After she pays for the wash, she sits for a moment in the gleaming car. She has finished all these little chores. Now her own thoughts come rushing back at her. Where should she go? What should she do? It comes to her. There is one thing, if she can manage it. She takes a deep breath and begins driving.
She drives with Chaya to the hospital and takes her upstairs in the elevator to the little office tucked away on the fifth floor. With effort she manages to carry the baby, along with her diaper bag and purse. She is sweating in her long winter coat, but she has to wear it because her hands are full. In the office she says to the woman registrar, “I’ve come to record the name of my baby. We left it blank, and we were supposed to come back and record it.”
“All right,” the registrar says, and she takes out her book. “Date of birth? All right. Time? … Female, Shulman. Here we are. And the name as you would like it to appear on the birth certificate? Last name Shulman. First name …”
“Celia,” says Elizabeth, shifting Chaya in her arms. They will never use the name. No one will say the name aloud, but in sharp black print the registrar is typing onto the official New York state birth certificate, the English name Celia. C-E-L-I-A.
5
THE buds on the bushes in front of the apartment buildings are still clenched shut like tiny fists; the thin trees in May look like upended brooms. Elizabeth walks home from the dry cleaner at the end of the block. Edelman’s Bakery has reopened, now that Pesach is over. Its door is propped open, and the smell of fresh bread wafts out to the sidewalk. At the corner Grimaldi’s window is stacked high with oranges and apples, improbably bright. She sees it now, the sign Isaac mentioned weeks ago. HELP WANTED. She wonders briefly what kind of help Grimaldi needs. He has never seemed to want help before. The place has been here for years with its odd assortment of produce and tchotchkes and imported food. Perhaps she should go in. But what would she say? Mr. Grimaldi does not much care for his Kirshner neighbors. She might tell him she would like to learn the business and go into it herself. That she has had some experience. A little. Working in a store might be what she needs. She might like to start her own someday. They don’t sound very persuasive to her in her mind, these ideas. They are small, idle thoughts. The main thought is that no, she wouldn’t want to take a job, really. She has the baby, after all. As Isaac says, Pearl could watch her. But she doesn’t want to start again now, start making a fool of herself. And the business wouldn’t be hers.
Elizabeth looks at the window and feels awkward standing there on the sidewalk loaded with the dry cleaning. Of course, there is nothing wrong with going in and asking. Introducing herself to the old man. She might have liked to—perhaps she will someday. What is he going to do to her? Putting herself forward might be a little embarrassing. She will seem completely inexperienced and odd, naive.
She begins walking again. Chani is watching the baby at home, and Elizabeth should get back and put up the meat for dinner. And she’ll heat up the sweet potatoes. Malki doesn’t like them, but she has some frozen vegetables. There are peas. Malki eats peas if they’re bright green. Only from frozen, not from a can. The girls love them fresh, of course. In Kaaterskill they break open the pea pods and pop out the tiny peas, smooth and pale. Well, all Elizabeth has is canned. She is no farmer, or great retailer. She stops short. She remembers how she said those words to Andras, sitting in the back of Cecil’s crowded living room. In another time, maybe, in another life, she might have been these things, businesswoman, philosopher, traveler, artist. And it comes back to her suddenly, what Andras said to her. His words, half whispered, his voice conspiratorial and dry. “Elizabeth, this is the United States of America. You can do whatever you damn well please.” She laughs softly at the memory. She turns around and walks back to Grimaldi’s door. She ducks her head down and walks in.
Grimaldi looks over at her from where he sits on his high stool behind the counter. He is bald and heavy, with a pink, weary-looking face, and long yellowish fingernails.
“What can I get you?” he asks.
Nervous, Elizabeth takes six grapefruit and puts them in a bag. She browses the cluttered shelves. She examines Grimaldi’s jams and teas and coffees, the china picture frames, and Lladro porcelain figurines.
“Anything else,” Grimaldi states rather than asks, when he rings up the grapefruit.
“Yes,” Elizabeth says.
He stops and waits.
“I mean, not to buy. Just a question. My husband mentioned—I saw a sign in the window mentioning you might need help.”
“That’s still up there?” Grimaldi says. “Where?”
“Oh,” Elizabeth says. “It’s over there.” She points to the place in the window.
“Forgot to take it down,” Grimaldi says.
“You found someone?”
“No, no, no,” Grimaldi says. Carefully, with his nails, he peels off the tape from the window and takes down the paper sign.
“I’m not much of a collaborator,” he says. “Know what I mean? I’ve run the place thirty years, and I don’t collaborate well with people coming in, their attitudes.” He hands her the grapefruit.
“Thank you,” she says.
“I don’t like to delegate,” he says.
“What,” Elizabeth begins, “what sort of help did you, were you interested in?”
“Doing the books,” he says, looking at her. “Taking care of the register some hours. Someone in the neighborhood.”
“I live in the neighborhood,” she says.
“I know.”
Elizabeth feels foolish, because of course he knows she lives in the neighborhood. How could Grimaldi help knowing, seeing her every day walking up and down the street, seeing the children corning home from school, Isaac and the old car.
“See you all the time, and your older daughter pushing the baby carriage,” Grimaldi says. “How many kids do you have?”
“Six,” she says.
He lets out a long, sympathetic whistle. “I have three sons,” he says. “All grown now. Youngest one’s got a good head on him. He’s in college now.”
“What I meant before,” Elizabeth says, “what I meant was, since I live in the neighborhood I was thinking I might apply to work—to do books.”
He makes a face. “What’d you want to do books for? No one wants to do books. It’s a lousy job. Boring, and”—he pauses searching for the word—“tedious,” he says at last.
“I’m interested in learning the business,” Elizabeth tells him.
“Oh, you are, are you,” he says.
She says nothing.
“You’re one of the Kirshners, aren’t you?” he says.
“Yes,” she tells him.
“You know, I remember when they came into the neighborhood,” he tells her. “A lot of turnover in this neighborhood. I’ve got cameras now.” He points up to the upper corners of the store where the little security cameras hang. “I don’t see a lot of the women like you working in stores.”
“Well,” Elizabeth says again, “I want to learn the business.” She does not tell him that she had a store once of her own. She cannot speak of that.
“Why?” Grimaldi asks her. “No offense. I’m wondering why you’d be interested. My own sons wouldn’t be caught dead in here. Working all day from the crack of dawn, worrying about your windows, keeping these kids from breaking them. You know how much one of these costs?” He waves at the dirty glass.
She says nothing.
He looks at her. “I’m wondering what your reasoning is.”
She hesitates. “The same as yours when you started out,” she says at last.
“Ha,” says Grimaldi. “I don’t think so.”
6
RENÉE’S chest is tight. She breathes painfully, and her legs are stiff in new sheer stockings. She clutches her music to her. It does not look like her music; her body does not feel like her body. She hears herself walk across the stage, her shoes tapping on the floor, and she looks shyly around at t
he audience applauding, all the parents of her teacher’s many students. This is the annual recital at the end of May, the night Renée dreads all year. The beginning students have already played, and then the intermediate. They are done, and sitting happily in the audience. Now the advanced students have to play. Now Renée has to take her turn at the black concert grand, wheeled in by the music school for the occasion. She sits down and props her music onto the piano. She was supposed to memorize it, but she is afraid to play without the notes in front of her. “Your fingers know the way,” her teacher told her in the wings. “Let them feel the music.” But Renée’s fingers don’t know anything. She is afraid to let them feel the music; they’ll run away from her.
So she sits down, and she stares at the Chopin, the subject of so many conflicts, the pages covered with pencil markings, and her teacher’s exhortations. “Bright!” and “Count!” and she rubs her fingers and dives in, just as if she were diving into Coon Lake. She does not think of her fingers as feather dusters on the keys. She does not think of anything but icy water. Renée is pushing against the cold, and her fingers are numb, but she keeps them moving. She swims on, and every once in a while a wrong note nips her, like a little fish, but she keeps moving, and her fingers behave mostly as they were taught, hitting the keys brightly, and she concentrates, her eyes on the notes, and her foot ready to pedal, and she keeps counting, no matter what, although sometimes her counting is faster and sometimes slower, and it gets faster at the end, a little blurred as she pushes to the last chords, and stands up, panting for air, because while she was counting there wasn’t time to breathe.
They are all clapping for her as she bows, and the noise warms her. She is filled with thanks to be done and then, immediately, irrationally, she wishes she could do it all again, and do it right this time. She looks out at the audience. Her mother and father are there, and little brother. Aunt Maja and Uncle Philip. They are all sitting together in the front. Aunt Eva and Uncle Saul had to stay home, because Aunt Eva is still sick. Renée sees the other families there as well, and the other piano students, and—she can’t help imagining it for an instant—there is Stephanie. Just for a second she sees her, and then her friend is gone. She is always imagining Stephanie turning up—although she knows she won’t. She is always thinking of her, and even phones her sometimes, although the recorded message says Stephanie’s number is not in service at this time. “All right, come on, move it or milk it,” she hears Stephanie saying, and so she walks offstage.
Maybe Stephanie is in Canada. Maybe she’s driving trucks on her own. Those heaving trucks Renée and Alex always watch as they drive to Kaaterskill, the eighteen-wheelers with names like Lurlene, or Miss Lucy. Renée can picture Stephanie driving cross-country, cracking purple bubblegum, carrying cargo into the Northwest Territories. The wind is blowing Stephanie’s hair as she sits there at the wheel in her blue jeans. There are books next to her on the seat. Books about the Cold War and Women’s Liberation, and Rosa Parks, and Large Animals, and How to Be a Veterinarian and How to Run a Dairy Farm. Stephanie is studying all these things, with her long straight hair trailing out the window.
At home, riding up the elevator to celebrate in the apartment, the family crowds around Renée.
Nina is ecstatic. “So proud!” she says.
“Well done,” says Philip.
Renée can’t help smiling in her exhaustion and relief. The day of reckoning is over. Summer is finally here.
“You see,” Maja tells Renée, “your mother was right that you should continue. The music will be a joy to you all your life.”
Renée’s smile fades.
“Am I right?” Maja presses.
“I guess,” Renée whispers.
Andras looks over and he sees his daughter’s face. She has a look of forbearance that surprises and touches him. Of course, this is exactly what Renée dreads; that she will be playing piano all her life. Poor Renée, as Eva would say.
The elevator doors open and they all walk into the hall. Everyone is talking at once, but Andras puts his arm around Renée and he tells her, “The piano won’t last forever. Don’t worry; it will end. Every year you’ll get older, you’ll see. You’ll be more independent.”
Renée looks up at him, startled. Andras keeps on, speaking softly so that no one else can hear. He tells Renée that she won’t be a child, or even a piano student always. She will grow up and decide what she wants to do with her own time. His voice is gentle, but his words are frank, and matter of fact. For although Andras never had fairy tales or lullabies for his daughter, now he sees that he has something to tell her. He speaks in sympathy as Eva would. The gentleness is Eva’s; the words his own.
IN HIS apartment in Queens, Jeremy sits at his desk trying to work. He has lived here for fifteen years. It is a two-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a large old high-ceilinged building. A brick building set back from the street with a courtyard in front and a cement fountain that does not work. Jeremy sleeps in the smaller of the two bedrooms; the master bedroom is his study, lined with shelves and filing cabinets. In the living room small glass bookcases hold his antique volumes. There are shards of pottery in cabinets.
He has done what he can with his father’s books. He has stacked the boxes neatly in the dining room and the living room, and then again down the length of the hallway to his bedroom, against his bedroom wall, and in towers in his own study. Of course he has no bookcases for the Rav’s volumes. Jeremy’s own library is large. His shelves are full, and his father’s books will fill twice the space of his own books when they are unboxed. Jeremy knows they are more than his apartment can hold.
He sits with his work before him. He must open the boxes and sort through them. He will have to transfer some to his office. He will get some appraised. Perhaps he will even donate some to the Queens College Library. His own manuscript lies before him on his desk, but he cannot stop thinking about his father’s books. The boxes sit there on the floor, always in sight, whether Jeremy is working, eating, or sleeping. He cannot avoid looking at them snaking through the rooms. They fill him with fascination and a certain dread. Several times he has taken a knife and begun to open a carton, and then stopped himself. The task is overwhelming. The culling and sorting out of volumes. It is too much to begin. The work is too painful. He simply looks at them. At night he falls asleep with the shadows of the boxes darkening the floor.
The books are a legacy characteristic of the Rav. A confusing gift. Praise and rebuke at the same time. A blessing and a curse. Jeremy must sit now and wonder how to interpret it. He must ask himself what his father meant by this inheritance. Whether it was intended to give him something of his father’s mind, to teach him and reconcile him to what his father was and then became. Whether it was meant to remind his younger brother that it was Jeremy who was the superior intellect. That while Isaiah could read and teach the older Jewish texts, he would not appreciate the philosophical works from Germany, the Rav’s Kant, Hegel, and Fichte, his books of German poetry, the great leather edition of Schiller’s Shakespeare, and then the modern treatises of the Kirshner rabbis, and the diverse volumes of theology, mathematics, and history culled from Jeremiah Solomon Hecht’s own collection. By this the Rav would be showing that his younger son, Isaiah, would be his successor in all ways but one. Isaiah would be heir to his father’s rabbinic authority, but not his scholarly understanding. Or is this a test for Jeremy? A challenge for him in the value and sheer number of the volumes. Will he be prepared to catalog these books? To study them? To give them to a proper library? Is he capable of preserving them?
The Rav’s library could be a test of Jeremy’s abilities, but more likely it is intended as a test of his soul. The proof case for the Rav’s long-ago decision that Jeremy is selfish; that he has a fine mind, but is a flawed man. The Rav would have guessed that Isaiah would want the books, but that Jeremy would never give them up. He would have assumed it would be so, knowing, prejudging, his sons as he did, coldly asses
sing their characters. Isaiah above all dutiful, and Jeremy above all … how did his father put it? Hard. Grasping. This, perhaps, is the hypothesis motivating his father’s experiment, his gift, directed like an arrow toward the future.
Jeremy thinks of all these things. For days he has been agonizing about these questions. He is weary of them, but he cannot stop. At last he stands up. He takes a knife and slits the tape on one box and then another. There they lie, the works of the German Jewish theologians, the translations of the classics, the thousand commentaries. The little ones like orphan children in their tattered bindings, black and blue cloth. The long flat tomes like small monuments, gold and leather, and somehow funerary, their covers shut like praying hands.
The books smell of mildew. Jeremy can barely look at them. He feels for the books a kind of pity and disgust. They are stained and battered, and where they are edged with gold, the gilt is slick and soft with dust. Their companion volumes, his father’s dark-covered sacred texts, lie at the yeshiva, open on tables, studied and taught, discussed and still alive. These, here, alone, separated from that library, lie readable but dead in their stacks. The mind that organized them is dead, the spirit and the world in which they were born is gone—their context killed.
In the next few days, open boxes all around him, Jeremy forces himself to grade his students’ final exams. He wades through their looping handwritten essays, the pale ballpoint and the sputtering black ink, the smooth round cursive, and the words that knot together on the page. In what way does Machiavelli appropriate and transform the literary tradition of the courtier prince?
The apartment is hot. Jeremy hates this time of year, the first muggy days, the end of the semester. As always in May he is tired of his students. He is sick of his class and his apartment, and the city. At this time of year when Jeremy was a boy, the family packed up to go to Kaaterskill.
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