by Susan Isaacs
Another time: after the planes hit on 9/11, when he called and I went to his apartment on the Upper West Side. We’d stayed watching TV for hours on end. I’d asked him, “Don’t you want to go up to Connecticut to be with your family?” As in, Are you crazy, not getting out of Manhattan when you have an alternative? He’d shaken his head. No. The next day we went downtown, as close as the cops would let us get, and he filmed for a while, asking the people who looked nailed in place, staring downtown, where they’d been when it happened, how they’d gotten home. Good documentarian that he was, he got many long stories. “Do you have an idea how you’ll use this?” I’d asked. He’d said, “No. I doubt if I’ll ever use it. It’s not really professional quality. I may never even look at it again. Maybe I’ll save it for my great-great-grandchildren. Although when you think about it, how much does Pearl Harbor mean to our generation? Whatever. At least it will be a personal link between them and some dead guy who lived in the early twenty-first century.”
A few minutes later he said, “You be the journalist and I’ll be the cameraman.” I didn’t want to. All I wanted to do was get the hell uptown, away from that thick air with its stench of melted steel, vaporized printer ink, burned-up flesh. But I went over to a coffee shop owner washing his windows. As he talked to me he held his squeegee the way the farmer in American Gothic held his pitchfork. He told me about the people he’d watched jumping from the towers. Some of them held hands, he started to sob, but none of them made it all the way still together. He’d been up all night praying for God to give him some sign that they’d died before they reached the ground or their hands simply slipped apart. No, he hadn’t gotten any sign as of yet. John filmed us until the guy sat down on the curb to weep. I asked him to stop shooting. I took the squeegee and finished cleaning the window while John turned off his camera, sat down beside the guy, and put his arm around his shoulder while the guy wept into his hands.
That night, I went back to my apartment. He kept asking me why, and I said, “Look, I don’t want to be in your way if you want to go up to Connecticut.” He told me, “That’s crazy, if I wanted to go that badly, you’d come with me. Unless you wanted to go to your aunt’s house in Brooklyn. Or see your father ...”
I honestly felt he needed his space. John enjoyed being alone. He could keep himself endlessly occupied: reading, screening other people’s work, listening to every kind of music, going to lectures on arcane subjects, playing pickup basketball. I didn’t want him to feel he had to be polite. Or that I was being sneaky, using the nation’s nightmare to slide into his apartment and his life. Because then he’d be stuck. How could he get rid of me?
Well, by asking. But back then, that thought never occurred to me. I can’t say for sure what I pictured: not me at ninety, going out to buy dental floss for my two remaining teeth. I suppose I imagined John at long last (two weeks? two years?) sitting me down to explain why it wasn’t working and how I’d have to go. Or just getting so disgusted living with someone who kept straightening out the forks in the drawer that he finally screamed, Get the hell out!
Yet John had been so clear on wanting to be with me. If I’d thought about it, I would have realized it was the time everybody was clinging to the person or people closest to them. And there he was, not going up to his family, but wanting to be with me. What had I been thinking when I left? No clear thoughts at all, just a need to leave. Why? Because I was the one who really needed space, but rather than admitting it, even to myself, I’d lobbed that need over to his side of the court? Or had my heart known something my head couldn’t acknowledge, that having been a guest at everybody’s family occasions had only reinforced my Véronique-genes’ proclivity for avoiding entangling alliances?
I was, and probably would always be, alone. All those weddings that weren’t mine. All those babies I wasn’t having. Sitting by myself in the emergency room, no annoying relative or concerned friend by my side. Being the loner invited by people for Thanksgiving turkey or Hanukkah latkes so they could feel benevolent. I could remedy all that. A baby. But was it fair for me to have a child simply because I needed a family?
I sensed I’d gone over the line from a cozy melancholia into serious self-pity, but Passover loomed a week and a half away. When I’d said good-bye to John’s parents at his cousin’s wedding, they’d said, “See you at the Seder.” Where would I go? Okay, almost anywhere, since tradition says a stranger has to be welcomed because of Jews having been strangers in a strange land. But the one place in the world I’d felt I actually belonged was with the Orensteins.
Well, not anymore. I thought of everyone I knew who lived alone, single, divorced, abandoned, widowed. Did they sit around staring at three candied almonds, thinking that at some point they’d better start amassing pills for that final night alone? Was that the alternative to a life spent with no meaningful connections? Or did they simply shrug, turn on TCM, and watch Lady L?
The only thing holding me back from Florida, from maybe getting to talk to Rose Moscowitz, was Happy Bob’s okay. “Are you sure you don’t just want a few days in the nice warm weather?” he asked. A phlegmy sound resonated from his throat: a chuckle, or perhaps a chortle. As usual, he masked his distrust of his own handpicked editorial staff behind what he considered an open smile. His teeth, mottled with brown, always reminded me of the Dead Sea scrolls. “Why can’t you do this online, or at a library? Get some expert at Columbia or NYU. Spend a day in Washington and come back—”
“Bob, three-quarters of the authorities I want to talk to are in Florida.”
“What’s wrong with the phone?”
“They’re not going to give me an hour answering my questions on Kucinich’s program for alternative energy sources—solar and ocean. That’s what’s wrong.”
Happy Bob tugged at the black hair between his eyebrows, his reflective gesture. Finally he smiled again: “Don’t let me see you come back with a suntan.”
By my second day in Florida, I knew I had almost enough information for a good piece. I’d assembled piles of data on the rising ocean due to global warming, and on sewage disposal for America’s ever-increasing population of a certain age, one not known for great bladder control. I even watched C-SPAN at night in my hotel; John Edwards was charming a United Synagogue convention in South Carolina and I took notes. Best of all, I’d gotten a free ride to check out my maternal grandmother.
At high noon, coated with SPF 30, I let the sun roast my face while my final interview, a meteorologist from the Gavarian Oceanographic Institute held forth with such dire warnings about the rising oceans it sounded as if all Miami’s Latinos and gays and Jews and blacks and Others would soon be frolicking on the sand in southeastern Alabama.
I’d taken her out to lunch on the theory I could get more out of her away from the distractions of the ever-changing line and bar graphs that kept flashing on the screens on the wall across from her desk. Anyhow, she was pencil-thin and had enough broken blood vessels on her face to make me suspect she was bulimic, so I figured she’d be easy on the expense account because she wouldn’t gorge in front of a relative stranger.
“It’s not just a question of sea level rise and increased precipitation,” she was saying about global warming. “It impacts on everything. Weather-related mortality, farm yields, forest composition, and I’m just touching the surface here—loss of habitat and species.” While she talked, I multitasked, breathing in the sweet, humid Miami air; wanting almost to cry, that such an outstanding woman could be in thrall to compulsive puking; taking notes on ecological Armageddon; brooding about how I should present myself to Rose Moscowitz. Normally, I not only planned ahead, I wrote everything down in outline form so I could critique my own strategies. Yet for some reason, when it came to approaching my grandmother, I hadn’t figured out a thing.
So now I was free to worry. Rose M. might be senile and not even know she’d ever had a daughter named Phyllis/Véronique. What if she lived in a gated community? If she said no to a meeting, ho
w could I get past the guards? Under what guise could I present myself? Should I use the name Amy Lincoln? Maybe she didn’t know anything about her daughter and Chicky Lincoln. But maybe she did. I didn’t want to use my name, put her on guard, and have her refuse to see me. On the other hand, how could I use a fake name? She might ask to see some ID.
“Precipitation has been consistently rising?” I asked.
“Over land at high latitudes in the northern hemisphere, yes. But there’s been a decrease in precip. since the 1960s over the subtropics and the tropics. From Africa to Indonesia. They’re both causes of, uh, great concern.” We hadn’t gotten any bread, but she kept glancing at a bread basket on the table next to ours. “Off the record?”
“Sure,” I said.
“The Bush administration’s position isn’t just dangerous, it’s primitive. They ignore accepted scientific evidence because it’s not to their immediate economic benefit. They don’t care about—”
Just then, the waiter came around. The meteorologist almost snatched the menu from his hand and began devouring it with her eyes. I got a little nervous because I knew In Depth wouldn’t pay for a binge. Fortunately, she only had a cheeseburger, fries, and lemonade, followed by a rather long trip to the ladies’ room. When she came back, her eyes were slightly bloodshot and I caught a whiff of vomit and Juicy Fruit.
After I was finished with her, I started feeling guilty about taking the afternoon off. So I drove from Miami to Miami Beach because John Kerry was in town. I watched him dump on the Bush tax cut before the Hardy-Schmidt Conduit distributors convention at the Fontainebleau Hotel. They seemed unable to comprehend supply-side economics or, indeed, Senator Kerry, though I thought he was in good form. His press person gave me fifteen minutes on the bus with him on the way to his next stop, a Guatemalan-American leadership organization, and I got enough substantive, quotable stuff on his environmental views to put a genuine smile on Happy Bob’s face. Then I popped three Advils and took a taxi back to retrieve my rented car and go back to my hotel on the beach. Excellent. I’d worked two whole days. Now this night would be mine.
I recalled my talk with Judyann Baptiste. Rose Moscowitz was a woman who had a college degree. She’d continued her education: Italian, philosophy, whatever. Even if I wanted to do it, I doubted if she could be easily duped. I had to come up with some reasonable story so she’d not only be willing to see me, but to talk about her daughter as well.
How about the truth? I asked myself.
My hotel was two blocks from the ocean, one of those formerly decrepit Deco ruins restored to aqua and yellow razzle-dazzle. Once inside, I’d realized about two seconds after registering that this was not a place for cool fashionistas and music minimoguls. My room was about as large as a medium-size walk-in closet, and the building’s electrical system seemed overwhelmed by the guests’ insistence on turning on their air conditioners.
I sat in the only chair in the room, a director’s chair covered in white canvas. Except for a taupe rug, the entire room was white, from pleated shades to bed linen to the little basket that held the CDs, an odd collection of classical guitar, hip-hop, and country music of the you’ve-left-me-and-stomped-on-my-heart variety.
The lukewarm breeze being exhaled by the air conditioner wasn’t the only reason my silk T-shirt clung to me like a wet washcloth. I sat staring at the display on my cell phone, half hoping to find the battery on the verge of death. But it was fully charged. I stood to check out my notes for Rose Moscowitz’s phone number in Boca Raton, but sat back down, realizing I’d memorized it. I dialed carefully, not wanting mistakenly to reach some random widow and cause so much confusion and pain that I would not have the heart to try again.
Oh my God! It was ringing. I was praying passionately to reach either her voice mail or a phone company recording that the number was no longer in service, when a woman answered: “Hello.”
“May I please speak with Rose Moscowitz?”
“This is she.”
I gave her an A for grammar and a C for warmth. Just from those few words I knew she wasn’t the sort of grandmother who either baked or ate chocolate chip cookies. “Mrs. Moscowitz, I am a writer and associate editor of In Depth magazine.”
“Yes.” A cautious yes, but at least it wasn’t Huh? or Wha’?
“Our offices are in New York, but I’m here in south Florida researching and working on an article. I was wondering—since I’m down here—if I can meet you... .” I swallowed, but there was nothing to swallow. My mouth was dry because all the moisture in my body was being utilized to manufacture sweat.
“Meet me for what purpose?”
“Actually, it’s a personal matter.” I was nervous that she’d hear the clack my tongue made as it attempted to unglue itself from my hard palate.
“A personal matter?” It wasn’t a query, as in I don’t understand. It was said superciliously—a personal matter?—the way a hoity-toity matron in an old movie would address a groveling plebeian asking for a favor.
Fuck favors. I would never have gotten into boarding school and Harvard if I’d been a person who knew her place. Nor was I the type who’d try to top a cold remark with an even icier one. I was not Rose Moscowitz’s inferior. And I wasn’t her better. I was her equal. People like me, the successfully upwardly mobile, behaved as if we really did believe that all men and women are created equal, despite the sad amount of evidence to the contrary.
Yet the weekend before I went off to Ivey-Rush for my first year, my aunt and uncle took me for a bon voyage brunch at a pancake house not far from where they lived in Sheepshead Bay. Uncle Sparky asked, “You scared, kiddo?” “Yeah,” I said, “I’m scared.” As if to prove it, my hand shook and three drops of syrup landed on my pink T-shirt. Aunt Linda dipped the edge of her napkin in her glass of water and handed it to me, but Uncle Sparky went on talking: “You should be scared. This boarding school business is a big deal. But when you get there ... Okay, be scared. Just act not scared. They let you in because you’re as good as they are.”
“Yes, Mrs. Moscowitz, a personal matter. But before I go into it, please feel free to check my credentials. On the Internet, In Depth dot com. They have the masthead there.” I decided not to explain the word masthead as I would have been obliged to for anyone on my father’s side of the family. “Of course, it’s also in the magazine.” She was so quiet she could have died two sentences earlier. I sensed I ought to lay it on thick. “I’m a graduate of Ivey-Rush Academy, Harvard, and the Columbia School of Journalism. I know their registrars’ offices aren’t open in the evening, but I’ll be glad to call you back tomorrow, after you’ve checked.” As she still hadn’t said anything, I added: “And I’ll be glad to meet you in any public place and show you my photo ID.”
“You haven’t given me your name.”
“Oh, sorry. Amy Lincoln.” Naturally, at this very moment that I’d been dreading, saying who I was, the air-conditioning shifted into high gear for the first time since I checked in. My sweaty silk shirt turned into a cold compress. Cradling the phone between chin and shoulder, I rubbed my upper arms, but despite that they were soon covered with goose bumps. Amy Lincoln appeared to be a conversation stopper. My teeth started chattering.
“You did say this was a personal matter,” Grandma Warmth said. “May I assume you’re related to a ... Charles Lincoln?” She said Chicky’s name as if she were saying cockroach.
“Yes. I’m Charles Lincoln’s daughter. But it’s not my father I’d like to talk to you about. It’s my mother.”
“Your mother?”
“My mother. Your daughter.”
Chapter Eleven
LIKE SO MANY of the gated communities I’d seen in Florida during the Bush-versus-Gore mess, Hibiscus Pointe in Boca Raton had a security booth with an overlarge sign on the window announcing the security guard’s name, so that even residents with fairly advanced cataracts could see RODRIGO. Rodrigo, actually, was worth seeing: noble head, manly brows, luscious lips that ne
eded only a touch of ChapStick.
“Hi. I’m here to see Rose Moscowitz. My name is Amy Lincoln.”
He pressed his computer monitor touch-screen two or three times, then flashed an Antonio Banderas knowing look that said, You would find me wickedly amusing, although his actual words were: “Yes, Miss Lincoln, she’ll meet you at the clubhouse. Do you know where it is?” When I shook my head, he punched a key. A printer wearily exuded directions. The gate rose slowly.
Speed bumps every twenty feet or so along Hibiscus Boulevard made sure I didn’t get anywhere at a New York clip.
I wondered if anybody from New York could truly love this life. Probably, because more and more people wanted to live this way. It wasn’t only rich whites. And not just in Florida, either. All over the country, I’d noticed the haves of all races, colors, and creeds hurrying to get themselves guarded so that their have-less and have-not fellow citizens could not steal their botanical prints. I wondered if this wouldn’t be the true Reagan-Bush legacy: not a return to the laissez-faire, invisible-hand capitalism of Adam Smith, but a slide into a tsarist state, where government existed to enrich the rich.
I was minutes from meeting my grandmother. Clutching the steering wheel as if it were a lifesaver, I drove at the prescribed fifteen miles per hour past single-family homes and blocks of two-story attached houses the signs pointed out as villas. There appeared to be three permissible colors for residences in Hibiscus Pointe: muted pink, pale apricot, and cirrhotic yellow. The development did not seem particularly Floridian. I had no sense an ocean was ten miles away. The Pointe was a fungible community with palm trees that, but for the humidity, could have been in Phoenix.