Louise had no interest in dance, and knew nothing about dancers. She was being carried off to the Tobeys’ as other people were being carried off to state hospitals.
II
“I think maybe I’ll go to Australia,” Maria was saying. “The weather is better. What do you think? Also the parking problems. Even also I think the schools.”
“Australia? You? Before you knew it, you’d be starting up with a kangaroo. Where you should go is Pago Pago. One grass skirt and you’d be in business, a water buffalo would get you around. No meters, no tickets. Maria, liebchen, I’ve just solved all your problems.”
The kitchen faucet burst out suddenly, but over the running water Louise heard Maria say, “It’s not in my mentality, Arthur.” Arthur and Joan Tepfer, Bert and Reba Axelrod: they were Maria’s neighbors, these people, and were constantly in and out of her apartment as if it were an extension of their own. Their children played with Matthew, and the strange, unfinished arts-and-crafts projects that Louise had first seen strewn around the house mostly belonged to Joan Tepfer. She was always starting something new, and left what she could not finish with Maria, who usually could and did not seem to regard it as an imposition. She did not seem to regard it at all. “You’re so inventive, Maria,” Joan and Reba would say. “Isn’t she marvelous?” They meant it, and would watch, fascinated, as Maria’s hands rapidly pulled and shaped the various materials, calling out at the same time, “Matthew! You’re slamming the God-damn refrigerator!” Or, “Damn it, I also forgot about the cheese.”
Maria worked as a dance therapist in a community rehabilitation center for drug addicts, and since there had been a cutback in staff, also did much of the arts-and-crafts work, which she had picked up from watching. Creativity was something she connected solely with Dennis.
Louise remained standing in the hallway, listening. It meant she had to face the pictures of Dennis, but still she would not go into the kitchen: Arthur Tepfer made her nervous.
“No, Arthur, really. I am sick of that God-damn parking. I am sick of that God-damn car. I think maybe I’ll sell it. What do you think? Only I love it to drive, it’s a very good car, only it’s always breaking. I am a very good driver, Arthur. Only I don’t like the tickets.”
Arthur Tepfer began whistling a German marching song. He said, “Who told you to get a foreign car? I told you not to, I told Dennis. If you had to have a foreign car, at least it should have been a Volkswagen—you’d feel at home in it, first of all, and as soon as you said Achtung it would have to listen.”
“One time be serious, Arthur. Just today—now—I went to the hospital again, and I found a parking place. Legal. When I came out, no car. I can’t find it. Some stupid bastard has just pushed it! It could have rolled down the hill, I don’t know. Also, I don’t even like the East Side. It’s not in my mentality.”
Joan said, “Oh, Maria. How is Dennis?” She said it in a very reverential voice, the same way all the people in the building always said it.
“How is Dennis? How is Dennis? How do I know how is Dennis? Dennis doesn’t know who is Dennis. I am sick of the God-damn parking, it’s a terrible hospital. Only parking for doctors.”
“Are they giving him any new drugs? Is he still getting radiation?”
If Maria answered this, Louise did not hear it. She yelled out, “Matthew, please! Clean up the cat shit, we’re having dinner. And afterwards, baby, angel, no television until after all the homework. Please.”
“Why do you push him about homework, Maria?” Joan said. “If the material was interesting intrinsically—you know—alive, he would do it. It would be like play.”
“Play!” Maria said. “Exactly! He’s a good boy, Matthew, really. But that’s what he does—play.”
Louise already knew exactly how Matthew played: he sat over a large chessboard by himself and moved both sets of pieces, exclaiming to himself and crinkling his small, fair, freckled face in absorption and a kind of gleeful, separate happiness. It struck Louise as being strange, but all Maria ever said was, “Oh, chess. I don’t know how it goes, the pieces. Dennis taught him, he was very little.”
Matthew’s other way of playing was drawing. He made very colorful, elaborate pictures and sang songs to go with them. Often they were about space and space ships—a topic in which Louise had no interest. She tried to follow the melody line as he sang, but had trouble; in fact, had trouble with Matthew altogether. No matter how much Louise tried to talk to him or play with him, Matthew gave back the same short, fishy stare. Often he simply got up and walked away. Naturally. What did she expect?
Joan Tepfer said, “I really don’t see why you took him out of private school. At his age! At seven! To be regimented so young. Everyone knows what public schools do, Maria, and you care so much about his education. It’s obvious.”
Early in the morning when Louise was in her still strange bedroom, trying to get up, she heard children’s voices calling up from the private-school cars, waiting outside. “Adam, Jonathan, Jennifer.” It had a singsong quality, and in repetition had the far-off wonder of an echo. “Adam, Jonathan, Jennifer.” They ran down then, bundled up and yelling greetings. “Have a good day, kids”: mothers had come out with them, wrapped in coats and sleepily waving, on their way to walk the dog. Or “Bye, muffin”: fathers hugging extravagantly, spruced for the morning, halfway into the Times.
“Je suis desolée”—it only meant “I’m sorry”: Louise’s new French course. “Je suis desolée,” an idiom she hung on to, it was part of her morning collection. “It was empty, forlorn, and apparently abandoned”—Rip Van Winkle (American Lit). And from a Katherine Anne Porter story, the two words “sour gloom.”
“Adam, Jonathan, Jennifer”—it was from “Wozzeck,” that children’s street song, when no one was left on the merry-go-round which kept turning. Empty, forlorn, and abandoned. In the sour gloom.
The school cars blew their horns and zoomed away down Riverside Drive. “Matthew!” Maria would call brusquely from the kitchen, where she was making sandwiches. “Hurry up! I know you have only to walk, but it’s late. Again. Also I’ll be late. Again. I have for you Frosted Flakes and Red Cheek apple juice. Also Skippy peanut butter. Crunchy. Come on, Matthew, angel, hurry up!”
No one had ever asked Louise what were her favorite foods, and bought them. Je suis desolée: I’m sorry, merely, sorry. That’s all.
Arthur said, “Achtung, Matthew! You heard your mother. A little heel-clicking would make her happy…What that kid needs, Maria, is a strong male image.”
“Always no problem with that,” Maria said, giggling strangely.
“Maria, I mean it,” Joan Tepfer said. “I can’t understand why you changed his school, it’s not good for him.”
“It was show, only. Charity. I had to.”
“Charity? For God’s sake, he had a scholarship! Do you know how many people would donate whole buildings to get their kids in there? Let alone get them scholarships.”
“It’s the same thing for black children. For show only. So they can say, we have these many children from Harlem and these many children of famous persons. So they can think always, here is the son of Dennis Tobey, so sad, so wonderful. Not just Matthew, a little boy in the school. Like other children. He is not like the other children there, Joan. It was not good for him. They are too rich.”
“I can’t see what that has to do with it. You’re just creating phony issues.”
“With maids and country houses and sailboats and horses? Always they were treating him, the parents, the maids. And taking him places. I can’t take them. Too many God-damn birthday parties. With magicians. Too many presents, I can’t afford so much those God-damn birthday presents….Matthew!”
Matthew came bounding through the hallway to the kitchen. “Louise is here,” he said, and ran straight for Arthur’s lap. “Do jellyfish have hearts?”
“How the hell do I know?” Maria said. “I think I never saw even a jellyfish. Hi, Louise, sit down. Did you was
h your hands, Matthew?”
“There was a terrible epidemic of jellyfish on the Sound last summer,” Joan said. “We finally actually felt lucky that we’re nowhere near the beach. Except for that constant pool-cleaning. Christ! I feel like Madame Curie, walking around with those idiot test tubes.”
“Country houses!” Maria said. “Swimming pools!”
“Well, we have to, Maria. Connecticut’s for tax purposes. Which I don’t understand. We might be bought out for the highway, though. Did I tell you?”
Arthur began whistling again and said, “She remembers when she built the Autobahn. By herself. Otherwise, highways don’t interest her.”
“Tax purposes! Country houses! Sailboats! There is something wrong with this country, I’m completely serious.”
“Mmm, Matthew.” Arthur widened his eyes and rubbed his hands together. “Look what your mother made for dinner—the Führer Special. Sauerbraten, sauerkraut, und a little kartoffel salat.”
“I used to, Arthur. I am a very good cook, I’m completely serious. I made sometimes fantastic sauerbraten. For Dennis. I marinate it overnight, it’s very simple. Also, dumplings.” She moved very quickly from the stove to the sink, pouring the spaghetti into the colander. The steam from the boiling water rose to her face, a burst from the cold-water faucet came down like a hurricane, strands of her hair flew out of her bun. “If you mix up the sauce with the salad, too bad, Matthew. No separate plates. Too many God-damn dishes. He is so particular, I don’t know where he learned that from. Not me. It’s not in my mentality. I don’t need so much dishes and dishes, I hate them dirty.”
“I’ll do the dishes,” Louise said uneasily. Her mother, cooking, had done this: locked the kitchen door, filling the small room entirely with her own cigarette smoke. If the food had had a smell of its own, there was no way of telling. She should not have had to do any cooking; naturally, her own mother had not had to; there were maids for such things: it was not in her mentality.
“Where’s the Parmesan cheese?” Matthew asked, rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses and sliding off Arthur’s lap.
“Exactly what I mean,” Maria said. She banged down the cheese bottle with one hand, and with the other, wildly ladled out more meat sauce. “I make you a bet tonight there’s no hot water!”
“We’re eating out,” Joan said. “Jennifer has a recorder recital.”
“Toot-toot.” Arthur cupped his hands and blew through an imaginary recorder, making Matthew giggle uncontrollably.
“Eating out! Do you know when was the last time I ate out? All that money for the God-damn hospital. And the parking tickets. And for what reason? Anyway, soon it will all be over.”
“Maria!” Joan said.
“What? He can’t know that his father will be dead? My father was also dead. Only we didn’t even know it. We thought only he was missing. Nobody knew anything, it’s not better. A rumor came from his register—regiment, a man from our town who heard it. That he was killed. So we knew finally it was true. Always rumors were true, it’s not better.”
Arthur said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you, Louise. I hear you were in Birch Hill. What was it like there?”
“What do you mean—what was it like?” That she was crazy.
“I think I saw a movie about a place like that—a lot of birches, a lot of bushes. What went on there behind all the birches?”
Stiffly Louise said, “There was a convent next door.”
“See that, Maria? That’s what you should have become—a nun. Who knows what you could have found between all those bushes?”
“Mushrooms,” Maria said, laughing giddily, oddly. “I am very good at finding mushrooms. I always used to, Arthur. I’m completely serious. I lived on them. In the war.”
The three of them were standing now, Joan at the door, and Arthur with his arm around Maria, who laughed even more, saying, “When I was very skinny.”
Joan said, “You know my Indian cooking lessons? I think I should have an Indian tablecloth for when I make the meals. The thing is—I don’t want to buy it. Could you show me how to make one?”
“No problem,” Maria said, “it’s very simple. Just bring me the material.”
“That’s what she said when she was turning out lampshades. Exact same words.”
Maria began to laugh again.
“Arthur, we have to go. Excuse me, Maria, he’s impossible. The jacket he’s supposed to wear tonight is completely wrinkled. He forgot to bring it to the cleaner’s. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
“You only hang it up in the shower, it’s very simple. Turn on very hot water and let it stand in the steam. The wrinkles are steamed out, no problem. I did it always. For Dennis.”
“Dennis,” Joan said, suddenly resuming her holy voice. “Tell him we love him, we all love him. Give him my love.”
Maria nodded; Matthew, his mouth red from spaghetti sauce, shrieked out “Toot-toot” and giggled; the door closed.
“They are very nice people, the Tepfers,” Maria said very slowly. “Joan cannot do one fucking thing, she is very lucky.”
Louise said, “Do you ever miss Russia? Do you think about it?”
“Russia? How can I miss it? I was there only once for one week. With the folk-dance troupe from my factory. Matthew! Take out the garbage! And I don’t want to hear yet the television. We made steel parts, pieces, I don’t know. I drove a giant something—a crane? It was very noisy. Also my family was terrible. Asking me always for money, especially my brothers. Families are shit. Then I was very skinny, but before even skinnier. Do you smell still the cat shit? Matthew! Cat shit is also garbage. I miss sometimes mushrooms. They’re different in this country. You open them and if in a few minutes, seconds, they turn purple, then they’re bad. It’s how I could tell. Always.”
“Mrs. Zeitlin told me that you—”
“What did she tell you? She cannot forgive me that I married Dennis. She was in love with him. Why, I don’t know. He was good for a dancer, but terrible for a husband. Terrible in bed and terrible for responsibilities.”
“She said you were a ballerina, that you gave up your career and left Russia because you fell in love with Dennis.”
“You see how she makes it up so glamorous so she can feel better? She would feel better maybe, I think, if she did something different. Or had a baby. She had once a baby, but it died. It’s a disease only for Jewish people. Tay-Sachs. She could have probably another baby, but it might also die.”
“She wanted to be a dancer, she said.”
“That’s because of Dennis. It’s why she says I am a dancer. She’s crazy, really. Not crazy, I don’t know. Matthew! Still I’m calling you! Did you take out the garbage? Did you do your homework? Why am I hearing only TV?”
Matthew came running in on very light feet—lithe, they seemed suddenly, like dancers’. “Mommy, can I get a hamster?”
“A hamster? No dog and no hamster. It’s enough that cat and the turtle. You must do your homework, Matthew, angel. Hamsters! It’s what we did in the war—you know, for getting food. For saving it. You stuff it up in the cheeks, like hamster faces, we called it hamstering. I was very good at it. I got caught only one time, I was running. In the country. I don’t know who shot. A farmer, maybe, I think there weren’t soldiers there yet. Later, farmers were always very nice to me. When I was crossing to the West…Matthew! Out! Homework! Please, angel. It was then very easy because of haying season. Always I could sleep in the fields, they were very nice. I didn’t like the forests. You know, people said always they were safer, but I didn’t like them. A farmer pointed for me a small little I don’t know—stream? brook? And I went across. There were soldiers near then, only not for that brook. Russians, I think. Maybe East Germans.”
“That’s how you got away with Dennis?”
“Dennis? I never even heard then of Dennis. It’s not anyway what people told you. I was the first woman Dennis was with. Before that, only men. Not many. I was working then i
n I don’t know, dancing clubs? nightclubs? In West Berlin. To dance with the men. Dancing only. Not a prostitute. Sometimes. For food mostly. I didn’t care so much about clothes. Sometimes, for exchange mostly, but, you know, I was tired of that. Fed up. I did always exchanges from when I was very little, better than my sister and brothers. Much better than my mother. You know how I spent my first twenty marks? Chocolate. I was very skinny then, but not so skinny as before. It was terrible chocolate.”
“And Dennis was on tour with his company when you met him?”
“He was very good to me, Dennis. Always. Except for later with responsibilities, then not so good. In Berlin then, he helped me for the abortion. Not his child. You know, nobody believed that. But he was very good. And I was tired, really tired. Fed up. With the war, with the peace, with Hitler, with not-Hitler. With Communism, with not-Communism. With East Germany, with West Germany. I thought probably America will be better. My God! I forgot again to wash up my underwear. And Matthew’s shirts! What will he have tomorrow for school? Matthew! Do you have left your blue jersey? Look in your drawer. Now, baby, angel, did you hear me?”
“A green one, Mommy.”
“That’s too small, I think. I don’t remember. Does it fit you still? Did you try it?”
Matthew came into the kitchen holding up the green shirt. “Does Arthur know about jellyfish? If they have hearts? Can I call him?”
“He’s not home now. It is small, Matthew—look! What else is in the drawer?”
“Then can I call him later?”
“Later you have to be in bed. Already it’s later. Look in the drawer. Hurry up!”
Louise said, “Why does Arthur tease you about lampshades?”
“Oh,” Maria said, smiling, “you know—I was in Hitler Youth. In school. Also, after the war, in the factory I was in Communist Youth.” She stood up, indiscriminately banging around the dishes, pots, and pans. “Damn it, it’s already rusty this pot and I think I only just bought it. Two years ago. Made in Japan. Also, I was first Protestant and then, after, when we went to my cousin in Bavaria, I was Catholic. My cousin was terrible, but I liked very much the country, especially the cows. Really he was terrible, Klaus. So old and so, I don’t know, crankly? cranky? Only my sister and brothers were worse. Also my mother. They were shit, all of them. I’m completely serious. Families are shit.”
Other People's Lives Page 2
