Face Tells the Secret

by Bernstein, Jane

  “Not this year,” I said. I was too much of a gloomster, unable to imagine going back to Chaverim, and yet tormented to think of Aviva living out her days with no family member looking out for her.

  “You could round up people to visit her,” Mindy said. “If you got six volunteers, and each person went twice a year, someone would be seeing Aviva once a month. People do these things, you know.”

  People like Mindy, who had a busy private practice, taught a course at the university, drove to the nursing home once a week to visit Stu’s mother, brought food to an ailing neighbor. At her Thanksgiving table would be cranky in-laws and aged aunts with a greater number of dietary restrictions than I had friends. Because she lived this way, and caring for others was an essential, if exhausting, part of her life, she saw the world as full of others who did the same.

  “I don’t know that I could impose,” I said.

  “Maybe you wouldn’t be imposing. For some people, helping out fills a need. They do it because they want to. You just have to ask. If you don’t, you’ll never know who might want to lend a hand.”

  When I hung up the phone I made a list. I put “Ronit” on top.

  I crossed out her name.

  Next I wrote “Dina.”

  There was a new man in her life, a dental surgeon who dressed well, and in photos had the unlined face of a child. The week before, he’d taken Dina to meet his ancient Hungarian mother who lived not far from Chaverim. Mama complained about the man’s former wife all through dinner, and at the end of the meal, when Dina excused herself from the table, Mama began to shout: “WHY DID YOU BRING THAT SCHVARTZA HERE?” Later, Mama escorted them to the double bed she’d made up then settled herself with a newspaper right outside their door.

  I crossed out Dina.

  It felt strange to put “Baruch” on my list, since he was already visiting my sister.

  His card was still propped against the lamp on my desk. In the corner was his email address. I could see him when he said: It’s a different country. His blue eyes, full of sadness and irony. You don’t know the language, can’t find your way around.

  I wrote “Dear Baruch,” and deleted it. (Dear was so arcane!) Shalom, I wrote. It struck me as pretentious. I worked my way through “hello” and “hi” and “hola!” and “buenos días,” and “Baruch” and “remember me?” and “a belated thanks.” I tried “Greetings from Pittsburgh,” and “I hope this day finds you well.” If a day could find anything, I’d ask it to locate my slippers.

  Hello, Baruch, I wrote at last. How is Aviva? Have you seen her? I hope you’re well and still enjoying your visits.

  I signed it Roxanne/Vered.

  Pressing “send” was like pressing on the okay veneer, and I could feel the roiling layer of emotion beneath this jolly okay.

  “She is splendid,” he wrote in return.

  

  All right, I’ll go already.

  This was my pretend attitude when I agreed to join Mindy’s family for Thanksgiving. Really, I was afraid I’d be unpresentable. A downer, a dud. To work against that, I insisted on making several contributions: a favorite Rioja, dark chocolate, a walnut pate, which I was preparing on Tuesday evening when the phone rang, and a woman said, “You don’t know me. My name is Tammy Schmidt, an old friend of Harley’s. I don’t mean to intrude, but I’m worried about Harley.”

  I’d never heard her name, didn’t know that Harley had friends; though given how secretive he was, she could have been the mother of their infant son. Nothing would have surprised me.

  “Harley’s been talking a lot about killing himself. Every conversation it comes up. Maybe it’s just talk, but I’ve always been told that when someone starts talking suicide, you should never brush it off. Nothing lifts his spirits. Not even when I ask about the boys. I worry that he’s isolating. That he’s started to drink. If I wasn’t so alarmed, I wouldn’t be calling you. Believe me, I’m not that kind of person.”

  “Is he seeing someone?” I could not guess her age or relationship to Harley. “Professionally.”

  “If he is, I don’t think it’s helping. That’s why I’m reaching out to you, as his friend. Someone who cares about him. I was hoping you’d give him a call.”

  “Calling him would be a bad idea. A terrible idea.”

  “Just to help him over the hump.”

  “You don’t understand.” Just then it seemed as if I’d spent my whole life explaining, outlining, defending, justifying. It made me feel like an arcane piece of equipment no one knew how to use. “If I call him, he’ll start believing we’re getting back together again.”

  “He knows it’s over. He isn’t bitter about it either.”

  “He doesn’t know. He’s still calling me all the time. What about Byron? Or one of his sons?”

  “Are you crazy? He’d never forgive me if I did that. Please. He speaks so highly of you. He’s always telling me what a good person you are. Please help. I don’t know what to do.”

  Mindy’s voice was one of many in my head, the most benevolent for sure. Don’t answer his calls no matter what, I heard her tell me, It gives him hope, keeps him going.

  “I’ve been advised not to call him.”

  “You’ve been advised? He’s threatening to kill himself and you’re not going to call him because you’ve been advised? Oh. My. God,” she said. “You are heartless.” Then she hung up.

  Heartless. I was heartless. My greatest fear articulated by this woman I’d never met.

  In the courtroom in my head, where in off-hours I prosecuted myself, I brought out evidence in support of her allegation:

  Exhibit A: the half-page ad from Smile Train in the back section of a magazine. Winsome big-eyed babies, their lower faces split in two. Ladies and gentlemen, Roxanne Garlick looked; she saw. But did she give money? She did not.

  And further back: the big, handsome girl from my neighborhood I tormented in third grade. She was twice my size, a star student, so energetic in her desire to call out the answers in class that when her hand shot up, it lifted her whole body from the seat of the chair. Was this why I threatened to beat her up?

  In seventh grade, two popular girls confronted me in the hall. “Is your father a math teacher at Solomon Schechter?”

  “No.”

  “Then how come he smells of garlic like you?” said one. “‘Jzzoseph, it is simple—kh kh kh,’”said her friend, as if my father’s phlegm was in her throat.

  I laughed to support my lie. Laughed at my own father.

  I did not mock the children in the special-ed classes. I gave them a wide berth, as if they carried germs. Held my breath, did not think of them as human. I held my breath when mention was made of “Jesus” or “Christ” in the Christmas carols sung in school. (Fear, not heartlessness, I suppose.) And when the spastic boy got on our school bus, I stopped breathing until he was past my row. I remember a frigid January morning, shivering in my winter coat, the heaters blasting beneath the hard seats, scorching my legs but failing to radiate upward, the floor wet from the slush we’d tracked in, and this boy with his loose-limbed gait, arms grasping the metal seatbacks, legs that seemed to have extra joints, as he worked his way to the back of the bus, a journey that took so long I nearly passed out.

  I was still that way, I thought, recalling the pale, skinny girl I often saw in our building, with a mass of auburn curls and big discolored teeth.

  And now: Aviva’s medical records tossed into the back of my car. Harley threatening suicide. Any way I turned I would be heartless. For refusing to call him—how could anyone be so cruel? For calling and giving him hope, “keeping him warm.”

  Harley’s son Yanni lived with his girlfriend Julia in her parents’ condo on a golf resort in Myrtle Beach. I dreaded calling him. When I finished tidying up the kitchen, I counted the reasons why.

  There was the phone, w
hich I hated.

  And Yanni, who probably hated me.

  Maybe no one called him “Yanni” anymore.

  It made me sad.

  I didn’t want to call.

  My concern for Harley was greater. Or maybe it was the guilt I’d feel if he hurt himself.

  After two rings I heard his familiar boyish voice.

  “Hi, Yanni, it’s Roxanne.”

  “Hey.” His voice was toneless, as if we’d spoken an hour before.

  “How are you?”

  It was noisy wherever he was—blaring music, a shriek of laughter. Either he was in a room with a hundred people or the TV was turned up loud.

  “I’m good.”

  “How’s Julia?”

  “She’s good.”

  Exactly his words years back when I’d ask if he wanted something to eat. I’m good. A sandwich? I’m good. A glass of milk? I’m good.

  Affection and regret welled in my chest.

  I had wanted to be someone for Harley’s sons, had believed if I were patient, it would happen. I could wait. I understood they were boys and not all touchy-feely, and also loyal to their mother. I’d tried to engage them in conversation, to win them over with home-cooked meals when these young men had no experience of sitting at a dinner table with their elders and preferred ordering pizza and scarfing it down from the box. After these mistakes, I downgraded my expectations and hoped they would tolerate me. Later, I downgraded another notch and wished for eye contact.

  “Your father’s friend Tammy called today to tell me your dad was having some problems. She said he sounded really depressed. She’s worried he might do something to himself.”

  I listened to the party noises. “Are you there?” I asked.

  “Yea,” he said, as if casting a vote.

  “Could you talk to him? I think it would help.”

  There was a siren, definitely not on TV. I waited. In the old days, I was always rambling on nervously, offering food or entertainment. They’d look at me blankly, Harley’s sons. No, I’m good. Never rude. No sons of Harley could be rude. Yanni, who’d rolled out of his frat house with all his frat boy ways intact, knew enough to position the knife and fork in the finished position when he was done eating. He might puke in a girl’s bathtub, but he knew how to hold the door for her when they entered a room and shake hands with her dad.

  “What do you say? Could you talk to him please? Let him know you care about him?”

  “Isn’t that part of your job description?” he said at last.

  “The problem is I‘ve resigned from that job.”

  Another long silence. In the background, shots, breaking glass, a screaming woman. Definitely TV.

  “We don’t live together. You know that, don’t you?”

  He didn’t. It made me want to take back my words, expunge this phone call from his memory.

  “You’re in touch, though, right? I mean, he calls you, doesn’t he?”

  “Only like twenty times a night.”

  “And you don’t talk?”

  Silence.

  “Okay then. Listen. I’m concerned. I don’t want anything to happen to him. He’s a good person.”

  “Really? I’m still waiting for those Penguins tickets he promised.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was kidding. “Yanni. He’s your father. I need to hear you promise you’ll call him.”

  A long time passed before he said, “Ah, right.”

  That night I dreamt I was in a vast expanse of ocean. In the dream the water is like a mirror, flat and glistening. Skyscrapers rise from a distant point of land that I recognize as the Battery, in New York. Hannah is with me. She’s afraid and begins to cry, and I experience how small I am in this flat smooth water, with only my fluttering arms to keep me from sinking. “I can’t swim,” Hannah cries, and though I know I am not strong enough to tow her to safety, I tell her not to worry. “I can save you,” I say. There is no way I can get her to land, and yet in this dream, I know I will.

  Eighteen

  Mindy’s house was packed with guests when I arrived. Everyone was there except Mr. Suppowitz. In the kitchen, the women were snapping beans and washing lettuce. Mindy’s aunt was arguing with the gravy maker who did not want to use the turkey bastings. In the family room, a football game was on a huge TV and the men were on couches and chairs, pecking away on their laptops, looking at spreadsheets and email. I picked up the remote, heard Mindy’s aunt say, “I’m telling you, without fat, it will have no taste whatsoever.”

  “Anyone mind if I shut this off?” I asked.

  The men snapped to attention. “Just kidding,” I assured them.

  I started downstairs to the finished basement to stow my overnight bag and heard two of Mindy’s kids quarreling in a good-natured way. You’re such an asshole; oh fuck off, loser. They desisted as soon as they saw me in the doorway. Hannah greeted me with a hug; her brother Adam accepted a kiss on his cheek.

  I could not imagine having children this old; the sadness, when it rose, was for babies. I perched on the edge of the bed to ask Hannah how she was doing and the dream returned, that glassy water, the certainty that I could rescue Hannah.

  She had made a deal with her parents and was living at home and working at Rutgers until the summer, when she would work on an organic farm with a friend in Chile or Peru. When I asked her how she was doing she said, “Living here…” Adam finished her sentence. “Sucks.”

  Hannah punched his arm and told me about her job at Rutgers. “It’s kind of a nothing administrative assistant job, but it’s in Philosophy and the grad students are great. I’m learning so much more than I ever did in my classes.”

  “Philosophy! Really?” I was excited. “Maybe you can help me find the true purpose of my life.”

  “No one talks about the meaning of life,” Hannah said. “At all.”

  I feigned disappointment, though beneath the mock surprise, I realized I still believed there was an answer, a single one-lane road that would lead me to, not paradise, exactly, but some settled place.

  A gorgeous holiday smell wafted upstairs. I excused myself and joined the women in the kitchen. The counters were covered in dishes—stuffing, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts—and one of Mindy’s cousins was saying, “Lemon zest on everything. That’s my secret!” so I took the microplane and two lemons. In the family room, a huge cheer was followed by a groan, and Mindy appeared while I was grating the rind onto waxed paper. Usually unflappable, she said, “Now he tells me the daughter is coming? Adam? I need another chair.”

  She left. Distracted, I shaved the skin off my knuckle and while I was pulling off a sheet of paper towel, an elderly woman said, “And who is this?” Her thin hair was golden and her formidable bosom was packed inside the jacket of a Chanel suit.

  “I’m Mindy’s friend,” I said, wrapping the paper towels around my bleeding knuckle. “From way back.” The blood kept seeping through. “We’ve known each other forever.” I pulled off another sheet of towel and the woman snapped her fingers. “What’s that line about old friends being like gold?”

  “Make new friends but keep the old…”

  “That’s right.” Satisfied, she walked off. I picked the bloody gratings from the pale mound of zest and went back to work.

  A decision was made to serve dinner before Mr. Suppowitz and his crew arrived. Mindy hustled everyone to the table and Hannah stood on a chair in the doorway. Glasses were raised and toasts were made, and she snapped photos until I talked her down, because I was the one who should have been taking pictures of this family. I was Mindy’s friend and had known her forever, but in this picture, years from now, I would be unidentified on left. “Get in there,” I told Hannah, reaching for the camera.

  As I stood on the chair, I felt my sister inside me, and my mother, far away. On this holiday, which I had been invite
d to share, I felt the ways I’d been shaped by each of them. I loved these people. Why hadn’t I doted on the kids and made myself an auntie, instead of standing to the side, ironic, elusive, reserved, that stance masking and reining in a desire to be with them always.

  Two hours later Mindy’s father arrived with his silver-haired girlfriend, both of them sporty and cheerful in fancy jeans, leather jackets, black boots, so much more youthful in demeanor than the woman’s middle-aged daughter tagging along, with her stiff hairdo and her doughy, disappointed face.

  When they settled into chairs at the empty table, Mindy said, “Dad, you remember Roxanne.”

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “Nice to see you.”

  I was part of his forgotten life: He did not remember me at all.

  Mindy raced off to the kitchen, and I said, “You brought me to Beach Haven for a week one summer.”

  Every afternoon he’d taken us into the ocean. Out beyond the breakers he roughhoused with Mindy, picking her up, whirling her around, pretending to throw her into the waves. I bobbed beside them, watched her climb onto his back, desperately wanting him to play that way with me, unable to ask. Mr. Suppowitz saw and hesitated. I was not his little girl. Maybe he was afraid it would be inappropriate to pick me up and whirl me around. Or maybe my raw need scared him. Then one day he relented, said, “You want a ride too?” then lifted and spun me in one quick loop.

  Now, in an absent way, he said, “Right! Beach Haven. We sure had some good times back then.”

  The disgruntled daughter poked her index finger into the sweet potatoes and said, “These are like ice.” Mindy took her plate back to the kitchen.

  “Mindy tells me you were just in Israel,” said Mr. Suppowitz’s girlfriend. “Business or pleasure?”

  “I have family there.”

  “Are they all right? It’s such a shame, all those bombings. Marv and I were supposed to go last spring. The tour company swore up and down it was perfectly safe, but then you read in the paper about these fanatics blowing themselves up, even the women, and to be honest, I didn’t see the point. So we’re going to Prague.”