlanta. The familiar crowd of people who power-lunch at Duke’s, dine at Germaine’s, take tennis lessons from Kathy Kemper at Mount Vernon Junior College and shop at the Georgetown Safeway have disappeared. Washington’s political types are like little children who can sense immediately if their parents aren’t home. When the president goes to Camp David for a weekend, lots of Washingtonians remain uneasy until he returns to the city.

  After her nap I take Amelia for a walk up Columbia Road to Kalorama Park. When Steven was young I used to bring him there frequently, but now the city has abandoned the park because of an infestation of rodents. Indeed the Recreation Department has simply bequeathed this park to the homeless, the dealers, the winos, the junkies and the rats. The grass is knee-high. The benches are all missing slats from either their seats or their backs.

  On one bench, close to the sidewalk, sits my client Hannah, with her shapeless body, faded eyes and torn shopping bags stuffed full of seasonal costumes. She has been crippled by arthritis. The lower parts of both thumbs are gone, actually devoured by the disease, and her fingers are frozen into contorted claws. She is holding on to the Safeway shopping cart she shares with a friend, who actually boosted it from the supermarket and thus holds majority control. The cart looks like a piece of found art. Each mesh square is stuffed with a prized possession: scraps of material, papers, cooking utensils, washcloths, used soap and empty containers.

  My first concern is whether or not Hannah will frighten Amelia, but my little grandniece shows no alarm. She seems to view Hannah as some sort of street performer trying to act funny. Today, with the temperature over 100 degrees, Hannah is wearing an old bus driver’s jacket that doesn’t quite button, a large white apron tied around her middle, baggy pantyhose and two mismatched shoes. Although elsewhere she has been busted for indecent exposure, in Adams-Morgan the cops are sort of soft on Hannah. Last year one of them gave her his old police cap for Christmas—definitely a no-no.

  “Whaddaya got?” Hannah asks in her ear-piercing squeal. “Whozat doll baby?”

  “This is Amelia,” I say begrudgingly.

  “Hi-hi!” Hannah says.

  She smiles at Amelia in her usual harmless, empty way. Hannah has a full round face, splotches of broken veins in each cheek, a Dutch Boy-cleanser hairdo and a walleye similar to Jean-Paul Sartre’s. But this is not the reason it is difficult to meet Hannah’s gaze. Hannah never looks directly at anyone. She tilts and turns her head, as if protecting her bad eye, successfully avoiding any eye contact with anyone.

  “How you doin’, Hannah?”

  “The shelter’s closed.”

  “Yes, I know. We’ll open up again in September.”

  Slowly Hannah raises her arms to inspect her claw-like hands.

  “Bad. It’s so bad today,” she says. “In Sarasota when I couldn’t get the groceries in the Winn-Dixie bags no more, the customers bagged their own, but the manager fired me anyhow.”

  I am shocked. Seldom does Hannah mention anything about herself or her past, and now in one sentence she has given me the name of a city, a job and even a skeletal explanation for her situation. So. Hannah was a Winn-Dixie clerk. From bagger to bag lady.

  “I didn’t know you were a checkout clerk,” I say carefully. “Come on—let’s go over to. McDonald’s and I’ll buy you something to eat.”

  But Hannah doesn’t like restaurants. She does not like going inside any building. Twice, in defiance of city regulations, I took her home with me for a proper bath, but she would only sit on the front steps. My fantasy is that I’ll finally find out enough about Hannah to discover she has a devoted sister somewhere who’s been seeking her for decades and who will quickly come to this corner near Eighteenth and Columbia Road to reclaim Hannah when notified of her whereabouts.

  “I didn’t know you were a bagger,” I probe again.

  But now Hannah is spent. She’s produced so many words she doesn’t feel like talking anymore. Picking up her Lord & Taylor bag, she stuffs it inside the Safeway shopping cart, wobbles to her feet and trudges off toward a more secluded bench.

  I pause for a moment and then go after her with Amelia trotting behind me.

  “Hannah, do you want to go to the House of Rachel?”

  She looks at me glumly. “I like your shelter,” she says accusingly.

  I think of the keys to the padlocked door, which are sitting on my bedroom bureau.

  “I’ll get it reopened by September, Hannah. Really.”

  I think about the shelter. Because there are no showers, the storefront always smells foul in the summertime. In the winter, when I draw the old sheet we use as curtains across the front windows, there is an elemental cavelike quality to the place that stirs some strong, primitive feelings in both me and Angie, my friend and unpaid volunteer assistant.

  Hannah makes several strange snorting sounds through her nostrils, shakes her head and then turns and walks away again.

  SNAPSHOT

  I have always kept this picture of my Bubbie among my important papers—our wedding certificate, my B.A. and M.S.W. diplomas, the titles to our house and cars. It is mounted in one of those heavy cardboard folders European photographers used in the early twentieth century. My Bubbie is maybe twenty years old here. She is wearing a high-collared dress with a brooch at the neck. Her dark hair is brushed back into a coil and her blue eyes are bright. Sometimes I feel that I knew her best when she was twenty—a wild political firebrand, stirred by the murder of her father and by her socialist dreams. At eighteen she joined some revolutionary cell, met my Zadie, fought in the streets and finally walked across Poland en route to America. I know this: If that young woman, Melunah, came to me now, looking as she does in this beige, tawny-tinted print, she would say: “So? This is your great America? With women living in the streets, sleeping in boxes, begging for food? This is your great democracy? Your golden dream? Feh,” she would shrill mockingly. “Feh!”

  Amelia and I have just returned home and are ransacking the kitchen in search of a snack when the telephone rings.

  “Ms. Myers?”

  “Yes?”

  “Lieutenant Culver here.”

  “Oh! Hi.”

  “Your car’s been recovered.”

  “Oh! Great. Was … my sister’s luggage inside?”

  My voice is at least an octave higher than usual.

  “Nope. Sorry ’bout that. Nothing but a bunch of papers spilled out all over the floor in the backseat.”

  “Oh?” Be still my heart. “So wh
at do I have to do?”

  “Are you alone over there?”

  “Yes.” Weird question. Unless he’s coming here to arrest me. Panic begins panting inside my rib cage, where I keep it chained. “Except for my little grandniece. I’m taking care of her this week.”

  “Look,” Lieutenant Culver says. “A few questions have come up that I’d like to discuss with you. In private. Since I have to make a quick run in my car, how ’bout I stop by there for a few minutes?”

  “Sure.”

  There is a drought developing in my mouth. I begin to dehydrate as soon as I envision the pleasure of the precinct cops seeing me brought back to the station house in handcuffs—stoop-shouldered, shuffling along as if wearing hospital-issue paper slippers. Me. With all my white ways and means.

  I’ll have to find Barney, I think. They’ll have to let me phone my lawyer. He’ll come and take Amelia. If I can’t find him, I’ll try to reach Victoria at the Post. They’ll have to let me find someone to take care of Amelia. She’s only three. Both Angie and Helen, my most dependable friends, are up on Martha’s Vineyard.

  “You got your car registration there with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. So I’ll see you in about twenty minutes. Five-eight-one-five Adams Mill Road, right?”

  “Right.”

  Amelia is standing on one of the kitchen chairs straightening out my silverware drawer for the second time today. Earlier I had removed the knives so she could put the forks and spoons in their proper molded spaces. She seems totally absorbed, but when I walk over to her she stops her work and looks up at me expectantly.

  “Whasa matta, Auntie Nattie?” she asks sympathetically.

  Amelia has long been programmed to acknowledge, even anticipate, adult moods. It was her mother, Yvonne, who taught her how to gauge degrees of distress and despair, to determine the differential between fear and panic. Watching her mother disintegrate, Amelia learned lots of diagnostic skills.

  Now she can interpret adult faces like pictures in a storybook.

  “Nothing’s wrong, honey.” I give her a hug. “I’m just going to put on some makeup.”

  In the powder-room mirror I see a moving still of myself, an implicit story etched on my face. My eyes, which change colors like a mood ring, are a light hazel-gray color right now. I know that means I’m afraid. In fact, I’m terrified.

  Amelia will freak out if I leave her. After all my promises, half a day goes by and I will disappear like all the other adults in her life.

  I’ll call Shay. If she refuses to come back, I’ll tell the police to pick her up in Atlanta. She’s the felon here. I’m not my sister’s keeper. I’m just her sister. Or Mickey Teardash can come back. He’s not covering the convention. He just went down there to be at the Democratic-party party with my sister the party girl.

  Boola, boola.

  I fix my hair, blot my face with a damp hand towel and use the cosmetics I leave on the sink for crash-makeup campaigns.

  Then the doorbell rings.

  “Hello, Lieutenant.”

  He is wearing vanilla-colored linen slacks, another madras sport shirt and white loafers with no socks. In one hand he is swinging Shay’s Big Brown Bag stuffed with messy, badly wrinkled papers.

  “Always wanted to see the inside of one of these houses,” he claims, looking around as he follows me into the kitchen. “It’s a great block. Great-looking houses. And that’s your little … granddaughter?”

  I don’t correct him.

  It feels sweet to be mistaken for a grandmother, as if that makes me a nice person by definition. Shay told me Jackie Onassis was ecstatic about becoming a grandmother this summer. Ellen Gilchrist on NPR is always raving about her grandchildren. Ditto Lena Horne, who lives a few blocks away, on Connecticut Avenue. Grandmotherhood is definitely an identity a woman can wrap around herself like a shawl to keep warm.

  “Would you like some iced coffee? Or tea?”

  “Iced coffee’d be great,” he says, sitting down at the table.

  Amelia continues working on the silverware.

  I fill a large glass with ice and pour this morning’s coffee over it. My hands are quivering.

  I know I’ve got to get a grip on myself. All I have to do is tell the truth and I’m home free. So why am I freaking out? Why do I feel as if I’m in free-fall?

  It is clear Lieutenant Bo Culver has come to arrest me.

  Me! I am just like poor Sherman McCoy. I did not mean to do anything wrong, to go astray. I did not mean to break the law. I do not want to get arrested.

  “Where’d you find my car?” I ask in a chatty voice.

  “Badly parked on MacArthur Boulevard. Squad car noticed it this A.M. and called in the license number. I went over to check it out. With my partner. It was my partner collected all these papers thrown around the backseat.”

  He accepts the glass of iced coffee from me and helps himself to three heaping spoonfuls of sugar. Lieutenant Culver clearly has a sweet tooth. He is also probably a high-cholesterol man. He might possibly score in the top 200’s or even low 300’s.

  “My partner … was sorta suspicious about those papers.” He nods toward the bag parked near his feet. “For some reason he thought they were government property. Classified documents. So I said I’d check that out with you. Since we’d already talked. Which is why I came past.”

  “Came past” is a black Washington expression. I would have said “came over.”

  I sit down.

  I am about to betray my sister. Turn her in. Let her be punished for all the crimes of the heart she’s committed. And for all her sins of omission.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Which word you having trouble with?”

  “What do you mean by … government property?”

  “Whaddaya think that means?”

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  Amelia, sensing my nervousness, suddenly abandons her silverware job and wanders over to the table. Backing up, she wedges herself between my knees so she can keep the detective under surveillance.

  Lieutenant Culver smiles down at her. In fact, he actually looks into her eyes, showing some capacity for relating to little people. This is a good sign. Amelia looks back at him with a great deal of solemnity and suspicion. Clearly she knows that men can disappear women just as adults know fascist South American governments can disappear leftists.

  “I mean,” I begin again, “how would I come in contact with government property?”

  “Well, that’s hard for me to say,” Lieutenant Culver responds, returning his attention to me. His eyes, the color of apple butter, have hardened with determination. “Maybe some lawyer friend of yours left them in your car,” he suggests. “Maybe even … your former brother-in-law, Barney Yellen?”

  Cool out, I tell myself. Stay calm. Think. What would Shay do now? She’d probably opt for ambiguity. For space. For keeping her options open. And she wouldn’t hesitate to dump on Barney.

  “We’ve got a lot of lawyer friends,” I say, rumpling Amelia’s hair and tugging at her bangs to make them droop lower across her forehead.

  The detective nods toward the Big Brown Bag again. “That stuff in there is sorta weird, though. Like … I guess you’d have to say they’re Grade-A, VIP-type documents.”

  “I wanna ice cream cone,” Amelia announces in a last-ditch effort to defuse the tension.

  Detective Culver smiles down at her.

  “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream,” he recites slowly. “Okay. Let’s go get a treat. Out on the street. How ’bout that?” He smiles. “I’m-a-poet-but-I-just-don’t-know-it.”

  Then he drains his coffee, tilting the glass so high on his face that it encloses his nose. When he’s finished, he smiles. His smile has different levels of brightness, like a three-way bulb.

  “I’ll just leave the bag here for the time being.”

  I go to find my purse. My panic is blinking on and off like the digita
l clock on my coffeepot.

  “Really. These are great houses,” Lieutenant Culver says again after we’re outside.

  He walks along, nodding at the gingerbread house next door to mine, the old Tudor-looking castle beyond it and the Hänsel and Gretel cottage beside the old-fashioned apartment building on the corner. When we pass People’s Park, Lieutenant Culver stops to survey some of the urban debris trapped in the chain link fence.

  “Lookin’ good,” he comments with satisfaction. “Condoms all over the place. Somebody’s practicing safe sex.” Then he glances down at his wristwatch. “I just went off duty. How ’bout I buy us a drink?”

  At noon a newscaster had excitedly announced that this was the hottest day of the year to date. The temperature at twelve was 104 degrees. We maneuver through the heat and cross the jazzy intersection of Eighteenth and Columbia Road, skirting the jolly fat kiosk covered with layers—generations—of leftist fliers. This Adams-Morgan kiosk could compete with any in Managua as a kaleidoscope of local color, chaos, and political enthusiasm.

  The jarring juxtapositions on Eighteenth Street mirror my mood. The boomtown stores, feverishly renovated when the yuppies invaded the neighborhood, wear facades, like false smiles, to hide the sad, shabby truths lurking behind them. Their duplicity reflects my own. Our neighborhood McDonald’s, squeezed inside a totally incongruous gingerbread Victorian building, is not like its swift suburban cousins. Here winos, bag ladies, beggars, down-and-outers, street psychos and latchkey kids stand in unruly lines waiting to be served by reluctant and surly counter attendants.

  Walking beside this handsome black out-of-uniform cop, I feel dangerously conspicuous. Even in Adams-Morgan a white woman with a black man still causes some consternation. Neither the blacks nor the whites of D.C. are crazy about miscegenation. This is a racially sophisticated, but basically separatist, city.

  “Fourteen Ethiopian restaurants on this block,” Lieutenant Culver brags, squinting into the white-hot sunshine. “That’s both sides of the street. Fourteen! You hungry?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Let’s just have a drink at Café au Lait. But first we’ll pick her up a cone.”