“The next step,” Laura said, “is going to be a letter, from Jerene to her parents, telling them she’s seeing her grandmother and insisting they come and visit her. Because you see, in this case, it’s not just Jerene and her parents—it’s the whole family. A whole history of disownment, of children rejecting parents and parents rejecting children. I think about this a lot, because of my plans to get my degree in family counselling. For instance, I’ve been reading up lately in systems theory, and I really think there’s a lot to it. What’s happened to Jerene—well, it’s all part of a family system which is unique. In my family, disownment wasn’t even something people thought about. But damn it, here I go again, blathering on about myself. Please forgive me. Let me ask: Did you ever worry about being disowned?”
“Oh, no,” Philip said. And Brad said: “Certainly not in my case. My parents are very supportive.”
“Which means,” Laura said, “that we’ve all got to be supportive of Jerene in this, because she doesn’t have that support. And she needs it.”
They all looked at Jerene, who got up, went into the kitchen, and returned with a large multi-hued salad. Laura tossed and distributed it. “So how long have you two been involved?” she asked casually as she finished, and Brad and Philip both choked.
“Well—”
“I mean, we’ve known each other—”
“The fact is, we’re not really involved, in a traditional way. We’re just good friends,” Philip said.
“Aha.” Laura leaned back in her chair.
“Friends,” Philip repeated.
“I understand,” Laura said. “Of course. But—romantic friends, perhaps?” For this last phrase, she affected a clipped, mock-British accent, batted her eyelashes, stretched her lips thin.
“You might say that.”
“So,” Jerene said, “has anyone here heard the new Ferron album?”
Everyone had. They discussed it as, for a half an hour or so, the dinner wound itself down. It was like a ride through an amusement park fun house, lurching along through narrow corridors of frenzied display, then suddenly finding yourself at the end, ejected, dizzy on the cold street, a little sick to your stomach.
“She is something,” Brad said.
Philip nodded.
“And your friend Jerene seems nice, too, though I guess she didn’t have a chance to talk much.”
“Oh, she’s like that,” Philip said. “She’s always very quiet with company. Listen, do you want to have a cup of coffee or something?”
Brad was silent. In the light of Laura’s coy questioning, anything could sound like a proposition. Anything. And, miserably, Philip remembered the evening last month when he had tried to say “Anything” seductively, and made a fool of himself.
“I mean at the Kiev,” he added.
Brad shrugged. “I think I’m probably too tired,” he said. “I kind of want to get home.”
“I understand,” Philip said. “I’m tired, too.” He paused. “You know, I couldn’t believe it when she asked us how long we’d been seeing each other. I felt very embarrassed. I’m mentioning it only because I don’t want you to think that I said anything to her, that I suggested—”
“Philip,” Brad said. “Of course not. Don’t worry about it.” He seemed annoyed.
“No,” Philip said. “Of course not. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Silently they moved on toward Brad’s building, Philip remembering that uncomfortable night back when it had still been winter. Now a warm breeze blew. They walked ungloved, unhatted, without umbrellas. And Philip thought how nice it must be to be able, like Eliot, just to take off from a place you’ve come to call home, to eject yourself from the complex and dangerous network of friends, lovers, apartments, to sever all ties and leap into the startling newness of the unknown. Sometimes he tried to imagine doing it, just buying a ticket somewhere, say, to Paris, and going there, and he could almost feel the shock, the relief of knowing no one, smelling strange smells, feeling new breezes. But then he would remember that he hardly knew the language, that he had no friends to stay with in Paris; he would realize that once there, he’d have to begin again a ceaseless cycle of worrying—about laundry, about eating out alone and being mistreated by the waiters, about finding a boyfriend. Such concerns apparently didn’t faze Eliot. He knew people everywhere, always had places to stay. And once again Philip envisioned Eliot in a trenchcoat, riding on a fast-moving train through some unspeakably beautiful landscape, with no luggage; he was standing on a sort of old-fashioned caboose balcony, the wind blowing through his hair. Probably he was going to Venice. Philip imagined Eliot and his lover, Thierry, riding a gondola through a jade-colored canal, strange, barnacle-caked towers rising above them on all sides. Some people left, some were left; it seemed the world required the two extremes, for balance. There would be no refuge in travel for Philip; he was too much of a coward for adventure, too yoked to routine and familiar comforts. Doomed, Eliot had said. Perhaps that was what he meant, as he sat writing in that dusty room in the Fifth, smelling “that Paris smell.” Perhaps he was simply thinking of his own good fortune, and he had written “doomed,” and added “to happiness” to cut the cruelty.
They arrived at Brad’s building. Once again, they were standing on the stoop, and Philip found himself facing the trial of saying goodbye when he would have so much rather gone upstairs with Brad, settled himself into one of the bunk beds, and watched television or talked. Then Brad said, “Why don’t you stay down here tonight? There’s no point in your making that trip uptown when I’ve got plenty of room.”
Philip’s cheeks reddened. “Well—okay,” he said, and laughed, he was so surprised, so thankful, so nervous. Clearly Brad was nervous too. “Okay, then,” Brad said, and tripped on the stoop, and was short of breath as he climbed the stairs to his apartment. It had taken only a moment for everything to change.
Once inside, Brad flipped on the light, took his jacket off, and headed straight to the answering machine, which was pulsing red with enthusiasm to tell what it had to tell. There were messages from his mother, from Sally, from his friend Gwen at work, all of which he jotted down disappointedly. “The boy of my dreams didn’t call,” he said, and Philip turned away, almost but not quite brave enough to ask, “Will I do?”
Brad was reaching into his closet to fetch linen. “Do you prefer the top or the bottom?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t care,” Philip said. “It’s up to you.”
“I actually kind of like to sleep up top, so I’ll put you on the bottom.” On his knees inside the crawlspace of the bottom bunk, Brad shook out a sheet. Philip sat at his white desk, his leg shaking. For once, it seemed they had nothing to say to each other.
They undressed modestly, trying not to notice each other’s bodies. Climbing into the bottom bunk, Philip considered for a moment all that was implicitly sexual in this ritual of boys undressing, all that underlay that careful pose of disinterest. Then Brad turned out the light. Streetlamps shone up and through the thin gauzy curtain on the window. From where he lay on the bottom bunk, Philip watched Brad, also in his underwear, scurry up the little stepladder to the top bunk, his legs scrambling for a second before they disappeared. There was a soft thud as he landed.
They were quiet. In the dark of the apartment the only sounds came from the street. He could hear Brad breathing above him, hear how his body settled on the top bunk. This same anonymity had titillated him in college; sometimes he’d masturbated quietly while fantasizing that his very straight roommate was doing the same right above him. He felt a little bit now as he had then—distrustful of the dark, fearful of getting caught doing something or saying something Brad would misinterpret or resent.
“Brad,” he said, when he was finally able to find words.
“Yes?” His voice was surprisingly hollow, as if the room itself were speaking.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Why did you ask me
to spend the night?”
There was a long silence. “I didn’t see the point in your going all the way uptown this late,” Brad said.
“But I’ve come down here a million times and you’ve never asked me to spend the night before.”
Brad shifted in his bed. “Well,” he said, “you know that I’m a shy person, a very private person in a lot of ways. I don’t trust people easily.”
“I know.”
“I consider my apartment my refuge, my haven.” He stopped, as if to choose the proper words, which made Philip nervous. “I’m safe here,” he said. “I guess before you, there was never anyone I trusted enough to have here with me without spoiling it.” He paused. “It just took me a little while to get up the guts to ask you up.”
For a second, Philip’s heart seemed to stop. “Really?” he said.
“Really.”
“Thank you, Brad,” he said. “I think I can say I feel the same way about you—even though my apartment isn’t really very much to protect.”
They were quiet for a few moments. “Does it bother you,” Philip said, “when people assume we’re a couple?”
“Aren’t we?” Brad asked, and laughed, and Philip laughed too.
“I suppose so in some ways. It’s nice, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Brad?” Philip said. “Forgive me for asking this—but do you ever think about the possibility of us becoming a couple—really?”
“Sometimes,” Brad said.
“Good,” said Philip. “I do, too.”
Above him Brad shifted again, and Philip imagined he was turning to face the window. Moonlight was streaming through the venetian blinds. Philip thought of Venice, and suddenly connected these blinds, these common things he had grown up with, with that mysterious, aquatic city he had only once visited, and hardly remembered. Did light shine through blinds like this in Venice? he wondered. Were lights shining on Eliot in Venice? He pretended that he was in Venice right now, that gondolas were passing on a canal below the window.
Then he noticed Brad’s hand, dangling from the top bunk, apparently without intent. Illuminated by the moonlight, it seemed to glow.
Cautiously he reached up and took the hand. Brad’s fingers were warm, as he’d imagined they would be, and Philip remembered how long it had been since he had touched someone. Gratefully he squeezed, and Brad squeezed back.
They lay like that, holding hands, for several minutes, until finally Brad said, “You know, we probably won’t be able to get to sleep this way.”
“I know,” Philip said. He gave Brad’s hand a last squeeze. Then they let go, and, saying goodnight, each curled toward the wall to fall asleep.
Late at night, in bed, Laura clung to Jerene, could not sleep until her head was curled in her lover’s breast, and, when she was sure Jerene was asleep, whispered like a charm, “Never leave me, never leave, never leave me.” Everything frightened her: supermarkets, large dogs, men. Not to mention phones. When Jerene—finally convinced to seek out her grandmother—asked Laura to do her the favor of making the initial phone call to the Briteview Laundry, Bensonhurst, inquiring as to the current whereabouts of the former owner, Mrs. Nellie Parks, Laura shook her head wildly, and dissolved in a babble of apology and self-loathing. She was a wreck on the phone, she explained. Jerene had had to swallow her twenty-five years of fear and make the call herself. She was relieved when a child answered.
“May I speak to the owner?” she said.
“We don’t deliver,” the child said.
“No, I’m not calling about that,” Jerene said. “I’m interested in some information about the former owner, and I need to speak to the present owner.”
Then there was silence on the line, followed by a stern female voice with a Jamaican accent.
“I don’t know about the lady was here before,” the woman said. “I been here three years now and I don’t know nothing.”
“Her name was Nellie Parks,” Jerene said. “Please. It’s important. I’m her granddaughter, and I have to find her.”
“I’m very busy,” the woman said. “No time. What you want it for?”
“I’m her granddaughter,” Jerene repeated. “There’s a family emergency, and I must get in touch with her.”
The lady sighed. In the background Jerene could hear dryers churning. “Well, maybe I have something,” she said finally. “You just hold on.”
She left Jerene holding the phone for about five minutes, and then she got back on and said, “Eighteen fifty-four South Forty-fifth, and that’s all I know. Goodbye.”
“Is there a phone number?”
There was. The woman recited it and hung up.
“I’m really sorry,” Laura said. “I can’t believe it, but there’s just panic shooting through me, just at the idea of it. Feel my heart.” She sat paralyzed on the sofa.
Jerene dialled the number. A voice that reminded her of the computer on “Star Trek” picked up and said, “Pinebrook Home.”
She breathed deeply and asked the question.
Mr. Parks, the voice was sorry to report, had passed on last year, but Mrs. Parks was still a resident.
Jerene asked for visiting hours. Every day between ten and five, the voice said.
“Thank you,” Jerene said, and hung up.
She went on a Friday, riding through Queens on the Long Island Railroad into the very first fringe of suburbs. It was a brisk, sunny day—the kind of March weather that seems somehow fraudulent, hinting at the possibility of a snowstorm the next afternoon. Children were jumping rope and riding bicycles enthusiastically on the small, quiet streets she walked to the nursing home. There were even some sunbathers lying on chaises on the small lawns, their skin white with cold, braced against the breeze, diehards determined to enjoy this first sunny day even if it killed them.
It surprised her to be walking through a neighborhood of houses. So many years had passed since she had last gone home, so many months since she’d stepped off the island of Manhattan, that she had practically forgotten that smell of grass she was smelling now, the tender, green gentleness of a suburb after school lets out. Here, residential streets formed a grid with big avenues filled with supermarkets and little shopping malls, and nothing was taller than a few stories. Red brick houses, all alike, lined South Forty-fifth Street like sentries, and at the end was the Pinebrook Home for the Aged. When she entered, a whoosh of circulating air was sucked out of the automatic doors. The smell of vomit did not surprise Jerene. At the front desk she asked for Mrs. Parks’s room, and a vacant-eyed girl in a nurse’s uniform looked it up: room 2119.
She took the elevator. A hallway whose pale yellow walls were illuminated by pale yellow lightbulbs stretched before her, full of elderly women in their bathrobes, some in wheelchairs, some with walkers. They gave her frank, suspicious stares. In a little lounge area, others, fully dressed, almost elegant-looking in their outmoded finery, watched a rock video on a big television screen. With the help of a floor map attached to one of the walls, she made her way to room 2119. A television blared through the open door. Inside were two neatly made beds, two bureaus, and two armchairs, both empty. An elderly woman in a darkly patterned housedress, a black patent-leather purse slung over one arm, was sitting in a small desk-chair in the corner, watching television.
“Get it through your head, Mother,” said a voice from the television. “Holly and I are going to be married, and that’s final.”
There was a cascade of music, the slamming of a door. Another voice whispered, “Over my dead body.” Then more music. “I don’t give my cat any old cat food,” declared a new, different voice, and Jerene nervously crept into the room.
“Hello?” she said.
The old woman started, and stood up from where she sat. “Excuse me,” she said, her voice high with offense.
Jerene stepped back. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said. “I’m sorry. I—Grandma, it’s me. Jerene.”
From where she
stood, the old woman looked up, her mouth closed tightly.
“I came to visit you. I thought I’d surprise you.”
“Jerene?” the old woman said.
“Yes. Your granddaughter.”
Her grandmother’s face melted. Tears came to her eyes. “Jerene,” she said gently.
“Don’t cry, Grandma,” Jerene said, coming toward her. “Sit down here, in this chair.”
“I’m just so surprised. Thank you. You can’t know. I—I never expected to see you again. Sam only calls the last Saturday every month, and—goodness, I can’t remember the last time he and Maggie came to visit.”
Jerene had never heard her mother called Maggie before.
“I thought you’d gone away,” Nellie said. “I thought—oh, it was ages ago that—you’d gone off to Africa, joined the Peace Corps. And then they told me you’d married someone there, you weren’t coming back.”
Jerene smiled. “Well, I’m back now.”
“Did you have a good time in Africa?”
Jerene nodded.
“And how are your children?” She closed her eyes. “Oh don’t tell me—let me remember. I know Maggie wrote me all about them. Let’s see: Sam Jr. And what was the girl’s name? Elizabeth?”
Jerene nodded. “Yes. Elizabeth.”
“Are they with you?”
“No, they’re there. In Africa.”
“With their father?”
“Yes. He’s taking care of them.”
“Well, it’s too bad. I would have liked to have met my great-grandchildren. Oh,” said Nellie, “I—I wish I could offer you something. A cup of tea. Some cookies. But I don’t keep much around, not since Sam passed on. You know, of course, your grandfather passed on last May, don’t you?”
The Lost Language of Cranes Page 26
