Other People's Lives

by Johanna Kaplan

  The day before, walking on Broadway, Louise had seen an older man walking slowly, his hands clasped behind his back. He reminded her of her father, but that was not possible. “My mother lives in London, my father lives in the Dominican Republic, and my sister lives in Sweden.”

  “I don’t know where is anyone in my family and I don’t give a damn. They could be dead for what I care. My mother probably is. She was a stupid Romantic. To name me Maria!”

  “My mother named me Louise for a Schubert song that she liked, and she named my sister Elisabeth for Elisabeth Schumann.”

  “Schumann’s wife? That one he got crazy over?”

  “Elisabeth Schumann. She was a Viennese lieder singer.”

  “Oh,” Maria said. “Vienna. I was never there. I didn’t know any Jewish people till I came here. Oh my God! I forgot again that stupid hand cream. Damn it! My hands are cracking, also my face. I should go down now very fast and buy it. If there is a drugstore open. I should go down now. What do you think?”

  III

  On the morning of the Block Party, a Sunday, Louise was awakened very early. It was Maria banging around in the kitchen. Throughout the whole building, in the wintry darkness, only this one kitchen window had a light.

  “They can have these pots and also these ones. Joan, I think, is making cassoulet. Why, I don’t know, it’s only beans mostly. It’s only farmer’s foods, peasant’s foods—she thinks it’s fancy, but what does she think farmers eat? It will give her diarrhea probably, she’s not used to it, just like that foul muddamas. Also, I forgot who, is making felafel, they need a big ceramic bowl and I promised the forty-cup coffee pot. Electric—they’ll have to put up wires in the street. What I have so many pots for, I don’t know. I’ll leave the door open, they can come in and take what they want, it’s better than leaving the keys, probably they’ll only lose them. What do you think?”

  Still sleepy and in her bathrobe, Louise watched Maria reach up from an unsteady stepladder and grab recklessly at enormous pots and pans. A lid fell into the sink, just missing Matthew’s thin blue nighttime water glass.

  “Damn it!” Maria said. “I can’t find that stupid coffee pot and I promised it definitely. Also, everything is absolutely filthy, I must first wash them now, it’s not right, I think, to lend out dirty pots. They’ll say anyway I’m hostile, I don’t care, but it’s not right…Here maybe is the coffee pot, the cord is coming. Oh, shit! A whole cockroach nest, babies only, because of the hot-water pipes probably, but I have now to spray the whole God-damn shelves and change the paper, and I have already my hand lotion on, it will stick to everything. Also, I should put out now the powder, it’s only boric acid, very simple, but they don’t get ammunized?—immunized?—to it, I’m completely serious.” She wiped her forehead with a dish towel, marking it with black grease, and said, “Absolutely I can’t do it now myself. Maybe Matthew will do it, he likes to always, only I’m not sure now about the spray. It’s bad for ecology maybe, he bothers me from school…Matthew! Get up, baby, angel. I have for you a special job. I know it’s Sunday, Matthew, but if you hurry up quickly, you can watch still those stupid cartoons and I can make breakfast. Matthew!”

  Maria climbed down from the stepladder, and on her way out of the room said, “Breakfast! How can I make anything with so much dirt and these many pots? Even when I wash them! Also, I think I should make lunch for us to take along. In the ear. I don’t believe to stop on the highway, it’s not in my mentality—too much money and the car maybe won’t start again, I make you a bet. I could make it start again probably, but I’m insecure of it. What do you think? Insecure is a good word, they like it, but it’s for people only, not for cars…Damn it! Look at my blouse! Already I have to change my clothes and I only just got up. A half-hour! What I have so many pots for, I don’t know. I think maybe I didn’t ever use them, even. Sometimes.”

  Louise knew what pots of this size could be used for: they had lined the shelves and ranges in the enormous, chilly kitchen at Birch Hill. In Maria’s house, though, these pots meant something entirely different. Enormous pots for enormous parties: people had trailed after the Tobeys constantly—brilliant, pale, revered Dennis and beautiful, high-spirited, energetic Maria. The elevator nearly burst from the numbers of people who rode up in it, neighbors peered in to see who was there and what they were wearing, the long halls of the apartment were filled with the separate smells of perfume, liquor, cigarette smoke, and excitement, which did not abate. The crowds became so thick that occasionally people stepped on each other’s feet, but they were careful always of Dennis’. He stood there surrounded, but remote. In the kitchen Maria’s hair slipped out of her bun, she looked glamorous anyway; the trailing guests pleaded with her to let them help out. “He was brilliant,” they said to her hopefully, or possibly, “Darling, it was a triumph.” The elevator brought up a new crowd of people; even though it was past two in the morning, no one complained.

  “Didn’t you used to have big parties?” Louise said. “For Dennis, after his recitals?”

  “Too many cigarette-hole burnings. I liked usually the cooking, but I couldn’t stand the holes. Nobody watches. I gave them out ashtrays. Always. Matthew! Please, baby, angel—up! Once even almost there was a bad fire—a girl’s hair. She was bending to light her cigarette from a candle flick. Candle wick? Her hair caught fire, she didn’t know it. I put out matches. Somebody saw it in her hair, he was an idiot. He poured on her what he had in his glass. Liquor, naturally, so it got only worse. I threw at her ice water. From the bucket. I put out so many matches, I don’t know. People don’t teach themselves to be careful.”

  On the whole, Louise was glad they were not going to the Block Party. She imagined herself hanging back on the windy, crowded street: balloons and streamers would blow all around her and she would not know how to get them back up; she would say “May I help?” five times before somebody heard her, and then when they did she would knock over a gallon ceramic pot of cassoulet. She would smile at the children who whizzed past on their bicycles or shrieked with their Frisbees. Naturally. She would smile till the corners of her mouth hurt: it was the same sickly, stranded smile.

  Other people were not glad about Maria’s decision. Joan said, “I know it’s painful for you to be there without Dennis. Everyone understands that—but you’re wrong, Maria. It’s not that kind of thing. It’s group participation, that’s very different.”

  “You’re crazy for this weather,” Maria said. “For outside you should make it in the spring. It’s what I already told you.”

  “That’s exactly why we’re doing it now. We’ll be the first ones! All the Block Parties are in the spring. By that time there’s such an overload that people don’t even absorb the notices.”

  “You think you can make more money when you have only wind from the river and people standing with their teeth shattering? Chattering. Between West End and the Drive is always the coldest street in the city.”

  Arthur said, “Come on, Maria. With something like this you’ll be able to remember the good old days. The worst winds, the highest number of shattered teeth. You can’t pass it up—it’ll be just like the Russian front!”

  “I am going for a drive to the country, I promised it already to Matthew. For a treat. You know how I thought about it? I was going across town through the park from Dennis in the hospital. It was already dark and I thought suddenly: I am fed up looking only at buildings and people. It’s time to see something else. So I told it to Matthew and to Louise and then when Julie Dresner called me up, I invited her also. Only I hope that God-damn car is all right, it won’t sometimes start when I stop it.”

  Joan said, “Julie Dresner. She used to be your baby-sitter, didn’t she? Why don’t you tell her to come to the Block Party? She’ll love it.”

  “Why you think it’s better so much to make a special day for looking at the same people and standing in the same dog shit, I don’t know. Also the cold weather. Already I promised it to Matthew, I ma
de out the arrangement with Julie, it’s what I decided for my plans. It’s not right, I think, to change plans like that. I hate the confusions. You’ll say probably I’m rigid, I don’t care, I hope only the car isn’t rigid.”

  “Maria, why don’t you sell the car?” Joan said. “We’d get rid of both of ours if we didn’t need them for the house. For the country.”

  “It’s what I think sometimes, Joan, I’m completely serious. Only while I have it still I should use it for something nice. It’s why I’m going now to the country—just quickly. For getting away.”

  Joan said, “Oh, I wish you’d change your mind and come. I showed Paula Kopell my Indian tablecloth that you helped me make and she said it would be fantastic if you would share what you know and give a demonstration.”

  “Paula Kopell? That one who—”

  “Who’s captain of the Block Association, and her husband’s going to be on television again, did I tell you? He’s doing this series on alternate forms of city subcultures. It’ll be on next week, I’ll remind you.”

  “Paula Kopell—that one who let in the muggers and then got so upset when people called the police.”

  “Well, Maria, how was she supposed to know? She asked them what they wanted and they said they had a doctor’s appointment.”

  “In all the years I am living in this building there has been only one doctor. Gruenfeld. And he’s dead.”

  “Notice how she still keeps up that body count on dead Yids,” Arthur said.

  “What about that psychologist on the fourth floor? You know—that Israeli woman? Rina Gershuny? She has a private practice. Paula didn’t want to pry.”

  “Two junky muggers would look definitely that they’re going to a psychologist! This is the demonstration I would share to Paula Kopell.”

  “Anyway, they might have been speed freaks,” Joan said. “How am I going to make cassoulet for so many people? Maybe I should just tell them I’ll do the Greek salad…Which one, Arthur? You’re going to have to eat it and help me make it. What should I do?”

  “Come on, Maria. You help her out. Tell her which one goes over better with speed freaks.”

  “Too bad, Arthur. I told it already to everyone: I’m going to the country.”

  The long-legged girl just starting down the windy hill in dungarees and an unzipped fatigue jacket was Julie Dresner. Her shiny black hair blew out of a turned-up tan wool cap—the kind that lumberjacks wear. She looked exactly like the students in the college town near Birch Hill: Louise had seen them on the days she had town privileges.

  “Julie!” Matthew screamed, and ran up to hug her.

  “I think again maybe she dropped out of Bennington,” Maria said. “It’s probably why she called me. I hope not. It’s very good there for dance, it’s why she went. Dennis suggested her to do it. Only I can’t give her advice, I’m not Dennis.”

  Julie’s arm was around Matthew as she finally turned the corner. “Oh, wow,” she said, “you still have the Saab. I love it.”

  The car was a dull, bluish gray; it matched the day exactly. Perhaps it had once been another color—a kind of snowy, pearly blue, like the mountain lakes in Sweden where it came from, and where Elisabeth, her eyes coldly narrowed against the glare, was accustomed to sleekly plunging in.

  “I think definitely, Julie, I’ll sell it. Why I need now a station wagon I don’t know. Be careful for the back door, it doesn’t close. The handle gets jams.”

  “I’ll go through the back window, Maria. Remember? I always used to. It’s so weird, really. I hate cars now, but I still love this one. It doesn’t matter if things are broken in it—it’s a happy car. Like someone’s old attic. When you find your old teddy bear and it’s completely wrecked but you still love it—I mean, that’s why you love it…I don’t even know if I ever had a teddy bear, I don’t remember. My mother is such a crazy compulsive bitch, she throws out everything. Sometimes I think I don’t remember anything, but how can I remember things if she throws everything out?”

  In dreams, Louise thought of answering, but didn’t. Sitting in the front seat next to Maria, bundled in layers for the cold of the country, she knew she could not have moved to reach out for a tissue, yet Julie slipped in through the half-opened window with the unthinking ease of a child on a sliding pond. Naturally.

  “Matthew had once a teddy bear, he was a baby. Do you remember, angel? He had then so many things, presents. People sent them. For Dennis, really. Or me. I don’t know. I was in the hospital still, he couldn’t even see them. We put them away and later he played only with the boxes. It’s what everyone always says, I know, but it’s true. Damn it! Look how this green Japanese idiot has cut me off! Toyotas are worse cars even than mine.”

  “When I’m stoned sometimes I remember things,” Julie said. “Like I’ll remember my bedspread from the apartment where we lived when I was in kindergarten. From before my father moved his office.”

  “Damn it, Matthew, that’s what I forgot! Again! To wash your bedspread. I asked you now all week please, please to put it out with the washing. It’s what I hate—filthy bedclothes! And also the basement completely filthy, roaches and roaches!”

  “God,” Julie said, “I used to be so scared of the basement when I was little. I mean terrified, it was incredible. Even the elevator man looked different to me when he let us out there. It’s funny—I never told my father. He should have asked me, though. I mean, he should have sensed it.” Julie leaned forward; her arms, long and easy, were spread out across the front seat like a sun-blind, resting swimmer’s. She was speaking to Maria, who any minute now, Louise knew, would say, “Families are shit, I’m completely serious.”

  “Again the green Japanese,” Maria said. “Probably he bribed up the driving tester, I make you a bet. It’s only touching thighs they care about. For a man, bribing. What do you think?”

  “Mommy, I’m hungry,” Matthew said.

  “You had already breakfast, Matthew. Soon, later, we’ll have lunch. Sandwiches. Shit! See what I have now? This stupid yellow Flashback. Fastback. The highway, I hope, will be better. Only not also if I still have that green idiot…I think maybe children get hungry always immediately inside a car.”

  Julie said, “That’s exactly what always happened to me! I used to love all those plastic places. Howard Johnson’s. When you stop on the highway. Let’s stop now, Maria, before we get to the highway. I didn’t have breakfast.”

  “I don’t believe to stop on the way, it’s too much money. It’s why I made us up sandwiches. For lunch. I think Matthew is maybe only bored. He knows how it looks here, all the streets and the stores. It’s the way he walks to school, he makes pictures of it all the time—that’s what to do, baby, angel. Draw some pictures. I put in the glove compartment Magic Markers. Fine-pointed ones, your favorite.”

  “Oh, Maria, let’s stop here! In the city, in a real store-not plastic. Right here, that little luncheonette place. With that big sign. Los Primos.”

  “Los Primos! Definitely no! It’s milkshakes only. Very, very sweet—for throwing up, it’s not in my mentality. I have trouble still with chocolate, and Matthew already has too much for the dentist.”

  “Tropical fruit shakes?” Julie said. “Is that the one? It’s famous, I’ve been dying to go there! Maria, I’ll meet you inside. Come on, Matthew! I’ll race you!”

  Hanging on to Julie and totally disregarding Louise, Matthew giggled and leaped out of the car.

  “From your allowance, Matthew!” Maria screamed. “I can’t get out of the car. Again they’ll only push it. And he’s already so pale, he’s getting sick, maybe. And then he can’t go to school, probably. How can I stay with him? Look how they beep and beep, I don’t blame them. It’s what I can’t stand—double parking. Only I think—shit!—I forgot to bring with me Tampax. And here now are no drugstores, I know it. It says only Farmacia, but it’s income-taxing place. Or else community storefront, I don’t know.”

  “I’ll look for a drugstore,” Loui
se said, overwhelmed suddenly by the closed-in, cloying sweetness of Maria’s hand lotion.

  Across the street, she watched people coming out of church. Dressed specially for Sunday, they crowded the steps and the sidewalk: little boys in suits and brilliant ties like their mustachioed fathers; women, a bit puffy-faced from tears, solemnity, or maybe just the sudden brush with the wind, were carrying small black prayerbooks and their heads were covered by lacy, netted veils or shawls. Mantillas. The boys, awkward in their suits, began running and playing off the steps onto the streets so that their mothers yelled out to them in Spanish, but the little girls, their shining, springy holiday dresses blowing out through their coats in the wind, hung together still on the steps, telling secrets and giggling. Productos Tropicales—it was on all the store signs. In the tropics, girls menstruated early.

  And all over the rest of the neighborhood, normal for Sunday mornings, people in pairs huddled into each other’s coats and scarves. These were their weekend clothes and were not unlike Julie’s. Against the wind, they balanced the heavy Sunday Times and bags smelling of the bakery. The day, in its pleasant laziness, stretched before them, so they walked even more quickly to their apartments, where the smell of the newspaper would remind them of the cold outside, and the taste of coffee cake and bagels would seam them again to the day’s warm, sleepy order.

  “Here it is! I found it! It was buried only, I didn’t forget. So much junk now, shit!” Maria waved the Tampax box through the window and said, “Again all that God-damn beeping! Tell them please quickly hurry up because I’m holding up traffic and it’s beeping.”