The Lost Family

by Jenna Blum

  “Hey,” said both parents, and Peter said, “Don’t talk to your mother that way,” and when June got up to leave, Peter rose too. Something in Elsbeth’s chest had felt like it was heaving, thrashing around. She yelled, “Fine, go with her! Take her side. You always do. Even though she’s sleeping with her boss, she’s been cheating on you for years!” Both Peter and June stopped, and Dr. Linda said into the terrible silence, “June? Peter? Is this true?” June was fumbling in her purse, taking out a cigarette although she couldn’t smoke in Dr. Linda’s office; holding it, she finally said, “Yes.” “I’m sorry,” said Elsbeth, “I’m so sorry, Dad, I didn’t mean to just say it like that, but it’s true. And you’d know it if you weren’t half asleep all the time anyway.” She was crying so hard she could barely get the words out. “I’m sorry,” she said over and over, “I’m sorry,” and June had walked out while Peter stood with his head down and his fists in his pockets. Finally Dr. Linda had said, “Elsbeth, why are you sorry? Do you feel responsible for your dad’s feelings? For his well-being?” and Elsbeth had snapped, “Of course,” and Dr. Linda had sat back. “Ah,” she said, “now we’re getting somewhere.”

  So Elsbeth highly doubted her visitor was either parent. June would never speak to her again, and Peter—Elsbeth could hardly stand to think about Peter. He had given her a cursory hug before he’d walked off yesterday, down the long hall; she hadn’t even been able to watch him go. She prayed he wasn’t in intensive care somewhere. But the staff here would have let Elsbeth know—and maybe it was Julian! Maybe he’d reemerged and found her. Not through Elsbeth’s parents, obviously, since Julian was persona non grata at the Rashkin household, and anyway his lawyer had filed a restraining order against Peter after Peter had crashed his exhibit and assaulted him. But there were ways. Maybe Julian had hired a private detective.

  “Here you go,” said the nurse, pushing open the door to the visitors’ room, and there, at the conference table, was Liza. Elsbeth shrieked, and Liza threw herself at Elsbeth and the two collided. Elsbeth teared up because Liza smelled so familiar, of menthol cigarettes and knock-off Obsession.

  “Yo yo yo yo, baby pop,” said Liza, when they separated. “Damn, it’s good to see you. Elsbeth Olivia Rashkin, in the flesh.”

  “Too much of it,” said Elsbeth. “Tell me the truth, do I look”—and, glancing at the monitor in the corner, she mouthed, Fat?

  “Are you for real? No! You look so much better. You were starting to look like Skeletor. Plus, that color’s good on you. Not everyone can carry off mint green.”

  “Thanks,” said Elsbeth, looking down at her scrubs. “They won’t let us wear anything else.” She wiped her eyes. “Sorry, I cry all the time now. This place is like an emotional lobotomy.”

  “That sounds kinda rad,” said Liza. She sat cross-legged on the conference table; she was wearing a cowl-necked purple sweater dress over black ripped tights, and her ashy hair was longer, to her shoulders. Elsbeth wasn’t sure what she missed more, being able to eat unmonitored or wear civilian clothes.

  “Can we smoke in here?” said Liza, taking out a cigarette.

  “Hardly. I’d offer you some food, but—you know.”

  “Yeah,” said Liza. She stuck the cigarette behind her ear and patted the table. Elsbeth hopped up, and Liza moved so they were sitting facing each other.

  “How is it?” she asked. “Really?”

  “It’s hell.”

  Liza laughed. “But they’re letting you out soon, right? Springing you on an unsuspecting world?”

  “Not soon enough,” said Elsbeth. She murmured, “So, did you get any more information for my . . . art project?”

  Liza shook her head, and her sword earrings clanked. “That’s what I came to tell you. I think that project’s officially kaput. Over.”

  “Did you go to the sites?”

  “I did,” said Liza. “At his studio there’s still police tape up, and it doesn’t look like anyone’s been there for ages. And uptown—well, kid, I hate to tell you this, but there’s some woman living there.”

  “A woman!” said Elsbeth.

  “Yeah, but don’t get your panties in a bunch. Not with him. He’s not there. Her name’s on his mailbox in masking tape. It’s probably a sublet.”

  Elsbeth thought about a woman living in Julian’s loft and wanted to kill her, whoever it was. She hoped the woman was at least eighty, with a gray wig and wheeled shopping cart and lots of cats.

  “How about the papers?” she asked. “Or his manager? His lawyer? Anybody?”

  “Nothing new in the papers. His manager hung up on me—that guy needs a serious attitude adjustment—and his lawyer keeps saying he can’t comment while the case is still open.”

  Elsbeth sighed. “Okay. Thanks for trying.”

  “Pas de problème.”

  “Will you keep looking for me? Until I get out?”

  “Of course,” said Liza, squeezing Elsbeth’s knee.

  “Thanks,” said Elsbeth. “So, what else is going on?”

  Liza hopped off the table. “Come with me, I’ll show you!” she said. “Wait, are you allowed to leave the room?” She looked at the black camera in the corner. “Can Elsbeth come out to play?” she yelled.

  “Stop,” said Elsbeth, but she was laughing. “Yes, I can move freely within the gulag—I just can’t go beyond reception.”

  “Come on, then,” said Liza and tugged Elsbeth out of the room and down the hall.

  At the door to the reception area they stopped and looked through its window at a man sitting on one of the couches. “There he is,” said Liza, “mon amour. Ron!”

  “What?” said Elsbeth.

  “Yup,” said Liza. “This is it, kid. I’m in looooooove,” and she gave it her special trademark gargle.

  “Wow,” said Elsbeth. The man had fluffy brown hair, jeans, bomber jacket; he seemed utterly unremarkable, except—

  “Isn’t he kind of . . . old?” said Elsbeth.

  “Thirty-eight,” said Liza cheerfully. “Divorced. Owns a bunch of condos down the Shore. I met him at Limelight on Halloween—when I was dressed as my mom, remember? Isn’t that a scream?”

  “It sure is,” said Elsbeth.

  Liza tapped on the window with a long red nail, and Ron looked up. “Isn’t he to die for?” Liza said. “Isn’t he a stone-cold fox?” She pushed the door open and skipped out. “Say hi to my best friend,” she said, planting a smacking kiss on Ron’s cheek.

  Ron waved. “Hi, best friend,” he said, in a slightly nasal voice.

  “We’ve got to book,” said Liza, “long drive back, and Ron has the kids tomorrow, don’t you, honey.”

  “Bye, best friend,” said Ron, and they started toward the front door with their arms slung around each other like competitors in a three-legged race. Liza turned and pointed at Ron’s head, mouthing, He’s the one! “Catch you on the flip side,” she called, and then they were gone.

  When the door had wheezed closed behind them, Elsbeth sagged against the wall. She felt sorrier for herself than ever: What was left for her out there? Her mom hated her; she had destroyed her dad; Liza would probably marry that geriatric dweeb as soon as she graduated, Very’s parents were sending her to boarding school, and Julian was gone. Elsbeth would have nobody. Again Elsbeth replayed the moment she’d last seen Julian, backing away from his bedroom door: Charlie, wait! Charlie, please! He’d chased after her, and she’d bolted. She had been so stupid! She should have stayed; she should have let him catch her, persuade her to come back, shoo those other people out of his apartment, get dressed. Lead her to the deli. Explain. She’d been an idiot to leave. Of course those people didn’t mean anything to him. It was just sex—everybody knew geniuses did things a little differently. But he’d cared about Elsbeth. He had. There aren’t many synesthetes, Charlie. We’re two of a kind. Elsbeth would give anything to have that moment in Julian’s hallway back, to do over again.

  Dr. Linda stuck her head out of a doorway and lo
oked around. “There you are, Elsbeth,” she said. “Coming to group?”

  “Sure, I’ll be right there,” said Elsbeth. She waited until Dr. Linda withdrew, then went to the cafeteria—another misnomer, since there was no food in it, except at mealtimes. But it was where they ate then, three times a day, with knife, fork, and spoon, not fingers; in full bites, not tiny pieces; they were not allowed to engage with their food, to change its appearance or carve it up or push it around or do anything except put it in their mouths, chew, and swallow; they had to stay in their seats until everything on their plates, the caloric, carbohydrate- and fat-laden mashed potatoes and chicken breasts and peas and corn and salad with industrial dressing was all gone.

  There was also a pay phone in the cafeteria, and although they were supposed to use it only during the hour before bed, it wasn’t Elsbeth’s fault nobody was supervising her, was it? She picked up the receiver and punched in the digits, using the number of the calling card she’d swiped from June’s purse.

  On the other end, Julian’s phone rang and rang. And rang. If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again. Elsbeth did. “You know this isn’t really about Julian, don’t you?” Dr. Linda had said kindly, earlier this week, looking at Elsbeth with her big blue eyes. She was pretty, Dr. Linda, in a round doll-faced kind of way, except for that spare tire at her waist; didn’t she want to get rid of that? “I know your feelings for Julian are very strong, but they’re what we call transference. Are you starting to see how they’re really about Mom, the love you feel she never gave you, and Dad and the love you tried to give him? And his sadness, and your half sisters, the ones who died in the war?” Elsbeth had nodded and said Yes, she saw it now—but she’d agreed only so Dr. Linda would write her a good report and let Elsbeth out of this hellhole. Privately Elsbeth thought it was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. Of course her love for Julian wasn’t about June, or Peter, or Masha and Vivian and Ginger or President Reagan or anyone else; it was about Julian. Oh, Julian! He was the only one who had understood her, who had really seen her, who was like her; Elsbeth had loved him the moment she first saw him, and she always would; she would go on loving Julian until the day she died.

  Epilogue

  Peter, April 1986

  When Peter came outside, into the backyard of the Glenwood house, Elsbeth was sitting on the swing set. It was an old metal structure he had put together for her when she was four, using a set of instructions only a little less complicated than the blueprint for the A-bomb, so the mission took a week and a lot of swearing. Peter had never been good at recipes for anything—his dishes he assembled by instinct, not by measurement—and mechanics were beyond him. The swing set therefore represented a triumph of determination over ability, a physical manifestation of his great love for his daughter. Peter had always secretly feared it might one day collapse, the one screw he had inserted incorrectly, the widget he’d put in backward giving way just when Elsbeth was at the top of the slide or sailing through the air. Somehow the contraption had held together, though its candy-striped poles were now rusty, the carousel horse’s eyes whitened by seasons of sun and rain. Elsbeth was sitting on one of the two middle swings, not moving, her head drooping. She hadn’t been on the thing in years.

  Peter started across the grass toward her. It was April, just past Easter, and the ground squelched underfoot. The Glenwood backyard was awakening after the winter, gearing up to be at its most enchanting: the buds on the big oaks, now furled, would burst open; the wildflowers in Elsbeth’s childhood fairy circle, a mysterious ring by the brook, would fill with small white stars. The forsythia hedge was just starting to turn yellow and the weeping willow to fuzz with tiny leaves. The grass was greening and the air smelled of mud and ice thawing in the stream; Peter had to wear what June called his Archie Bunker jacket, a heavy plaid flannel, because the sun’s warmth was more an optimistic idea than any real heat. But it would get stronger.

  Elsbeth looked up at Peter’s approach. She gave him a little wave but didn’t smile, and then she looked down at her feet again, in the dirt beneath the swing, in aqua basketball sneakers. They had scribbling all over them, mysterious sayings and drawings Elsbeth and her friends at the eating disorder center had done on her last day. June had told Peter this; the analyst there had told her. Elsbeth herself had not said much of anything since they had picked her up at the beginning of the month. She was respectful and polite but quiet, eating her measured amounts of food at the table with her parents three times a day, using a knife and fork, the door to her bedroom and bathroom left open at all times. She had stabilized, according to her analyst, and she no longer looked like a refugee from a DP camp. To anyone else, she would appear just an ordinary girl. But Peter would never absolve himself for not having seen it, how Elsbeth had grown thinner and thinner still, how her makeup had grown darker and her nails longer and her skirts shorter and her heels higher and all the while she was melting herself away, his Ellie, all to pose for that bastard, that soulless predatory cocksucker Wilton, he should burn in hell. “You have to forgive yourself,” Elsbeth’s analyst had told Peter, “for everything, for what’s happened here and for your first wife and daughters. Because it hurts Elsbeth, you see? She senses your pain and internalizes it. When you forgive yourself, you help her.” Peter had nodded and said he would try, but he didn’t think he would ever be able to do it.

  “Hey, Dad,” said Elsbeth when Peter got to the swings. She looked at him, again unsmiling, and he saw how hollow her cheeks still were within her cloud of hair.

  “Hi, Ellie,” Peter said. He stood with his hands in his pockets, unsure how to approach her; he was a little scared of her, of saying or doing the wrong thing, something that might set her off again—his Ellie! It broke his heart.

  “May I join you?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said, and Peter sat in the swing next to hers. The red plastic seat, meant for a child, wasn’t big enough, and the chains bowed out comically around his hips; there was an ominous crack. Elsbeth laughed.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Mine did the same to me. At first I thought it was because I was—you know, fat. But that’s what Dr. Linda called a false belief.”

  “Yes,” said Peter. “You are just fine the way you are.” They had told him to say this, but also it was true. Didn’t Elsbeth know, how could she not know? She could weigh a hundred pounds or four hundred, and he would still love her.

  “It’s because the seat’s too small for me,” continued Elsbeth. “It was designed for a little kid, and I’m not anymore.”

  “No,” agreed Peter, “you’re not.”

  He smiled at her, sitting in the sun in her denim jacket and denim jeans, not warm enough for the day, her ghastly makeup washed off, her nails clipped and clean, the only sign of her earlier venture into premature womanhood being the big hoops in her ears. Peter wanted to tuck her light-brown curls back behind them and dared not. Where had it come from, her hair? It must have been somebody on June’s side of the family, some throwback. Where had Ellie herself come from? She was a blessing, a gift from the God Peter did not believe in; a surprise after June’s miscarriage, one Peter had not been prepared for. He had thought after his girls and the lost baby there would never be another, that he was destined to be childless and that was exactly as it should be. And then there had come Ellie, wrenched from her mother red-faced and squalling with indignation, a person utterly unto herself, melting Peter as completely and easily as butter in the pan. He had never fully understood Ellie—there was too much June in her. But he was so grateful for that. In this American child her mother’s genes had dominated her father’s, so Elsbeth had more of June’s stubbornness and determination and zest than Peter’s timidity and formality. He feared for her, as any father would. To have a child was indeed to have one’s stomach, one’s heart, walking around outside one’s body. But in Elsbeth the best of Peter and June was combined, and Peter thought this made her stronger than them both.

&
nbsp; Elsbeth put the toe of one sneaker in the depression beneath the swing and pushed. “So what’s the verdict?” she asked.

  Peter looked away across the yard, at the big willow behind the garage, the forsythia lining the driveway.

  “We’re going to sell the house,” he said. “Your mother is.”

  Elsbeth nodded. “And?”

  “And,” said Peter. There was such a pain in his throat he could hardly speak. He said, “Your mother and I will be getting a divorce. You and she will be going to Minneapolis to live. You will be closer to your grandmother Ida, and your mother has friends there who will help her get established as a real estate agent.”

  “No,” said Elsbeth.

  “Yes, Ellie,” said Peter. “I am sorry. I know that’s not what you want to hear.”