by Brad Graber
“Your grandmother has raised a very rude young lady,” Mrs. M. shouted.
“Thank you, Mrs. Mandelbaum,” Rikki called back. “I’ll be sure to let her know.”
◆
Lil struggled to concentrate, even as she reminded her students about the importance of quieting their minds while maintaining the fullness of the breath. It was the end of class. The room was dark. About her, thirty students lay on their backs, eyes closed. She sat cross-legged on the floor before them, her thoughts straying to her handsome neighbor, Harry Aldon.
It’s a shame a man like that should be alone. I must invite him to dinner.
She instructed the class to take another deep breath, hold, and release.
I wonder if authors make any money. Oh, it’d be so nice to be with a man of quality. Someone who I could really trust.
She visualized the cover of Harry’s latest book, which had been delivered to her front door courtesy of Amazon. The silhouette of a young man stood dangerously close to the edge of a cliff, arms extended, ready to jump. The title was displayed in bold black letters—Death Leap—set against a burnt-orange background.
She shifted her hips, releasing tension in her lower buttocks. What kind of title is that? It’s so dark. She licked her lips and tried to refocus on her breath.
Her last two relationships had proven a disaster. Walter had turned out to be an on-line cheater. She’d found him trolling Internet sites. He told me that we were exclusively dating, she remembered with irritation. She’d trapped him by creating a bogus account on Match.com.
And then there was Peter. He’d broken her heart.
Such a lovely man, she’d thought, when they first met. Kind and affectionate, but unable to maintain an erection. I’m too young to be celibate. I still have my needs, she thought as Peter sat on the edge of the bed, embarrassed and apologetic. Such a shame. A successful lawyer. She’d so hoped Peter would be the one.
And then, the others. So many others.
Looking back, she wondered if she’d been too picky. No, she surmised. She had standards. And yet, it saddened her to think that she’d never married.
Don’t focus on the negative, she berated herself. You have a wonderful life. Not many women who are married can say that. She suddenly felt superior. And it’s not like I chose to be single. Though she couldn’t help but wonder if her personal energy, strong and decisive, had created her current circumstance.
With a final breath she roused the class, instructing her students to open their eyes and, when ready, to sit up. Slowly, the group came to life, assuming a posture that mirrored her own. She raised her palms to her chest, pressing them together in the guise of prayer and slowly bowed at the waist. In unison, the group said, “Namaste.”
◆
Crossing the Aguilar Gardens lobby, Rikki spotted three adults waiting by the two elevators. She considered ducking down the hall, but it was too late. They’d seen her, turned, and smiled. So she marched forward, politely saying hello, per Rita’s rules. Always say hello when you meet people at the elevator. When the elevator doors open, stand back, and allow everyone to exit. If you’re by the buttons, ask the others what floor they would like. When you arrive at your floor, say, “Goodbye.” And most of all, never fart or belch in an enclosed space. People will talk.
The two gray-haired women were in the midst of a lively conversation. Something about a sale going on at Macy’s. The other woman was younger, a brunette with shoulder-length hair. She wore a black leather jacket over a pair of fitted jeans. Rikki couldn’t help but notice her brown high-heeled boots. The four-inch heels were so thin, Rikki wondered how they didn’t just break off.
Rikki focused on the lighted displays above each elevator as she peripherally sensed Ms. Boots staring at her. Rikki touched her face, hoping she didn’t have a zit popping up. Floors eight, seven, six . . . the elevators were seemingly tied in a race to the lobby. Then, one elevator stopped on the fifth floor while the other continued on to the fourth floor.
“Are you El’s daughter?” the younger woman finally asked.
Three, two, one. Rikki smiled.
“You look so much like her. The hair is different—but your face. It’s a mirror image. I can’t get over it.”
The doors of the elevator opened to the lobby.
“My name is Jenny. Your mother and I went to school together. We ran into each other a few years ago when my mother moved into 5J.”
Rikki nodded as all four entered the elevator. Jenny stood next to Rikki at the back. The two older women stood at the front, entering everyone’s floor as it was called out and continuing to talk, but their conversation had shifted to the narrow aisles at the supermarket.
“Just last week, this dreadful woman clipped the back of my heel with her cart,” Rikki overheard one say to the other. “I think she did it on purpose.”
As the elevator doors closed, Rikki was struck by the intense mix of female scents: orange citrus combined with honey violet and a hint of lilac. Rikki cleared her throat, suppressing the urge to sneeze. She spied flakes of dandruff on the dark woolen coat of the woman in front of her. Oddly, it reminded Rikki of coconut. And then the woman sneezed. Rikki gasped, holding her breath as the elevator passed the first floor.
“Whatever you do,” Rita had warned her, “don’t touch the buttons in the elevator with the tips of your fingers. Use your knuckle. Those elevators are a breeding ground for germs. So toxic, someone should call in the CDC.”
Jenny smiled as she looked at Rikki. “I haven’t seen your mother in years. How’s she doing?”
Rikki jerked her head from side to side as she held her breath, afraid she might be forced to take another breath before getting off the elevator.
The elevator stopped on the fifth floor—Jenny’s stop. As she left the car, she turned to Rikki, placing a hand on the rubber bumper that kept the elevator doors from closing. Instead of saying goodbye, as Rikki assumed she would, Jenny said, “I’d love to see her again. Please let her know.”
The other two women in the car turned to look at Rikki, who had yet to answer. Rikki finally exhaled, now gasping for breath as she said, “I can’t.”
“Why not?” asked Jenny, a troubled look on her face.
“Because she’s dead!” Rikki blurted out, exasperated by having to explain. As soon as the words left her mouth, she felt a deep shame, as if El had somehow abandoned her because she was unlovable.
Jenny’s face went pale. “Oh, my God.” She stepped back from the elevator, her face registering a pained expression, confirming to Rikki that her personal tragedy was just as awful as she believed it to be.
◆
Harry shielded his eyes from the bright Phoenix sun as he hurried along the walkway past five identical, three-story white buildings in search of building A.
There must be a sign somewhere, he thought, as he crossed a maze of pathways, spying one door and then another. He imagined old people wandering aimlessly, constantly lost in their own housing development. This is really impossible, he decided as a woman above called out “Yoo-hoo!” Harry looked up. He spotted a large letter A plastered high on the corner of the building.
“Damn,” he said. I was supposed to look up. Why didn’t I look up?
“Yoo-hoo!” she called again, hand waving from the terrace. It was a sunny eighty-five degrees, and she was dressed in a bright yellow sweater. “Are you my ride?”
Harry smiled. “I’m your guy,” he said loudly, just in case she was hard of hearing.
“I’ll be right down. Don’t go anywhere.”
It was Tuesday, the day Harry drove seniors to their doctors’ appointments. He’d been doing it for three years, ever since he’d decided that writing full-time had become too isolating. Today, he was picking up Mrs. Adeline Jones.
“You can take someone grocery shopping or drive them to their doctor’s office,” Sue, the volunteer coordinator from Duet, had informed him at the volunteer orientation session.
“Let me get that door,” he said as Mrs. Jones approached the passenger side of his Ford Escape. Her posture was perfect. Probably no taller than five feet, the little lady bent forward at the waist, placing a large wicker purse with a mother-of-pearl clutch on the car floor. “Oh my, this is a big car,” she said sweetly as she hoisted herself in with a firm pull.
“Watch your head,” Harry warned out of habit, though her head was nowhere near the car’s roofline.
“Aren’t you a nice young man?” Mrs. Jones cooed as Harry settled into the driver’s seat. “And so polite.”
Harry smiled and nodded. “Ah, thank you. But I’m not young.”
“That all depends,” Mrs. Jones said. “How old are you?”
“Fifty-five come January.”
“Hmm,” she hummed. “Well, I’m eighty-five.” Her tone was boastful.
“No,” Harry said, turning to inspect the lovely lady next to him. “I don’t believe it.”
“Well, it’s true,” she said, giving him a sideways glance. The twinkle in her eyes was coy. Almost seductive. He could sense her examining his face even as the car pulled forward.
“You know, when I look at you,” she started, “I’m reminded of my third husband, Edgar.”
“Third husband?” Harry said, bemused, as the Ford left the parking lot heading west on Camelback.
“Yes,” she said, head held high. “You wouldn’t know it, but I was once a pretty hot number. I worked as a stewardess in 1946 for United Airlines.”
“Oh,” Harry said, looking at the still very pretty woman. He imagined her young. It wasn’t difficult.
“A lot of people don’t know it, but back then, we had something called lap time.”
Harry made a right on 32nd Street as he listened.
“Newbies had to sit on the pilot’s lap. It was kind of a rite of passage.”
“Really?” Harry said. “That doesn’t seem appropriate.”
“Oh, we didn’t mind. It was fun. You know, back in those days, they weighed you every week. And you couldn’t hold the job if you were over the age of thirty-two.”
Harry was appalled. “That seems so wrong. Didn’t that bother you?”
“Oh, no.” Mrs. Jones smiled as they pulled into the parking lot of the medical office building. “That’s the way it was and I just loved it.”
◆
Rikki sat on the bed, an open diary across her lap.
Her room, painted a bright yellow, was anything but cheery. It had once been a den, but with Rikki’s arrival, Rita had removed the coffee table and added a single bed, which now faced a canvas sofa. Her desk, a wooden folding table Rita had swiped from the storage room, sat at the head of the bed. The walls, covered in posters of matadors, red capes high in the air poised to face the charge of the bull, had been collected during Rita’s many trips to Mexico. Small clay pots sat on shelves above the tan sofa. A tall black warrior sporting a sword and red, white, and blue feathers stood on a side table guarding the only picture of Rikki’s mother in the house. A 3 × 5 photograph encased in a silver frame.
Rikki held the frame in her hand as she stared at the picture. The photo was of El’s high school graduation, a carefully posed, static moment in cap and gown that seemed to obscure any real sense of El’s personality. Rikki had spent hours staring at the photograph. Studying it. Trying to animate the smile. Wondering how her mother might have moved her head when she spoke. Raised her eyebrows as she asked a question. Smiled when she expressed love. And how did her voice sound? Rikki was certain that if she could only hear her mother’s voice, the memories would flood back. But now, as she looked at the photograph, she felt frustrated. The face seemed familiar. But was it because it was the last thing she looked at before closing her eyes at night? She just couldn’t be sure.
“Great traumas can result in a loss of memory. It’s the way the brain protects us,” Dr. Gillian, the psychiatrist at Sun Haven, had explained. A grandfatherly man with wispy white hair and a long, prominent nose, Gillian generated a kindness that had captured Rikki’s trust at the start. “You mustn’t be too hard on yourself. When you’re ready, you’ll remember. It’ll come back in bits and pieces. Slowly. Very slowly.”
But that had been so long ago, and still, Rikki struggled.
Maybe if I focus, Rikki thought as she stared at the photo. And though she wanted to once again ask Rita about El, she decided against it. What was the point? she thought, running a hand across the picture. It was abundantly clear that Rita couldn’t talk about El without becoming upset.
Rikki had only recently begun to keep the diary, a long-ago gift from Dr. Gillian. It was the only thing that had remained as proof of her time in Sun Haven. Rita had made certain of that. “Write, my child,” Dr. Gillian had said. “Your ability to remember is wrapped up in your unconscious. Tap that source and it will all become clearer.”
“You’re absolutely fine,” Rita had pronounced upon first seeing her granddaughter in the dayroom at the psychiatric hospital. “There is nothing wrong with you,” she had said with such conviction that Rikki was certain she was lying. “You’re as sane as anyone here,” Rita whispered, nervously looking about the room at the other in-patients.
But Rikki knew everyone there was crazy.
She was able to recall snippets of her life in Michigan. The house where she was raised. The neighbors. Old schoolmates and friends. It was just the specifics about El that seemed to be displaced. As if her mind had selectively deleted any memory of her mother. And even with the little she did remember of her life before, she was afraid it too would eventually slip away, lost to the darkest corners of her mind. That fear was exacerbated by her disappointment at losing touch with friends and neighbors from her old Michigan neighborhood. Rikki had written letter after letter. Sent holiday cards. And yet there had been no response.
“Some people just don’t know how to behave,” Rita had offered as one explanation. “They never really cared about you. They certainly didn’t offer to help when you needed it. No. That was my job. Oh, but advice. Now that they had plenty of to spread around. Well, don’t you give them another thought,” she’d said, waving a hand in the air. “Elitist snobs. Every last one of them. You don’t need those people in your life. They’re not interested in you. They’re all surface. Focused on themselves. Besides, you now live in Queens. You can’t expect people from Michigan to stay in touch. Everyone has moved on. They have their own lives and you have yours. It’s absurd to think that you can maintain friendships at such a great distance.”
Perhaps they have all forgotten me, Rikki thought. Perhaps Rita’s right.
◆
When El Goldenbaum had turned seventeen, she left Queens for Michigan and the Cranbook Academy of Art. Her parents, who had waited until her graduation from high school, separated that year, much to El’s relief. They had fought continuously through El’s junior and senior year of high school, and when the split finally came that June, El was all too happy to get away.
“But why not go to Queens College?” her mother implored, disappointed that El had opted to attend school so far from home.
El didn’t bother to look up as she knelt on the floor packing a duffel bag with her clothes, rolling her jeans and blouses so that everythin
g would arrive wrinkle-free. “Because,” she explained, exasperated by Rita’s petulance, “it’s time to move on. I’m becoming an adult.” El said this proudly, though deep down, she wasn’t quite certain.
“That packing can wait. Come here,” Rita commanded, arms outstretched.
“Mom, please,” El implored. “I have to get this done.”
“Why is it that whenever I ask you to do something you give me a hard time? Is it so much for a mother to ask her daughter to return her affection?”
The last thing El wanted was another scene. Rita had become almost impossible to live with as the day approached for her to leave. “Okay,” she finally agreed, doing as her mother asked and standing to allow Rita to wrap her arms about her.
“You know how I feel about you. You’re my special girl.” Rita pressed El tightly to her. “It’s so hard to let go. You’ll see. One day, when you have a daughter, you’ll discover how difficult it is to see her grow up and leave.” Rita tucked a stray tress of El’s blonde hair behind her daughter’s ear as El started to pull away.
“Really, Mother. You’re holding on too tight,” El protested.
“Promise me,” Rita said firmly, “that you won’t do any late-night partying or go walking alone. And no drugs or sex.”
El glared back. “Mother!”
“Now promise,” Rita said, crossing her arms, her face set in a determined gaze. “I need to hear you say it.”
El exhaled. “It’s the ’70s. Drugs are everywhere,” she answered breezily. “I won’t make a promise that I may not keep. I have no idea what’s out there.”
Rita clasped a hand to her mouth, weighing her daughter’s words. El turned her back to finish packing. “Okay,” Rita acquiesced, her hands now on her hips. “Marijuana. But no heroin or cocaine. Nothing you snort or inject. Promise.”
El crossed her fingers. “Sure,” she said, doubtful that she’d ever try those drugs but covering her bases just in case.
“And no sex.”
El grabbed a sweater and started to roll it. “Are you serious? I’m going to college, not a convent.”