The River Beneath the River

by Susan Tabin

  I followed Michael up the curved staircase to the third floor.

  “This room is even more lovely than I remembered.”

  “Rosa lit a fire for you before she left.”

  I crossed the room, glanced at the four-poster bed with its layers of white linen and warmed my hands in front of the stone fireplace. Michael stoked the fire. The flames crackled; elongated shadows moved on the walls.

  “How is Rosa?” I asked.

  “Fine, she only comes in two days a week now. I really don’t need her more.”

  “Your annulment is final?”

  “Last month… good night, Darci”

  “Michael, don’t go, please, stay and talk to me for a while.”

  “We have to be up very early tomorrow,” he said.

  “I know but I’ve been lonely.”

  Michael smiled nervously. The crooked slant of his mouth that I’d always considered rugged seemed seductive and appealing, sexy. I had never thought of Michael as sexy before. I had never thought of him as anything other than Olivia’s husband. A jumble of thoughts raced through my mind. Olivia was the sister I never had. I could tell her everything. She was my dear friend. I missed her. I hadn’t been hugged or held since I last saw Olivia and Michael. I’d dated a few young men but I had not been intimate with anyone in the three years since Africa. I could hear Ere Zeta’s words, ‘when in doubt don’t,’ but I was twenty-one and a half and horny. I let Olivia’s flight from our lives and the annulment of their marriage reinstating Michael to bachelorhood override my doubt. In that moment, under drowsy lids, my green eyes shamelessly beckoning Michael, it didn’t seem to matter to me that I had only known him as Olivia’s husband.

  There was a thick rope of silence between us. He tugged at his end, I at mine and we met in each other’s arms. We kissed. We didn’t say much. We were both hungry for physical contact, for affection. Michael spent the night with me in his guestroom. I felt him stirring at first light and while dawn whispered to the Mediterranean of mornings coming, we were with each other in ways I could never have imagined. Then playful as children, attentive as new lovers, we showered together, made the bed, drank from the same cup of coffee and left for New York.

  “Your dad doesn’t know you’re coming?”

  “I haven’t told him, it’ll be a surprise.”

  “Some surprise, you’ll give him a heart attack.”

  “Nah, he’s like an ox. You’ll meet him, big thick neck, broad shoulders, deep voice.”

  “My mom’s a nice woman. I want you to meet her, too.”

  “After your dad died, your mom moved to New York?”

  “Moved back, she was from New York originally.”

  “My cousin May knows I’m coming. I’m gonna stay at her place in Greenwich Village. She calls it her ‘pad’.” I rolled my eyes. “We plan on skating at Rockefeller Center. My dad’ll come to watch and you bring your mom.”

  “Sounds good,” he agreed.

  Sixteen

  May’s pad on Bleecker Street was in the middle of all the Village hubbub. There was so much activity on the street below whatever the time it was a wonder we slept at all.

  “Dar, get up.” May shook me. “It’s ten o’clock, you need to leave already.” She was still adorable, dimples, yellow curls, big blue eyes. May had been in my life for as long as I could remember. A year older than me she was at the opposite end of the spectrum from her mother, my father’s older sister. If Aunt Anna was a pale lemon sourpuss then May was a cherry red sweet pie. My aunt was tight lipped as a pecking chicken. My cousin was loose as a goose.

  I stumbled into the bathroom and showered with hanging baskets of showy philodendron that grew toward the small window, verdant leaves shiny from the water’s mist.

  “Wanna smoke some weed?” she asked as I came through the beaded doorway curtain into the all-in-one eat, sleep and live in room with dark wood floors.

  “No thanks.”

  “It’s good weed.”

  “I’m sure it is. I don’t smoke grass.”

  “Why not?” she asked simply.

  “I’ve been studying mystical teachings, May. I’ve learned that marijuana… it attacks your etheric body.”

  “Etheric body? You believe in that shit?”

  “I do, and I’m surprised grass hasn’t opened you up beyond your five senses.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah, in that respect…”

  “Then keep open to new information. Check it out,” I suggested.

  “Well what about it?” she asked.

  “It’s like paper being ripped. Because the etheric body’s been damaged, your life energy pours out instead of flowing gently. I have a teacher who can see these things in a person’s aura.”

  “Man, that’s pretty far out.”

  “Yeah, more way out than marijuana. When you’re turned on to the Light and Spirit it’s the real deal. It’s an inner trip to universes without end.”

  “Groovy bell bottoms, aren’t you in style,” she chided.

  “You know, Europe’s not in the dark ages anymore,” I countered.

  ~

  I took the F train at West Fourth to Continental and Seventy-first Avenue. The Q65A bus through the exclusive Forest Hills neighborhood with its aristocratic Tudor style homes on manicured parcels of land small as postage stamps, down Jewel Avenue past garden apartments and the government-supported housing project. There I was in front of the red brick building. It didn’t seem imposing anymore, just older. I still had my key. I used it to gain access into the chilly vestibule, stopping first at the rubber mat to stomp the slush off of my pointy-toed boots. I decided not to ring the intercom. I wanted to go straight to my father’s sixth floor apartment. I rang the doorbell; an eye looked through the peephole. The door opened slowly, but it wasn’t my dad. A friendly looking woman who appeared to be in her late forties smiled and said, “Yes.”

  “I’m Darci,” I said as if I was asking.

  “Darci, I should’ve known, come in,” she said putting me at ease. “Pini,” she yelled to my father. “Pini, you won’t believe it.”

  My father appeared and like the building he didn’t seem imposing either, just older.

  “Oh my God, as I live and breathe,” he bellowed. “Look at you, all grown up.” He hugged me and I could feel his tears against my face. “Darci, this is Arlene. We’re gonna get married.”

  My father was happy. He was shoving questions at me right and left, while Arlene was shoving food at me.

  “Have a banana. You want some sour cream and sugar with it? I’ll cut it up for you.”

  “Thanks, Arlene. Maybe later.”

  “So when did you get in?”

  “Yesterday, Dad.”

  “Yesterday! Where did you sleep?”

  “At May’s. . . ”

  “Darci, you wanna apple?”

  “No thanks, Arlene.”

  “You heard about Andrew Goodman?”

  “Yes, May wrote me.”

  “They should string the KKK bastards upside down by their balls.”

  “Darci, maybe you want some soup with matzoh balls?”

  “Arlene, could I have a glass of water?”

  “Of course sweetheart, you want ice?”

  “Thanks.”

  “You gonna ice skate with May like old times?”

  “You must be a mind reader, Dad. We talked about Rockefeller Center, it being Christmas and all.”

  “The skates are in the closet right where you left them.” My father gestured toward the hall closet and I imagined my ice skates dangling next to the winter coats above the galoshes, across from my mother’s wooden ironing board and the ancient Hoover vacuum cleaner. In that moment I looked down and realized that the twined fringe at the bottom of the rose sofa wasn’t lying on the carpet. Apparently Arlene had taken over sewing up the fringe.

  “Darci, Pini, a little sandwich?”

  “Honey, I’ll have a sandwich.” My father made eyes at
his betrothed. And his acceptance of her food offer made Arlene a very happy woman.

  Seventeen

  Manhattan was resplendent, dressed to celebrate Christmas. The soaring tree at Rockefeller Center seemed to reach the very juncture of heaven and earth. May and I glided over the ice while Aunt Anna, Uncle Ben, my father and Arlene swaddled in wool scarves, hats and gloves watched us and waved, huddled and talked, cold air vapors blowing from their mouths.

  “So, is this Michael a boyfriend?” May asked, then turned a figure eight.

  “A very good friend.”

  “How good?”

  “He’s like family to me.”

  “Like kissing cousins,” she teased.

  “I guess we are a lot more than friends. Oh, there he is now.”

  “Mmm. . . good looking, broad shoulders, square jaw—my kinda guy,” May purred.

  I skated over to the far end of the plaza. “Hi, Mrs. Drummond. Hi, Michael.”

  “Hello dear,” she said.

  There was a strong resemblance mother to son. Light brown hair curled around the outside of Mrs. Drummond’s fur hat. Michael’s hair was the same color only straight. They both had the same deep blue eyes and small narrow nose. Mrs. Drummond’s was a little bulbous at the tip. Michael’s was chiseled perfectly. The arched shape of their eyebrows was the same and they both had porcelain skin, almost as if they had no pores. He wasn’t as white as his mom… the Mediterranean sun I thought. And they weren’t built alike. Mrs. Drummond was a petite woman.

  “I’ll meet you over there by my family.” I pointed.

  He gave me a little nod and his usual crooked smile.

  When I approached, I heard Aunt Anna say, “Mary Alice.”

  “You know each other?” I asked. Just then my father turned around and went white as new fallen snow. “Dad, this is my friend Michael and his….” Mrs. Drummond was turning away.

  “Pini, whatsa matter? You look like you saw a ghost,” Arlene said.

  “Okay so you know each other, from where?” Michael asked no one in particular.

  “Michael, this is a mistake,” his mother whimpered, tugging at his red plaid lumber jacket sleeve.

  “Did you say Mary Alice?” I asked my Aunt.

  My uncle Ben, standing next to her, began twitching profusely. My aunt stared at me with her lips so tightly sealed they formed a thin straight line that said don’t cross over.

  I looked directly at Mrs. Drummond. “Mary Alice what? What was your maiden name?”

  Michael answered for her, “O’Malley, Mary Alice O’Malley.”

  “I prayed this day would never come,” Mary Alice whispered, barely audible with her gloved hand covering her mouth, her blue eyes to the ground.

  “And I prayed it would,” my father mumbled. “Michael, your mother and me were kids, still in high school when she was pregnant and we got married.”

  Like a hot iron pressed to my flesh his words branded me. I curled over like a wave and crumpled to the ground. Michael reached out to lift me but I recoiled and reacted like a child having a temper tantrum. I had left home after high school to discover who I am. What had I uncovered, a stranger, a dirty incestuous girl. While shame and panic clawed at me I cried, “Don’t touch me, you’re my brother.” I untied the laces and left my ice skates right there on the ground. May gave me the saddest look anyone ever had. I grabbed my bag, put my boots on and didn’t look back.

  I walked for hours, feeling twisted and broken, numb to the cold and to the surroundings. The committee in my head held an ongoing meeting with my father, bitterly accusing him of my emotional demise, of perpetrating my shame. I beat my fists against his barrel chest and in biting, acrimonious language I castrated him so that he could father no more. Then like an animal gone off to lick it’s wounds I entered into a desolate alley, sank down on my haunches and sobbed. I don’t know how long I was in the narrow passage but it was the smell of urine that brought me to my feet. Close by, a vagrant was relieving himself against the wall. I left quickly and found myself in front of Saint Patrick’s. Inside the vaulted cathedral, intoxicating pyramids of votive candles reminded me to call myself forward into the Light.

  Lord God, I ask to be filled, surrounded and protected with your holy Light for the highest good. I thought about all the prayers the candles represented. Some prayed for their heart’s desire to come to pass; others prayed for things not to happen. I reflected back to how lucky I’d felt when I first met Michael and Olivia, and I remembered Michael telling me that coincidence was God working and remaining anonymous. I lit a candle adding my unspoken thoughts to the thousands that had gone before and wondered if the Light and God had forsaken me.

  ~

  It was dark when I returned to Greenwich Village, but I couldn’t bear to face my cousin. I stopped at one of the smoky crowded coffeehouses on McDougal and languished over a cup of hot chocolate that burnt my tongue. When I finally arrived at May’s she was sleeping, her yellow curls spilling over the pillow. Disheartened that I was losing Michael as my lover and tormented that he was my brother and we had made love, I lay down beside my cousin in the double bed and escaped the insanity my life seemed to be.

  ~

  Morning broke into my sleep bringing an early call. The telephone was on my side of the bed. I reached for it quickly, still not wanting to face May, and whispered, “Hello.”

  Michael’s voice was strong, “Darci, please, let’s meet. You don’t have the full information.”

  “I’m so ashamed, I can’t see you,” I said.

  I got up from the bed and walked a few steps into the bathroom with the telephone. I could hear him breathing.

  “My mother and Pini explained it all to me,” he said.

  “I wish they could explain it all away.”

  There was an awkward silence. Then he said, “No one can do that, but we can choose how we’re going to deal with it all.”

  “Michael, are you out of your mind, what’s there to deal with. This is a nightmare.”

  “Darci, they were very young. My mother and John Drummond were high school sweethearts. He signed up for the army; my mother flipped out. She broke up with him, dated your dad for two months, got pregnant. She’s Irish Catholic. Abortion was out of the question. Pini didn’t abandon her. He did what he thought was the right thing. They married against his family’s wishes. Your grandfather was despondent because she wasn’t Jewish. He considered Pini dead, even said the mourner’s prayer. Didn’t see him for years. Did you know that?”

  “Of course not, it was all a big secret.”

  “Pini and my mother stayed together almost a year and a half after I was born, but they didn’t have money, they didn’t have family support. Although your father said—”

  “My father… he’s your father too.”

  Michael continued, ignoring my interruption, “Pini said his mother visited once after I was born, but she was afraid. Her husband forbid it. Even when they divorced and Pini married Sela three years later, Harry Beriman didn’t attend the wedding and he wouldn’t allow your grandmother to go. John Drummond was there for my mother—for me, despite the circumstances. He married her… adopted me… with a family inheritance they moved as far away… to California. They did what they thought was right for those times. I couldn’t have had a more loving, affluent childhood. I’ll always consider him my father.”

  “Look, that’s all well and good, Michael—but it doesn’t undo the fact that we’re brother and sister. We slept together…we did things.”

  “Ere Zeta is in New York,” Michael said. He’s at the Waldorf. If anyone can help. . . something else, your grandfather didn’t see your father again until after you were born. Your mother sent baby photos of you to your grandmother. She left them out. Your grandfather saw them and wept. You were the one who brought the family back together. You know how Ere Zeta says there’s a blessing in everything.”

  “Not in this mess,” I said weakly. “I really can’t talk anymore. Go
od luck, Michael.”

  I put the phone back. May was still sleeping or, thankfully, playing possum. I turned on the shower, took off my nightgown, sat down on the floor of the tub and cried. I thought about how my mother had penny pinched all those years so I could have the wedding she never had. The wedding my grandparents didn’t attend. I missed my mother and I cried for all the sorrow and anguish in the world, but mostly I cried for myself.

  Eighteen

  “Excuse me, can you please call up to a guest?”

  “Certainly, young lady. The guest’s name?”

  “Ere Zeta.”

  The gray-uniformed clerk at the registration desk tilted his head ever so slightly and asked, “Miss Beriman?”

  “Why, yes,” I answered with obvious surprise.

  “The gentleman is waiting for you in the conference room on the fourth floor.”

  I thanked him and walked to the elevator shaking my head in amazement at how Ere Zeta was always with me. In my dreams it was as if he was there first waiting for me to fall asleep. Now when I most need guidance and support, he shows up in New York.

  The conference room was only a few paces from the elevator. I could see Ere Zeta through the etched glass door. I knocked lightly and entered. It was a small meeting room dominated by a large crystal chandelier hanging above a handsomely carved cherry wood table and six matching high back chairs. Ere Zeta was seated at the far end of the table with papers spread out before him. He stood up and we embraced.