She Is Me

by Cathleen Schine

“Well, never mind,” he said.

  “Take it, take it. The celebratory sandwich,” she said. She handed him the bag.

  “You’re a good egg,” he said.

  She thought, That’s the kind of thing Brett might say. And she wondered why she felt, suddenly, so sad.

  When Elizabeth mentioned her new dog to Volfmann, he surprised her with his excitement. He wanted to know the dog’s name, how big it was, what color. His voice changed from the rough growl she had found so attractive to a low, melodious growl she found even more attractive.

  “Are you a lady with a lapdog now? Or is he too big? Emma Bovary’s Italian greyhound was almost a lapdog, don’t you think?”

  Any chance to drop a few literary allusions. And he obviously has a thing for strays.

  “I’m really happy for you, Elizabeth. He just came out of the blue and found you. It’s beautiful. Have you read My Dog Tulip? Maybe you’ll fall in love, like J. R. Ackerley with his Alsatian . . .”

  “He’s a mutt,” she said.

  “Aren’t we all,” said Volfmann.

  When she arrived home from her grandmother’s one day, she found a small gift-wrapped package on the steps. At first she thought it was for Harry, but a small label said ELIZABETH. She opened it right there. Inside was a tiny brass dog, obviously old, very heavy for its size, a paperweight, probably. It was a Pomeranian. The same breed as the lapdog in the Chekhov story.

  Elizabeth held the dog to her face and felt the cool metal against her cheek. Volfmann had sent her a gift. There was no card. But there was no mistaking who had sent it. And why.

  “That’s nice,” Brett said, when she came inside and he saw the little figure.

  “I got myself a present,” she said. “To cheer myself up.”

  A lapdog in the palm of my hand. My little secret, she thought. But her own words rang uncomfortably in her ears. So you didn’t tell him it was a present. It’s just a white lie, she told herself. But even as she reassured herself, she realized it was not lies that were bothering her. It was the words themselves. They were her mother’s words. I got myself a present, Greta had said. To cheer myself up. Then she’d held up her tourmaline ring. Her tourmaline ring just like the tourmaline rings Elizabeth had tried on at Fred Segal. When she saw Daisy Piperno.

  Elizabeth had a swift, clear memory of Daisy grabbing a little gift box and stuffing it into her bag. A swift, clear memory of Daisy blushing. Daisy blushing and hiding a present she’d bought. For someone.

  Elizabeth held the brass Pomeranian dog in the palm of her hand. Where does privacy end and secrecy begin? her mother had said. You are my private little gift, Elizabeth silently told the dog. My secret little gift. The ring was Greta’s secret gift. Elizabeth was sure of it. She stared at the Pomeranian. Volfmann had sent her a lapdog. It was beautifully detailed. It wore a little collar. Its eyes stared back at her.

  “It won’t bite,” Brett said, but she was afraid he might be wrong.

  She called Volfmann.

  “You’re amazing,” she said.

  “I’m a son of a bitch. And don’t forget it.”

  “I’d say you’re more of a lapdog,” she said.

  There was a short silence.

  “Elizabeth? That is a peculiar remark.”

  “It is?”

  “Did you call for a reason?” he said.

  “Just to thank you. And to say . . .” She paused. What did she want to say? “I don’t know. Can we meet for a drink?”

  They met at Shutters again. There were no oysters this time. Or champagne. Volfmann was drinking scotch.

  “I love the little dog,” she said.

  “Good, good. Little dogs are good.”

  “I’ve been thinking about the story. ‘Lady with Lapdog.’ I guess that’s what you were thinking of, too.”

  He was silent, just looking at her.

  “That little dog means a lot to me,” she said.

  “You’re very kind to adopt a stray, you know,” he said.

  “I don’t exactly think of you as a stray.”

  He frowned. “Me? God, I hope not. How’s your grandmother doing by the way? And your mother?”

  “I don’t want to talk about them. I want to escape them just for a little while.”

  “Well, we can get right to the script, then, I guess.”

  “No,” Elizabeth said, amazed at how bold she was being with this man who yelled and stamped feet and reamed out new assholes. But not to me, she thought. He sends little lapdogs to me. “Not yet.”

  She’d brought the brass Pomeranian with her. She took it out of her bag and put it on the table.

  “Ah,” he said. “You really are my lady with a lapdog.”

  She tapped the dog nervously. “I’m, well, I guess . . .” She lifted the dog and looked at it, then at him. “Thank you?”

  Volfmann looked at her, then at the dog she held, then back at her.

  “You got that as a gift?”

  “Well, yeah . . .”

  His eyes were wide and droopy and sad and perhaps a little amused. Elizabeth felt suddenly sick.

  “You didn’t send it to me?” she said.

  He shook his head no.

  “You’re sure?”

  He shook his head yes.

  She picked up the lapdog. Its pop eyes gazed adoringly at her.

  “I wish I had sent you such a sweet little dog,” he said. “But, no, it’s not from me.”

  “Oh.”

  “Someone sent it to you.”

  “I guess.”

  “I told you I was a son of a bitch.” He patted her hand gently.

  “Yeah,” she said. “You did.”

  With Lotte recovered from the operation, an attempt was made to provide her with recreational activity. The day of shopping at Barneys had been welcomed, but had also tired her out and she returned to her catalogs with a sigh of relief. She could not have physically endured sitting through an entire movie, in addition to which she would have hated any movie that was being shown. She couldn’t bear seeing old black-and-white movies on television. They depressed her. She no longer played cards. She refused any kind of exercise. She could not sit outside because of the sun. She ate like a bird.

  “Maybe you could teach me to cook,” Elizabeth said. “You tell me what to do, and I’ll do it and you’ll supervise.”

  “Cooking requires split-second timing. It’s an art. I’m old and sick. Anyway, I already taught Kougi.”

  Both Elizabeth and Greta had begun bringing Lotte delicious little morsels—raspberry tarts, cherries, chocolate-covered marshmallows. The only offering she responded to was the box of chocolate-covered marshmallows, which she ate in one sitting.

  “Kougi can teach me to make matzo balls and you can supervise,” Elizabeth said.

  “You certainly want to learn to make those matzo balls. Did you ever hear the joke about the waiter with the matzo balls?”

  “Waiter, you got matzo balls?” Elizabeth said, recognizing her cue, happy to have engaged her grandmother’s interest, even for a minute.

  Lotte stood up and took two creaking bowlegged steps. “No, lady,” she said in a heavy Yiddish accent. “Dat’s the vay I valk!” She stood there, her legs spread, her nose a sideways flap, her chin purple and swollen. Grinning, she acknowledged Elizabeth’s applause, then threw her head back and gave a hoarse croak of a laugh.

  Elizabeth took her grandmother to see the surgeon. He told them he would have to operate again. She followed him when he left the examining room.

  “What will happen if you don’t operate?” she asked.

  “The tumor will keep growing.”

  “Right,” she said. Right? No. It’s terribly wrong. “But, then what?”

  The doctor looked just a little annoyed and he said, very quickly, “Well, to begin with, it becomes increasingly unsightly. And there is a foul odor associated with this sort of thing.”

  Elizabeth waited for him to go on.

  “The tumor will i
nterfere with your grandmother’s ability to eat,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “To drink,” the doctor said. “To swallow anything at all. To talk . . .”

  He started to move away as if clearly that had settled things. Elizabeth, a little dizzy with the information and, more, with the realization that it was she who finally was going to have to make this decision, or at least to decide what and how much to tell Lotte, not to mention Greta, said, “Wait, though. Wait. What about if you cut off her jaw? If you do the operation. Won’t that interfere with those things? Because how do you eat without a jaw, you know? Or talk or . . .”

  The doctor had turned back to look at her. He put his hand on her shoulder. “I want to help your grandmother,” he said.

  “When you help her, will she be able to eat and drink and swallow?” Elizabeth said. Why did she sound so angry?

  “With the aid of a feeding tube, yes, she will.”

  “And talk?”

  “Her speech will be negatively impacted by the surgery, naturally.”

  Elizabeth leaned against the wall of the doctor’s hallway. From inside the examining room, her grandmother called her.

  “Elizabeth! You have my pocketbook?”

  “So how long does she have to live if we don’t do the operation?” Elizabeth said quietly.

  “A few months,” he said.

  “My purse, honey!”

  A few months? She had expected him to say, “We don’t really know,” or “Just a few more years,” or, at worst, “Six months to a year.”

  “One month, possibly two,” he said.

  “And how much extra time would she gain with the operation?”

  “Maybe a month or two.”

  “And how long does the recuperation take?”

  “Oh, just six weeks or so. Miss Bernard, this surgery is your grandmother’s only chance. It is the only option.”

  Elizabeth went back into the examining room and handed Grandma Lotte her purse. Outside, they stood beneath a flowering tree and saw a hummingbird.

  “Such a handsome man, the lousy prick,” Lotte said. She was smiling, leaning on Elizabeth’s arm. “The air is sweet as sugar today,” she said, switching to her sunglasses. “As sweet as sugar.”

  How could Elizabeth calculate, what formula could she apply? Elizabeth held her grandmother’s hand. If Lotte got the operation, she would suffer for six weeks in order to add two more weeks of suffering. Elizabeth inhaled the blossoming warmth. Or would the two weeks be like that moment, beneath a tree breathing air as sweet as sugar?

  Temple barked at the mailman. He barked at the squirrel and the blue jay. He barked at Brett.

  “Don’t you see,” Brett said, yelling to be heard over the dog, “that we’re a family? Of course I came with you to be with your mother. I’m part of your family. You are my family. We are a family.”

  Elizabeth nodded. Her family was everywhere. It had invaded her dreams, invaded her daydreams. Why should it overlook her home? Why should Brett escape?

  “We’re bound together. We ought to be married,” he said. The dog yapped. “It’s very perverse of you.”

  Elizabeth told the dog to shut up. He barked at her, wagging his tail. He barked and barked and barked. Brett hollered over the barking. Elizabeth nodded without hearing. The sun was directly overhead. The birch trees were too young and slender to protect the house from the glare. Elizabeth’s head hurt. Destiny is death, she thought. Is marriage my destiny? She knew Brett was talking. She knew she ought to marry him. He was the father of her child. He was the man she loved. She lived with him already. He was her family, he said.

  “I’m the daughter,” she said, vaguely, not certain even if she’d spoken out loud.

  “You’re a mother, too,” Brett said.

  The dog’s tongue was so pink, lolling so comfortably over the sharp, white teeth. I’m the daughter. I’m a mother. How many more titles does a person need? How many more names? This is when people who love each other have to be there for each other, Brett was saying. When things are difficult. And I’m here, he said. But I might as well have stayed in New York for all you care. You pay more attention to this lousy cur than you do to me. The dog stopped barking and lay down in a patch of glare. Brett had also stopped making any sound. He was rolling up the left sleeve of his starched white shirt, then unrolling it, over and over.

  “I’m not here,” she said at last. “I don’t know where I am. I wake up in the morning and I don’t know where the fuck I am. I run around like a chicken with three heads cut off. I worry about my mother and Grandma Lotte in my sleep. I hardly see poor Harry, I’m preoccupied when I do, and you want more from me? You’re not my child. You’re a grown man. You want to be there for me? Then maybe you should get off my back.”

  It was more than she had said to Brett in a long time. She sensed she was being unfair, that he was reaching out to help her, but all she saw was someone reaching out, asking for something, grabbing and pulling and needing.

  “Sometimes the bonds of love are so binding,” she said softly.

  “And sometimes you’re so full of shit.”

  “I don’t have time to get fucking married. Okay?” She burst into tears. “I’m too tired to get married. Why can’t you understand that?”

  “Christ almighty,” he said. He left and slammed the door. The dog’s tail thumped on the wood floor.

  nine

  It was Thanksgiving and there were torrential rains. Any rain in Los Angeles was described as torrential, which seemed accurate to Lotte. Rain. It had ruined many an outfit. On the other hand, when else would she get the chance to wear the gorgeous new raincoat she’d ordered from Saks? Calvin Klein. Simple. Elegant. Classic lines. You couldn’t go wrong with the classics. Lotte admired herself in the mirror. She pointed to the bottom drawer in her kitchen.

  “That’s okay,” Josh said. “We have platters at home.” Sweet Josh. He had been dispatched to fetch the old lady. Lotte remembered Morris helping her mother into the car, so many years ago. A beautiful baby-blue Buick. Morris always had a Buick. Baby blue. Just like his eyes. Her mother had been the old lady then, Morris the young man. Not as young as Josh, though.

  And my mother was nowhere near as old as I am, Lotte realized with a start.

  “My hat,” she said to Josh, pointing to the drawer again.

  I’m so old, she thought. There must be some mistake. She wanted to set someone straight. But who? And what good would it do? It didn’t seem right to her that she was so old. She felt no wiser. No calmer. She was neither satisfied with her life nor bitter about it. She just wasn’t finished with it yet. Was this what her mother had felt as the handsome young Morris helped her into the baby-blue Buick? But her mother had been such a sweet, docile old lady. Lotte remembered her mother’s gloves that day, clutched in one hand as she’d allowed Morris to hold the other and ease her into the backseat. She had been wearing a dark navy blue silk dress with white polka dots. Lotte’s mother was never heavy, always slim, but her ankles by then had thickened a bit. Lotte remembered the shoes, thick medium-height heels. Laced. Had her mother with her gray hair and white gloves and lace-up shoes—had that soft-spoken kindly person felt the way Lotte felt? Restless? Impatient? Full of the first glimmers of schemes and plans she was too tired to even finish imagining?

  “You keep your hats in the kitchen?” Josh said. He pulled out the drawer, meant for pots and pans, but much better suited to hats, as he could surely see.

  “Voilà!” she said.

  Josh handed her a wide-brimmed felt hat, just the color of the raincoat, a beautiful cocoa.

  “Now,” Lotte said, placing it on her head at an angle, “what do you think of your old grandma now?”

  “You look sensational,” he said, smiling broadly. “Like a model.”

  “A fashion model,” Lotte said, wishing her mother were alive to see her. “Those poor skinny girls, all they do is vomit and take drugs, they should live and be well.”
>
  Greta listened to the rain pounding on the roof. Poor Lotte would be put out. It would spoil her entrance to have a dripping coat to shake out. Greta felt suddenly happy. It was Thanksgiving and her mother would be able to have her entrance spoiled. Lotte was alive and coming to Thanksgiving dinner.

  And I’m alive, Greta thought. Alive and coming to Thanksgiving dinner. The sight of the turkey made her queasy and she was tired, deeply tired, but she was alive. She looked up at the ceiling and silently said thank you. There was no one on the ceiling to thank, but she said it anyway, and she meant it.

  She looked around the room. There was Tony. He had already stained his tie, she noticed, but there he was. She could see him through the door into the dining room, carving. There was her wonderful daughter fussing over her, bringing her a pillow she didn’t want. There was her grandson, a sturdy little boy, even tempered as little boys go, sweet and affectionate. He crawled on the floor with the hideous mutt Elizabeth had brought home from nursery school. The dog looked like a homeless person’s dog. It lacked only a shopping cart and a pile of rags. Brett, who stood above them drinking scotch, kept moving away, but Temple followed, jumping up to be petted.

  The door opened with a whoosh and Josh dragged in Lotte’s wheelchair, then went out with Brett to help Lotte in. She stood in the doorway, her arms held out dramatically, her coat and hat dripping. There was a moment when those inside stared at her, wondering why she didn’t come in and get dry. But Greta quickly came to her senses.

  “Mama! What a fabulous coat! And your hat! Gorgeous! And perfect for the weather. Thank God you had it.”

  Lotte smiled. She seemed as if she might bow or curtsy. Josh gently helped her unbutton her coat.

  “Oh!” she said, seeing the dog. “Is that the turkey? Pretty scrawny if you ask me.”

  Harry stared up at her, trying to decide if she meant it. She jingled her bracelets at him. The dog barked. Harry stood up at the prompting of Brett and went, uncertainly, for his kiss.

  “I could eat you up,” Lotte said, grabbing his arms with her strong hands and kissing his cheeks. “I could bite you, chew you . . .”