“You’re back living in our house, that’s all. Aren’t you here because there’s no place else for you to go? Face it—you’re settling, not choosing!”
He sits down next to me, placing a heavy hand on my forearm. A blast of Freon passes between us. “I’m not leaving,” Donny says, “And neither will Charlie!”
“Please take your hands off of me. I know what you’re doing—don’t try and scare me.” I get up quickly, toppling the heavy wooden chair onto the floor. A spindle breaks and rolls away. This is what I’d hoped to avoid, and yet it’s happening right before my eyes. I am filled with fury—feeling powerless in my own house. Donny’s words shred my veil of strength, and smother all traces of determination. I need fresh air; I can’t catch my breath. My fingers fumble with the lock on the screen door. I hear deep sighs. It’s Becky and Lana crouched together on the bottom step under a tent made from Lana’s blanket. Becky stares at me, her eyes silvery blue in the dimly lit hallway. Her arms are draped around Lana, whose fingers are clamped inside her mouth.
“Mommy, where are you going?” Becky cries, her perfect lips quivering.
“Oh sweetheart, no place, really. I’m upset and thought I’d take a nice walk. Walking always makes me feel a whole lot better. Would you like to come along?”
The girls shake their heads in unison. Yes, they wish to come.
“Hurry then and put on your slippers. It’ll be dark soon.”
From the den comes this huge audio boom. For a split second I imagine a gun, held to Donny’s temple—his gelatinous brain splattered across the thick pile of the shaggy rug. But he is escaping, as well, by blasting The Grand Canyon Suite. I’d like to die right now, anything, so not to witness the terror unraveling in Becky’s and Lana’s once calm little faces.
For the next few nights, Donny stays late at the factory. This is unusual considering all summer long business has lagged. I notice brochures on top of his dresser advertising courses for everything from scuba diving to rock climbing, but they stay there for days, gathering dust. I stop myself from inquiring, letting go of a claim to Donny, his present, our present, and the future. When he is home, he pounds the keyboard with a fury I’ve never witnessed—an energy which sends peculiar stirrings through me, until I realize what I feel is the pathos triggered by his choice of music.
Downstairs, right below him, I work late into the evenings, putting the finishing touches on another new painting. I catch myself staring at the canvas as if it were a maze offering hidden clues, or a map with intricate directions. What I like about the work is that it is anything but finite. The borders are open and free to interpretation—yet the core of the painting represents such deep entanglement. Tangled … yes, that’s what I’ll name this.
I call Louise on Friday—her day for chores around home and town. I want to reach out to her, to tell her how, no matter what, she will always be important to me and to the girls. We haven’t spoken in several days, a rare occurrence, or perhaps I’ve lost track of time. My weeks had been marked by the special significance I’d attached to Saturday nights. Now time seems stretched out, each hour agonizingly slow, like in school when I’d sit staring at the large metal clock above the classroom door, convinced it had jumped backward a minute, to torture me.
After several rings, Gussie answers the phone. She recites Louise’s itinerary for the day: a wash and set, the dressmaker for a fitting, her weekly trip to the vault to borrow her own jewelry for an upcoming wedding. My attention becomes focused when her voice, low and gravelly, breaks in its projection. I’m stunned when she asks if I’m okay.
“So, you heard?” I ask Gussie, this person whose loyalty marches North with her employers.
“Be sure and mind your children. That’s all I can say. You folks sure made a mess of your lives, and Mr. Pearl wants those little ones cared for.”
Which Mr. Pearl is she referring to? “They’re fine, Gussie. I’ve always taken real good care of them. That’ll never change.”
“First, you need to take care of yourself so you can do your job. I wish I could help but I can’t. Should Mrs. P. call you when she gets in?”
“No, never mind, I’ll try again later.”
I sink down at the kitchen table. This is the first time I can remember sipping hot tea in late August, but it fails to warm me up or cease the noisy chattering of my teeth.
On Sunday afternoon, Louise and Ben show up, unexpected. Luckily, it has been a quiet weekend devoid of confrontations, but the atmosphere feels strained—the smiles and laughter fake. After dinner, I pull some of Becky’s old dresses from storage to try on Lana, who is both thrilled and jittery to be starting kindergarten. Donny bangs on the piano while Lana models the outfits. There are loud applauds as Lana performs a tap dance she learned at camp over the summer. I bite the inside of my cheek, afraid I might burst into tears.
“Are you sure they have bathrooms in the classrooms, Mommy?” Lana asks, cuddling up next to Louise.
“Sure baby, little seats, a perfect fit for your tushie.”
“That’s cool!” A phrase Lana’s picked up from Ricki Bell.
During the coffee and cake ritual, a blimp-like silence threatens to drop and crush us all. Louise looks at me and then strokes my cheek in a loving way.
“Darling, I think you could use a break,” she says, surprising me. This is the nicest she’s been to me in a long time. “You’ve lost too much weight, and when I called you back last Friday, you were napping in the middle of the day. That’s not like you, Alex, not at all.”
I wasn’t about to tell Louise it was impossible to rest during the night with her son beside me. How we’d each drawn an imaginary boundary on our mattress, avoiding an accidental colliding of hands and feet, enough to jolt either one of us out of the pleasures of sleep.
“I admit I’m a bit tired, but that’s all. I’ve been working late after the girls are asleep.” It occurs to me that Louise has never asked to see any of my new work. To her I might always be the T-shirt lady of Wheatley Heights.
“Why not hop on a plane and go visit your folks?” She sounds certain that a few days of separation will have some magic reconcilia-tory power. “Don’t worry, I’ve got Gussie to help me, and it’s a perfect time—Labor Day weekend.”
“But there’s so much to do before school starts.”
“Whatever it is, tell me and it’s done. Your folks are quite concerned, Alex. They’re calling all the time.”
I had deliberately rushed through our conversations recently. For years, my parents’ weekly call became part of the fine balance in their lives. Still, staying with them would be a total regression. All I need is to see that look—the one that speaks volumes in its cast-iron silence. Look, look what you’ve done to us.
Yet, strange as I feel, the next morning I pick up the telephone and call Sophie in Miami, thinking I’ll book a room in one of her senior citizen hotels. Hell, I feel a bit like a senior citizen—older, yes, though certainly not wiser.
It’s been months since we’ve spoken; we wrote for a time after Rob died, and then stopped. I didn’t think she’d be in a frame of mind to hear about our involvement with the Bells, but mostly because of her friendship with Charlie’s brother and sister-in-law. However, after we finish catching up on our children, Sophie boasts that she already knows the whole story. Her tone borders on congratulatory.
“Got the scoop from Cheryl and Peter,” Sophie brags, her delivery matter-of-fact.
“Why on earth would they share something so private, especially about their own brother’s marriage?” I ask Sophie.
“Ah, I guess you could say they have quite a bit in common with you, Donny and … ah, me.” Sophie giggles. “Okay, I might as well spill the beans, Alex. Rob and I had our own little fling with Cheryl and Peter about two years ago. But it didn’t last long. They were so incredibly boring that we had a tough time staying awake.”
“What? Rob and you were the other couple?”
“Yup! Ain’t th
at a kick in your Levi’s?”
I try picturing Cheryl with Rob, Peter with Sophie. Nothing makes sense, that is, if sensibility is part of the equation. What happened to us could not possibly have been the same. Sexual attraction leading to sex, yes, but there was also the slow unraveling of affection, or maybe I’m the only one who felt that way.
“He told Charlie he’d been involved, but no names were mentioned,” I answer. I realize I am more than a little pissed off. What gave Peter Bell the right to be spreading gossip and making assumptions?
I renege on Sophie’s offer to stay at her home, stressing I was flying down in order to have time alone. When she made it clear she was through with mourning and ready to party, I told her my partying days were over.
Later that evening, I circle my departure date on our new calendar, remembering that it was a gift from the friendly folks at Marriage Mountain. They had sent it along with a 50 percent-off coupon, good for our October “brush-up” weekend—the one Donny and I never attended.
EIGHTEEN
I land in Miami on the stroke of midnight. But there are no gilded coaches turning into pumpkins, no handsome princes waiting on bended knee—only a pockmarked cab driver, greeting me gruffly in broken English and reeking of garlic.
“Lady, we’re here,” he says, startling me. He hands me my duffel bag, which, at once, feels heavier. I pay him, and without saying a word, he screeches off, leaving me standing alone on a cracked cement sidewalk. The surrounding air is nearly visible, steaming like the tunnel in a car wash. Miami in summer; Miami is summer.
I enter the lobby of the Betsy Ross Hotel, dimly lit by amber sconces placed too high on pea-green walls. The aroma of strong bleach masking all other odors invades my nostrils. Pop-up air fresheners stand everywhere, poised like miniature spaceships on launching pads. I am on the verge of gagging. In a far corner sits an elderly woman wearing a flowered housecoat, just like the ones Bubbe, my father’s mother, wore. I bet there are hard candies with soft, fruity centers in her pocket, wrapped in a handkerchief. She is mumbling to herself, rocking and moving her fingers as if engaged in some task. An aluminum walker is propped in front of her, protecting her as if she were a toddler in a playpen.
A young Spanish man, about twenty, dangles a key in the air. He already knows who I am and seems amused that someone close to his age is alert at this late hour. His dark eyes gleam like olives as he jumps from his post—a beat-up desk on which sits a phone and small TV.
“Buenas noches, senorita Pearl. Are you sure you don’t need help with that bag?”
“No, gracias.” I falter. All I remember from high school Spanish is finally implemented in the somber lobby of this hotel. If I could recall how to say, It fucking stinks in here, I would.
At the end of a long hallway, I find the door to my room unlocked. There is absolutely nothing here to steal: a cot-like bed, a gray metal dresser, a torch-like floor lamp, and a torn vinyl chair. There’s a portable burner with a greasy tea kettle stuck to its top reminding me of the YWCA where I’d lived while student teaching in Gloversville, New York—a town that catered to the workers from leather factories—where nearly every storefront was a pub.
This would be a horrible place to die, I think. I can only imagine how many poor souls gasped their final breath upon these creaky springs. My eyes trace the water stains on the ceiling, then move down to a gold plaster picture frame above my bed. I lie down with my head at the foot of the bed to get a better look. Could my eyes be playing tricks on me? I see a print of Degas’s ballet dancers in recital, the very same print my mother hung above my pale pink desk when I was seven. We had just moved from an apartment in Brooklyn, and Mom kept busy accessorizing the bedrooms. It was such a joyous time for all of us: the powdery aroma of a brand-new baby brother; Dad bright-eyed sneaking up behind my mother to kiss the nape of her neck; my grandparents’ Sunday visits. And me pressed against the pane of my bedroom window, counting to one hundred, again and again, until I’d see them pull into our driveway. I tripped down the stairs to get to them, my feet running in place as my grandparents struggled out of their car, Papa reeking from city sweat and cigars, Nana, not a hair out of place, her skin cool as peppermint—so much love and history pulling up to our curb in one gigantic aqua ’57 Caddy.
The sound of my weeping is unrecognizable. I grab the end of a pillowcase to wipe my eyes, staring at the faded ballet print I must struggle to see. If only I could swim through these colors—the serenity of pastels, colors missing from my own oval palette. It’s hard not to wonder why everything turned out so differently from what I was promised. Work hard, they said. Do well in school. Marry a nice boy from a fine family. Keep your home clean, your children tidy and polite.
I need my babies now; I have never been this far from what I truly love.
All night long, I drift in and out of an unsettled sleep. Am I awake or is this a dream? My aloneness makes me an uncertain witness. Rising from the deep gully I’ve made in the bed, I float like a ballerina around the room. When I lift the peeling shade, to my surprise, I find a full Miami moon, which, beyond a doubt, is a most spectacular sight. In the roundness of its melon face is an exquisite mystery: a vast landscape of shapes and shadows, and its promise to return, again and again.
Why am I here, on my parents’ plant-filled terrace, sweat pouring down my neck and soaking my tank top? They offer gourmet salads, and a basket of my favorite onion pockets. But I am too hot to eat. Dad points to a stubborn cloud pattern that’s been hovering in the sky. Nimbus, the former sailor says. Cumulus, I utter, forever trying to impress him.
“Better get the sun while you can, kiddo. We’re headed for a downpour.”
“Nah, Dad, it’s too hot to bask in the sun.”
“Squirt yourself with the hose, dear. You used to do that, remember?” my mother chimes in. I have come to be with them, after all. If only what I feel could be cured with a smear of Vicks rubbed above the heart, chicken soup, and the gift of the latest Archie comic book.
“I’m all right, just thirsty.” I sip iced tea. I pick at a mound of potato salad, amazingly still chilled.
“Your hair’s a pretty shade, full of golden streaks. Natie, don’t you think Alex’s hair looks nice?” They are being so kind and attentive, I’m certain something terrible shows.
My fork bangs on the wrought iron table before bouncing to the floor. While retrieving it, I smack my forehead and feel the hot sting that promises blood. Blaming my injury on the table, my father pats my head like he did our childhood dog. My mother moves quickly, especially for her, and wraps tiny ice cubes in a dish towel. She presses hard against the eruption above my brow, making me wince. But she sees through me, I can tell. This is not about my bump.
“It’s over,” I blurt out.
My mother strokes my hair, something she hasn’t done in twenty years. “And if you hadn’t met that other fella?”
“What? How do you—”
“Yes, of course we know. Did you not think Louise would fill us in? She jumped at the opportunity. We waited for you to tell us, week after week, that is when you decided to pick up the telephone, but all we heard was about your ‘wonderful new friends.’”
“Charlie and Paula.”
“Right, well now I’m asking if you hadn’t started all that messy stuff, would it still be over?”
Dad doesn’t know where to put himself. He begins shredding a luncheon napkin, but I can feel him struggling to listen, even though he’s humming Younger Than Springtime.
“I know what happened sounds crazy. But it wasn’t one of those random love affairs. We switched partners, and when doing that, we also changed our lives. I’m a different person now. I can’t go back pretending with Donny.”
“Some people go through an entire lifetime pretending.” She turns toward my father, with a wistful look in her eyes. Dad has switched to whistling, but the tune is choppy, like a scratched record.
“Don’t worry, Dad, I’m not going to become
a burden to you. I can take care of myself. I just need some time.”
“Kiddo, we love you, but you need to be sure. It’s not easy out there, alone,” my father says, his eyes brimming with tears. “Maybe, you should think about teaching again.”
“Yes, dear, you once loved teaching,” Mom says.
Though I nod yes, I can’t dismiss the fact that everything they suggest feels like enormous pressure.
Finally, we escape the heat and go inside. In an attempt to distract me, my mother drags out several old picture albums. There are faded photos dating back to the 1920s, when my grandparents first arrived in this country from Riga. One is a group shot of my great-grandmother, my grandparents, and an assortment of aunts, uncles, and cousins taken on a sprawling lawn in the Catskills, where the clan often gathered in summertime. All heads are turned, upright and proud, toward the camera’s lens. The men wear their shirtsleeves rolled at their elbows, and the women appear ethereal in bright floral dresses. I am struck how everyone touches the person next to them: leaning in with a shoulder or an arm draped over a kneecap, fingers clasped around someone’s waist. Though not a single person in the photo is smiling, they appear proud, as though they are collectively thinking: We know who we are and where we have been. Maybe it was enough to know they were bound by blood, marriage, and an arduous past—a past that catapulted them here in order to survive. How I envy them now—the fierce pride in their apparent struggle; but more, I ache for what is evident in each and every photo: the closeness of family, and the sanctity and power sealed by that connection.
Noticing my condition, the regression I was hoping to avoid, my parents beg me to stay the night. It doesn’t take much convincing. At the hotel, the night before, I lay awake listening to moaning from the wall behind my headboard. I thought about going downstairs to tell the desk clerk, but then someone’s gentle shushing became audible above deep moans. I imagined an elderly couple resting side by side on their too-small bed. The husband’s hand lifts damp strands of white hair from his wife’s burning forehead. In sickness and in health. It will never be Donny and me behind some wall; we will not grow old together as we, naïvely, once believed.
Split-Level Page 24
