The Other Traitor

by Sharon Potts

  He turned off the water and dried himself with a towel as he returned to his bedroom. He opened the closet door. What the hell? There was a pile of clothes on the floor. His clothes. Sephora’s shoes, bags, dresses, pants and shirts were all gone, but she’d scrawled a note on the closet wall. GO TO HELL. He stepped closer. She had used red nail polish.

  He sat down on the bed. Sephora had left him. Shouldn’t he be sad or angry or disappointed? Some reaction to show that his relationship with this woman over the last two years had meant something to him? But whatever love or attraction he once felt for her had faded a long time ago. And then he started to laugh. Nail polish. Sephora had said goodbye to him with red nail polish. Probably last season’s shade. He fell back against the bed and laughed until his stomach hurt. His head started pounding again. He caught his breath, wiped away the tears of laughter, and sat back up.

  She was gone. But that was okay. He no longer had to put on an act for anyone. He was free to start over.

  He reached into the heap of clothes in his closet and pulled out a pair of worn jeans and a stretched-out crew neck sweater that Sephora hated. He dressed quickly, grabbed his army-surplus jacket, and took the stairs down the nine flights to the lobby.

  Sephora was gone.

  What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

  CHAPTER 7

  Stronger. He was already feeling stronger. Just a little, but it was a start. Goodbye job. Goodbye Sephora. But Essie was a tougher nut to crack. He had taken one step forward with her, but it felt like he had fallen back two. Maybe his grandmother could get him on track.

  Most of the slush had been cleared off the sidewalks from yesterday’s storm and Julian walked through the West Village passing hip new restaurants and yuppie bars, double-parked BMWs, doormen flagging down taxis in front of renovated luxury apartment buildings like his. It was like he was seeing his neighborhood for the first time. Damn. Why had it taken him so long to realize he didn’t belong here?

  He walked farther and farther from this phony place, stepping over a ‘Happy New Year’ tiara, a crushed gold horn, and silver streamers, crossing Houston Street into the Lower East Side and the rich, spicy smells of his childhood. Rusted fire escapes clung to old tenement buildings like vines. Some of the restaurants had been here for a hundred years—Yonah Shimmel’s Knishes, Russ & Daughters Appetizers, Katz’s Deli. His grandmother’s world.

  He turned south and went down the familiar streets. Her apartment building was just as it had always been. Brick and solid, with bay windows overlooking the front courtyard where Julian used to throw a rubber ball against the wall when he was a kid.

  The outer door was oak, abraded and darkened with age. Julian ran his finger over the buzzers on the adjacent wall. The name beside Apt. 4B was barely legible. The paper it was written on had probably been there for the last sixty or seventy years. Aaron Lowe, it still said, even though he’d been dead thirty years, since shortly before Julian was born.

  He pressed the buzzer and waited, knowing it sometimes took her awhile to get to the intercom.

  “Yes?” her sweet scratchy voice said. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me, Nana.” And for the first time in a long while, he was where he belonged.

  A comforting staleness, reminding him of the Musée de la Vie Romantique in Paris, hit Julian when his grandmother opened the door to her apartment. She had to hold her head back to look up at him. Her dark eyes were clouded by cataracts and her short chaotic hair looked like silver tinsel.

  “Hi, Nana.” He took in her quirky outfit, typical for her—leopard-print pants, a red sweater that was way too big, and earrings with clusters of magenta stones. She was so tiny that he had to stoop all the way over to kiss her soft crepe-skinned cheek. She smelled citrusy, like she always did. How could his mother speak about this woman as though she was the devil?

  “I think you’re growing and I’m shrinking,” Nana said. “At this rate, in another ten years you’ll be a giant and I’ll be no bigger than a mouse.”

  Julian laughed. His grandmother was in her nineties, but she liked to joke about the future as though she was going to be around forever. And he wished she could be. The thought of a world without Mariasha Lowe left him with a hollow feeling inside.

  “How does that song go?” she said. “If I knew you were coming I’d have baked you a birthday cake.”

  “Sorry. I should have called. But you never have to do anything special for me.”

  “I can still make you something to eat. It’s almost lunchtime.”

  “I’m good. I had a couple of bananas.” He took of his army jacket and hooked it on the coat rack.

  “How about some nice French toast or macaroni and cheese?”

  His childhood favorites. “Thank you, Nana, but I’m not really hungry. Can we talk?”

  “Of course.”

  Julian left his shoes in the foyer, not wanting to get scolded for messing up his grandmother’s rugs. It was kind of funny that here, with his grandmother, he felt like a child again—safe and loved.

  He followed her into the living room. She moved cautiously, her eyes on her feet as she tottered across the wood floor and pale pink area rug. The soft leather of her flats bulged from her bunions. She hoisted herself up into one of the two turquoise leather chairs closest to the windowed alcove where three of her sculptures stood.

  The apartment hadn’t changed since Julian’s earliest memories. It was like stepping into a circa 1945 time capsule, where every object seemed important because of the absence of clutter. Nana still had a wind-up Victor Victrola in one corner and, against the long wall, a large wood console with its original black-and-white television. The TV hadn’t worked even when he was a kid and he wondered why she kept it. Julian had gotten her a flat-screen TV for her bedroom that he knew she watched because she was always up-to-date on the latest episodes of Downton Abbey.

  The walls were the same mint green they had always been, and in front of the console was a crimson art deco sofa with bulbous arms and the two turquoise chairs. He remembered Sephora’s reaction the first time she came here. She’d pinched Julian’s arm and whispered, not realizing Nana’s hearing was excellent. “This stuff is so retro. I’d love it in our place.”

  His grandmother had called out in her sweetest voice. “I’m not dead yet, darling.”

  “How’s your girlfriend?” Nana asked now, as though reading Julian’s mind. “Cremora? Remora? I never remember her name.”

  “Sephora.”

  “That’s right. Sephora. What kind of people name their child after a make-up store?”

  “We broke up.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “Sorry if it makes you sad. Not sorry about the girl.”

  “I know you didn’t like her much.”

  “She was pretty,” Nana said. “There are plenty of pretty girls out there.”

  “She was a symptom of the wrong choices I’ve been making.”

  His grandmother nodded, as though she knew what he was referring to.

  “Somehow I got myself into the wrong life,” he said. “Wrong girlfriend. Wrong apartment. Wrong career.”

  He went over to the sculptures that Nana had created with her own hands. Most of her work had been sold or given to museums, but she had kept these three for herself. Each one was a four-foot-high representation of a person made of steel rods and bronze golf-ball joints, a bit like the Tinkertoy set he’d played with as a kid. The brass plaques on their bases read: Woman Wearing New Hat. Man Reading. Boy Playing Stickball.

  They’d been there his entire life, but Julian had never paid much attention to them. Of course, Julian was realizing there was quite a bit he hadn’t noticed growing up.

  “Anyway,” he said. “I’m trying to fix all that. I quit my job and now that Sephora’s gone, I can start looking for a new apartment.”

  “And will that make everything better?” she asked.

  He turned back to her. “Not everything
.” He sat down in the chair next to hers. “I went to see Essie last night.”

  “Good,” she said. “You should spend more time with your mother.”

  “That’s never been easy for me.”

  “Your mother loves you.”

  “So you’ve been telling me my whole life, but I’m trying to understand why she never seemed to want to be around me.”

  His grandmother closed her eyes. Her wrinkled cheeks and mouth sagged and she looked terribly sad.

  Julian rested his elbows on his knees. “Nana, I need your help.”

  She opened her eyes. “You know I’d do anything for you.”

  “Then please explain to me why she’s so cold and angry. Did she not want me? Rhonda’s ten years older. Was I a mistake she can’t get over?”

  “Oh, Julian. It’s nothing like that. I’m telling you, your mother loves you.”

  “Then what’s going on?”

  “Sometimes that happens between parents and children. An inability to communicate.”

  A dull light came in through the windows making the three sculptures seem forlorn. “Was that what happened between you and Essie?” he asked.

  His grandmother rubbed her pointer finger with her thumb.

  “Nana, I’m not completely blind. My mother never visits you. Why is that? And I remember the two of you fighting all the time when I was a child.”

  “What can I say, Julian? My daughter and I never got along.”

  “But why not?”

  She sighed. “I wasn’t a good mother. I wish I could have been, but the world I grew up in molded me. I made promises to my parents. I had responsibilities to my brother. Maybe I just didn’t have enough left over to be a good mother, too.”

  “I don’t buy that,” he said.

  She turned her gold wedding band around. Her fingers were knobby from arthritis. These were the hands that had once created intricate sculptures; now they resembled her work.

  “My mother told me about your brother Saul.”

  His grandmother started, as though she’d heard a sudden noise. “What did she tell you about him?”

  “That he was an artist.”

  “He liked to paint, but he was never an artist.”

  He looked at the walls, unadorned except for a purple neon clock and fan-shaped sconces. “Do you have any of his paintings?”

  “No.”

  “Did you know Essie has one?”

  Her face grew pale.

  “Saul gave her the painting that’s hanging in our living room.”

  “She has that?” Her voice was practically a whisper.

  “Yes,” he said. “And she told me you hid it from her. Why did you do that?”

  “It was a terrible painting.”

  “It was her birthday present.”

  She shook her head, angry about something.

  “Essie told me that you and she fought about it,” he said. “Is that why you’re still upset with each other? Because of the painting?”

  “I wanted to protect her. That’s all I ever hoped to do.”

  “She said you and Saul didn’t get along.”

  Her face hardened, her lips forming a straight line. “Your mother knows nothing about my relationship with Saul. He was my baby brother. I sacrificed everything for him.”

  “Then tell me, Nana.” He sat forward on the chair. “Tell me about your parents and your brother. Tell me so I can understand my mother. So I can understand myself.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head.

  “Why not? Is there something you don’t want me to know?”

  Her eyelids opened. She licked her lips. “It’s all in the past. Nothing in the past can help you.”

  “But I think it can.”

  She seemed to shrink into the big turquoise chair. Her eyes clouded over as she stared at the three sculptures.

  “Please, Nana.”

  Finally, she let out a heavy sigh. “Okay, Julian. I’ll tell you our story. I only hope it will help, not hurt you.”

  He almost reminded his grandmother about Nietzsche’s words—What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger—but he had a feeling she wouldn’t appreciate them.

  CHAPTER 8

  She didn’t want to tell him any of it, but her grandson had a point. How could he ever be himself if he didn’t know where he had come from? So she would tell him some of the story, but never would she reveal everything. Not to Julian, not to anyone.

  Mariasha looked across the room at the sculptures she had created. Mama adjusting the treasured hat she had made for herself. Papa immersed in a favorite book. And Saulie, poor Saulie, playing a momentous game of stickball. The frozen figures had emerged from her desperate effort to preserve the people she loved in a moment of happiness, so she wouldn’t have to dwell on how she had failed them.

  Julian was on the edge of the other chair, his stocking foot tapping on the floor, impatient and frustrated, just like her brother had once been.

  She studied the optimistic swoop of the rods that formed the shoulders of Boy Playing Stickball. “First, I would like to clear something up, Julian,” she said.

  He looked at her expectantly, his blue eyes reminding her of his mother’s, just like the cat’s-eye marble Mariasha had had as a child.

  “I loved my brother,” she said. “Maybe too much.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You want to hear our story, so I’m going to tell it to you from the beginning. Then, maybe you’ll understand.”

  The clanking sound of the radiator started up and the room filled with stale heat.

  “My parents came from Russia in the early 1900s,” she began. “They ran away to escape the pogroms against the Jews, hoping to find safety in America. A place to raise their children.” She ran her tongue over her lips. “My father, I think, was in love with America. The land of liberty, he used to say. But he also felt, like many of the other immigrants, that he had to do his part to help shape America. He was very active as a social democrat. And that was how my little brother and I were taught to see our country. As a place where equality should prevail. Where everyone deserved a fair shake—black, white, immigrant. Everyone.”

  She told him about how poor her family had been, how her father had gotten sick when she was a little girl. That after she’d heard the doctor talking about germs and using separate plates, she was always reluctant to eat food her mother hadn’t prepared. She recounted how her father had been a thinking man, an educated man, who wanted her to study, to learn, to teach her brother. He would read books to her and made her promise to read them to Saul.

  “My father died when I was seven,” she said. “My mother was left alone with little money to raise two young children. She took in laundry and sold eggs to neighbors from our tiny apartment.”

  Julian’s face was in a frown, as though he was picturing this.

  “Saul was not even three when Papa died,” Mariasha said. “Mama was busy trying to support us and my brother became my responsibility.”

  She looked at the sculpture of Boy Playing Stickball. They were a couple of ragamuffins, she and her brother, living their childhoods with practically no supervision.

  “I read him the books my father had read to me. Stories by Sholem Aleichem. Books and pamphlets I didn’t fully understand at the time. About equality for all.”

  She leaned her head against the chair and closed her eyes. “They have a name for children who grew up like my brother and me,” she said. “Red-diaper babies. Children whose fathers or mothers were sympathizers with certain communist ideals.”

  Julian looked startled. “So were you a communist?”

  Mariasha released a long heavy breath. “Let me tell you the whole story, then you be the judge of what I was.”

  June 1932

  Mari watched the stickball game from the stoop of their apartment building. Last inning. Man on second. Saulie’s team behind by one.

  It was hot and there was no breeze. Even th
e diapers on the clotheslines between the tenements hung motionless. Mari’s heavy black braid made her back sweaty. She threw it in front of her shoulder and fanned herself with the book she’d borrowed from the public library. Campfire Girls at Work. Next month, she was going to camp for a week and she wanted to learn everything she could about camping. This was the fourth Campfire Girls book she’d read. She couldn’t wait to hike in the woods and learn how to build a fire, where she’d roast marshmallows and tell spooky stories.

  Saulie was up at bat, clutching the broom handle low, his dirty white shirt pulling out of his overalls. He was four years younger than Mari—ten and small for his age—but he was one of the best hitters on the street. He could win the game for them now.

  The pitcher, a twelve-year-old named Louie from around the corner, threw the rubber ball. Saul swung. The stick connected with a thwap and the ball went flying over the second baseman’s head toward the butcher shop.

  Mari jumped up. “Go Saulie!” she shouted.

  Saulie raced the bases marked in chalk, red curls bouncing, his short sturdy legs churning up and down like engine pistons.

  The ball bounced behind a parked car and two boys ran to get it. The second baseman got there first. He fumbled the ball, trying to throw it to Irving, who was standing in front of home base waving his arms. “Throw, you shmendrick!” Irving screamed.

  Saulie was nearing home base, a chalk mark on the rough asphalt. The second baseman wound up his arm and threw.

  Don’t slide, Saulie, don’t slide. Stop trying to be a hero. Her brother had already torn up his other pair of overalls, and his legs were covered with scabs.