Paper is White

by Hilary Zaid

  I turned to Francine. It was time for my confession. “I’ve been seeing someone. At work. Outside of work. Someone from work.” Work, work, work—I kept repeating the word, as if the incantation of duty could prevent this from being personal. From being infidelity. Next to me on the couch, Francine tilted her head up awkwardly as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing and had to see it from a different angle. “An old lady!” I cried. Then I held my breath. Francine had already accused me of having an affair. I don’t think this was what she expected. But how different was it? I was preoccupied with someone else. I was leading a hidden life.

  Betty had excoriated me for “leaking.” Now it would be Francine’s turn to thunder down her disapproval, to tell me that I needed to confess to Wendy, to stop seeing Anya. Francine was the one who had sent me crawling to Wendy in the first place, trying to find in the Foundation a container big enough to hold all of my sadness and longing. Now she was going to tell me that I needed to quit my job. She was going to tell me that I had a problem and needed help. She was going to be furious at me for lying to her. Which—I sighed, ready to take on the onslaught— was a reasonable thing for her to be.

  “The old woman who had a female lover?”

  Francine’s arm shot out to grab me as I toppled off the couch.

  “You knew about Anya?” Of course she knew. How could I have thought she wouldn’t? Francine knew everything.

  “Anya? You never said her name.” Francine chewed her cuticle, a habit that usually annoyed me, but which indicated a nonchalance I was too grateful for to mention. “You told me about her girlfriend.” Francine prompted me as if I were the one who had forgotten Anya’s story. Girlfriend—that seemed like such a strange word to use for Sheva.

  “Sure—but, I mean, that was at work. I mean, I didn’t say it was anything outside of work.” I scanned my memory banks, trying to remember the exact words I’d used when I’d brought Anya up. Old flames, that’s what we’d been talking about. Surely I hadn’t suggested that I’d been seeing Anya at the museum, at her apartment?

  “That’s where you were when I called? Those were the torn museum badges, the florist receipts?” Francine let her fingernail drop from her mouth. She threw her arm around my waist and gripped me tight, her hazel eyes locked on mine. “Ellen. Were you trying to lie to me?”

  “No,” I squeaked. “Not exactly. I was just trying not to tell you.”

  Francine’s forehead wrinkled. She didn’t look angry. She looked sad. “Why wouldn’t you want to tell me something like that?” It was like she was talking to her mother. It was like I had broken her heart.

  I couldn’t look at her when I answered. “Because I knew you’d be mad.” I felt bad about hurting Francine. But, even now, it seemed like a good reason to avoid saying something when you could get by without. Not hurting Francine seemed like the very reason I had not told her about Anya. But maybe I was just concerned about hurting myself.

  Now Francine looked confused. “Why would I be mad about you getting involved with this person?”

  “For following an old woman around,” I countered. “For getting too involved. That was the reason you made me ask Wendy for a job.” I sat up. “So I would stop doing that.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” Francine sat up, too. She’d begun to chew her cuticle again, furiously, like she was trying to solve a math problem. “I told you to call Wendy because you were depressed.”

  “Yeah,” I prompted her. “And because of the old ladies at Safeway.”

  Francine squinted at me, as if she had no idea what the hell I was talking about. Then she spit out a piece of fingernail skin and held my face between her hands, one of them still wet. “Ellen, you think I don’t know that you have a weakness for old Jewish ladies? You think I don’t know you would follow them to the ends of the earth?” Was I supposed to say yes or no? Francine went on, “The two of us, apparently,” Francine blinked back tears, “come from people capable of repressing the most intensely . . .” She scanned the ceiling. “The most painful and personal things, as if the goal in life is not to admit that anything has ever hurt you. But you, Ellen,” she blinked again, “you’ve got this big, messy hole in the middle of your heart, and it’s made you a generous and caring person. It’s made you the person I love.”

  “Oh.” The futon creaked. “I guess I misunderstood.”

  I blinked away tears, suddenly recalibrating all the conversations we had had about my grandmother, and the Safeway ladies, and the people I talked to at work. Rewinding in my head, I realized with horror that it had been possible, starting from this single misunderstanding, to have an infinite number of perfectly sensible conversations throughout which each person had an entirely different understanding of what was being said, and neither person realized it. Is that what had happened with Betty and Sol? One person said “For now” and the other heard “Forever,” and it took them thirty-five years to realize the mistake?

  As we nestled back into the crook of the couch together, Francine tapped my forehead with her nail. “I already told you I would love you, warts and all.” It was a joke that didn’t sting only because I’d finally rid myself of my hideous warts. The flaws in my personality would be harder to eradicate. Separating the selfish kind of silence from the selfless kind wasn’t always so easy. Plus, I sensed that Francine’s forgiveness came from her own loss. Had I told her that it was Anya right off the bat when the phone rang in our house that night, I wasn’t so sure Francine would have been so generous. But, lying on the couch next to my future bride, I resolved I would try harder.

  Beside us on the floor, a dozen packages tied with bells, wished us, over and over again, a lifetime of joy.

  ( )

  Late Monday afternoon between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I went to pick Francine up at school. Older children had invaded some of the preschool classrooms, hunching against the tiny yellow and orange seats. “What is holy?” a clear voice called out. I paused by the open door of Francine’s regular classroom, “In Judaism, do we have holy places?” No one said anything. “Are the floorboards up in the sanctuary holy? Are the pews holy?” The students murmured disapprovingly. “No,” the teacher confirmed, “because places can be destroyed. In Judaism, Time is holy. Can anyone ever destroy Time?”

  Francine found me out in the hall. “Look,” she said, pulling the preschool newsletter out of her backpack. Francine was shaking. “Here.” She dropped her finger on the page under the black and white photos of the children dipping apples. Mazel tov! it read, To teacher Francine Jaffe on her wedding next month to Ellen Margolis. “Laura put it in.” Francine’s preschool director.

  “That’s . . . pretty fucking cool,” I decided.

  Francine looked ashen. “One of the families told Laura they won’t be coming back next year.”

  I was confused. What did that have to do with . . . Oh.

  I put my arm around her shoulders. “‘The whole world is a very narrow bridge,’” I told Francine. “‘And the main thing is, not to be afraid.’”

  I’d been working a lot. Something about this time of year—the Days of Awe; the hour of confession; the blank, turning leaves of the Book of Life; the hovering wings of the Angel of Death—brought witnesses to the Foundation in greater numbers than at any other time of year. We booked appointment after appointment, making note of the names, the times, the dates, putting them down, sealing them.

  “Ms. Margolis?” I had my head deep in a transcript when the phone rang. “This is Jason Klein.” Jason Klein waited for me to recognize his name. “You interviewed my grandmother.” When I still didn’t respond—did he not understand that more than half the people I spent my life listening to were grandmothers?—he prompted me: “Ruth Klein. At the Western Home.”

  The Western Home. I remembered the old movie theater with the sadly urgent marquee: “Availability NOW!!!” Jason Klein was the grandson in khaki pants, the one who played Rummy Tiles with his grandmother.

  “Yes,�
�� I told him. “I remember your grandmother.” Of the present, Ruth Klein herself had remembered very little. Of the past, she had remembered enough, between slices of frosted lemon cake. “I hope she’s doing well.”

  “Actually,” Jason Klein coughed, “I wanted to let you know.” He coughed again. “She died.”

  I pressed my lips together, touched my hand to my forehead, felt in my throat and eyes a familiar reflex. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  Jason Klein coughed again. “I was wondering,” he said, “if you might want to go out for coffee. Sometime.”

  “Oh.”

  I understood why Jason Klein called me. My mind flashed on the last Thanksgiving, Gramma Sophie behind the counter, frail, hiding behind the pots and pans, Francine in the other room. After this, no woman he met would ever have known his grandmother.

  It would have been so easy to say yes. What did coffee mean? Coffee could mean anything.

  I knew what coffee meant.

  “I’m really sorry about your grandmother,” I told Jason Klein. “But I can’t. Have coffee with you. I’m getting married,” I said, “in two weeks.”

  “Ah,” Jason Klein answered. He’d been cute, I remembered. He’d played Rummy Tiles with his grandmother. “Lucky guy,” he said.

  My mind caught on the word. I opened my mouth to say something, got caught on the silence.

  I was getting married. In less than two weeks.

  “Girl,” I said.

  “Sorry?”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I told Jason. “Goodbye.”

  ( )

  Black is the color Jews, like Christians, wear for mourning. But white is the color you wear into your own grave. Because it is the color of spiritual purity, white is the color of the kittel—the pocketless, ceremonial gown—one wears on Yom Kippur. White is the color of the funeral shroud. It is the same color, sometimes even the same garment, a Jewish person wears on her wedding day.

  I disappeared upstairs, safe from the eyes of my betrothed, to try on my wedding dress. Francine and I had gone back to Union Square, to the shining glass doors of Saks Fifth Avenue, to find out whether the waters would part, or swallow us up. (After my collapse there, Francine insisted I go to Kaiser. “Did you experience any uncontrolled movements of the arms and legs? Did you experience heart palpitations?” “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I hadn’t eaten. I was shopping for a wedding dress.” The doctor looked up from her checklist, her glasses perched on her nose. “You’re planning a wedding?” She put her cold stethoscope against my back. “Go home,” she said, “and have a glass of wine.”)

  Francine had pushed open the door and together we’d stepped back into the cool hush of the nautilus shell, everything polished and shining, entire worlds, above us, twisting up and up the moving stairs. My head felt light. Sweat broke out over my nose, my forehead and neck. But Francine had held my arm, warm in hers. As we stepped onto the main floor, I took a deep breath: perfume and powder. Suddenly, the fear broke. I’d stepped through it, cool and light, like a fairy-tale rag girl stepping through a mirror, turning princess.

  Perhaps, when I’d fainted, part of my soul had split off and hovered there. Because something drew me on, something like instinct. Three floors up, scenting, blind, my fingers groped toward a sliver of cream-colored lace. “This is it,” I announced, pulling the dress from the rack.

  “That’s the dress!” Francine exclaimed over my shoulder.

  “Do you really think so?” I extricated the dress from its mates. It hung, straight, sleeveless, a sheer lace sleeve over a creamy, satin sheath.

  “No.” Francine shook her head. Her lips groped for words. “No, that’s it. That’s the dress I found for you in New York.”

  I’d stared at Francine, then at the dress. My dress. The mate—not matching, not clashing, she’d told me—of her dress. It was the only dress like it on the rack. Size 8.

  Francine and I had walked out of Saks Fifth Avenue, the persistent horror of my childhood, bane of my wedding day, folded, finally and neatly, away; in its place, the form of my life to come: comfortable, sleek, light and shimmering as a pair of wings.

  Now I stood at the far end of the bed, in front of the full-length mirror framed with a garland of leaves and vines: a housewarming gift from Fiona. Francine and I had just moved in together in our little craftsman bungalow, and I’d wanted Fiona to see all of this—the house, the life, the girl—and recognize me in it. She’d shrieked when she stepped off the plane, her huge green eyes brilliant with joy. The mirror, an object the three of us had admired at a boutique on Fillmore, had appeared after she left, Fiona’s magnanimous gift. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, the card read, who are my sweetest two of all? It was the first gift in which we’d seen ourselves—literally, figuratively—reflected together as a couple.

  Standing in front of it, I unzipped the cocoon of shimmery gray nylon that held my dress; the dress hovered up against the closet door in the darkened room like a spirit, waiting to be possessed. This was my own dress. My mother had not picked it out for me. My mother had not seen it—had not examined the label, pinched the fabric between her fingers, appraised it as “a knock-off,” a fake. I hated that I knew my mother’s criticism already. But it was practically written in the lace, patterned there, the thread of my mother’s unfollowed passion, a lost life. It hovered in the space behind my own eyes, where I saw it, for once, quite clearly.

  I pulled off my T-shirt and unbuttoned my jeans. Parting the nylon lips of the bag, I gently pulled the gown by the shoulders; I turned and unzipped it slowly. The fabric slid, cool and smooth, up my thighs, as my arms found their way through the openings. I couldn’t manage the hook-and-eye at the very top, but it didn’t matter. In the full-length mirror, garlanded by leaves and vines, stood a bride, her bare arms brown, her body with its gentle curves draped in shifting, subtle patterns of a single, classic line. Potentially my Achilles heel, my wedding dress had turned out perfect. Even more than perfect: I could wear it without panty hose. Even more perfect still: It was probably the last dress I’d ever wear.

  ( )

  Though he didn’t believe in God, or, for that matter, in religion, Sol believed in normalcy enough to go to Kol Nidre services on Erev Yom Kippur, the way he and Betty had every year for as long as they’d been married. “I’ll meet you at the house,” Francine reminded me, kissing me goodbye, a bundle of white clothes tucked under her arm.

  I was standing inside the closet, trying on clothes and throwing them on the floor, which is why I didn’t hear the phone until the dogs began to bark, and then to howl, a crazy, wailing sound that rang through the house like a tekiyah gedolah, the great, plaintive shofar blast that calls Israel to worship. Arise sleepers! Awake from your slumbers!

  I dashed out of the closet, tripped over a pile of sweaters, and lunged for the phone. God knows why. The phone had begun ringing off the hook daily, the chorus of a professional pissing contest between the caterer and the DJ. Francine wanted no part of these conversations.

  “Hello? Is this Ellen? Margolis?” A woman’s hesitant voice accented my name on the second syllable, the first blurred. Brusque, thick. Israeli. “You called. About my mother.”

  “Batsheva?” I asked. “Batsheva Singer?”

  “My name is Anat Singer. Batsheva was my mother.”

  I stared at the clothes heaped on the floor. “Yes.” I’d been prepared, I thought, to tell Batsheva that Anya was still alive, still loved her. And I had contemplated having to confirm that Sheva was, recently, dead. But the daughter? I couldn’t exactly out Batsheva Singer to her surviving daughter. Probably, I realized, I shouldn’t even be talking to Batsheva’s daughter. “I work at the Foundation for the Preservation of Memory.” As if that explained it.

  “They said you worked there,” Anat Singer answered, “but you never know. Those women,” she added, “at Rose of Sharon, can be real bitches.” I suppressed a smile. “You can’t imagine how surprised I was to hear from that woman
again, and my mother already dead nearly a year.”

  Of course she’d been shocked. What the fuck was I thinking, conjuring her mother’s spirit up, like the Witch of Endor, out of sheol? “Your mother . . .” I started. Anat Singer listened quietly; these international calls had gotten insanely clear. “I’m so sorry.”

  “My mother escaped from Europe to come fight the war for Palestine. She was tired.” Anat went on, the words with their strong downward slope conjuring the weariness of thousands of years of history. “The past was all she wanted to remember.”

  Wanted to remember. Why did Anat Singer say that? I wanted to press her here. I wanted to know: Had Batsheva talked about Anya? “Ms. Singer,” I ventured, “I interviewed someone who remembers your mother.” I stopped, unsure how to go on. “Someone who may have helped your mother escape from the Kovno ghetto.”

  “The Gandras?” Anat Singer asked. “The stork?”

  I hadn’t meant the Gandras, but, of course, Alina Sapozhnik was the one who literally helped Sheva escape. It wasn’t necessarily something a survivor would talk about. “You know about the stork?”

  “Only a little. From the letters.”

  There were letters. “The letters?”

  “Yes. After she died, I found some letters among my mother’s things.” Before I could ask Anat Singer about her mother’s letters, she continued. “I always suspected there had been someone else. Someone before my father. Why not? My friend Devorah’s mother came from Warsaw. Later, she found out, her mother had had a husband, and two children before her. Killed in the War. Why not my mother, too?