Other People's Lives

by Johanna Kaplan

  She heard the motorcycles zooming around the hilly roads again, and this time, in the early twilight chill, they managed to sound ominous and mournful at the same time. They were other people’s energies moving and rushing away, and Maria, standing up with her heavy bag on one arm and Matthew’s Magic Markers slipping out of their case in the other, raised her voice to match the motorcycles. “I think now we really must go. Because in case later on there are icy roads or too much traffic, I am clearing steer of it.”

  “Maria, darling! You can’t leave yet! I haven’t shown you anything! My marvelous antique jewelry!”

  Maria pulled Matthew’s gloves out of her raincoat pocket; they smelled of wet wool. “It’s better I think if we come back another time,” she said. “It’s already dark and I’m nervous for the roads. Also, because they used all day my apartment for the Block Party, I’m afraid for what it could now look like.”

  “Well, darling, of course you’ll come back! But here—it’ll just take a second! I have them in beautiful little velvet cases and I’ll show you my jewelry. It’s Victorian and early American—and early everything! Because everything I have is very beautiful and everything I have is very old—and all kinds of vital, wonderful people all love it. And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Julia!” Rebecca suddenly turned from her velvet cases to find Julie, who was already on her way out, slouched against the door. “Your father, Julia, wrote a paper in some kind of psychiatric journal about people who like to live with antiques. And he said that the reason they do it is that they’re incapable of dealing with adult conflicts and adult sexuality! And that they’re attempting a Peter Pan-like retreat! Schizoid and unresolved! Those were his exact words! Peter Pan-like! Schizoid and unresolved! Since when does he know anything about antiques? Or people who buy them? I’d just like to know what makes him such an expert!”

  “I don’t read my father’s papers,” Julie said, and, banging her knapsack behind her, slammed the front door.

  “Peter Pan-like retreat!” Rebecca repeated. “Although I’ll tell you something, Maria. When you’ve been through as many failed political movements as I have, you understand something about retreat. About the temptation to retreat. Only it’s not what he thinks—it’s a retreat into beauty, a retreat into aesthetics.”

  “That’s what people said about Dennis always—that he was ascetic. They meant it for a compliment, but it’s true, really. It’s what he was good for. He should have been a priest. He would have been better off, maybe. I think.”

  “Well, really, Maria! Dennis would have been brilliant at anything! And naturally there’s no question about it. But religion! I don’t see how you could wish that on anyone! I refuse to have anything to do with it! And I made up my mind a long time ago—I’m definitely going to be cremated.”

  “Dennis wants also to be cremated,” Maria said. “To give his old bitch mother, very Catholic, even more heart attacks. I don’t know…”

  “Memorial meetings are one thing. Because, after all, who do you know who wouldn’t want to be remembered? But funerals! They’re not going to catch me involved in a barbaric and atavistic ritual! I didn’t do it in life and I’m not going to do it in death! Because I’ve thought of everything and I have everything planned! And if people want to call it morbid, that’s their business and their problem. Because I’m not afraid to face the future—and I don’t need any cushions for it. Or any crutches, either!”

  “Daddy had crutches,” Matthew said. “And cushions, too.”

  “Maria!” Rebecca screamed. “You don’t mean to tell me that you’ve allowed that child, this adorable baby, to see his own father in such a degenerated state! What’s the matter with you? Of course, I understand—you don’t want to deprive him of the relationship, you don’t want to cut off the give and take. But this! You can’t let him see his father so passive and incapacitated. What will it do to his identity? And how will it make him feel about getting older and growing up?”

  Maria said, “No, no—it’s from a long time ago. Dennis twisted once his ankle. A filament only, I don’t know. It was not broken. Retched? Wrenched? That’s for plumbing—anyway, he made then such a fuss over it with crutches and a cane and sitting always only with special pillows that Matthew still remembers.”

  “But that’s very painful, Maria. And especially for a dancer! That’s a terrible thing. It makes him a man without an occupation.”

  “Yes.” Maria nodded. “It’s true. He stayed home all the time.” The Chinese umbrella began rolling off the kitchen table, and Maria said, “Come on, Matthew. Let’s go. No more standing here. Now it’s really late, now we must really go.”

  “But Louise isn’t ready yet, Mommy,” Matthew said in his peculiar, aloof, sneaking voice.

  Louise was not ready: in one of the drawstring velvet bags there was a pair of dark gold dangling earrings with a roundish gold-brown stone the exact color of her own hair. They would be worn, these earrings, by a girl who walked quickly, whose hair blew freely in the wind. Running to a bus stop, there would be nothing unusual about her—nothing to make people wonder about the clumsiness of her movements, the awkwardness of her life. Her earrings would fly out freely for a second and then pass along sunlit through the windows of the bus.

  “Oh, I see what you’re looking at!” Rebecca said. “As soon as I heard your name was Weil, I knew you’d have marvelous taste! And I’m glad that I was right! But as beautiful as they are, I can’t find anyone who knows what—”

  “The door is already open, Matthew. If we stand here any more, it will make it for Rebecca only more freezing, and that’s not fair. So, move now. Let’s go.”

  The opened door let in a stream of air so dark, raw, and piercing that Louise felt as if nothing outside existed: no path, no steps, no far-off lights or cars. Not even motorcycles—only a suggestion of massed and massing trees which did not knock, but merely bent and might just as well have been imaginary.

  “You’re really going, Maria,” Rebecca said very slowly.

  Where were the motorcycles? Where was the highway? Where?

  “Well, I’m very glad this is the day you chose to come, not that I wouldn’t be delighted to see you any time. Even if I am constantly busy! Because you have no idea what it’s like for me around here most of the time! The letters, the people, the phone calls! No matter where they are! I’m still the one they think of and I’m still the one they want—”

  Matthew said, “I’m going to the car, Mommy.”

  “Look at him, Maria! He’s so sure-footed—just like his father! And don’t worry, I understand completely. I know what you’re going through and—”

  “Good-by, Rebecca,” Maria said firmly. She had already started down the unfinished steps herself, and now merely half turned to wave.

  “Oh, don’t, darling. Please don’t! I know you’re emotional and you believe in expressing yourself, but if you start that, it’ll only make me cry. Just give my love to Dennis and to everyone and tell them that I think of them constantly and they’re always on my mind, no matter what! And tell the Dresner girl to give my love to her mother and father and I’m sure they’ll remember me. Even if after all these years, between the two of them, they never came up with an original idea. Or in his case, an accurate one. Although, who can say now what might someday be considered—”

  It was the last thing Louise heard Rebecca say. Running down the hill with Maria in the windy cold, she felt as if they were fleeing.

  “Damn it if I can’t now find my car keys. From this fucking dark!” Maria said, and with nervous speed flung the contents of her purse onto the roof of the car. “Open the door up for some lights, Matthew! Quickly!”

  In the dark, with Julie asleep in the back seat, the car began to move out slowly on the gravel driveway—past the sign that said ANTIQUES—R. RELKIN, past some trees and recessed, shadowy houses, past Marzano’s—desolate, white-shingled, and ramshackle.

  “Mommy, Jamie Laufer! We passed it already. W
e passed where you turn for his house.”

  “Maybe next time, baby, angel,” Maria said very softly. “Another time when we come.” There were no other cars around them, and it seemed to Louise that Maria’s voice was taking on the dreaminess of the small road. Melting snow dripped down from the bare, bending branches of the trees on both sides, making the road seem even narrower and the small, uneven houses closer. In a lit-up upstairs window there were children writing on the glass with their fingers. Downstairs, behind sashed curtains, someone was playing the piano. Soon they would all sit down for dinner: it was the feeling of evening everywhere, and driving quickly in the darkness, the feeling was complete.

  “God damn it!” Maria said, fumbling for a tissue. She sneezed loudly, waking up Julie, who sat up with a start.

  “Shit! What a horrible woman,” Julie said, fishing some Chap Stick out of her knapsack. “What a total monster-lady! I can’t believe it. I can’t believe she exists.”

  Because she had to turn the car onto the main road now, Maria began peering anxiously through windows and mirrors, one hand on the steering wheel and the other still holding the tissue to her nose.

  “Where?” she asked, her voice coming through nasal and muffled. “Which one?”

  Julie swung her thumb backward. “Her,” she said sourly. “Rebecca.”

  “Rebecca? Rebecca is not a horrible woman, Julie. Not horrible. I don’t know how you think things, really. I don’t know how you think people’s lives. You’re not a child—like Matthew, who complains she touches you. Or her hands are too fat. I don’t know. There are really people who are horrible—and don’t tell me now your mother. Because that, in my opinion, is horrible.”

  Louise could not put the day together: families are shit, Maria had said, I’m completely serious.

  Julie, too, seemed amazed. She stretched back uneasily and said, “You know what I mean, Maria. Her attitudes. Her head.”

  “What attitudes? You wouldn’t even speak to her. You were very rude.”

  Matthew said, “She talks all the time.”

  “Exactly!” Maria said, and banged down on the steering wheel. “All the time. Anything…She has, maybe, some reasons.”

  “She does? What?” Julie asked. Louise heard a surprising note of gossip creep into her voice as she leaned forward with grudging, unfamiliar animation.

  “Oh…I don’t know…” Maria shrugged, and suddenly seemed reluctant to answer. “Some things—many things didn’t come out the way she thought. With her children. Other things, too, but mainly that, I think.”

  “What?” Julie repeated.

  “Oh, the one married a man she doesn’t approve, and the other she doesn’t approve because she had always many different men and many different jobs. And is always changing everything lock, barrel, and stock…They live very far away, both of them.” Maria’s voice faded with the distance. “She doesn’t ever see them.”

  “Why does she think she has to approve of them? How can she think she has the right to run their lives?”

  “She doesn’t, Julie. She can’t. But she was very disappointed for them. For herself, for them. She had, I don’t know, better hopes.”

  “Because they didn’t marry whoever she wanted them to?”

  “Because—the second one, really, I don’t know. The first one went to the Peace Corps,” Maria said. “To Malaya? Malaysia? Rebecca was very proud of her, she was very brilliant always. Only she met there a man who was an Islam. A Moslem? And Rebecca told her: In his country they have still women in veils, and you were not raised to be inferior. But—I don’t know—she stays there still. She married him. With children and many servants. They send her often plane tickets, but she doesn’t use them. It’s true—she doesn’t want, really, to see her mother.”

  “Because she is horrible. That just proves it.”

  “Nothing proves people, Julie. You can’t even that way explain them. I think it’s wrong even for me to say that Rebecca is this way or that way for a reason that I know. That I can tell. I know only definitely that it’s very hard for her to think about her daughters and not see them. It’s her fault, maybe. But maybe it’s not…” Maria reached her arm back and put it around Matthew’s shoulder. “Families…children…They all grow up and leave you. You won’t leave me yet, Matthew, baby, angel, will you?”

  VI

  On both sides of the street, pieces of burst balloons and strands of blown-apart macramé marked out the length of the block so that it looked to Louise like a trail left by clever captives or uncertain explorers.

  “They probably broke some things, I don’t hope,” Maria said, as they ran through the wind into the building. “I don’t anyway care—I don’t use them. But Joan, especially, will bother me with apologies and replacings. To come with her. Just what I hate!”

  In the lobby Louise felt the stuffy, pleasant smell of steam heat mix with the building’s customary stench of garbage. A curly-headed, blondish man in a long, striped djellabah came out of a ground-floor apartment and began picking up the stacks of flyers that announced the Block Party in English, Spanish, and Japanese. Padding around the lobby, barefoot and smiling, he had the uneven look of a man without his glasses.

  “Hi, Matthew,” he said, without turning. “What would you say you liked best? I’m taking an informal survey.”

  “Say the rides,” Maria whispered, pinching Matthew for urgency. “They had an—I don’t know—merry-go-round. Tell him that was best. Quickly. All I need now is arguings—that’s Kopell, the Block Captain’s husband.” And then, turning and rebalancing her packages, Maria said very loudly, “You are going to be our great new television star, Larry. It’s a good thing everyone has now cable.”

  “We don’t, Mommy,” Matthew whispered crankily.

  “We can’t afford it, Matthew, baby. It’s too expensive. You know that. Shh!”

  “It’s wonderful, Maria, isn’t it?” Larry Kopell said. He had put down the flyers and was still nodding and smiling distantly. “That’s just the spirit I hope I can get across on those programs—the sharing, the movement, the looseness…” He waved his arms in awkward happiness and seemed, Louise thought, as if he would be unable to continue, stymied somehow by his own helpless, foggy joy. “The day was great, the people were great, the kids were terrific…You were wonderful, I was wonderful. Even the things that didn’t really work seemed right. Didn’t it remind you of childhood?”

  “Childhood!” Maria said, bursting directly into the elevator, which had just come. “Now I’m really glad we weren’t here!…Childhood!” she repeated, shaking her head. “Whose?”

  Inside the elevator, the garbage stench was even stronger. Matthew said, “Yucch!” and, screwing up his face, buried his nose in the Magic Markers. A taped-up, unevenly lettered sign read: “FOUND—A Segal key in Laundry Room on Sat. Is it YOURS??? See Supt.”

  Leaning her packages against the wall, Maria turned to Louise and said, “See Supt! See Supt!” She pronounced the abbreviation exactly as it was written; it made the derision in her voice even more emphatic. “That stupid bastard, he is always so drunk. He can’t find to turn on even the hot water! Supt! Wait—now they will take definitely the money they collected from the Block Party and come with petitions for him to go to encounter groups for supers! It’s anyway what I think…God damn it, I must find now quickly my keys. Or they maybe left open the door, probably, I bet you.”

  Very few lights were on in Maria’s apartment, but misshapen candles flickered everywhere. Through their uncertain glow, Louise could not tell whether the people and objects spread out in equal crowded disarray were an indication of some great, nearly secret carousing, or whether, having laid themselves out beside batik hangings and wine bottles, both people and objects were spent.

  “Filthy dishes—exactly what I can’t stand!” Maria would certainly say momentarily; and looking at the mounds of unraveling, hand-crafted projects, Louise was reminded of Patient Bazaars at Birch Hill.

  “C
hicken parts, twenty-nine cents a pound! I found the sale in a new supermarket opening!” Maria called out triumphantly, diving into a large grocery bag. Still in the narrow entranceway, behind both Louise and Matthew, she stood in the dim light, waving a package of chicken high above her head like a torch. “And so many opened-up wine bottles!” she said, immediately snapping on a light and sweeping through the room. “That’s what I’ll do! I’ll make for everyone coq au vin. Only I think definitely I don’t have enough mushrooms. What do you think? Quickly! Who has some?”

  “Maria!” they all called out, jolted by the light, but happy to see her. Joan squinted and, stretching sleepily, said, “I think you got a call from the hospital. But I wasn’t the one who answered, so I’m not sure.” And Arthur, who managed to get up at once, shaded his eyes comically, saying, “Again mushrooms? That’s the first thing she requisitioned every time she conquered a country.”

  Maria put down her bundles and walked around the living room blowing out all the candles. “You don’t ever believe me,” she said, already carrying off overflowing ashtrays and bowls filled with apple cores and nutshells, “but it’s true. You have only to look for specials, on sales, in big supermarkets and it’s much cheaper. Even if it’s not near you, if you see it—notice it? You just stop. From the bus, it’s naturally easier—you just run out. From the car, a big pain in the ass because of double parkings. But this chicken I got—I don’t know where—on the East Side someplace. When I was dropping off Julie.”

  Large pots of leftover food had been set down carelessly throughout the room, and over them floated the smell of burnt-out candles. It was exactly what Louise had expected: after so many hours of just sitting, she now did not know where to move. Even Reba Axelrod stood up slowly. Her face looked pink from the wind or from sleep, and running her finger through a wedge of runny cheese, she tried, too suddenly, to speak briskly.