Eleanor said, “There’s a wonderful new play on in San Francisco—a new work by a Polish playwright—it had excellent reviews. I bought four tickets for Saturday evening.”
They were escaping into the quicksand of trivia, Rosa thought. The secrecy that had bothered her all this time seemed like a malignant growth spreading slowly towards the center. Her head throbbed. The Scotch burned her throat. She didn’t even like liquor. Why then was she drinking it? Even though it would be no use to talk to them—she lamented that fact now—she could put it off no longer. Words were slashes of a surgeon’s knife—even if she alone heard and remembered the words. Only words at this time could cut beneath gangrenous tissue.
“My right arm could have been set,” she said.
“Really?” said Eleanor. “I thought not.”
“The doctor said it could only be set at great risk,” said Aaron.
“Maybe when I was seven it would have been a risk. When I was fifteen, it would have been routine surgery. I saw a doctor just a few weeks ago, and that’s what he told me. Why didn’t you ever consult anyone else? Why did you tell me it couldn’t be done? Why was I foolish enough to believe you?”
“It was almost unnoticeable,” said Aaron. “I don’t know why you’re bringing this up after so many years. It never seemed to bother you.”
“I wanted to be a dancer.”
“Nothing stopped you,” said Aaron. “I have an artist’s eye—I watched you move—your arm was barely noticeable.”
“People never noticed because I camouflaged. I stood in front of a mirror and taught myself how to limit my movements so no one would notice!” said Rosa. Blood flushed through her cheeks. Her chest pounded. She felt like shaking him. “You and Mom consult so many doctors about your own illnesses . . . why is it you never consulted anyone else about my arm? When I had a breakdown you sent me to three shrinks in one day—why was that? Were you afraid perhaps that if my arm were fixed I would be a dancer—I would become something you didn’t want me to be? You’ve tried to control my whole life!”
Her mother’s voice was clipped, angry. “No one stopped you from becoming a dancer. The deformity was all in your imagination.”
Rosa clenched her glass. There was no point going on about this. She was so angry that words blurred into a dark, slimy, vicious, thick torrent. She wished she had waited to speak about this until Antonio were here. (But she herself had just betrayed him!)
Everyone was silent.
Eleanor poured herself and Aaron more Cutty Sark. Rosa shook her head when the bottle was offered. She noticed a stain over the right knee of her slacks.
“Will you be coming to the play?” asked Eleanor, at last.
“How the hell can you talk about plays?” Rosa blurted.
“What would you like me to talk about?” asked Eleanor.
“I’m getting my arm operated on as soon as I can, and I’ll need money. . . . I’ll tell you what you can talk about,” she said, her voice rising in rage. “You can talk about what’s been going on between you and my husband. You can talk about how you and he made love in Paris. You can talk about how you’re going to give him twenty-five thousand dollars to start a business when you know he’s going to blow it. You complain about not having any damned money. . . . Yet you can come up with all that. . . . You can talk about what damned hypocrites you are.”
Her mother’s face was all angles, pale in the electric light. She was weeping. “You promised not to say anything to Aaron,” she finally said in a choked up voice.
Aaron went over to his wife and put his arm around her.
“Can’t you see how you’re hurting her?” he asked. “Your attack is uncalled for, brutal and cruel. After all your mother has sacrificed for you. . . . You don’t know half of it. You don’t understand at all.”
Memories of quarrels Rosa had had with her mother when she was growing up came into her mind. Every single time her father had given her no peace until she apologized to Eleanor—Eleanor could do no wrong. At this moment, Rosa realized that she, his daughter, did not count as a human being at all for Aaron, so blinded was he by loyalty to his wife. It was as though he were giving homage to a savage goddess, sacrificing Rosa to appease the goddess, her mother.
Her parents faced her, hand in hand, ashamed.
“You’ve betrayed me,” said Eleanor.
“I knew about Antonio. I sensed it,” said Rosa’s father. “Eleanor and I know almost everything about each other—although often we pretend not to know.”
“If you knew, why did you never give me a breath of sympathy?” Rosa asked Aaron.
He said nothing.
Rosa swallowed. She pictured herself flailing a machete against each of them until they were nothing but blood and gore.
Tears streamed down Eleanor’s face. “If only I could undo it,” she murmured. “Undo the past. But why did Antonio have to tell you? He is diabolic. He tries to destroy everything.”
“He couldn’t have without your help,” said Rosa. She turned towards the windows. A seagull circled over the trees against the sky, which was reddish from the light of the sinking sun.
A mass of grief weighed her down. Overcome, she sank on the floor. Howls tore out of her throat.
“Hush, everyone in the hotel will hear you,” said Eleanor, soothing Rosa’s shoulders with her hands. “You must be quiet.”
Rosa wrenched herself away and rose to her feet. With all her strength she rushed for the door, slammed it behind her and ran howling through the hotel corridors trying to find an outside exit.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
She saw Antonio’s Volvo come into the parking lot after she phoned him. She ran, shouting, “Antonio,” in the darkness.
He was drunk, she could tell from the way he walked with a staggering gait after he got out of the car. A cap was pulled halfway over his face. He had on a heavy grey sweater that Eleanor had given him.
“Eh, what is it?” He looked into her tear-streaked face. He smelled of alcohol and cigarette smoke. His cigarette glowed.
She told him what had happened.
“A dégalasse!” he said. “The con your father! The merde of your famille.”
Even while tears streamed down her face, Rosa thought it ironic she should be telling Antonio, of all people.
He had—as if probing to find the skeletal structure of her family underneath the camouflage, probing all weak spots—set up the crisis, which forced them to see themselves as they really were.
Antonio was her saviour.
“I love you,” she sobbed, “because you reveal reality to me. Now I can see why I broke down . . . all the craziness flowing between us at home . . . no one could speak the truth . . . everything was all hidden . . . I felt all the pressures.”
He offered her a cigarette and lit it for her. They wandered over the pilings by the yacht harbor and sat there, looking at the dark water which shimmered with lights, at the boats which rocked, tall masts upright.
It was inconceivable that she should confide in him, after she had told her parents not to give him money for the business! She was as rotten as they were!
But there was no one else to confide in.
No need even to tell him how she had doubled-crossed him.
“Foutu, Petite. They’ll never give me the money for the empanada business now,” said Antonio.
They were driving in his Volvo.
Eleanor had called at their home to cancel their dinner. She said that Aaron had forbidden her ever to see Antonio again. She and Aaron were taking a flight back to New York at midnight.
“Finished. I am foutu,” he said.
She did not know where they were driving. Up a narrow winding road in the direction of Mount Tamalpais.
“You have finished me off, Petite,” he said. “Your mother and father will never give me the money I need now. Twenty-five thousand dollars down the drain . . . gone . . . that I will never see . . . Antonio is foutu. Why did you do that, Rosa? Why
do you destroy everything?” he asked. But he looked exultant. His face had a glow to it that she had not seen in a long time. “Money . . .” he took his hands off the steering wheel and rubbed his fingers together.
“We’re free of them now,” she said.
They turned into the driveway.
“Perhaps they’ll still send the money.” (She was Judas reincarnated.)
He laughed. Parked. Got out. Spit onto the gravel. “They’ll never send me the money . . . your father . . . never.”
He laughed as they climbed the steps. She felt heavy, black. She had betrayed him. His laugh was too violent, too bitter, as if he were not in control.
He burst into Isabel’s room, and Rosa followed. They looked down at her as she lay asleep on her side, facing them, in her pink flannel pajamas. Her tiny white shoes and her sneakers were lined up by the side of the bed. Her toys and books were arranged in orderly piles. It was as though by keeping her things in order, she could shut out the chaos, thought Rosa. The child sensed the chaos, the feeling of danger that was always in the air.
Isabel was clutching a stuffed bear covered with brown velour. Antonio pushed a lock of her hair back from her forehead. She was damp with sweat. He picked the child up in his arms, held her as he walked back through the kitchen and into the living room, and laid her down on the sofa. She started to wake up, clutched her bear tighter, and gave a little cry.
“Who loves you?” he asked.
She smiled. “You love me,” she said, half awake.
“Preciosa,” he said. He lay down with his cheek next to hers, his feet on the floor.
Rosa made a pot of tea. He didn’t want any. In a few minutes, Isabel was sound asleep again. He carried her back to her bed and stayed there a long time, gazing down as she slept, watching the rise and fall of her breath.
CHAPTER FORTY
Aaron’s heart beat so fast that the beats flowed into each other and he could not distinguish them. It had been going on like this for eleven hours now. He had come in from the studio and lay in bed. Eleanor and he were waiting for the doctor to come and give him an injection.
If he could run fast enough, he would escape. Then no one could catch up with him. What he dreaded would not overtake him.
If he slowed down, if he listened, saw, perceived, the things he so dreaded would break his heart.
After the injection he slept for a long time.
Eleanor sat beside him and ran her fingers through his hair. Even in sleep, eyes closed, he claimed her. Everything in Aaron, from the tips of his hair to his squat fingers and calloused toes, staked her out as his possession.
She felt as if a landslide were dividing her from herself. Half her head, heart, bowels, intestines . . . a slide of gravel . . . herself . . . disorienting her . . . was sliding away.
She belonged to Aaron, as he belonged to her. They were husband and wife. Only with him was she whole.
She undressed, bathed, and lay beside Aaron in the darkness. He snored slightly. The sound disturbed her and prevented her from sleeping.
She tossed in bed. For nights now, ever since that terrible scene with Rosa in Sausalito, she had been unable to sleep, barely able to swallow any food. She had wandered around in a fog after they arrived back in Plainville, barely conscious of anything at all. At times she wanted to die.
Rosa, in her absence, underwent a change in Eleanor’s consciousness. Rosa became luminous, someone whose love she wanted terribly. Would Rosa ever forgive her?
She was overcome with pity for Antonio. Pain shot through her head. Rosa was composed of tough sinews. But Antonio was made up of vaporous forces that fought against each other.
A bird could be pecked to death by other birds when it weakened. Antonio was dying. She tossed. The mattress was lumpy. Aaron snored on. Through the window she could see a pale, almost full moon, half-covered by floating clouds.
God forgive her, she loved Antonio. She would always love him. His smile hovered over her. His wisdom seemed to penetrate her.
Outside the bare branches were covered with tiny buds, like hard nipples. Soon spring would come. Then her roses would blossom. How Antonio had loved her roses.
Who could explain why one loved?
You are sentimental, a voice inside assailed her.
You are sentimental. You are false. Who are you? What do you want?
She could not answer. A desire for something she could not name, something limitless and eternal, engulfed her.
The next evening Eleanor called Rosa when she thought Antonio would be out. “We love you,” she said.
“Do you?” Rosa’s cold voice warded off waves of affection that Eleanor had been transmitting to the imaginary Rosa.
“I’m sending you the name of an orthopedist with an excellent reputation in San Francisco. . . . If you need money for the surgery, we’ll help.”
Eleanor wrote Antonio a note saying how sorry she was that circumstances had changed and they could not raise the money. She wished him well and hoped to see his new novel in print soon. Enclosed was a check from her personal account for a thousand dollars.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
“The Bernsteins are a fine Jewish family,” said Antonio, his voice thick with irony. “I thought Jewish families took care of their own!”
“Some do, some don’t,” said one of his drinking companions, a thin, dark-bearded, intense young man with Semitic looks.
“Rosa’s grandmother sponsored me as an immigrant and wrote on the application that she had a million dollars in assets.”
“Thought you’d be set for life, eh Antonio?”
In South America, families handled their money with grace, Antonio reflected. They did not raise a daughter as an aristocrat and leave her to starve if the daughter happened to marry someone poor. They adopted him into the family. They helped him. Even sexual intrigues were handled with grace. (Here Antonio dove into a realm of unreality.) The waitress brought him another beer. He imagined wistfully the family he would like Rosa to have had. The father strong, solid—whether a selfmade man or an heir—assertive, courteous, a man of breeding who could be a father to Antonio, too.
The mother, a lady of distinction, would have repelled his clumsy seduction efforts—better yet, the seduction of such a woman would never have been attempted—because Eleanor sent out electric signals that she wanted to make love.
A family that was stable, generous, sane would have produced a sane Rosa. Then he and Rosa could have soared.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Wind whistled. A neighbor started his car. Six a.m. on a Saturday morning. The lights of the car shone through the front bedroom window. The engine turned over and warmed up. Why was the neighbor starting his car so early on a weekend?
Antonio was half asleep.
A little while later the alarm rang.
He closed his eyes. He heard Rosa moving around the room, opening and shutting closets and drawers. He shut his eyes against the light.
Bones so heavy.
Rock music from the kitchen radio. Smell of toast and bacon.
Eyes tightly closed.
Isabel said something in her soft cooing voice. Rosa’s voice and the child’s intermingled. La belle Isabelle.
Rosa moved like a great black crow flapping her wings.
He got out of bed, put on his bathrobe, and sat down in his armchair which faced the living room window. The grass was green from the rains.
Rosa moved around the house flapping huge black wings. Her beak was set.
“I’m taking Isabel to the babysitter’s. Then I’m going to class,” she said. “Soon I’ll be able to get my adult teaching credential.”
She had robbed him of strength. She had stolen his vitality, sapped his blood, his soul.
Like fire, she consumed (and he, poor fool, wanting to save her, was drawn into the flames).
Her chest jutted out like a bird’s—all pride, vanity, arrogance.
She had no compassion.
&nbs
p; A crow’s soul was trapped in her human body. Her hands were talons.
Isabel looked so pure with her gleaming hair, her translucent skin. But she would only create more evil and chaos in the world. Rosa had tainted her daughter with evil.
The crow came close and attempted to embrace him.
He flung his writing onto the floor. The sheets spiraled out into white fanlike shapes on the grey-green carpet.
“Merde alors! Will you ever leave me a moment’s peace?”
Tears gathered in the crow’s eyes.
He flapped his wings. “Fly!” he cried. “Fly off into the sky and leave me alone!”
Thinking this was a new game, Isabel imitated him.
He slapped her, leaving a bright reddish welt on her cheek. She began crying. Rosa folded her in her wings. “There, there now, your Daddy’s a little crazy,” she whispered.
Seven-thirty in the evening.
The room whirled.
A laugh rippled through Antonio’s stomach, ripping open the ulcerated part, searing him with pain. The laugh was so unpleasant that he wished he could jump outside his skin to escape it. But the laugh was spreading all around him.
His tongue tasted rancid.
His body seemed to be composed of a substance like melting rubber. He could hardly move himself to the bathroom to piss, to the kitchen for another can of beer.
Rosa drove into the carport, home from the first day of her weekend education seminar. She got out with Isabel and bags of groceries. The child ran ahead, hopping, skipping, babbling to herself.
They entered the house, blasting in the cool, fresh air.
Rosa’s face had something hard, contemptuous about it—she had grown contemptuous of him.
In the kitchen Rosa put away groceries.
Isabel’s bath water was running.
Invisible presences—huge faces and bodies—seemed to surround him. The laughter spread from his stomach through the atmosphere, its taste so horrible that it sickened him to the roots of his being.
Isabel ran out naked from the bathroom. “Mommy!” she wailed. So easy to drown the little one in the bathwater. Better to drown it than let it spread its evil. Poor little bird.
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