Face Tells the Secret

by Bernstein, Jane

  Les brought me a small cup of espresso. “That was my cousin in Israel. I have a twin sister who lives in the north of the country in this place, this institution, but my cousin said I shouldn’t go to see her because nothing is left. That’s what she said.”

  Kayleigh turned from her work area.

  Les downed his cup, pinkie raised, then looked at me in a somber way.

  “What does that mean, ‘nothing is left’?” I asked.

  “She’s a vegetable. That’s what your cousin is trying to tell you.”

  There was something bizarre and awful about this term. Parsnip, sister. Aviva. I bit hard on my lip. Aviva.

  “I’ve got to see her. I don’t know, I just do. Not now. Don’t worry. But I do.”

  He punched my arm lightly and walked off, and I looked around at this space with its high ceilings and tall windows that rattled in their frames. Long ago, when this city had three times its current population, children sat in this room. An old-fashioned desk had been left behind, with a marred wooden top, a deep slot for books, a groove for pencils, a hole for an inkwell. As for the children who’d once sat here, nothing was left.

  Why should I have such a sense of loss? It wasn’t as if once I’d had a sister and now she was gone. I’d never known of her. Why should I feel so bereft?

  I thought of an acquaintance who’d miscarried twice, as I had, bought a cemetery plot, and had a funeral for these babies that had never been born. How could you mourn what never was? I’d thought. If all of us buried our dreams this way, there’d be more cemeteries than places to live.

  Sister as okra. Sister as plump peapod, and when you open it, there is nothing inside.

  Later that day I called my mother’s apartment, and when Sunny handed her the phone, I said, “Mama, it’s me. Roxanne. I found Aviva!”

  “Whaaaat?” Of late, my mother drew out this word when I asked her a question. It was a way to buy time, so I might not know she no longer understood much of what I asked.

  “Aviva. Your other daughter. Did you know she was still alive? Aviva,” I said again, needing to hear her name. “She’s an Israeli citizen, so Ronit says the state takes care of the cost of her care. Daddy moved her to this place up north that was started by some Canadians whose son—”

  “Canadians?” My mother cut me off. “I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Vered and Aviva.” I waited, listening to the silence.

  Sunny came on the line to tell me how strong Eema was and how well she was doing. “Oh, she make me laugh all ways. I am begging to disagree!”

  Kayleigh approached my desk after I’d hung up, hair pulled into a ponytail. “Your sister! When will you meet her?”

  “I’ve just gotten home,” I said.

  “Oh no, you’ve got to go; we’ll be fine, really, everything will be okay, and anyways the work you did when you were gone was awesome.” She crossed her hands over the Buckeyes logo on her sweatshirt. “I know it’s not my place to say, but still.”

  Ronit suggested I sleep at her house when I’d be returning in a month. I could use her car, no problem. When I said I might stay in the north, she said, “Whatever is best,” and assured me I could change my mind. They would always have room.

  When I told Dina about my upcoming trip, she said, “I will meet you at the airport and we will drive together to Chaverim.”

  “This first time I need to go by myself,” I said.

  The next day Dina called and said, “Roxanne, I am so upset, I cannot sleep. I have talked with my friend who is a therapist and she says I must tell you what I think: I will be at the airport when you arrive.”

  I tried to explain why I needed to be alone, tripped over my words, tried again to thank her, which made her cry. Exhausted, I thought, this friendship is doomed.

  A day later, she called to give me the name of a spa where I should stay, the most beautiful and famous and very close to Chaverim.

  Fourteen

  I picked up a small, white rental car at Ben Gurion Airport, and after studying a map the agent kept behind her desk, set off for Chaverim. It was just after ten in the morning. Unless I hit traffic, I could expect to arrive by noon. The first part of the drive was on a high-speed road, but north of Haifa were secondary roads that went past Arab towns, where the spires from mosques rose above the pastel houses, and the signs were in Hebrew, English, and Arabic.

  During the trip I imagined Chaverim to be like the nursing home where my father spent his last years, the sickly smell of perfume, meant to mask the odor of urine assailing me when I reached his floor, rooms where broken people slept in beds or slouched in wheelchairs, where corpses had been dressed up and arranged around a blaring TV. I imagined a screamer, because there had been one near my father, who cried, “Help! Help me!” It was the plaintive cry of someone trapped beneath rubble. “Help!” and no one could save her. Every time I visited the screamer cried out. When my father was moved to this unit, he no longer asked if there was another one because his language was gone by then. His face was a mask; if he recognized me, I couldn’t tell. He rose when I helped him to his feet and walked beside me. It brought me no comfort to remember these visits because by then, I could have been anyone.

  On the way to meet Aviva, hopelessness was what I had expected. An institution, a warehouse, a place to put the bodies when technology keeps them going, or when some spark stays stubbornly lit. I imagined a dark room, the bleep of monitors, a pale form curled like a grub. Life cruelly extended by artificial means, a waste, a shame. Nothing is left.

  I’d found the BBC on the radio and while driving through this tranquil terrain I listened to a radio report about an Israeli raid on a village and the killing of three men. I looked at the olive groves and the little goats meandering beside the road and on the radio, angry Arabic voices, and the translator, with her plummy voice, saying, “…an eye for an eye. Holy war will be raised on the Jews.”

  So when I arrived at Chaverim and saw the beautiful grounds, I was suspicious and felt the landscaping was fraudulent, like the perfume used at a nursing home. I parked my rental car and stepped out. Birds were singing and the sky was a cloudless blue. My knees were quaking in a furious rhythm. The buildings were stone and the gardens along the perimeter fragrant and beautiful. For us, the bougainvillea; to soothe us, the visitors; for us, jacaranda, and oleander in bloom, the lavender and mint, the century plants with tall flowering stalks. This is what I thought. To trick us into coming closer.

  As I crossed the patio, laughter rang out, as unnerving as the chortling of surgeons in a hospital elevator. I could get back into the car and drive to the airport. Only Ronit would know, and she had warned me against coming. No one would think less of me. Then I reflected upon the hole in my life, the nothing, and thought, okay, you’ve travelled all this distance. It would be foolish to turn around now. This was how I took my first step forward.

  I followed the beautiful plantings all the way to the broad doors. When they parted, I thought the birds had followed me inside until I saw in the center of the atrium a ceiling-to-floor enclosure full of bright finches, lovebirds, and cockatiels. Such lively little creatures, hopping and twittering about. While I watched them flittering from branch to branch, trilling, scattering seed, calling out, the double doors swung open, and a man pushed a wheelchair toward the enclosure. The tiniest creature was curled in the seat, head turned up, mouth in the shape of a silent scream, hands like claws—a boy, a man, a remnant of a human.

  Across the room was a reception area. I asked for Mrs. Silk and moments later heard someone call, “Roxanne?”

  Before me was a heavy, slow-moving woman with streaked blonde hair and the broad, pretty face of a Victorian doll.

  “I’m Rochelle Silk.” She took both my hands in hers. “Shelley.”

  “Sweaty palms!” I said. “Sorry. Sorry.”

>   Gross, I thought, wiping them on my pants.

  “You found us without too much trouble?”

  Mrs. Silk wore pearls and a tan linen jacket and skirt, and close up was older than I’d thought. Later she would tell me she was from Manchester, England, and had moved here after the Six Day War, full of passion and idealism. She would sigh deeply when she said this. Now, though, she said, “Aviva and I have been here since the start; we’ve practically grown up together.”

  I followed Mrs. Silk through another set of doors into a broad corridor lined with customized wheelchairs and tall walkers with straps and handgrips and bright wheels. Music and voices and guttural sounds wafted through the hallway. “She’s a lovely woman,” said Mrs. Silk. “We’re all very fond of her.”

  Lovely. I didn’t see how “lovely” was possible and worried I’d be asked to feel what was not inside me.

  She continued to talk about Aviva with great animation when someone in a motorized wheelchair buzzed toward us. Big grimacing face, tight pink skin, one finger on the controls. It was hard to look. Looking felt like staring, which you weren’t supposed to do when someone different passed by, someone whose appearance threatened to ruin your perfect day. Not looking also felt rude.

  Mrs. Silk said something cheerful to the man and turned back to me. “She had very little stimulation in the last place she lived, so it took some time for her to come around. It’s been marvelous to see her gains. She’s changed a good deal. Let me show you her room and then we’ll find her.”

  A faint odor, alien and unpleasant, distracted me as we continued down a corridor past rooms, each decorated in a different way—posters on the walls, family photos in frames. All were vacant. It was like being in a dormitory. Then Aviva’s room: a pine bureau, upon which sat a large stuffed bear, a blue elephant with curved white tusks. Two prints were on the wall—a street in the old city in Jerusalem, a Picasso bouquet of flowers. No photos. Did my father choose the prints? And the colorful quilted spread that Mrs. Silk lifted to show me the guardrails beneath? “We cover the equipment during the day,” she explained. “It gives a homier feel to the rooms.”

  “My cousin said my father visited four times a year,” I said as we continued on.

  “Yes, he did, without fail, and always with food and gifts for everyone. It was such a treat to have him. When we didn’t hear from him we wrote several letters and got no response. One never knows what to think when communication stops so abruptly.” Mrs. Silk touched her pearls. “Your father and I had become very close over the years. He was a very special person to me, and a very nice man.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Everyone says this.”

  Back in the corridor, she spoke in Hebrew to one of the aides, then turned and said, “She’s in the pool with Baruch. Of course. I should have remembered.”

  “Wait.” I leaned against the wooden railing, listening to conversations I could not understand. “I need a moment.”

  Mrs. Silk paused, a beatific expression on her face. Her composure made me feel worse. “Roxanne, many people are uncomfortable at first. Shall we go to my office?”

  “No. I’m okay,” I said, though I wasn’t. “What do I do when we meet?”

  “There’s nothing special to do. You might start by telling Aviva who you are.”

  “I don’t speak Hebrew.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Once you spend time with her, you’ll find other ways to relate.”

  “But how? She doesn’t speak, she can’t understand me.”

  “She might like it if you put lotion on her hands or sit in the swing with her. Let her show you what she likes and doesn’t like. Shall we find her?”

  I followed her down a long corridor that led to an annex. First there was the pungent smell of chlorine, then air that thickened from humidity. From outside the closed doors to the natatorium I could hear the echoes of conversation. Mrs. Silk opened the door a crack and peered inside. “Shall I give the two of you some time alone?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Where will I find you?”

  She touched my arm. “I’ll be in my office all day. Stay as long as you like.”

  I stepped inside. It was a large pool, the size of the one at my gym. No lanes or diving boards. A hydraulic lift to lower swimmers into the water. Fiber optic tails sparkling on the tiled walls. A man was in the pool, cradling a limp woman, and he was moving, swirling, dancing with her in his arms. The woman was so skinny and pale in a stretched-out red swimsuit, broad shoulders, small breasts, long salt and pepper braid. He bounced over to the end of the pool and said, “You’re Aviva’s sister? Come in!”

  The tile floor was wet. I took off my shoes and walked slowly toward the water. And the woman, my sister, her jaw slack, mouth hanging open as if she were asleep. Long white limbs. Hands fisted, feet turned in at the ankles. A being. The shock of seeing her breasts. A woman, the body perfectly formed, for what? The face, her face, like mine; the fluttering eyes and crowded teeth; a being, a woman, a sister, separate from me, part of me. I had yearned for a sister, but not this, not her. The air was so thick I could hardly breathe.

  The man, now that I was closer, had a puff of white chest hair. His eyes, too big and blue for his narrow face, were downturned, as if in sadness, in opposition to his cheerful demeanor. An aide, I thought. A therapist who enjoyed his job, though what kind of person would do this, I could not imagine. I watched while they danced and realized there was noise in the room, like the sound in an aquarium where dolphins splashed and played; aquatic sounds that echoed as he sang and twirled in the water. I wanted to go home. Away. Anywhere else.

  The man danced his way closer to me again, Aviva limp in his arms, before I realized that the echo had distorted his words, and he was speaking to me. “Come in. The water is something else.”

  I said, “Another time.” I couldn’t imagine another time. “I don’t have a bathing suit.”

  The man called out in Hebrew to the lift operator, and a few minutes later, he handed me a blue one-piece swimsuit and pointed.

  The locker room was empty. Even so, I pulled the curtain shut before I slipped into the well-worn suit. When I stepped out, I caught sight of my whole self in the mirror. At first there was a shock of recognition—I know her! —as if I was seeing a long lost relative from afar. Then, taking a step back—she’s small!—another surprise, since living with Harley had given me the illusion that I was a big truck-like woman, a Hummer of a human being, driving over curbs and flattening everyone in my path. I put my arms on my hips and scrutinized my flattened image. From a distance I looked like a paper doll.

  Someone needs to clothe her, I thought. A pretty tunic and flowing pants, with tabs to keep the garments in place. Someone needs to give her a name and a history and imagine a life for her.

  Why don’t we call her Vered? How about if we give her a career? Have her be a maker of pretty things. Beautiful containers. Nesting boxes.

  I imagined myself the second doll of three nesting dolls. Vered. This time pushing the r to the back of my throat, so the name sounded as it might in Hebrew.

  Aviva was the smallest doll, the one inside me.

  I made my way back to the natatorium, and when I stepped close to the pool, I was again taken by the man’s somber eyes and cheerful demeanor. “Welcome,” he said, bobbing Aviva in his arms.

  Her head lolled; her mouth hung open. Skeletal, and yet utterly slack. Boneless, dead.

  “I’m Baruch. Your sister and I have become good friends.”

  I plucked at the stretched-out bathing suit, feeling naked and self-conscious. “Roxanne,” I said.

  He stayed close to the tile edge of the pool, waiting for me to join them. “Roxanne?” He did not break out into song. “This is a name I’ve never heard.”

  “Apparently I have another name. Vered.”

  “Come in, Vered.” He extended his arms, a
s if to hand me Aviva. “In the water, she’s very light.”

  I could not step closer.

  “It’s warm,” he said. “Once you come in, you’ll never want to leave.”

  Once, when I was married Tom had taken me scuba diving in the Caribbean. He’d hired a guide who brought us far out into the ocean in a skiff. After our equipment was adjusted—tanks, respirators, flippers—we were supposed to sit on the edge of the boat and fall backwards into the sea. Tom sat on the gunwale, lifted his knees, and fell back without pause. I could not make myself fall into the water. My heart throbbed; my breath came quickly. The guide tried to reassure me. I did not need him to tell me I’d be okay because I knew once I hit the water, I’d be fine. The language was there, the knowledge. It was my body that refused. This was fear in a way I’d never experienced, fear detached from reason or thought. That day in the Caribbean, the guide grew tired of the delay. He put his hand against my chest and pushed.

  In the natatorium at Chaverim, I grasped the top of the ladder, but I could not get myself to turn. My ears throbbed from the echoing voices in the pool area. I tried to steady my breathing, worried I’d be sick. Baruch regarded me with his solemn eyes, then after a few moments silently glided away.

  I stayed in the natatorium because I felt it was expected of me. I watched this man sway in the water, cradling Aviva. After a while, the lift was lowered, and a second aide sat on the edge of the pool. The two men effortlessly moved Aviva from the water to the lift, and the limp, skinny creature, this being—woman, sister, twin—was brought back onto land, wrapped in a towel and transferred into a wheelchair.

  I sat in the locker room, overcome with nausea. When my stomach settled I dressed, struggling to get my shirt buttons through the buttonholes and make bunny ears with the short, waxed laces on my shoes, wishing I could unsee what I’d seen. I thought of Ronit saying, “Don’t go,” and was sorry I hadn’t listened.

  After I was dressed, I saw an aide wheeling Aviva down the corridor, and I caught up with them. Aviva was dressed in navy fleece and strapped into the seat, her wet hair in a braid, body supported by a thick black foam block. “Hi,” I said. “Shalom, Aviva.” She blinked, slack-jawed, displaying nothing.