The Good Neighbor

by Amy Sue Nathan

  Mrs. Feldman muttered a few more words, never looking at me, or anywhere but out the window. I didn’t know if this was a confession or a breakdown or a touch of dementia, or maybe all three. If this were Rachel or Jade, I’d have smacked them. Just to bring them back to reality. But no way was I going to slap Mrs. Feldman.

  Instead, I grasped each of her hands tightly enough so that she turned and looked at me. “Mrs. Feldman, stop!”

  She was still.

  “Geraldine! Geraldine, look at me! Who is going to come for this box?”

  “My daughter.”

  I let go of her hands. My daughter. Such simple words, but they might as well have been Mandarin or Swahili or Urdu.

  I looked at this woman who’d been like a mother and grandmother to me, who was more maternal than my own mother, whose face filled my memory bank. I rifled through my mental files for a reference, a spark, a pinpointed moment where I would have my aha moment. Mrs. Feldman looked the same on the outside, but she’d flipped herself open to reveal another half. I could see it, empty. Her mouth curved into a frown, set deep with the lines of age and worry. And sadness.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  * * *

  I insisted Mrs. Feldman come home with us. We sat together in the living room, and I prompted Noah with question after question about school, LEGOs, pirates, and Maya—anything I could think of, so the conversation stayed focused on him. Then I offered Mrs. Feldman books, magazines, and the remote control while I went upstairs for Noah’s bedtime rituals. I needed to spend time with him, end the day on a note of normalcy. For both of us.

  Back downstairs, I didn’t know where to begin. I reclined in my dad’s chair to feign nonchalance. Was it my job to coax this information out of her? If she wanted me to be her secret’s keeper, perhaps she should have been prepared to tell me everything. My head throbbed, as if my brain were full and I needed to upgrade its software. I needed more space for all the secrets. Mine, Mrs. Feldman’s, and even Rachel’s. Rachel, who would be here later.

  “Secrets get under your skin,” Mrs. Feldman said without looking at me. “They become so much a part of you they become invisible—to your head, to your heart—because they have to be. It’s the only way to protect yourself.”

  Enough with the mumbo jumbo. “Where’s your daughter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is she alive?” I wondered if this was a resurgence of grief, a moment in which Mrs. Feldman had forgotten what year it was, and that she’d mourned a child decades ago.

  “Honestly, I don’t know. I gave her away. I was fifteen when I had her.”

  I sat up and the recliner snapped to attention. My insides ached. My hands held my stomach, which twanged with a phantom flutter. “I’m so sorry.”

  We sat in silence, my comfort unbalanced. An empty, almost-hungry feeling passed through me.

  “I know what it’s like to lose a baby.” I had never said that aloud before. I didn’t really know, I only sort of knew. A pregnancy had prompted Bruce and me to marry. “I had a miscarriage right after Bruce and I got married. I wanted that baby so badly. I always knew I wanted kids, and then I got pregnant and felt like my world was wrapped with a big bow.” I remembered shopping for maternity clothes, wedding invitations, honeymoon trips, cribs …

  “I know,” Mrs. Feldman said.

  “No one knew. Ever.”

  “I knew you were pregnant at your wedding, and I knew you weren’t pregnant the next time I saw you.”

  “You never said anything.”

  “Of course not. That secret was yours to keep. As was mine.”

  “So why tell me now?” It was flattering to be trusted, but also encumbering.

  “I’m tired. Tired of wondering if one day the baby I gave away when I was just a baby myself will show up looking for me. Or maybe her children. Or her grandchildren. But if I’m not here…” Mrs. Feldman’s voice caught in her throat.

  “Did you want to keep the baby?”

  “That wasn’t an option, dear. It was 1944. This was a shanda, a disgrace to my parents, and to me, and to anyone in my family who knew. A nice Jewish girl getting pregnant? Let alone by an Italian boy whose father made pizzas and whose uncles were priests?” It wasn’t sinister at all. It was young love. “They found out about the baby and Tony, and in two shakes my parents drove me to Staten Island. But this was not a trip to summer camp.” Mrs. Feldman shook her index finger back and forth like a metronome. “No, no, no. This was the Lakeview Home for Jewish Unwed Mothers. When I got home seven months later, my parents and half my family had moved from South Philly to the Northeast. They might as well have moved us to the moon. I wasn’t ever going to see my old friends again. No one mentioned the baby ever again. I never saw Tony again. Ever. The talk of the family that summer was that I was going into the eleventh grade when school started again. I was a grade ahead. One thing about pregnant Jewish girls, they brought in the best tutors for us.”

  “And then?”

  “And then nothing. I graduated from high school. I worked at Gimbels. I met Sol. I got married. I was supposed to forget. Not just ‘not mention it’—but really forget. No one went to a therapist in those days. There were no support groups. Behind my parents’ back I wrote a letter to one of the very nice nurses at Lakeview. I begged her to put our new address in my baby’s file. I put three silver dollars I’d gotten as birthday presents from my nana over the years into the envelope as a bribe, or I thought that maybe, if the nurse was very nice, she would put them in the file and one day my daughter would know I cared about her. I just knew that if my daughter ever wanted to meet me, the records would likely only have my parents’ South Philly address or a phony address. How would she find me? I don’t know if my daughter ever looked for me, or if that nurse ever even received the letter.”

  “You never tried to contact that nurse again?”

  “No. It wasn’t like now. No tap, tap, click, click. And honestly, Elizabeth, I owed it to Sol to be a good wife and to the boys to be a good mother.”

  “And you were.” I had no idea what kind of a wife or mother Mrs. Feldman had been, only what I’d assumed based on our relationship. I was beginning to think I didn’t know Geraldine Feldman at all.

  “But Mr. Feldman must have wanted to help you find her, and your sons must have the means to dig through whatever red tape there is to get some answers. Things are different now. You know that. You could have started looking years ago.”

  “Elizabeth, when I said it was a secret, I meant it. The boys don’t know about the baby. None of my friends know about the baby.” Mrs. Feldman sighed in a tone filled with regret, not joyfulness. “She’d be seventy now and I still think of her as a baby. Sol didn’t know about her either. I lied to him for our entire marriage.”

  I bit my bottom lip. She’d never told her husband. Every time someone asked how many children she’d had, she’d said three when the answer was four. Every time there’d been a conversation about mothers and daughters, Mrs. Feldman tucked back the secret a little further, perpetuating the lie.

  My angst about Mac, Pop Philly, and Jade were blips compared to what Mrs. Feldman had gone through. What she was still going through after seventy years. Her trust was a gift. As was my newfound perspective.

  “I will do whatever you need me to do,” I said.

  Mrs. Feldman had relaxed into the sofa cushions, and it made her appear pliant and frail. “Thank you, dear. I know it’s a lot to ask. I know it was a lot to hear.”

  I thought of all the hours playing with paper dolls, eating cookies, steeping tea, talking, dusting tchotchkes, and folding napkins. “It’s nothing.” And it was nothing. Nothing compared to the manicured and delicate, yet strong, maternal hand she offered throughout my childhood, and still. “But it might help if I knew her name. Do you know what her adoptive family named her?”

  “I don’t know anything about her except for her birthday, of cou
rse, and the name on her birth certificate. I’m sure her new family changed it. She probably doesn’t know her real name. Her beautiful name.” Mrs. Feldman touched her lips as if to keep it inside.

  I knew what she was going to say next. I just nodded and she nodded back. Our bond had always been strong, sealed the day my parents brought me home to Good Street from Rolling Hill Hospital. I asked the question even though I knew the answer.

  “What did you name her?”

  Mrs. Feldman smiled and told the rest of her secret. “I called her Elizabeth.”

  Chapter 19

  Tensies

  I SAT ON THE floor by Noah’s bed, my head against the side of his mattress. His wispy breathing sounded like a baby’s. His eyelids still fluttered as he slept, and I imagined he watched swashbuckling adventures unfold before him. I brushed the plush royal-blue carpet with my palm, knowing that with each stroke, the hue changed even though I couldn’t see it. There was so much going on I couldn’t see. I knew that now more than ever before. Mrs. Feldman had a daughter. Rachel was avoiding me. She hadn’t shown up tonight, hadn’t answered texts, and my calls went straight to voice mail. She had updated her Facebook status with vague annotations of busyness and joy. Why weren’t people just busy and joyful instead of busy and joyful and sharing it with the world?

  Noah shifted on the bed, and his foot pushed out from his blankets and dangled in front of my face. As I slid his foot back to warmth and coziness, my disparate thoughts came together.

  I claimed I’d moved back to Good Street because of what I’d lost and labeled it an act of surrender. I thought nothing could be as good as the life I’d planned with Bruce, so why even bother? But perhaps my divorce was not a defeat. Perhaps it was a challenge. To be better. Do better. Have better. Perhaps I’d moved back to Good Street not because of what I’d lost, but because of what I had. Mrs. Feldman. Familiarity. Memories. A house that was already a home. Maybe what I had was the chutzpah to make it on my own. The comfort and safety of this house, this street, this life, didn’t have to be cop-outs, they could be catalysts.

  I tiptoed out of Noah’s room and into mine. Mrs. Feldman’s box was on my nightstand. The box needed safekeeping away from a little pirate’s prying eyes and hopeful hands.

  In the living room I sat on the sofa with my laptop, and Googled Lakeview Home for Jewish Unwed Mothers. I found one message board with a half dozen men and women looking for birth mothers. None of the information corresponded with Mrs. Feldman’s. It was not my job to look for her Elizabeth, or whatever this woman’s name was now. I repeated this inside my head. It was just my job to hold on to the box, to hand it over if someone came looking for it.

  But do people look for treasures they don’t know exist? Even pirates follow maps.

  For now I tucked Mrs. Feldman’s secret into the bread drawer with my Phillies cap and pushed both aside in my thoughts as my cell phone lit up with Rachel’s face and ringtone.

  “Hey.”

  “I’m sorry. Seth and I started talking … it just wasn’t the right time to leave.”

  “Okay.”

  “How about I bring dinner tomorrow? Just a quick one with the kids? At your house after work?”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  “No, really, Iz. I need to talk to you in person.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, of course I’m okay. Actually, I’m better than okay.”

  Rachel made me dizzy. “I’m always here for you, Rache. But you have to show up.”

  “Oh my God, Iz. Let it go. I get it. You’re busy.”

  I imagined Rachel rolling her eyes. Yes, I was busy. Busy envisioning my cousin snapping seductive selfies and posting them on Facebook. Busy worrying I was tarnishing my best friend’s business. I was also busy juggling students and parents and paperwork at Liberty. And I was busy trying to ignore Mrs. Feldman’s secret.

  * * *

  The next day I didn’t emerge from my office until lunchtime, avoiding any impromptu encounters with Dr. Howard. Since Donna’s warning, I’d arrived by eight- fifteen at the latest, although Helen always seemed to be on her second cup of office coffee by then.

  Today, for four and a half hours, a parade of graduating seniors marched into my office needing help with FAFSA, college applications, recommendations, and graduation requirements. One freshman, three juniors, and a sophomore handed in both real and fabricated paperwork proving they lived in the district. And a Ukrainian translator waited for the arrival of the Tkachenko family so that Dennis Tkachenko’s parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles could discuss his college options.

  Still, I needed sustenance and a change of scenery, just for five minutes. Without looking into the waiting room or toward Dr. Howard’s door, I hurried to the empty office that used to belong to another counselor, a bagel with cream cheese clutched in one hand, a Styrofoam cup in the other. The door was ajar so I tapped it with my hip and flipped on the light with my elbow.

  “Hi, Miss. Lane.”

  I flinched and water spilled as I set down the cup. “Donna, why are you in here? I mean, why are you in here in the dark?”

  “Sorry, I just had to answer a quick personal phone call. I didn’t think I’d get the chance to take a real lunch break today, so I brought my lunch in here.” Donna’s face drooped, and her eyes widened. I hadn’t meant to reprimand her, yet I had. I noticed her lit cell phone and a half-eaten cardboard-box lasagna.

  “Eat, talk.” I waved my hand as if shooing her away. “I’ll go back to my office.” I peeked back out into the waiting room I’d sneaked past. Every chair was filled except the broken ones. Kids’ heads hung to their chests, fingers twiddled, pencils twirled.

  “Thank you.” Donna typed on her phone as she talked to me.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “It’s my mother—” Donna didn’t look up.

  I cringed. That morning I’d waved at Donna as I beelined to my office, still buzzing from Mrs. Feldman’s news and Rachel’s abandonment. I hadn’t even poked out to say hello or to ask about Donna’s weekend. “Do you need to go home?”

  “It’s her hip. She’ll be fine. But thank you for asking.”

  “Please give her my best.”

  “Do you mind if I sit here for a minute? I just need to catch my breath before I go back out there. Organizing those students while I’m dealing with the doctors and my sisters is not easy. They don’t always understand what I do, and that I can’t always talk.”

  I could relate. “Of course you can stay here. Do you mind some company?”

  Before Donna could answer, I unwrapped my bagel. Donna said nothing. She just stared at her phone. Scrolled with her index finger. Shook her head. Scrolled some more.

  “Is everything else okay with your mom?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, yes. She’ll be fine. She’s tough.”

  “Oh, I just thought…”

  Donna held up her phone. “This?” She tapped the screen and turned it to me. “My guilty pleasure.” Philly over Forty. “Not that I haven’t tried not to be single, but since I am…” She laughed louder than she should have. “Nothing new on here today, though. Which is strange.”

  Nothing new on Philly over Forty, that was absurd. It was Monday. My weekend flashed though my mind. All those comments on my Valentine’s Day post, written in anticipation—in fear—of “the big day.” Then there was CD. Ethan and Maya. Mrs. Feldman and Elizabeth. Rachel and … Oh, no. I forgot to upload my Monday post. No, I forgot to write my Monday post! And I could do nothing about it until tonight.

  I stopped chewing and just swallowed. The bagel clump lodged in my throat. I reached for my cup and forced down my bite with a swig of water.

  “You look pale, Miss. Lane. Do you need the Pepto?”

  Donna was a devotee of placing a definite article before a proper noun, as was my mother, who always shopped at the Ac-a-me when I was growing up. I took classes at Penn to rid myself not only of the Northeast Philly burr,
but its syntax. Yet Donna’s colloquialism warmed me. Comfort lurked deep within its renounced familiarity.

  And, yes, at this moment, the Pepto was just what I needed.

  * * *

  I sat in my car in the parking lot outside the JCC, where Noah attended his after-school program. Where I’d paid this month’s bill on my own. Jade hadn’t even tried to contact me, and she was always the one who blinked first.

  Ripe with apprehension, I called her.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m sorry.” That apology had more layers than she knew.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I was worried about you, but I didn’t want to bother you, considering.”

  “Considering what?” Was something wrong with Noah? With Bruce out of town, Jade’s third emergency contact rank had been bumped to second.

  “I know about Mac, Pea.”

  The Pepto crept to the back of my throat. “I’m so sorry, I should have told you, it wasn’t right, but I didn’t know what else to do. I promise I’ll make it up to you.” I held the steering wheel so tight my hand cramped. This was finally over. The bad, the good, the lying.

  “Make it up to me? I should be making it up to you. My best friend breaks up with her boyfriend and doesn’t tell me? You think Philly over Forty is more important than you are?”

  “What are you talking about?” Now five minutes had passed and I had to get Noah or pay overtime. I left my car, cell to my ear, and walked through the parking lot. “I honestly have no idea.”

  “When you didn’t post today, Holden checked your drafts. Pea, you should have told me you broke up with Mac.”

  Oh my God. My breakup post! Holden had accessed it. Of course he had. When there was no new post by nine this morning, he tapped and snapped and wiggled his nose and saw my draft.

  “There’s more to it. But I’m picking up Noah now.”

  “Of course there’s more to it. We can talk about it Friday night.” I walked through the JCC doors and smiled at the parents and kids leaving the building. “Pea? Friday night? Dinner? You, me, Andrew?”