The Queen and I

by Russell Andresen

  Even now, as he wandered through its empty rooms, he knew for a fact that he was not alone; he could sense the eyes watching him, could hear the footsteps fall in behind him, and if he listened closely enough, he could hear the soft humming of Shall We Dance?

  The presence that insisted on staying in this house even after Richard had pleaded and threatened with spiritual intervention was the ultimate winner and would soon have a new fool to torment and to grace with his own special kind of perverse haunting. Fortunately for the ghost, the new owner was apparently some kind of playwright, so they would obviously have something to talk about.

  He locked the door behind himself as he left for the last time and left the key in the mailbox as he said he would do. He took one last look at the house on the lake and at the second floor where his bedroom had once been and saw that the windows had been fogged over. Inscribed in the steamy film were the words, Good night, sweet prince.

  Chapter Ten: The Phone Is Not Ringing

  There was still time to be put to good use before Jeffrey vanished to his self-imposed exile in little Zion, New York. He had former colleagues to contact, actors to speak to, and the all-important task of telling Rachel that he had purchased the house to begin with.

  He had avoided this conversation because he knew what her reaction would be—that he was a coward and that he was running away instead of facing the problem head on. Rachel was a very driven person, much more so than Jeffrey, and she was the typical type-A personality who bowed to no one and made you understand exactly what a mistake it was to cross her. The mere mention of Jeffrey fleeing the city to clear his mind and get back to work would appear to her as nothing more than another attempt of his to avoid confrontation at all costs.

  Rachel would most likely insist that he continue to make phone calls and to continue his work here in the city where he was both in the middle of the action and close enough to her for her to keep both eyes on him.

  What she didn’t realize yet, because they hadn’t spoken in a couple of days, was that Jeffrey had already made those phone calls, some of them repeatedly, and the fact was that the phone simply was not ringing. No matter how he sounded when he left the message, no matter how he went about seeing to its delivery, the phone was not ringing.

  He was a pariah in the Broadway community, a cancer to be avoided. Schultz and his friends had been very thorough in their systematic dissection of his career and life. They had thought of everything, and there seemed to be little that Jeffrey could do to fight it except get back to work. In order for him to get back to work, he needed to be as far away from this mishegas as possible.

  He laughed to himself. Why was it whenever he faced dire situations or complicated social interactions that he always turned to speaking Yiddish to himself?

  Perhaps it was because it was a soothing language to think about; it always seemed to have the right word for the right situation. Maybe it was because the way the language rolled off of the tongue it made the message sound harsher than it really was. Or perhaps it was because it was the language that his grandmother, or bubbe, had used, and as she said, there was not a situation in the world that could not be explained with a single word in Yiddish.

  His bubbe was a remarkable woman. She was a survivor of the Holocaust and a woman who had every right to be bitter toward society; but instead, she faced every situation as just another hiccup that life threw at you and always dismissed the big problems, as well as the small, with a clever word or phrase in Yiddish that made the problem go away. Jeffrey wondered what she would say about what he was going through right now.

  Nisht geferlich. That’s what she would probably say; I’ve seen worse. That is how his bubbe would easily sum up his current situation, and she would be right. Being a survivor of Nazi atrocities, she had indeed seen worse.

  He knew that he would have to get in touch with her before he left the city; she was the one person he never wanted to anger, and thought about how protective she had always been of him since he was her only grandchild. He owed her a phone call and knew that at least she would call back.

  He got her answering machine; “Hello, this is Zelda Rothstein, I’m not going to tell you where I am because it’s none of your business, so leave a message, and I will call you back if I like you.”

  That was his bubbe all right, straight and to the point. He sometimes wondered if she knew how charming she was in her old-world ways, or if maybe she was putting on a show to hide the pain that she had experienced in her lifetime; perhaps she was just getting old and had learned a long time ago that people by nature were farcockt, and the less time you spent worrying about them, the happier you wound up being.

  He decided that after he packed a few more of his things, he would head over to Brooklyn to drop in on her before going to see Rachel.

  He came across a few finished plays while going through his personal effects that he had forgotten about due to the sheer volume of what he had written, and decided that he would also send them off to a couple of backers, in the event that he could still sell one of them and supplement his income while in exile.

  Life was moving a bit too fast in ways that he could not control for his liking, and he desperately needed to find a way to slow things down. The sooner he could feel as if he were in control of his situation, the happier he would be, and then he would be the one in position to dictate terms of what would happen next in this little game of chess that he was playing.

  Jeffrey loved returning to Brooklyn to see his bubbe; there was something about the borough of his birth that always made him feel welcomed and at home in a way that no other place on earth could. He suspected that his bubbe was screening her calls again, so he took the chance and grabbed a cab to bring him to her Borough Park neighborhood.

  Borough Park was one of the last true enclaves of Jewish life in Brooklyn, and the majority of the Jews who lived there were very religious, but Jeffrey’s bubbe, Zelda, was not. Yes, she went to temple every Saturday, and yes, she observed the Sabbath, but she wasn’t much for standing on ceremony, and she certainly was not about to wear a shadel, or wig, for anyone.

  Her house was a quaint little two story that looked much the same as the other homes on her block, and the residents of her little corner of the world had known each other for decades and were as tightly knit as any family of blood relations. They also practiced the very same idiosyncrasies that were not uncommon to both actual family and the Jewish people; gossip flowed freer than water in her neck of the woods, and nobody was exempt from it. Just by showing up to her home unannounced, he knew, by the end of the day, the entire neighborhood would be commenting on the various possible reasons for his visit, as well as the reports that have been circulating about him in the papers.

  He rang the doorbell and waited. He knew that she was home because the string was not in the doorpost. His bubbe was slightly paranoid due to her childhood and made a habit of leaving a small black string in the door whenever she went out, so that if someone broke in through the front door while she was away, she would know that someone was possibly still in her house. “I’m not going to let some sex fiend have his way with me,” she said.

  He rang the bell again and now heard her coming to the door, yelling, “I have my own religion!”

  “Open the door, Bubbe. It’s Jeffrey.”

  The door opened and Jeffrey’s ninety-year-old grandmother stood in front of him, all five and a half feet of wrinkles and smile, wearing a housecoat, and holding a glass of prune juice spiked with vodka.

  “Oy, Mr. Big Time Broadway man comes all the way to Brooklyn to see his bubbe,” she said to no one in particular as she licked her parched lips before asking for her hello kiss. “Come in, bubbeleh.”

  He followed her into the house, and the smell of stewed meat hit him immediately. It was as if his grandmother always had one cut or another stewing away in an aromatic broth of vegetables and raisins. The smell was always intoxicating and made Jeffrey feel bad that he didn’t
visit more often.

  His parents had moved to Europe about fifteen years earlier because his father was offered a curator job at the US Embassy in Prague, and Bubbe had refused to go with them, even though she had been invited. “The Germans had their chance,” she said. “No way I’m giving them another shot.”

  “So, what brings you all the way to Brooklyn?” she asked, looking for someone else as she asked the question.

  “She didn’t come with me, Bubbe.”

  “Who didn’t come with you?”

  “You know who. Rachel. She did not come with me; she doesn’t even know that I’m here.”

  His bubbe smiled, shook her head, and muttered under her breath, “He has to sneak around so the golem doesn’t know where he is.” She chuckled softly. “You would have been an interesting man, if the moyel hadn’t taken offtoo much.”

  Bubbe loved to break his chops over Rachel. The two of them had met at a Shabbas about two years earlier, and Bubbe had immediately taken a dislike to his girlfriend. Part of the reason was that she caught Rachel on her cell phone in the backyard during the Sabbath, and that was a major no-no, especially in an ultra-religious neighborhood like Borough Park where the streets have eyes. When she asked for an apology, Rachel thought the old woman was being ridiculous, and the two of them had not spoken since. It didn’t really bother Bubbe at all; she took more pleasure in watching how uncomfortable it made her grandson whenever her name came up.

  “I wanted to let you know that I am going away for a little while and was wondering if you would like to come with me?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Go? Where are you going?”

  “Upstate, near the Finger Lakes.”

  “Why would I want to go live near a finger?” Bubbe asked, slightly confused.

  “That’s just the name of the lakes, Bubbe; they aren’t real fingers.”

  “Why are you in such a hurry to leave? Is it that goniff girlfriend of yours?”

  Jeffrey had almost forgotten about that. Bubbe had accused Rachel of stealing a single spoon from her silverware set, hence the nickname goniff, or thief.

  “It has nothing to do with Rachel, Bubbe. I’m having some problems with work, and I just need to get away for a little while.”

  Bubbe shook her head disapprovingly and said, “It’s those horrible, disrespectful plays that you write for the goyim. The Gentiles have never appreciated the hard work we Jews do for them, but they have no problem blaming us for everything when something goes wrong.” Not this argument again. One of the great pleasures that Jews, especially older Jews, took out of life was playing the tortured soul card, and Bubbe had been a member since the day she was born. She had her reasons, of course, watching your family get hunted down by the Nazis had that kind of effect on you, but she played the card more often the older she got.

  “I’m not being blamed for anything. I just feel that I could get more work done if I left town for a little while, and I hate the thought of you being here all by yourself.”

  “What by myself? I have friends.”

  Jeffrey stood and said exasperatedly, “Not that crazy Zena Glassman woman.”

  “Zena is not crazy. She is just an old woman with a schmuck for a grandson.” She smiled at Jeffrey, “We have a lot in common.”

  Zena Glassman was an eccentric old woman who lived in Marine Park, who had become friends with Bubbe years ago. In all the years Jeffrey had known her through Bubbe, she had never changed, never aged a day. And her grandson, Izzy was it? He was a nice enough guy, but a bit neurotic. Let’s face it, the man was about Jeffrey’s age and was still living with his grandmother and mother in the same house.

  “Will you at least think about it?” Jeffrey pleaded.

  “Think, think, yes I’ll think. Always thinking with this one,” Bubbe said as she took another sip of her drink. “Are you eating?” she asked.

  Jeffrey smiled and knew that this was bubbe’s way of ending the conversation and changing it in the direction she wanted it to go. “I could eat some of that stew,” he answered.

  “Come, you look terrible,” she said as she led him to the kitchen. This was what the old woman lived for, feeding her beloved grandson. Jeffrey would make arrangements for someone to drop in and check on her a couple of times a week. Maybe before he went back to Manhattan he would stop by Marine Park and ask Mrs. Glassman if she would mind.

  Chapter Eleven: Thinking for Two

  Jeffrey arrived at Rachel’s Tribeca apartment and let himself in; he knew that she was not home yet and didn’t feel like waiting until later in the evening for her to come to him, so he decided that waiting for her was the optimal way of going about reaching her.

  He called and left a message and then texted her so that she knew he was waiting and made himself comfortable. It was not hard in her apartment. She was a very neat person and was not much of a collector or hoarder of any unnecessary items. Her home was almost what you would expect from a minimalist and not a vibrant, thirty-year-old woman. She didn’t even have many pictures strewn about the place; one of her parents, who were both dead, and one of her and Jeffrey at a premier, that’s all that she would allow herself to be sentimental over.

  Rachel had fashioned her life in a way that even the most power-hungry women in the workforce would probably see as a bit harsh. She allowed no time for friends, did not cry at movies, and thought that pets of any kind were a nuisance that could be lived without. Jeffrey had once bought her a Siamese fighting fish and she promptly forgot that she had it and it wound up starving to death.

  Her qualities were not those of a woman Jeffrey had ever thought he would fall in love with, but it was her strength and conviction that was so sexy and appealing to him that he found himself almost craving her company whenever they were apart. She provided the strength for both of them in this relationship, and he credited her privately for much of his more recent successes, as it was Rachel who often was the driving force keeping him working when he felt burned out and had lost the will to write.

  Now his problem was not that he had lost his will, it was that the will had lost him. Try as he may, there simply was no flow of ideas or creative thought coursing through his veins. He was as devoid of an original idea as in any time in his life, and it was scary. He felt as if things were beginning to turn for him with the thoughts of revenge dancing around in his mind, but there were no real concrete ideas that he could work with yet and that was beyond disturbing. Usually at this point in the creative process, he would have already been burning the midnight oil and ignoring both sleep and sustenance in favor of writing, but the only thing that interested him right now was getting out of the city and to the little town of Zion where his newly purchased home was.

  He watched television as he waited and texted her again to let her know that he was still waiting. She finally got back to him and said that she was on her way and that he should order Chinese take-out. He wasn’t planning on spending that much time there tonight, but also did not want her to become suspicious about the real reason why he was leaving.

  Jeffrey knew that he was being completely honest with himself when he said that he was going upstate to write and get some privacy, but there was the little voice of negativity in his head who was calling him a failure and a coward and that he was only running from his problems. There may have been some truth behind those words that came from his subconscious, but he chose to ignore them—or at least tried to.

  Another option was that he could invite her to come with him, and the two of them could live together as Zion’s first official power couple. That was a reach, but he thought he might give it a try.

  He ordered the food, and Rachel arrived home a couple of minutes later. She looked beautiful as always, those dazzling green eyes of hers shining brilliantly from behind the glasses that she wore whenever she had a meeting or an interview to conduct. She believed that they made her appear more intimidating; Jeffrey thought that they made her look sexy. She was one of the few women he had ev
er seen who could make the pantsuit look attractive, and he often joked with her that she should give Hillary Clinton some pointers, but Rachel would just laugh and say, “I’m good; I’m not that good.”

  She changed out of her work clothes in front of him, and he marveled at the form of her. She was truly the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and what was more, she was truly only interested in him. She was flirted with at every turn in her daily life and shot down advance after advance from these would-be suitors, telling them that she preferred a real man. When asked what a real man looked like, she would point at Jeffrey and say, “The brilliant one over there.”

  Walking over to him in a pair of sweatpants and a New York Mets t-shirt, she sat down, and he poured her a glass of wine. She stretched out her legs over his lap, and he gently massaged her feet as she sipped happily away at her glass of pinot grigio.

  “So, what’s up?” she asked. “I thought I was coming to your place tonight?”

  Jeffrey smiled and said, “I was in Brooklyn and …”

  “Oy vey, what did her Führer have to say about me this time?”

  Rachel called Zelda that from time to time, even though Jeffrey had asked her not to considering his grandmother’s history, but as long as she never said it to Bubbe’s face, he let it slide in private.

  “She actually asked how you were doing and wanted to know why you didn’t come with me,” he lied.

  “Ha! You’re such a bad liar.”

  “Seriously, she wanted to know, so this way you could bring the spoon.”

  “I didn’t take her fucking spoon!” she snapped, not getting the joke. Jeffrey laughed at her reaction. “You bastard,” she said and hit him with a pillow.

  He continued with the foot massage and sat in silence for a bit. This was one of the things that he loved about her; they were able to be in a room together and not feel the need to say anything, they could just be and that was fine with both of them. Finally, he turned to her and said, “I bought a house.”