A Long Island Story

by Rick Gekoski

We shall come rejoicing,

  Covering up the schmutz!

  The white paint would see them out before the grime reasserted itself, but it would come back, sure as sure could be. Schmutz is like that.

  Ben smiled, it was good to see Addie happy again.

  A can was opened on a trestle table which they’d covered with an old sheet. She poured some into a tray, thinly, and covered her roller, shook it to make sure it didn’t dribble, and applied it to the wall. Stepped back, took a hard look. It will take a lot of effort, but it’ll be worth it!

  Ben stepped in, watching her without being seen. Addie in purposive and positive mood was an awesome sight. He stepped across to join her.

  ‘Hey, lady, you got another holy roller?’

  ‘Sure do. Look under the sheets!’

  He took it, rolled it into the paint and joined his wife. After an hour and a half they had painted two walls, and Ben put his roller down gingerly, rubbing his aching shoulder. Addie came up behind him, put her hand over his.

  ‘Let me,’ she said.

  He was surprised, gave in immediately, bent over the stepladder so she could get a grip, dig in with her fingers. She was surprisingly good at massage, either for relief or simple pleasure: particularly good when it was both . . . He sighed. She’d hardly touched him since he had come back from Alexandria, his many practical and emotional chores completed. They’d slept together for the last few nights, but all contact was inadvertent, embarrassed, slighting. They hadn’t talked: when she picked him up, Addie said, ‘Let’s just get on with it,’ and they were doing so. He knew where he stood, but not how securely.

  He reached back and put his hand over hers.

  ‘I missed you so much,’ he said. He’d said so many times on the phone from the old apartment. Most days he had called when he got home from work: she thought he was trying to show that he was alone, not with Rhoda, big deal, but after a week or so it was clear that he was calling so regularly because he really did miss her and wanted to be forgiven. Rhoda was finished, she could tell it from his voice, which sounded, well, normal again. Unburdened, unevasive. Like Ben, again, almost. She wasn’t entirely sure that she welcomed him back.

  And now, spattered with paint, leaning onto a stepladder, squeezed and kneaded, he felt – a joke coming on! – squeezed and needed. He knew better than to say so.

  She hunched and scrunched her shoulders, gave a low moan.

  ‘My God, I ache. I’m not used to all this.’

  He nodded. He wasn’t either. He moved to reciprocate her massage, but she evaded him. Enough already. Too much.

  ‘I’m going to have a shower,’ she said. ‘I brought soap and towels, and a change of clothes.’

  He looked at his watch.

  ‘Do we have time before dinner?’

  ‘Who gives a damn? I’m not going over to Little Miss Honeysuckle’s smelling like a Cossack’s armpit!’

  He smiled and nodded, as if his permission was required.

  She locked the door, surveying the bathroom suite with distaste. She hated turquoise – American Standard called it Claire de Lune, for Christ’s sake! – and the sink and tub were already streaked with age, or worse. She averted her eyes from the toilet bowl – Poppa Mo called it the crapper – turning down its lid fastidiously.

  Dropping her sweaty clothes on the floor, she turned on the shower and stepped into the tub. There was a powerful flow, better than she was used to, sufficient to wash away her tears almost at source. As if that were possible. She needed to staunch the flow or Michelle would spot the signs, try to catch her eye and smile in commiseration, and triumph.

  As she emerged, freshly clad but still spattered with paint, combing her fingers through her wet hair, Perle and Becca had finished cleaning the kitchen drawers and cabinets. They only had the stove and icebox to finish; there would be time for that tomorrow. Perle checked her watch, stopped to wash her hands in the kitchen sink, dried them on an only slightly soiled towel, stood back to approve her handiwork, gave Becca an approving smile and looked out into the rest of the apartment.

  ‘May I make a suggestion?’ she said in a loud voice. The others stopped what they were doing and stood at attention.

  Across the courtyard, Michelle had prepared a buffet of sliced brisket, potato salad and coleslaw, lettuce wedges, pickles and bottles of beer and soda. The plates were stacked on the kitchen counter, with enough cutlery for ten, baby Charlotte already asleep in the smaller bedroom.

  Frankie looked round.

  ‘Bit crowded,’ he said, pursing his lips.

  ‘We’ve had more. Remember the Seder last year, all those kids, must have been about fourteen altogether?’

  He laughed, he was in a good enough mood, considering his sister was moving in across the way. It didn’t matter, it wouldn’t matter. He couldn’t wait to tell them why. From the living-room window he could see them emerging from the Silbers’ apartment, raising their faces to the still hot sun, splattered with paint. He hoped it had dried by now.

  He went to the front door and opened it, stood aside as the children rushed by, hugged his mother, who was looking as close to radiant as Perle could get – which was not very – clasped his father by the hand, put his other hand round his shoulders in a welcoming hug. Nodded to Addie without hostility, greeted Ben with a handshake. Six. All accounted for and ready for feeding. It was the least he and Michelle could do, he was almost enjoying it.

  Michelle – she thought of everything! – had arranged a tablecloth on the sparse brown grass in front of their entrance and, after the four children had filled their paper plates, ushered them outdoors.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘you get your own picnic! And I will get you a big jug of Kool-Aid and some plastic cups.’

  The three little girls tittered with pleasure, but Jake looked down glumly, aware that an entreaty to join the adults would be turned down. But it was OK, he loved brisket with lots of ketchup, and could finish it quickly and rejoin the grown-ups. The girls looked at his button, Jenny reading it, Naomi spelling out the easy words. They made a face, knowing their father would disapprove. He didn’t like McCarthy, but thought he was right; neither of them was clear what he was right about. It was something important.

  At the dining table, which just about accommodated the six adults, Frankie was fanning out a set of colour brochures.

  ‘We thought we might look at these,’ he said, putting one at the top, pointing to the cover illustration. ‘They’re only $18,500 and at 4.5 per cent mortgage that’s less than $1,000 a year!’ Michelle took it in her hand, looked at it warmly as if greeting an old friend and passed it to Perle, sitting opposite.

  ‘Look, Mother,’ she said. ‘Just look! A Cape Cod, four bedrooms with a living room and a den, and a screened-in porch. Lovely back yard, with old trees. AND a big kitchen with all appliances, even a built-in dishwasher!’

  ‘I thought you were the dishwasher,’ said Frankie.

  She smiled at the stale old joke.

  ‘Not any more!’

  ‘And it’s just down the road from the school on Park Avenue, and three minutes from town! We’ve already looked at the lot, and the house will be ready in six months. We’re putting a down-payment down this week!’

  Addie had already taken the brochures and plans in hand and was perusing them carefully.

  ‘Congratulations,’ she said. ‘It looks pretty nice.’

  Ben was later to quiz her about this response.

  ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that you were going to remark that it is everything you never wanted.’

  ‘It is! Or it was,’ she said, with a shrug. ‘And now I want one too. I certainly don’t want a garden apartment! Isn’t life funny?’

  She paused. ‘But NOT near them, please God.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ said Ben. ‘And you know what? In twelve months or so, maybe a few months more, we’ll be ready, we just have to tough it out at the Ex-Silbers’.’ Neither of them was willing, yet, to ca
ll it their apartment.

  ‘After all, the figures add up: once I am earning and we have your salary, we can buy a house and pay your father back.’

  Addie nodded, gave him a not entirely gentle punch on the shoulder.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘I’m sick of existing on sandwiches. Let’s cook for ourselves!’

  Ben laughed. By committing herself to the stupid sandwich metaphor – how he hated it, always had! – Addie seemed to proclaim herself a competent cook. He suppressed the impulse to laugh, and to point this out. But of course she was right. If she couldn’t make a sandwich, she could make sandwiches, could help provide, ensure an easier transition into a new life. And whatever she thought and said, an exciting new life. He was looking forward to it.

  ‘Let’s tell Mo,’ he said. ‘Soon! We can look after ourselves.’

  ‘We can,’ said Addie, without a trace of self-congratulation. ‘And after we get settled, and you open your new office, then perhaps you can get back to your writing . . .’

  ‘It’s nice of you to say that,’ said Ben, ‘but that it isn’t going to happen.’

  ‘I know it’s hard to fit everything in, but I know how much it means to you. And you’re good at fitting things in, do you remember when—’

  Ben put his hand on her arm and squeezed, as if staunching a flow of blood.

  ‘No, time is not the problem. The impulse is gone, it has been for a long time. I’ve held on to it because my idea of myself required the epithet “writer”. It still does, really . . .’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I need to change my idea of myself. After all, lawyer, father, husband, Huntingtonian, and all that will entail . . . It’s enough already!’

  There was a pause of a few moments as they both considered what this would mean.

  ‘I am worried,’ said Addie, ‘that you will resent me. For making you give up your dream.’

  Ben laughed, not entirely humourlessly.

  ‘That’s what dreams are for,’ he said.

  It was an unexpected renunciation, but, as Addie reflected on it, an entirely agreeable one. Ben could write, but he was not a writer. Thank God for that!

  ‘There was a brochure for a development just off Mechanic Street – you know where that is? Just north of town, ten-minute walk to your office!’

  ‘Office?’

  ‘On New York Avenue. You know?’

  ‘I don’t yet.’

  ‘You will,’ she said. ‘Shall we go look at the plots tomorrow? They start building soon, I think.’

  They had the whole weekend to work on the apartment, get it finished before the furniture arrived on Monday. There would be time first thing Saturday morning to drive round with the kids, have a look at the possible new neighbourhood. Maybe go out for breakfast, all of a sudden the kids loved pancakes and bacon, that would be a sufficient incentive to get them out of bed early.

  When the time came, and the two sleepyheads were ushered towards the car, Becca didn’t want to go, turning back towards the house.

  ‘What if we get lost?’ she said.

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ said Ben. ‘I know the way!’

  Not entirely reassured, the little one allowed herself to be corralled in the back seat with a scornful Jake.

  ‘So what if we do?’ he said.

  They did. Somewhere just off Wall Street they made the wrong left turn and ended up peering at street signs, stopping to discuss where they might be.

  ‘Look at the map!’ said Becca urgently.

  ‘Don’t have one of Huntington,’ said Ben. ‘But don’t you worry, we’ll find it soon. This is the right neighbourhood.’

  ‘What if it isn’t?’ said Becca anxiously, just as Ben gave a thumbs-up and turned up the hill towards Mechanic Street. At the top, there was a row of shabby old houses on the right, the kids peered at them anxiously – poor people must live there. They soon parked and looked onto a field on which frames for a large number of houses were visible.

  ‘Let’s walk round,’ said Addie. ‘This road’ – she pointed to an unpaved track – ‘is going to be called Brookside Drive, isn’t that a nice name?’

  Jake looked round. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s stupid. I don’t see any brooks.’

  ‘I don’t too,’ said Becca, wondering what a brook was. ‘It’s stupid.’

  It was stupid, and ugly too. The trees had been cleared from the whole site and a baked reddish clay with tussocks of grass covered the desolate space: the frames for the houses looked like skeletons, a house graveyard.

  Even Ben was depressed, looking at it, and resisted going further. Instead he retrieved the brochure, turned it over and bent down to show the artist’s impression of the final development to the children.

  ‘You see,’ he said, ‘it’ll look great!’

  They gave a cursory look. ‘So where’ll all those trees come from?’ Jake cast an eye round the parched mud. ‘Looks more like a desert to me.’

  There was no sense arguing. Anyway, the boy was right. It did, and it was depressing.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ Ben said, ‘every few months we can come here and watch it come to life, the houses going up, the grass and trees planted. And then if we start to like it we might buy one, and if not we can look elsewhere. Huntington is full of new developments, they’re springing up like mushrooms.’

  The children listened sceptically – what fun, living in a stupid mushroom! – retreated to the car, got in and closed the door, looked up expectantly, visions of pancakes and maple syrup on their faces.

  ‘OK,’ said Addie, reading the signs. ‘Breakfast time!’

  ‘Can I make a suggestion?’ Ben asked.

  Everyone laughed.

  ‘I have a new game,’ he said. ‘It’ll be exciting, and we can all learn some things and get to know our new town.’

  ‘What? What?’ said Becca, smelling more rat than pancake.

  ‘I just invented it,’ said Ben. ‘It has two names . . .’

  ‘I’m not playing!’ said Jake.

  ‘It’s called “My Turn, Your Turn”,’ said Ben. ‘But it’s also called “Lost and Found”.’

  Neither notion was compelling to a small, rebellious and hungry couple of kids.

  ‘I don’t want to play some dumb game with two stupid names. I want my breakfast!’

  ‘Me too!’

  Ben turned towards the back seat and smiled.

  ‘We’ll get breakfast on the way,’ he said.

  ‘The way to where?’

  ‘Who knows?’ laughed Ben. ‘That’ll be up to you three.’

  Addie looked puzzled, Becca uncomprehending, Jake scornful.

  He turned the car round at the dead end at the top of Mechanic Street and drove to the next intersection.

  ‘We can start with Becca,’ he said. ‘Which way should I turn?’

  Becca looked up and down the road, right and left. ‘How should I know? I don’t know where I am.’

  ‘That’s the point,’ said Ben. ‘We can discover parts of town we’ve never seen before. We will get lost on purpose. And you know what? We’ll find our way home, sure enough!’

  ‘I don’t—’ Becca began, just as Jake piped up.

  ‘Left!’ he said firmly. ‘Go left!’

  Ben turned, crossed the next intersection without asking, then stopped at the stop sign at the next.

  ‘Right,’ said Addie.

  At the bottom of the hill was a junction with a big road. They stopped for the traffic, waiting for an opening.

  ‘Left!’ said Jake.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ said Becca. ‘He had two turns, and he always says left.’

  Jake laughed. ‘I’m a leftist,’ he said, pointing to his button.

  ‘Right!’ said Becca.

  ‘It sure is,’ said her brother. He laughed louder. ‘Grossman slays Grossman!’

  Ben turned right and didn’t ask again, heading away from town. After a few miles they could see water to their left and the entrance to
a beach, which even at this early hour had a number of cars in the parking lot, umbrellas sprouting on the sand.

  Becca looked out of her window longingly.

  ‘Can we get out and go to the beach? We could paddle. Maybe they even have a food place!’ And what they certainly would have, she knew, was a person who could tell them how to get back to Huntington.

  By now they had passed the entrance to the parking lot.

  ‘You should have said left,’ said Jake, ‘then we would have had to go in.’

  ‘Go back! Go back!’ said his sister, but was overruled. ‘Back’ was not a turn.

  ‘It is,’ said Becca, ‘it’s a U-turn!’ Ben reckoned that was a fair point, but still didn’t make one. Soon the beach was out of sight and there were no turns at all, just the empty road ahead, making them more lost.

  Addie looked left out of her window, at a windswept landscape of sand dunes. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, ‘guess what I just saw?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A lion!’

  The kids couldn’t resist combing the landscape for lions, though they were pretty sure Long Island didn’t have any. Alexandria certainly didn’t, except in the zoo.

  They peered out anyway.

  ‘Where?’ said Becca, just in case.

  ‘You know what? I’m lyin’,’ said Addie.

  Everyone groaned.

  ‘Addie slays Addie!’ she said, suddenly ashamed that like Ben she was using lousy puns to draw attention to herself, but away from her troubles. First it was him and his stupid mattababy. Now her, lyin’ as well. What’s a matta with me?

  She shrugged her shoulders. Everything. Nothing. What choice did they have, really? You have to get on with things, they had to get on with each other, they would as best they could. It was what you did in a marriage: what, her parents were happy and in love? Or, worse example – or did she mean better? – Ben’s parents, who could hardly stand the sight of each other, cramped together in their shabby shadowy apartment, silent, morose, lethargic, confined to their chairs and bedroom.

  It was impossible. She was hardly cut out for raising children on her own: never mind the money and logistics, the claustrophobia would have smothered her. Of course her mother would want to help. That would make it worse. So, there she was. Ben was essential. And though she was attracted by the prospect of freezing him out, making him play bad puppy for the foreseeable future, who’d gain from that, starting her very own cold war? He was genuinely contrite. Perhaps, one day, not soon, she might be genuinely forgiving. In the meantime perhaps she should treat him like an uncongenial roommate – someone whom she hadn’t chosen but had to get along with. Politeness, deference, distance. No intimacy, either emotional or physical. But roommates move out, and on, and she was stuck with Ben. And the children, bless them. Wedded to them all. That was a fact. The facts of life, her life. Best get on with it.