Other People's Lives

by Johanna Kaplan

  The antique hurricane lamp went on again, seemingly of its own volition, and Maria said, “Ah! It does work, Rebecca. Only you have I think intermitting current.”

  In the sudden burst of light, Matthew rubbed his eyes, making them seem smaller and suspicious. “That’s not from Hansel and Gretel, it’s Peter and the Wolf! We have the record in school. In my old school. If you don’t believe me, you can call up Jamie Laufer.”

  “What’s this Jamie Laufer business, Maria? Why do you want to see the Laufers?”

  “I don’t,” Maria said, and with her hands in her pockets, looked toward the windows. “Only Matthew does. It’s who he remembers from around here in the summer, and it’s what I promised. I told him probably you would know who is up here now in the winter and who comes only for special weekends.”

  “Well, of course I do! Because who ever comes here in the middle of winter? Leon thinks I’m crazy, he won’t come! Nobody comes! Unless it’s a holiday or unless they’re running away from each other. And with the Laufers, what good would that do them? In that family, each one is crazier than the next! And don’t think people don’t notice it! And I’d say it’s a pity on the children. But that Jamie! With that mouth on him even I can’t feel sorry! I’ll tell you something, Maria, and I hate to even think of it coming out of my own mouth—but you listen to that child for five seconds and you can’t help coming to the most atavistic conclusions! The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree! Trees! Because you look at that marriage and you don’t know who to feel sorrier for.”

  Maria nodded noncommittally. “They went to the same school,” she said. “Used to.”

  “And you’re not going to try to tell me he was any different there! All you have to do is watch him run around with that dog—a beautiful Irish setter! Or it was, anyway. Because even studies have proven it! A dog reflects the personality of the people who own it. And the Laufers made that poor dog as crazy as they are. And that was a very expensive dog!”

  “What do you think, Matthew, angel? You think the turtle reflects your personality, that’s why it’s getting lost always? Or the cat? What do you think?”

  The light blew out suddenly, as unpredictably as it had gone on before, and Rebecca said, “Even the bulbs go out on me here, and I can’t tell you how new they are.”

  Maria, standing in the darkness, clicked the lamp’s switch on and off several times. “For intermittent current, you need only something to tap it. You break the circuit. You make the circuit? I don’t know which one, it’s contact only. Not a spoon, definitely, because of conductoring electricity and shockings. It’s what happens if you put a fork inside the toaster. I scream it at Matthew always, yes, baby?”

  Julie said, “But what do you do when bagels get stuck? I always use a fork and nothing ever happened. Daddy even does it and he’s into all that scientific shit…I really loved those breakfasts, he did it every single Sunday. When he bought the Times and Nova and cream cheese and everything…My fucking mother didn’t even make the coffee. She used to have her own little private tiny teapot so she could have it with her sickening, plastic Melba toast. Or her grapefruit!” Julie shook herself in remembered disgust; Louise heard the various zippers on her fatigue jacket jangling in the darkness like the keychain of a Victorian housekeeper. “That’s probably why I still can’t stand grapefruit. Even when it’s been grown pure and organic and right for you.”

  At Birch Hill the one Indian social worker also ate grapefruit. Raised as a vegetarian, she could not accustom herself to eating meat, she explained. Flesh…it disgusted her. So, every single day at noon, the bracelets and bangles on her thin brown arm falling and ringing together, she reached into the bottom of her English leather purse to pull out her lunch: a grapefruit. Using no utensils, she peeled the grapefruit whole and pulled apart each section. With tiny, quick gestures she thrust the grapefruit sections into her mouth, and as she crushed them whole against her tongue, Louise always felt newly the meaning of the word flesh.

  Still moving around in the dark, Rebecca said, “You see how you underestimated your mother, Julia? Teal Grapefruit! Melba toast! Even you have to admit that there’s nothing wrong with it and how wonderful and healthy and natural it is. Although God knows how anyone could go on putting that into their mouth year after year and pretend to themselves that they’re eating. Or living, for that matter! But—each to his own! I was always very tolerant and open-minded about individual differences and mishugassen. It’s what you owe to your fellow human beings, not that I like the word owe!”

  Maria, standing over the lamp, began tapping the glass funnel.

  “What are you fiddling with, Maria? For God’s sake! What are you doing? I don’t know what’s going on and I can’t even see you!”

  “Something with a wooden handle you need, I think. Not really handle—you know, a mop, a broom. It wouldn’t fix it, but only for making it work temporarily.”

  “Wooden? Wooden? Where do I have something wooden?” Rebecca said, clapping her heavy-gloved hand against her forehead.

  “It’s her head,” Matthew whispered to Julie and began laughing.

  “All right, Matthew! All right!…I heard that because I’m still not deaf! And if I believed in hitting children—anybody’s children—and God knows I never did. Because otherwise right now, with your mother sitting right here and your father lying in a hospital, you’d be the first one to get it! And I mean get it! Because I’m not fooling around, and you’re just very lucky that I have a sense of humor about these things. And about myself! Which I always had! Which is why I—”

  “Matthew!” Maria said. “You must apologize. Right now. Say you’re sorry. You must.”

  “Maria, darling! Stop it! Please! You’re being so harsh. After all, he’s only a child—a baby, practically. And anyway, since when can’t I laugh at myself? Where would we be—all of us—if we couldn’t laugh at ourselves once in a while? And anyway, am I the kind of person who would take offense at something like that? Am I?”

  Maria said, “In the car I have usually somewhere an umbrella. With a wooden handle. I think wooden, not plastic. If plastic makes a difference I don’t anyway know. What do you think?”

  “An umbrella! Maria, darling! What a marvelous idea and leave it to you to think of something original like that! Because the umbrella that I have is so unique that someone could offer me a million dollars for it and I still wouldn’t part with it. Because it’s beautif—”

  “I hate umbrellas,” Julie said. “That’s another one of my mother’s things. She’s always sending me these new kinds of umbrellas. That fold up. Or are tiny. Or that attach to something. I think it really freaks her to think that I could go out in the rain without an umbrella. I mean, for her all they have to do is say on the news that there’s a chance of rain. Of showers. And there she is—marching out with her little matching umbrella set…Daddy says that she should have lived in England—you know, London. And that her whole umbrella trip is just part of her obsessive, compulsive, bullshit neurosis. Only I think it’s because she’s so into things. Possessions. She’d probably feel naked without it.”

  “She worries maybe you would get a cold. Get sick,” Maria said. “Only people have always more resiliency—resilientness? I think.”

  In London, England, Louise’s mother emerged from an underground station. Life, bitterness, and a variety of demeaning climates had taken away from her that striking, high-colored, youthful bloom which had once been the outward sign of her true promise and deeper distinction. Even her hair, once fair, was now almost entirely white. Worry, injustice, and general mistreatment would have been her explanation for this. But there were those who saw in her white hair, as it fell over her ears and wound about her head, stylish still, an old-fashioned, gracious, otherworldly beauty. These were usually students and could have no idea at all of what her life had been, and what she had rightfully expected of it. It was possible, in Louise’s opinion, that her white hair and forced, distant smile (secre
tly contemptuous if you knew what to look for) lent her a false, suffering wisdom, an idea of herself she had come to enjoy. At least she could extract some pleasure from it—bittersweet—her favorite kind. Enough pleasure, in any case, to diminish the edginess of her gestures, the impatience of her expression. Still, with her graceful smallness, she walked up the steps determinedly, purposefully—the otherworldly calm in her eyes entirely misleading. Alighting from the underground at Swiss Cottage, she put her hand out to test for rain and, accustomed now to a climate where rain was constant, she opened up her umbrella. She did not dislike it: its faded rosy shadow both above and before her temporarily gave her back the coloring and outlook of her youth. Hooded, protected in this way, she managed packages, completed errands, and greeted people with unexpected ease and a certain lightness. Her resilience was remarkable; everyone said it. She did not debate in her mind why this quality had not been passed on to her younger daughter. It was a long-standing misfortune and she did not dwell on it.

  “Here it is and I knew I’d find it!” Rebecca said, her thoroughly pleased bustle stirring up the deadness of the room. She held the umbrella out to Maria, but did not let go of it. “Wait a minute, darling! Wait one minute. The reason that it’s so special and people would be shocked at me for using it as if it were just an ordinary umbrella for everyday—not that I care!—is that this umbrella, hand-painted and bamboo and everything, comes from China! And I don’t mean Hong Kong and I don’t mean Bloomingdale’s China. Although all I read about in the paper was straw baskets, and you’ll have to excuse me, Maria, but any dope can make a basket. And that’s the one thing that you’d expect those hot-shot fancy society chippies to know about. Because what kind of colleges did they go to but basket-weaving ones…”

  Maria said, “Bamboo. That would definitely, I think, be all right.”

  “And hand-painted, Maria! Every single stroke! It’s from the Canton Trade Fair—and never mind the kind of Americans who ended up going there! The people who brought it back for me have lived practically everyplace! India! Japan! England! So they’re the last people in the world who could just get taken! And get stuck with junk! Because merchants are merchants—and never mind Cultural Revolution and New Orders! Because I don’t care how many rivers he swims naked in the cold! When it comes to rooking people, salesmen are the same all over.”

  “If you swim naked in the cold, you could join the Polar Bear Club,” Matthew said. “I saw it on TV.”

  “Do you see why I object to television, Maria? Did you hear him? That’s exactly what I mean and exactly what I always tell people—oh my God! The telephone! The telephone is ringing and I bet I know who it is! It’s that wonderful Carla Saltzman! And any time she just talks to me it means something very special for her. As a woman and as a doctor. Because it’s so different from her own parents! ‘I can’t get over it, Rebecca,’ she always tells me. ‘You just defy the whole syndrome of old age!’ Defy! Every single symptom!”

  Rebecca hurried off to answer the phone, and Maria, with the Chinese umbrella on her arm, knocked lightly on the bulb of the antique hurricane lamp. It lit up immediately, and facing away from its brightness, Louise watched Maria tap the bamboo umbrella handle. She moved her fingers over its strange texture and knobby grooves, and in a distant voice repeating, “Bamboo,” Maria looked as if she were in a different world.

  “I don’t know whether that was a wrong number or the God-damn party line or what!” Rebecca said as she rushed back into the room with the door swinging behind her. “And after all that running! I don’t even know why I bother!”

  Matthew, too, looked as if he were in another world. In the darkness he had found a narrow, raised platform like a ramp that Louise thought was probably intended as a showcase for Rebecca’s antiques. Only the one shaded light was on and Matthew seemed unaware of it: with his eyes half closed and his arms partly raised, he walked carefully, one foot exactly in front of the other, inching his way across the ledge as if it were a mountain in an unexplored country. It was a child’s game played in private. Every so often his eyelids tightened: he was daring himself to open them, but would not.

  “Look at him, Maria! Look at the way he walks—he looks just like Dennis.”

  Maria said nothing. She nodded slowly in the gloom and her face, suddenly longer and narrower, seemed to have an unnatural pallor that Louise had not seen before. Because of the red glass shade of the hurricane lamp, the light rose up through the funnel like the close glow of a candle flame. Matthew was balancing now in a far-off corner of the room. Half in shadow, his skin, too, looked unhealthily translucent. It was not the eerie, borrowed bloodlessness of Dennis illness, Louise told herself, but merely the peculiar, distorting light of the lamp.

  “I’m not saying that he shouldn’t,” Rebecca laughed, reddening and grabbed at Maria’s arm. “I only meant with the way he looks and the way he walks, maybe he’ll be a dancer, too. Or with all his picture-drawing, some kind of artist.”

  “I hope not. It’s a terrible life,” Maria said. She had put down the umbrella, regained her characteristic expression, and, still standing, was rapidly pushing things back into her purse. “Come on, Matthew. No more climbing and no Jamie Laufer. It’s already late now and time definitely for us to go. My watch says it even.”

  “Oh, Maria, darling! You don’t know what you’re saying! How could you? Who could blame you? It’s only because of your bitterness at life! At fate! At the cruelty of Dennis’ illness. It’s your grief that’s speaking—not you! Of course you want him to use his creativity! Of course you want him to be an artist. What mother wouldn’t? What greater thing could you want for your son?”

  Maria shrugged. She said, “It’s my opinion only. I can’t decide what will happen to him, but definitely that’s my opinion. It’s a terrible life.”

  “Because it’s extreme, darling. The highs, the lows, the excitement, the agitation, the constant, intense turmoil—of fertility! And delight! That’s what it is! By definition. You can’t object to the unconscious. It doesn’t know in-betweens! And who would want it to? That’s boring. And that’s one thing, Maria—” Rebecca shook her hand, forgetting that it was still mittened, like a prizefighter’s. “That’s one thing that even all the reviewers always agreed about! He was certainly never boring.”

  Maria was folding Matthew’s long green woolen scarf and did not look up. “Maybe on stage not. But in life, always. Chronical. Like his disease now—also chronical.”

  “You mustn’t give up, Maria. They’re doing marvelous things with Hodgkin’s disease! Radiation! Remissions! All kinds of wonderful things.”

  Predictably, Maria said, “Well, they’re not doing wonderful things for Dennis. It has to do with—I don’t know what—stages. What they can do for him now, I don’t know. What they can do for me at least is better parking places. It’s in my opinion disgusting—parking places only for doctors!”

  “I know, darling! It’s an old story. A profession that guards its privileges—and all of them undeserved! From the largest to the smallest. And in my opinion—” Rebecca suddenly looked at Julie—“opinion nothing! Why am I suddenly being so ladylike? It’s not opinion! It’s the truth. The worst ones were psychiatrists’ wives—the very worst! They thought they were God and they were married to God, and that’s how they looked at the world and that’s how they brought up their families. And everyone knows how that paid off!”

  How had it paid off? Louise knew: sullen in her expression, but easy in her gliding strides, Julie dropped in and out of schools at will, at her own pleasure. If she did not like a course, it would not be different for her from not liking a particular flavor of milkshake. No one would think it strange; no one would consider her “not ready.” In no one’s eyes would there be the accusation that she was unable to cope. If she happened to be taking a bus somewhere, she would just lope onto it on the spur of the moment. She would never have laid out the exact fare the night before, and though she would have to fish for cha
nge in her knapsack, she would not lose her balance as the bus lurched. Once seated, she might well miss her stop, but not because other people’s lives beckoned her.

  “Oh, God damn it, Matthew!” Maria said. “Again God damn it! Again that’s something I forgot—your dental slip for school. Because the girl there gets very mad, you can’t blame her, if you say it’s for rush but not emergency. She has always too many phones to answer, it’s a very crowded clinic.”

  “Maria! Since when do you take him to a clinic? Why? Why don’t you take him to Leon? It’s true he doesn’t like to work on children, but that’s because of the parents. And for you! You know he’d make an exception! Gladly!”

  Maria said, “It’s too far for him to go by himself. And coming home then in the dark, it’s what I don’t like.”

  Matthew, his eyes now fully open, came down off the ramp. He said, “Yucch, Mommy! I hate the dentist. I hate the drill and I hate the needles. I hate everything. And they have these stupid gold stars—for babies.”

  “You see that, Maria? He’d love Leon…Matthew, darling, I know you would. He’d never treat you like a baby. And besides that, he would tell you what he’s doing and then it wouldn’t hurt.”

  “It always hurts,” Maria said. “It hurts for everyone. He must only get used to it. He has already very bad teeth.”

  “Is Leon a painless dentist?” Matthew asked. Zipped into his jacket, he was standing near the ledge again and squinting up at Rebecca suspiciously.

  “Any dentist can be painless,” Julie said. “You just have to put your head in the right place. Nitrous oxide is good, though. It gets you started.”

  Rebecca, whose face was still red, disjointedly pulled herself away from Maria and, turning to Julie with her gloved hand upraised, said, “Julia. I have a bone to pick with you, you know.”

  “It’s a duck bone,” Matthew said, and once again lapsed into giggles. The suspicious squint was still in his eyes and it occurred to Louise that he so often looked this way because he neglected to wear his glasses.