What the Family Needed

by Steven Amsterdam

  She pulled the washcloth between Bella’s toes. You clean the feet last, once the body is adjusted to a respectable position, before it all gets too firm. Bella’s face looked reasonable. No matter how weary and waxy people looked at the end, Ruth often detected a gleam of relief, as if they had been wandering down the wrong path for decades and had finally arrived at the place they had been searching for. The place they had been before they were born.

  Bella’s silence put Ruth at ease. The prospect of finishing this task and going back to the uncensored voices of the corridor did not. There had to be a reason. The first manifestation of a tumor. A sleep-deprivation psychosis. A nurse’s uncontrolled explosion of empathy. Each scenario suggested a hospital admission was in her future.

  Bella’s smirk lingered. It suited her. At the wink of death, if you were free enough and another person was nearby, you could grant them a second way of hearing, so that you could be heard. If the circumstances were right, as they had been with Ruth, the sense could expand and the recipient would hear others too. That must be it.

  A low gurgle escaped from Bella’s yellowy lips in confirmation, but her expression remained the same.

  Who knew? It was as sound an explanation as any.

  On the way out of the garage, the attendant gave Ruth the usual, sarcastically chipper “Good morning!” The joke being that neither of them wanted to be where they were.

  It was followed by Lord, take me if I’m working here at her age.

  Driving home, unjustly ensnared in the rush of people going to work, Ruth tried to consider options. The thought of calling in sick didn’t appeal, largely because she didn’t feel sick. But the prospect of returning that evening to a storm of comments darting past her every minute—that would unwind her, fast. The whole raw mess of the hospital’s consciousness, staff and patients seething with all their indignities—that would be unbearable.

  Four nights on in a row never yielded her best brain. She was tired and there was one more night to go. This was all a dream, her mind urging her body to draw the blackout curtains and tuck herself into bed. She would try warm milk first and if that didn’t work in half an hour, she would go straight for the pills. By the time the halfhearted winter sun set that afternoon, she would be awake again and all would be quiet. The thoughts in her head would be her own. It sounded like bargaining. In the same way she knew she wasn’t sick, she knew the voices would still be there when she woke up.

  Possibly, this was the beginning of what would become of her. It was undeniable that she had reached “her age.” The hours and shifts had sculpted her into the same shape of the old nurses who had taught her. She would run to them with questions and respect, thinking to herself, Lord, take me if I’m working here at her age. Had any of them heard?

  If the stock market kept working for her, she could quit in five or six years and stay home with her feet up. Other than that and until then, it wasn’t a buffet of options.

  As she pulled into her parking place, she saw Martin getting ready to drive off.

  “Morning.”

  He rolled down his window. “Hey.”

  He was cute, younger. Forty-four, as if such an age implied youth. He was the only one there who was at all neighborly. They shared a balcony and sometimes she watched him out there from her living room when he did sit-ups in boxers and not much else. She’d entertained some entertaining thoughts, but nothing within the kingdom of likely. Martin had fixed her sink when it clogged. Ruth had bandaged his elbow when he fell off his bicycle. It was like that. His presence one wall away provided an acceptable minimum of companionship. What did he get from her presence? She braced herself to find out.

  “Just coming home? Lucky you, all done for the day.” Getting to spend the next few hours lounging—lucky. Wait—“You worked last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “There was noise in your kitchen, around eleven. I thought it was you. I definitely heard noises.”

  “What was it?”

  “Music, and dishes-in-the-sink sounds. Your nephew?”

  “Alek hasn’t been around here for a long time. And he made a big show of leaving the keys when he left. Could it be the new people on the other side?”

  “No, definitely your kitchen. Should I go up with you?” Please please please don’t say yes. I’m so late already.

  Ruth couldn’t help smiling, which must have made Martin wonder.

  “Thanks. I’ll be fine. No burglar would have bothered staying through the night. It must have come from your other wall.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” I hope she doesn’t get killed. “You’ll call if you need me?” he said.

  Ruth promised, and Martin sped off, leaving her to wonder how she would keep a straight face with anyone.

  For as long as she could remember, she had never completely believed what she said to people or what they said to her. Conversation seemed inherently dishonest—a mixture of showing off and begging, in one form or another. Now she had a different way in. The first thing she would do would be to call up Ben and see what he really thought of his dear old mother—assuming the burglars had left.

  It would be ironic but make perfect sense that since she’d managed to move one tiny notch upmarket, thieves would have finally decided that she was worth their trouble. Her place, on the second floor and far from the stairs, wouldn’t have been their smartest choice. Still, she unlocked the door with minimal clicking, pushing it open like you would on a crime show.

  It was a Deco two-bedroom, with too many bookshelves holding too much stuff. Because of the usual disorder, detecting a break-in with certainty might be difficult. The cordless phone had been left on a shelf, not in its cradle. This could have been her doing. A stack of magazines for recycling had been tipped over. This could have been spontaneous. Or not. Ruth took a step back. No sounds. There were alcoves and corners where someone could easily hide. Still, she felt confident as she ventured in, ears alert. If anyone were there, she would hear them think.

  She called in through the doorway, “Hello?”

  She expected an internal Oh shit! No sound.

  She stayed out in the open so she could, in theory, run back into the hall.

  No sound.

  Ruth picked up the phone to carry from room to room, in case she’d suddenly need it to call for help or beat someone over the head. That’s when she saw it, next to the change bowl on the dining table—the open container of chocolate milk. Alek’s calling card.

  “Alek?”

  She walked through her five rooms looking for more signs.

  When he’d left two years ago, he told her, “I need to find my way out of this,” but wouldn’t say if he meant this apartment, this city, or this life. His departure was not up for discussion, but afterward Ruth used her off days to scour the city for him. The staff at the restaurants where he had worked didn’t know and didn’t care. He was replaceable. The ones that were advertising for kitchen help didn’t remember taking any applications from “an extremely energetic, handsome young man, a little under six feet and pale, with brown curly hair and,” she would add in a lower volume, “a sort of preoccupied expression on his face.”

  She hoped to see his backpack in the middle of the spare bedroom. Its lumpy, sometimes smelly presence would mean he had parked himself here again, if only for a few nights. It would be an excuse to call Natalie.

  No backpack. Silence.

  He would have been out there, coping well, until again, inevitably, he couldn’t. Then he’d come back to whoever would have him. This was his habit. Ruth could relate.

  No backpack, no shoes, no pile of laundry.

  The whole pattern was worse if it was your son. Alek had talked rings around psychologists. He had denied the need for the meds, he had taken them to please his parents, he had pretended to take them to please himself. And every once in a while he would vanish for weeks and months, returning healthy, smiling, and in a new pair of jeans. Maddeningly, he would maintain that he had never be
en far away. It wore everyone down. In the end, Natalie ran out of wisdom and Peter resorted to tough love. Alek wasn’t interested in that scenario.

  That was when Ruth had stepped in, her goal being to play good cop long enough to get him back home. She offered him the spare bedroom of her new apartment and the independence he was always talking about. Living closer to the city would help him connect with more like-minded souls.

  “Connect to druggies,” Natalie had said.

  He behaved, though, living with Ruth for nine months, not always making sense, but not disappearing as much. It was his longest stretch anywhere since he’d left school. It was on and off for another two years after that, with him utterly abusing the freedom. Ruth said she meant to do right by him, that she didn’t want to see Alek discarded to the wind. Natalie told Ruth that she was undermining their parenting.

  “Where is he right now?” Natalie asked, during one of their last civil morning calls.

  Ruth, home from work five minutes and without a clue, said, “Out.”

  “Discarding himself to the wind, I imagine, and using you and your spare room when it suits.”

  “But I’ve made it plain that life here has limits.”

  “Have you shown him? If you don’t show him, then somebody else surely will.”

  “I told him—”

  “Deeds, not words.”

  Natalie and Ruth stopped talking about Alek and things became cordial. A few months after that, as if he was the only connection between them, Natalie stopped calling altogether. To make it all worse, this was when Alek announced he was leaving. He tossed the keys on the dining room table and told Ruth, “Won’t need keys anymore where I’m going.”

  Ruth called Natalie that night and cried that she had lost him too.

  Natalie said, “Of course you did,” and hung up.

  Ruth called back, but Natalie hung up again.

  Ruth gave it a day, then several days, but Natalie didn’t pick up. At first she thought it was a wound that could be healed with time and a few of the right words. But Natalie never responded. When Ruth realized that her sister had truly cast her adrift, it was a disaster. The first year after the divorce had been a similar disaster, but it came with the consolation that natural and sensible laws had prevailed. All Ruth knew was that she had tried to be good and her sister had cut her off. Even after a dozen pleading, apologetic letters, Natalie granted her no more contact. It was as if Ruth had sent him away.

  No, he didn’t need keys. Alek had come in through the balcony. He had smashed the smallest pane to unlatch the window and climb in. The broken glass had been brushed into a neat pile with a blue Post-it marked “Sorry” on top of it.

  When he first moved in, she imagined him losing the keys on a regular basis and they discussed hiding a spare set.

  “There’s nowhere you could hide them that a thief who looks for keys couldn’t find them,” he told her. The balcony, he added, was far too vulnerable.

  There was more promising evidence of him in the kitchen. On the window ledge, a beef bourguignon was steaming in her blue baking dish. The aroma didn’t feel right for the early hour, but she knew she would be grateful for it later. He’d used or spattered every utensil, pan, cutting board, and counter, leaving it all where it had landed. The deal had always been that she would do the cleanup. Did he really break in to cook?

  The blank dining room wall she had just walked past grabbed her attention. Ruth took two fearful steps backward. Her favorite painting was gone. Over the undusty rectangle where it belonged, another “Sorry” Post-it.

  Over many years, Ruth had struggled to internalize the patient drone of every yoga instructor and therapist she had ever seen. Their soothing mantras filled her head at times like this. Breathe out. Drop shoulders. Let the heart get sadder. Let it expand again. Let it adapt to change. Let it adapt to loss.

  The picture was Ruth’s sole remnant of the solid first year of her marriage. A small framed sketch, a busy bright stick figure of a city skyline floating in a golden patch of wilderness. She’d managed to hold on to it through all that had happened since—a grab bag of homes, a grab bag of men, and the kids slipping off into their lives. It was one of the few belongings that she had counted on to keep her company in old age.

  Ruth sat down at the table and stared at the space on the wall. When she’d first seen the sketch, she had liked but not loved it. It was a very lesser Paul Klee, though, and somehow within their reach. If they skipped a few treats for a while it could be theirs. That first year they were going to build an empire. They would make investments—in art, of all things. Not loving the picture provided her with confidence that she would be able to part with it when the time came to cash in. She had shared all of this with Alek one night and asked him if it had been hubris.

  “Does every action have a pathology behind it?” he asked.

  He was right. That was when she detached it from her marriage and from its potential value and came to like the picture for what it was.

  Alek had never stolen before, not that she knew of. He hadn’t needed money, just an occasional bed. Paying jobs materialized for him like they would for no one else—Ben, to name one person. Alek would excitedly play along with the formality of work for the first few paychecks and then get bored. There would be a disappearance, a bewildering excuse, and another promising job. This was why Peter had lost it. They couldn’t control him if he was financially viable.

  The break-in indicated bad things. His flightiness had finally led to trouble. He was in debt to someone—someone nasty? The sketched city in its frame was bouncing in his khaki army pack on its way to a pawnshop or art dealer. It was about to be traded for a fraction of its worth. Every possibility was a sinkhole.

  Nine-thirty a.m. and still not in bed. It was officially too late to even try. Her body’s clock had fully turned over into the next day and there was so much else to think about that sleep was becoming unlikely.

  Every once in a while, Ruth felt the necessary pull of destiny. When she’d eloped, when she finally took the kids and left, when she’d switched to night duty, when she’d bought this apartment. In each case, she couldn’t have done otherwise. Her decisions had been inevitable. And now, she decided, her sudden talent of deep listening was meant for Alek. For years, she had wanted to get closer to him, to her own kids, to everyone, always closer, by asking questions. Always closer toward a vanishing point of data that might help her understand why they did what they did. That’s why the gift had arrived. She would hear what he thought, find the painting, know what kind of help Alek needed, and bring him in from his fog. This too was fated. There was no need to call the police. There was no need to call Martin. And nothing to tell Natalie yet.

  All she had to do was find him. She taped a piece of cardboard over the broken pane to keep out the wind, changed out of her work clothes, and, with no idea where she was going, set out.

  The air was colder than the winter light had her believe. Three long streets to the park. He would be sitting on the bench near the lake, his arms extended, holding the picture up toward the thankless sky. It would turn out not to be about money. It would be some sacrifice to beauty. He would say, “It needed a drop of sunshine.” If she found him, Ruth was sure she could lure him home. At first sight she would listen to what was brewing behind his words. It would save him, save the whole family.

  But Alek wasn’t on any of the benches that she could see and she was already beginning to ache from the chill. With bleary energy, she trudged out of the park and toward a street corner where there was a pawnshop. Maybe that was his destination.

  The times he stayed with her had been calm, mostly. When their schedules overlapped, he would cook, blowing out any savings on the best cut of meat or bottle of red he could find. On his own nights, he kept to his chocolate milk and baked beans. He would demurely fan his farts into the room. This, in the middle of pep talks. He was always advising her, about scuffles at work, about men, about the sorry tu
rns her life had taken and how every one of them had been necessary so she could become the mind-blowing individual she was. It was nice to have that on tap.

  The few times when she had tentatively suggested that he stick with one job or hold on to his money, his face went harsh. Or, heaven help her if she asked him what was on his mind. He hated that, but most men did.

  Once, she noticed that he was staying home from work with a cold.

  “Do you want me to give them a call so they can find someone else tonight?” she asked.

  “Don’t mother-smother,” he said.

  Natalie hadn’t laid eyes on him in almost three years at that point, so the warning was understood.

  That sharp edge would soften just as quickly, and he’d go back to spinning out tales of things that he couldn’t have done, trips he couldn’t have taken to impossible places, even stories about her. Natalie found this talk too chaotic, while Ruth believed that listening openly to whatever he had to say was exactly the medicine he needed. When she felt nursing concerns creeping in, every word out of his mouth indicated another symptom. Preferring the notion that her nephew was merely special, she chose to ignore that line of thinking. If she allowed him to spin out his stories long enough, he would reach a rational core. In the meantime, he kept her enthralled and that was enough. She listened to him the way Alice Liddell would have listened to Alice in Wonderland—dazzled to find that she was inhabiting someone else’s fairy tale.

  Leaving the park, she passed two Pilates-postured young mothers, setting out on a cardio walk, plowing the street with their children strapped into superior strollers. They trotted along in silence, with a cloud of extra dialogue around them. Out of the static, Ruth heard, This is getting very old.