“You’re making them up. It’s impossible for you to have had an uncle and aunt I never heard of.”
“No, I must have told you about them. If you forgot it’s because I probably only mentioned them once or twice in five years. Why would I mention them more? I saw Cecile maybe twenty times in my entire life, and only brief visits—maybe once a dinner at their home and they at ours. Nate was a bookie, worked out of his apartment, so we didn’t, I think, for that reason—the kids at least—go over there much or stay very long. He usually had, maybe ten hours a day, someone in the kitchen manning the half-dozen phones, and sometimes two to three people working there and in the master bedroom for very big races and sports games. And policemen coming over to get paid off or make bets, and things like that. But I liked going over—and they were only ten or so blocks from us—for the good snacks, and Cecile was always very kind to me, and that half dollar. But when he tried to throw her out the window—well, after that my mother didn’t want us to go over there at all. If she disliked him before, she hated and maybe even feared him now. Cecile was two-thirds of the way out the window—head first and face down and he was holding her by her legs and shaking her, shaking her, maybe just to scare her or I don’t know what. That’s what the doorman saw and told my father and my father told my mother and I overheard. Then some people on the street screamed—or maybe they were in the park, because most of the apartment faced the river—and he pulled her back in. He also shot her once—after the window incident—or shot at her, missed, or just grazed her arm—burned her. Whatever the bullet does. I know she was hurt but not that hurt. Nate said the wound came from the broken bottle the bullet smashed, but Cecile always claimed she’d been shot, not just shot at. Or not, as Nate told my father, that he shot at her clothes closet ten feet to the left of her, but because he was such a bad shot, the bullet hit a perfume bottle, I think it was, ten feet to the left of the closet. Once when we were there I asked my father to show me where the bullet went. He showed me a hole in their bedroom wall. The bullet had been dug out but the hole was still there.”
“Maybe he was kidding you.”
“About the hole?” She nods. “He did do that. I forget now where the hole was—by the dresser, the closet, whatever.”
“Not that I’m saying there wasn’t a shot. But I think it would have been patched up. By the way, you don’t think you should call Bill now? If he was heading for a big drunk before, the later you call him, the more incomprehensible he’ll probably be, if he does pick the phone up.”
“Maybe I’ll wait till tomorrow—around ten; noon, even. Or see if he calls back tonight. Whatever it is, I know it can hold. But last time I saw Aunt Cecile was a day or two before she died. Or a week or two, but she looked so bad—or that’s my memory of it, and I probably only saw her for a few seconds—that I think of it as a day or two. I don’t know why my folks brought me there. And my mother came this time. I suppose they thought I was old enough. Fifteen, maybe fourteen. Maybe they wanted me to play with my cousins Catherine and Ben—distract them.”
“Catherine and Ben? Since when do you have cousins with those names?”
“Catherine’s since died. She got the same brain cancer her mother had, but the doctors said it wasn’t hereditary. ‘Coincidence,’ they said. I remember the figure of one out of five thousand that two people in the same family would get it. That was about the same as for two people living on the same city block. For a while she was my favorite cousin. We played together a lot, or at least once a month. But hardly ever at her apartment. Almost always at ours or in Riverside or Central Parks. Nate used to beat up his kids too. Ben didn’t get it as much. He locked himself in the bathroom or screamed hysterically if he thought he was going to get hit or ran to the neighbors, or just wasn’t a target for Nate’s violence as much as Catherine and Cecile were. Maybe because those two yelled and fought back. Catherine lost a front tooth to him once. And he hit her head too. Once with a teapot. Picked it up to throw at her and when the water came out of the spout and top—or tea did. Maybe it scalded him and he got even madder because of that, but he hit her head with it. She had to go to the hospital. Had several stitches—maybe thirty. He was a madman. He died by walking into a streetlamp.”
“How? He was knocked unconscious, got a head injury—you know, swelling of the brain’s membrane from it or a blood clot—and died?”
“It’s a mystery. He hit the streetlamp, went down, but it wasn’t enough to kill him—just knock him out. In other words, he didn’t die from the blow. He died of a heart attack. There was some connection—maybe only a doctor could tell us what it was—but he got the attack while he was lying on the sidewalk. But this is the odd part. A policeman came, tried to revive Nate, searched his pockets for identification, found a whole bunch of bookie slips, and somehow got hold of a policeman friend of his, or something, because in about ten minutes two other policemen showed up at Nate’s building, got into his apartment and cleaned out every cent he had stored away there. What’s odder is that my father knew some policemen would do that once word got out that Nate had died suddenly on the street. Apparently every policeman knows that if you’re a bookie, and Nate was a very successful one, you’ve lots of cash stashed away in your home to pay off big winners and such, and also because most of your income is never declared for taxes. In fact, when Ben called my father to tell him Nate had died an hour ago on the street, my father’s first response was to tell him to rush right over to Nate’s apartment and clear out all the money in two shoeboxes in the bedroom closet. Ben didn’t want to. He said that as much as he hated Nate, he still had at least a day’s grief and mourning in him for him. But my father told him ‘Don’t be a moron. I’ve got grief for him too. But there must be twenty thousand dollars there, and if you don’t get it, the cops will.’ How’d my father know what the cops would do? He knew lots about city life, that’s all. So Ben rushed over to the apartment, but the police were already long gone. He couldn’t press charges. For what? Their stealing illegal money? If he did get the money back, the government wouldn’t let him keep it anyway. They’d look at all of Nate’s reported income over the last five to ten years, and Ben and Catherine, to pay back Nate’s owed taxes, would probably have to dig into their inheritance. Ben was also afraid the cops would kill him if he went to the city against them. Nate still left a lot to his kids. Jewelry, gold. But Catherine, married and with a child by then, died a year later from her brain cancer. And Ben’s in jail now, my mother says. She saw it in the newspaper a few months ago. Maybe he’s out by now—but for running a gambling operation in his home. In fact—well didn’t I tell you I met him in an apartment building elevator a year ago?”
“No. I would have remembered. Because it would have been the first time I ever heard of your cousin Ben.”
“I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. I know I wanted to. Reminded myself to tell you, after I met him. Anyway, I hadn’t seen him for ten years, probably more. Maybe not since Catherine’s funeral. And I heard this guy, running from the lobby, yell ‘Hold the elevator. Press the “Door-open” button.’ So I pressed the button and in comes Ben. We were both so surprised we even kissed each other’s cheeks. I was on my way up to see Hector Lewis. Ben then lived in that building. But according to the newspaper, my mother says, he has another address now, or maybe he gave a phony one to the police. But he was on the top floor, Hector on the eighteenth, and Ben said, as we’re going up, ‘Guess what I’ve become in life?’ I said ‘Well, according to Aunt Ruth you went into the dress business, so I suppose you’ve become a millionaire.’ He said ‘A bookie, isn’t that amazing? I hated the guy, but I end up doing just what he did, and I think I’m going to do even better than him.’ Maybe, after taking a beating in the dress business, he took what experience he’d learned just from watching Nate all those years and started taking book, running gaming tables, which I don’t think Nate ever did, and also numbers and stuff, my mother said my cousin Holly told her. Or maybe he was ne
ver legit—a word my father like to use—before he became a bookie. I know that as a teenager he was thrown out of a few boarding schools for causing trouble and then in this city got arrested for drunken driving, without a license, but I don’t remember hearing of anything worse.”
“No wonder you never talked about them. Actually, that’s not fair. Because though I can’t picture Cecile very well from everything you’ve said, Catherine seemed very nice.”
“She was. And to me, sonofabitch that he was, Nate was still kind of interesting in a way. And look what that poor kid went through—Ben. If I’d had his life as a kid, would I now be much different than he? No matter what—why I also never mentioned Catherine, I don’t know. I was never closer to one of my cousins. Then, when she was around fifteen, she got big and fat, and stupid, it seemed, when before she was always curious and perceptive, and I couldn’t talk to her about anything except our playing together as kids. Last time I saw her she was so sad she made my cry. She’d lost about a hundred pounds, but it wasn’t, and I don’t say this to be funny, an improvement. No, forget that. She had no hair. She was wearing a wig. Her speech was slow. She’d gone through operations and one chemotherapy session after the other. My heart bled for her. She acted retarded. But she was so sweet. I don’t ever remember her being as sweet as she was then, though she was always a very kind person. Generous. She had about a month to live. In fact, all this took place at one of Cynthia’s daughters’ weddings. And it’s not that she got big and fat and stupid. She got heavy, that was her business, but after everything she went through as a kid, and then was still going through as a fifteen-year-old, you could understand why. She was pretty smart too, in her own way. She was a good businesswoman till she got sick. And whatever I might have suggested, I don’t think her sickness was Uncle Nate’s doing—hitting her on the head. Or if it was his doing for Cecile’s cancer either. I don’t know about such things. But what that family’s gone through is unbelievable.”
“It’s still difficult for me to understand how I never heard about any of them. From you, from Ruth. But this card. What’s it mean? Who’s it from? Who is this Cecile?”
“I don’t know. Someone’s playing a joke. What’s the postmark say? It’s this city. Sent yesterday. The mail’s faster than I thought. I don’t know any Cecile. My Aunt Cecile is the only Cecile I’ve known. Or that I can remember having known. But certainly no Cecile for years. And this Cecile is talking about today, isn’t she? Someone’s cracked. Someone’s trying to start trouble between us. You’re the only person I love and love being in bed with and the only person I go to bed with and there isn’t any other woman, and hasn’t been since maybe a week or two after I met you, whom I’ve known in that kind of way.”
“I’ll accept that,” and she tears up the postcard. They kiss. He says “No, a long one, not just a hello, back-from-work kiss.” They hug and kiss. Then she says “Like to split a beer?” and he says “Why not?” and follows her into the kitchen.
Windows
Nothing’s on his mind. Can’t read, doesn’t want to sit around the apartment and snack anymore. If he stays here any longer he’ll uncork a bottle of wine and drink it down while he looks out the window, stares at the walls, ceiling light fixture and the floor. He gets up to go out. But if I go out, he thinks, where will I go? Take a walk, see what you’ll see. Don’t stick around here doing nothing, ending up sleepy from all the wine, overstuffed from all the snacks, asleep by seven or eight so up around four or five in the morning and then what’ll you do? More staring, eating, drinking. Maybe try the newspaper again.
He sits down, opens the newspaper. Explosion someplace. A woman shot. A woman raped. Two boys find a decomposed body on a beach. Milton Bax wins Endenta Prize. New movies. Spy grabbed. Two dozen pregnant whales run aground. Famous physicist dies of mysterious disease. A young woman crossed the ocean in a canoe. Television listings. Sports. Ads. Juniper Holland’s “perfect brownie” recipe. He crumples up the paper, sticks it into the fireplace. Lights the paper, watches it bum. An ash floats through a hole in the fireplace screen and he grabs it in the air. His hand’s smudged from the ash. He rubs his hand on his pants. Now his pants are smudged. He brushes his pants till only an indelible spot’s left. He sits in the chair. Think about something. Let something just come to mind. Daydream.
He remembers a real event. It was a number of years ago. Three. He was married then and was changing the baby’s diapers. Esther. “I peepee,” she liked to say, and he or Jill would change her. “If you know when you peepee,” he used to say, “then you should try to peepee and kaka into the toilet.” “Toilet?” she used to say. “Potty,” he used to say. “Potty and toilet, same thing.” “Same thing?” she used to say. “Sweetheart, don’t repeat everything I say.” “Don’t repeat?” she used to say. Though it only sounded a little like “Don’t repeat.” Like her “toilet” only sounded a little like “toilet.” “Potty” she could say. “Dough repee,” she used to say. “Toyet. Same sin.” She didn’t peepee into the toilet till she was three. People said that was very late. He and his wife didn’t mind her not using the toilet till then. Some things one gets used to. And he liked changing her most times. The softness of the diapers, patting her crotch and bottom with a warm washrag, drying her, pinning the diapers on her, the rubber pants, the long pants or stretchies or shorts. She would be on her back on the changing board and he would be sitting in front of her on the same bed and he would often lean over and kiss her forehead or the top of her head or her cheek. Sometimes he’d say “Kiss daddy,” and she’d kiss his cheek. Then he’d finish dressing her, if he hadn’t already finished, and stand her up on the floor or just lift her off the board and put her into or back into bed.
But he was changing her, he remembers, when the phone rang. He looks at his hand. Still a little dirt. He picks at it with his fingernail, then spits into a handkerchief and rubs it into his hand till the spot’s gone. It’s not that I mind dirt, he thinks. He smells his hand. It smells from spit, but that’ll go away quickly enough. And an ash really isn’t dirt. I could, in fact, almost any other day, walk around with my hand smudged like that or even worse. Not the whole hand smudged, but a much larger spot than there was. Anyway: walk around or just stay here without paying any attention to the smudge till it disappeared through nothing I consciously did.
He turns around and looks out the window. About fifteen feet from his window are two windows in a brick wall. Above the wall—his apartment and the apartment or apartments he’s looking at are on the top floors of their buildings—is some gray sky. Maybe I should stare at that slit of sky till something passes in it. A bird, helicopter, sheet of newspaper, a plane. Rain, even. Stare till it rains. It can’t snow. Not the season for it. What else could be in the sky that might pass, drop, stay there awhile, float by? A cloud, of course. Hailstones would be unlikely. A balloon. On the other side of the building he’s looking at is a street. Someone could walk on it holding a balloon. The balloon could be released, accidentally, intentionally, and float past that slit of sky he’s looking at. He looks at that sky for around two more minutes, tells himself to look at it another minute and if nothing passes in it, to stop. He looks at it another minute. Nothing passes. He faces forward, rests his head back against the chair, remembers.
The phone rang. He yelled something like “Jill, would you get it?—I’m changing the baby.” She yelled she would and ran to her studio from wherever she was and picked up the phone. “Oh Randi,” she said, “hi,” and that’s all he remembers hearing from that phone call. That was all he heard. Because he remembers that maybe an hour later he thought about why he hadn’t heard more of the phone conversation than just “Oh Randi, hi,” and decided it was because she must have started speaking very low after that or else had shut the door. He never asked her about it, though once or twice had wanted to. But she came into the baby’s room a few minutes later, while he was on the floor putting away Esther’s books and toys and Esther was sitting on the
floor trying to string beads, and looked very sad. She was very sad, but when she came into the room, or rather, stood inside the door with her shoulder against the jamb, as if, if she didn’t lean against it she wouldn’t be able to stand, all he could tell was that she looked very sad. What he thought then was that she was sad because of something she’d learned over the phone or something that had happened to her since she put the phone down. Because, he thought, what could Randi have told her that made her look so sad? And how come she didn’t let him speak to Randi? She was his niece. They were quite close. Maybe Randi had called to tell him something about his sister, but something so terrible that she was now relieved she wouldn’t have to be the one to tell him. “What is it,” he said, “something wrong?” She nodded. She brought her hand to her mouth.
He hears a plane, turns around to that slit of sky but doesn’t see anything. Then he sees it for a couple of seconds. Flying west. A jumbo jet. It could be going to any number of places. California, Tahiti, Japan. It could be going, eventually, east. If it is, it’ll soon turn around. But chances are much better, not that he really knows what he’s talking about, that it’s going west, or west now but north or south soon. He looks at the two windows. He’s never seen anyone in the right one. The shade’s always down. Never even seen the room. He’s seen artificial light behind the shade. In the evening, very late, maybe five or six times. But he’s never seen the shade raised even an inch from the sill in the year and two months he’s lived here. The fourteen months since Jill asked him to leave their apartment, which he did and got this apartment that same day. In the other window—it’s much smaller—he’s seen a woman showering maybe fifteen times. Showering or just shampooing, if one doesn’t always shower, meaning clean one’s body, which he’s never seen her do, except for her face and neck, when one shampoos. He wonders if the shaded window is part of the same apartment as that bathroom. The bathroom door is at the end of the left wall. If it was in the right wall, then the bathroom would have to lead to the shaded room. Though maybe the shaded room is a hallway in that apartment or a public hallway in that building. If he steps up to his window he can see four windows on the same floor to the right of the shaded window, two with blinds, two with shades, all opened or closed or lit or unlit at various times of the day, but none, except for the one next to the shaded window and there only a little, can he see inside. Not the right angle or too far away. But a public hallway wouldn’t have a shaded window. Makes no sense. For the last two months the bathroom window has had a shade on it. Almost to the sill. Possibly because she caught him watching her showering several times. Sometimes it was by accident. He’d be slumped below the top of the padded chair when he’d hear a shower go on, look around or above the chair and see her showering. Or he’d enter his apartment, shut the door and see her showering. Hear and see at the same time sometimes. The shower part of her bathtub is right by the bathroom window. For a while at night when he came home he wouldn’t turn on his apartment light till he found out if she was showering or not. If she was, he’d watch her in the dark till she left the bathroom or put her bathrobe on. If she only put on her underpants or bra, he’d continue to watch her till she left the room. If she put both underclothes on, he’d crawl away from the window to one of the lights, turn it on and stand and go about the apartment as if he just came home. But he only caught her showering once in the eight or so times when he came home and went through this routine, so he gave it up. She’s a woman of about thirty-five, somewhat plump, somewhat pretty, who spends a great deal of time lathering her long dark hair. Sometimes he’s seen her entirely covered with lather, which would start at her hair and slide down on all sides and sometimes in large clumps to the rest of her body, or the parts of her body he could see above the bathtub rim. He’s gotten quite excited sometimes when he’s seen her showering or drying herself and then putting on her underclothes. Once when she saw him looking at her while he was standing in the middle of the room and pretending to flip through a magazine, she slammed the window down and pulled the single shower curtain around her where he couldn’t see her showering anymore, not that he would have been able to see much through the smoked glass. Once when it was night and he was reading in this chair, he heard her singing in the shower. He doesn’t know if he had been so absorbed in the book that he had missed the shower going on, or else if the shower and singing had started at the same time. Anyway, he stood up, with his back to her put the book on the chair, shut the light, opened his door, slammed it, crawled to the far right corner of the window and raised his head just above the sill to watch her. By the time she was drying herself while standing in the tub, he had his pants down and his handkerchief out. He wonders about a woman who’d shower in front of an open window, one that faces another open window, especially one in which she must have known a man had caught or watched her showering several times. Maybe she has a let-him-look attitude about it, all he’s seeing is a body, one not much different than any other woman’s body her age, and if it does anything to him, it has nothing to do with her. Or maybe she liked showering in front of him, showing off her body, so to speak, the pleasure it might give him, let’s say, maybe even showering more times than she normally would because he was there, but then felt the situation had possibilities or ramifications she hadn’t thought about, so she stopped. He can’t see her toilet or sink from his window. They must be on the right side of the bathroom.
Love and Will Page 14