Face Tells the Secret

by Bernstein, Jane

  Ronit put her hand up. She covered her face.

  “They’re all gone,” I said after a while. “Everyone in that generation. We’re the ones who get to make the rules. Please. Let’s not live with all these secrets anymore.”

  Inside the house, the phone rang. Ronit waited until Meir picked it up. “Your father begged me to stay silent, because to him, what Savtah and my mother talked about was a lie. Every visit, he would sit with me and take my hands. And he would squeeze them hard and ask what good it would be to whisper these stories, to spread them, after all this time. It would only make things worse.”

  We listened to Meir laugh then to his voice trailing off.

  “He saw it as a very big sacrifice. You never got to know Savtah, or my parents. Or me, really.” Ronit sighed. “You would have loved Savtah. She was very emotional, you know? She loved in a very big way and hated just as big. Between her and your mother, there was so much bitterness. Yes, I heard those terrible stories from Savtah. Were they true, when everyone said she and Leona could not be in the same room for even five minutes? What kind of person would I be to tell you what Savtah whispered when your father swore it was a lie?”

  “Just tell me what you heard and let me take it from there.”

  “She was never healthy,” Ronit said of Aviva. “She didn’t feed well, and she cried all the time, and there was something with a doctor who said she would never be normal, they should send her away. Your father would not hear of that, but two babies, one who screamed day and night, was too much, so he asked Savtah to move in to help. She was very good with babies and loved them more than anything, but even she couldn’t stop the crying. Your father told me about these nights, how terrible they were. And then what happened, I was too young to know. The way Savtah tells, one night she is feeding one baby, and the other is crying and crying without stop, and before Savtah realizes, Leona has taken the baby from the crib and is shaking her and screaming at her to stop and hitting her against the wall.”

  My body ached all over. I closed my eyes and listened to Ronit’s chair scrape against the stones and when I looked up, we were sitting the way I’d sat with Aviva earlier that afternoon, our knees nearly touching. “I did not think this was something you should hear, especially because your father swore on his life the baby fell.”

  “She didn’t fall,” I said.

  “Vered,” Ronit said. “You cannot be sure.”

  “If it was an accident, why would he have hidden everything and everyone from me, not just Aviva?”

  “He thought it was the right thing to do, that he could protect you. He didn’t want another generation to live and breathe so much tragedy.”

  “I grew up with nothing,” I said. “I never lit a candle or celebrated a holiday. I have no memory of our grandmother, didn’t get to know my cousins. Even the ones in the U.S., like the Gorelicks in New Jersey, are total strangers.”

  “He worried about you,” Ronit said. “Try to understand.”

  Sitting with Ronit, I felt like I was at the very beginning of a long journey to what was so blithely called “understanding.” To understand meant having a firm, insistent “I,” a road to the heart “I,” while mine had been like a trapped bird, flying against a glass door.

  “Understanding takes a lot of time. In this regard, I’m just an infant,” I said. “A tee-nok.”

  “This is wrong,” said Ronit.

  “It’s how it feels trying to grow into this life I hardly know. You don’t know what it’s like.”

  Ronit patted my knee. “But I do know you’ll never be a baby boy.”

  Twenty-Five

  I asked Sunny to take whatever furniture, household items, and clothing she wanted, and Dina put me in contact with an agency that would donate the rest to immigrants. While I was waiting for the truck to arrive, I opened the door to the small balcony. For a long time, I stood looking at the sea.

  By the time the taxi dropped me off in front of my house in Pittsburgh, the apartment on Nordau Street was clean and empty, ready for the next tenants. It had been an exhausting few days that left no time to mull over the past or the future.

  The driver carried my bags to my door and drove away, and I walked through the damp grass to see what had bloomed in my absence. The hostas had spread their broad leaves, and the iris were purple and attentive. The long stems of the peonies were bowed and their big tender heads were weeping petals. I’d never had a garden before I’d bought this house and had imagined gardening as going out in a straw hat and waterproof clogs and clipping beautiful flowers. Never did I foresee there’d be such violence in the endeavor; that I’d be yanking out weeds, raging against the bunnies, throwing poison into mole holes.

  My street was quiet. The children were still in school and no dog-walkers passed, so I picked up my bags and stepped into my house. I went down to the basement to make sure I was alone. So now I was more than a stick figure on a blank sheet of paper, I thought. There was a background, lightly sketched, and a foreground, incomplete. On my way back upstairs, I knew there was a lot left to learn to create what I called my history. Just then, though, all I really wanted was to have a life in the place I resided, a small, ordinary life, free of unnecessary drama.

  Mindy had planned to spend the weekend with me in Pittsburgh. But my cousin, Mark Gorelick, had invited me to his house, which was not far from Mindy’s. So I drove to New Jersey instead. Mindy and I stayed in our pajamas until noon, took long walks in the park near her house, chopped, diced, and sautéed for the dinner we cooked together. She’d framed a photo of the two of us from seventh grade, in which she is stern, big-bosomed, and matronly looking, and I’m little and bedraggled, hairband drooping, wrinkled blouse. Stu picked it up, said, “Mother and Motherless Child,” and disappeared. All weekend, it made us giggle.

  We talked about her kids, our childhood, how far we’d go to preserve a youthful veneer, and Baruch; I kept circling back to Baruch, the sound of his voice, this sense of connectedness I’d felt when we were together, each time asking her: Was I right to say goodbye? And each time, Mindy saying yes. It was too hard; he lived too far away. She was sure I could find somebody wonderful in my city.

  Before I left for the Gorelicks’ we sat on her living room sofa, just as we had planned. I’d brought the accordion envelope containing The Book of Aviva. She unwound the string, rolled off the rubber band, read the first pages of the medical records, which by then I knew by heart.

  The soft leaves rustled. I’d told her about Aviva’s medical history, but reading the actual words shook her, and she murmured, “So terrible,” and looked up at me. I smiled and shrugged and said, in the kind of light tone I used to deflect and put others at ease, “It’s awful, isn’t it?”

  Mindy would not avert her eyes, and the warmth of her steady gaze broke me, and before I could cover my face, I began to cry. “I don’t know how to love!” Then I put my head on my knees and wept until I thought it would rip me in two. I hated this ugly story, felt it would twist my life forever, become the whole of me, all that I’d ever have. I tried to bring to mind the pleasure of this weekend, and the women sitting on the bench outside my mother’s apartment, but all I could think was that I’d never again lose myself in laughter, never recognize love, never know how to love in return.

  “Oh, sweetie, you do know how to love,” Mindy said. “You love me, don’t you?”

  “That doesn’t count,” I said, sobbing, then laughing, then lowering my head to sob some more, because it did count, I knew it did, but even so, I could not stop thinking, “Why had I let him leave?”

  

  My cousins lived in a tidy new house that was easy to find because of the truck on the driveway with Gorelick Heating & Cooling on the side. I hadn’t even rung the bell when the door opened, and Mark, small, bald, and olive-skinned, wrapped me in a hug. His wife Marilyn stood to one side in a pink sweatshirt and
jeans. She and I did a little ballet, starting to shake hands, then abandoning the formality to embrace. Inside, everything was cream: the carpet, the sofas, the Wheaten Terrier playing Frisbee outside with their kids.

  “You two are like twins,” said Marilyn.

  Mark patted his bald head. “She has hair,” he said.

  Marilyn knocked on the glass doors that led to the patio and Galia trotted over, barefoot and flushed. She kissed me on each cheek and then said, “So, Vered, you’re angry with me?” Before I could respond, she turned to Mark. “She was very nice to me and my friend when we were in Pittsburgh, working at the mall. I don’t know what happened, not answering the emails.”

  “You missed out on some free dinners,” I said. I’d forgotten those emails and was pleased to see her.

  Galia was staying with the Gorelicks, helping with their kids, and commuting into the city to take bartending courses. She’d finished the basic course, had three more classes in mixology, and then would work toward her wine certification. She was hoping to get a job that paid enough for her to share an apartment in New York, and after that, she wasn’t sure.

  “Where’s Yael?” I asked, and Galia made a sweeping motion in her hand. “In Rio.”

  “You have cousins in Rio,” Marilyn called from across the room.

  “Yael doesn’t,” said Galia.

  Marilyn had spent months constructing family trees for her side and ours. After lunch she showed me how complete the family tree was on Mark’s side of the family. In some ways it had been easier to reconstruct our family than her own because of the detailed records the Nazis had kept—“Death Books”—with the names of seventeen million people, who’d entered a concentration camp, were forced into labor, or executed. She knew how most of our uncles, aunts, and cousins had died, and had names of many of the surviving remnants of our once large family, including several people in Lima, Peru, and Brazil. “Your cousin, Florencia Bursztein, is a well-known watercolorist who lives in Sao Paulo. You should see her beautiful website.”

  “Florencia,” I said, drawing out the syllables.

  And Marilyn said, “I’ll call in the kids and we can eat.”

  Then the kids barreled in and the dog followed them to the bathroom, barking and jumping. The children sat on either side of Galia, while Mark and I reminisced. He had fond memories of his dormer bedroom, with its window to the eaves of the roof, but didn’t recall that we’d sat there together, shooting spitballs at the guests. Nor could he recall when my father had started to visit, only that he was always alone.

  “He was into puzzles and brain teasers, like the one with the missionaries and cannibals crossing the river, where the cannibals couldn’t outnumber the missionaries or they’d eat them. And those little metal pieces you were supposed to untangle. He was a smart guy, your dad. Not someone you could picture going into the yard and throwing the ball around.”

  “Not much ball throwing in our house.”

  Just then, I remembered how thrilled my father had been by the Rubik’s Cube I’d gotten him when they first came on the market.

  “Did anyone ever say why he was always alone?” I asked.

  “Your mom thought she was too good for the rest of us.”

  “That wasn’t it at all,” said Marilyn. “The split happened because your grandmother told everyone it was Leona’s fault the baby was brain damaged, and that’s why they moved.”

  “How did you know this?” Mark asked his wife.

  “Because I listen,” she said. Then, with affection: “He is so ADD he never pays attention to anything.”

  I said, “The baby is all grown up. Like me. Her name is Aviva.”

  I looked at the faces of these cousins, who waited for me to go on. They didn’t know what to say—neither did I, really. But it seemed that the words I chose didn’t matter. It was speaking of her, so she would be part of our family. I tried to describe Chaverim and say something about her daily life. Then I turned to Mark. “She looks like you,” I said. “Like us.”

  I drove back to Pennsylvania after that and got busy, trying to create the ordinary life I’d so badly wanted. I cut my hair short, bought a dress to wear with the pink shoes, chose the paper to use for my letter to Baruch—ecru, deckled-edged, acid-free, with a handsome matching envelope. Sitting at my drafting table, I began to write. But I started to cry and the ink smeared and the paper got splotchy, so I put it aside and designed an insulated shopping bag, light, foldable, with as many Velcroed pockets as a photographer’s vest. It was the blue of glacial ice, with a snowstorm of tiny, horned creatures with fat bodies, long arms, and short bowed legs. When Dina called, I set this creature on long journeys down winding streets with flights of steps cut into the steep hills, holding the insulated bag with his image. Her accent and rushed way of speaking made it hard for me to understand her on the phone and it helped me focus.

  The realtor called to say the young couple with the dog wanted to buy my house. I countered their lowball offer and waited dispassionately. It felt like a game. When I thought I’d lose, I decided I could make a home in this house and let the beautiful garden go wild. But this big Slavic woman and her small Colombian husband were sweet. Winning meant they’d fill the rooms with love, set a dog bed in the corner of their bedroom, use the guest room for the child they’d have. I could stop hating bunnies, stop poisoning moles, and stop worrying that Harley was hiding in a room. When at last we made a deal, I felt a surge of energy. I would box my possessions, put everything in storage—my old life, my old self. Then, like a dormant plant, I would emerge when the seasons changed.

  One Saturday, just after the papers were signed, I joined a group of volunteers planting saplings in Frick Park. While standing with a dozen others, waiting for the truck that carried the trees, their fragile roots wrapped in burlap, I saw Baruch in the distance, hurrying toward me with that familiar loping gait, and my heart began to pound.

  It was a lanky boy, rushing toward the crew. I turned from him, put on my work gloves, and kneeled in the dirt. After a few minutes of digging, I pulled off my gloves so I could feel the cool soil between my fingers. I tossed the stones from the hole, yanked out the bigger rocks, deeply satisfied by the effort. Later, taking a break, I looked at the lanky boy who was not Baruch and felt like a fool for my error, for holding onto what I could not have.

  I was bone tired from tree planting, and when Dina called to tell me about a new man she was seeing—Shmuel, Shuki?—I struggled to stay awake. As soon we I hung up, I fell into bed. I dreamt that Baruch and I were walking along Ha’Yarkon with our arms linked, the sea to one side. He was complaining about a traffic jam when I stepped in something sticky. I lifted my shoe to see what was stuck to my sole and cried, “Ugh! I’ve gotten shmulik all over my shoe!”

  I laughed so hard in the dream that I woke myself up.

  It made everything seem possible.

  Dear Baruch,

  Apart from sorry and thank you, which I mean sincerely, I wanted to tell you that my mother died the day I didn’t go with you to Chaverim. After the funeral, I drove there myself. It was a weekday so I knew you wouldn’t be there, but I kept looking anyhow. It’s still hard to see Aviva and harder to leave, and I miss her now that I’m home, though it’s impossible to explain this to anyone except you. One of the aides told me she ate pureed food and the next time I go up, I could try to feed her. Bananas are an obvious choice, but I love a good latte myself, iced or warm, so maybe she will too. I have so much else to say, but maybe for now I’ll just ask why you were offended when I called you kind. That’s how it seemed, and it puzzles me. I hate the way things ended between us, and hope, truly, that life has been sweet.

  With love, Roxanne

  The weather got steamy. Baruch replied, saying, “Thank you for your splendid letter. Let me know when you return.” There are only so many ways two sentences can be interpreted, and I worked
at them all, until the effort wore me out. I needed a place to live. That’s where I had to put my energy.

  Les took on my search for a home, making it one of the many projects on his virtual drawing board, along with a bottle that would appeal to mature consumers and a logo for a brokerage house. He fancied himself immovable in the Federal house he’d bought years back in the Mexican War Streets and presented his quest to find me a perfect neighborhood as a vicarious pleasure. Every few days he showed me listings of spaces in converted factory buildings, some within walking distance from our office—the Cork Factory, the Cigar Factory, Otto Milk. The city had begun to evolve since I’d moved here, and so had I.

  “You need to choose a place that works best for the person you are right now,” Les said.

  “The person I am right now is sad. Should I buy a sad, dark house? Something with bricked-in windows and a rusted fence? Because that’s the kind of house that fits the person I am right now.” I’d seen that house exactly. Listing toward an empty lot, across from a burned-down building.

  I was touched by Les’s interest, though it made me feel porous, an empty vessel. So I let him take me to see a loft in a partly renovated factory building a few blocks from work. On the way back, as we were crossing our lobby, I heard the echo of laughter and footsteps, and my mother’s words returned to me—anechoic, impedance—and a memory of her taking me into an anechoic chamber at Bell Labs, a weird, padded room, where sound was flat, free of all echo, and her delight as I cried out, “The quick brown fox!” and “Four score and twenty years ago!” Not a monster, and my sadness just then the ordinary feeling of loss. As we approached the steps, Les’s shoulders dropped, and his posture softened, and there she was: Yogi Descending Stairs.

  She was so pretty, with her small, pale face. Oh, I thought, when she reached us. It was an exhalation, an awareness of loss and love.