Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn

by Alice Mattison

  Con looked over the letters but was too tired to read them. She took a long shower. When she came out there was a message from Jerry: “You’re hard to reach, I’ll try tomorrow.” She didn’t call him back. She turned on the television and watched a little of thirtysomething, then went to bed, read Salman Rushdie for a few minutes, got hungry again, and ate toast with jam, belatedly weeping with gratitude because Joanna was safe. Then she wept with rage at Jerry. Then she slept.

  On Wednesday morning, still in bed, she reached for the letters again.

  “I went to Saks this morning looking for a present, but that’s silly. I can’t buy him anything there and anyway what would he do with it” a long, crumpled page began.

  Another page that seemed disconnected from everything else said only:

  When you think about it you’ll see I’m right. There is nothing wrong with it, only with what was before. I’ll write again in a couple of days if I can. I have to do a lot of things. Your loving sister-friend, Marlene.

  There was a P.S.: “Kiss baby. If she’s good.” Con might have been the baby. She had been born in January, 1944. Was she to be kissed only if she was good? Marlene had left a space at the bottom of the page. In pencil, in her mother’s handwriting, was a list:

  Evap

  Fruit Cocktail

  Bread.

  Another disconnected last page said:

  You’re not going to believe this, there was an article in the paper saying if we bring the contents of wastebaskets to donate for the war effort we should leave out the cigarette butts. I’ll tell you, Gert, they are going to have to win the war without the contents of my wastebasket, with or without cigarette butts. Wish me luck.

  Luck with what? Not with donating the contents of wastebaskets, apparently.

  As well as she could, Con arranged the letters in order and tried to link up parts of letters. It took a long time, time when she felt pleasantly suspended from problems she should have been solving. Then she put aside the fragments and began reading at the beginning.

  Dear Gert,

  Well, you can imagine that I was glad to get your address after all this time. I thought you’d probably left the baby in a foundling home, if they still have such things, and taken off with an attractive sailor like—what was his name? The room sounds small. I know, you’ll cope. How far are you from the beach?

  I know Eleanor is your sweetheart [it took Con a moment to think of Eleanor Roosevelt] but it says in the paper she agrees with La Guardia that women air raid wardens should not wear slacks. I’d like to know how she’d feel walking in the cold, night after night, with the wind going up her legs. I might wear slacks under my dress, that will show her.

  I’ve had my own adventures, nothing like what you’re up to. To make a long story short I met a Catholic man at a bar. I went there with Sherman but he was tired so I said I’d take the subway home alone, and then I went back and got into a conversation with the man, Mike. He had a cross around his neck believe it or not. He asked me to marry him. Turned out he promised his mother when he went to New York he wouldn’t kiss any girl he wasn’t engaged to, so he gets engaged to all his dates. Very funny.

  We had a few laughs but that was all. I saw him again when I went back with Sherman, but we both pretended we didn’t know each other. Or maybe I pretended and he forgot.

  What do you think of calling the baby Babs? Someone in my office has a sister Babs. You’ll tell me Jewish Barbaras aren’t called Babs but since when was Barbara a Jewish name? Then you’ll say you named her after your Aunt Basha and I guess you did. I know you don’t hear from your aunt these days, but that could mean any number of things, not just Hitler.

  Got to go, if I don’t get some sleep I’ll start laughing at the jokers in my office and you know where that would get me.

  Your friend,

  Marlene

  Dear Gert,

  I didn’t get an answer to last week’s letter but I’ll write and tell you the news from here. First of all I looked up where you are on the map, and I guess Starke isn’t too near the beach. Do you get to see Abe? Maybe they’ll end up using him at the base and he won’t have to go overseas. There must be a need for people like him with moderate-sized brains in their heads instead of noodles. As you know I have never considered Abe a genius (not since the alphabet incident) but he is no dope either.

  We won’t tell the army about the alphabet incident.

  Anyhow, I’m still wearing out my shoes and my feet walking the streets of Brooklyn at night. Imagine how we would have felt in peacetime, just a few years ago, if somebody said it was her job to walk up and down the street and make sure you couldn’t see any light through the window curtains. I have gotten to know a very nice fellow, also a warden. He wasn’t drafted because of something he doesn’t like to talk about. I think he had an operation. He showed me pictures of his daughter. I can’t guess how old—maybe four, maybe seven. As you know I don’t know anything about kids.

  Better go. Write soon.

  Love from your friend,

  Marlene

  P.S. I miss you. Maybe there will be a letter tomorrow.

  In Gert’s apartment, the doorbell rang.

  When cell phones were invented Con was not interested, and when she finally bought one she often left it turned off. Alone at home on Sunday afternoon (in November, 2003), she left it on. She didn’t like to use it except away from home—she hated the thought that two phones could ring simultaneously—but Joanna rarely called on the apartment phone, as if she preferred to talk to her mother when Con was distracted, elsewhere. She checked her e-mail again, then opened a memo she’d been writing. She read what she’d written—she’d been studying interviews with potential clients—and changed a few words. It felt good to do this work. Then she made herself a cup of coffee and cleaned the kitchen. When she checked her e-mail again, she had messages from Jerry, Marlene, and her friend Peggy. She read Peggy’s first. “Are we still on for dinner this week?” it said. “Which night? In the last weeks I have performed the impossible in all areas—work, family, love. Eating fewer carbs too but everybody’s doing that.” Con and Peggy had dinner every couple of weeks. Two years ago, Con had been at dinner with Peggy when she’d received a cell phone call from England telling her that Barbara had died. She and Peggy had stayed together all night that night in Peggy’s apartment, never sleeping.

  Jerry had forwarded a message he’d received from Joanna: “Dad—Tell me I’m not crazy. I want a boyfriend who respects me. I’m working up my nerve to break up with Tim.” That didn’t fit with what Joanna had said to Con, and Con didn’t know why Jerry had forwarded it. Was he bragging that Joanna had turned to him in her perplexity, or asking Con to answer her? He’d added a message, but it didn’t refer to Joanna. “Marcus Ogilvy is a footnote in the history of Brooklyn who makes the inside of my head light up, though the story doesn’t have a happy ending. I’ll tell you when I come.”

  Marlene wrote, “The City Opera is doing Turandot Saturday night. I can’t remember Turandot. I wish it was Tosca or Aida. I like doomed passion.”

  Joanna didn’t call again.

  Con blinked, as if the doorbell had not just interrupted the reading of Marlene’s old letters, but awakened her. Would she ever know the story of “the alphabet incident”? Probably not. And what did her mother know of handsome sailors? She hadn’t washed her face, brushed her teeth, or eaten breakfast. It was nine thirty Wednesday morning, and she still hadn’t changed the locks, couldn’t go outside, and had done nothing about the case she was supposed to work on.

  At the door was a woman about Con’s age or maybe a little older, dressed in indoor clothing—black loose pants and black sweater—hand on one hip. She had a long, narrow nose and long fluffy curly gray hair. Her nose made her seem like a thin person but her breasts were big. “I couldn’t imagine,” said the woman. “I came to see. You’re somebody else, for a start. Were you marching, yesterday? Are you going to do that a lot?” She looked
as if she could be Jewish, but her name, which she said next, sounded Italian. “Peggy Santoro. I live underneath.” She wore red nail polish; she seemed like someone who’d lived all her life in Brooklyn, but the black clothes meant that she worked in Manhattan, or “New York,” as Brooklynites put it.

  “I was running,” said Con.

  “Maybe you ought to run outside?” said Peggy Santoro.

  “I’m sorry,” said Con.

  “Are you her daughter? Shopping cart. That’s my name for her.”

  “I guess there aren’t too many of those left,” said Con, disliking this woman. The shopping cart was folded in the broom closet. “Her name is Gertrude Tepper. She’s my mother. She’s away. She asked me to stay here. My purse was stolen.”

  “What do you mean, stolen?” said Peggy, who didn’t seem to care whether she was disliked or not.

  “What do you think I mean? The first night I was here, somebody came into the apartment and took my purse.”

  “That hasn’t happened for a long time,” said Peggy. “It has happened here, but not for a long time.”

  “Well, it happened to me.”

  “So I understand.”

  Peggy Santoro sounded less cranky so Con said, “Have you lived here long?”

  “Five years.”

  Gert had been in the building for twenty-five years.

  “Your mom’s one of the old-timers,” Peggy was saying. She took a step farther in. “She probably knew my aunt. I took over my aunt’s apartment when she moved to Florida. Nobody in my family gives up an apartment.”

  “Come in,” said Con, since Peggy wasn’t going away, and since she was finally talking to someone.

  Peggy came in and sat down, smoothing her pants under her hips. “Especially because I’m not married,” she continued. “They don’t think I could find an apartment on my own. For me to move, somebody has to move out of a better apartment or die, and somebody else in the family has to be ready to move into my place.” She had long fingers and a ring with a rectangular stone, the color of butterscotch, in the middle of her right hand.

  “My mother hasn’t mentioned you,” said Con.

  “We nod. Sometimes we talk. Your mother is a little uncertain, you know?”

  “Suspicious?”

  “Not quite suspicious.” She shook her hair off her shoulders as a glamorous woman might have during the forties.

  “I was running,” Con said again. “I can’t go outside because I don’t have keys to lock the door—the burglar took my keys. I need to change the locks but I don’t have any money.”

  “They’ll bill you.”

  “But I asked them—”

  “Well, you don’t ask them. You tell them you need your locks changed. When they’re done, you say, ‘Please bill me.’ What are they going to do? Change them back?”

  Con looked at her, walked over to the table—the phone book was on the striped tablecloth—and looked up locksmiths once more. She stepped into the kitchen, called the first one, and arranged to have the locks changed.

  “I’ll keep you company while you wait,” said Peggy. She wiggled her hips as if to carve a comfortable place on the sofa cushion. “I’m going crazy anyway. I took a day off from work to catch up on everything at home, and all I’m doing is waiting for my boyfriend to call. I fooled myself. I thought I truly wanted to deal with laundry, shopping, cleaning. Then I heard myself tell him I was going to do it.”

  Con excused herself, leaving Peggy in the living room. She washed her face and brushed her teeth. She dressed in a fresh navy blue turtleneck. When she returned, this confident guest was standing at the table, leaning on one hand and reading the newspaper story about airport security. “I saw this last week,” she said. “It’s another world.”

  “I thought it was kind of funny,” Con said.

  “It’s not funny,” said Peggy. “I see you’re married,” she said then, returning to the sofa. “I’ve never been married.” She pointed to her bare left ring finger. Con had been wondering how old Peggy was, and Peggy said, “I’m fifty,” as if she’d heard Con’s thoughts. Then added, “He’s married. Of course.”

  “I’m forty-five,” said Con.

  “That’s so cultural,” Peggy said.

  “What is?”

  “When I said ‘married—of course.’ As if you’d already know that the boyfriend of somebody like me would be married. Did you see the story about China the other day? Ever since I read that, I keep thinking about cultures.”

  Con had read a story about China in the magazine section on Sunday, but had not seen the paper since.

  “Deng Xiaoping, apparently, is not as popular as he used to be,” Peggy said, standing up straight and sounding particularly alert. “The story explained that ‘Xiaoping’ can mean ‘small bottle’ in Chinese. So it seems when he was popular, people would put small bottles in noticeable places to show their support. And now they smash small bottles. I can’t stop thinking about that. Imagine if people grew bushes if they supported Bush, and rooted them out if they changed their minds.”

  Con liked what Peggy was saying but she wasn’t quite listening. She had never thought of her mother as suspicious, but when Peggy used the word—or when she used it herself—it had made her understand that Con was the same, without quite knowing it was possible to be otherwise. Con found herself marveling at Peggy as if she’d never been allowed out of her mother’s house, as if Peggy was the first person she’d ever met. Gert was not suspicious but wary. Con was wary too: she expected that things were likelier to go wrong than right. She saw now that her mother had taught her to be that way. “My mother’s friend,” she said, “thinks my mother is losing her marbles.”

  “Is this the friend she’s visiting?” Peggy said. Then she said, “That locksmith won’t be here for a while. Want to go out for a few minutes, and I’ll keep an eye on the place? You could buy a paper.”

  “You’re not the burglar?” said Con. “Yes, that friend.”

  “I’m not the burglar,” said Peggy. “I want to stay here because it will make my phone ring.”

  “That doesn’t work if you have an answering machine,” said Con.

  “Of course it works. The laws of the universe have not been altered by answering machines,” Peggy said. She turned on the television and Con didn’t stop to put on her running shoes and sweat pants but picked up her coat. “What does she do for this friend?” Peggy said then.

  “Do for her? Not much,” Con said. “The friend does a lot for her. They’ve been friends forever. Why?”

  “We meet on the stairs. Last week,” Peggy said, “she said she was taking a trip, so I said something polite and she said, ‘It’s trouble to go, but she needs me.’”

  “She did?” said Con. “That makes no sense at all.” She went downstairs and walked around her mother’s long block as fast as she could. It was amazing to be outside. Surely she’d been locked up for weeks; everything looked fresh and interesting. Her mother lived in an apartment building near a corner, but brownstones filled most of the rest of the block, their high stoops and tiring stairs less grand than formerly, but not too cracked and crumbly. One or two were being restored. Two old women talked on the sidewalk outside, and Con tried to decide which one needed the other. When she climbed the three flights back to Gert’s apartment, the television was off and the kettle was starting to boil. Con was slightly put out that Peggy had made herself quite so comfortable, but also pleased. She made a pot of her mother’s coffee. Peggy made tea for herself from Gert’s supply of Lipton. She talked about her work—she worked in admissions at NYU. “April is not the best time to take a day off,” she said, “but I was exhausted. At least at NYU I meet guys.”

  She put a second tea bag into the mug. “Before that—briefly—I was a dog groomer,” she said. “I never met men, only dogs. The wives brought them in.” She searched in Gert’s cupboards for sugar. “Before that I went to graduate school in romance languages. Not for very long.”
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  Con remembered that she had used up the milk. She disliked black coffee.

  “What’s wrong?” Peggy said.

  “No milk.” She decided to put ice milk in her coffee. Opening the freezer with her back to Peggy, she said, “I am so angry with my husband I am going to leave him.”

  “They’ll do that to you,” said Peggy.

  The doorbell rang and they brought their cups into the living room. The locks were changed. A trifling event, except that now—halfway through Wednesday—Con finally had keys to Gert’s apartment, though Gert didn’t, as if Con were its true occupant. After watching the man for a while—perhaps making sure he’d do—Peggy gulped her tea and departed. When Con said, “Please bill me,” the locksmith took down her name and address in Philadelphia. If her mother wanted to reimburse her, fine. Probably she wouldn’t think of it, and Con wouldn’t mention it either. When she realized that she would rather pay for the new locks than explain once more what had happened—and that this line of thinking was habitual—she understood that her mother had been finding it hard to think for a while.

  But no sooner did she understand this than instead of wanting to go outside, now that she could, she wanted to call her mother. She was hungry. She had $4.78. She had been too shy to ask Peggy—such a new friend—to lend her some money. Despite hunger, she went to the phone. “Mama, I got the locks changed,” she would say. “I met your downstairs neighbor. I’m leaving Jerry.”

  “Why leave Jerry?” her mother would say. Her mother cherished Jerry. Maybe Con would omit that part. She called Marlene’s number, but nobody was home. They had probably gone to the doctor. She didn’t leave a message. She’d go shopping. She went out and walked in the spring sunshine; she found a grocery store and made her way up and down cramped aisles. $4.78 wasn’t much money. Finally she decided she wanted spaghetti with meat sauce. Con bought a package of chopped meat and a can of tomato sauce. She bought some apples and a quart of milk. Gert had spaghetti. On the way home, she stopped for coffee and a muffin, and felt rich, though she’d now used up all her money. On her table in the luncheonette was a copy of that morning’s New York Times, opened to a story about Babylon. She couldn’t have said what country Babylon was in, or even whether it existed in modern times. It did; it was in Iraq, and the Iraqi dictator, whose name was Saddam Hussein, was having the palace of King Nebuchadnezzar restored. Sudanese laborers were doing the work, since the Iraqi men were all fighting in the war with Iran. The paper said, “Iraqis enjoy Nebuchadnezzar’s emerging palace, flooding to Babylon on their Friday holiday by rickety bus and car. ‘It’s prettier than where we live,’ said Sadia, a teen-age technical-college student who was visiting with classmates.” Con flipped the paper back to the first page so as to see the headlines. The Speaker of the House was defending himself against charges that he’d failed to declare much of his income. Thousands of people in China had marched to Communist Party headquarters, chanting about democracy. As soon as Con got back to the apartment, opening the door with the sharp-edged new key (there was no message from Jerry), she tried Marlene’s number again, and this time her mother answered the phone.