"Don't forget who you are, Meena," he said to her, but you had no idea who that was, and he could only tell you who you were not. You were not a Catholic, for one thing. And you were not a Grandon, either. You were different, you were other, maybe you were better, somehow? Too smart to be a Catholic, you were expected to be able to see through all that smoke and mystery. Too good to be a Grandon, you were not allowed to succumb to the whims of the world the way that people like that were, blown here and there by whatever happened to be the passing fad of the day. And at that time there were plenty of those, coming and going so fast. But not for Meena Krejci.
Your father seemed to have nothing but contempt for the Grandons, as well as for some of the other families in Wellington Heights that he judged to be like them, but they never knew the depths of his feelings against them. Because good old Josef Krejci was everybody's friend, wasn't he? The corner grocer, always friendly, always polite. Eager to be useful to them, happy to be of help. Aloof now and then, maybe, moody sometimes, but certainly never rude. He was a thoughtful man, that was it. Complicated, a widower, a Czech prone to laughter, prone to melancholy. In his apron, in his white shirt, in his tie. He was serious and studious, a self-educated man, how could he be otherwise, circumstances being what they were? He knew just what to say. He knew just how to compliment the customers as he rang up their orders. He knew when to wink, how to smile, how to flatter and to flirt. With one hand in his pocket, snapping the thick red rubber band that he'd wrapped around his fattened roll of five and ten and twenty dollar bills.
But you thought you knew better. Because, hadn't you seen for yourself what Mr. Josef Krejci, the grocer, was really all about? Hadn't you followed him, didn't you know where he'd been, weren't you aware of where it was he went, couldn't you guess at what he did? And weren't you his daughter, after all?
So you thought you knew better than anyone that your father was wrong about himself and that he was also, by extension, wrong about you. Truth was: Josef and Meena Krejci were nothing special. You were not, as Matka kept insisting, a miracle, and your father was not a king. Far from it. Josef Krejci was just another fat horny old bald bohunk. A widowed grocer, that was all: he was no one. And if he disappeared tomorrow, who but you, his daughter, would mourn?
And you were the most ordinary girl in the world—there were a million more just like you, too. All over the place. Those days, they were everywhere you looked.
Here's the proof you had of this: no one saw you. You went to school and came back home again, joined the crowds in the halls, went from class to class, unnoticed and unseen. You had become a ghost; bored and lonely, isolated and alone, you were living in a world of your own.
The idea that John Grandon had had about Julia Bell being trapped in some other parallel space: this was just what popped up into your head, and it was just as you were feeling, too, except that unlike Julia, you didn't even have the benefit of really being gone. Instead you were still there, awake and aware of what had happened, what was happening, and you were moving through the world and doing things and saying things, raising your hand in class, turning in your homework, pushing Belle Chadima's food around on your plate with a fork, while at the same time you were somewhere else and watching from a distance this awkward girl who somehow had your own name and your own face, this clumsy creature who went about the business of her life with her shoulders hunched forward and her arms hugging her schoolbooks to her breasts, her head down, her eyes focused on the ground just ahead of her feet. If Libbie had been looking, if she'd been able to see you then, she would have nudged her best friend Gingi Noone, snorted, clucked, shaken her head and rolled her eyes in disgust at the pathetic daily spectacle of you. But Libbie was not around. She had turned her attention elsewhere, and of course that was the problem.
You poked your fingertips with a needle and eyed the spots of blood that spread and dried and then grew dark and blackened on the opened pages of your math book. To you they looked just like the freckles on your arms, the moles on your stomach, the nipples on your breasts. You took hold of your own skin, twisted it and, moaning, yanked it hard between your finger and your thumb so that later you could lie back bare in the bathtub and admire the deep purple blooms that had flowered up high on the insides of your thighs where no one else could see. You had created them and, you thought, maybe they were art.
During the week, days went by and you regularly saw Libbie come and go. In the mornings she rode to school with her father, in the convertible with the top down if the weather was good. If it weren't for the gray skirt and the brown shoes and the knee-his, Libbie might have been a movie star: Marilyn Monroe herself—fair hair covered by a black scarf, sunglasses, pink lipstick, silver bracelets, polished nails. If she happened to look up and if she happened to see you at the window watching, then she would grin and wave—"Goodbye! Goodbye!"—as her father backed the car down the driveway, turned and pulled away. And maybe you would smile and wave back.
In the evenings Libbie came home late, dropped off at the sidewalk by an unfamiliar car, in a carpool with some other girls whose names you didn't know. Libbie had lots of reasons for staying on late after school—cheerleading drills, play rehearsal, choir practice, French club. It was as if she just couldn't bear to be at home.
Some days you might see Mrs. Grandon standing out on her front porch, and she would be watching the street—the victim of a shipwreck she seemed, eyes on a vast empty ocean, searching the bare blank horizon for some flashing beacon of relief. But it was so much simpler than that: Mrs. Grandon was only waiting for her family to come back to her again. She wore a heavy sweater buttoned up and pulled in tight at the throat against the cold. She kept her arms wrapped around herself. On her face the lonesome worry of a frown had begun to etch lines that she would later have to work fiercely to erase.
When you saw her standing alone and waiting like that you felt sorry for her and you went over there and you sat in the kitchen at that table where once Mrs. Grandon had served you meals—eggs and bacon, peanut butter and jelly, fried chicken, coleslaw, French toast, hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, sloppy Joes—and now you talked to her, recalled out loud the days gone by when John and Libbie were babies, and what that had been like for her.
But they didn't need her anymore now, she said, and asked, "Why should they?" No answer from you on that one. You were stumped. You looked around at the house that Mrs. Grandon had been keeping for her family all those years. Perfect, clean, still. Her checkered curtains at the kitchen window billowed in the breeze. Beyond the window you could just see the garden that was blooming in the back yard—the roses and tomatoes and peppers and mums. But—Mrs. Grandon looked at you then, and, genuinely puzzled, asked: "What for?"
Tears welled in her eyes, before she brusquely brushed them away, shook her head, tugged at her hair. She didn't want to be unhappy, she insisted. She was so pretty—with her careful makeup, perfect teeth, manicured nails. She did her best, she said. Took care of herself. Read books, read the papers, tried to stay in touch. She ironed her husband's underwear, folded his socks. She made glorious meals, worked to keep it different and interesting: escargot, caramelized duck, shrimp cocktail, crab Louie, vichyssoise, an elaborate cream of mushroom soup.
But no matter what, still they scorned her. Turned up their noses. Couldn't be bothered: who could eat that stuff?
Well, you could.
Mrs. Grandon took French lessons, she read novels, she played bridge, she went to Gardening Club, she gave a talk at Ladies' Literary, she volunteered her services to the Junior League, she worked crossword puzzles and acrostics when she could. She was busy all the time, it seemed. And yet...
You had no trouble at all picturing Libbie mocking this. Rolling her eyes, gesturing the look of gabbing with her fingers and her thumb, open and shut, loose lips, flapped jaw: Blah blah blah. Who cares?
Well, you did.
And so there you sat in that calm quiet clean kitchen while the endless-seeming aftern
oon finally wound down toward dinnertime, and you listened to Mrs. Grandon talk.
"Watch out for yourself, Meena," she said, more than once. "Don't make the same mistakes that I did."
"I will," you promised. "I mean, I won't."
You were sitting very still so that you might not distract Mrs. Grandon from herself. It might have been that you were so good at this, so quiet, that Libbie's mother forgot you were even there. Invisibility can be an asset, sometimes. You kept your hands folded in your lap, pristine, demure. You politely sipped the milk she poured for you and politely nibbled at the cookies she baked. Maybe for a moment it felt as if it might be possible for you to become Libbie herself, and wouldn't that have been all right? If you couldn't be around your old friend anymore, well then what if you were just to become her for a while instead? Was there any harm in that?
"I almost died once, you know," Mrs. Grandon said. "When I was just a child, an infant, babe in arms." She shook her head. She had both her hands spread out flat on the polished reflective surface of the table—not a speck of dust—and she tilted her head to study them, critically it seemed. She went on: "I fell out a window, toppled down two stories, to the ground. My mother had no idea. She didn't know it. She didn't even miss me. It was my father who found me on my back in the grass when he came home from work that night. What was I doing there? He looked up, saw the open window. I must have climbed out of my crib, he figured. Then crawled across the room, clambered up onto a chair, to the sill, rolled over, and out. All right, I was a toddler then. The window had been left open because it was summer, it was hot, we didn't have air-conditioning in those days. But, I wonder, why was there no screen?"
She took deep breath, sighed. "My mother was napping and she didn't know. It wasn't her fault. She cried and cried. They poked me all over, but they didn't find anything, no scrapes, no bruises, no broken bones." She shrugged, mystified. "I seemed to be okay."
And then she went on, "When my father found me, I wasn't even crying. I was just lying there on my back in the grass, gazing up at the sky. I was happy! Imagine that! Sometimes I think I can see again now what I saw then. I close my eyes and there it is: that perfect vast endless deep unbroken space. Where did I think I was? I was only a baby. So then how was it that I could know? And now, how is it that I can still remember?"
What you were seeing was a pool of cold sunlight. Speckled linoleum. A faucet, dripping. The cold comma of your mother's stolid body and the dark curl of your own self nestled in against it. Your finger, tracing the waxy outline of Agnes Krejci's face. What you were hearing was that buzzing sound, a wasp caught, and the close whisper of your own breath.
Mrs. Grandon had stopped talking. She was studying her hands again, turning the gold band and the diamond on her left ring finger around and around, thoughtfully.
She glanced at the clock above the sink, and sighed. "They'll be home soon," she said. It was getting dark outside. Mrs. Grandon offered you more cookies, more milk, but you declined. "I'd better get going," you said. You leaned in close to kiss her lightly on the cheek. Her skin was like powdered paper, and there was still that faint smell of cloves.
And then it was November, and you were home, not really sick but faking it because you could only take so much and about every two weeks you'd have to give up and stay at home in bed. Just being yourself all the time exhausted you. Shade pulled down, curtains drawn, blankets yanked up over your head. Dreaming, maybe: something vague, dark and wet and warm. Drifting on that imagined boat again, alone in the world, if there still was one. Until a sound brought you back, a banging at the front door, and you came to. You sat up, alarmed. Outside, a siren was wailing. Had there been a nuclear attack then? That was your first thought. It was always your first thought. Fear and longing, both at once. All those images that you and Libbie had dreamed up when you were kids came swimming into your mind: the rubble, the silence, the two of you, alone.
"Meena?"
It was Mrs. Grandon, standing on the front porch. Her hair was all a mess—she hadn't curled or combed it, and it stuck out all over, made her look crazy.
When you opened the door, she stumbled and fell toward you. "Oh thank God, you're here." She'd been crying. Her face was a mess: puffy, no lipstick, eyes outlined in black mascara circles.
Behind her, Otis Road was quiet. No bombs. No rubble. Only old Mrs. Bickel standing in her yard, looking up at the sky as if she thought it might be about to come down all at once all around her. And in the distance, sirens.
If you had been in school, you would have known. Later Libbie told you that they'd announced it over the intercom, just after lunch. The President had been shot, he was dead, school was over, get your things, go home. All those Catholic girls, crying and wailing, grasping at the little gold crosses that they wore around their necks, rolling their eyes heavenward in imitation of the battered saints that glowed in the glass of the cathedral windows and stooped on the pillars of the bridge. Nuns flapping up and down the halls, rattling their rosaries, shooing everyone away.
Friday, November 22, 1963, who could forget it? Even if you wanted to, you couldn't, they wouldn't let you. Everybody has a story, isn't that what they say? If you were alive then, you have to remember. You don't have a choice.
You loved it, that weekend: the crisis, the drama, the unpredictability. It was like a holiday. Stores closed, flags flying at half-mast, the whole public spectacle. It just got better and better. You hung around with the others at the Grandons' house, because they had the best television set, and you watched the news reports, hour after hour, image after image, trying to put the pieces together and follow the story even as it was unfolding before your very eyes. It wasn't that you were wishing for bad things to happen, but that week was the beginning of what would become for you a lifelong habit of gaping at calamity.
Mrs. Grandon was truly in her element, too. John called her "the master of disaster." Making sandwiches, baking cookies, sweeping into the room with a bowl of popcorn, bottles of pop. And crying, she was always crying. With a little laugh, she'd brush away the tears that kept welling up into her eyes. She was so happy. She loved the crisis, too. "Oh, isn't Jackie beautiful?" she kept asking. In her widow's clothes.
Mr. Grandon stayed as far away from it all as he could. As if he could smell the storm coming, he braced himself against it by simply going on about the business of his life. This man who had been prepared to survive a nuclear attack by taking shelter from it in a concrete bunker that he'd built with his own two hands could not even acknowledge the strange accumulation of thunderclouds that had already begun to build up inexorably around his wife. He went to work in the mornings and came home again in the evenings, as if nothing had happened. As if he thought there might still be people out there shopping for houses.
Josef Krejci also went to work every day as if nothing were happening and nothing had changed. This was one thing he and Mr. Grandon finally could agree on: life goes on, with or without you, whether you like it or not. To your father the spectacle of John Fitzgerald Kennedy's death seemed improper, as it was played over and over again on the television.
"Why dwell on bad news? Why not get on with things, if you can? A grocer can't afford to mourn," he said. And, "Everybody's still got to eat, don't they?"
Yes, they did. The cash register at the store chimed all day long.
Two weeks later, the excitement was all over. Lee Harvey Oswald was dead. JFK was buried. Jack Ruby was in jail. Wellington Heights was quiet again and everyone was back at work or back at school or out shopping, running errands, thinking about the Christmas holidays coming up. Or if they were at home, they were inside. There was no traffic on Otis Road. It was early winter, cold and still, and the afternoon had already begun to sink down toward dusk. In a few more minutes the streetlights would come on.
Faye Grandon dragged a bedroom chair across the carpet, over to the open window. She knelt on the cushion and hoisted herself up to the sill. Ladylike, awkward, in a rose-color
ed cashmere shift, matching jacket with a fake fur collar, dyed-to-match rose silk pumps. A string of pearls. White cotton gloves. A headband holding her hair back from her face. That slight upward curl, gentle flirty flip at the ends. Jacqueline, the beautiful widow, serene in her horror and noble in her grief. She sat there on the sill with her feet hanging over, legs crossed at the ankles, hands folded in her lap. She wasn't nervous. She was relaxed, in fact, calm, content, happy even. She lit a cigarette, closed her eyes, exhaled smoke. From there she could see the tops of the houses all up and down Otis Road. Chimneys, shake shingles, terra cotta tiles. A glint of the river. A frowning saint.
One of her shoes was loose on her foot. She let it dangle from her toes, let it slip off and fall, leaned forward to see it land. She wobbled, caught her balance, gasped. She stubbed the cigarette out against the sill. She fiddled with her hair. Pursed her lips. Considered the sky. Finally she wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, then leaned, rolling forward, tumbling away from herself toward the momentary indulgence of that one sweet unencumbered fall.
Later, after the ambulance had come and gone, Mr. Grandon stood in his yard with his hands on his hips and his head tilted back as he looked up at the bedroom window and silently measured the distance, trying to puzzle out what had happened, what his wife had meant by what she'd done. Maybe it was an accident, as Libbie suggested. Her father nodded, sucked his teeth, shook his head, mystified. "Had to be," he agreed. "What else?"
The Minor Apocalypse of Meena Krejci Page 14
