Con felt a rush of pleasure. “Mom, it’s Connie!”
“I know that,” said Gert. “Did you try to call before? We were at the doctor.”
“I did.” Long before answering machines were invented, Con’s mother had always known if Con tried to call. “Then I remembered you had an appointment. How was it?”
“All right,” said Gert. “An old man. He thinks I should take those pills my real doctor gave me.”
“Yes, you saw Dr. Herbert—you know, the famous Dr. Herbert.” Marlene had talked about Dr. Herbert for years. He was her friend if not her lover, and neither Con nor Gert had ever been sure whether Herbert was his first name or his last. But her mother seemed to have forgotten all that.
“If I take them, I go to the bathroom every minute,” Gert said.
“For blood pressure. Don’t you take those?”
“No, I’m up six times a night. It’s crazy to take them.”
“But maybe you should. Listen, Mama—how’s it going, this visit?”
“The visit to the doctor?”
“No,” Con said. “I mean visiting Marlene—are you comfortable there?”
“The bed gives me a backache,” Gert said. Then, “Did you get the locks changed?”
“Yes, yes I did!” said Con, inordinately pleased. “I could have done it right away. I called someone and when he was done, I asked him to bill me. It wasn’t a problem. And you know who made me do it? A neighbor of yours.” Con slowly told the story of Peggy’s arrival and opinion, gesturing vigorously in the empty room. “And she was so smart—she just said I should tell them to bill me later.”
“She paid?” said Gert.
“No, I told them to send me a bill.”
“That was nice of her to pay.”
“No, I told them to send me a bill. But anyway, do you know who I mean? She has curly hair. She lives downstairs.”
“The woman with the shoes?”
Con was stumped. “High heels?”
But now came the usual skirmish, and then Marlene had the phone. “So you finally got the locks changed?” She sounded amused.
“It was simple. What did the doctor say?”
“Let me change to the portable phone.” There was a pause. “Sweetie, I hate to say this. We talked while she had a chest X-ray. He wasn’t hopeful. He was surprised she lives alone. He couldn’t say what’s coming but he looked awful. I can’t keep her—we wouldn’t get along. I try, but I see how it would be.”
“Nobody thinks you should take her!” said Con. She too had decided her mother could no longer live alone, but now she resisted. “We could put a good lock on that back door—something that locked automatically. Or if we pay the super, maybe he’d come up for the garbage.”
“When we were young,” said Marlene, “we said that when we were old we’d live together. But I don’t want to.”
“Of course not.”
“I don’t think you should take her either,” said Marlene. “Sooner or later Jerry will get impatient.”
“I forgot something I have to tell my mother,” said Con.
“She’s taking a nap. The doctor wore her out. Listen, there’s something else. He emphasized that someone has to take responsibility. You know—her money. I think I should have her power of attorney, Connie. You shouldn’t be burdened with that.”
“Her power of attorney?” Con said, startled.
“Yes, you know, paying the bills, signing the checks—”
“Yes, I know. I’ll do it.”
“I did it for my aunt,” said Marlene. “It’s work. Let me deal with this. I may even be able to deal with it while she’s here.”
“I’m not sure this is necessary,” said Con. She didn’t want to deal with her mother’s money, but of course if someone had to do it, it should be Con, not Marlene.
“Think about it,” said Marlene. “I’ll call you back.”
Monday, November 3, 2003, was as warm as it had been on Sunday. Con checked the Times Web site before work. Sixteen Americans had been killed when missiles in Iraq brought down a helicopter. A gay man had been chosen as Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire. She left home a little early, then emerged from the subway a stop before she had to, to get some air.
At the office, a letter had arrived from the London law firm that was slowly handling Barbara’s estate. Con was still shocked that Barbara had died, though her death had not been truly sudden: she had not been run over by a bus, Con sometimes found herself saying to friends. But it was as if she’d been run over by a bus, by one of those big red London buses they’d loved. Barbara had died of a brain tumor over the course of five months. She’d left her meager estate to Joanna, a fact that made Con weep. She’d flown to London several times while Barbara was sick, but avoided going now. Each time it made her think she should have gone more often when her sister was well. Now the impersonal letters about money caused hours of regret and grief. Con put aside the one that had just come, and returned to the interviews she’d been examining.
Clients who lived nearby came to the office, where they were interviewed by a young paralegal named Aaron, who Con privately feared was incompetent. He was sweet and maybe too conscientious, and prepared long lists of questions that he asked in order, no matter what the answers. Sometimes, reading his transcripts, Con wanted to know only the answer to the question he hadn’t asked. What made the woman think she should have been promoted? How many people in her position had been promoted? Aaron would have needed to sound less sympathetic to find the best clients.
Con’s office was on the sixth floor of a prewar building near Union Square, with dusty streaked windows. Sometimes she pressed her forehead to the glass, looking at the tops of heads of people below, watching them move in the aggregate, as if they were loosely tied together with invisible cords. Considered as a group, the clients—like the people on the street—seemed to have experiences and problems in common, but when she considered each one in turn, that woman was hardly ever a good example. She didn’t seem like someone Con would have promoted either. Or she seemed to be lying. Con had been thrilled to get this job—looked at from above, it too made sense—but minute by minute it frustrated her.
Often Con ate lunch at her desk but on this warm November Monday she wanted to be outdoors. She walked with her jacket open. As she passed the Strand Bookstore on her way downtown, her cell phone rang. It was Joanna at last—their first conversation since the phone calls in the park a day earlier. “Well, I may be moving,” her daughter began, “but I’m not going back to New York.”
“What was that e-mail you sent Dad?” said Con.
“He told you about it? He didn’t answer.”
“He forwarded it. I should have answered. Did you have a fight with Tim?”
“When I said Barney wanted me back, Tim accused me of wanting to leave early so I could sleep with my new lover, the famous sculptor.”
“Isn’t that something I accused you of?” said Con. She crossed the street.
“I hope not,” said Joanna.
“I’m at the restaurant,” said Con. “I should hang up.”
“But still,” Joanna continued, “I think maybe I should stay here, or go somewhere else, internship or no internship.”
Con was sure that was a mistake. Even if Marlene was coming, even if Barney was whatever he was, the internship mattered. “Think about it,” she said. “Ask Barney to give you another week. You’ve been so excited about working with him. Maybe you just have to make clear—Well, I hate to see you give it up.”
“What difference will a week make?” said Joanna.
“You’ll have time to think,” Con said. She was standing outside the noodle shop and people kept jostling her. “And it might be better if you didn’t come here this week. Marlene’s coming for the weekend. And Dad. It will be crowded. Next week we can talk more, and maybe we can figure out together what you need to say to—”
“Marlene’s coming?” Joanna interrupted.
�
��Yes.”
Joanna was silent. Con said, “I know you don’t like Marlene.”
“I don’t know if I like her or not,” Joanna said. “One of these days, there are some questions I want to ask Marlene.”
“What questions?”
“I’ll tell you sometime. But if I did come, could you pay the difference in the plane fare?” said Joanna. “It’s going to cost a hundred dollars to change the flight. If I decide to come.”
Con was now chilly, warm day or not. “Sure, I guess so,” she said, baffled, and got off the phone.
Marlene’s wartime letters were at the cleared end of the table. Late Wednesday afternoon, Con picked them up again. She liked reading about Marlene’s love life. Sex life. Con wondered whether her mother would have been shocked. Maybe not.
Dear Gert,
Your letter came two days ago and I’ve been waiting for a spare minute to answer it. Are you sure about your period and so on and so forth? Well, there’s only one explanation I suppose. I don’t know what you’re going to do in one room, sharing a bathroom, with two kids.
Bernard came home with me the other night. I told him I had a picture I wanted to hang and I didn’t know how. I had mentioned it the day before, so he brought a hammer and came home with me and did it. Then we sat and talked and had a beer and a cigarette and the next thing it was late. We laughed, but when I saw him again he looked embarrassed.
He likes me because I’m an artist. He said he never knew a Jewish woman who was an artist before, he thought all of us just cooked. I said he better not try my cooking. But I don’t have time to paint what with working all day and walking the streets at night. Call me Marlene the streetwalker. It’s getting cold these nights. I’m not scared. They tell us what to do if there’s an attack but I figure it’s not my time. Too much is happening. I’ve got Bernard, I’ve got Frank. Frank doesn’t like Bernard but that’s not my business.
What do you know, they figured out a way for us to pretend we’re in Europe, as if we needed such a thing. They’re having a mock air raid in Brooklyn: fireworks, very realistic, people running around and taking care of the make-believe wounded, coffee and doughnuts. I want to be wounded but I’ll probably end up making coffee, my luck.
He’s not Jewish, not that I want to marry him, he’s already married.
Is it hot there?
Your friend,
Marlene
Dear Gert,
It’s two a.m. and I have to get up for work tomorrow but I can’t sleep. Maybe I’ll feel better if I write you a note. I think I spoiled things with Bernard. We had a real fight. My big mouth, I said something about Brenda and I should have known better, he thinks she’s perfect, but she’s a pest and we do what she wants because it’s the only way to see each other except if he sneaks home with me at night. He takes her to the zoo or something and his “friend from work” (me) comes along and then we have to make up stuff about our supposed office. She’s just old enough to figure it all out and tell the wife—if the kid was smart. But I don’t think she’s smart enough, and I said so.
Now don’t go and tell me how you’d feel if Abe did something like this, you don’t know a thing about Bernard’s wife, she’s probably nothing like you.
Anyway probably it’s all over now. I should have apologized right away but instead I said something back and it’s too late now. I don’t know what I could have said, the kid really isn’t too bright. She brings her reader sometimes and he tries to get her to read simple sentences, but she won’t or can’t.
What do you mean the baby won’t listen to you? She is a child and you are her mother. You are a fool if you can’t make her listen. I don’t think I would like to have children but if I did they would listen or else. But what do I know? Now they want girls to volunteer to look after children in the slums but I would rather be an air raid warden.
Don’t worry, the new baby will be all right, that doctor doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Too many soldiers’ wives and he’s not getting any sleep so he can’t remember what they taught him in medical school.
I better try and sleep.
Your sister,
Marlene
Dear Gert,
I keep explaining but you don’t seem to get it. They’re not going to use real bombs but there are going to be real fires. Well, smoke. I think I’ll get to be one of the wounded. I might get to ride in an ambulance. I don’t know if they’ll use the sirens. I had another fight with Bernard. He wanted me to take care of Brenda but she wet her pants again the last time we had her and I wouldn’t know what to do if that happened. You know I’m not good at that kind of thing. Bernard has an idea he started to tell me about and I’m afraid now he won’t tell. I don’t know what it has to do with exactly but I can guess, don’t want to say in a letter, you never know.
Your friend,
Marlene
Con stopped reading the letters and went looking for something to eat. She didn’t feel like meat sauce after all. She found a couple of potatoes. They were starting to sprout so it made sense to cook them. When she took a carton of eggs from the refrigerator she saw that Gert had written on it, “Connie, use up—I don’t remember when I bought.” Her mother, it seemed, had touched her shoulder. Con made herself an omelet with potatoes and an onion. The onions were sprouting too.
As she ate she remembered another time when she’d been alone in this apartment, during her last year in college. Gert had to spend a night in the hospital after minor surgery, and Con—who had just had her heart broken by a man she’d slept with once—had come home from school for a couple of days to help. Alone in the apartment at night, she’d thought not about her mother but her lover, and as she brought her mother home in a taxi the next day, Con had told Gert the story, leaving out sex. Ordinarily she didn’t tell stories like that to her mother, but Gert hadn’t tried to make Con feel worse. She’d said, “Somebody once did that to me. After a long time it’s almost a nice pain—like sad love songs.”
Now Con was alone again in the same place. She’d gotten over that man—he was not even a comfortable pain. She hadn’t made much progress, she considered, in acquiring the sad stories women loved telling and reading. At ten p.m. the phone rang and it had to be Jerry. She could tell from the ring, that “Who, me?” ring.
“I tried to call you,” Jerry began. “The first day she was here. But your line was constantly busy. And I tried a couple of times today.”
He had never wanted Con on his trips, not even when they were young and in love, before Joanna was born. Once, she’d wept. “I’ll bring books,” she’d said. “I’ll eat alone and make up my own things to do.” She was ashamed to have been so craven. Her old hurts were either gone altogether or still painful; she had no comfortable ones. At the time, Jerry had said, “I have to do it this way.” They had been in bed, and he’d turned over and curled his long body into its oval nighttime shape.
Now—finally on the phone with him—she was more curious than enraged, as if he were a stranger. The sound of his voice, which was light and quick, and had always pleased her, made her sad. She said, “Jerry, what made you do this?”
“You mean, letting Joanna come?” he said lightly. “She’s been wanting to for years. And she found out something I wanted to know.”
“What, she got a tourist brochure from Fort Ticonderoga?” Rage came into her voice after all.
“I don’t care about the fort,” said Jerry. “It’s not even open until summer. I’m interested in where Allen was coming from and how he got across the lake. And she found something at the library. I didn’t even remember telling her what I was thinking about.”
Con was sitting at the table in the living room, stretching the cord to talk on the kitchen phone. Over and over, she ran her free index finger down the edge of the orange stripe on the tablecloth. “But you took her out of school. And you didn’t tell me. How could you not tell me?”
“You’d have said no.”
“You were ne
ver going to tell me? Didn’t you think I’d phone her?”
“Sure, but she’s always hard to reach. I didn’t think you’d think anything. She was going to call you and not say where she was.”
“Jerry, you told her to lie?” Her hand flattened on the table.
“Well, it was a game,” he said. “Like a play. Surely you can see that this was good for her. Joanna’s a kid with so much anger, so much inborn rebellion, that she could just turn against everything good.” He paused. “Con, I know you’re not going to listen. You’re not going to agree—and that’s why I didn’t tell you in the first place. But I’m trying to save this girl for something worthwhile. School does nothing for her. She could turn against it and go on drugs or get pregnant. She could be twenty-one with four babies.”
She said, “But Jerry, Jerry, wait a second. I’m asking you something simpler. What did you think would happen? What did you think I’d think? Do you know the police in Philadelphia were looking for her?”
Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn Page 7