Winter Eyes

by Lev Raphael

  “I like when you talk about him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you love him.”

  “I don’t anymore,” she murmured. “At least not the way that hurts.”

  Now he was ready to go back to himself. “That picture on my desk at the dorm?—the man and woman?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s not my dad, not really. He’s my stepfather, Leo. The guy in the other picture is my mother’s brother, Sasha.” Spoken this way the facts seemed harmless, ordinary.

  And Marsha seemed prepared to help him. “When was the divorce?”

  “I was eight when things got bad, eleven when it was final.”

  They said nothing for a while and sat comfortably together; his thoughts shifted, waiting.

  “But I told everyone he was my father. I let them think it. Everyone thought so.”

  “Your stepfather?”

  “My uncle. Sasha.”

  Marsha twisted around to look at him. “Wait, I don’t get it. What about your real father?”

  “It’s a mess, just like you said.”

  “And you really never talk about any of it? Like the camps?”

  “Head down, he murmured, “I can’t.”

  “How do you get work done?” Gray asked one afternoon, lying in a pool of letters. “You’re over there all the time.”

  Stefan grinned. “Inspiration.”

  “I need some of that.”

  Sasha wrote him briefly reminding him it would soon be his mother’s fifth anniversary—a stiff little note that hardly bore a trace of his uncle. Stefan read and reread the note, wondering at how he’d grown past Sasha somehow, though he wasn’t even sure what that meant. When he put the letter away he decided he would go down to New York to help them celebrate this one.

  He called Marsha, asking her to meet him at the snack bar near his dorm.

  “What’s up?” she asked, joining him at the table where he sat with an untouched cup of coffee. She was wary, amused by his withholding silence.

  “My parents’—my mom’s anniversary is in two weeks.”

  “And?” Marsha unbuttoned her coat, struggled out of it.

  “I’m going to New York.”

  “Oh. How long?” Her voice was flat.

  “Why don’t you come too?”

  “What?”

  He told her in great detail what they could see, talking at length through her strange silence until he noticed her eyes were wet.

  Marsha had never been to New York. “It’s just so great,” she sniffed, rubbing at her eyes, and that was pretty much all she said for the next days while he made their plans; her quiet astonishment and pleasure was something new to him.

  “What is that?” Marsha asked one day, leaning over him to inspect a piece of paper. “You’ve got the times down for everything?” She read at random: “Saturday morning: breakfast, leave Bay Ridge 10:30 to Museum of Modern Art.…” She peered down her nose at him. “This is a weekend, not a forced march.”

  He disengaged the timetable from her hand and said with dignity: “I want to be sure you have a good time.”

  “With you? In New York? Impossible,” she laughed, ruffling his hair.

  Stefan phoned Leo. “I want to bring someone down.”

  “That’s fine. Your roommate?”

  He hesitated. “I’ve been dating someone. Marsha.” And then he added, “She’s Jewish.”

  There was a silence. “Tell her we’ll be glad to meet her.”

  “What should I wear?” Marsha began asking more and more as the Friday they were leaving crept up.

  “You always look nice.”

  “But I’ve never been to New York, I want them to ask me back.”

  “My mother and Leo?”

  “The mayor, everybody. What do you wear to an opera?”

  The bus ride was very long and grim, with rain sheeting the windows most of the way down. Marsha slept, waking once to mumble, “Are we under water?” The closer New York came, the more peculiar Stefan felt; it was nervousness of a kind he hadn’t known. Back at school the distinctions were clearer—he had his classes, his schedule, his talks with Gray, and there was all the time with Marsha that defined his life there. But he was going home, bringing her with him, a symbol and proof of his independence: it was almost too important a weekend.

  Marsha held his hand tightly all the way off the bus to the subway. “I’m glad we didn’t bring much,” she said in the crowded train.

  “What a beautiful house,” Marsha said when they turned the corner in Bay Ridge.

  The door opened before she could say anything else. Stefan impulsively hugged his mother and Leo, making a mess of the introductions. Everybody smiled.

  “Are you hungry?” Leo asked, hanging away their coats. They were.

  “But I’d love some coffee first,” Marsha said, and Stefan’s mother led her into the kitchen.

  “You’ll sleep in the study?” Leo asked him. “And Marsha in the guest room?”

  “Sure.”

  Dinner was long and noisy. Marsha talked about where she worked and even told Stefan’s stories about Gray and his letters. Stefan noticed that Marsha was as relaxed as a member of the family, and across the table from her it was like meeting her all over again. Her face shone with comfort; she could’ve been warming herself at a fire. And while that was beautiful, he felt uncomfortable that she was having so much fun with people he didn’t trust. He was proud of her, and jealous. Why was it so easy for her?

  “She’s some girl.” Leo smiled when they were stacking dishes into the dryer. Stefan nodded, but that didn’t seem enough.

  “She’s great.” But that wasn’t right either, and he knew he wasn’t enthusiastic enough.

  “Maybe next time, we can have a Shabbat dinner,” Leo said softly, as if waiting for Stefan to get angry.

  He shrugged. “Maybe.” He didn’t even know what a Shabbat dinner was, exactly, and he was too embarrassed to admit it.

  When they were all done shelving and straightening, Marsha asked if he’d play something.

  They had Benedictine in the living room, where Stefan was suddenly focusing on the menorah that he knew his mother and Leo lit, though he had never come to their house for Hanukkah, which had quietly replaced Christmas in his mother’s life. That left only a blank for him and Sasha.

  They talked idly about the news while Stefan went through the pile of music at the piano.

  “But some of this is mine,” he wondered, turning to them.

  “Sasha brought over a few things you might like.”

  “Should I call him now?”

  “He’s not home.” His mother smiled.

  “Where is he?” Marsha asked, echoing the playful tone.

  “At Mrs. Mannion’s. He’s been there often.”

  “In the winter? It must be freezing.”

  “Sasha’s finally teaching her to play,” Leo said, eyes wide. “He said she’s not a very good student and will need a lot of lessons.”

  Stefan pictured Sasha and pink Mrs. Mannion at the piano in her bedroom. After the disaster in Michigan, he had asked Sasha why he never got married in America, and Sasha had told him about being forced into a ghetto when the Nazis took over Poland, the starvation and the terror, and seeing Rushka, the girl he was in love with, clubbed to death by an SS officer because she didn’t get out of his way quickly enough. “After that,” Sasha said, “Who could care about someone?” And Stefan couldn’t ask Sasha anything else, like why there was always tension between him and Stefan’s father; the reason would surely be something that would leave an ugly, indelible scene inside of him.

  “Your uncle’s dating someone?” Marsha asked.

  Stefan shrugged, turned to the keyboard to play a jubilant Haydn sonata he’d almost forgotten he knew, but his fingers never faltered and knowing they were listening, and that Sasha had made some sort of decision, filled him enough for the music to come naturally, with ease. Maybe it was his leavin
g for school that gave Sasha permission to change his own life. He felt a little guilty. Maybe taking care of him all these years had kept Sasha single.

  He played two more pieces, but without that first excitement, and his hands were tired.

  “Your rooms are both ready,” Stefan’s mother said, standing. “I’m glad you came down.” She stepped across to kiss Stefan good night and take Marsha’s hand. “Tomorrow it’s museums and the opera? I hope you’ll have dinner with us before.” She went upstairs.

  “I’ll get these,” Leo said, collecting the liqueur glasses and taking them into the kitchen. “Good night,” he called to them from the stairs.

  “They’re neat. Your mom’s so classy and your father’s a beautiful man.” She swore. “Stepfather, sorry.”

  “He is my father, I guess—more than anyone else just now.” Marsha came to sit on the floor by his chair, head back against his knees; she reached for his hand.

  “You know what I was thinking?” Marsha asked after a while. “I was looking at this room, and your mom, and I couldn’t believe anything terrible ever happened to her. I mean, in the war.”

  “It did,” Stefan said vaguely. And now, instead of feeling resentful, as he had before, he thought that maybe Marsha could help him find a way to talk to his mother without feeling so much bitterness smothering each possibility. He was surrounded by mine fields—he needed help to pick his way through to freedom, or at least safety.

  “Remember I told you my dad was getting married again?”

  “In the summer, right? What about it?”

  “I’ve been wondering. I might go. And if I do, I want you to come with me.”

  She frowned. “Why? To throw rocks?”

  “I’m serious. I think I could do it if you were there.” He imagined a beautiful outdoor wedding amid lush flowering shrubs, a gazebo, dancing with Marsha in his arms, feeling he belonged, feeling his father was proud of him. But it would probably be a Jewish wedding with one of those canopies, and Jewish prayers. He wouldn’t know what to do, he didn’t know anything about being Jewish. How was he supposed to learn, where could he start?

  “What’s wrong?” Marsha asked him.

  “I just feel so stupid sometimes.”

  “Join the club! Tell me, how come you don’t play the piano in the dorm? Isn’t the sound good? You look so cute when you play.”

  “We should get to sleep.”

  “I forgot your schedule. We have to be up at five o’clock? Don’t you dare tickle me!”

  They kissed good night, and going off to sleep by himself wasn’t as strange or lonely as he’d thought it might be.

  He found his mother and Marsha deep in conversation the next morning, wrapped in their robes and the odor of rich morning coffee. He poured a cup and stood at the counter listening to his mother tell a story he’d never heard before about her first days back at school and how nervous she’d been. Marsha leaned forward, face bright with attention; she really was someone you told things to. Even his mother felt that and responded—something in Marsha’s eyes or tone or movements was soothing and encouraging. He’d never be afraid of her.

  Watching his mother, with her short gray hair flattened by sleep and her face still a bit heavy, he thought she looked different. Maybe he was just seeing her as a person, like the night on the porch in Rockaway when Leo had looked different.

  From the stairs he heard Leo humming louder than he thought anyone could hum, and then Leo burst in on them, growling, “Where’s my coffee?”

  “So you’ll be back at four-thirty?” his mother checked again when breakfast was over, and once more as he rushed Marsha out onto the street.

  “If I don’t collapse!” Marsha called.

  All day—hovering in front of Guernica, gawking at the Plaza Hotel and strolling up Fifth Avenue—he saw nothing so clearly as Marsha and her pleasure. She kept beginning sentences of adulation that faded into helpless smiles, pointed and stared and nudged and stopped like a busload of tourists. At the Frick Museum, he let her wander while he sat on a bench opposite the Ingres wondering if this blue-satined Countess didn’t look just a bit like Marsha, there at the neck, or maybe the eyes, it was probably the eyes, yes they definitely had similar eyes, somewhat.…

  “We could do the Guggenheim, it’s just up Fifth from here,” he offered when Marsha at last joined him on the bench.

  “Oh honey, I’m arted out. Let’s eat.”

  But before they left, Marsha bought a small print of the Ingres for his parents. They went down to O’Neal’s near Fordham, and across Lincoln Center, where he had sometimes hung out, but being there didn’t mean much. When he had first seen pictures of Lincoln Center in the newspaper, they were of a model, and even all these years later, he saw that same vision of anonymous, bland concrete, a shell.

  They ate hamburgers, and Marsha spotted a few famous dancers that Stefan only knew by name. She was ecstatic, though. On the way home, an arm around her shoulders, he wondered at how quickly the day was passing, but he seemed to stand at the center of it, motionless, close to Marsha.

  They were back in Bay Ridge after five and had to rush dressing. Marsha came upstairs to show off her black boots, plain-lined black dress and cameo. She’d pulled her hair back at the temples.

  “You are gorgeous,” he said.

  She eyed his dark double-breasted suit, shaking her head. “If you let anyone near you tonight, I slap.”

  “Me or her?”

  “Both—I told you I’m tough.” She brushed his lips with a kiss. Downstairs when they slipped into their coats, his mother put on a mink he had never seen before. She looked stunning and serene. Leo drove a bit unsteadily to the small Czech restaurant on the East Side he and Stefan’s mother had gone to a lot when they were “at school together.”

  “When you were dating?” Marsha asked.

  “I suppose it was dating,” his mother agreed, murmuring something to Leo, and for the rest of the ride there were two separate conversations. Stefan kept squeezing Marsha’s hand, playing with her fingers, nervous, excited.

  “Here,” Stefan said as soon as they’d ordered dinner, and he placed two small boxes on the table. “The green one’s for Leo.”

  Leo and his mother unwrapped their gifts. “Stefan.” His mother held the silver chain from which hung a small blue glass drop shaped like a tear, put it against her white blouse. “It’s so beautiful,” she marveled.

  “There’s a crafts store in town and everything’s handmade.” He’d used his father’s check.

  Leo’s gift was a silver tie bar with a similar glass tear. “Beautiful,” he echoed, putting it on after slipping off the plainer one he had been wearing.

  “Marsha helped me pick.”

  “I didn’t, not really.” She handed across the flat brown bag and Leo and his wife grinned when they saw the print.

  “How did you know?” Stefan’s mother asked.

  “She’s our favorite. We’ll have to frame this.”

  Dinner was soon over and in the car riding downtown to the theater he hardly remembered what they’d eaten.

  “Here.” Leo slipped him a bill when they stopped down the block from Lincoln Center. “Take a cab home, okay?”

  “Enjoy the opera.” His mother smiled her thanks.

  He followed Marsha through the crowd to the red plush and gold and glare inside, dazed by the Chagalls, the enormous staircase, the crowds, and a little drunk despite the coffee, and for hours he was more aware of Marsha’s intense appreciation and applause, when she shifted in her seat, when she smiled at him, than Faust itself or anyone around them.

  He fell asleep in the cab and couldn’t really tell who it was helping him to bed.

  It was cold in Rockaway—gray and windy and they walked from the train station the next afternoon close together. Without sunshine Mrs. Mannion’s house looked very lonely and old. They had to knock hard to be heard over the wind pulling at trees and tormenting a garbage can down the street. Marsha had
seemed intrigued when he told her he wanted to show her where he’d spent so many summers, and have her meet Sasha. Now she was almost jumpy.

  “Hello. I’m Mrs. Mannion.” She beckoned them in. “You two must be cold.” She sat them down in the living room, poured two brandies and called out: “Sasha? Sasha!”

  Stefan gratefully sipped from his glass, surprised that Mrs. Mannion could raise her voice. Sasha walked in fiddling with the buttons of a large blue cardigan Stefan felt sure Mrs. Mannion had knitted. He shook their hands and poured himself a drink; they eased into conversation about yesterday’s museums and the opera.

  “New York,” Mrs. Mannion said now and then, adding nothing more. Sasha seemed embarrassed, Stefan thought, and during dinner he tried not to notice; it worked because Sasha played for them later: waltzes, light music.

  “I love this,” Marsha practically squealed, hugging herself. “We always take a walk,” Mrs. Mannion said when Sasha finished, “Before retiring.”

  “With that wind?” Marsha wondered, while Stefan was thinking how easily Sasha and Mrs. Mannion could use a word like “always”—it pleased him.

  Mrs. Mannion sailed out to prepare herself and Sasha took him aside: “Both bedrooms upstairs are ready, you can use either.” When Marsha was in the bathroom, Sasha said, “I’m glad you brought her here.”

  Stefan wondered if this was some kind of oblique reference to Louie.

  But Sasha went on: “She’s quite charming. Shall we play a duet for the ladies tomorrow morning?”

  Stefan grinned. “Great idea!”

  “You choose,” Sasha said, giving him a quick hug. Then he went off after Mrs. Mannion.

  Stefan and Marsha sat up cuddling in the living room.

  “I wish we could stay all week,” she said more than once.

  “Wouldn’t you get tired?”