Every Body has a Story

by Beverly Gologorsky

  “The roughing it,” Stu says, “something invigorating about it.”

  “Oh you mean, man sets up abode for clan, then goes back to his modern house for a shower?” she responds, smiling.

  “Yeah, something like that. We’ve all become so wimpy.” He wears his usual loose smile, though his eyes have lost their mischief.

  “Filled with strange expectations,” she murmurs, a bit giddy from the wine.

  “Something like that,” Stu agrees, and they glance at each other, almost but not quite as they would have before that afternoon.

  “Then again, I do like my comforts,” she admits. “Though I don’t remember thinking about comforts growing up.”

  “We didn’t know what they were,” Zack says.

  “Once you taste caviar, everything else tastes fishy,” Stu declares.

  “Did you ever taste caviar?” Rosie asks.

  “It is very fishy,” Siri tells her earnestly.

  “Live and learn,” Stu says. “Zack, now he’s the guy that led us all here to safety.”

  “Safety? What have you been drinking?” Rosie asks.

  “Wine. And you, girl?”

  “Unfortunately, my mother …”

  “I said you could have a beer.” She notices Rosie’s hand in Siri’s, and notices as well the contentment on Zack’s face, some of it the drink, but the rest his beloved house. Her eyes flit to the vestibule where, not so long ago, coats hung and shoes lined the walls, and wonders if that’s ever to be again. “It’s not our fault, the foreclosure,” she suddenly finds herself saying with an awareness that surprises her. “Losing the house, it’s not our fault. The banks, the money men, the indifferent ones who sign those foreclosure letters, they’re to blame. Not Zack, not me. We tried. They wouldn’t give an inch. And for what, to keep another empty house on the street?”

  “You just realized this?” asks Dory.

  “It didn’t register in the way it does now.”

  Reaching across to squeeze her hand, Zack knocks over a glass of soda. A map of the states spreads bizarrely in the center of the blanket. They all laugh, because who cares? No one tries to do a thing about it, except Zack, who tosses napkins on the spreading wet spot.

  “Guess I’m three sheets to the wind,” Zack adds, apologetically.

  “I’m four,” she says.

  “You can’t be,” Stu amends. “You have to own a sailboat, a real schooner to say that. It can’t apply to us.”

  “We should all go sailing someday,” Rosie announces.

  “On whose boat?” she wonders.

  “Strange picnic,” Dory says softly.

  Lena nudges Casey, sitting beside her. “My love, why so quiet?” But it’s Dory who’s said almost nothing.

  “I like listening.”

  “When you were two or three and Dory and Stu visited, you’d run around the room touching each person, exclaiming, ‘Everyone is here!’ Do you remember doing that?”

  “I was too young.”

  “I remember us taking three-year old Rosie for a night so you two could smooch. And she wouldn’t sleep. She talked the whole night long,” Stu says.

  “I can remember back to the crib,” Rosie asserts and gets a sweet smile from Siri, who seems to enjoy anything she says.

  “Stu, do you remember me calling you on a winter night? We didn’t have Triple-A, and our car had run out of gas on the expressway, baby Rosie strapped in the car seat, Lena outside waving cars past. What a nightmare.”

  “I drove up, poured gas in the machine from a can I was smart enough to carry.”

  “I used to watch the children sleep,” she begins, refreshing her glass, not a clue as to why this memory came to her now. “I believed nothing bad could happen to them as long as I was watching.”

  “Mom, maybe you shouldn’t have more wine.”

  “Rosie, maybe you’re suffering from a role-reversal problem.”

  “Funny, funny.” Her daughter’s tone—thank heavens—is playful.

  “Siri, glad to have you on this picnic,” Zack says.

  “Thank you. It’s good being here.”

  “Yeah, I’ll drink to that,” Stu empties his wine glass.

  “A toast,” Zack lifts his cup.

  “Do we all have to be quiet?” Casey asks.

  “Of course,” Stu says. “The leader of the clan is about to talk.”

  “Okay, shut up, everyone. Dad, go on,” Rosie urges.

  “My friends, in our year of lack of plenty, I am most grateful to …”

  The sirens reach them ahead of the blue and red flashing lights that sweep the windows. The silence in the room is sudden and absolute. Then, as if waking from a trance, Stu and Zack rush out, followed by Rosie and Siri. No doubt the neighbors will soon join them. Dory, too, manages to get up and stands by Casey at the open door.

  She can hear talking, but not what’s being said; no voice is raised, thank god. What if they have to move out tonight? The boxes are still packed. The generator out back, is that a crime? And turning on the water? Are the police going to come in, walk through? Should she go out and plead for extra hours as she did the first time? Eyeing the plates and cups strewn across the blanket, she decides no, what has to be will be. A calmness fills her like the one she felt on first hearing her mother was dead. What she had long expected had happened. Now, too. She never had a doubt it would end this way. Unlike then, though, she has no desire to escape. Not while her family and friends are out in the street, doing whatever they can to make it better.

  A few minutes later they file back in. Casey shuts the door. She searches his face. He wears the same alarmed expression she recognizes. He really thought this would work.

  Zack murmurs, “Some asshole saw the lights, called the police.”

  Rosie announces, “They gave us seventy-two hours to vacate.”

  “Thank Stu,” Dory says. “One of the cops recognized him because he did some free welding at his Staten Island house after Hurricane Sandy.”

  “I didn’t know it was a cop house,” Stu says defensively.

  At the window she watches Stu and Dory drive away in their cars. Stu will drop off Siri at the train station. The children are in their bedrooms. Before turning in, Zack whispered how sorry he was. She assured him his urge to move back was hopeful, not selfish; the best of him, not the worst. It was the right thing to say, even if the past days didn’t need to happen. Then again, maybe they did. Maybe they mattered deeply. Maybe they welded the family back together. The strange picnic around the blanket was a bonding as well as a release of sorts. Something is ending. She knows it now for certain. Not her friendship, not her family; but she can feel it, an interruption, a break, a place marker to separate before and after. What that means, she’ll have to wait to find out.

  Behind her the empty rooms hum with silence. Leaving here for a second time … it’s not the same. The grief of parting already gone through. She eyes the soiled paper plates and cups on the blanket. Tomorrow. She’ll deal with all of it tomorrow. It’s after midnight, the navy-blue sky untouched by stars or moon.

  55.

  The elevated train is crowded with rush-hour riders shuffling for space and balance, trying not to touch one another, such an impossible task. Lena stands, as always, at the window in the train door, watching the passing blur of Bronx buildings. She’s on her way to the nursing home to meet Dory’s charges. It’s how she’ll always think of them, even after Dory leaves and the old ones die and new admissions arrive. She’ll be the best caretaker. She will. She owes that to Dory.

  The packed boxes and suitcases are once again ready to be moved. Stu will pick up the generator after work and turn off the water. It’s finished there for all of them, though she and Zack arranged for Casey to travel to his old school until he completes eighth grade. By the look of relief on his face, it was the right choice. With Siri in her life, Rosie seems to care less about where she lives.

  This evening, she’ll sign a lease for a two-bedroo
m apartment in an old building she checked out yesterday. They’ll move there tomorrow, though no one else in the family has seen it. There’s no time to be picky. It’s on Valentine Avenue, near Fordham Road, not far from where she grew up. Once more the face of sadness, poverty, and god knows what else will greet her every morning as she leaves and every night as she comes home. Such familiar neighbors. The apartment is small, deprived of natural light, but the super promised to paint it, and there’s an eat-in kitchen. She’ll bring back the furniture from storage and cheer up each room. She knows how to make it home. Her family is together. That’s something. And Zack’s ability to believe in miracles will help her navigate the dark moments to come.

  The train stalls before entering the tunnel. She gazes at the cloudless blue sky, a gentle sheet over uneven rooftops. As the train lurches forward, an arm of sunlight reaches across buildings to mask the grayness inside.

  Acknowledgments

  A special note of gratitude to my brilliant friend, Elizabeth Strout, whose wisdom and strength have always been available to me.

  Deep appreciation to those who gave generously of their time and support: Jane Lazarre, my talented first reader-editor and constant dear friend, whose devotion to my work never failed to spur me on; Jocelyn Lieu and Jan Clausen, whose detailed and insightful attention to various chapters were more than helpful. For reading through the novel and sharing their comments, my thanks go to Barbara Schneider, whose loving friendship never wavers, and Liz Gewirtzman, who gave unsparingly of her knowledge. For their caring support of my work and more, my profound thanks to: Vicki Brietbart, Prue Glass, Rina Kleege, Wesley Brown, Ellen Siegel, Pat Walters, and Marsha Taubenhaus.

  For those who have helped in ways too numerous to describe, I thank Dr. Kristin Robie, Denise Campono, Urszula Kopciuch, Peggy Belenoff, Barbara Gould, and Sam and Yudi Wiggins.

  Many thanks to the staff at Haymarket Books and especially Anthony Arnove, Nisha Bolsey, Rory Fanning, Caroline Luft for her incredible copyediting, and Mimi Bark for an amazing cover design; also to Dispatch Books and Tom Engelhardt, extraordinary editor, for his ongoing belief in this project and for being a friend to the end. And, as always, a million thanks to my agent, Melanie Jackson, a national treasure.

  To my family for their neverending love and support, I am grateful to Robert and Sam Trestman, Judi Gologorsky Brand, and Dr. Kenneth Trestman for his help and brilliant counsel.

  As ever with more than gratitude I thank my beloved, late Charlie Wiggins for his devotion, enthusiasm, constancy, and unfailing belief in what I do. And for always being there, I remain forever grateful to Georgina, Dònal, and Maya, the lights of my life, who make it all matter.

  About the Author

  Beverly Gologorsky is the author of the acclaimed novel The Things We Do to Make It Home, a New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Best Fiction Book, and a finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great Writers Award, which the New York Times described as “stunning [and] completely persuasive.” Her work has appeared in anthologies and magazines, including the New York Times, Newsweek, the Nation, and the Los Angeles Times. Former editor of two political journals, Viet-Report and Leviathan, noted for her historical contribution in “Feminists Who Changed America,” Gologorsky’s essays appear in Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides and The Friend Who Got Away: Twenty Women’s True Life Tales of Friendships that Blew Up, Burned Out or Faded Away, among other collections. She lives in New York.