• • •
He was now trying to convince me that there were two perfectly good beds here for us to sleep on. He would call down to housekeeping. Ask them to send up fresh sheets.
“No way. This is a place people go to drink themselves to death.”
“Maybe that’s what I’m here for.” He was backlit against the picture window. I saw a smeary face print on the glass. Or was that from someone’s ass?
“Is this because of Lazar not coming to New York? Is this why you’re so upset?”
He didn’t seem surprised. Maybe he assumed I’d rifle through his apartment for an answer. “I’m depressed. I told you.”
To move us along, I told him I’d wait for him in the lobby. Grudgingly, he said, “If I knew you were going to come down here and start ordering me around, I would have sent a generic postcard.”
“I would have found you anyway,” I said. “You have five minutes.”
There was a grubby bar at the foot of the stairs with no patrons and a man was passed out in the only chair in the lobby, so I stood near the rack of pamphlets and free condoms. A skinny woman, her hair knotted into an orange scarf, was stacking out slices of Wonder Bread and brown spotted bananas for the continental breakfast, although it was past noon. I felt the panic hardening in my stomach at the thought of being alone with him in this dirty, aimless city with so much unsaid between us. I wasn’t sure I had the courage to say it.
The bartender with cracked lips was watching me, hoping to get my eye, and I thought of the little body forming in my uterus. Seven weeks pregnant. I turned away. On the other side of the open door was a lazy, overcast Florida afternoon. People walked by with beat-up shopping bags or transistor radios, singing to themselves. No one seemed well here, me included.
I was starting to worry Rhinehart had escaped through an alley door when I heard and then saw him coming down the stairs, dragging an army-issue duffel behind him. I went over to help. “Damn elevator was broken,” he said, panting. He dropped it in the middle of the floor and turned to the bartender. “Well, Jimmy, the woman here says I need to leave. We’ll have to finish our trivia session another time.” He looked genuinely disappointed.
Jimmy was talking to the drunk man, who had migrated to a stool. He waved at Rhinehart, but his eyes slipped down to my breasts. “Sure, friend.”
“Come on,” I said, pulling on Rhinehart’s arm. He looked as if he wanted to take a seat at the bar.
Out on the hot sidewalk, I hailed a cab, and Rhinehart held his hands up in a lamentation sign, refusing to get in.
“But it’s several miles up!” I said.
“Then we’ll walk until we get tired.”
But I’m pregnant! I thought. But as the younger, healthier, and seemingly more stable person, I was left to my own devices. Together we dragged the bag, scraping along the pavement. He kept stopping at vendor tables, fingering thin silver chains, flipping through obscure beat-up paperbacks, trying to start a conversation with whoever was selling. He refused to look at me, as if I were his parole officer and he wanted to maintain the illusion he was free. The sun had come out, and sweat trickled down under his broad straw hat. A shirtless man, hanging out of a doorway, made kissing noises at me as I passed.
I was praying we weren’t headed in the wrong direction, into some dirty South Beach netherworld far from the bank of hotels. But gradually the area started to improve, and I persuaded him to take a cab up Collins Avenue to our hotel. Everything got better once we entered the white-pillared lobby, the palm ceiling fans creating a gentle breeze—even the air seemed purer here. Our hotel room had large soft beds with down quilts and sliding glass doors that opened onto a balcony overlooking a breathtaking view of the ocean. “Isn’t this great?” I said.
Rhinehart had laid down on top of the covers, his back to me. He had fallen asleep.
I went out for a walk on the beach, staring mournfully into the wind. Alone, fully dressed, I wound around laughing couples sitting out on their towels, drinking cocktails. This was not the place to have a breakdown. But what had I expected, that we’d just reunite as if nothing had happened?
When I returned to the hotel room, Rhinehart was no longer on the bed. The patio door was open, and my breath caught, picturing him sprawled out on the cement six flights down. But he was sitting in a chair with my laptop; he’d already established an Internet connection.
I hovered at his elbow, trying to control the self-pity that was making my voice uneven. “It’s very painful for me to see you like this.”
His shoulders hunched in a sulky way.
“I’m sorry we drifted apart. That I was out so much. But I came all the way down here to find you. I’m trying to make it up to you.”
“Whoever tries to do good is often paid back with suffering.”
I knew this line. He was paraphrasing from a Merwin poem. A stranger helps an injured snake and once the snake is free, he wraps himself around the stranger’s neck, saying he will kill him. As the snake says, that is the law—good deeds are rewarded with bad. They wander around the village looking for examples of this truth.
I said, “That’s bullshit, and you’re confusing the ending. The dog saved the man’s life, and the man rewarded him by giving him a home. Good repaid good.”
He frowned. “That’s a bad read of the poem.” With a few key-taps, he had called it up on his screen. I leaned over his shoulder.
He said, “Look at these last lines. The dog called the man his ‘friend’ and in turn was treated ‘the way a stranger would treat a dog,’ i.e.—like shit.”
I threw my arms around him. “Rudy, please, what difference does it make? Please come home. Please! We can work this out.”
It was like hugging a boulder. He didn’t move his arms. For a minute it seemed as if he were weakening, then he turned towards the sun-glinting ocean. He was looking at the water as if he had dropped something in it that he had no hope of retrieving.
“I’m not sure I’m going back to New York,” he said.
• • •
Four, then five days passed. We cohabitated, but he hardly spoke to me. Mostly he slept. I felt under the mattress for pills, Ambien, Seconol, but found nothing. I’m not sure if that made me feel better or worse.
I spent a lot of time walking on the beach, trying to figure out what to do. Sometimes I brought my camera but I was too distracted to photograph anything. I was tragically lonely, torturing myself with the memory of receiving the news in my gynecologist’s office. How bizarrely happy I’d been to hear it confirmed, as if I’d been trying to get pregnant. So eager to tell Rhinehart. This trip was quickly leaching me of those feelings.
I rented a car and drove to Boca, and became so upset I had to pull over. I called Hallie. “What if he stays like this forever? How am I going to raise a child alone?”
“He’ll pull it together once he knows. You need to tell him.”
I couldn’t bring my fragile secret into this despairing environment. It would burn up on contact.
“The minute he knows, everything changes,” I said. “If his reaction isn’t positive, there’s no way he can ever take that back. Maybe I should go home and wait for him there.” The idea of leaving Rhinehart alone here was frightening. What if he returned to that seedy motel, got a monthly rate?
“Did he tell you to leave?”
“No. He acts as if I’m not here. I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with him. He’s like a man whose entire world has fallen apart. Maybe it’s Lazar? He had so much invested in that relationship, as if he was his only family.”
“Even more reason to tell him. Your news is family.”
• • •
I couldn’t face going back to the hotel and so I wandered up and down Ocean Drive, which was crowded with intimidating groups of people on vacation. After passing by several times, I finally decided on a bar with pink umbrellas and a steel band that I thought might cheer me up. I ordered a Sprite and began a letter to Rhinehart tel
ling him about the baby. That I hoped he would consider being a family with us. He had successfully avoided having children for most of his life, and there could be a reason behind it that I didn’t know. Whenever we discussed babies, we’d always focused on me. But I’d changed. Underneath everything, I was still excited. What if he left me? How many times in my life had we separated? I counted. Six. I’d given him up six times, gone through all the emotions, yet here we were. But now I had a child to look out for. I started crying harder. Screw him—if I had to, I would raise the baby on my own. I finished the letter by extolling his good qualities and feeling slightly manipulative.
When I got in, he was waiting for me. “Where have you been? I was starting to worry.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed. “I was writing you a letter.”
The color left his face. “Please don’t give it to me. I can’t handle any more letters with bad news in them.”
“We’re going to have to discuss it.”
“Let’s have a conversation instead. Tell me what it said.”
But I didn’t want to have to say all this to his face. What I had planned was to deliver the letter and then go down to the beach while he read it, which would give him time to react without me witnessing it.
His eyes were large and forlorn. I reached my hand out, and he took it. “Why are you so against letters all of a sudden?”
He went over to his suitcase and pulled out a stack of yellowed envelopes, the cursive a faded blue, each one clipped to a blindingly white sheet of paper. It took me a moment to realize that these were Rhinehart’s mother’s letters to Ukraine—Lazar had managed to sneak them out after all.
I said, “This was the project Lazar said he’d finished.”
Rhinehart nodded. “I received them a few days before he said he wasn’t coming.” He handed them to me and motioned that I go read them. I wasn’t sure I wanted to, but I took them onto the balcony anyway. They were in chronological order, spanning a little over a year’s time. The letters were addressed to “My darling Yosyp” or “My sunshine,” according to Lazar’s translation, which was more fluid than his email had been. He had worked hard.
In the initial letters, dated over the summer, Rhinehart’s mother was chatty and rather sweet, giving details about their tiny railroad apartment in Greenpoint, the heat in the city that you could actually see rising up from the cement. Summer nights it was too hot to stay indoors and men gathered on the sidewalk to play cards, while the women stayed on the stoop to chat. Many of their neighbors were also Ukrainian, some were Russian, and a Polish woman lived next door, she’d lent them a fan. The apartment had a closet even, which the neighbors had said was a rare thing, and Rhinehart’s mother had borrowed some hangers and made room in it for Yosyp’s clothes. She had even bought him a cloth armchair, secondhand, from a store down the street and was now concerned because she wasn’t sure how much to tip the men who would be bringing it up the stairs the following day. Tipping was very important here, she said. A neighbor, maybe Chechna, watched Rhinehart during the day, while she looked for work in Manhattan. Seamstresses were always needed, she’d heard.
At first Rhinehart was scared of the noise, but now he seemed delighted with all the trucks that came by, especially those delivering gas. There was a firehouse halfway down the block, and the kids would gather there to watch the firemen washing the trucks or going out on calls, the dog jumping on at the last moment. That past evening she’d taken him down to watch, a pair of the firemen’s boots had fallen off the truck as it was pulling out, and Rhinehart had helped throw them back on. He also enjoyed watching the other kids play stickball in the street, although he was too young. He loves to watch everything. Like an owl. They had gone together to the Criterion Theatre in Times Square and both of them had their mouths hanging open. He was picking up English quickly, and soon would surpass her. She was being given lessons from an American woman who lived down the block in exchange for doing the woman’s shopping. The woman had bursitis and it was painful for her to walk.
Over the following months, she wrote to say she now had a job and was working very long shifts, sometimes ten hours, at a factory making ladies dresses in midtown, which she talked about only briefly. For two letters, nothing was said about Yosyp’s prospective arrival, and then all of a sudden she took up the subject with renewed force—We keep your place set at the table every night. “That’s Papa’s chair,” says your son. Why hasn’t the Good Lord seen fit to send you yet! Why haven’t you come!
There was also an element of fantasy creeping in. I assumed, based on Rhinehart’s memories of his childhood, that they had never lived in a doorman building. I’m not even sure there were any in Greenpoint in the mid-1950s. The doorman was mentioned in the same letter as the suitor, a man who insisted on buying Anna a mink stole, which she returned, saying her husband would be angered.
In the next letter, little Rhinehart had caught pneumonia. He was very ill and maybe wouldn’t last long. Then nothing. Two months passed with no correspondence, while Rhinehart languished. From what I could infer, Yosyp had been investigating the illness story during that time with the help of a mutual acquaintance in Brooklyn. Rhinehart had been seen chasing a schoolmate on the playground with his jacket open, apparently in perfect health. Anna’s reply was irate. He was feeling better that day! The doctor said fresh air would be good. And he was not running around. He was sitting, taking in the sun. Your spy is a liar. If you are so concerned then why don’t you come and see him for yourself!
The next paragraph was devoted to determining who the spies were with a list of possible names, fired off, I suspected, in fear, now that she realized much of the content of her prior letters was considered suspect, too. And then this: I told him all about you and what you did, all your lies and promises to come join us. It’s been months! Why should I keep that bad agreement? Marta knows you don’t love her otherwise you never would have found me, you would have stayed at home with your wife. She has family! They can help her raise Lyuba—she is nine now, almost a woman. I have been caring for our baby son alone in a strange country with a strange language for months! While you feed me promises to come! We are alone!
So this was the news Rhinehart had been so anxious to uncover. He was the illegitimate child, not Lyuba.
His child voice, fabricated by his mother, was also indicting: “I never want to see Papa again. All he does is hurt us.” Your own son said that about you. What a lousy, selfish father you are. Even your own son is shamed that he came from you.
I got the sense she regretted that letter. There were several penitent ones afterwards talking about daffodils she’d planted along the southern side of the building, a man down the street selling live chicks and ducks for Easter—the first she’d seen since leaving Ukraine, a ferry ride they’d taken, the kindness of the landlord in not increasing the rent that year, how well Rhinehart was doing in school. She referred to enclosed photographs that had been separated from the batch of letters and perhaps were tangled up with the father’s things, which Lyuba now had possession of. Rhinehart’s father had cut off all communication with Anna, although he continued to send money, which she thanked him for very formally, while pleading that she was “dying of the silence. A word would mean more than this pay.”
Four months passed. Then she began writing to Marta. These letters were not as chatty. Rhinehart’s mother, the mistress, not the dupe, was presenting herself desperately as being in the right. Proclaiming that Yosyp loved her, that Marta was trapping him, forcing him to stay. If Marta really loved him as much as she said, she would let him go to the U.S., where there was much more opportunity for him to make money. Maybe, she reasoned, he would even send many dollars back to Ukraine so that both families could prosper. As far as I could tell, Marta was not replying. But she was opening the letters. These envelopes were split neatly at the top, as if with a letter opener, whereas the father’s had been torn down the side.
The worst one was right arou
nd July 4th, in which Anna began setting up a list of comparisons, something of a structured argument. Yosyp had reported to her that he was often irritated at the way Marta talked with food in her mouth. Especially when she was excited about the story, little chewed pieces would drop out and fall onto her blouse. It revolted him. Made him feel he had married a peasant. He ate less because of it, but with Anna, he always had second and third helpings. She then moved on to sexual terrain, and on to the topic of why Yosyp and Marta were no longer sleeping together: He told me about how you are in bed, you just lie there and stare at the ceiling like a dead deer, so that he loses all his desire. And how you suck in your breath very quick without knowing you do it—it makes him very irritated. And so fat you’ve gotten! He used to touch my thin waist like he couldn’t believe a woman could look like this. He worries that little girl will look like you. Already she is short-legged and big around the middle and shoulders like a farm laborer.
Another woman, a more aggressive one, would have thrown these letters away, or told Rhinehart’s mother to fuck off, or had her husband intervene on her behalf, but Marta had kept them, as if she could learn about a hidden dimension of herself by rereading them. The envelopes had been tied together with a pink ribbon like they’d come from a lover. There was something very wrong about that. The last one was separate from the others and addressed to Yosyp. Inside was a condolence card dated June 1958 when Rhinehart would have been seven years old. I am sorry to hear Marta has died.
I remained sitting in that cushioned patio chair, looking out to the whitecapped sea. I was waiting for Rhinehart to join me. He had been watching me through the sliding glass door until I finished. Minutes later, he came out and sat down. I had been thinking what a mess we can make of our lives, when we’d begun with the purest motives of love, and companionship, and the desire to make another person happy.
He began talking quickly, as if there were some personal offense he needed to smooth over. “It’s hard to tell from the one-way correspondence, but I think he truly loved her once. She was a real dark-haired beauty and a spitfire, too—gave a lot of backtalk, a flirt. From what I could gather, Marta was the opposite. Very shy. One of those who always spoke in a low voice, laughed into her hands. She was my father’s childhood sweetheart. He met my mother after. How carefully she rearranged those facts and then knitted a story around them to give me a sense of legitimacy.”
The Rest of Us: A Novel Page 22
