The Marble Quilt

by David Leavitt

  “Actually, I don’t drink tea. Could I have a Diet Coke?”

  “Of course. If I have any. I’ll check. Otherwise it may have to be normal Coke.”

  “That’s fine.” Audrey was opening her backpack, arranging notebooks and binders and spreadsheets on the coffee table.

  “Georgie’s a stockbroker,” Rose called from the kitchen. “He lives in New York. Oh good, here’s some Coke. Anyway, he worries about me—too much, if you want my opinion. That’s why he got me Dinah. At first I wasn’t too happy about it, let me tell you. I mean, I’ve raised three boys, the last thing I needed was something else to take care of. But since then, Dinah and I, we’ve gotten to be good friends. And I must say, it’s nice having something to shout at again!”

  “My mother has a Rottweiler,” Audrey said.

  “Does she now?”

  “For protection. I always say to her, Mom, with all those alarms and window grates, you’ve got nothing to worry about, you could be living in Fort Knox. Still, she says she can’t sleep at night. So she bought this, like, killer dog.”

  Rose, popping open the Coke can, nodded gravely; sat across from her niece. “Cucumber sandwich?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Cookie?”

  Audrey was studying a spreadsheet. “Maybe later.” She looked her aunt in the eye. “Well, Rose—do you mind if I just call you Rose?”

  “You have to ask? We’re family.”

  “Okay. So, Rose, like I told you, for my master’s thesis I’m doing a medical history of the whole family, looking at which illnesses crop up most commonly, environmental factors, genetic predispositions—that sort of thing.”

  “What a wonderful idea. Your mother must be very proud of you.”

  “She’s too out of it to be proud of anything I do … but never mind.” Audrey opened her pen. “To begin with, I’d like to get the basic data on your branch of the family—you know, dates of birth, places of birth, that sort of thing.”

  “I got it all ready for you.” Rose pushed the manila folder in Audrey’s direction.

  “And the full names of your children—let me make sure I have these right. George Robert, born July 7, 1954—”

  “He’s my oldest. Not married yet, but we’re still hoping.”

  “Then Daniel Jeremy, born October 20, 1957.”

  “He’s back in New Jersey. Tenafly. Teaches high school English. Got divorced last year, I’m still sorry about it, she was a lovely girl—”

  “And finally Kevin Leon, born February 14, 1960.”

  “The baby of the family. They just moved to Singapore. The company sends him all over the place. First Germany, then France, and now—”

  “And he’s got kids, right?”

  “That’s right. His wife is Denyse—with a Y, not an I. The little ones are adorable. David Bernard and Sarah Rose. Would you like to see pictures? I’ve got pictures.”

  “That’s O.K. And all the documents are in here?” Audrey pointed to the manila folder.

  “All there.”

  “May I take these with me and make photocopies? I’ll bring them back, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  She scribbled. “So when did you move down to Florida?”

  “It must have been … 1970? Could it have been 1970? Hard to believe, the time’s gone by so fast. It’s funny, most people assume that just because I’m an old lady, I must have retired here, but the fact is, we raised our kids in this house. Our boys all went to high school in West Palm.”

  “And Minna?”

  “Oh, Minna was already here. Minna retired … it must have been sixty-five, sixty-six. She’s been retired longer than you’ve been alive! But if you don’t mind my asking, what have you found out so far? Anything about migraines? All my boys get terrible migraines.”

  “My data is really too preliminary to share. But I have prepared a survey”—she pushed some more sheets across the table—“which I wonder if you might fill out. Also your sons.”

  “And Minna?”

  “Well, if she’s—you know—clearheaded enough.”

  “Minna?” Rose laughed. “She’s sharper than any of us. Oh, maybe she can’t get around as easily as she used to, but she still drives, and she’s got a mind like a steel trap. We should all be in such good shape at her age!”

  “Good, then maybe you could give her a copy.”

  “But why don’t you go see her yourself while you’re here? She’s just a little ways down the coast. And I’ll tell you, it would make her day. She loves all the nieces and nephews, keeps up to date on all of you, I suppose because she never had children of her own.”

  Audrey coughed. Over her folder, she gave Rose a look of—what to call it? Curiosity? Pity? Some hybrid of the two?

  “Yes, well, that was something else I wanted to talk to you about. I meant to wait until later, but since you’ve brought it up—”

  “What, dear?”

  “According to your birth certificate, you were born August 11, 1920, is that right?”

  “That’s right. A Leo.”

  “In Cape May, New Jersey.”

  Rose nodded. “You see, Momma wasn’t feeling well that summer, and it was so hot that Poppa decided to send her away from Newark, so she went to stay at a hotel in Cape May. Minna went too—to take care of her.”

  “And when was Minna born?”

  “When would that have been? 1902, 1903? 1902, I guess. Funny, isn’t it, that of all eleven kids, only the two of us are left? Oldest and youngest. Like bookends.”

  Audrey pulled a stack of photocopies out of her briefcase. “Last year, I went to the hall of records in Newark,” she said, “to see when all of you were born. And then, when I couldn’t find your birth certificate, I asked my mother, and she told me about your being born in Cape May. So I went down to Cape May. It took me a while, but I tracked down the information.”

  “But, darling, you didn’t have to go all the way to Cape May! You could have just called me!”

  “Yes, I know. But I had another reason.” She pointed at the photocopies.

  “And what was that?”

  “I’d better explain. As I’m sure you know, my grandmother was a major pack rat.”

  “Boy, do I. Harriet never threw anything away.”

  “Well, after the house was sold—your parents’ house—she was the one who took charge of packing it up, on account of being the closest to home, and what was in the attic she just basically moved to her own attic. All those trunks and boxes, which no one ever opened. For years. My grandfather used to gripe about it, every now and then he’d threaten to burn it all, or have a sale, but Grandma wouldn’t hear of it. And I suppose she had her reasons, because what Grandpa saw as just a fire hazard turned out to be a treasure trove for me, for my study. I mean, when I started going through those trunks last summer, I found everything: every doctor’s bill, every dentist’s bill, every medical record. Your high school grades. Your mother even made notes of all your illnesses, in a big black ledger. One for every year from when Minna was born until Grandma died.”

  “Momma was very meticulous.”

  “But here’s the thing—that summer, the summer of 1920, there’s just nothing.”

  “Well, as I said, she was in Cape May. And it was a hard pregnancy. She had to be in bed for most of it.”

  “And Minna went with her?”

  “To take care of her. Poppa could only get away from the shop on weekends. You can ask her yourself when you see her, she remembers everything—the name of the hotel, what their room number was.”

  Audrey picked up the photocopies and started shuffling through them. “Have you ever seen these?” she asked, handing them to Rose.

  “What are they?” Rose put on her reading glasses, which hung from a rope around her neck. “Let me see … Oh, doctor’s bills.”

  “Dr. Homer M. Hayes, Cape May, New Jersey. An obstetrician.”

  “Oh, so this must have been the doctor that Momma saw w
hen she was pregnant with me.”

  “But look at the top. Under patient’s name, it doesn’t say Effie Miller. It says Minna Miller. And not only on one—on all of them.”

  “Oh, it does, doesn’t it?” Rose’s hands fluttered, so that the papers made a slight noise, like birds passing overhead.

  “There are bills here for ten different visits. All related to a pregnancy. And on every one of them the name is Minna Miller.” Audrey leaned in closer, across the undrunk Coke and the Peek Freans. “Do you see?” she asked. “Do you understand why I had to talk to you?”

  Rose played with her wedding ring. Glancing at one of the cucumber sandwiches, she observed that a little mayonnaise was dripping over the edges of the thin-sliced bread. She picked up the tea tray and carried it toward the kitchen.

  “What’s the matter?” Audrey asked, almost hungrily.

  “It’s nothing, dear,” Rose said. “I think I hear Dinah, that’s all. I think Dinah is crying to come in.”

  Once, in her youth, Rose had been thought a wild driver. Oh, how her mother had wailed whenever she’d gone off in her little roadster, in those years when it was considered shocking for a girl even to have a license! To Rose’s mother driving was, quite simply, unladylike, the sort of thing you would have expected of Harriet. “But you let Minna drive!” Rose had countered.

  “It’s different in Minna’s case,” her mother had said. “Minna needs to drive to go to work.” For Minna was an elementary school teacher, and the school at which she taught was out in the country, near New Vernon.

  Fifty-some years later, Rose still drove—slowly. It was not that she was any less bold; rather, it seemed that the velocity of the world had increased while her own pace stayed the same, leaving her the object of impatient tailgating on the part of young women in station wagons: young women with children in the back seat, as she had had children in the back seat, not so long ago.

  With Minna the problem was worse. She was always losing her car in the parking lot at Publix. That afternoon, just after Audrey left, she called Rose, and said, “I can’t think where I’ve left it. I’ve been up and down every row. I can’t think—”

  “But, darling,” Rose had said, “didn’t you tie something to the antenna, like I told you the last time?”

  “Yes I did. Only isn’t that the joke? For the life of me I can’t remember what.”

  “Dinah, no! Bad girl!” Rose hit the window, which shuddered. “Listen, Minna, don’t worry. Just sit yourself down in the air-conditioning, and I’ll be there in a jiff.”

  “As soon as you can. Otherwise the ice cream will melt. Oh, and Rose”—here Minna’s voice grew soft, even coy—“I promise it will never happen again.”

  They hung up. Rose went into the garage. Really, Minna was getting to be a bit of a trial these days. When Rose was a girl, and Harriet had said something cruel to her, Minna always sat her in front of the mirror, brushed out her hair, and counseled, “This too shall pass.” And usually Minna was right: the wrong did pass, though Rose never came to understand why Harriet hated her so much. Now she wondered if that hatred had passed through the generations, like the hook of the nose or of the lip, to Audrey. Audrey, like her grandmother, was clearly not the kind ever to let go of a grudge. Instead she would build a citadel from the wrongs that had been done her, and gain what sustenance she could from leeching other people’s woes.

  Who was the father, anyway? “My father,” Rose said to herself, climbing into the Cadillac and lighting a cigarette. For she couldn’t remember Minna ever having had even a single boyfriend. She was the schoolteacher, the caregiver. And yet there must have been someone. Somewhere along the line, someone whose name was never mentioned, yet who had a name, a family with its own meshugaas, its own medical history to be charted by some enterprising niece. And where was that family? Was it big, with even more nieces and nephews for Rose to confuse? (Remembering that you could get a ticket for not wearing one, she put on her seat belt.) God, it was hot … Stupid to have stuck it out in south Florida for the summer, when in the old days she and Burt had always gotten away in August, gone north to the Cape. But Burt was dead, and she had Minna to attend to. Minna, quite simply, could not be left on her own.

  Oh, what a foolish thing to do! And why had they done it? For it must have been a conspiracy. Not that anyone would have ever thought to question them, since as it stood Effie was pregnant all the time anyway, it made sense that she should be pregnant. And Minna … who would have ever guessed it of her? Never married. Up until today, Rose had wondered if she had ever even loved.

  She pressed a button. With a creak, the garage door opened, admitting a light so harsh Rose had to squint against it. Where were her sunglasses? In her bag? She rummaged for a moment, found them at last, put them on (the world became pink), then, turning the key, felt the first gusts of hot breeze that presaged the air-conditioning hit her wrists. Lastly she switched on the cassette player—on the highway, Mozart calmed her—and looking over her shoulder, lurched backward, with a great shudder, onto Ixora Avenue.

  Cautiously, even timidly, Rose made her way to the highway. Near a red light, a station wagon bore down on her, its driver, a young woman with children in the back seat, flashing her brights, making a face Rose could see quite plainly in the rearview mirror. Seconds pulsed by, the light changed, and she rose up onto the interstate; her tormentor passed her, disappearing into a haze of motion. Ten miles of blind panic now separated Rose from Minna, ten miles of off-ramps and merging lanes and terrifying low-slung vehicles with oversized tires, windows tinted black, chain metal frames for the license tags. As if edges meant safety, she kept to the slow lane the whole way, sandwiched between a pair of trucks that let off plumes of exhaust but also offered, in their immensity, a measure of protection. Yet she was nothing as compared to Minna, who drove so slowly that she’d actually gotten a ticket for it. Yes, there was a speed limit on the other side too; you could get a ticket for going under it. Really, she had no business being behind a wheel, George said; she was a menace, and not only to herself. Only, who had the heart to stop her, when she valued her independence more than her life? For that was the thing everyone said about Minna: “She loves her independence!” Never asking anything of anybody, until lately.

  Was that the reason, then? Would a child—would Rose—have compromised her beloved independence?

  At last the turnoff neared. Where Minna lived was a world of old people. All the businesses catered to them. Clever entrepreneurs traded in urban nostalgia, peddling bagels with a schmear, take-out Chinese food spiced down to suit elderly stomachs. It always made Rose a little uneasy, coming here. After all, unlike her sister, she had moved to Florida as a vital woman of middle age. She had raised her boys in a nice neighborhood with frangipani and banyan trees, street games after school, and on Halloween so many trick-or-treaters they ended up having to give away the hard candy moldering on the piano.

  Minna, on the other hand, had arrived already old. For three decades she’d been living in her one-bedroom apartment with its view of the Intracoastal, in a squat, modest building which had once shared the waterfront with no one, but over which, every year, more gleaming towers crouched, throwing shadows onto the patio, stealing the sun.

  It was George’s sensible opinion that Minna couldn’t go on like this much longer. She could barely get herself dressed anymore. A nice old folks’ home, he counseled, or one of those places where they think they’re on their own, but there are nurses. And yet why was it that whenever George talked about putting Minna away, within seconds he invariably brought the conversation around to what he called Rose’s own “situation”? “Why not sell the house?” he’d ask. “Now that you’re on your own, it must be an awful lot to keep up with. Buy yourself a little condo instead.”

  The exit snuck up on her, as it always did. Alarmed by its sudden appearance, she cut across three lanes of traffic, enraging a truck, which honked and startled her. Off the highway a red light gave he
r a moment to collect her thoughts. Back when she and Burt had first moved here, farmland had shouldered the interstate on both sides. But now everywhere she looked there were warehouses, and warehousey strip malls, and supermarkets, including the Publix where Minna had lost the car. From where she waited, Rose surveyed its parking lot, stretching all the way to the cyclone fence that blocked off the highway.

  Finally the light changed. She turned right, pulled up to the curb in front of the market, and, leaving the engine running, hurried through the doors to find Minna. There she sat, slumped on a bench by the telephone. Her white hair fell over her forehead in a wave. She was wearing a striped jersey and stretch blue jeans. Even though she was asleep, one of her hands lolled protectively over the handle of a cart brimming with groceries. And what on earth made her think she needed all that stuff? It would only go to waste.

  “Darling, I’m here,” Rose said, patting Minna’s shoulder, at which point Minna’s eyes opened.

  “Oh, Rose! I must have dropped off.” She hoisted herself to her feet; made to take hold of the grocery cart.

  “No, I’ll get it,” Rose said, and pushed her away with a gesture so violent that Minna’s hands flew instinctively to her face.

  “Darling, what a relief it is to see you,” Minna said, once they were safe in Rose’s car. “You can’t imagine how vulnerable I felt, sitting there by myself, with all that food. People stared.”

  “It’s all right, I’m here now.”

  “A man stared … a long time. I was afraid.”

  “Only I do think that in the future you might consider asking Mrs. Lopez—”

  “And then I thought, what would I have done if you hadn’t been home? Sat here until the market closed, or you came back?”

  “Nonsense, you would have called Mrs. Lopez and she would have fetched you.”

  “But her car’s in the shop. She takes the bus.”

  “Well then, I’m sure the police would have helped.” (In fact, if George had had his way, she wouldn’t have rescued Minna at all. Instead she would have left her to stew in her own juices, learn her lesson the hard way.) “Anyway, now we need to concentrate on finding your car. Where do you think you left it?”