by Ann Charney
“That is strange,” she agrees. “Did she by any chance say why?”
“Beats me,” Leo says, shrugging his shoulders. “They’ve been estranged as far back as I can remember. Now, suddenly, it’s Helena she wants. I suppose it’s the kind of thing people do when they think they’re dying. You know, make peace with the past.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I promised her I would call Helena tomorrow, but I doubt she’ll agree to come. She didn’t strike me as being all that interested in our family when we met in Venice.”
Leo is probably right. As far as Nerina can remember, she’s never heard Helena mention family in New York or anywhere else.
“I’ve been thinking,” Leo goes on, “it might help if you were to call Helena as well. She is very fond of you, you know. What do you think?”
“Of course. I would love to see Helena again, but I’m not sure it will do much good. I’ve heard her say many times that she finds travelling more of an ordeal than a pleasure these days.”
“Try anyway,” he says, rising from his chair. “We’ll compare notes tomorrow.”
As soon as Leo leaves, Nerina rushes to Meredith’s place. One look at Meredith’s face and she can tell her message has gone unheard.
“Where have you been?” she demands, spitting out the words as if they carried an unpleasant taste. “Because of you, I had a terrible day. People knocking at the door, the phone ringing incessantly, and Edward has been going crazy waiting for you. You’re supposed to be here, looking after things. How selfish of you to think of no one but yourself.”
Nerina wants to point out that she is only an hour late, and cannot possibly be held responsible for Meredith’s entire day, but Meredith’s fury is impervious to reason. A small child in the throes of an allout temper tantrum is how she looks to Nerina. To stifle her urge to laugh she buries her face in Edward’s silky coat, and the dog, overjoyed, responds with a dance of ecstasy, jumping and twirling between the two women.
“Sit, Edward, sit,” Meredith commands, using her most imperious tone, but the dog is too far gone to obey.
The sheer exuberance of his performance seems to melt some of Meredith’s fury. A wan smile crosses her face, encouraging Nerina to speak.
“Leo’s mother had a heart attack last night,” she says, hoping to remind Meredith there is drama in other people’s lives as well. And Leo is one of her oldest friends, after all. “He spent last night and most of today at the hospital with her. It looks pretty serious.”
Meredith responds to the news with more irritation. “No surprise there. The woman eats like a pig. The one time I made the mistake of accepting an invitation to a holiday dinner at her house, the amount of food on that table was indecent. Which reminds me, I’m starving,” she concludes without missing a beat.
“Tell me what you’d like and I’ll go get it,” Nerina calmly replies, but she decides on the spot to drop in on Christophe, no matter where she is sent. Meredith’s cruelty is making her feel more selfish by the minute.
“Make sure Edward does his business,” Meredith calls after her when she leaves. Nerina waves one of the plastic bags she now carries in her purse for such purposes and hurries away. It feels so good to be away from Meredith, even picking up Edward’s turds seems pleasant in comparison.
She arrives at Christophe’s door fifteen minutes later, out of breath and with Edward in tow. “I’ve got half an hour,” she tells him and heads for the bedroom, with Edward close at her heels.
“What about the dog?” he asks, looking uncertain. “Can you leave him in the other room?”
“He won’t bother us,” Nerina says, taking hold of his hand and pulling him along. “He’ll just munch the biscuits I’ve brought. They’re his favourite kind.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never done it before with a dog watching.”
“Just think of it as one of those perceptual discrepancies you spoke of last night,” she says, forcing him down on the bed beside her. “You know, the reality of what we’re about to do, and what Edward will make of it. It could be a paradigm for exploring different perspectives.”
Christophe, to his credit, doesn’t seem to mind Nerina’s teasing. Or maybe he is too absorbed in undressing her to notice.
XIX
Helena arrives
TO Leo and Nerina’s surprise, Helena, after taking a day to make up her mind, agrees to come to New York to visit her ailing cousin.
“Leo was so helpful when I contacted him about you, I didn’t have the heart to refuse him,” she tells Nerina. “I don’t know why Miriam is asking for me, but I’m hoping the visit will make up for my numerous sins — starting with my lack of enthusiasm when she wanted to sponsor me as an immigrant to the US.”
At this very moment, while they are driving to Kennedy Airport to meet her, Helena is speeding towards them in an Alitalia jumbo jet.
“Maybe she’s in one of those planes overhead,” Nerina says, watching the steady stream of jets zooming in for landings. The traffic on the ground, however, moves at a discouragingly slow pace.
“Don’t worry, we have plenty of time,” Leo reassures her. “Even if she gets in ahead of us, she still has to go through customs and baggage claim.”
Leo is right. Helena’s plane has landed by the time they’re inside the airport, but it takes almost and hour for its passengers to emerge into the area where Nerina and Leo are waiting. When Helena appears, her small figure barely visible in the throng of travellers, she looks older and frailer than Nerina remembers. It’s been nearly two years since they’ve seen each other, but Nerina prefers to ascribe the changes to the fatigue of the long flight.
She throws her arms around her friend, ignoring for the moment Helena’s dislike of physical displays of affection. This time, Helena does not pull away, and hugs her back.
“Let me look at you,” she says, stepping back to check Nerina out.
Nerina suddenly wishes she’d had time to change out of the jeans and hoodie she’s been wearing since this morning and into something more to Helena’s liking. As it is, she only managed to tidy her hair and put on some lipstick on the way to the airport.
It doesn’t help matters that Helena, wearing layers of soft grey jersey over black trousers and her signature black jet beads, looks as elegant stepping off the plane as she does in Venice, despite the rigours of the long flight.
“Is this what young women in Manhattan are wearing these days?” Helena asks, taking in Nerina’s outfit. “I must say it looks very comfortable.” There’s a hint of mockery in her tone, but it’s softened by the look of affection in her eyes.
“You’re sure you won’t change your mind and come and stay with us?” Leo asks Helena, as he hauls her luggage and shepherds the women to his car. “With the children away at school, there’s plenty of room in our apartment. No need for you to go to a hotel.”
“You’re very kind,” Helena says, struggling with the seatbelt in the back. “But I make it a point never to stay with anyone — one of the many eccentricities of a woman who’s lived alone for many years. Too late to change now, I’m afraid.”
The next time Nerina turns around to check on Helena, she sees she is sound asleep. The murmur of gentle snoring soon fills the car, and Leo whispers to Nerina, “I see the family resemblance now. She’s as stubborn as my mother. They’ll get along fine, these two tough old birds. That is, if they don’t kill each other first.”
Helena doesn’t wake up until they pull up in front of her hotel on 39th Street. “Are we here? What a wonderful ride. I always sleep so well in a moving car. A pity one must leave Venice to enjoy such pleasures.”
Leo reminds Helena he will be back in a couple of hours to pick her up. Nerina is invited to join them for an early dinner before they visit Miriam in the hospital. She is reluctant, however, to abandon Meredith in her time of crisis, despite her foul moods.
As the date of the opening draws near, Nerina has found herself increasingly c
aught up in the feverish pace of production that Meredith has set for herself. Watching the colours and forms emerge more distinctly each day is like watching the birth of a new constellation, one whose significance she can barely grasp, but which holds the power to relegate Meredith’s outbursts of bad temper to mere background noise.
“It’s all right,” Helena says, as Nerina starts to apologize for deserting her on her first night in New York. “My return ticket is openended. We’ll have plenty of time to catch up tomorrow, over lunch.” She looks at Leo over the rim of her glasses. “I expect you let her have time off to eat?” she asks.
“No, not as a matter of rule,” he says, feigning severity. “In your case, I’ll make an exception.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Helena replies, playing along. “One never knows about the customs of a strange land.”
There is no trace of Helena’s good mood when the two women meet for lunch the following day. “I’ve made a terrible mistake in agreeing to a reunion with my cousin,” she announces, as soon as they are seated in a restaurant near the hotel.
There is so much Nerina wants to tell Helena, starting with the fact that she has been seeing Christophe, but she realizes that Helena’s need to unburden herself is more pressing.
“Why? What happened?” she asks, curtailing her impatience.
“Reunions after a long separation are a bad idea in general,” Helena sighs. “For one thing, there’s the wreckage of time, more easily discernible in others than in ourselves. What really shocked me, was that the woman in the hospital bed was a dead ringer for our grandmother. Suddenly, I was thrust back even further into the past than I was prepared for.”
Nerina thinks of her own grandmother, a woman embittered by the war, who rarely had anything good to say about anyone. The likelihood of her ending up like her baba feels impossible, but, apparently, there is no controlling the alchemy of time.
“Then, as I leaned over to kiss her,” Helena continues, “my jet necklace brushed against her cheek. She opened her eyes and said, ‘I see you’ve taken to wearing a rosary now. All that’s missing is the cross.’ Crazy.”
“You know, Miriam really wanted you to come,” Nerina says, encouraged by Helena’s chuckle. “Leo said that she continually asked for you.”
“Wait, it gets better,” Helena goes on, ignoring Nerina’s comment. “‘So you’ve finally decided to come and visit us,’ Miriam said, after asking me to crank up the bed to a sitting position. ‘Had I known all it would take was a heart attack, I would have arranged to have one sooner.’ I know it sounds as if I’m describing a vaudeville act, but I have to tell you that when Leo said he was going to give us some time together, I panicked at the thought of being alone with her.”
“You were probably spooked by the resemblance,” Nerina says, trying to soften Helena’s indignation.
“Only in part,” Helena says, her tone indicating she is not ready yet to forego the pleasure of what she deems to be justified resentment. “Miriam can be relentless, particularly now that she’s ill. Like many sick people, she thinks her condition entitles her to special dispensation, giving her the right to say anything that comes into her head.”
“Didn’t you try and stop her?” Nerina asks, finding it hard to imagine Helena as a passive listener.
Helena assumes an expression of innocent helplessness. “What could I do? Short of slapping a pillow over her face, there was no way to shut her up. And what came out was all the bitterness towards me she’s stored up over the years, starting with my original sin: when I chose to live in Italy, ‘among strangers,’ rather than be close to ‘the only family I have in the world.’ Sixty years later, she has still not forgiven me. Somehow, it’s all tied up in her mind with my refusing to be part of the fold. You probably didn’t know I was Jewish. Sometimes I forget about it myself. I have to say, it’s not as if it’s been a source of great joy in my life. Miriam, however, feels it’s her duty to show me what I’m missing.”
“How do you like your hotel?” Nerina asks, grasping for a less charged subject while Helena pauses to catch her breath.
“Don’t get me started on that,” Helena snaps. “For some bizarre reason, the entire staff seems to have been imported from Poland. Everyone, from the chambermaids, to the bellboys, to the doormen. I might as well be back in Warsaw.”
Nerina laughs. “That’s what I love about New York. All those different languages coming at you from all sides. It’s great.”
“Speaking of languages,” Helena says, finally turning her attention to her salad. “I’m amazed at the progress you’ve made since Venice. Very impressive. How did you do it?”
Nerina, happy with the direction the conversation has taken, launches into a description of the months of isolation in Smith Falls, and of how she put them to good use, reading books and memorizing unfamiliar words or phrases. “Vanity Fair was one of my favourites. I still remember one of the sentences I copied out of it: ‘She had the dismal precocity of poverty.’”
“Yes, I can see how that would appeal to you,” Helena says, looking at Nerina with affection. “Substitute the word ‘war’ for ‘poverty’ and you have the same result. I take objection to the word ‘dismal,’ however. Precocity, no matter how hardearned, is always an advantage.”
Nerina is tempted to say this is something she and Helena have in common — the bracing effect of early exposure to war — but she doubts Helena is in a mood to hear it. And there is so much more to tell.
When she comes to the part about working for Meredith, Helena grimaces. “Some people take her almost as seriously as she takes herself, but I’m not one of them. The Ohstroms, who’ve bought some of her work, say she’s quite a character. Bill and Alice would certainly be interested to hear about your experience with her. I’m surprised you haven’t been in touch with them.”
“I wrote to them when I was living in Smith Falls, but they never answered.”
“The rich can be fickle,” Helena says, with a sigh of resignation. “Too many pleasant distractions at their disposal. I’m afraid it’s a case of out of sight, out of mind. But in their own way, they’re very fond of you.”
“Never mind about the Ohstroms, Helena,” Nerina interrupts. “I don’t really care anymore. There’s someone else we knew in Venice who’s reappeared in my life. You remember Christophe? The Canadian artist? He’s living in New York now.”
Helena gives her a startled look. “Really? How did that come about?”
“Pure chance. We simply ran into one another on 6th Avenue one day. We’ve been seeing a lot of each other since then.”
“It really is a small world, isn’t it?” Helena says, looking a little shaken. “I must say, it never occurred to me you two might end up together. That’s why I went along with Alice’s game to pass you off as an exchange student. He knows the truth now, I presume?”
“I know,” Nerina agrees, laughing. “I couldn’t believe he recognized me after all this time. And yes, I’ve come clean about my entire shady past.”
“Just exactly how friendly have you and Christophe become?” Helena asks, looking closely at Nerina’s face.
Nerina feels herself blushing as she tries to think of a way to satisfy Helena’s curiosity without giving too much away.
“I see, that friendly,” Helena says, indicating Nerina has already revealed too much. “My poor girl, I’ve warned you numerous times: falling for an artist is a big mistake. You’ll always come far behind his work. I speak from experience.”
“I have another confession, Helena: he’s not the only new love in my life,” Nerina says, racing past Helena’s warning to safer ground. “There’s also Edward, Meredith’s dog. The most beautiful creature you’ve ever seen.”
“I thought you were afraid of dogs,” Helena says, pushing aside her salad. “I’d forgotten about the size of American servings. We could have easily shared this between the two of us. Anyway, remember how terrified you were of Dante, Theodora’s Borzoi?”<
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“I know, but thanks to Edward, the fear is gone. I think of him as my therapy dog.”
“Well, you certainly sound much more lighthearted than I remember.”
Nerina guesses the remark is not meant as a compliment. “You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”
“I’m not a fan of the American brand of mindless optimism. It’s the refuge of fools.”
“Thanks a lot,” Nerina says, her laugh more selfconscious now. “May I remind you that when I went to work for the Ohstroms, you were the one who told me Americans like people who smile a lot? But I’ll try to be grimmer the next time we meet.”
“Don’t pay any attention to me,” Helena says, sounding contrite. “I’m just a cranky old woman. This business with Miriam has left me more out of sorts than usual.”
XX
Surprises
LEO reports that relations between the two elderly cousins have taken a slight turn for the better. Miriam, having purged her heart of her longheld resentment towards Helena, appears to have run out of things to say. Helena, for her part, has chosen to interpret Miriam’s silence as signalling a truce.
In the spirit of forgiveness, she has taken it upon herself to persuade Miriam to have the surgery her doctors consider essential to keeping her alive. She has her own reasons as well. It annoys Helena that Miriam, who’s only a year older than her, is ready to give up on life.
“If you believe as strongly as you claim in the life you’ve chosen, then why are you so eager to depart from it?” she asks.
Good point, Leo thinks, overhearing the question when he arrives for a short visit. It goes unanswered, as his mother continues to lie with eyes half shut, ignoring Helena’s challenge — and everything else.
Leo has spoken to the doctor about his mother’s low spirits, and was told that depression is not unusual following a heart attack. It would likely resolve itself on its own, but it troubles Leo to see his lively mother so depleted. He visits daily, trying to rouse her.
This time, he has brought a shoebox filled with old photographs that he found on an upper shelf in her closet. A quick glance into the box’s contents revealed several charming photographs of the cousins as young girls, wearing identical taffeta bows in their hair, their arms entwined around each other’s waists. He doubts his mother has looked at them in years, and he’s pretty certain Helena has never seen them.