“May I ask you something?” she said.
“I guess so.”
“Well,” she began, touching with her long arthritic finger the elegant Jewish star that hung on one of three golden chains around her neck—I noted a Tiffany bean on another, and a big, fat diamond on the third—“we were talking.”
“We?”
“The girls. And also my husband and the other husbands, too. Although to be honest, there aren’t all that many husbands anymore. Well, we were thinking about you. We know you are going through a very hard time. What could be harder?” She looked at me consolingly, and I could tell she wanted to hug me but held herself in check. “We know you are all by yourself up here in this apartment and surrounded by all us old people. It must be so boring. Who wants to be with old people?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“We also know, to tell you the truth, that one day in the not so distant, if you know what I mean, our own kids will be doing what you’re doing right now….”
“I’m sure not for a long, long time,” I assured her, and started to close the door.
“Be that as it may,” she replied, putting herself between me and the door frame, “but all we have here is us—old people, that’s all we have, and though I know it’s boring for you, we thought, well, that Yom Kippur is coming up. And we don’t want you to be alone. We talked it over. So here, we got you a ticket. It’s free, you don’t have to pay a thing. And you can sit with us. With the Mosemans and the Futernicks and Harry and me—we sit together. We have good seats, right up front. It’s a lovely temple, you’ll love the rabbi—it’s a woman! It takes a minute getting used to, but even my husband likes her now. One could not say she’s beautiful, but she’s very, very smart, and such a good speaker! Now we don’t have a big cantor or a choir, but it’s a lovely service, and there are some younger people who come too, and I’m sure you can meet them if you want, and then afterwards, there’s the oneg, and then we thought you can come with us to break the fast. We all go over to Charlie’s Crab. You’re not kosher are you?”
“No, I’m not kosher.” It was obviously very important to her, otherwise they’d have to change reservations.
“And you don’t have to worry about the cost of that either. It’s on us.”
“I couldn’t possibly…” I stammered.
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s Yom Kippur. You’re doing us a favor. Maybe He’ll give us another year or two for this!” This caused her to laugh with great delight. Then she looked me in the eye with a kind of tenderness I had not seen since my mother died, with eyes, though perhaps bordered with too much mascara and pearlescent eye shadow, still vibrant and blue and full of fire and hope. “It would be a mechayeh. You know what that is? A joy! You’ll be doing a good deed.” She placed the ticket in my hand. “We’ll see you tomorrow, all right? We all meet downstairs. Kol Nidre starts at six. So we meet at five-thirty.”
Tomorrow? I thought. Ten days have passed already?
She looked at me seriously now. “If you’re not there, we’ll understand, and we’ll leave without you. But we want you to be with us. It would be our pleasure.” Standing there in her raincoat and galoshes, her umbrella bouncing in the wind, she reached out and squeezed my hand. “Be strong,” she said. “It’s something we all go through, if we’re lucky.”
I knew what she meant by that. She meant if we live long enough to see our parents die, rather than the other way around, the world is as it should be.
Then, bunnylike, she scurried down the gangway towards number 316, her see-through plastic booties barely skimming the surface of the water under her feet. I thought of my mother then. She and Dad had it the other way around. And I thought of Josh, too. If I lost him, only then I would know pain.
I went inside and put the casserole down. I threw the ticket into the rose-colored candy dish, where it would stay long after tomorrow had come and gone. I already knew how it would go: the two Gitlins and the two Futernicks sitting in the car, waiting. Harry Gitlin, the husband, anxious to leave, growing more impatient by the millisecond. They would get into a spat because she’d be saying, just another minute or two, he’ll be down—just one more minute! But sooner or later even dear old Mrs. Gitlin would have to give up on me. Oh well, she’d say to Harry, what can you do? We tried! Delirious to have been right for a change, he’d console her. You can’t save everybody! he’d say, throwing it into Drive.
Later that night, I went back into the kitchen. The casserole seemed to look up at me with plaintive Jewish eyes. I was hungry, so I thought, why not? I’ll give it a try. It turned out it wasn’t brisket after all. It was something they liked to call Chicken Divine—chicken breasts baked with broccoli and a sauce of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup. I looked at it suspiciously but popped some in the microwave. I brought it out and sat down at the dining room table and took a bite. It was actually delicious. As I sat there eating, I could study my wall of clues in the living room just beyond.
My eye found itself drawn to the little train ticket that I had put up a few days before. I set down my fork. Stepped closer to it. It was just above eye level, and I had to stand on tiptoe to view it. I must have been less than an inch from it. I was being silly, there was nothing. But then I thought I saw a blue color bleeding through from behind, as if someone had written something on it, which long ago faded away. I pulled it from the wall and turned it over. There was a trace of writing there! Very small, very fine, created with a remarkably precise hand, now blurred with years of erosion, moisture, traces of mold; and the tops of all the letters were cropped away—but there it was. GvH.
GvH. I wondered what that could mean.
I stared at it a long time. I tried to think back—what had he said? What had he written?
And then it hit me. G. von Hellman. The girl from Vienna.
CHAPTER 28
Not Frau Hellman. Fräulein.
I was suddenly overwhelmed by the need to take a shower. I threw my plate into the sink and ran into the bathroom. I scrubbed my body with Ivory Soap, shampooed my hair and shaved, all under the bracing needles of the Shower Massage. My father had loved his Shower Massage. Ooooo, he would croon when he mentioned it, Ahhhh.
I looked at the clock. It had somehow become night.
I thought about him lying there. Dying. It’s time to go, I thought.
I put on a pair of khakis, a pale yellow golf shirt, and my linen sports coat. I wanted to look respectable. In fact, I looked pretty much like him.
I knew I needed the stuff in the gym bag, but I couldn’t remember where I’d put it. I looked everywhere for it, frantically digging through the piles of discarded evidence, throwing photographs, notebooks, ashtrays, and shoehorns right and left, cursing, wailing, begging, and finally dissolving into tears. Then I saw its iridescent green strap peeking from under my bed. I pulled it out so carefully you might have thought I was rescuing a child trapped in a culvert. I unzipped it, felt around inside for what I wanted, put the stuff in my jacket pocket, zipped it back up. I stood up, looked around. The apartment seemed totally unfamiliar to me. Everything was a wreck. What had I been thinking? It was like waking from a dream. And yet it was all too familiar. I knew I had been here before. But when? As I rushed towards the door, for some reason I pulled Karen’s hospital bracelet off the wall and shoved it in my pocket too.
The phone rang.
Oh God, I thought, he’s dead! But it was April.
“I was worried about you,” she said. “I haven’t heard from you for days. Are you okay?”
“I have to go to the nursing home,” I muttered. “I have to see my father.”
There was a discernible catch in her throat. After a minute she asked, “Do you want me to come with you?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll call you.”
She said she would be thinking of me, and we hung up. Vaguely I realized I did not have her phone number.
I moved toward the door, but the phone rang again. Jesus! What d
oes she want? I thought.
But it was Josh. His sweet voice, like an angel whispering in my ear, like the heavenly stranger at the tent door. Something urged me to invite him in, to beg him to come in if I had to, to fete him with delicacies and fine drink.
“Josh! Kiddo!” I said instead.
“Hi, Dad.”
He waited for me to say something.
“Sorry I didn’t call today,” I finally said, tossing off the first thing that came to my mind.
“Or yesterday,” he said.
When I spoke to him, I felt like I was drowning, but not in water, in mud. No thrashing about, just stuck and sinking.
“How were services?” I went on stupidly.
“Boring,” he said.
If I were my old self I would have said, “Yeah, I know. Who needs heaven?” I would have gone into my rap about how nice Sodom and Gomorrah really were and why having your wife turn into a pillar of salt was not necessarily a bad idea—I had a great bit about it that I used when I toured places like Arkansas and North Dakota, actually—but instead I just asked, “How was dinner with Grandpa and Grandma?”
“Boring,” he repeated.
“Come on, Josh! It was fun, wasn’t it?” I insisted desperately.
“Not really,” he said. I could hear him waiting for me to tell him I’d come home and save him from having to go to temple on Yom Kippur.
“Listen, I have to go see Grandpa Rosenheim. He’s not feeling well today,” I added.
“Hey, I was thinking about Frau Hellman,” Josh said cheerily.
“What?” I said.
“Frau Hellman. The mayonnaise lady.”
“Yes, Josh, I know who she is.”
“Maybe Grandpa’s worried he’s going to die. You know, Hellman. As in hell. It’s psychological, Dad.”
I shifted impatiently. “I guess that’s a possibility.”
“Or maybe it was his girlfriend. Before Grandma.”
I heard myself cough. “Yes, that’s also possible.”
“But shouldn’t he be thinking about Grandma?”
“I’m sure he is. Why are you obsessing over this?”
“I don’t know, I was just thinking about it.”
“Well, try thinking of something else, okay?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, Josh. For heaven’s sake—”
Instantly I regretted scolding him, but I had to leave. Time was running out.
“I have to go, Josh,” I said. “I’m late for seeing Grandpa.”
“It’s okay, Dad,” he said.
His little heart was trying so hard to be valiant. I loved him. I wanted to hug him. Protect him. Maybe in some strange way that’s what I was doing, protecting him, but from me. When I look back on it, I’m absolutely sure I intended that Josh have a childhood of honesty, love, and security. But at that moment I concluded you simply can’t give something you’ve never had yourself, even if you always thought you had.
I promised him that when I got home we’d spend so much time together he’d get so sick of me he’d send me on a one-way ship to Patagonia.
“Where’s that?” he said.
I was honest with him for once. “I haven’t the slightest idea,” I said.
Then I asked him to put his mother on.
“She’s probably busy, Dad.”
“Put her on,” I said.
I must have been breathless, because she sounded horrified. “It’s your father!”
I said, “No. I want to talk to you about me. I need to tell you something about me. I need to tell you something very, very important. I want to come clean.”
She didn’t miss a beat.
“But I don’t need to hear it anymore, Michael. I don’t care.”
Instead of coming in through the front, I found a side door, and before I knew it, I was standing in the dark, forgotten space at the far end of the hall near the stairway no one ever used. No one could see me there. The night crew moved like ghosts themselves, barely visible, like beams of light, their white shoes descending like snowflakes, their voices muffled under the hum of the water-coolers. I watched their comings and goings. In and out of the broom closet, the dispensary, the bathroom, the patients’ rooms. I had the strange sense I had been here before, too, but all I wanted at the time was to stand there in secret and watch, secure in the shadow and quiet. Then I roused myself, went outside, and came back in through the front doors.
Nurse Clara was on night shift. She appeared to be waiting for me, even though she could not have possibly known I was coming. But for once she looked at me kindly, took me by the arm, and led me aside, her monster breast pressed against the sleeve of my jacket. In her other hand, she grasped her equally large, black wooden cross as if to ward off the evil demons that followed me into the nursing home. She held it in front of her as we walked, clearing us a safe path.
“I wanted to warn you,” she said in her serpentine southern drawl. “Physically, you will have to be prepared.” Her eyes were teary. “We were going to call.”
“Physically.”
“There’s been a pretty big change.”
“I see,” I said.
Nurse Clara took my hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We all love your daddy.”
“Yes I know,” I said.
She was right.
The fat under his skin seemed to have melted away. The arms sticking out of his short-sleeved gown were like branches of willow, the skin weeping down in long flat sheets, the bone eerily visible. His face had become birdlike, with sallow cheeks and pointed beak, and a strong, sour smell rose from his corrupting flesh, like rotting fruit. He no longer resembled my father at all.
I did not want him to die that way.
I closed the door, lowered the light until it was no more than a glimmer. I slowly walked over to the window and lowered the blinds. Then I quietly pulled the curtain around the bed. The hooks made a swishing noise against the runners. I stood there over him. It was our private world, the most alone with him I had ever been, cut off from everyone and everything. All we’d ever said to each other, done to each other, hoped for each other, seemed very far away. The only noise was the echo of his oxygen mask and my own hushed breath. I came closer. I stood as still as a statue, watching him. I studied the dark scrolls running down his face, crisscrossing his skin, each wrinkle set there for a purpose—to teach us the folly of hope, I supposed. I looked at his mouth, drooped open and toothless, the same mouth once so full of wisecracks and patriarchal wisdom and an endless stream of criticism. I stared into his sunken eyes, now closed to all but their own inner light, the same eyes that once were all-seeing, all-knowing, and also, I had little doubt, witness to the most repulsive crimes of man. It was improbable, it was implausible, but it was only then that I was certain I had always loved him and that I loved him now.
Slowly, carefully, I slipped my hand into my pocket—the pocket of my linen sports coat—and reached for the hypo. In the dark corner of the hall, I had already loaded it with its colorless potion of justice. He would not have a natural death. That was what I had promised myself.
He seemed suddenly to move his head and look at me—his eyes just at that moment opened.
“Israel?” he said.
“No,” I said. “It’s me. It’s Michael. It’s your son.”
“Oh Michael, I’m so glad it’s you!”
My hand was still in my pocket, searching. But the hypo wasn’t there. I must have put it in my other pocket. Instead, I felt something thin, a little sticky, like rubber, bending beneath my fingers. I lifted it out. It was my sister’s hospital bracelet. The bracelet Karen had worn the day she died.
“Oh dear God!” I cried, and fell upon him, weeping, my heart breaking into pieces upon his tiny, frail breast.
From some deep unconscious place, he found the strength to wrap his arms around me and hold me tight.
CHAPTER 29
Everyone thought I was still at school, but I used t
o sneak back to see her all the time, almost every day. I couldn’t help myself. I don’t know why I didn’t tell my father and mother. I came early before they showed up. Or late after they went home.
“How’s it going?” I said.
Her lips curled into a fine note of sarcasm. “Nathan was by this morning. He was cheery, too. He brought me this.”
She pointed to a pile of vacation brochures for places like Barbados and Tuscany.
“He thinks I’ll be fine by summer. We’ll bicycle through Provence.”
“Mom would never let you go off to Europe with a guy. You’re not old enough.”
“Nor will I ever be. And thank you for not contradicting me. Do you have any cigarettes?”
I gave her one. In those days you could smoke anywhere.
“Thank God I don’t have lung cancer,” she said. “Can you imagine what a drag that would be?” She laughed, sucking a thick, fragrant plume up through her nostrils. “Mom and Dad aren’t around, are they?”
“Not that I know of. Dad’s at the store, I guess. I don’t know where she is.”
“Probably looking in the broom closet for The Cure. She’s certain they have one somewhere and for some reason they just won’t give it to me.”
“It’s hard on her,” I said.
“You would think she’s the one who’s dying,” she replied.
I did not know how to take these glib moods. She wanted me to be glib right back, but I suddenly felt I no longer knew how. Maybe it was just that she couldn’t see herself. She couldn’t see how thin she had grown, how green-gray and scabrous her face had become. She knew she’d lost a few teeth, but probably forgot about it as people do when they get used to something, and didn’t realize that when she smiled it radiated hopelessness rather than joy. She was once such a beautiful girl.
But she surprised me again.
“Mikey, I need to tell you something. I’ve been thinking of how to tell you for a few days now. We all know I am going to die; it’s not about that. I’m okay with that. No, I am. As much as I can be. But something else.” She took my hand. “I’m in a lot of pain, Michael. Look at me, please. Look at my face. They want to dope me up all the time, but I don’t let them. I don’t want to not be here. You know what I mean? And even when I let them dope me up, I hurt anyway, terribly, horribly, badly. So why should I be a zombie, too? It hurts like nothing I ever thought could hurt. I want to tear my insides out of me. It’s not just one place, like my side or my back. It’s everywhere. Everywhere hurts. They want to do more chemo, but I don’t want more chemo. It’s almost worse than the pain. You get so sick, you never dreamed you could get so sick, but you go through it because you think it’s worth it, because you think maybe they can fix you and you can go home. But it’s not going to work, Michael.”
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