Face Tells the Secret

by Bernstein, Jane

  Boker tov, Aviva! My sister’s shades drawn, the morning sun flooding her room. Familiar voices. The smell of food. Boker tov!

  The sound of water running in the kitchen, the kettle being filled. Then suddenly I was plunged into consciousness. What time was it? Had I missed him? I uncrossed my arms and sat up, pushing off the sheet. Holy shit, what time? I slipped into the sandy clothes I’d dropped on the floor. Had he gotten his car from the garage beside his building, backed out of the space, locking the cement pole so no one could take his spot? Had he pulled up to the curb to wait, turned off the engine when I did not appear? Checked his watch. He had no number, wouldn’t buzz every apartment. What time was it?

  Sunny was ministering to my mother, cooing, speaking softly. She looked up when she saw me. I took in the digital numbers on the clock radio and my mother, breathing, and said, “How is she?” I still had time. Sunny put a splayed hand across her chest and breathed very deeply. All those hours of conversation and never once had I mentioned my mother dying. I splashed water on my face and after a few minutes I went downstairs.

  I stood on the street, bedraggled and salty. The air was still cool, and the crisp morning light made everything looked beautiful, the stumpy palms and peeling apartment buildings. On the strip of land that divided the street, a dog with ropy hair like mine trotted ahead of a woman with a newborn swaddled on her chest, and someone’s horn root-tooted discreetly. I didn’t know what kind of car Baruch had and failed to see him drive past until a white car pulled up to the curb beside me, and he stepped out, wiry hair, long legs, sunglasses, which he took off, as if to get a better view of me, standing on the sidewalk, barefoot and disheveled. “What’s wrong?”

  His kindness pierced me. “I can’t go,” I said.

  He put his hands around my arms and held me tightly, so close to me. Then softly, “Haven’t you slept at all? Did something happen?”

  It seemed, just then, that I had waited my whole life for someone to speak to me with such tenderness. “My mother’s very ill,” I said. “I can’t go.”

  I did not say that she would die, and there’d be a funeral and the dismantling of her apartment, and then I would need to go home.

  “Last night was like an amazing dream,” I said.

  “Not like life?” he asked, lightening for a moment.

  “None that I’ve known,” I said.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your mother. You’ve called a doctor?”

  “The doctor knows,” I said. “She’s very old.” Then after a long exhale: “Oh, why do you live here? It’s so inconvenient. I mean, really, you want a woman who goes to sleep with you and wakes up beside you, someone who lives here.”

  “You’re a mind reader? You know what I want?”

  “It’s not like that,” I said.

  “So you’re telling me what you want?”

  “In my life,” I said. “Before now, before this, I’ve been trying really hard to make good decisions. And right now I’m just overwhelmed with a sense of futility.”

  “Kind.” He seemed offended by these words.

  He waited for me to say more, and I shook my head, confused, unable to string together anything coherent. He turned away and got into his car, and even then, I just stood. He drove to the intersection and waited for the light to change. I wondered numbly if he’d taken what I’d said as a flip goodbye, like a lover saying “let’s be friends” while breaking up. I raised my hand, just as he turned onto Ha’Yarkon. And then he was out of view. I wondered if he would still swim with Aviva when he got to Chaverim, or if I had stolen him like a jealous sister, grabbed what I wanted, and thrown the rest away.

  After I showered I sat beside my mother. Her breathing stopped and then startled, and it wasn’t so much a rattle as a kind of gargling that Sunny told me not to fear. I put my hand over hers, then brought it to my lips and kissed her cool, loose skin, and she did not flinch, was no longer able. What had they done to her? What had happened to her long before we were born? “Is it better now, Mommy?” I asked, not caring if I was too old to call her Mommy.

  She was so pale, her gaze as soft and unknowable as Aviva’s. Her skin smelled like roses from the lotion Sunny had used. Now that I did not want anything from her anymore, I could sit beside her. Once she roused, as if startled, and then she slept. Her breathing slowed, and there was the dreadful gargle as if she was drowning. And then it resumed.

  On the way to the living room, I heard an argument across the hall, two women, a slammed door, then silence. I had done the right thing, hadn’t I? It didn’t feel that way, but it would, wouldn’t it? At conferences I’d met men from distant cities, lovely men, perfect, if only… The sadness I’d felt at parting was deep, the ache lingered, and then my vivid emotions grew hazy and disappeared into the soup of memory.

  A different shomer sat in the corner while the hours passed.

  Late that afternoon, I went out to the market across the street. The buildings looked crisp in the low light. I felt hung-over. What have I done? I asked myself. Our evening rushed back, intimate and otherworldly. The moon, the smell of pot, the briny sea, his lips against mine, his somber eyes, his flesh, the bones beneath it. My silence.

  The fruit in the bins was old and bruised. I considered buying a freckled banana, then reconsidered. Two blocks away was a better market. I stood in front of the tilted boxes of produce and looked at the offerings the way one looked at art. The rosy rat-tailed radishes, cucumbers with prickly skins, smooth green peppers with their womanly curves and clefts. I could not believe what I had done, could not remember any hunger apart from what I’d felt for Baruch and purchased what was beautiful—tomatoes, lemons, fresh figs.

  Sunny met me at the door when I returned, eyes brimming with tears. She took my hand and squeezed it. I put down my shopping bag, took in the playful seals on the calendar and Sunny’s swollen face and went into my mother’s room. Her hair had been freshly combed, and her hands again placed on top of the blanket. Her skin was still warm. She was so beautiful, my mother. Everyone spoke of this when she was younger, and now at death it was again true. I sat beside her bed.

  Before this moment, I’d never understood why people said, after a death, “At last she’s at peace.” In my imagination, death was violent and tragic. When my mother died, I looked at her blue-veined eyelids and smooth skin and thought, at last she is at peace.

  

  I, too, felt at peace after my mother’s death. It was so unexpected that I half awaited for the enormity of her passing to catch up with me. Maybe I’d be walking down the street when it would split me like an axe. Or at the funeral service, I’d be brought to my knees. I wanted to be able to cry as the casket was lowered into the ground. The others would expect this of me, since I was her daughter.

  “My mother is dead,” I told Kotovsky, the landlord, to practice saying it. I bought the pale pink shoes and set them in the small bedroom. Then I emailed Les. My mother is dead. It seemed attention-seeking, as if I were still pirouetting down the stairs, singing loudly and waiting for applause.

  She died this morning. I studied the words, said them aloud. I felt no bolt of grief.

  I need to stay through next week to take care of business. I didn’t write to Harley, though his affection for my mother had been genuine. I didn’t try to explain her death to Baruch, though I felt him holding my arms on Nordau Street, then felt his grasp loosen. It was as if my mother’s death was in my brain and he was lodged in my body.

  The funeral was held at a kibbutz north of Tel Aviv, where land had been set aside as a resting place for secular Jews and non-Jews. My mother had planned for this civil service. The documents that stated these wishes were in an envelope Sunny had given me. While extremely helpful, I was reminded that she’d been of sound mind when she’d left New Jersey. She really didn’t like me, I thought, when I finished perusing the instructions. It was hard
ly a revelation. I wished Mindy were with me, so we could name a couple of miscreants and petty criminals from our high school class who’d been blessed by their mother’s unconditional love. Then I could say, “I wasn’t so bad, was I?” and Mindy would tell me what I knew but did not yet fully feel: “You weren’t bad at all.”

  Dina drove us to the kibbutz in her banged-up white car, restless behind the wheel, glancing out the side window, answering calls on a cell phone mounted on the dashboard, now and then Pitts-boorg lodged like a pebble inside a Hebrew sentence. She went on for a few minutes about my mother’s greatness, then moved on to her newest boyfriend, the bare-chested man I’d seen in her doorway.

  “I met this man who swims with Aviva every week,” I said. “This totally lovely person. He has a nephew who lives a Chaverim and—”

  Dina turned, alarmed. “This man, he swim with Aviva?”

  “Yes, it’s how we met. The last time I was here, he found me a bathing suit so I could join them in the pool, but—”

  “Roxanne! You should not be doing this. These people, they must respect you. If they don’t, they will not take such good care of Aviva.”

  “He doesn’t work there,” I said. “I thought he did, but—”

  “No. It is different here. You must have a distance. Tomorrow, I’ll take you.”

  “For now, I need to go alone,” I said. “I’m still self-conscious when I’m there.”

  She lifted her chin and squeezed the steering wheel.

  “Dina, you’re wonderful. I don’t know how I would have managed without you.” Now it was worse. She curled her lip in disgust. “Can you tell me why you’re offended when I say thanks?”

  “Roxanne!” She turned to face me. “What have I done wrong?”

  The car swerved. This argument would kill us both if I didn’t stop talking. We drove the rest of the way in silence.

  When we arrived at the kibbutz, Ronit and Meir were standing in a dirt lot, where a half-dozen cars were parked. I said, “My cousins are here,” and Dina got out of the car, paused to smooth her skirt and introduced herself. She and Ronit were more like twins than Aviva and me, same height and shape, both dressed in loose jackets and short, straight skirts. As they walked ahead, I could see how enlivened they were by Dina’s vitality, her unthreatening flirtatiousness, and wished I could be like her.

  Sunny arrived, and then, in separate cars, three men she’d notified about my mother’s death, physicists whose names and numbers were in the envelope. During the service, Dina and Ronit stood together. Dina wept. Ronit took a tissue from her purse and dabbed at her eyes. I stood dry-eyed, scanning the small group in attendance, their heads bowed, feeling stunted, damaged.

  When I got back to her apartment, I opened her wardrobe, as if the smell of mothballs would make her death real. I moved the garbage bags and touched her slacks, hung neatly by the cuffs and her skirts on hangers. Then I knelt and went through her shoes. A dozen pairs of flats all the same style, with a crisscross elastic front. Full slips with darts and V-neck tops, trimmed with lace, delicate straps; half-slips with lacy hems in cream, ecru, oyster, sand, bone, eggshell, corn silk, vanilla, ivory, flax. Did these garments even exist anymore? I remembered her tweezing her eyebrows and penciling them. The face she made when she put on her lipstick. The smell of her perfume and cigarettes. Her disdain. The way she flinched from my touch. The template for what I’d recognized as “love.” Someone who could not know me, who remained achingly out of reach. I hated it, knew it well. Baruch came to mind. The thought that I’d turned him into what I’d known best.

  I wondered if my mother had thought of Aviva the way I thought of Baruch, if ghostly sensual memories flitted through her head. I slipped her wedding band and opal ring, her lapel pins and gold chains, into a small drawstring sack, then I slid shut the wardrobe door. Maybe this is it, I thought. Maybe it’s already hit me.

  Twenty-Four

  Aviva was out when I arrived at Chaverim, so I sat on the patio to wait for her return. Nearby was a woman wrapped in layers of mauve and gray, in her arms a tiny, curled man with a receding hairline. She was feeding him bits of something sweet, rocking him, humming in an airy, peaceful way. It was the strangest sight, his middle-aged face, like that of a scholar, the working of his tongue, his clenched hands, her blissful crooning. Strange, unsettling, but not a nightmare. Dear Baruch, I thought, thank you for giving me a passport into this country.

  When the willowy caregiver wheeled Aviva onto the patio, I saw that my sister’s head was supported with foam blocks and she was bundled in red fleece. Her hair was in a long braid, and her cheeks were flushed. Curled hands, chunky slipper-socks to keep her feet warm. A bouquet of lavender and thyme across her lap.

  Seeing her was different than thinking about her. The smooth face, with its gaze I could not read, and long, thick lashes. The slack mouth. “Hello,” I said. “Hi.” My greeting was small and tight. Miserly. The caregiver showed me how to use the wheelchair brakes and when she left, I wheeled Aviva down the broad winding road that circled Chaverim, down past the gardens and chicken coops and barns, and when we had made a long loop, I returned to the patio and positioned myself so we could face each other. The old woman was still there, humming and rocking her tiny, middle-aged son. Aviva did not seem to see me. I could not want this from her. But she would not withhold her affection, would not lie or manipulate me. She made no promises. I uncurled her fingers, long like mine.

  Her nails had been nicely cut. Someone had taken the time to clip them evenly and trim the edges. Aviva, with her hollow checks, the soft unlined skin of someone who had never laughed or scowled or played in the sun. Blinking. I said her name, pressed my hands against her cheeks. I remembered the list of sensations that pleased her and thought she might like this.

  I thought of the story Baruch had told me about visiting Danny with his sister, just before she’d died. The CDs she’d brought of all they’d listened to over the years—classical music, folk, disco, Afro-pop, crashing waves and wind in the trees, recordings of her singing and talking so he’d always have her voice. It wasn’t a sly maneuver to fool him into thinking she was alive. Comfort, that’s what she’d intended.

  I held her hand against my cheek and waited for the noise from the big thrumming world to recede.

  I thought, what is it you like? Then I made myself say it aloud, “What do you like, Aviva?”

  I looked out at the perfect line of cypress trees and the low stone walls that lined the road. Dina would have been better at this. She would have had a bright, shiny voice and no inhibitions.

  I splayed my hands and said, “This is who I am. It’s just who I am.”

  Her eyes, dark like mine, regarded me. We were fish in the same sea, I thought.

  Then in a murmur, “We were fish in the same sea.”

  Wounded fish, I thought, left to flap on our sides.

  Her skin was so soft. I lifted the lavender, held it to my nose and then to hers, and to myself I sang, “Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.”

  And aloud, in my not-so-good voice I sang, “Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.”

  She blinked and softened, and I thought, I can learn to do this. “Give me time, sister,” I said.

  I put her foot on my lap and eased off her slipper. The soft sole was hers alone. The high arch and narrow foot and bulbous oversized toe. I rolled my eyes and laughed—she had that same crazy toe.

  And I said, “Poor you, with that same ridiculous toe. A lollipop toe, Mindy calls it.”

  We, I thought. Us.

  Our start, curled together in our mother’s womb. Our birth, when I cried and she did not. The months that followed, when she cried ceaselessly and I learned to be silent. It was just the two of us now, with our long fingers and lollipop toes.

  I worked Aviva’s socks back onto her feet. Then I knelt and grasped her feet and kissed her goodbye.


  Later that day, on the long drive south, I thought I would write to Baruch, to tell him about this visit. Then I thought about Aviva. She had a life story too. I’d been slow to recognize this because it did not progress in a conventional way—childhood, schooling, occupation, marital status. I could not lose myself wondering who she might have been had fate been kinder. What mattered was that she was someone who was knowable, and someone I would get to know.

  

  On the way back from Chaverim, I stopped at Ronit and Meir’s. My cousin knew I loved her patio, so she loaned me a shawl and put on a bulky cardigan so we could sit outside after dinner. While Meir was clanking around in the kitchen, we talked easily—of Galia’s travel plans, and Ronit’s new job. Then I told her about my visit with Aviva, and what I’d read in her medical records. I said that I loved getting to know her again, that it meant everything to me, the way she welcomed me into the family. If every visit was about Aviva, and who knew what, it would create a wedge between us. “Please help me out,” I said. My voice was shaking. “We’ve inherited a lot of hard history.”

  The night was cool. I drew the soft shawl around my shoulders, and Ronit buttoned her cardigan. She’d gotten her hair cut very short and in the dim light it was like a silver helmet. I knew I was making it hard for her and regretted it. Still, I waited.

  “After your father stopped coming to see us, we forgot about Aviva. I know it sounds very cold-hearted, but this is the truth.”

  It was what Galia had said at my house. I understood. Aviva was not a person to them, alive or dead. She was not someone, not part of the family. I would have felt that way too.

  Ronit shifted in her chair. “There was no internet then. It wasn’t so easy to get answers. We were upset that no one bothered to tell us your father had died.”

  “I’ve read a lot about trauma in infants—from papers I found online, and some recent cases. What I read in Aviva’s medical record are classic signs of abuse. Subdural hematoma—that’s bleeding in the brain. Diffuse axonal injury happens when the head gets whipped back and forth, like in a car accident, or when a baby is shaken. Broken hip.”