The Ruined House

by Ruby Namdar

  Andrew’s mind went blank, collapsing under the weight of so many thoughts. He shut the book, knocked it from the table to the rug, kicked it beneath the leather couch, and looked around as if waking from a dream. The light in the room seemed softer. He gazed out the window, his tension draining as he saw a ruddy streak. Thank God dawn had broken! It was morning. What time was it? Six forty-five! He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry from joy. He had been waiting for this moment all night without knowing it. Sesame Street! Sesame Street was on in fifteen minutes! Reaching for the remote control, he eagerly turned on the TV and felt an almost hysterical happiness when the opening jingle came on.

  Sunny day,

  Sweeping the clouds away

  On my way to where the air is sweet.

  Can you tell me how to get,

  How to get to Sesame Street?

  He stretched out on the couch, too exhausted to be embarrassed by the emotion he felt. How had he remembered the song? So many years had gone by since he last heard it, and he hadn’t known it by heart then, either. But what did it matter? Now came the next stanza. He shut his eyes and hummed it along with the television, basking in its blessed, eternal sunshine.

  Come and play,

  Everything’s A-OK

  Friendly neighbors there,

  That’s where we meet.

  Can you tell me how to get,

  How to get to Sesame Street?

  Yes, sunshine! A kind sun shining through the leaves of a green forest. He knew the place, he had been in it before. A party was under way, a wedding, birthday, or celebration of an equinox. Who could remember? The enchanted cottage belonged to two long-haired lesbian hippies; their shapely legs that hadn’t seen a razor in years showed beneath the hems of their white robes. A naked, angelic baby tottered among the trees. The fat, unpracticed soles of its little feet trod the rich leaf fall. The little plume of its male sex danced between its chubby thighs like a sweet little tail. What an awesome, magnificent sight: a whole, uncircumcised child! But wait a minute. What was going on here? Something was wrong, all wrong. How could the trees be green when there were so many fallen leaves on the ground? Was he confusing two different memories? No, that couldn’t be. He had only been here once. He had never been here at all. But why then this sudden, uncontrollable, longing? For what? It never happened, it was a dream!

  23

  The stilted digital voice drilled into Andrew’s brain like the buzz of a mosquito: Rosenthal, Abigail, Rosenthal, Abigail. Who the hell was Rosenthal, Abigail? He fought against opening his eyes, unwilling to part with this magical, comforting dream. The telephone fell silent, then sounded a lively beep. Someone was leaving him a voice mail. When would he listen to all his messages? Suppose it was something important. No, not now. Anytime but now! Soon. Later. First coffee. Yes, coffee. When had he last had a cup of it? He couldn’t say. He had lost all track of time. Things fell apart, the center didn’t hold. Who was this damn Abigail Rosenthal? He didn’t know any Abigail Rosenthal. A wrong number? Impossible. The beep was preceded by his recorded announcement. Could it be the editor of the magazine? No way. The editor’s name was Greenspan. He knew the man. Could he have been fired? But who in the world would fire him? He had to stop this paranoid thinking. It led nowhere. He had to get up.

  Andrew made his way to the kitchen, sidestepping the wet stain eating away at the black rug and turning it even darker. The thought of coffee was both inviting and repellent. An espresso would be too strong. He was weak, he was sick; he needed something easier on the stomach. Perhaps a nice latte with lots of sweetened, foamed milk? The thought of the hot milk slowly mingling with the aromatic brown brew brought a smile to his lips. He opened the refrigerator. What? There was no milk! He had finished it two days ago. The smile vanished. Andrew sucked in his breath. Something was hiding in the refrigerator—something he had done his best to forget. He fought back the urge to slam the stainless-steel door and run from the apartment. Get a grip on yourself, man! Forcing himself to look, he saw the tenderloin in the refrigerator’s sallow, operating-room light. Pathologically black, it lay in its corner. He stared at it in horror. It seemed to have swelled and lost its shape. Its once succulent meat made him think of a dead, rancid animal. Plunged from his dreamy, still sleepy state into a cold bath of hyperawareness, he felt the violent, urgent need to tear the malignant creature from its lair—to sweep it into the garbage pail—into the incinerator shaft—into the river . . . the river! That was it! He would throw the hideous thing that had taken possession of his apartment, of his life, into the Hudson. He would stand watching it sink slowly into the polluted, chemical-infested river, breathing its last in a few final bubbles before disappearing in the metallic gray water.

  For a moment or two, flying high on the renewed euphoria of a mad notion, Andrew felt an almost infinite power. Then, losing altitude, he crashed on the hard ground of his helpless depression. No, he would never dare do such a thing. Not now. Not ever. He wasn’t capable of such drama: it was one more ridiculous, juvenile fantasy. He shut the refrigerator with an empty feeling and returned to the living room, forgetting the coffee he had craved a minute ago. His mind whirled obsessively like a carousel with no one to stop it. Impatiently, he turned the pages of the cookbooks, still hoping to find in them the answer to his predicament. But what was this? Unbelievable! Last to emerge from the pile of books was the friendly, familiar, long-forgotten Joy of Cooking, the classic once found on every kitchen shelf in America. He hadn’t known he still had it. Certain that their well-thumbed family copy had stayed behind with Linda in Brooklyn, he hadn’t thought of it for years. He ran his fingers over the dog-eared volume, whose jacket was torn here and there, as moved by it as if he were stroking the cheek of a beloved woman or child. He leafed through its pages, lingering over the old black-and-white illustrations. It all came back to him now. Smells, tastes, and textures burst through the dam of memory. The loud, sticky oilcloth on the table. The pots and pans whose age showed in a broken handle or dent. The knives that stayed blunt no matter how often they were sharpened. The wooden spoons, blackened by the remains of the innumerable meals they had stirred, which had become part of them despite their frequent scrubbings. Where had the book been hiding? He had missed it so badly all these years without knowing it.

  Andrew went on reading, carefully separating pages stuck together by grease and grains of sugar. Although he felt that he was in a whirlpool of different, contradictory, and even self-destructive emotions, he tried putting these out of his mind and remaining with his first, spontaneous reaction to the rediscovered lost book. Meat! Simple, hearty meat recipes. A French country casserole, home cooking at its best. The onion, carrots, and celery are browned well before the wine and beef stock are added to the pan. The wooden spoon scraped the charred, fragrant, flavorful bits from the bottom, folding them into the hot, brown stew whose lard gave it a special, silky texture . . . A sudden sob, sharp like a puppy’s yelp, escaped Andrew’s mouth. He shut the book and pushed it away. Propping his elbows on the table, he rested his head in his hands and kneaded his soft eyeballs. How would it all end? When?

  Rosenthal, Abigail, Rosenthal, Abigail . . . The telephone’s robotic voice made him sit up with a start. He mustn’t answer. He mustn’t! What did they want from him? Why did he have to answer every time someone called? The nerve of calling him at home over one shitty little article! Ten pages all in all, two of them bibliography. Furious, he rose to go to the phone. But what was he doing? Hadn’t he decided not to answer? Not now. He would answer when he felt like it, when he had something to send. Meanwhile, he would show them. He strode to the phone, which had begun to quiver and growl again like a nasty little dog, reached quickly for its cable as if afraid of being bitten—just not now, don’t let anyone call now!—and yanked it from its socket, letting it drop to the floor. Then, trying to forget the idiocy of his action, he beat a safe path back to the rug, now half-soaked with water from the goddamn air conditioner, from where
he proceeded to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door so savagely that it almost flew off its hinges. The tenderloin, unrepentant and shameless, was where he had left it. He threw it a hateful glance as if about to engage it in hand-to-hand combat, summoned all his strength, pried it from its place, and stuck it, the rare, aged-to-absurdum cut of meat, as far back in the freezer as it would go, behind bags of frozen vegetables, frost-covered vodka bottles, and cartons of ice cream. With a last glance at the freezer door, he slammed it shut and hurried to the bathroom, holding his hands out to keep them from contaminating the rest of him, until he could wash them.

  24

  July 28, 2001

  The 8th of Av, 5761

  Ten a.m. The tinkling chimes of an ice-cream truck penetrated the closed windows of Andrew’s stifling hothouse of an apartment, bouncing off each other as if in a game of marbles. Andrew, his face still in his sleeve, shot out of his dream like the human cannonballs he had seen at the circus as a boy. He turned on his back, stretched, and listened to the fading music-box echoes while trying to put himself in the proper frame of mind to cope with the weekend. What was he going to do? He had no plans—nothing! He forced himself to sit up on the leather couch, feeling stiff all over. He couldn’t stay by himself in this apartment another day. He would rot, he would go mad.

  The park! Should he go for a bike ride? Get a breath of fresh air and some exercise? The green, open spaces of Central Park, he imagined in a new spurt of euphoric glee, were charged with health and vitality. They called to him. He roused himself. Should he shower first? He hadn’t showered for the last two days or more and probably reeked to high heaven. No, not now. His bike helmet would hide the greasy mess of his hair and he would work up a healthy sweat, not like the night’s sticky perspiration. He had to get out of here! Another minute and he would burst out crying like a little boy. Get out, get out as fast as you can!

  25

  Even before he reached the street, the effort of extricating his bicycle from the pile of junk that had accumulated on top of it in the basement had drenched his workout clothes in sweat. The shorts were big on him, hanging loosely down from his hips and stomach. He kept wanting to hike up his underpants. When had he lost so much weight? He pushed the bike through the lobby, relieved to see the doorman wasn’t there, opened the heavy door, and stepped outside.

  The asphyxiating heat hit him at once. One never got used to it, never developed the slightest resistance. He stood staring blindly at the street, his senses a frightening, heat-stricken blur. Where was he? He tried to piece together his surroundings. The gray, chipped bricks of the building’s facade suggested a fortress or prison. An empty, rotting sky, the nondescript color of rusting metal, hung like a sack over the empty, rotting city. Should he turn around and go home? No, he had passed the point of no return. Onward! He steadied the bike, swung an awkward leg over the seat, settled into it, and began pedaling laboriously eastward, toward Central Park. More than the bicycle was carrying him, he felt he was carrying it.

  Eleven fifteen. The park was already full of New Yorkers defying the heat. Joggers, strollers, and bikers thronged the lawns and paths. He pedaled with effort, as he threaded his way through them. He felt none of the relief he had hoped for, he was in the same prison in which he had been in his apartment. The sky was an impenetrable gray, rusting iron. An apocalyptic sun, pale and sickly, hid behind the curtain of haze. The burning hot asphalt stuck to the bicycle’s wheels. He had known he had made a mistake from the moment of stepping outside, he just hadn’t had the strength of character to turn back. His eyes stung. His lungs ached. He was thirsty and could feel the onset of heartburn. He needed to rest. To drink. Coffee. Juice. Water. When had he last gotten down anything solid? Two, maybe three days ago. He needed to eat. Maybe a bagel? Corn on the cob? Andrew made a face . . . Ice cream? Chocolate ice cream! Why not some ice cream? A goddamn ice-cream cone wouldn’t kill him, would it? He could feel the yen for its sweetness go to his head as if he had already swallowed a tablespoon of sugar.

  Andrew pedaled faster, scanning the park for an ice-cream wagon and almost panting with expectation when he saw one with a long line of customers in front of it. By now reduced to a single, all-consuming desire, he rode toward it so fast that the line was forced to jump back, muttering an angry protest as he braked at the last moment to avoid hitting a signboard with garish illustrations of the wagon’s overpriced wares. Andrew ignored the indignation, which united the random collection of park-goers in a moment of solidarity directed against him, the violator of the unwritten law. Sliding his sore rear end off the seat, he planted both feet on the ground and studied the sign while awaiting his turn with open impatience. The vendor, overwhelmed by the heat and the fussiness of his customers, kept rummaging through his freezer to meet their demands. The heat hadn’t bothered Andrew when he was in motion. Now, molten and stupefying, it hit him again.

  Come on, move it! How long did anyone need to find a fucking Popsicle? His fit of anger nearly made him scream out loud. Get a grip on yourself, man! Don’t lose it, not in the middle of the park. He inhaled some heavy air and held it in his lungs as though he were smoking a joint. When was he supposed to meet Mitchell his investment adviser again? When was the last time they had met? And what were those phone calls about his credit card debt all about? What goddamn debt were they talking about? He didn’t have any debt! Calm down! Calm down this minute! He needed to take a deep breath and let the wave of anxiety roll over him and break nearer to the shore. But . . . Move it, goddamn it! How much time did the idiot need to count out change? What was that smell? There was smoke somewhere, a fire. Someone was burning dead branches. Or garbage. Or something.

  26

  Exhausted by the heat, Andrew asked for a large, family-size container of chocolate ice cream. You only live once, right? He gritted his teeth at its outrageous price and went looking for a private spot to eat it in, pushing the bike ahead of him. Far from feeling hungry, he suddenly felt disgustingly full. Braking sharply, he came to a sudden halt, almost falling from his bicycle. He found a place on the grass, half-hidden by a row of bushes, and took some deep breaths, opened the container, stuck his plastic spoon into it, and began to eat methodically. The half-chewed gobs of brown chocolate slid down his throat as though down the throat of a snake that had swallowed a live rodent. Unenthused by its first solid food in a while, his irritated stomach reacted apathetically. He ate at a fast, steady pace, combing his surroundings like a stray dog that fears its bone will be snatched from it. The less interested he was in what he was eating, the more he began to realize that the privacy provided by the bushes was an illusion. He looked uncomfortably at all the attractive, half-undressed bodies sprawled on the lawns around him while spooning up the last of the ice cream from the bottom of the empty container. On the grass a few steps away lay a self-absorbed young couple who were making out in full view like actors in a film. As though in a fog, Andrew stared at their carefree bodies that were twined around each other with a youthful, do-not-disturb innocence. He felt light-years away from sexual passion. He was outside the circle of human sexuality entirely, a pariah banished from the camp. His ice cream–crammed stomach, now determined to thrust out whatever had been thrust into it, hung over the penis beneath as if shielding a cowering little mouse. Andrew belched loudly. The whole shocked park, or so it seemed to him, stopped what it was doing to look his way. The nearby couple disentangled itself and stared at him. He turned quickly away, his cheeks burning with a shame he hadn’t felt since childhood. Getting to his feet in what he hoped looked like a casual manner, he steered the bike back to the path by its handlebars while holding the empty container in his other hand. What was he so ashamed of? Having belched? Been caught peeping at the couple? But he hadn’t peeped, he hadn’t! What was he supposed to do with the goddamn container? Where were the goddamn garbage pails when you needed them? Not that anyone ever ate so much ice cream in one sitting. It was insane. Now he would be sick to his stoma
ch in the middle of the park. Just what he needed!

  Andrew threw the container into the first garbage pail, feeling sicker and sicker. Again he sniffed the burning smell. Who was burning wood on a weekend? Couldn’t they have waited until Monday, when the park was empty? Hot, weak, and weary, he remounted his bike and pedaled dutifully with no clear goal in mind, conscious of a thick curtain of loneliness descending on him. Although he knew he should be heading uptown, back toward home, he kept cycling downtown without asking himself why. More and more bicycles were on the path. The park was filling up with perspiring, scantily clad bodies that moved like wraiths or desert mirages through the haze: bare shoulders, clean-shaved heads, uncovered breasts, naked thighs and stomachs. He swung the handlebars to the right, cutting across several cyclists, and banked at high speed into a side path to get away from the crowds, which he felt surrounded him, like a city under siege.

  The smell of burning grew stronger, filling his mouth and nose with its black, astringent odor. Flames licked the felled cedar beams that were strong as iron and the large stones that screamed with pain like living creatures. Andrew braked with a screech, throwing himself sideways to avoid landing on his top wheel, and stood breathing heavily by the side of the path. The air was dense, noxious. What now? What should he do? He forced himself to look around, searching for something to latch on to that would help him out of the abyss. The stench was getting worse. He instinctively sent a hand to the collar of his shirt to unbutton the button that wasn’t there and started out again, his thigh muscles straining to turn the stubborn pedals. His destination, unclear to his mind but known to his senses, was hiding just around the corner of consciousness. It was somewhere where he had forgotten or left something, somewhere where he had unfinished business. He kept heading downtown, crossing Strawberry Fields and turning left at Cherry Hill Fountain with Sheep Meadow on his right. The magical names in which he had always taken such pleasure now echoed dully in his mind, as meaningless as everything that appeared out of the haze and vanished back into it, like the fragments of an undeciphered dream. Circling the little lake, he followed the boathouse path toward the east side of the park and turned northward, drawn by a strong though invisible gravitational pull that grew stronger with every turn of the sprocket chain. A heavy, semi-opaque, impenetrable veil hung between him and reality. The glossy treetops resembled artificial, green plastic mushrooms rising above the haze. The lawns looked like Astroturf, their occupants scurrying ants. Even the majestic avenues bordering the park now felt like a stage set, a cheap Technicolor production.