The Wonder Spot

by Melissa Bank

  When she says, “I’ve known Elaine forever,” her voice boards the Mayflower, a bad sign.

  “Are you friends?” I say.

  She says, “We’re not close,” her way of saying she dislikes a person. I hope it’s one-way; my first boss was a disgruntled ex-girlfriend of my older brother.

  We park in the lot for the Professional Offices at Manor, a concrete box with windows tinted brown like sunglasses. My mother says she’ll wait for me; she’s brought an old New Yorker to read, as she did during my violin lessons in high school.

  As I get out of the car, she wishes me good luck and says, “You’ll be fabulous.”

  The walkway is encrusted with ice; even in low heels I’m slow and unsteady, a toddler learning to walk, an old woman afraid of breaking a hip.

  A moment after the receptionist announces my arrival, out comes Elaine Brodsky in an inexplicably familiar kilt with an oversized gold-tone safety pin.

  In her office, she says, “How’s Mother?” Her voice isn’t as cold as my mother’s, but it isn’t warm. She says, “I was so sorry to hear about Dad,” like we’re all one big unhappy family.

  She’s somber for a respectful moment before launching into the exciting happenings at Shalom.

  I try to mirror her enthusiasm for their new volunteer staff—a cub reporter from the Hebrew school and a secretary from the Jewish Home for the Aged: “Wow.”

  She says, “We’re helping each other.” Then she turns the topic to me: She just loves my publishing background! Do I like to write? That’ll certainly come in handy, as I’ll be doing most of the reporting myself.

  It is possibly the best interview I’ve ever had. I can tell she’s going to offer me the job. In a few minutes I will again be one with the working world.

  She wants me to meet Shalom’s current editor. After she dials his extension, she hands me the most recent issue of “The Weekly Newsletter Serving the Jewish Community of Greater Philadelphia” and she says, “Hot off the press.”

  I read the headline of the lead story: MRS. JACOBY’S FIFTH-GRADE CLASS LIGHTS THE HANUKKAH MENORAH.

  The fifth grader in me knows that however desperate I am to get a job I am more desperate not to have this one, and once Elaine is off the phone, out of my mouth these words come: “I don’t know anything about Judaism—is that a big part of the job?”

  I’m as stunned as she is. The man who would have been my predecessor walks in and we shake hands, and then Elaine Brodsky is saying, “Give my best to Mother.”

  Mother and I drive home.

  I’m lying on my bed when I spot Elaine Brodsky’s kilt on Molly, the doll my grandmother Steeny brought back from Scotland for me. Molly sits on a shelf along with Gigi from France, Frieda from Germany, and Erin from Ireland, each dressed in her country’s native costume. I haven’t noticed the dolls for a long time, and now that I do, they seem to sing, “It’s a small world after all,” about mine.

  When my mother calls, “It’s Dena,” I pick up the phone.

  She says, “How was it?”

  “Great,” I say. “Amazing.” Then I tell her.

  She laughs, and tries to make me see how hilarious the interview was. I do for about one second. Then I remember I am living at home with my mother in Surrey, and I will be living here forever. Lying on my canopy bed, looking at my costumed dollies, talking on my Princess phone, I can feel myself aging at an accelerated rate. Soon people will mistake my mother and me for sisters.

  Dena says, “You need to get out of the house.”

  “Where should I go,” I say, “the drugstore?”

  “Go downtown and see a movie,” she says. “Go to my house.” She likes this idea so much she repeats it, and now it’s an order: “Go to my house.” She tells me she’s calling her mother as soon as we hang up.

  Recently Dena started liking her mother, or at least seeing why someone else might.

  “I’m calling her right now,” she says.

  . . . . .

  The Blumenthals live in the only real mansion in Surrey, the house all other houses aspire to. It’s old and vine-covered, with a pool hidden in back. There’s a big formal living room no one uses, and the dining room ditto, but there are also rooms that seem private and warm—a little alcove with a window seat, Mrs. Blumenthal’s dressing room with its deco vanity, and the library with its fireplace.

  Growing up I envied their kitchen most, which had anything and everything you could want—white-papered packages of cold cuts, fresh rye bread, and bagels from the delicatessen, Coke and Tab and Sprite, Doritos and Fritos, Mallomars and Oreos, ice-cream cones covered with a helmet of chocolate and nuts, and at least two flavors of Häagen-Dazs, usually chocolate chocolate chip and butter pecan; if what you wanted wasn’t in the kitchen, it was in the butler’s pantry. I’d go home comparing their staples to ours—leftover chicken, celery, and vanilla ice milk.

  The Blumenthals’ housekeeper did the shopping, cleaning, and what little cooking there was. Her name was Flossie, and everyone seemed to like her better than they liked each other.

  Dena’s sisters, Tracy and Ellen, identical twins were both gymnasts and both cheerleaders. Dena called Ellen shallow and Tracy witchy, but they were indistinguishably fascinating to me. When the three sisters found themselves together, always by accident—to watch television or sit by the pool—the mood was reluctant forbearance.

  Their father occasionally announced that he wanted them to behave like a real family, and he would suddenly decide that they were all going to Florida to play tennis or to Utah to ski; he’d insist that they were going to sit down as a family for dinner, though he himself would be the one missing the next evening.

  In a pearl-gray cashmere sweater large enough to fit over his belly, Dr. Blumenthal gave the impression of being expert at his own comfort. I don’t think I ever saw him without a drink in his hand—a beer after tennis, a gin and tonic by the pool, a martini in the evening, a Bloody Mary on Sunday, and so on. He could be convivial or blustery—often convivial then blustery.

  Mrs. Blumenthal seemed immune to both. Taller than her husband and lithe, she carried herself like the great tennis player she was. Her hair was long for a mother, frosted a color Dena called “Surrey blond,” and with her regal demeanor made her look a lot like her Russian wolfhounds before they got old.

  She was always reading in a big armchair by the fire or on the white divan in her pristine bedroom, with a cup of tea or a glass of wine and an ashtray on the table beside her. She’d ask me if I was reading anything I loved, and if I was, she’d write down the title.

  This afternoon when she opens the door, she’s holding her place in Madame Bovary. She kisses me on both cheeks and says, “Sophie”; she has a throaty, smoker’s voice.

  “Hi,” I say. She’s asked me to call her Stevie—short for Stephanie—but I can’t bring myself to call her anything but Mrs. Blumenthal, so I avoid calling her anything.

  As I follow her into the library, she says, “What can I get you to drink?”

  I ask what she’s having.

  “I haven’t started yet.”

  I say, “What would you drink if . . .” I try to think of a crisis that would make her feel as bad as I feel now. “If Dr. Blumenthal said he was leaving you?”

  “Champagne,” she says, deadpan. Then: “I think we’re in a brown mood—scotch, bourbon . . .”

  “Bourbon,” I say, though I can’t tell the difference.

  We sit in the big armchairs by the fire, and she lights a cigarette for herself and one for me. “Let’s talk about money,” she says.

  “Okay.”

  She says, “Are you in debt, Sophie?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” Then: “I’m assuming your father left you something.”

  “He did.”

  She asks how much, and I tell her. I can’t tell whether she thinks it’s a little or a lot. “And how much would it cost you to move back to New York?”

  “I don’t know.�
�

  “Well,” she says, “think about it.”

  I tell her that my father specifically asked me not to use the inheritance for living expenses; he wanted me to use it toward a down payment on a house or for a trip—something momentous.

  “That’s a nice idea.” She pauses. “But you could always pay it back, once you’re working.”

  I want to be closer to the fire, and I slide off my chair to the rug, where the wolfhounds once lounged. I wonder if Mrs. Blumenthal misses them.

  She says, “Maybe we should talk about why you’re in Surrey.”

  I try to think of the dogs’ names: Masha and Ivan?

  “I don’t know whether you’re trying to go back to a time before your father died,” she says, “or whether you can’t bring yourself to move on.”

  It’s both—though I realize it only now.

  “You just don’t have the energy it takes?” she says.

  I nod.

  She says, “I’ve felt that way.”

  I’m amazed that she’s speaking so honestly about her life. No one my mother’s age ever does, or at least not to me.

  I’m warm by the fire, but it’s gotten dark outside; looking at the black windowpanes, I can feel the cold. The house seems quiet and still. I wonder if Dr. Blumenthal is home more or less now that all the girls are gone. I wonder if he is on his way home now, and if Mrs. Blumenthal herself knows. My father always called before leaving the courthouse to ask if my mother needed him to pick up anything, even though in all those years she never did.

  It occurs to me that maybe Mrs. Blumenthal wasn’t kidding about the champagne.

  She says, “What about this boyfriend of yours in Los Angeles?”

  I wonder what Dena has said. “Ex-boyfriend,” I say. “Demetri.”

  “What does he do?”

  I say that he writes for a sitcom now, but he’s a comic. For some reason I think she may think he’s a clown, so I say, “You know, he does stand-up—”

  “Thanks,” she says. “I know what a comic is. Is he funny?”

  I say that he is. Onstage he does shticks, like the one about his role on a soap opera: “I’m not an actor, but I play one on TV.” But alone with me he could be hilarious. I consider imitating his imitation of what his pets would say if they could talk. But thinking of Demetri at his funniest makes me miss him.

  I hear myself say, “I keep expecting him to call.” I haven’t admitted this to anyone, and it’s a relief to say it out loud. Still, I don’t say the whole truth: I’ve been hoping he’ll call and say how much he misses me and how much he loves me and how much he still wants me to move out to Los Angeles with him. Meanwhile, he hasn’t even called to say hello.

  She gets up to refill our glasses. “Why don’t you call him?”

  “Mrs. Blumenthal.” I wait for her to say, Stevie, but she doesn’t. “He never told me he loved me.”

  “Some men don’t,” she says. “Some men say it all the time and don’t mean it.”

  I recognize myself in the latter category, not with Demetri but with one of his predecessors. I sometimes said “I love you” to Josh because I was afraid I didn’t; toward the end, I hardly said it at all, and when I did I meant, I wish I loved you.

  Now Mrs. Blumenthal says, “What a man does is more important than what he says.”

  She tells me that I know what I need to know about Demetri, and I appreciate how she says it, like she doesn’t have the answer herself, or any stake in what I decide.

  I ask if she thinks I should go back to New York.

  “I don’t see any reason not to,” she says. “You could stay with Dena at first.” She considers this. “I think it would be good for her.”

  I wonder what she means, but while her remark doesn’t seem disloyal, my asking about it would be.

  Suddenly I feel tired. I say that I think I’ll stay until my mother is a little stronger.

  She says, “You’ll move when you’re ready.”

  It takes another month. I worry about telling my mother, but when I do, she looks about seventeen years younger.

  . . . . .

  I’ve known Dena since seventh grade. We were in homeroom together; I learned her name from the blue-cloth loose-leaf binder on which she’d written, “Dena Blumenthal + Bobby Orr Forrever.” This was the year the Philadelphia Flyers won the Stanley Cup, and it was a mark of Dena’s social preeminence that she could get away with pledging eternal love to Mr. Orr, the star of the archrival Boston Bruins.

  I myself loved Bob Dylan; I didn’t care about the Flyers or ice hockey or skating. But everyone I wanted to be friends with went to the rink on Friday nights, and one Friday night I decided I’d go. I was getting a ride with some girls I didn’t know too well. This seemed better than arriving alone.

  My mother insisted I wear my green parka, an end-of-season sale item she’d bought without my consent the previous winter. It looked like a rolled-up sleeping bag with a belt and seemed impossible to make friends in. “You’ll be as warm as toast,” she said.

  In my unzipped coat, I sat waiting for my ride while my family finished dessert. After a few minutes, I took off my coat and held it with my mittens and hat on my lap.

  It was almost 7:30 when my father said, “What time are they coming for you?”

  “Seven,” I said.

  My older brother said, “I’ll take you over.”

  I said, “Thanks, anyway.”

  Finally, a honk came from the street.

  Whenever anyone honked for my brothers or me, my mother usually made the face of a person driven insane, but tonight she just said, “Have a good time.”

  My little brother, who liked to skate, called out, “Fall forward.”

  At the rink, the girl whose father had driven us didn’t even go in; she was meeting a boy from ninth grade in the parking lot. The other two had brought their own skates and were out on the ice before I’d even reached the clubhouse to rent mine.

  The man at the window told me he was out of white in my size and gave me a pair of black skates, which reminded me of old-fashioned shoes an orphan would wear. After lacing them up, I lingered a moment on the carpeted bench; it was warmer in the clubhouse, and you could buy hot chocolate. But I walked out, my blades chop, chop, chopping on the vinyl mat.

  I’d never skated before, but it didn’t look hard. The boys seemed just to be running on ice; the girls seemed to be doing ballet to the scratchy waltz that played over the PA system.

  I couldn’t find an entrance onto the ice and considered going back to the clubhouse for hot chocolate. Then someone brushed by me and opened a door that was part of the wall, and I followed. I slid onto the ice and kept sliding until I was in what seemed like the fast lane of a circular speedway. The boys on the hockey team were chasing each other and, despite the NOROUGHHOUSING sign, were roughhousing. I was afraid they’d knock me down.

  I fell all by myself, onto my back.

  The parka padded my fall but made it hard for me even to sit up. Finally, I was able to kneel and then stand. I lurched across the superhighway to the shoulder, where I stood gripping the wall. My two friends skated by and waved, and I waved back, an orphan in a sleeping bag.

  A skating rink was unlike a pool, I realized; you couldn’t stand still without standing out. But I couldn’t make myself move. I felt sure that everyone was looking at me and then realized that no one was, and I experienced the distinct shame of each.

  Dena was in the center of the rink, in a white fur hat with pom-pom ties and a short red skirt, practicing a twirling jump that might have qualified her for the Olympics. She was small and thin, with large breasts her posture didn’t acknowledge—and wouldn’t, even once she’d grown up. She had dark hair, blue eyes, and a long nose—both of her sisters would have theirs fixed, but not Dena—which made her more striking than pretty.

  She skated backwards. She pirouetted so fast she became a blur. Then she was whipping around the rink, her arms linked to a chain of similarl
y skirted champions.

  As she skated by, I saw her notice me. I was afraid that she’d point me out to her friends, but she broke off from her chain and skated toward me.

  She said, “Hi, Sophie,” and I was surprised she knew my name.

  I didn’t say hers; I wasn’t sure if she was making fun of me.

  She said, “You want to skate?”

  She took my arm, and slowly we went around the rink. She told me what she was doing, pushing off and gliding.

  I kept hearing jingling, and I looked down and saw the tiny bells attached to Dena’s skates.

  She said, “Try not to look at your feet.”

  “Okay,” I said, and nearly fell.

  She said, “Just hold on to me.”

  . . . . .

  Most of my friends live in studios, or in larger apartments with serious flaws—a roommate in the living room or a methadone clinic across the street. Dena’s apartment is perfect, a big one-bedroom with a view of Gramercy Park. She doesn’t say what her rent is, but I assume she lives as frugally as she does because it is high—though I also know she enjoys frugality for frugality’s sake.

  Over Christmas, she took a trip to India, and now she’s in love with what she calls the simple life. She gets serene talking about it; her speech slows and her eyes glisten when she describes an Indian boy who amused himself for hours with a piece of string.

  I nod, but I think, You watched somebody play with a piece of string for hours?

  The first night, she shows me where she keeps the coffee beans, grinder, and what looks like a watercolor brush for getting every coffee speck into the reusable cotton sock she uses as a filter. Her cupboards are virtually bare and make me pine for the Blumenthals’ larder of yesteryear.

  Dena shows me the big pot of soup and bowl of salad she prepares each Sunday to last the week so she won’t be tempted to eat out or order in.

  The salad bowl contains nothing but brown-edged lettuce. “Yum,” I say.

  Dena laughs and says, “Richard calls it ‘Salade Fatiguee.’ ”

  . . . . .

  Richard was her professor in graduate school at MIT, and though she doesn’t say she’s seeing him, she’s seeing him.