Oh god she would go mad; she would go mad. How could anyone bear to live in these circumstances? But surely, this kind of thing was always going on. She wasn’t in the least unusual. Reuben used to say, years ago, at the house on East End Avenue, when they were all together, when Tasha asked him to help with this or that, around the house, in the garden; when one of their few friends was having people round, he used to complain, just keeping the lid on his voice, ‘I’m under intolerable pressure.’ At work, sometimes he added: at work. If he lost his temper, if he didn’t eat, if he couldn’t bear company, that was his excuse. Rachel never liked the phrase; the pedant in her baulked. A grown-up phrase: dramatic, untrue, unlike him. Of course, he tolerated it, he didn’t go under. But she remembered it now, sympathetic: that feeling of coming to boil. She kissed him goodnight and stepped straight in the shower before bed.
In the morning, a Saturday morning, he said, ‘You need a day off. I want you to buy yourself something, something for your mother. Spend a little. Feel free.’ A windy sun blew litter down Park Avenue. Spring was coming in a hurry. Rachel could smell it; she wanted to get out, out. Sunshine the colour of apple juice fell in the kitchen window.
She said, ‘What should I get for Tasha?’
‘You know me. I never had any taste. Your mother was always very superior; I never dared pick out anything for her. The way she turned up her nose. I couldn’t keep up with the fashions. Real Port Jervis, she used to say. I mean look at this place, just empty. I don’t even try any more. But you, you’re a beautiful girl. You’ll know.’
Later, before she went out, he said, ‘It’s a wonderful thing to give pleasure to your mother. She’s very susceptible to it.’ A repeated sentiment; still, he had not uttered it in years. It drew fresh blood. ‘Very generous,’ he added, considering. She kissed his brow. In the end, she bought her pearls from Bendel’s. Tasha had once said to her, ‘When all else fails, there’s always pearls.’ The way Tasha skipped to the long mirror in her bedroom, her touched-up vanity – like a little kick of sugar in her tea – Rachel thought these things would appal her. Instead she had to fight back tears; she had stepped into the shadows, merely a go-between.
*
She began to play a game in her head with Mr Englander, simply to pass the time in class. She sat mostly in a far corner of the room, where she could look out, across the table and the assembled heads, through three tall windows to the outside air. A chestnut spread its branches high enough they sometimes knocked their knuckles on the panes. She heard the wind in it, plangent, gusty, wet exhalations. Its leaves had grown full, large in the palm, with fat fingers. Through them, uneven clouds shifted rapidly. At odd angles, light broke through, sharpened by these obstructions, strongly radiating from a central point. The blue skies of growing spring were urgently, repeatedly interrupted. Between the leaves, downhill, the landscape fell away towards the Harlem River and Manhattan. She pretended that Mr Englander was sneaking sly looks at her, and kept her eyes fixed on him, ready to respond.
Of course, Rachel suspected what lay behind this… recreation.
Her father was dying; his old assertive manner weakened by bedrest and wide regrets. His insistent recollections exposed a patchwork life. She had never guessed before he was unhappy, no, not unhappy – unsatisfied. Not that either; rather, what he longed for surprised her. Sure, he’d had great personal success; the kid from Port Jervis had come up in the world. A rich lawyer, a big man, his daughter educated at great expense, in the best traditions. But what should he do with his memories of sandlot baseball? Every day after school till the sun dropped, and later some summer nights, when the lights from the Walgreen’s car park glimmered on. There was Bobby Spandau, now a claims adjuster in Syracuse. The Polkawitz boys, who all three went into their father’s shoe-store chain, and expanded into Middletown. And Erwin Manno, later a basketball coach, fired for passing out bribes, diddling exams. (There had been a tearful confession of guilt, broadcast live on local news. Reuben’s sympathies had been painfully refreshed, yes, he wanted to suffer with Manno, make equal expiation: we have all come a great way from what we were.) Important figures now with no part in his life; these, once, had been to him all in all. And little enough he had to show for their replacement: a failed marriage; alimony payments; two kitchens, three sitting rooms, a dining room, five bathrooms, seven bedrooms, maintained on his nickel; sure, a beautiful daughter. OK, he had achieved a certain personal dignity; but it helped him little enough with his hair falling out in her hands. His appetites diminishing, his thin frame, always a source of pride, now ridiculously exaggerated: as if he claimed kinship with other survivors, mocking them. What Rachel wanted, he knew, was that this final process should be presided over by his own firm will; she couldn’t bear to see him in this matter as helpless as she. So he was disappointing her, too.
Rachel knew that her playful interest in Mr Englander was only a kind of transference. His big-boned filled-out frame made certain assertions: I’m not going anywhere, you can rely on me. Sometimes she imagined climbing up him like a small girl, making a ledge of his kneecaps, grasping his elbow, his hip, rising to arch her arms around his neck, clinging. His accent, in spite of thirty years in the city, was pure Midwestern: patient, clear in the vowels. It suggested plain-dealing, a practical intelligence applied, in his case, to questions of some subtlety: grammar, literary reference. Reuben always admired Midwesterners. He disliked Manhattan childhoods, he often said as much – fond of his own anonymous, up-state American youth. Sand lots, high-school bands, kids going nowhere in life: at least, nowhere far.
So she dutifully followed him with blue glances. And when Mr Englander turned her way, she looked wide-eyed encouragement: as if to say, keep talking, you’re doing well. If only he would take notice. She imagined certain unavoidable confrontations in great detail. The class hour seemed long, there was plenty of time to give to such dreams. Meanwhile she kept her eyes on his clean, pink face.
There was a general storage room at the end of the corridor, one floor below, by the stairwell. An L-shaped closet with doors on both walls of the corner. Part of the unrenovated school plant: a thirty-watt bulb hung low off white cord, forcing a tall man to duck beneath it. Dimly, it lit the bending shelves, stacked with notepads, blue-backed exam books, boxes of staples, red pens. Vanilla and dust smells of breathing paper. A crate of white-out jars, mostly crusted at the lid. White-out was banned because the kids sniffed at it, but the staff still borrowed a pot from time to time – their fresh lemon and old milk odours very strong. To see in the corners you had to swing the bulb, or hold it by the hot cord. The light, egg yellow, cast long and short shadows against the stippled-card ceiling tiles, the ceramic floor. A spot of rare peace in the school crowds, its solitude concentrated by the clamour outside. Or, when the halls were quiet, the consciousness of being hidden. Teachers sometimes sent their students to fetch something from the cupboard, as it was called. This usually involved a laborious hand-over of keys, a clattering drawn-out search for the right one. Sometimes, to save time, they went themselves. Rachel, quiet but dutiful, often volunteered, fisting the singled-out key in her dented palm, letting the rest dangle.
Sitting in class, she imagined carefully what would happen if she came in one door and Mr Englander, opening the other, surprised her there. ‘Rachel!’ She heard him say it, the tone shifting. ‘Rachel.’ Her name, spoken aloud, revealing private meanings. The fact of the two doors was significant. He didn’t trap her exactly, but approached in sudden view, from the entry by the stairs. To come deeper in, he would have to stoop below the bulb towards her face. The way she pictured it she didn’t flinch.
When Mr Englander caught her eye, he turned away first.
In class his manner was dilatory, collegiate. He said, ‘Sometimes you get into a business out of one kind of interest, one set of concerns. Single-minded: this is what you want to do; this is why you want to do it. Then you find, to your surprise, the compensation of… other pleasures
.’ He called for a volunteer and opened the classroom door. ‘We need a king.’ One of the boys, a fat, rough-shaped kid with messy yellow hair, shoulder-length, much-loved, stepped out. ‘Kneel on the floor in the hallway, as if you’re praying. Back towards us. Not far from the doorway: so we can see.’ Rubbing a blond clump between his fingers, the kid let it fall in the wet edge of his mouth and trail out. ‘Gross,’ someone called under his breath. Mr Englander raised a flat palm, then lowered it dramatically, pointing. ‘You, Hamlet,’ he said. ‘So superior. Step up.’ Smattering of applause among the girls. (Rachel did not join in.) Hamlet lifted himself on his elbows, swinging from the table. ‘Stand in the door with your hand in your pockets, looking at Claudius.’ He gave them each an open copy of the play.
Later, Rachel remembered the layout clearly. The boy in the hall, with bent head: a closet thespian, letting his hair hang loose across his face, arms spread wide on the dirty floor. The lounger in jeans shifting on his feet, irritable, glad to be looked at. Mr Englander, gesturing, enacting – these rehearsed thoughts. How often must he have said this bit before? And discovered, amid the necessary repetitions, a way of working out deeper feelings. Her father clearly had fallen short in this. ‘In some ways, this is the most important scene, the moment that turns Hamlet into a modern tragedy. Now might I do it pat. Remember the tradition of the revenge play: the hero raves, the heroine cries, all stab, and everybody dies.’ Mr Englander moved to the window ledge; the pane rattled loosely at his back. His was restless bulk. ‘Hamlet has his chance here. Consider what would follow if he makes the simpler cut. Would he become king? Marry Ophelia? Fight a civil war with Fortinbras? The play would take on wider political questions. By doing nothing, he drives the action inside, where it belongs, in the head and heart.’
The boys began. Claudius, with his back turned, loudly, bravely: ‘Now my offence is rank.’ The words rang rudely in the hallway. It suggested a strange freedom, which all of them enjoyed, to hear his unembarrassed echoes along the corridor. His tone unexpectedly patrician. The manner of a boy used to loneliness, long words, private dramatics. ‘Help, angels!’ – his voice rising grandly, before it broke into a squeak at the back of his throat – ‘make assay; Bow stubborn knees; and heart with strings of steel Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe. All may be well.’ At that, he pressed his head between his knees; his hair spread across the floor tiles. Rachel imagined giving it a good scrub between soapy hands. Later, the words ‘all may be well’ offered her some comfort. Brian Bobek repeated them to her when she fell quiet; but many other things had come between them by then. ‘OK, Hamlet,’ Mr Englander broke in. ‘Take your hand out of your pocket. Before any protest: I know I said.’ Claudius had won a few laughs, and this good-looking kid felt put out by them. It seemed suddenly beneath him to give it feeling.
Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I’ll do’t: and so he goes to heaven;
And so am I reveng’d. That would be scann’d…
Afterwards, Claudius rose grandly to his feet, and turned into the doorway. He had to hold the hair out of his face; his book propped open by the thumb of his other hand.
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
Rough applause. Claudius bowed widely, sweating, puffed up, out of breath – just once, his gifts acknowledged. Hamlet had already sat down and crossed his legs.
‘Perhaps,’ Mr Englander remarked, ‘Shakespeare should have called the play Claudius, King of Denmark. A more passionate protagonist.’ Such licence with the name made an impression on Rachel; it never occurred to her books could be called anything but what they were. That choices had been made, inside, outside the text. When the door closed behind him, she caught his eye. He sighed through his nose: these kids. A complicitous frown.
He began to discuss in detail both speeches, ‘answering soliloquies’. This short scene – his tone quiet, pervasive – lies at the heart of the play, its literal centre. (What an old ham he was, really, Rachel thought, perching at the window in his bow-tie.) This is what happens when you fail to act. Among other failures, the failure to communicate. Hamlet could have killed Claudius on the spot, his prayer had fallen short of God. (Rachel imagined balloons flagging and sinking as the helium leaked.) Each soliloquy involved a significant refusal: Claudius would not give up his wife or throne, and so condemned himself knowingly to hell. There is also, of course, God’s rejection of the prayer to be considered. And Hamlet refuses – to fulfil the purpose of the story, his father’s revenge. And why? Because the language of doing is very inexact. As soon as you do anything, mistakes get made. So he wants to think about it. He wants to work out the whole thing in his head. The modern experience, Mr Englander said, standing now, pressing his hands together flat before him, is defined by this: if you refuse to act, wider worlds open up within.
Some years later, more deeply read, a lecturer herself, Rachel learned to appreciate this account for what it was. Clear-headed, passionate, a high-school teacher doing his best. At the time, however, it promised much greater things: access to the larger conversations of adulthood, in which vital matters could be openly discussed, the heart’s dearest secrets offered up. People talk about important things. Still later, as a grown woman, a married mother, she remembered him more sympathetically: simplicity has its place. ‘If you refuse to act, wider worlds open up within.’ This kind of talk still attracted her. She had supposed such conversations were commonly held; by this time she realized her kinship with Mr Englander was something rarer. (She thought of him whenever she looked over those drafts of her unpublished novel, kept in the storeroom of her house on 82nd Street. She abandoned it after college, quite happily in the end. Like a neglected pasture, covered in clover, they suggested a more general prosperity.)
That night she went home to Park Avenue and began to write, hot in her head in her hands in her heart. Beginning her first serious argument with him:
The play is called Hamlet and not Ophelia because Ophelia really does go mad. Hamlet’s father has been killed and Ophelia’s father has been killed. So the lovers have a lot in common. But the play isn’t about the problem of action – if you look at him clearly Hamlet does a lot of acting from the beginning – but the problem of going mad. Going mad is the only honourable thing to do in those circumstances: that is, if your mother divorces your father and kills him. That’s why Hamlet insists ‘I have that within which passeth shew’, which is a pun on the word show, which can mean either something displayed on the outside or something demonstrated, something reasoned and proved…
All of this seemed tremendously important to her, even with her father dying in the next room.
*
As soon as she stepped out of the lift, Rachel knew she was there. There were empty bags from Dean and Delucca lined neatly against the wall. A glass of hyacinths on the coffee table gave off meadow odours, a strong undertone in the room, a window letting in a draught of outside air. A rug from home lay folded over the red couch. Cluck-cluck of closed-door talk from her father’s bedroom. She knocked, and he answered alone, ‘Come in.’ Tasha lay back at an angle on the bed, one leg on the floor. She had her hand on her father’s hair, lifting up the strands of it, patting them down again. ‘Rachel, darling,’ she said, rising brightly. ‘I’m making coffee. Do you want some?’ The manner of someone brushing off an infidelity.
When she was gone, Reuben tried to sit up. ‘Help me.’ Taking his hand, she shifted him back in the bed, then let go to get pillows to place behind him. ‘Now that I’m dying she’s collecting me again.’
‘That’s not fair, you walked out on her.’
‘Well, what could I do? And now she’s walked in again. I’m in no position.’ Rachel’s still face was subtly accusative; she felt like a child again, pulling no weight, as her father tried to lift her in his arms. All give; amazing how hard it was to carry someone utterly unresisting. That’s how she felt now: sl
ack. And wanted no part of this set-up. ‘Hear me out. I’m in no position.’ His voice, carefully modulated, betrayed the repetition of his thoughts, a private argument already thrashed out. Even so, an audience inspired him with fresh passion, at a third try. ‘I’m in no position to turn down what I can get. I’m scared, Rachel. I have to do this alone. I don’t want to. I want to take somebody with me.’
‘Don’t I sit here? Don’t I listen?’
‘Believe me, at this stage, if you could take somebody with you, you would. You’d hold on to their hand and drag them after you.’ Tasha came in with two cups of coffee, set them down and went out again. She was wearing a flowered dress, light blue; her legs were still good from the knees down, her high lean calves, her arched feet. ‘Well,’ Reuben said, preparing to drink, leaning his head tenderly forward on his neck, ‘You’re too young. It isn’t fair.’
Afterwards, they all ate supper together. Tasha ordered in; they sat at the kitchen table. ‘Isn’t this nice?’ she kept saying. Rachel felt like a kid again; she wanted to scream, why do we have to pretend to be happy? The opened window looked over the courtyard, and the windows on the far side, unevenly lit. So many private lives. Later, she watched Tasha make her inspection of the apartments. Very approving: there were no marks anywhere of a third party. Rachel read silently on the couch. After Reuben went to bed, Tasha moved to sit beside her, laid her hand on Rachel’s thigh. ‘I thought you’d be happy,’ she said.
‘All you two do is fight. It’s all you ever did.’
‘We haven’t fought yet.’
‘You will.’
Tasha withdrew her hand and sat back. ‘Fighting isn’t so bad,’ she said. ‘You’ll learn that.’
Rachel closed her book. ‘I’m going to bed.’ She didn’t move, preparing herself for speech. Even she guessed it sounded over-rehearsed. ‘You can’t even let him die without nosing in. You always have to take centre stage.’
Either Side of Winter Page 22
