She Is Me

by Cathleen Schine

  “Elizabeth!” she whispered. “They took Harry! They have Harry. I hear him crying. Harry!” She was no longer whispering. “The baby! They’ve got the baby!”

  Elizabeth stroked her hand and told her no baby was crying. It was the woman in the next bed.

  “Yes!” Grandma Lotte said.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said in her most soothing voice.

  “Yes!” Lotte repeated. “The woman. The woman who stole the baby! She’s got Harry!”

  Lotte began thrashing at the sheets, trying to get up.

  “You just had an operation,” Elizabeth said, holding her down. “You’re in the hospital. Everything is fine. Harry is fine.”

  Sometimes Grandma Lotte stopped worrying about Harry and went back to sewing. Other times she cried in fright at a thunderstorm she thought she was caught in. For a while she swore viciously at a group of sinister Hasidim who were apparently closing in on her.

  “Hypocrites, bastards, get away from me, dirty rotten pious sons of bitches . . .”

  Once, she touched the bandage and said, “My face,” in a voice deep with tenderness and defeat.

  When the surgeon visited, he said the operation was a success.

  “But why is she sewing? She’s hallucinating. She’s so scared . . .”

  “The dementia is from the anesthesia. She’ll be herself tomorrow. Won’t you, dear?” he said to Lotte.

  Lotte bit off an imaginary hanging thread and spit it out loudly.

  When Tony arrived, he offered Lotte the lemon meringue pie, but she put her hands up to shield her face.

  “The bastards!” she screamed.

  Elizabeth tried to apologize.

  “She doesn’t know what she’s saying . . .”

  But her father was already waving a hand, dismissing the possibility that anyone would really call him such a thing. He was comfortable in his own decency, Elizabeth had noticed. Sometimes it made him seem smug.

  “Dementia,” he murmured, as he opened Lotte’s chart.

  Elizabeth envied him his expertise. He knew something, was an authority on something. And he could do good in the world just by doing his job. Like a nun.

  “You can walk into a hospital room, look at a chart, and understand what it says, what it means. I envy you,” she said.

  “It’s been a while,” he said, still flipping through the chart. He looked up. “You can walk into a room and open Madame Bovary and understand what that means.”

  “That’s not a profession. That’s . . . entertainment.”

  Lotte began singing, That’s entertainment!

  “For Christ’s sake,” Tony said suddenly.

  Again, Elizabeth began to apologize for Lotte, but then saw that her father was staring at the chart.

  “The bastards,” he said.

  Lotte nodded in satisfied agreement.

  Elizabeth stared. Her father swore so rarely. He left the room carrying Lotte’s chart.

  Lotte, still singing, stopped her imaginary sewing and began to imaginary crochet. Elizabeth recognized the stitch.

  “Sweater?” she said.

  “You like the color?” Lotte asked.

  Tony returned after about a quarter of an hour.

  “They gave her a sleeping pill that makes people nuts,” he said. He shook his head, disgusted. “Lotte?” he said, leaning over her. “You’ll feel better soon.”

  “Dirty bastard hypocrites,” Lotte cried out. “Pooh! Phoo! G’way!” She waved her hands, as if at flies.

  “Right on,” Tony said.

  Elizabeth cringed. She found her parents’ occasional ’60s slang excruciating. Please don’t say “Bummer,” she thought.

  “Bummer,” he said. “But now the dirty bastard hypocrites are on their way out, Lotte old girl. I’ve taken care of it.”

  “Isn’t it handy to have a son-in-law who’s a doctor?” Elizabeth said.

  Lotte smiled as she looped yarn around the crochet needle. Elizabeth put her head on her father’s shoulder. He was the calm one in the family. He and Josh. He and Josh and Greta.

  He put his arms around her.

  “Thank you, Daddy.”

  “She’ll be okay.”

  There was a silence as they both took in the sentence and the spaces around it.

  Everyone will be okay, Elizabeth wanted him to say.

  She waited.

  Perhaps it’s me who’s supposed to say that, she thought.

  “They both will,” she said.

  Her father hugged her closer.

  “Poor Elizabeth,” was all he said.

  Lotte listened to the rain. It never stopped. If she died, she would see her father in heaven. He would be angry at her. With his fiery red hair, he would stamp his foot, stare silently, and chew on his cigar. Lotte saw herself cowering. She had always been her father’s darling. Or so she liked to claim. But if she was his darling, why was he so angry at her? She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to see her angry father. She could see the fury in his eyes. She listened to the rain. It sounded like tap dancing. She moved her feet to the rhythm. She was a talented child. Of America.

  When her father left, Elizabeth sat in the only chair. The yellow curtains were pulled, like shower curtains, around the bed, the bedside table, and the chair with Elizabeth in it. She hoped Brett had given Harry dinner. Would her grandmother get dinner? She shifted irritably, accidentally kicking the bed. There was a knock on the door and she watched as Josh’s friend Tim gingerly pushed open the curtains. She wondered if she should get up, if this was like greeting a guest at one’s house. Was she the hostess? She didn’t move.

  Tim squatted beside her. He was wearing baggy blue jeans with an ink stain in the back pocket and a white T-shirt, also with an ink stain in the pocket. She was glad to see him. A family friend, she thought, and the sound of that was comforting.

  “How is she?” he whispered.

  “She sews a lot. It’s unnerving.”

  They watched Lotte sleep.

  “You don’t have to whisper,” Elizabeth said.

  “Oh,” he whispered. He got up, smelled the large bouquet of flowers from Volfmann, looked at the card. “Your boss?” he said. He raised his eyebrows.

  “Yeah, the whole casting-couch thing,” she said. But she felt herself blush.

  “Where’s your mom?” he said.

  Elizabeth put a finger to her lips to silence him. She didn’t want Greta’s name so much as mentioned in front of Grandma Lotte.

  “I’m in charge,” she said. “Like Alexander Haig.”

  “Oy,” Lotte said, her eyes still closed. “That dirty son of a bitch.”

  “They called me to come in because Grandma was agitated.”

  With her eyes still closed, Lotte licked the frayed end of her imaginary thread and carefully directed it through her imaginary needle.

  Tim raised his eyebrows.

  “What are you making, Mrs. Franke?”

  Lotte did not respond. She was tying a knot.

  “‘Agitated’ means she’s hallucinating because they gave her Halcion. She thinks the lady in the next bed stole Harry. She told the morning nurse she had a fat ass.”

  “Was that a hallucination?”

  Lotte suddenly began to sing.

  Toot-toot-tootsie good-bye . . .

  “I had to come untie her,” Elizabeth said. She liked the noble sound of having rescued her grandmother.

  Tim peered down at Lotte, who sang and moved her feet beneath the blankets until her dinner was brought in on a tray. Tim and Elizabeth stared at the Salisbury steak.

  “Disgusting,” Elizabeth said.

  “Really? I like Salisbury steak.”

  “Is that why you stayed in school?” She couldn’t even remember what his field was.

  “Can I have it?”

  Elizabeth wrinkled her nose.

  “You can have the string beans,” he said graciously. He sat on the arm of the chair and scooped up brown goo with the plastic fork. “I d
o research in school, too, you know. Throw subatomic particles at each other. See what happens. It’s awesome.”

  Elizabeth was sure it was awesome but now wished he would go so she wouldn’t have to make small talk. She preferred to watch her grandmother sink gradually into dementia in solitude.

  He wiped his mouth with the little napkin and opened Lotte’s carton of milk. “Teaching’s awesome, too,” he said.

  “Your whole life is just full of awe,” Elizabeth said.

  Tim, who had been smiling, stopped. He shrugged. “Yeah,” he said. “It is.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She felt her face get hot and, probably, red. She looked down.

  “I know you think I’m infantile,” Tim said.

  “Puerile.”

  “Oh.” He sighed. “Right.”

  The phone rang. It was Greta.

  “How is she?”

  “Sewing and singing,” Elizabeth said. “Daddy came and changed her pills. Tim’s here.”

  “I’ve always had a crush on you,” Tim said.

  Elizabeth covered the receiver with her hand. “What?”

  I’ve got a cruuush on youuu, Lotte sang.

  “Honey?” Greta was saying. “You still there?”

  Tim stood up.

  Sweeeeetie pie! Lotte sang.

  The woman in the next bed groaned.

  “My poor baby,” Greta was saying. “I should be there. Not you. You have a family to take care of.”

  “This is my family, too,” Elizabeth said. “And I’m taking care of it. Relax, Mommy. Please. I’m in charge.”

  “Well, bye, I guess,” Tim said.

  Elizabeth hung up.

  “You guess?” she said. But Tim was already gone.

  When Elizabeth got home, Harry was asleep. Brett was in bed reading the New York Times on his laptop.

  “I’ll be there in a minute,” she said. She went into Harry’s room and sat on the edge of the bed. Tim had always had a crush on her? She still thought of Tim as a kid in ninth grade. That was how old he was when they met. She had come home from college and there was her brother shooting hoops in the driveway next door with this skinny boy wearing glasses. But now he was not in ninth grade, he was not skinny, he was not even wearing glasses. She pushed his words out of her mind. Her grandmother sewed what was not there. That was enough imagination for one night.

  “Harry?” she said. “Are you awake?”

  She put her hand on his shoulder. She shook him gently. She longed to hear his voice.

  “Why can’t I?” he murmured, still asleep. “Why?”

  “No reason,” she said softly. “No reason at all.”

  Elizabeth lay down next to him, letting her shoes drop to the floor as she swung her legs onto his bed and, lost in the peace of his breath and his scent and the touch of his skin, she fell asleep.

  Greta lay in bed missing her mother. I’m fifty-three years old. I’m a mother myself. A grandmother. My mother has lived a long, full life. These things are supposed to comfort me. They don’t. I want my mother. Her mouth twisted like a child on the verge of tears. I am a child, she thought. I am still my mother’s child.

  Tony was out. He had helped organize a benefit dinner and had left the house looking handsome and prosperous in his tuxedo.

  “I wish you could come,” he’d said.

  But Greta could tell he was glad to get away. He had never been very good with sick people. Broken bones, yes. The Sick with a capital S, yes. But the terrified patient, desperate and clutching—that need had always frightened him.

  She heard the car pull up, the garage door open and close. She heard Tony come into the bedroom. She pretended to be asleep as she listened to the swish of his clothes, the clank of the hangers. He went into the bathroom. She heard him pee, flush, wash, brush his teeth. He got into bed and fell asleep instantly, and she turned over and thought of Daisy. She thought she ought to rent Daisy’s movie, Doll. It didn’t sound very promising, a girl in love with her doll, but you never knew. When she was little, she had imagined that she was a princess and all the princes in all the neighboring kingdoms would come seeking her hand and she would turn them all down until she met the one who passed the secret test: he would smell just like her security blanket. She realized later that the smell she loved was partly her own, partly the cat’s, and mostly, simply, dirt. But the point, she said to herself now, is why the hell not a doll? She herself had never even liked her dolls, much less fallen in love with them. But there was a plush monkey she had been enamored of. He had red corduroy overalls and his feet were white rubber made to look like high-top sneakers. His hands and face were rubber, too. To each his own, she thought. She leaned over and sniffed Tony. He smelled like Neutrogena T/Gel.

  Lotte stared at the ceiling. The rain hadn’t stopped, but she knew now it was a hallucination. A pale beam of fluorescent activity showed between the door and its frame. There were hundreds of men in black coats stained with food. Some wore fur hats. Their beards depressed her.

  “Go away,” she said. “You’re not even here.”

  She listened to the rain and wondered if she had already died.

  “But I’m not ready,” she said. “I’m just not ready.”

  The men had kidnapped Harry, but they were just a dream. The rain was just a dream. The hospital was no dream. The cancer was no dream. And I am no dream, either, Lotte thought. She examined the blanket she had crocheted for Harry, for when the kidnapping was over. It was navy blue with red-and-white yarn drawn diagonally across the seams. She tried to put a hand up to touch her face, but she couldn’t move it. She began to cry, but the men in their hats and dirty black coats ignored her.

  five

  Elizabeth made Barbie Bovaine come not to Milwaukee, as Daisy had at first suggested, but to Los Angeles. Where better for a romantic to wind up? Flaubert wrote that Emma Bovary “felt that certain places on the earth must produce happiness, just as a plant that languishes everywhere else thrives only in special soil.” L.A., with its huge blossoms, its roses bigger than roses, its swollen oranges bulging from its chubby trees—this was special soil in which all kinds of plants flourished. Here the desperate narcissus could burst into its doomed narcissistic bloom.

  “So, okay,” Daisy said, “Emma wanted the romance and passion she thought resided in the lives of the rich, the aristocratic, the urban sophisticate. And Barbie wants the romance and passion she thinks reside in celebrity.”

  Elizabeth nodded slightly, not sure, now that someone else had summarized her idea so plainly, if she still wanted to claim it. They were in a conference room, seated around a large, polished table: Volfmann, Elliot, Elliot’s two assistants, who had trailed him in like ducklings, Daisy, and me, Elizabeth thought. She looked from one face to another, trying to pick up some reaction. But everyone looked down. Everyone but Volfmann, whose eyes were closed. His chin rested in his hand. He tapped the bridge of his nose with his forefinger. It was a gesture Elizabeth found interesting because it seemed so unconscious.

  “Obvious parallel,” he said. He opened his eyes. “Obvious is good sometimes.”

  “How about this time?” Daisy said.

  “Good. Obvious is good this time. Celebrity is seductive.”

  Elliot pursed his lips and wrinkled his brow.

  “What?” said Volfmann.

  “Rarefied?” he said, his head cocked to one side, pursing his lips even tighter. “Not accessible to ordinary people?”

  “An obsession with celebrity?” Elizabeth said. “Rarefied? Are you kidding?”

  “Gossip is good,” Elliot said. “Fictional gossip? Not good.”

  “A Star Is Born?” Elizabeth said, “Sunset Boulevard? The Player? The Jazz Singer, for Christ’s sake . . .”

  Daisy put her hand on Elizabeth’s. “Okay,” she said.

  “The Big Picture,” Elizabeth muttered.

  “Anyway, it’s not about celebrity,” Daisy said. “It’s about celebrity worship.”

 
; “Elliot?” Volfmann said. “Celebrity worship? Closer to home?”

  By the time the meeting was over, Barbie and Chuck had successfully moved from Milwaukee to Beverly Hills. Daisy had called Elizabeth “Cookie” twice and “Pussycat” once, kicked her under the table, and squeezed her hand to shut her up, then thanked Elliot for clarifying the concept of celebrity worship. Volfmann laughed, but Elliot didn’t seem to notice. Volfmann then shook Daisy’s hand and said, “At ease, Ms. DeMille.”

  “That was awfully nice of you to send flowers to my grandmother, by the way,” Elizabeth said to Volfmann as they were leaving. She could not think of him as Larry no matter how hard she tried.

  Elliot, already in the doorway, turned and gave her a curdled, knowing glance.

  “The vaudevillian,” Volfmann said. “She okay?”

  One of the 1930s secretaries appeared. “Your lunch is canceled. The brush fires. The traffic is impossible . . .”

  “I was supposed to have lunch with the assistant director of The Fog,” he said. “Shit. I was so up for it.”

  Why would he be having lunch with the assistant director of a crappy 1980 John Carpenter movie? “You were?”

  “I grew up in Boston.”

  “You did?” What did that have to do with it?

  “The guy is an expert in carte de visite. Which I kind of collect. How often do you get to talk to a museum director about your pischedike hobby?”

  “The Fogg,” Elizabeth said. “The museum. In Boston.”

  “You know anything about carte de visite?”

  She shook her head. No. Although she had seen the 1980 John Carpenter movie.

  “They’re sort of the nineteenth-century version of baseball cards. Or, say, autographed photos of movie stars. But never mind, come on,” he said. “You’re the ringer.”

  He led her to the elevator, which took them upstairs to the executive dining room. It looked like a dining room in someone’s house. A movie star’s house, Elizabeth thought. They sat at the large table, which was set for two. A waiter appeared and Volfmann ordered a margarita.