In Los Primos there were bright orange cafe curtains covering the windows. Between them you could see the tables, which were not yet set up: chairs were stacked upside down on them, like the end of the day in an elementary-school classroom. Someone, arriving early and alone because it was Sunday, would have to unlock all the locks, push up the grating, turn off the burglar alarm, and wash the floor. Thinking of his family, whom he had left dreaming and turning in sleep, he would finally take down the chairs and, through the smell of disinfectant, start the day.
Julie, her elbow on the counter and all her hair way over it, turned when Louise came in. She said, “Matthew’s so incredible! He knew exactly what he wanted! I feel like I’ve been here a half-hour and I still can’t decide. I asked the chick what all the flavors are, but they all sounded so fabulous, now I forgot. I think I should’ve taken Spanish.”
The woman behind the counter, chunky and Indian-featured, was looking at them strangely. Why shouldn’t she? Perhaps she was the one who had had to leave sleeping children. If Louise were one of her half-sisters in the Dominican Republic, she could have spoken to the woman, explained everything, straightened out the silliness, belonged in Los Primos. As she did not.
Matthew said, “Los Primos means cousins. Hector told me. He speaks Spanish in his house.”
“But you got papaya, Matthew. You could get that anyplace, it’s boring. I think I’d get pina-pineapple, but it sounds like a drink. You know—like my parents, when they come back from Mexico or the Caribbean. Mango’s probably just mango, and I hate bananas. What about guanbanana? Or trigo? Except I forgot what she said that they were. Where is she?”
Toward the back, two men on counter stools sat over coffee cups, drinking and stirring as the steam rose up. Every now and then they looked up at the three of them with a distant, smiling curiosity, but it seemed to Louise that their interest had by this time passed. They were tired of hearing Julie repeat, “Trigo, aanon, guanbanana, mamay, papaya, pina-pineapple, mango, banana.” The woman behind the counter was tired of it, too. She was reading a letter, an aerogram in foreign script; she read it slowly, her cheeks flushing, and stopped only when parts of it made her smile. The smile was nostalgic and removed her entirely from the voices of the teasing men, the bursts of the espresso machine, and the ongoing whine of Julie’s indecision.
“Maria’s in a hurry,” Louise said, and felt suddenly as if she were speaking Spanish. “Why don’t you get mamay, it’s probably delicious.”
Julie began fishing in her knapsack and said, “Great! Mamay! Except I don’t have any bread.”
“I do,” Louise said. “We better get out of here. Matthew, is yours paid for?”
“From my allowance,” he said, and continued hanging on to Julie as if Louise were not there. From the back, one of the men drinking coffee looked up at Louise and smiled. He smiled at her as if she were any ordinary girl.
“All this time only beeping and beeping!” Maria greeted them. She threw her purse down and seemed to be looking wildly at the traffic through the windows and the mirror. “You’ll throw up and it won’t squench your thirst! Quench your thirst. Where you’ll throw it I don’t know. Take-out! Wonderful American inventing, to take it out so you have no place to throw it and then on the highway you can have a fine!”
Sipping her tropical fruit shake, Julie leaned forward. “I just remembered this really weird thing!” she said happily. “This song we always used to sing in the car. When I was a little girl. ‘George Washington Bridge, Ge-orge Washington, Washington Bridge.’ You know: ‘Stars twinkle above, it’s the loveliest night of the year.’ Except we used to sing, ‘George Washington Bridge, Ge-orge Washington, Washington Bridge. George Washington Bridge, Ge-orge Washington, Washington Bridge.’”
“For New Jersey only,” Maria said. “And that’s not where we’re going. Except Jesus Christ! Look how I made a mistake! I am going on the East Side Highway and we need the West Side! To pass the George Washington Bridge only, not cross it. How I did this I don’t know!”
“You should see my mother when she has to drive! My father has this theory that she’s brain-injured. She’s OK when she knows exactly where she’s going, and if she’s done it the same way a million times before, but if there’s ever a detour like for construction or something—shit! She gets so hassled, she lets it hassle her. That’s why she hardly ever drives. She just sits there reading the Times and bugging me. That there’s a sale in Bonwit’s and all I have to do is walk in and use her charge. That there’s this terrific pant-suit in Bergdorf’s and if I don’t like shopping, I could order it in a couple of different colors and have it sent. She once sent me five suede skirts from Bloomingdale’s that were exactly the same! Except for the colors. And the pockets. She is such a compulsive bitch I can’t believe it.”
“I know someplace there is a linking-up,” Maria said. “A turn-off. Someplace in Bronx. But where? For Major Deegan, I think. If I watch the signs I’ll find it, no problem. I hope only I don’t have a blow-out. So I’ll have Major Deegan in Bronx, then Saw Mill comes and then Taconic. Saw Mill is what I love, not the traffic lights, they are a pain, but the trees. They make in one place an arc. An arch? It reminds me always of roads in French movies. Only there they are famous for too many accidents, I’m completely serious.”
“You know what’s weird, Maria? That I took French for so many years and I still have to read the subtitles. I can never understand anything. Even when I was in France that time in July. Nothing. I couldn’t believe it. I got so pissed that I always had such rotten teachers.”
“French,” Maria said. “I never had to know it. First, Russian. A little only, at the end of the war. For the soldiers mostly. To feel more safe for what they were saying. Even usually I pretended not to. You know—to act stupid. Also, then later it was very good in that factory. For a better impression and not getting into troubles because I didn’t like so much all the meetings for learning Marx. And then English, the same thing. Only English really for what happened later, I had to really know. So if people laugh sometimes still, too bad. You learn languages always when you have to. Matthew now learns Spanish a little, no problem. Mostly cursing words probably, I think, but other ones too. I tell him only not to say them in front of his friends’ parents. Yes, angel?”
“Angel is a name,” Matthew said. “For a boy. If they’re Spanish.”
You learn languages always when you have to: once, years before, when their apartment was being painted, Louise had found, in a carton of her mother’s old music papers, a hard-covered book. It had ruled lines like a notebook and handwritten daily entries, all of them in French. Sitting with it on the floor in the disarray of painters’ cloths and dislodged furniture, Louise turned page after page and stared: it was an account book. “Jeudi 14 Novembre: miel, beurre, pommes, tomates, oeufs, Lundi 23 Décembre: fromage, café, oignons, riz, fruits.” It went on: days, dates, lists of foods, prices, totals—and that was all that there was. There was not even any indication from the numbers what the currency had been, so there was no way to tell the country. The handwriting, foreign, precise, and elegant, was probably her mother’s, though Louise was not certain, and some entries looked as if they had been written by somebody else. Who? When would her mother have needed to keep such a careful account book? Why? And why, above all, had she written it in French?
“Soon, now, I think I turn,” Maria said. “Except—damn it! Here comes a stupid red Gremlin too fast, he doesn’t know what he does there. It’s his tires, maybe. Also I don’t have snow tires, they are only to cheat you. Especially for city driving—so they can have more money for what you don’t need. Only for where we’re going, maybe there will be snow. What do you think?”
Where were they going? “To the country” was all Maria had said, and had gotten up early and made sandwiches to prove it. To the country, Louise had repeated, testing it over and over again in her mind: it did not have anything to do with Birch Hill and out-trips—the awkward, overheated feeling of a
special day out among ordinary people.
“Finally they fixed up that damned Hawthorn Cycle, great deal! For Rockefeller, I think. Now comes Saw Mill, and right after, Taconic. There is a little stream here sometimes. Only you can’t maybe tell it.”
Louise looked out for the stream, but saw only other cars: suits and dresses dangled on hangers over side windows, skis and suitcases shifted on roof racks, children and dogs pressed against back windows, fathers at steering wheels peered nervously at mirrors, mothers with tinted glasses folded over maps. Families, families. “Families are shit,” Maria had said.
“Here comes soon now the exit, Matthew! So far, I’m definitely OK and the little roads I think I remember. The house with the waterwheel! Millwheel? Fake, naturally, and probably very expensive. You used to love it, baby, remember?”
Matthew looked up from his drawing. “The windmill house, Mommy? The one with the big pond?”
“Also fake, I think probably. Silly, whoever they are, they must only throw out their money. But anyway still pretty.”
Julie had unzipped her fatigue jacket and kept rubbing at a small spot on her wrist. “Does that sound plastic!” she said. “Maria, why don’t we go up to Woodstock? It’s not that far and there’s always a lot going on.”
“Woodstock? For what reason? For a lot going on you can stay in New York. Besides, we’re already here. It’s very nice, very quiet. Only in summer not so quiet. We used to come here always with Dennis. For people he knows who have summer houses, also weekend houses.”
“Dennis?” Julie said, turning newly to the houses and the lawns. “I never knew there were people around here who’re into dance. Who?”
“Jamie Laufer, Mommy! We can visit him!”
“Laufer,” Maria said. “Laufer…Oh! Who was in your old school? With the big red Irish dog and the two little twin sisters? I don’t know if they’re here today, Matthew, and it’s anyway too cold for going in his boat. There will be some people. Definitely. I make you a bet. Who, I don’t know. Just watch now for our exit. Yes, angel?”
Matthew screamed, “Here, Mommy!” Maria, no longer muttering over tires or highways, made the turn and Louise realized that the safety of being inside, merely riding, would soon be over. Trees, paths, houses; houses, paths, trees—although it was probably noon by now, the grayness of the day had not abated, and the lights of occasional lamps from the windows filled up the narrow road with the mistaken intimacy of twilight.
“You can’t see from here the lake,” Maria said. “It’s what’s very nice in summer.”
“Summer,” Julie said, falling back again to her swimmer’s position. “Sometimes I think that was the only time I was ever really happy. In our summer place. Which they sold—naturally! Did I tell you, Maria? My mother said it was too far, she has to have a place for weekends. So now, I can’t believe it, they’re renting this absolute, total monstrosity near Amagansett, and the only thing that bitch can think of is how she can get me to go there.”
“Here comes now motorcycles, God damn it! I could anyway without them have trouble going up this hill—with the snow. From my gear-shiftings.”
Louise looked out at the motorcycles as they roared through this small, unlikely road in the snow, speeding on to an invisible lake. What could they want here?
“There’s my ice-cream store! Look, Mommy! It’s still here—the same one!”
“Oh.” Maria smiled. “Marzano’s. It’s a store for everything, baby. They’ll know who’s here today probably. If they’re open. They could be maybe in church. What do you think?” She pulled the car closer to a low white shack that in no way resembled a store. Outside it was a rack for newspapers, and nearby a hand-lettered sign and arrow that said ANTIQUES—R. RELKIN. “That’s who’s here today definitely! Rebecca! It’s who we’ll go and see. Never mind Marzano, closed or open, it’s no time now for ice cream, Matthew, and she is too sour anyway, Marzano. She won’t even give you ever the night of day.”
Julie said, “Who’s Rebecca? Is she a dancer?”
“Rebecca has always here an antique store. Not exactly a store. She sells sometimes antiques. It used to be for summer only and sometimes weekends. Not for making a living. Only now I think she lives here all year round.”
“Is she the old lady with the fat hands? And she touches you with them?” Matthew’s small face crinkled in distaste, increasing its resemblance to the pictures of Dennis; but he bounded out the back window with Julie, whose long, lithe legs slid out now as easily, trickily as before. Naturally.
“God damn these gravels for my tires! But here anyway I won’t be towed away or have pushings.”
The same sign, ANTIQUES—R. RELKIN, hung on a post at the beginning of the driveway. A small, plump, gray-haired woman came rushing down it before Maria had even parked.
“Maria!” she screamed. “Maria, darling! I thought it was your Saab that I saw, but I couldn’t believe it and you won’t believe why I couldn’t believe it. Because naturally I don’t believe in ESP, not that everything is always so rational and I absolutely agree with all the wonderful young people who are showing us what false gods we’ve been worshiping, not that I eat organic food, I love eating too much and don’t tell me it doesn’t show, but I was thinking of you and Dennis this morning! In fact, I almost called you, but you don’t know what the phones are like up here, it’s the one thing that drives me crazy and there’s nothing you can do about it, don’t think I haven’t tried—you know my mouth when I get going. Even though I pride myself—I’m always careful to be a lady about it, it’s what I always taught my daughters: by example. Because otherwise you’re only taking it out on workingmen! Although around here, find me one—one—who isn’t a Fascist, you should see their faces when they look at you, and I’m always very nice. I offer them coffee, beer, anything. Leon always tells me I’m too nice, but I can’t help it, that’s the way I am. And you should see their children! Who do you think breaks all the windows around here? And not just windows! You heard what happened with the Dorfmans’ house, and with all their other troubles that’s just what they needed! Although Sybil Dorfman—I’ve always said it and I’ve said it to her: You can’t spend your life with your eyes closed. He’s a pig, though, there’s no question about it, a brilliant pig, but still—! And the pity is the children, especially the little one. How she’ll pay them back I don’t even want to guess! But what am I telling you for, Maria? You know them much better than I do.” Louise thought that Rebecca had stopped, but it was only to rub her hands together and stamp her feet; it made her look like Rumpelstiltskin.
“Dorfman I never even heard of,” Maria said, and, slamming the door of the car, reached in through the back window for the bag of sandwiches.
“Of course you did, darling,” Rebecca said, and, with her arm around Maria, propelled her up the gravel path. “But what are we talking out here for? In the cold? Let’s go inside. Not that it’s so warm in there—the boiler’s broken and I’m aching. Why do you think I’m dressed like this?”
It was exactly what Louise had been wondering about. No matter what your eye hit—her Laplander’s boots, wool Scottish plaid slacks, long Mexican serape pushed over a turtleneck Irish fisherman’s sweater, a child’s bright red furry earmuffs half covered by a multicolored, flower-filled East European peasant kerchief, Rebecca looked, as Louise stared, like a package that had been sent on from one wrong foreign address to another, receiving at each mistaken customs office its country’s distinctive stamp.
“You’ll have to forgive me, Maria—I know you’ll forgive me, with you I don’t even have to say it—but everything is in such disorder. I’m half here, I’m half still in the city, sometimes I don’t even know where I am. Everyone always says to me, I don’t know how you can bury yourself in the country like that—you of all people. But I don’t feel buried. And that’s what’s important! Here, it’s beautiful, the air is beautiful, I can take walks wherever I want to—and I don’t have to be afraid. Of course it’s tru
e, I loved the city, for me the city was everything. I loved my neighborhood, I taught in a wonderful school—for thirty-five years, Maria. Did you know that? Thirty-five years! Everyone cried when I retired—the janitor, the principal, the elevator man. Cried? Wept! They used up more Board of Education tissue boxes because of me that last week—I got back at that God-damn Bureau of Supplies! And the letters—you should have seen the letters I got! From students. From alumni. Begging me, pleading with me not to leave. Young people are wonderful.”
Turning toward Matthew, Julie, and Louise, Maria said, “Rebecca was a history teacher.”
“History? Maria! Darling! I was a French teacher—you know that! Of course you have so much on your mind now, don’t think I don’t understand. Although lots of people think I was a history teacher, it’s because I know so much about it, I’ve always been so involved. And I’ve lived through so much of it, I’m practically a part of history myself. Leon’s always teasing me about it, he says that’s why I’m so interested in antiques, I’m practically an antique myself. Although I’ll tell you something, Maria, I’m not so old that I can’t be flexible. And that’s why young people always gravitate to me, they feel it, I’m on their wavelength. I’m like a mother to them, but a mother they can actually talk to. That brilliant little Carla Saltzman, she’s a hematologist, she calls me long distance from Denver. She’s working on an Indian reservation, I’m so proud of her. And when I walk outside here, I don’t have to worry about being mugged; I don’t know how you stand it, still living on the West Side! With all the druggies and the junkies and with what went on at Columbia. And the way they look! Not that I disagree with them—they’re brave and they’re wonderful and I could never stand to sit in school myself. But they don’t know anything. They think they invented everything. Everything! What do they think we did in the thirties? Do they think we didn’t also have bodies? Or beds? And sometimes not beds, because, believe me, then parents didn’t just hand over money and apartments and houses. I’ll never forget—right in the middle of the woods in that broken-down camp, Leon thought I looked so innocent, was he in for a surprise…We called it free love, it had to be free. It was still the Depression. And politics, too—the Spanish Civil War! They weren’t even born yet.”
Other People's Lives Page 4
