Wish You Were Here

by Hilma Wolitzer

  The other time I was there was in October, when my mother made Celia and me help her deliver some birthday surprises for him while he was at the store. Even though he was coming to our house that night for a birthday dinner, Ma left a cupcake with one blue candle in it in the refrigerator. She hung balloons and streamers over the kitchen table and put a present on his bed. I stayed in the kitchen and got out of there as soon as I could.

  On Sunday, just before Nat was supposed to pick me up, Pete came over to see if I wanted to do something—ride our bikes, or go to the park. I told him I couldn’t, that I had to help Nat the Gnat with some job. Pete said, “Are you sure you aren’t going to see your girlfriend again?”

  “What girlfriend?” I demanded, but he started whistling and didn’t answer me. I couldn’t figure out how he knew I’d been to Mary Ellen’s house. Maybe her bratty kid brother sold information about her. Talk about spies! “She’s not my girlfriend,” I said.

  “Who isn’t?” Pete asked, combing his hair, looking at himself in the toaster.

  “Don’t be a wise guy,” I told him. “I went over there once, to study for the algebra midterm.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Pete said. “Some studying.”

  I was glad when Nat showed up and Pete took off. Ma came downstairs to say hello to Nat, and she gave me a last-minute lecture about not doing anything strenuous. I said, “Ma, will you leave me alone,” and Nat said, “Let’s get out of here before she sends you for a physical.” Ma looked a little angry, but he grabbed her and kissed her on the lips real hard, and then we were out the door.

  In the car he tried to start a conversation. Like most adults, he asked me about school. I said it was okay. Actually, things had been more than okay that week. On Friday, Mrs. Jacobs handed our algebra tests back. I got an 86! It was the highest mark I’d ever gotten from her, and she’d written “Good work, Bernie!” in red pencil across the top of the page. The mistakes I made were mostly careless ones, a couple of them in simple arithmetic, and once I solved a problem correctly on my scrap paper and forgot to transfer all the steps to the test. Later, Mary Ellen acted as if I’d gotten a perfect score, like her. I was feeling pretty good, though, and it wasn’t easy being modest. I did say that if it wasn’t for her I might have flunked, and she said that I was the one who got the 86, so I deserved the credit. I wasn’t about to tell Nat all of that. We were going to his house to work, not talk.

  The first thing I noticed when he opened the front door was how quiet it was. When you live by yourself, nobody ever calls out to say hello or ask if that’s you coming in. I could hear his refrigerator humming, and the heat making knocking sounds in the baseboards. The place looked different from the other times I’d been there. There weren’t any pictures on the walls—just lighter spaces where they used to hang. And the books had been taken off the shelves and were lying in stacks on the floor.

  Nat went right to the portable radio in the kitchen and put it on. I guessed he did this whenever he came home, to break up the quiet. He turned the dial until he came to a station with Bob Seger singing “Turn the Page.” “This all right, Bernie?” he asked, and I shrugged. I knew he’d rather listen to classical music or jazz, because that’s what he and my mother played when they were together at our house. He was trying to please me, but it was so obvious it made me nervous. I wished he’d relax! I wished we would just start working and get it over with.

  Nat didn’t seem to be in a hurry. “Want something to eat or drink?” he asked.

  “No, thanks,” I said, and he went to the refrigerator and took out a can of beer for himself. Then he said, “Why don’t we start upstairs?” He carried the radio, and I followed him up the steps.

  I hesitated at the door to his bedroom. People’s bedrooms are really personal places. Even though we only have one bathroom in our house, I’ve always had my own room, a place where I could think and shut the door on the rest of the world.

  All the married people I know share a room, including my grandparents. Nana loves to tell us that when she was a little girl her family was so poor the four sisters slept in one bed. Nana, the youngest, had to lie at the end, next to everyone’s feet. When Celia and I were small, we’d go into our parents’ bedroom in the morning and wedge ourselves between them, where it was warmest. Right after Daddy died, I wondered what it was like for Ma to have that big room to herself. There was his side of the bed, and hers. Did she sleep in the middle? Did she use his pillow?

  Nat’s bed was one of those king-size jobs. He had cartons on it, and piles of clothing and other stuff. “Okay!” he said. “Why don’t you fold some of these things and throw them into boxes, Bernie. They’re old clothes your mother wants me to get rid of, just when I’ve broken them in. I’ll leave them outside for the Goodwill truck next week. But if there’s anything in there you want, just put it aside.”

  Was he kidding? Why would I want any of his old clothes? Two of my mother’s friends came over to help her go through my father’s clothes a few weeks after he died. They did it while we kids were in school. When I came home, his closet was empty. A couple of months later, Ma said she’d kept a few of his things for me, in case I wanted them. There was his blue sweatshirt, his army raincoat, and a brand-new sweater he never got to wear. They were all too big for me, but she said I’d grow into them, and might like to have them as keepsakes. I got really upset when I looked at them. I started to cry and wanted to run out of her room, but Ma held me and made me stay there. She closed the closet door and said maybe it was too soon—she’d save everything until I was ready to decide. Last fall, I started wearing the raincoat. It swam on me, but I didn’t care. Each time I put it on, it hurt a little bit less to think about him. I was glad Ma hadn’t given it away or thrown it out.

  I started folding Nat’s shirts and dropping them in the nearest carton. He was busy opening drawers and taking more things out.

  “You know,” he said, “my wife, Mady, used to call me a pack rat. I hated to throw anything away.”

  I’d almost forgotten that he’d had a wife who died, and I never knew her name before. I turned around and Nat was standing in front of the dresser, holding a framed photograph. “This is Mady,” he said, “the year we got married.”

  The picture was a little blurred, but I could see a woman—a girl almost—with long blond hair, standing in front of an apartment house. She was laughing, as if someone had told her a joke and then clicked the shutter. I didn’t know what to say. Was Nat going to bring a picture of his wife to our house? Would Ma still keep her wedding portrait on the dresser in her bedroom? They were going to sleep together in that bed. I’d known it all along, but this was the first time I really thought about it, really saw it in my mind. I turned back to his bed and started folding things again, very fast, and dumping them in the boxes.

  “I know you don’t like me very much, Bernie, do you?”

  Why did he have to ask a dumb question like that? What was I supposed to answer? Yeah, I can’t stand you, you’re a creep? Nah, you’re the greatest guy that ever lived? I didn’t say anything. Nat cleared his throat. “I understand part of it. I mean, you must think I’m trying to replace your dad, and you resent my horning in, I guess. Anybody would.”

  I wouldn’t look at him. I just kept folding.

  “This may sound phony to you, Bernie, but I respect that. The feeling I get from you, though, is that you don’t like me, as a person, not just as the guy who’s going to marry your mother.” I wasn’t going to say a word, but he said, “Am I right, Bernie?”

  I shrugged, mumbled something.

  “Well, tell me what you especially don’t like about me. If the list isn’t too long, I’ll try to change. As your mother would say, everybody could use a little constructive criticism. Right?”

  “Cheerful,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  “You’re too cheerful,” I said. “How come you’re always jolly, ho-ho-ho, like Santa Claus?”

  Nat laughed.
r />   “See?” I said. “See? We’re having this stupid, embarrassing conversation, and you’re laughing. Are you laughing at me?”

  “Oh, no, Bernie! No, no. I’m laughing because I’m happy, that’s all.”

  I didn’t get it. He was still holding the picture of his dead wife. I had just told him why I didn’t like him, and he was happy.

  “Sit down, Bernie,” Nat said. It was an order. He shoved a few of the cartons over, and we both sat on the edge of the bed. “Listen to me for a minute.”

  I was holding one of his shirts and I looked down at it, rubbing the collar between my fingers.

  “Mady and I were married for seventeen years,” Nat said. “We were crazy about each other. The only sadness we ever had was that we couldn’t have a child. When she died, I was like a madman for a while. You should have seen this place! Dirty dishes, empty beer cans, cigar butts. I didn’t shave. I didn’t wash. My friends came over, but I wouldn’t let them in. I wanted to die, too, but I couldn’t.”

  I looked at him, and he was staring at that picture and running his hand over his bald spot.

  “Eventually,” he said, “I started straightening myself out. I took a bath and a shave, got dressed, and went to work. Work helped a lot, but I was mostly going through the motions, like a robot. You would have loved me in those days, Bernie. I was so un-cheerful I never even smiled.” He paused. “Then one day this woman comes up to the dress-shirt counter, looking for a present for her father’s birthday.”

  “Ma,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  We sat there for a while in complete silence, as if we were watching a movie of Ma and Nat in Macy’s, meeting for the first time.

  “The rest is history,” Nat said. “Your mother and I—that dear, beautiful woman—we fell in love. All the loneliness we’d both endured was going to be over. Every day there was something, somebody to look forward to. And when I met you kids, I thought I’d go nuts with happiness. A ready-made family, too! I couldn’t believe I was that lucky. But if it gets on your nerves, Bernie, I’ll try to hold it down when you’re around.”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  “I could always tap-dance in the bathroom. And maybe I could laugh in my sleep, and waltz my customers around the underwear counter.”

  I started to laugh, and Nat did, too. It felt good, like the end of a war. I hoped he wouldn’t hug me or anything, though, and he didn’t. Both of us got up and went back to work. We packed for three hours, with time out for sandwiches and milk. Nat paid me ten dollars. Then we loaded up the trunk of his car with some of the stuff he was keeping, and we drove home.

  Troo-Gloo

  MA SAID, “I KNEW you weren’t dressing warmly enough, Bernie. I knew you were doing too much lately.”

  “It’s only a cold,” I said, dropping two slices of bread in the toaster. “Don’t make a federal case out of it.”

  “Well, you’re not going to school, and you’d better stay in bed all day. I’ll drive home at lunchtime and give you some soup.”

  “You don’t have to do that. I can take care of myself. I’m fine.” Then I sneezed three times in a row.

  “If you took better care of yourself, you wouldn’t have that terrible cold.” She put a giant glass of orange juice in front of me.

  “Everybody gets colds,” I said. My timing for this one was lousy, though. It was Friday, and there was no way my mother would let me sit for Ronnie and Randy the next day. I had eighty-five dollars and twenty cents jammed into my bank. I needed almost fourteen dollars more, and hated to lose the babysitting money.

  “If I catch his cold, I’ll kill myself,” Celia said, meaning, of course, that she’d kill me. “It’s only two weeks till the play.” She said all this to Ma, sitting as far away from me as possible without leaving the kitchen.

  “I don’t see how you can catch anything from your brother. You two might as well be living in different countries. How long are you going to keep this up?”

  Celia didn’t answer. She gulped her juice and pushed back from the table. “I’ll be late for my bus if I don’t hurry,” she said. “Bye, Ma, Gracie,” and she grabbed her knapsack and was out the door.

  Grace had her head bent close to her bowl of Rice Krispies, listening to them snap, crackle, and pop. I wished I was her age again, before life got so complicated.

  Ma hurried Grace along, making sure she had her schoolbooks, and her Big Bird lunch box, and her mittens clipped to the sleeves of her coat. Then Grace was gone, too, and Ma and I were the only ones left in the house. I knew by the way she stood near the stove, sipping coffee and gazing at me, that I was in for another lecture. Why couldn’t she be like Berenice Sadie Brown, so I could tell her my troubles and she could say wise and funny things to make me feel better? I started to get up, and Ma said, “Sit down, Bernie.”

  I faked a couple of hacking coughs into a Kleenex and said, “I was only going upstairs like you said, Ma.”

  “I want to talk to you for a minute first,” she said. “I want to know what’s going on between you and your sister.”

  “Celia?”

  “You know perfectly well who I mean. You haven’t spoken to one another for days.”

  Weeks, I thought, but didn’t say it. “I can’t help it if she’s weird,” I said.

  “Your sister is not weird. She’s a little high-strung right now, because of the play. But she’s talking to everyone else, I notice. Something must have happened between you two.”

  I snuffled into my Kleenex. “Well, ask her,” I said.

  “Bernie, I did. And she said she can’t help it if you’re a little nerd.”

  “Well, there!” I said. “How am I supposed to talk to somebody who calls me names like that?”

  “Listen, Bernie,” Ma said. “This family has been through a lot together. The main thing we’ve always had going for us is that we are a family, that we have each other.”

  “You and Aunt Lillian used to fight all the time. You said so yourself.”

  “Yes, and you and Celia do your share of that, too. But at least Lilly and I always made up after a while, and stayed friends until the next fight. It’s this awful silence I don’t like. Maybe one of you owes the other an apology.”

  “Not me!” I said.

  Ma sighed. “That’s what Celia said, too. Well, then maybe there has to be a compromise, both of you giving in a little bit, until you meet in the middle.”

  “I don’t feel so good, Ma,” I said. “I think I better get into bed.” I rounded up some provisions—cookies, oranges, the TV Guide—and headed for the stairs.

  After my mother went to work, I lay in bed thinking about Celia and me. If I told her I was sorry, she was liable to say she didn’t care and never wanted to speak to me again as long as she lived. I was sorry, at least for what I’d said to her about Jackie, that toy horse. I opened the night-table drawer and saw the two jagged plastic pieces, head on one end, tail on the other.

  But she should be just as sorry, even sorrier, for saying it was my fault that we don’t have a cat or a dog, that the whole family has to suffer because of me. I shut the drawer with a bang. Didn’t I want a pet, too? Wasn’t I the one who had to have shots because of those stupid allergies? The last time I saw Dr. Cardoza, though, she said I was making great progress. When I told her about playing with Cupcake and not having an allergic reaction, she was very impressed.

  I stretched out, thinking of that day at Mary Ellen’s, of how much I liked her and would miss her when I left. I decided to call her up that afternoon, for the English and science assignments. Maybe she’d write to me when I lived in Florida.

  I’d picked the day for my getaway—Wednesday, April 6—the first schoolday after the spring break. It was also eleven days before Ma’s wedding, and three days before Celia’s play. I would have liked to see the play, out of curiosity, but I wasn’t going to sit in the audience while my sister, who hated me, was up on the stage. She’d really be sorry after I was gone. She�
�d probably start appreciating me when it was too late.

  I got up to get my bank and took it back to bed with me. The oceans painted on it looked so blue and peaceful. I noticed that part of one finger covered the whole distance between New York and Florida. Still, I’d never make it without the air fare. Even if I sat for the twins next week and saved a dollar from my allowance, I’d need at least six or seven bucks more, ten to be on the safe side. Where was I going to get it? Trying to figure that out made me tired and I dozed off. When I woke up, Ma was coming into the room, carrying a tray of soup and sandwiches.

  She sat on my bed and watched me eat for a few minutes. “I see your appetite’s still intact,” she said. “How do you feel?”

  “Better,” I said, trying not to cough. “Much, much better. By tomorrow I bet I could babysit—”

  “Forget it! You’re taking it easy this entire weekend. And, Bernie, you’re becoming positively money-mad. You’ve done a lot of sitting lately, and Nat paid you for helping him pack last week, didn’t he? I hope you’re not rotting your teeth with candy and soda pop. Or wasting time and money on those video games.”

  “I’m not,” I said, proud of being able to tell the truth. “I’m saving my dough.” I picked up my bank and shook it for her benefit. It hardly made any noise, because there was no room for the money to move around. “This thing is loaded,” I said. “Daddy Warbucks could hit me for a loan.”

  “Oh, really? Then perhaps you should make a deposit to your savings account. Your money isn’t earning any interest in your bedroom, you know.”

  “Yeah, soon,” I said. “One of these days. Right now, I just like having it around.”

  “Well, back to the salt mines,” Ma said, getting up. “Remember—plenty of fluids, and rest. And think about what we discussed this morning, dear. Sometimes the bigger person is the one who gives in.”