“She thinks she’s needed here.”
Tammy made a gesture that was affectionately dismissive: “She doesn’t understand that everyone has changed.”
“You’ve changed,” said Ross—but it wasn’t true, Tammy was the same only more so: more yearning, more straining upward.
“Of course I’ve changed!” she cried, her voice too straining upward to a higher register. “That’s what it’s all about—his technique,” she explained. “It’s incredibly hard work—he says it’s like drilling through rock, the rock being the calcified self. He’s really helping me, Ross.”
“Why should you need help?”
“Because I’m a terrible person,” said Tammy, a cloud of despair darkening the pure heaven of her face.
“Is that what he’s told you?”
“It’s what he’s shown me. He makes you turn inward, and the horrors you see there! Not only what your own past has deposited but everyone else’s too, all the generations before you—you have to break them down because you’re responsible for them, for what they were and did. We’ll have to get rid of all the furniture, Ross. Because it’s charged with everyone’s bad living; and dying.” She laid her own cool hand on his and whispered, “We’ll both feel better when it’s all gone. You’ll see—it’ll be like everything’s been purged away, exorcised.”
“I don’t know that I’d want to exorcise Grace out of her own apartment.”
“But it’s so different already.” Tammy sniffed the air as Minnie had done. “It’s even got in here—is it oil or incense? You’ll really have to tell her, Ross. We have to clear the place out. His work is so fearfully hard inside that outside he absolutely needs a neutral space.”
However, as news of Ma spread in the neighborhood and beyond, the apartment became more and more crowded. It wasn’t only through the people in the coffee-shop that Ma was getting to be known; those clients brought new clients and those in turn brought others; the doormen too had friends and relatives; and finally a new sort of clientele came from the other inhabitants of the building. This mighty pile, with its Gothic façade, its marble entrance halls, its Boston palms and areca ferns, was chock-full of troubled people. Some of these had inherited their apartments from their grandmothers, others had bought them from other people’s grandmothers, or from heirs who had had to sell to pay the inheritance tax. Their furniture was of the same vintage as Grace’s, their lives too not unlike hers, each with a quota of madness, suicide, even in one instance a hushed-up murder. The most recent owners were the wives of businessmen who had made a lot of money very quickly and were now in jail for financial fraud on so enormous a scale that their sentences ran into decades. At first all these neighbors had complained about the rag-tag jamming up the mahogany-paneled elevators on their way up to Ma; but one by one they became curious, and some of them, and then more, came to see what she would do for them.
All this could not be managed without some organization, and Ross found himself handling that end. He arranged Ma’s timetable and allotted the appointments for special sessions. It was years since he had had a job—he had usually been employed by more successful fellow refugees, whom he had helped over some delicate matter in their accounts; for, though not highly qualified, he was trustworthy. Now again he was in a position of trust as Ma’s right-hand man; he was kept very busy, and of course so was Ma, and there was no time for any private exchange between them.
Tammy too was under pressure, for it was past the date when the Doktor was due to have moved in. Meanwhile the apartment had become transformed into what was almost a public meeting place; people felt free to walk in and out and to stay as long as they liked, and they liked to stay very long. When Tammy came home at night, she had to thread her way through the passage, saying “Excuse me,” very politely to the people blocking her way; she made straight for Ross’s corner room. Instead of asking him, “Have you told her yet?”, she would ask, more of herself than of Ross, “What can I tell him?” for it seemed the Doktor was expecting to move in at any moment.
One day Tammy said, “He’ll say it’s my fault. And he’s right—I’ve let him down and let you down and let Ma down and everyone. It just shows I’m a failed human being—I am, Ross, unfortunately. I can’t do anything right because I’m not right inside myself. I’m very poor material for him to work on.” She gave a wan smile. “I’ve been with him long enough to acquire some self-knowledge. Failing yourself is one thing—but failing him and Sally and the children—his family,” she explained to Ross’s look of inquiry. “Well, of course he has a wife and children—he’s a fully developed man, that’s what makes him what he is. He’s about fifty,” she answered Ross, “but you would never in a million years think it. Sally’s his second wife—I mean, the second one he’s had a ceremony with or whatever—but of course everyone who submits to his guidance is his wife. You know, like the soul and the spouse.” There was a silence. “Anyway,” she continued, “all that’s just technical.”
Ross looked down at the floor, and there was another silence.
“It’s not fair,” she accused him. “When Mother said that about your being her last lover, I never asked is it true or not, so why are you asking me?”
“I’m not asking anything. What am I asking?” He waved his arms around as he did on the rare occasions when he got excited.
“You cared for her like a lover, took care of her, that’s what was important. Is important.”
“Is that what he does for you?”
“Of course he does,” said Tammy, wiping her eyes. “Guiding someone psychologically means taking care of them—caring for them—” In spite of her efforts to brush them away, tears flowed—so many that Ross had to help wipe them away. She leaned against him while she went on: “He has this wonderful gift of being with you even when he’s not—like you think he’s busy with someone else? Like he might be with Minnie or someone for hours and you think you’ve been completely forgotten and then next thing you realize he’s never for a moment stopped thinking about you and knows exactly what’s going on inside you. I can’t stop crying, I feel stupid. I never used to cry, did I, Ross? Not at the worst times so why should I now when the best thing in the world is happening to me?”
Later that night—very late at night—Ross made his way to Ma’s room. He had to step over several bodies asleep in the passage, for some visitors had developed the habit of staying overnight. They slept very peacefully, and the only sound to be heard was the snoring from Ma’s room; and when he reached there and had slipped inside, the sound was so loud that it was like being in the engine room of an ocean liner with everything churning to keep the ship afloat. Ma was on the high mahogany bed between four bedposts; her window and curtains were wide open, spilling in a mixture of moonlight and streetlight, both white. She had fallen straight on the sheet without changing her clothes and lay spread-eagled on that snowy surface, forming a mound that, with each snore, appeared to heave higher to the ceiling. Ross called out, “Hey!” (he still refused to call her Ma, so had no name for her at all) and shook her shoulder till she started up.
He said, “We have to help Tammy.” He explained the situation, but—perhaps she had been too abruptly awakened out of her deep sleep—she only yawned and stretched, so that her sari slipped from her upper body and spilled in a pool of violent, violet silk around her. She seemed terribly to want to go back to sleep.
Ross became more explicit: “She wants you to leave.”
“And you?”
He grimaced: “There’s always a corner for the poor old dog.”
That sounded like a good joke to her and she laughed at it. Her mouth was like an empty cavern but her teeth smiled all by themselves in a glass by her bedside. He began to be very irritated with her.
She said, “Well, I’ll have to find somewhere else.”
“Where would you go? And with all these people?”
“If I go out of this door and into the park and sit on that broken bench you like so
much or under a tree or anywhere I choose, they’ll follow me. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know why.”
“Neither do I. You’re setting up as this wise woman and you don’t understand the most basic situation. You can’t even help one single person.”
“You mean yourself?”
“No, not me,” he said, now more irritated at her obtuseness. “What help could you give me?”
“No, none,” she agreed. “But if Tammy wants me to go, then I’ll have to.”
“I would have thought you’d have some better solution after all your promises. Yes,” he overrode her, “when Minnie sent you packing, that’s what you promised: that you were here to help Tammy.”
“But now Tammy is sending me packing, so what can I do?” She laughed again and then she chucked him under the chin in the most familiar manner. Offended, he turned to leave, with her calling after him: “But why are you angry? It’s I who should be angry that you’ve come into my bedroom in the middle of the night, making people think all sorts of things that should not be.”
But only a few nights later, it was she who came to his room. She entered silently on her bare feet, only her bangles jingling. She climbed nimbly on to the end of his bed, and tucking her feet under her, she said, “So what are you arranging for me? . . . What, nothing? First you tell me to go, then you have nowhere for me to go to—you’re a fine first-class business manager.”
“Business manager,” he repeated: he had never had such a grand title and didn’t think he could live up to it.
“Well, who else has been arranging my business here, and doing it quite well too? I think you have a future.”
“With you?”
“If you care to come with me, certainly.”
He took off his reading glasses; he said, “But where are you going?”
“I’m asking you! I thought you’d have arranged a place by now. That’s why I’ve brought all this: look.” She lifted her sari; a cloth bundle was hidden there, tied to her petticoat string. She unfastened the bundle and shook it out on his blanket: hundreds and hundreds of bank notes of all denominations fluttered down, together with crumpled checks and money orders. “This is for a deposit: you get us a nice place and the rest of the money will come. That’s easy.”
“So you’ve had a fund-raiser.”
“I only said, ‘Children, I need another home where you can all come visit me.’ Everyone gave. Some stood opening doors at the supermarket collecting in a paper cup so as to have something to give. They needed to give—some more than others.” She smoothed out one of the crumpled checks, which was for an astonishing amount: “From the lady upstairs, the one who has all the lawsuits with her son. She needed to give very badly . . . And meanwhile you’ve done nothing.” She clicked her tongue at him but playfully, and playfully she shook his toes under the sheet. When he indignantly withdrew them—“How proud you are,” she pretended to pout. “Here I’ve come to you past all these people looking on and suspecting, now what are those two up to again? And you won’t even let me touch your feet . . . I think you only think of her: Grace. You live with a ghost.”
“You’ve laid her ghost long ago.”
“Then what’s wrong? Don’t you like to be with a living person—even if she is a bit fat and old?” To prevent herself laughing, she sucked in her lips, which disappeared right into the pit of her mouth. She swept her hand over her black, black hair and coquettishly turned her profile. When he laughed, she laughed too, releasing her lips and opening that gaping pit: she looked like a hundred-year-old witch but like a temptress too, gleaming and glittering with oil and silk and gold.
“Oh my God, that smell!” said Minnie as usual, on entering the apartment. She was right: besides everything else, a lot of cooking went on in there now, and volunteers had been taught by Ma herself to deep-fry fritters and breads and onions and spices. Along with hot meals, she was also glad to offer bathing facilities, expounding the benefit of oil massage for body and scalp, so that all the bathrooms were in constant use, including Tammy’s, Ross’s, and what had been Grace’s.
“Listen,” said Minnie, “you’d better get her out of here, but quick.”
“Yes,” Ross agreed. “As soon as we’ve found a suitable place to buy.”
Tammy gazed at him, startled, and so did Minnie, who asked, “You’re looking for a place to buy?” He nodded casually, and narrowing her eyes a bit, Minnie regarded him with more interest than she had ever shown him: “How much are you thinking to spend?”
It turned out that she was looking to sell her apartment, which her lawyer had managed to get for her as part of her divorce settlement. She hardly stayed there nowadays, spending most of her time with the Doktor, and anyway the place held horrible memories for her from her horrible marriage. But when she took Ross there to view it, it didn’t seem as though it could have any memories at all. Even the paintings had been chosen by the designer, who came in regularly to check up that everything was kept as he had arranged it, including the dining table set out according to his specifications, though no one ate there any more. Minnie gave Ross a guided tour, pointing out the French wallpaper, the rugs handmade by inmates of a jail in Kabul, the Tibetan wheel of life over the king-size bed. With regard to this bed—“I cannot tell you what went on there,” she said and went on to tell in detail. “And I thought I was marrying this decent guy who liked girls.” But thank God it was all in the past—a bad dream—and if only she could get this place off her hands, off her mind, out of her life—if only someone would come up with the money . . . It was a lot of money, but Minnie could hardly let it go for less, it was owed to her, after what she had paid for it in suffering.
Ross said he would take it. After another fund-raiser, he was able to pay for it in cash. The lady from upstairs actually sold her ancestral apartment and all its contents to pay for Minnie’s, so that she could move in there with Ma. Ross agreed to buy Minnie’s furniture too—he knew it wouldn’t be in their way, they would all just dispose themselves around it, the way they had done at Tammy’s. Tammy’s furniture meanwhile—the detritus of a hundred years—was appraised, and as soon as Ma moved out, it was carried off to the auction houses. Here it was sold for a very handsome amount (the proceeds went to the Doktor’s movement), for it was from a period much in fashion, and even the cracked mirror fetched a good price. Ross agreed to stay on as caretaker, though his bed and wardrobe had been sold—they were too valuable to leave behind—and he slept in a sleeping-bag Tammy lent him and kept his belongings in his two old suitcases. He was now the only occupant, for Tammy was too busy preparing for the Doktor’s move to have time to come home; anyway, her bed had been sold too.
Workmen moved in—painters, carpenters, plasterers, electricians—to get the place ready for the Doktor. They stripped and purged the apartment into its furthest corners, including Ross’s corner room, sweeping him out along with all the roaches, which had come scuttling out from under cracks and water pipes and broken tiles. Minnie was there to supervise the work. She had changed completely: far from the restless seeker she had been, she was now very busy, efficient, a businesswoman; only her manner had remained the same—alternately effusive and rude, depending on whom she was addressing. Tammy followed behind her; she was supposed to be taking notes but did not do it very well, so that Minnie kept snapping at her. When they reached Ross’s room, Minnie found some fault in the ceiling, and stretching up to point this out to the delinquent plasterer, she stubbed her toe against Ross’s suitcases. She glared at them angrily and asked, “What’s this?” and when Ross acknowledged them, she glared at him: “I guess you’re taking them away today? Tomorrow? When are you moving out?” Ross had bent down to take his possessions out of her way, and by the time he straightened up, she had swept on with her troupe of chastened workers. Tammy stayed behind—she helped Ross with his bags, but when she tried to put them in the closet, he said not to.
She peered into his face: “You’re not really leaving?”
Minnie was irritably calling for Tammy; Tammy called back that she was coming. Stepping closer to Ross, she whispered, “You can’t leave me alone here.”
“Then come with me.”
Tammy sighed; she shook her head: “The work is here now, not with Ma . . . Don’t look like that, Ross. You’ve never met him; you’ve never met anyone like him. I don’t blame you that you don’t believe me—I’d have felt the same had anyone told me what would happen; how he would change me.”
And by now she had changed. Her head, once hopefully raised toward a higher region, now hung from her neck like a flower wilting on its stalk. When Minnie again shouted for her, even more impatiently, she called back in apology, and letting go of the suitcases she had been trying to wrest from Ross, she began to hurry away in answer to the summons.
But now he held her back; he said, “Won’t you come with me?” It was only a shy suggestion, giving her the chance to turn him down. And sadly she did so, shaking her head, turning toward where Minnie was yelling for her.
He had no words to dissuade her. Just as he could never tell her mother outright “Please don’t kill yourself” but only by indirection—for instance, by making her laugh, mostly at himself—deflect her from her purpose: so now he could only catch hold of Tammy’s hand to halt her in her flight from him. Her hand lay very lightly in his, so that, if she had wanted, she could have drawn it away; but she left it there, a pale, live, frail thing that could easily be crushed by a stronger hand than his. His hand was as small as her own, and she could nestle there till there was another call from Minnie—“Let me go,” she whispered, as though she hadn’t the strength to draw away herself; so he released her and picked up his two suitcases and left.
East Into Upper East Page 19
