The Ghost of Hannah Mendes

by Naomi Ragen

  “Do what?”

  “Travel to Europe to look for the manuscript.”

  “Abuela, I can’t just pick myself up and…First of all, you can hire a dozen scholars to do this for you who know Spanish and Portuguese. Who are at home in the book stacks of old, nasty libraries all over Europe. Besides, if you’re ill, I think I should be here.”

  Catherine hesitated. “I don’t know if I can make you understand. But I feel I’ve let someone, something, down badly. I’ve betrayed some kind of commitment, some trust. I didn’t have much else to do in life, and the little that was my duty, I didn’t do it. I don’t want to hire someone to give me a report, the way I hired maids to polish and dust my heirloom silver. Before I die, I want to understand where it is I come from, and what it’s all meant. It’s really a family matter, and not some archaeological dig. You’re my family.” She shrugged. “I’m asking you to help me.”

  Suzanne looked at her blankly, flustered. The whole thing was ridiculous: traipsing around Europe in the hopes of finding a few more pages of a manuscript that had been missing for hundreds of years. Trying to find motivations for a long-dead ancestor by cruising along the Grand Canal, or walking through the streets of London. How could you ever really know anybody’s motives, even your best friend’s, let alone someone who lived hundreds of years ago?

  “I just don’t know, Gran…”

  “Listen, Suzanne. I haven’t made up my will yet. Remember that!”

  “Gran!” She was absolutely shocked. She looked across at her grandmother, watching against her will the light flash off the two large diamond rings she wore on either hand. She thought of the apartment on Fifth, of the stone country house in Connecticut, of the rare antiques and books, with a horrified and almost helpless fascination.

  What the rape-crisis center, the ecology groups she belonged to, could do with funds like that! So much could be accomplished.

  And then, quite unbidden, some other images came to her. Leisurely strolls through museums, libraries, and galleries. Good hotel rooms, fine wines. And maybe…(Her mind flashed the image of Renaldo, leaning on the railing of the bridge spanning the Grand Canal.) A trip to Europe. All expenses paid.

  Blushing pink with shame and excitement, Suzanne looked into her grandmother’s eyes. She looked all right. Maybe the doctors were just being alarmist. And if this would really make her feel better, if this was really what she wanted…

  “Look, this is just theoretical, okay? But let’s just say for a minute I agreed to all of this craziness. Then where would I need to go, and how soon?” she asked, smiling with more accommodating sweetness than Catherine had ever dreamed possible.

  6

  It was Vivaldi’s Mandolin Concerto, Francesca Abraham realized as the radio alarm went off. Lively, unrelentingly upbeat, it was probably the perfect tempo in which to start the day. Covering her head with a pillow, she reached out blindly and urgently, desperate to shut the damn thing off.

  Five more minutes, she negotiated with herself. Or maybe ten. Why was sleep such a delicious treat this time of morning and such a boring burden when she turned in at night?

  Fifteen minutes later, she dragged her petite, shapely legs over the side of the bed and stood up. Her eyes felt heavy and her head spun as she crossed the floor. Mind over matter, she thought wearily, slapping on wrist and ankle weights and feeding a cassette into the recorder. It was a fifteen-day program guaranteed to reduce her thighs and firm her buttocks.

  She didn’t stare at Jane; it was too depressing. Instead, she looked at one of her backup girls, a blond Barbie who started like plastic perfection and then slowly began to melt, sweat dripping down her face and making big dark circles under her armpits. Fifteen minutes into the tape, and the girl’s smile was gone, her breath was coming hard, and you could tell she was hating every minute. I love that girl, Francesca thought, her whole body crying out for mercy.

  She was only on the fifth day.

  The shower, set to the merciless massage setting, hit her like biblical punishment. When it was over, she sat on the cold edge of the tub staring at her pink, naked flesh in the full-length mirror. Everything about her proclaimed powerlessness and vulnerability, she thought, discouraged. Petite body, small face, little hands and feet. Like a china doll, her mother’s friends used to exclaim over her, convinced they were paying her a compliment. Even her hair, she thought, running her fingers impatiently through the damp golden brown ringlets that curled romantically around her face. A Botticelli angel, a boy in college once called her, begging her to let it grow. Right! That was all she needed: wild curls cascading down her back like a doomed Shakespearian virgin, or a rock star.

  She squared her slender shoulders, leaning forward. Only her eyes pleased her. Large, brown ovals with flecks of amber and gold around the irises, they dominated her delicate, narrow face, giving it a cool strength. She rubbed the sleep wrinkles on her cheeks and forehead.

  In four years, I’ll be thirty, she thought, rubbing harder.

  She sighed, opening her closet and flipping through the hangers, mourning once again that she lacked the trampoline tautness necessary for the latest fashions. The tight, ass-hugging skirts that looked so chic on Bendel’s window dummies underwent an alarming change the moment she tried them on, becoming indistinguishable from those Lycra creations long favored by Puerto Rican schoolgirls.

  It was the old-fashioned stuff that looked best on her, she knew: the full-skirted girlish dresses, the heart-shaped necklines. No one wore that anymore, except as evening wear. It had been a year since she’d said “Fine” to anything as frivolous as “Why don’t we have dinner?,” and nearly two since she’d broken her engagement to Peter Aronson. Evening wear was not a justified economic expense for Francesca Abraham.

  Peter, she thought, stepping into the gray, pinstriped skirt of a severely tailored suit. He was married now, to a girl she’d known from expensive, horsy summer camps. They’d bought a house in Short Hills, New Jersey. A charming Tudor with a Jacuzzi and a circular driveway, Mom had informed her accusingly. They’d just had a baby, too. A little girl.

  She opened the drapes and pressed her forehead against the cold glass. The gray March sky was flattened against the hundreds of identical windows of her unknown neighbors. Far below, a hint of green winked against the silver branches of winter-shorn trees. She listened to the ceaseless city sound of vehicles conversing. My Rapunzel tower, remote and inaccessible, she thought. And me with short hair.

  She’d made the down payment right after the breakup with Peter, using every cent she owned or could borrow. It was a tiny studio in one of several huge apartment towers near Lincoln Center, a place with a doorman and private, armed security guards who roamed the grounds twenty-four hours a day.

  But it was hers, all five hundred square feet of it. Hers and the bank’s, that was. Homeowner, she congratulated herself, her spirits rising bravely. Maybe it didn’t have a Jacuzzi or a circular driveway, but it also didn’t have Peter Aronson sitting on his butt complaining dinner wasn’t ready, or waiting impatiently for ironed shirts and matched socks to magically appear.

  She tried to imagine Peter’s tall, manly body amid the delicate flower portraits hung with bows, the scented candles, and the gilded cherubs hovering over the doorposts. The vision dwarfed everything she owned, making it all seem make-believe and doll-housey.

  That was the Peter effect, all right. He’d towered over her, an invalidating and overwhelming presence that sucked her in, taking away her separateness, relieving her of all responsibility. At first, she’d been attracted to his wealth and position, but most of all to his suitability. He was the quintessential “catch.” But as time went by, she realized that it wasn’t her he wanted, not really. She was simply raw material—a girl from the “right” family, an heiress, he pointed out to her on more than one occasion, no hint of amusement in his face. He had taken on the task of “redesigning” her, as it were, to fit the lifestyle he planned for himself.

/>   He made her take tennis lessons—even though she had no interest in tennis—and helped her buy the perfect white outfit. He gave her books to read and told her what to think about them. Often, he laughed at her opinions. “Don’t be childish” was his favorite phrase. He was constantly tutoring her on how to behave and what to say in front of his friends. Slowly, but surely, she’d felt herself growing smaller and smaller until she was afraid she’d disappear altogether.

  No one had the right to do that to someone else. She shook her head as if once again reviewing the rightness of her decision. Even if there was some truly superior male out there, whose expertise and knowledge far outweighed her own, the most she would ever agree to do would be to walk by his side.

  Still, a rich, handsome Jewish surgeon, and she’d said “No, thank you” a month before the wedding.

  Her mother and Kenny had been furious, Gran sad. Only Suzanne had partially understood, and then in her own strange way. She’d called him “the ultimate consumer-boomer” to his face and laughed at his pretensions at serving humanity. “How? By performing unnecessary hysterectomies and milking rich patients and the health system?”

  Francesca straightened up her clean, orderly house, then brought in The New York Times. Something else in Bosnia—those horrifying photos of senseless suffering. She turned quickly to the comfort of the stock pages. Nothing morally ambiguous or heart-rending here, she sighed, relieved. Her no-load mutual funds were blooming petunias, well watered; the interest on her money market funds a worm’s crawl upward. High-tech stocks had wilted, though. But that could change.

  She was all right, all right, she comforted herself, feeling suddenly lonely and tearful. I’m the piggy who built the house of bricks. I’ll be safe and you’ll be sorry….

  She took out her thick-leaved day planner, glancing through her packed schedule for the months ahead. Equity. Equilibrium. Calm waters. Days divided into predictable and manageable segments where nothing terrible could happen. My own apartment, my own job, my own investments, my own life. She lifted her chin bravely. And every month the victory renewed itself through the ritual of check signing: mortgage, credit card, utilities, Gran….

  Her grandmother had often offered to forget about the loan. But it seemed downright underhanded to Francesca to have asked for a loan for the down payment and then to renege somehow and turn it into a gift. The fact that family was involved shouldn’t make any difference. Fair was fair.

  Suzanne, of course, disagreed completely. “Not accepting it as a gift is hostile, even aggressive in a way,” she’d argued. “I mean, it’s family, after all, and you’re denying her the joy of giving!”

  Usually, Suzanne was big on the “joy of giving” when it came to strangers. With family, it was the “joy of taking” she was best at. Suzanne never had a problem demanding money from the family for the myriad causes she passionately supported as well as occasional “grants” for herself. But when it came to fulfilling her family obligations, well, that was another story.

  Take the Passover seder, Gran’s pride and joy and the sole annual family event left. Every single year, Suzanne attempted one excuse after another to avoid coming.

  Poor Gran. Getting the family together was like herding cats. Every year, it took more and more of her bullying powers to pull it off. Still, she usually managed it. And then they’d all sit around with the hagadah in their laps (so it would be easier to hide it when the Inquisitors came knocking on the door!) while Great-Uncle Moise droned on in Ladino, Hebrew, and English about foolish, wise, and ignorant sons, the hand of G-d, and the plagues of Egypt.

  But the meal was worth waiting for: roast lamb and prunes; mazzah mojada, buñuelos, and sfongato; brick-red apples, raisins, and almonds mixed with spices and sweet, red wine. And all of it served in la loza Pascual—as Gran called it—the stunning antique porcelain used only seven days each year. And all through the evening, the beautiful silver heirloom wine goblets were expertly replenished with the finest Chardonnays, Reislings, and semi-dry Rosés, in addition to the traditional raki, a liqueur distilled from dried raisins. Except for the unleavened matzoh—that inedible cardboard!—it was always a memorable feast.

  She felt a sudden sense of guilt. Gran had left several messages on her machine asking her out to lunch, and she still hadn’t gotten back to her. It wasn’t right, she scolded herself briefly, glancing at her watch.

  That late!

  She grabbed a doughnut, eating it in little pieces so the calories would leak out; then she stuffed the thick wad of systems specifications into her expensive leather attaché case. She was going to convince those macho clowns that the new currency-trading back-office system had to be based on a PC peer-to-peer network, and not those antediluvian giant mainframes. If it was up to them, they’d still have punch cards safely tied with two rubber bands and paper tape all over the wall! Any new ideas, especially if they were being championed by a woman half their age and weight, were going to be resisted.

  She squared her shoulders, turning on her alarm system, then hurried out the door before it began the Sing Sing wail of breakout that always put the nice old lady in 34E into incipient heart-attack mode.

  The elevator paused on the nineteenth floor to allow two dark-skinned women in white uniforms to enter. One pushed an expensive carriage enthroning a pink-skinned baby boy.

  The baby looked up at Francesca adoringly, his blue eyes sparkling. Francesca adored him back, feeling a sharp pain in her chest that dulled into a familiar ache. It was a pain she knew well; one she had had checked out medically. After a million tests, it came down to this: an irreducible side effect of living the life she’d chosen. A protest, as it were.

  She had learned to ignore it.

  But this morning, it seemed worse than usual, almost like a hysterical cry welling up from her gut; the cry of an unreasonable child in a shopping mall throwing a bloody fit.

  Babies.

  There weren’t going to be any Third World ladies in white uniforms for hers. No, not for hers.

  When the time came.

  When the man came.

  When marriage and home came.

  When her turn came…

  When…she thought, letting the single word dangle, almost feeling his silky hair and tasting the warm, fat curve at the back of his neck. She tapped her bulging briefcase nervously against her thigh. Tick-tock, tick-tock, she thought, wondering if that was supposed to be funny.

  Petite was a problem in the New York rush hour subway crowd. Pushed and jostled as if she were weightless, she felt her arms and shoulders pull apart with the reach toward the overhead strap and the downward pull of her heavy attaché case. But outside, surrounded once again by the straight and logical forms of steel and concrete, her dignity and competence revived. She was part of this powerful machine, she thought, almost proudly, banishing irrational visions of soft, clingy things.

  At the elevator banks of MetroCorp, she signed in at the security desk, smiling at the courteous greetings of the well-groomed guards. Lately, she had been looking them over with unforgivable interest. Of course, it was unthinkable. They were high-school graduates, for Pete’s sake! Some had probably even earned equivalency degrees after volunteering for the military! Still, they were young and attractive. More important, they looked straight and (she scanned for wedding rings) perhaps available?

  A young man in a uniform.

  A young man in a suit.

  A young man.

  Or even, she thought, examining the middle-aged male who entered on the twenty-second floor, a man not so young, with nicely combed hair, an expensive sweater, and no wedding ring. A man who wasn’t too tall…

  She got off the elevator and made her way through the maze of six-foot-high partitions that divided the enormous room into tiny cubicles. As she rounded the corner, she was surprised to see people gathered in small groups, speaking to each other in low whispers.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, full of instinctive dread. It had
to be something bad. Something good would have been louder.

  “Francesca,” Robert Murphy, her supervisor, greeted her somberly, putting a brotherly arm around her shoulder and refusing to look her in the eye. Without another word, he walked swiftly into his office and closed the door behind him.

  She felt her amorphous dread solidify and sink down her windpipe to her knees. She stumbled into her cubicle, dropping her briefcase a little too high off the floor. The resulting thud seemed full of editorial content.

  “It’s not the end of the world, you know,” Gilbert Odessa’s voice intruded on her thoughts. He stood in the doorway. A large security guard stood behind him, holding a cardboard box.

  She looked up, surprised. He looked visibly, humanly distressed.

  In the two years that Gilbert Odessa’s cubicle had adjoined hers, this was the first sentence he’d ever addressed to her that didn’t contain the words bit, byte, chip, or algorithm. She had always considered him simply an extension of his hardware.

  “I mean, it’s not like a serious illness or anything. It’s just a job,” he said, in a tone of voice that reminded her of a small child who’d just found new underwear and socks in his Christmas stocking.