Either Side of Winter

by Benjamin Markovits

  ‘‘Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,’ she began, ‘To give these mourning duties to her father.’ Her voice frail. She read blindly, red-faced, conscious of the attention fixed on her. Later, when she settled into the rhythm, the lines moved in her only the ordinary fret inspired by schoolwork. She crossed her brows and concentrated; she had been directed to understand this difficult thing, and usually did as she was told. ‘But you must know, your father lost a father.’ She squeaked sometimes, trying to give depth to the words; this after all, was meant to be an old man’s voice, his kingly tones. By the general quiet she guessed a certain rigid discomfort; nobody shifted or sneezed. They couldn’t hear her: how she despised her mousy accents! And then she thought, perhaps they knew. She had suddenly understood what she was reading. Perhaps they were embarrassed for her because they knew. Her father was dying. Only Mr Englander, restless on his feet, seemed indifferent to her. Oh god. No doubt they all expected her to burst into tears. Whatever she did she mustn’t burst into tears. ‘Fie! ‘tis a fault to heaven, A fault against the dead, a fault to nature, To reason most absurd, whose common theme Is death of fathers…’ So shaming, to be exposed in this way; to feel their embarrassed sympathies. Afterwards, she couldn’t remember getting through it. Someone else took over for the Queen.

  It was only later she realized how much to the point these reflections were. And part of her had enjoyed the quiet attentions of the class – her mother’s daughter after all. Later, she reread the passage, on the school bus home, moving her lips, the top lip hanging slightly below the bottom, pushed out in whispers. Its personal application astonished her. Her private feelings, in this context, seemed only a means to an end: a way of better understanding the world.

  *

  Afterwards, she decided to talk to Frannie. They met at Gracie Mews, a wide-windowed diner on First at the foot of an apartment block. Frannie ordered pancakes, then changed her mind to French toast, then settled sighing for the fruit and cottage-cheese plate, and finally persuaded Rachel to split the pancakes with her. So they sat picking at them while the syrup cooled, its skin wrinkling. Almost eleven o’clock on a Thursday night; the street lights reflected very white on the plastic tabletop. Rachel, for once, was spending the night at Tasha’s and she didn’t want to go home.

  ‘My father is dying,’ she said. She had a vanilla milkshake and drank thickly through the straw. The sugar had gone to her head; she was almost happy.

  ‘What do you mean, he’s dying. We’re all dying.’ Frannie wore a wide burgundy shawl around her shoulders, picked up from the Met – a print patterned off one of their tapestries. It hung across the top of her shoulders; her gestures involved it in complicated folds and stretches. She could not reach across to sip from her friend’s straw without a certain constricting flourish.

  ‘That’s what he said, how he broke the news to me. I can see why you two get on. He’s always asking after you. Why don’t you bring your friend Frannie round? I like her. I’m no company for you like this. It’s very depressing for a young girl. That’s what he said. For an old man it’s also depressing, to suffer with you. I said, you’re the one who’s dying.’ She sat now with her hands on her lap. ‘Brain cancer,’ she said, feeling the weight of these two words tenderly. A dramatic revelation: both true and important. She sensed the pleasure in this, and entered briefly into the medical details.

  Frannie’s tears were instant. Her full nose inhaled roughly, with a catch, and she waved her fingers rapidly at her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Only, I feel everything so strongly. My mother’s always complaining, why do you have to suffer for everything so much? Who are you to suffer so much? Only I’m very tender-hearted. You wouldn’t think it to look at me but I’m very tender-hearted. Oh Rachel.’

  She leaned over to put her hand to Rachel’s cheek, but her shawl was in danger of dragging in the leftovers on the pancake plate, and in the end, she stood up and moved over to Rachel’s side of the booth. ‘Scooch over, girl,’ she said. ‘Scooch.’ And embraced her awkwardly with one arm. This isn’t what Rachel wanted; she felt almost as if Frannie’s sympathies made larger claims than her own first-hand grief. It was awful, this fighting in her heart, to be heard loudest. Quite unlike her. You couldn’t blame Frannie, really; she was used, in their friendship, to taking centre stage. Why should she change now? ‘Today in school,’ Rachel began again, her manner demure, childish, ‘my English teacher made me read out a passage about dying fathers. It was awful. I was suddenly convinced that everybody guessed, they were all so embarrassed, they didn’t know where to look. I blushed to my roots, my voice began to squeak. Eek – eek, like a mouse. The worst of it was, by the end, I felt so – excited. I wanted to scream, this is about me. Listen, this is about me. Me. Me.’

  ‘Stop it,’ Frannie said, ‘you’re breaking my heart.’

  ‘I’m worried my parents are going to get back together.’

  ‘Why?’ From this side of the table, Frannie picked at what was left of the pancakes with Rachel’s fork. She couldn’t help herself, often complained of feeling bored; she needed several operations going at the same time, as she expressed it. Rachel wanted to put her hand on her wrist and pin it. You fat girl, she thought; the pancakes are cold; leave them. Butter-smears stuck in the hard syrup. You have no sense of… of disgust. To keep eating like this.

  ‘I don’t think it would be right. Just because he’s dying. They knew what they were doing before; he was very unhappy. To give in, like this, just because it’s almost over, doesn’t seem right.’

  Frannie considered this. True, Rachel thought, forgiving, she isn’t a bad listener, in spite of all her bluster. She liked to work out her various opinions. This required a certain attention to facts. It amazed Rachel sometimes to hear the things Frannie comfortably asked, said. She had a frog-like mouth, protruding upper teeth that pushed the thin line of her top lip out. A pursed mouth, as if she sucked on the tip of her tongue, not unattractive in itself. ‘I don’t know; it isn’t only your death.’

  Rachel bridled at this rebuke. Of course it is, she thought; it’s mine, it’s mine, it’s ours. But some time later remembered it with grudging admiration: the girl would speak her mind.

  ‘I never told you what happened with my father.’

  ‘Yes, you told me.’ Rachel determined to cut this short. For once, she had her own news to discuss. Also, Frannie’s last remark still stung. She thought when she found out Reuben was dying she wouldn’t care any more what anyone thought. This solid fact couldn’t be changed: he was dying. All her other worries were unimportant. It didn’t matter what people said. He was dying. She could use it as a point of comparison; nothing would seem significant in its light. If she concentrated hard upon his image – in his bed, propped against white pillows, the physical creature diminished by bulky protective covering, the featherbed, his light summer overcoat – the rest of the world would go away. Her father was dying. Frannie had always bullied her with her greater suffering, her worldly experience; Rachel was sick of it. ‘You live in a bubble,’ Frannie once complained. ‘So pretty and petite, you want everything pretty around you. If something’s ugly, you turn your head, you don’t want to look.’ Rachel turned her head at the time, full of pity: that her friend could confess so openly, shamelessly, pleadingly, how ugly she was. But now she too wanted to claim this prerogative: look at me, how vain I am in grief, jealous, loving, what an ugly heart I have. Shut up, you, I demand full attention. I take what I want.

  ‘No, I mean, what happened afterwards. We don’t see him any more,’ Frannie continued. Outside, a little rain fell on the slant, struck the window, desisted. Flower baskets hanging off the lamp-posts swung in the wind. From where they sat they could see its wide orchestration: when a wet gust came, a woman, carrying shopping bags in each hand, ducked her head into her neck, retracting. A young man walking his dog stopped, holding the flaps of a trench-coat against his breast; continued. ‘That’s
the phrase we decided on, Annie and me. WE DON’T SEE HIM ANY MORE. The truth is, he won’t see us. He took one look at us and said, no thank you. Afterwards we went for coffee with his boy lover, this German kid. My father broke it off with him, too. The lies he had to tell to get rid of us, you wouldn’t believe.’

  ‘Let’s sit here a little longer. I don’t want to go back out. I’m staying at Tasha’s tonight.’ Rachel called the waitress over: a Greek woman with a heavily lined face, dyed hair, a kind of sexual gruffness. She brought her a cup on a grainy white plate; hot water and lemon, the tea-bag on the side. Rachel unhooked the bag from its wrapping and dangled it in; slowly brown stains seeped billowing forth. She pressed the slice of lemon between thumb and forefinger, and cleaned them afterwards in her mouth. ‘I can’t wait for summer.’ A casual thought; as she said it she realized her father would be dead.

  Frannie had ordered black coffee, and began snapping a sugar-satchel against her palm. Once twice. She tore open its contents; the granules gathered on the dark surface, soaking in colour before descending.

  Rachel looked at her face bending in the teaspoon. ‘My eyes are red. I think I’m coming down with something.’

  ‘So my mother says, I pushed him away again, I always push them away. This by the way is true. Meanwhile, I’m sitting in Rohr’s with wet feet. All of us at the counter, staring at the road. The German is crying. Annie is comforting him. Nobody’s drinking coffee. A real scene. Suddenly I know how my father feels: count me out. People looking in at the window; they probably think he’s my boyfriend. My mother puts her arm around his shoulder; too weird. I keep shaking my head, as if to say: it’s got nothing to do with me. I’m an innocent bystander here. I hardly even know the guy.’

  Frannie was raising her voice, as always protesting too much. It came from the back of her throat, harshly. Rachel resisted putting her fingers to her ears. She quickly claimed an interval of silence. ‘I don’t want to give it to my father,’ she said. ‘That’s the last thing he needs. A cold.’

  ‘God knows what goes on in their lives, these people.’ Frannie was unabashed. ‘Well, the daughter of a single woman has certain responsibilities, as you know. Afterwards, all I said to her was, easy come easy go. To comfort her. To let her know I’m all right. She was practically in tears. So I said, let’s go out to the movies, what do we need with these men.’ She took a sip of her coffee: still too hot. Rachel observed the way her friend’s thin upper lip protruded over the rim of the mug. She kept it there, blowing, and tried again in a few seconds, a childish impatience. Still too hot. ‘My mother said to me, I don’t want you to think that way. I’m unhappy you should think that way. I thought, you can’t win, can you?’ Now she drank, holding the sip on her tongue before swallowing. ‘I won’t be able to sleep.’

  ‘Easy come easy go,’ Rachel repeated.

  Frannie exchanged with her a frank look, sympathetic – widening her eyes and taking her bottom lip between her teeth. It confessed that once more she had said the wrong thing, and begged Rachel not to judge harshly. ‘Look at us with our fathers,’ Frannie said. Rachel was suddenly conscious of unusually strong fellow feeling. She knew what Frannie meant: at their age, having these difficulties. In spite of it all their lives would continue interesting. The Greek woman came by, saying, ‘Hot water hot water’, with a tin pot in her hand. Rachel put her hand over the teacup; she could feel the steam in her eyes rising from the narrow spout, a soothing heat. She realized how cold her hands were. The rain, never steady, had gone away altogether, leaving only a low white sky behind. Street lamps sent their yellow light upwards; the levels of the apartment block across the road – pale bricks, curtained windows, balconies protected by brown glass – repeated themselves with only slight variations. Plants over the kitchen sink. A bicycle left out. The irregularity of the lights left on and off, suggesting a complex mathematical function. Rachel wondered how many people living there had more reason to be unhappy than she did. By no means a straightforward question, but not impossible to answer. Some yes, some no.

  ‘Have you told Brian?’ Frannie said, putting money on the table.

  Rachel, sliding and rising out of the booth, shook her head. ‘Only you. I wanted to tell you.’ She dipped her arms into her white coat, rumpled irregular wool, bunched up at the sleeves and collar. ‘I thought it might mean something different telling a boy.’ Rachel took out her purse from her handbag, her face narrowing in calculation.

  ‘Look at you, so pretty. Such a pretty suffering thing. Embrace me.’ Frannie had to stoop somewhat, her chin held up by the top of Rachel’s head. Rachel submitted to this, counting the seconds, one two three. Her hands ended up at Frannie’s full hips under her shirt, warmed themselves on her damp heat, grateful for that at least. In fact, there was some comfort in her old friend’s body. She let go.

  ‘When did you start smoking?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t smoke!’ Exasperated, emphasizing each word in turn. Undeniably pleased, too, obscurely flattered. ‘You’re as bad as my mother. Sometimes I have a cigarette, that’s all.’

  Oh, Rachel thought, applying the whip internally, I am a tight, prissy little girl. But these pains offered some consolation. She suffered in more ways than one though the sufferings also alleviated each other. Vanity and grief offered balms fraternally. But still deeper hungers demanded satisfaction. They parted at the corner of 82nd and First; Rachel then turning happily enough towards the richer quieter side streets to the east.

  *

  Dying, he did in fact pick up her flu bug; the very human, very lively suffering contrasted strangely with his other grander affliction. A fuzzy head, the shakes, a runny nose, made him childish, loving. Kissing her goodnight, he asked her for an extra blanket over his feet. Laid on top, not tucked in: at his age, to find yourself fighting in bed on your own! No good. He fought enough with her mother; he didn’t need to have it out with the sheets.

  When she came back, rug in hand, a green army blanket from her grandfather, he said, ‘I’ve been thinking, I want you to know. Don’t blame me. Don’t blame Tasha.’ Her name sounded very tender in his mouth, a word with vintage. ‘Rest assured, whatever your suspicions, what happened between us happened between us. There were no third parties that mattered. OK, that photographer, an insignificant man.’ Rachel asked if she could get him anything else. He said Alka Seltzer, but made a face at his first sip and gave it back to her. As if to say, what does it matter? I’m through with these medicines. She moved to bring it back to the kitchen, but he wanted to talk.

  ‘I thought, let her be happy if she can.’ Rachel was standing in the bedroom door; he never let her go. ‘But soon as I left, your mother put him out on his ear. Reuben didn’t mind enough was all she cared about. I was worried about her, not these dudes. Tasha has a suspicious taste in dudes. Look out for it. Long hair, leather jackets, zoot suits, the works. I didn’t suffer much for my own sake. These were small men, peanuts. Couldn’t buy a girl a cup of coffee. Real nothings; two weeks with him was enough. What did I care, I had you. But living with your mother was something else, I tell you, something else. Who am I talking to, you know. She was very depressive, very difficult. Eager, unhappy, both. But things had been done to her, partly in my name. That affair with Jimmy never got to run its course. These relations have a way of coming round. OK, I take responsibility.’

  The next night, at the height of his fever, he couldn’t feel his feet. He complained miserably of the cold. ‘It’s like the grave in here,’ he said. ‘Touch my hand.’ Rachel knew he was teasing her with these remarks; dying had given him great funds of humour. The kind of joke he always liked: uncomfortable rather than amusing. But it was worse when his humours passed. ‘They’re trying to freeze me out,’ he said. ‘I won’t let them. I’ll kick.’ The way he said ‘kick’, Rachel had never seen such mean spirits, such pettiness. All the while the vents made a constant rumbling like a washing-machine. Hot humid air dripped from the inside off tall windows. She swe
ated and smelt strongly of her sex, even in spaghetti strings and softball shorts. Her blood swelled just below her skin, the softer blonder hairs on her arms, her legs, her upper lip waved lightly standing on end. A real animal, that’s what she felt like in all that heat, a real caged animal.

  As she kissed him goodnight, he whispered, ‘I’m very cold I can’t feel my feet why don’t you come in to bed with me? Rachel. Rachel.’ Such tenderness, she couldn’t resist it. She took off her shoes and climbed in, turning her back. He held her shoulder in his arm and pressed against her from behind. The bed stank of unhealthy sleep. She held her breath, counting, one two three, and breathing out. Inhaled carefully through her nose till her cheeks plumped up – such a child, at seventeen; acting like a girl, on her first trip down the subway, among dirty men – and began her count again, one two. His hands felt like a sack of frozen peas. He disgusted her; she disgusted herself. ‘I’ve never had a woman in this bed. I want you to tell Tasha that. I’ve never had a woman in two years.’ She became sensible of certain involuntary reactions; human nature at its simplest responds to the feel of things and makes mistakes. ‘Go now, go now,’ he said, sobered. ‘It isn’t right, a beautiful girl like you.’