by Amy Bloom
“We’ll golf tomorrow,” he said. “Sylvia can spoil Beth and we’ll steal away.” The Shenkers and Mrs. Shenker’s mother all smiled at one another and finally Mrs. Shenker said, “Well, thank you for bringing a treat for Beth. Although, my God, we all ate enough doughnuts at that hospital …”
Mr. Shenker said, “Always room for a few more.”
Mrs. Shenker said, “Let’s just take a peek at Miss Beth and see how she’s doing.”
“Hey, Frances,” Beth said. Beth was smiling and she wore a silky green T-shirt over her bandages and a green headband. There was a pull-up bar above her head and her bedroom was decorated like a tropical paradise. She sat in the middle of her big green-and-blue bed, surrounded by her laptop, her iPhone, and her remote control. A flat-screen TV was mounted on the opposite wall, with white-capped waves painted to unfurl around it. The doorway was as wide as a hospital room’s. Pale-green mermaids raised their arms on either side of it, and there was an old-fashioned map of the world’s oceans painted on the wood floor, and a wheelchair was folded up in one corner.
Mrs. Shenker saw Frances looking. “I know—we went all out. We had an architect in here and Beth drove him crazy until everything was just the way she wanted.”
Beth grinned and looked down to text someone.
“Pretty cool, right? I might become an architect. The disabled Americans thing, plus I love design. Did you see my dresser?” Her dresser was painted to look like a treasure chest, with gold coins and jewels glued all the way down the front, as if the treasure were spilling out. “That was my idea.”
Frances sat in the small, comfortable armchair and Beth chatted a little, and answered e-mail. (Oh, my God, she said. No way. No way.) She texted friends and smiled at Frances to show that she didn’t mean to be rude and went back to her laptop. Mrs. Shenker’s mother came in with a plate of peanut-butter-and-fluff sandwiches, each half topped with a strawberry slice and two glasses of milk.
“Nana, thank you,” Beth said, and her grandmother kissed her and said, “Physical therapy in an hour, young lady,” and Beth struck a strongman pose and then offered Frances a sandwich and a napkin. Beth played some music on her computer and Frances and Beth ate their sandwiches, as if they were two girls in seventh grade, taking a homework break.
Frances ate her sandwich halves and thanked Mrs. Shenker’s mother, who handed her a couple of warm cookies for the road. The Shenkers emerged arm in arm to thank Frances for coming. They told her that Beth was starting school in three weeks, and Mr. Shenker said, She’s nervous about it, but you know Beth—she always gets back on the horse.
Frances got in her car and drove around the corner and pulled over, to just sit for a while.
S.S. DISCOVERY
Dear Beth,
I saw your picture today. Everyone in America must have seen it, plastered on the cover of People magazine. You look wonderful. Everything that was just on the cusp in you, when I knew you ten years ago, has absolutely flowered. I was sorry to read that your grandmother had passed but your parents look very well and, of course, very proud. I’m sure you are an inspiration to everyone around you, just as they said in the magazine. To have done what you’ve done—the Paralympics and now the triathlon and your work with teenagers—is very impressive.
Things have been quieter, here. I’m actually still at the hospital. I’m the Assistant Director of Social Work, which sounds like more than it is. I handle the scheduling and the outpatient programs but I don’t do any hiring or firing.
My father—I think you met him the time my car broke down at your house—passed away about five years ago. I miss him. It’s weird, at least it’s weird to me, but I now spend most Friday nights with his widow, Carol Skolnick. I don’t know if I ever mentioned it (probably not—we didn’t really talk about me, which was appropriate, since my home visits were for you and to help with your post-traumatic recovery), but my father remarried during the time you and I were in contact. Anyway, Carol and I weren’t exactly close when my father was alive but since he died, she’s reached out to me, and now on Friday nights she lights a Yarsight candle (I don’t know if I’ve spelled this correctly) for my father and for all of the other people we know who have died (I don’t include patients; we just mourn the people we’ve known in our personal lives) and then we have dinner, which is usually Kentucky Fried Chicken. It’s sort of a tradition.
The other big change is that I am in touch with my sister, Sherri, who was not part of my life when you and I knew each other. Sherri lives in Indianapolis and she and her husband run a cleaning service. They clean up after storms and other natural disasters in people’s offices and homes and also just regular cleaning. They have two girls, who are almost as old as you were when I met you, and they are wonderful girls. I only wish I had known them sooner. Sherri called me after our father died and she said to me, Your only family is me, and I remember saying that it didn’t seem like she wanted me in her life and she said that that wasn’t true, that our father had just abandoned her after her religious experience (my sister is, I guess, a born-again Christian and my father and I were the kind of Congregationalists who didn’t bother anyone, and I guess that was an insurmountable difference between them, plus my father and I thought Sherri was gay, which bothered her more than us but she stopped being gay, apparently, when she became born again and married Paul and had the girls). It’s a little odd being in their house sometimes, with Jesus on every wall and pillow and Sherri censors the girls’ reading, like no Harry Potter because of the magic. (I have to say this doesn’t make any sense to me. What makes magic particularly anti-Christian? I understand that calling up Satan is definitely not good but I can’t see how Tinkerbell or flying carpets threaten anyone.) But it is their house and their rules, and my nieces are happy and loving girls, and Paul has been very welcoming in his quiet way, and I am really grateful to spend their birthdays and Christmas with Sherri and her family.
I’ve continued my interest in polar exploration and the great expeditions, although I think it’s safe to say this is not a subject of general interest. They were just so phenomenally brave. They lived on dog meat and willow tea. They boiled old boots and ate them. They ate the deerskin ties off their tents and then they cut up their tents to make footgear, so they could go out and look for the rescue ships. Lieutenant George DeLong of the U.S. Navy spent two winters frozen in place 750 miles from the North Pole, which is not that far—others had traveled farther—and then his ship sank on June 12, 1881. There were fourteen of them left, and still he wrote in his journal, “All hands weak and feeble, but cheerful.”
All my life, those men were my heroes. I think I would have been better off with the astronauts or even the Argonauts or with the saints, if we had been that kind of family, or with the people who marched on Selma for their rights. But my father loved these men and he didn’t seem to notice that they were all, really, pretty crazy and most of them failures (Roald Amundsen was often the villain of these stories and I think now it was because he knew what he was doing; he accomplished his goal and he went on to other successes, and all of that was despicable to my father). These people made terrible mistakes and the best and worst of them just shrugged and said that it was no one’s fault at all, just the nature of life, just the inevitable outcome of what they had undertaken, but it wasn’t true. They had something missing. They left things behind that other, more reasonable men would have known to bring. They brought the wrong food, and the wrong transportation. They held the fucking maps upside down half the time and one boat fell to pieces in the Arctic Ocean because, when the ship had sailed in sunnier climes, the crew had pulled nails out of it to trade for sex with the Polynesian women, since iron was so valuable. They could have been saved by vitamins, which were easy to buy and carry. They could have been saved by a wireless transmitter, which was not uncommon.
On one of Peary’s expeditions, their boat was struck by moving ice, pressed between two icebergs by the current, and as the ship was sinking,
water coming in through the port side, the crew and the scientists gathered a few things and scrambled onto the icy bluff. Finn Hamilton went below three times, because he couldn’t decide what to take. He brought a compass and threw it to a crewmate already on land. He went down for his pipe, and halfway up the stairs, he went back down again for his Bible and he slipped and drowned, tangled up with a footstool.
Some of us are Finn Hamilton and some of us are Beth Shenker, I guess. I have somehow not had the right things for this journey and I have packed and repacked a hundred times as if somehow the right thing will be found in some small pocket, put in by someone with more sense or gift than me, but I’m always scrambling for the last-minute thing and I am always, always watching the boat pull away without me.
Your family was one of my early boats and you were the bright and amazing sail, and I am, as I said at the beginning, very, very proud of you.
SLEEPWALKING
I was born smart and had been lucky my whole life, so I didn’t even know that what I thought was careful planning was nothing more than being in the right place at the right time, missing an avalanche I didn’t even hear.
After the funeral was over and the cold turkey and the glazed ham were demolished and some very good jazz was played and some very good musicians went home drunk on bourbon poured in my husband’s honor, it was just me, my mother-in-law, Ruth, and our two boys, Lionel junior from Lionel’s second marriage, and our little boy, Buster.
Ruth pushed herself up out of the couch, her black taffeta dress rustling reproachfully. I couldn’t stand for her to start the dishes, sighing, praising the Lord, clucking her tongue over the state of my kitchen, in which the windows are not washed regularly and I do not scrub behind the refrigerator.
“Ruth, let them sit. I’ll do them later tonight.”
“No need to put off ’til tomorrow what we can do today. I’ll do them right now, and then Lionel junior can run me home.” Ruth does not believe that the good Lord intended ladies to drive; she’d drive, eyes closed, with her drunk son or her accident-prone grandson before she’d set foot in my car.
“Ruth, please,” I said. “I’d just as soon have something to do later. Please. Let me make us a cup of tea, and then we’ll take you home.”
Tea, her grandson Buster, and her son’s relative sobriety were the three major contributions I’d made to Ruth’s life; the tea and Buster accounted for all of our truces and the few good times we’d had together.
“I ought to be going along now, let you get on with things.”
“Earl Grey? Darjeeling? Constant Comment? I’ve got some rosehip tea in here, too—it’s light, sort of lemony.” I don’t know why I was urging her to stay; I’d never be rid of her as long as I had the boys. If Ruth no longer thought I was trash, she certainly made it clear that I hadn’t lived up to her notion of the perfect daughter-in-law, a cross between Marian Anderson and Florence Nightingale.
“You have Earl Grey?” Ruth was wavering, half a smile on her sad mouth, her going-to-church lipstick faded to a blurry pink line on her upper lip.
When I really needed Ruth on my side, I’d set out an English tea: Spode teapot, linen place mats, scones, and three kinds of jam. And for half an hour, we’d sip and chew, happy to be so civilized.
“Earl Grey it is.” I got up to put on the water, stepping on Buster, who was sitting on the floor by my chair, practically on my feet.
“Jesus, Buster, are you all right?” I hugged him before he could start crying and lifted him out of my way.
“The Lord’s name,” Ruth murmured, rolling her eyes up to apologize to Jesus personally. I felt like smacking her one, right in her soft dark face, and pointing out that since the Lord had not treated us especially well in the last year, during which we had both lost husbands, perhaps we didn’t have to be overly concerned with His hurt feelings. Ruth made me want to be very, very bad.
“Sorry, Ruth. Buster, sit down by your grandmother, honey, and I’ll make us all some tea.”
“No, really, don’t trouble yourself, Julia. Lionel junior, please take me home. Gabriel, come kiss your grandma good-bye. You boys be good, now, and think of how your daddy would want you to act. I’ll see you all for dinner tomorrow.”
She was determined to leave, martyred and tea-less, so I got in line to kiss her. Ruth put her hands on my shoulders, her only gesture of affection toward me, which also allowed her to pretend that she was a little taller, rather than a little shorter, than I am.
She left with Lionel junior, and Buster and I cuddled on the couch, his full face squashed against my chest, my skin resting on his soft hair. I felt almost whole.
“Sing, Mama.”
Lionel had always wanted me to record with him and I had always said no, because I don’t like performing and I didn’t want to be a blues-singing Marion Davies to Lionel’s William Ran dolph Hearst. But I loved to sing and he loved to play and I’m sorry we didn’t record just one song together.
I was trying to think of something that would soothe Buster but not break my heart.
I sang “Amazing Grace,” even though I can’t quite hit that note, and I sang bits and pieces of a few more songs, and then Buster was asleep and practically drowning in my tears.
I heard Lionel junior’s footsteps and blotted my face on my sleeve.
“Hey, Lion, let’s put this little boy to bed.”
“He’s out, huh? You look tired, too. Why don’t you go to bed and I’ll do the dishes?”
That’s my Lion. I think because I chose to love him, chose to be a mother and not just his father’s wife, Lion gave me back everything he could. He was my table setter, car washer, garden weeder; in twelve years, I might’ve raised my voice to him twice. When my husband brought his son to meet me the first time, I looked into those wary eyes, hope pouring out of them despite himself, and I knew that I had found someone else to love.
I carried Buster to his room and laid him on the bed, slip ping off his loafers. I pulled up the comforter with the long-legged basketball players running all over it and kissed his damp little face. I thought about how lucky I was to have Buster and Lion and even Ruth, who might torture me forever but would never abandon me, and I thought about how cold and lonely my poor Lionel must be, with no bourbon and no music and no audience, and I went into the bathroom to dry my face again. Lion got frantic when he saw me crying.
He was lying on the couch, his shoes off, his face turned toward the cushions.
“Want a soda or a beer? Maybe some music?” I pulled at his shoulder.
“Nope. Maybe some music, but not Pop’s.”
“No, no, not your father’s. How about Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan?”
“How about something a little more up? How about Luther Vandross?” Lion turned around to face me.
“I don’t have any—as you know.” Lionel and I both hated bubblegum music, so of course Lion had the world’s largest collection of whipped-cream soul; if it was insipid, he bought it.
“I’ll get my tapes,” he said, and sat halfway up to see if I would let him. We used to make him play them in his room so we wouldn’t have to listen, but Lionel wasn’t here to grumble at the boy and I just didn’t care.
“Play what you want, honey,” I said, sitting in Lionel’s brown velvet recliner. Copies of Downbeat and packs of Trident were still stuffed between the cushion and the arm. Lion bounded off to his room and came back with an armful of tapes.
“Luther Vandross, Whitney Houston … what would you like to hear?”
“You pick.” Even talking felt like too much work. He put on one of the tapes and I shut my eyes.
I hadn’t expected to miss Lionel so much. We’d had twelve years together, eleven of them sober; we’d had Buster and raised the Lion, and we’d gone to the Grammys together when he was nominated and he’d stayed sober when he lost, and we’d made love, with more interest some years than others; we’d been through a few other women for him, a few blondes that he couldn’t pass up,
and one other man for me; I’m not criticizing. We knew each other so well that when I wrote a piece on another jazz musician, he’d find the one phrase and say, “You meant that about me,” and he’d be right. He was a better father than your average musician; he brought us with him whenever he went to Europe, and no matter how late he played on Saturday, he got up and made breakfast on Sunday.
Maybe we weren’t a perfect match, in age, or temperament, or color, but we did try and we were willing to stick it out and then we didn’t get a chance.
Lion came and sat by me, putting his head against my knee. Just like Buster, I thought. Lion’s mother was half Italian, like me, so the two boys look alike: creamier, silkier versions of their father.
I patted his hair and ran my thumb up and down his neck, feeling the muscles bunched up. When he was little, he couldn’t fall asleep without his nightly back rub, and he only gave it up when he was fifteen and Lionel just wouldn’t let me anymore.
“It’s midnight, honey. It’s been a long day, a long week. Go to bed.”
He pushed his head against my leg and cried, the way men do, like it’s being torn out of them. His tears ran down my bare leg, and I felt the strings holding me together just snap. One, two, three, and there was no more center.
“Go to bed, Lion.”
“How about you?”
“I’m not really ready for bed yet, honey. Go ahead.” Please, go to bed.
“Okay. Good night, Ma.”
“Good night, baby.” Nineteen-year-old baby.
He pulled himself up and went off to his room. I peered into the kitchen, looked at all the dishes, and closed my eyes again. After a while, I got up and finished off the little bit of Jim Beam left in the bottle. With all Lionel’s efforts at sobriety, we didn’t keep the stuff around, and I choked on it. But the burning in my throat was comforting, like old times, and it was a distraction.
