Silver

by Hilma Wolitzer

  I rented a van and drove out to my mother’s place without calling first. Jason might have taken off again if he knew I was coming, and I think she would have warned him. As it was, I took them both by surprise. It was late morning when I got there. She was in the kitchen making breakfast and Jason was taking a shower. I heard the boom of the plumbing as soon as she opened the door. Her jaw fell open in shock when she saw me, and then it just hung there, as if the hinges had come loose. I looked around and the setup was familiar—two place mats and two coffee cups on the dinette table, the pair of Barca-loungers positioned to face the TV, The only major difference was the set of drums in front of the picture window. When the shower stopped, I could hear the air-conditioner’s siren song. “Jesus, Ma,” I said. “How could you do this?”

  Jason came out then, barefoot, in a kind of sarong-towel. He had a terrific tan—even the beads of water on his torso looked golden. I don’t think he recognized me for an instant, but when he did he put his hands up, as if to show me he wasn’t armed.

  “You have a son, you son-of-a-bitch,” I said. All the way here from New York, I’d wondered what I would say when I saw him, and nothing that abrupt or crude had come to mind. But everything I had thought to say was just as awkward and off the mark. The thing was, I’d never talked to him, really, so how could I begin now? Could I describe the way I’d felt when Paulie brought the baby out to me? It was like a wonderful dream of restored youth, and like pitching headlong into eternity at the same time. The baby, who was all lopsided, and red as a peeled tomato, was howling his head off. I saw his naked gums, his tonsils, his old age and mine in that wrinkled, toothless face. Paulie pulled back the blanket to show me it was a boy. I think I knew that right away, but I looked with amazement at that stub of a penis, the scrotum too big for the rest of him. The down on his head and shoulders was standing straight up from static or surprise, and I could actually see his heart beating, so fast it scared me. I thought he was probably going to resemble Jason, and me, too, once his face straightened out and his color came in. Poor kid, with that mashed nose and his eyes swollen shut, he looked like he’d gone down for the count, his fists still swinging. But I was thrilled, as if I’d just met someone I’d been admiring from a distance for a long time. I thought I might cry, but I didn’t—I laughed instead, and I reached out and touched the baby’s waving hands, his funny-looking feet. I said something stupid to Paulie that had nothing to do with what I was feeling, and she said, “Here,” and put his featherweight into my arms.

  Jason’s hands had come down slowly until they hung helplessly at his sides. “Is Sara okay?” he asked at last.

  “A hell of a lot better than you,” I said, and imagined Paulie saying: Talk to him, Howard. Why can’t you ever just talk to him? “She’s doing fine,” I added grudgingly. “And so is the kid.”

  “Dad, listen, I’m sorry—” Jason began, but I didn’t let him finish.

  “Don’t tell me about it, mister,” I said. “Save it for Sara. Just pack up your goddamn stuff now. We’ve got a flight out of here at three.”

  My mother, who had been fluttering around us in her apron, swore to me that she’d never meant any harm. She had only been giving Jason time to think, to straighten himself out. He’d come to her for refuge, what could she do? “Sit down for a minute, Howard,” she said. “Let the boy have his breakfast at least. And tell me about the baby.”

  Jason fell asleep on the plane. He was sitting in the middle, between me and the elderly woman in the aisle seat, who was reading a Bible. He began to slump in her direction and I pulled him over toward me. His head dropped onto my shoulder. It was heavy as lead, and smelled of sunlight and perspiration. I remembered the baby’s sweet, yeasty smell, Paulie’s face when she handed him to me.

  On the way to the airport, Jason had tried to explain what had happened, how he’d suddenly seen his life as a big black net dropping over him. And how he’d panicked and run. He swore he’d been planning to go back on his own, as soon as he got himself together again. No matter how it looked, he did love Sara, he did care about her and the baby. He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself as much as me. I let him talk this time, but I didn’t say anything. I knew I was bringing him back like some sporting trophy, like a slain deer tied to the roof of my car. Except, of course, I was bringing him back alive. I was using him in one sense, but it was for his own good, too. And eventually he’d see that.

  The woman looked up from her Bible and smiled at us. “He’s all knocked out,” I whispered, over Jason’s head. “He’s just become a father.” Her mouth opened in surprise—he probably looked too young to her—and then she blessed him with a beatific smile. When he woke up, she’d be sure to congratulate him, to ask him a few embarrassing questions. Well, he’d just have to start getting used to it.

  At La Guardia, we collected his gear from the belt and finally found a taxi big enough to handle it all. I dozed off on the way to Larchmont, and when I woke up, it was dark out. We were on the Hutchinson and Jason was looking out the window. It was easier to say something conciliatory to him then, in the darkness, and on our own home ground. “We’re going to help you, Jase,” I said. “You really screwed up, but it’s never too late to start over. Everything will work out, wait and see.”

  37

  THE NIGHT HOWARD AND I first met, at a dance he was playing at NYU, there was a mirrored ball suspended from the center of the ceiling. It began to slowly revolve when the music started, and bullets of light ricocheted around, striking me painlessly, pleasurably, on my face and sweater and arms. Everyone there was united by the restless pattern of light we all wore, like the spots or stripes of our species. But in that crowd, and in the mysterious order of things, Howard and I singled each other out.

  Now he believed he could win me back through acts of faith and heroism, and I would let him continue believing that. And I’d let him woo me with the romantic rituals we’d skipped twenty-five years ago, in our hurry to be in love. I wouldn’t tell him I was flung back that far last night, after Byron was born. When I leaned against the wall in the hallway of Ann’s house, I was leaning against the wall at NYU again, pierced by the tender, insistent voice of Howard’s saxophone.

  38

  JASON HAD WANTED TO call Sara from the airport, just to prepare her. For once he was trying to use common sense, but I wouldn’t let him. I figured it was better to surprise everybody, the way I had done down in Miami. And I imagined a grand finale to the whole mess, with the lovers embracing and Paulie sobbing with happiness.

  It didn’t work out that way, though; Sara didn’t exactly throw herself into Jason’s arms. In fact, she shrieked and ran out of the room the instant she saw him, abandoning the baby, who was asleep in the cradle next to her bed. Jason paused for only a moment to look at him before he chased Sara down the hallway, shouting her name.

  The baby started crying, a little mewling sound at first, and then he worked himself up into that squalling vibrato. I could hear Jason calling to Sara somewhere in the house, and their running footsteps, and a door slamming shut. Where was everybody else? Ann had let us in, and then she’d disappeared. I didn’t even know if Paulie was there, and I wasn’t sure anymore that I wanted her to be. I had brought Jason back, just as I’d promised, but so far his reunion with Sara was less than ideal.

  There was an ominous silence now, except for the baby, who was still going off like a siren. “Hey, you, calm down,” I said, and I nudged the cradle with my foot. When it stopped swinging, I bent to pick him up, but I’d forgotten how their heads wobble, as if their necks are broken. Jesus, it took three tries before I could scoop him up in one piece. He was soaking wet and stinking, and he hadn’t stopped yelling for a second. I carried him all over the house until I found Jason and Sara in the kitchen, where he had her pinned to the refrigerator.

  Maybe it was just as well that Paulie wasn’t around, that she came in later, from some local doughnut shop, when things had settled down a little.
The baby had been changed and fed. Sara and Jason were upstairs, talking. At least that’s what I told Paulie they were doing. The last time I’d looked, Jason was doing all the talking and Sara had her hands over her ears.

  The doughnuts that Paulie had brought were still warm. Ann and Spence appeared from nowhere, and we all sat down to drink coffee and eat the warm doughnuts. I looked around the table and something like music kept rippling through me. We could have been any family, anywhere, doing this ordinary, marvelous thing. I began to think about the lyrics to songs I’d played, and how they ask all those unanswerable questions. How deep is the ocean? How high the moon? What is this thing called love?

  SILVER

  THE SURPRISE PARTY WASN’T REALLY a surprise, because there had been so many hints, and a few dead giveaways. The Thursday before, when I was visiting my mother, she’d said, “What time on Sunday—” and then stared at me, stricken, covering her mouth. But even before that, Spence and Ann had spoken too broadly about their plans to go away that particular weekend. And when I’d looked in their freezer for coffee beans, I found hundreds of tiny meatballs and stacks of cakes and pies. Still, there were considerable elements of surprise that Sunday—like the adrenaline that surged through me as we approached our shuttered, waiting house. And when Howard unlocked the door and we heard the whispers and scurrying that preceded the shouts, he sucked in his breath and seized my arm. “Surprise! Surprise!” they all cried, and I turned to bury my face in Howard’s neck.

  The only trick Ann had actually pulled off was having the party here instead of at her own house. That would have been the logical choice; it was so spacious and handsome and well equipped. I suppose she relished the challenge of fooling us on our own territory. But it wouldn’t be ours much longer—we’d put the house up for sale at the beginning of the month.

  I pretended to be surprised when we walked in, and so did Howard. We had discussed the imminence of this event for days. Our actual anniversary had been Friday, and except for my mother’s slip, I would have guessed Friday or Saturday night as a more likely time. They didn’t have to do anything to get us out of the house on Sunday, though. At noon, we’d driven to Bayside, where one of Howard’s cousins’ children was playing the cello in a music-school recital. We’d agreed to attend in a weak moment—Howard’s cousin had phoned to invite us a month ago—and whenever I regretted accepting, Ann would remind me of how sensitive Cousin Sheila was about her kids, and how she’d sent that lovely quilt when Byron was born. So we’d dutifully left the house at noon. Getting us back there in time for the party was harder; Howard and I might have gone into Manhattan after the concert, and stayed for dinner. They had to invent a ruse about the real-estate broker bringing hot prospects who could only view the house today at five. I’d almost fallen for that part—they had even gotten the broker to call us himself. And they’d set up another blind by sending us anniversary gifts in advance.

  There we were now, at the party I’d vowed last August never to have. It had started without us—some of the guests had been there since three, drinking the wine, nibbling the cheeses and pâtés and then smoothing them over. The rooms were festooned with silver streamers and bells, and a flotilla of Mylar balloons had been allowed to drift to the ceilings. A poster-size blowup of our wedding portrait was on prominent display in the living room, with the signatures of all the guests scribbled around its borders. And there was live music—two new friends of Howard’s, a pianist and a bass man, had played “The Anniversary Waltz” at our entrance, and then swung right into a jazzy rendition of “’S Wonderful.”

  “Were you really surprised?” Ann wanted to know immediately, and of course we swore that we were. “Just feel my heart,” I told her, and Howard said, “Does this mean we’re not showing the house?”

  It was the first joke he’d made on that subject. Selling the house was an essential term of our reconciliation, but he had resisted the idea until June. All the old arguments against living in the city were dragged out once more, and it was hard to dispute them in this season of bloom and regeneration. But I was adamant—in order to heal our marriage, we had to go back where we’d begun.

  We had put a deposit on a two-bedroom co-op on the Upper West Side, the final deal contingent on the sale of our house. The apartment was half the square footage of the house, but it was in one of the city’s older buildings, with thick plaster walls and high ceilings. There was a sunny southern exposure, and you could just see the spire of the Chrysler Building from the master-bedroom window. Howard was going to rent studio space nearby. He would commute to Hempstead two or three days a week, until he built up his Manhattan clientele, and then he’d probably sell his share in the other studio to Mike.

  Mike was at the party with a beautiful black woman named Trish. When he introduced us, she said, “Congratulations. I didn’t think anybody stayed together this long.”

  “We did it in installments,” Howard explained. We did it with mirrors, I thought.

  The house was jammed with friends and relatives—even Howard’s cousins had beat us here from their daughter’s recital. La Rae came over to greet us. “You can return what I bought you,” she said. “It’s only a book, a walker’s guide to the city. I know how you hate to polish silver, Paulie, and nothing else seemed appropriate.” La Rae was at the party without an escort. She’d left Frank early in May, suddenly, as if struck by lightning or inspiration. Her father had been quickly moved to a nursing home in Elmont—Katherine had gotten him in there, through political connections, past a long waiting list. If I were more generous, I knew, I’d introduce Bernie to La Rae, or to one of my other unattached friends. In one of our private sessions, Dr. Lewin wondered if I was, perhaps, keeping him on a back burner.

  I found out that Katherine and Tony had been in cahoots with Ann about the party. They’d served as her local liaison, drawing up a list of neighbors to invite, ordering the balloons, and providing flowers from their own fertile garden. The flowers had been set out everywhere in fragrant profusion: white and lavender lilacs; tea roses; foxgloves; and long-stemmed Japanese irises, my favorite. “Thank you for everything,” I said. “The flowers are simply wonderful. Everything is.”

  Katherine stood in the circle of Tony’s arm. “Just be happy,” she said doubtfully.

  Sara carried Byron around in a canvas Snugli. He was asleep, and so closely curled against her I might never have cut the cord between them. We’d started calling him “By” right from the beginning, and a thousand other pet names as they occurred to us. He responded to all of them, to everyone, with a crooked, naked smile. His eye hardly wandered anymore, and his hair was a crown of golden feathers. Sara had stopped coloring her own hair, and the emerging roots were a surprising, ordinary brown. She was beginning to look more and more like her sister Peggy.

  Ann and Spence had hired a bartender, and two waitresses who passed among us, serving hors d’oeuvres. The meatballs I’d seen in Ann’s freezer were sizzling hot now and skewered on silver toothpicks. There were stuffed mushrooms and bite-sized quiches, and triangles of black bread studded with blacker caviar.

  My mother washed a meatball down with a swig of ginger ale. “Things work out for the best, knock wood,” she said, rapping on the marble top of an end table. “But I almost gave it away, didn’t I?”

  “I never had a clue,” I told her, the harmless and harmful lies continuing between us.

  Later, I found her in the dining room with Sherry, advising her to “stop running around” and settle down with somebody. It certainly wouldn’t be Nicholas—he’d recently found someone even older than Sherry, through another personals ad in The New York Review. She had brought her old friend Dave Becker to the party, and my mother said, “He looks very nice, Sherry, although, believe me, looks aren’t everything.” Sherry didn’t bother to tell her that Dave was gay, and spoken for, in any case. Nor did she say how much she liked the unpredictability of her single life.

  Sharon Danzer was making her first
formal social appearance since Gil’s death. A few weeks ago, when I told her that I was going back to Howard, she said that all separations were only dress rehearsals, anyway. Now she stood on the sidelines of the party, trying to remember how to enjoy herself. Shadow, who had grown just as wary of large gatherings, stayed close by her, and she absently fed him bits of caviar and quiche.

  Jason had been in the bathroom before me, smoking grass. I opened the window to air the place out, and then went looking for him. I found him hiding out in his old room. He was lying on the bed, in a crush of silver-wrapped gifts, with his arms folded behind his head. I sat on the edge of the bed, the way I did sometimes when he still lived here, and we talked a little, mostly about his music, and about Byron. He said that the punk sound was on the way out, and that Blood Pudding was moving toward heavy metal, to attract a larger, younger audience. They were thinking of changing their name to the Cattle Prods. He tried to write new songs for their new image when the baby wasn’t sleeping or crying. Jason’s speech was slightly slurred and his eyes had a remote, abstracted look. I got up at last and left him there, saying, “Come back in when you’re ready, Jason. We’ll see you later, okay?”