Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn

by Alice Mattison

  Con didn’t want to think about whatever did or did not upset her fourteen years earlier. “I’m sure it doesn’t matter,” she said.

  “No doubt. But for whatever it’s worth, I Googled him. He was a gangster from Brooklyn in the forties. He went to prison a couple of times.”

  “I can’t imagine why I would have known the name,” Con said.

  “We’ll never know,” said Peggy, as she kissed Con gently. Their apartments were in different directions. Con spotted a taxi and waved it down. She was uncomfortable all the way. The too-smooth upholstery seemed likely to spill her at every turn.

  Joanna was watching a reality show in the tiny room Con called her living room, knitting her greenish twine. On the program, a young woman was lost and exhausted. A smug young man said she was the last person to arrive, and she cried.

  “This makes me feel like a shit,” said Con, looking at the young woman’s face.

  “You’re supposed to laugh,” said Joanna. “You’re only supposed to feel guilty about what’s on public television. Guilt makes you give them more money. With commercial television, you feel superior, so you buy things for yourself.”

  “Well, you must be feeling better!” said Con.

  “No, I’m not,” said Joanna.

  “Sorry.” She thought for a while. “I didn’t make you break up with him.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you want to talk about it or would you rather I kept quiet?”

  “Probably he’s a bastard. But I’m sorry I ended it. So I feel as if he ended it, which doesn’t even give me the satisfaction of ending it.”

  “Are you going to be friends? When you get back there?”

  “We’ll see. We’ll see if I get back there,” said Joanna. “Maybe I’ll find a teaching job. I’m sick of working with fiber anyway. I should do something different. I’ll get white lung disease if I keep this up.”

  Con had wondered about breathing the stuff. Little threads were everywhere. “By the way, would you vacuum around them?” she remembered to say. “Marlene is coming, as you know—and do you know Dad is coming for a week? It’s one of his trips.”

  “A week?” said Joanna. “Why did you let him do that?” She had turned off the television and dropped the knitted mess on the floor. Now she stood, fingertips in the small front pockets of her jeans, looking down at her mother, who was again perched on the arm of the big chair, in her jacket. Two of Joanna’s green creatures loomed nearby, like attentive but helpless listeners.

  “God knows.”

  But Joanna had turned to leave the room; soon Con heard the rise and fall of her voice as she talked on her cell phone.

  First thing Thursday morning, still in her bathrobe, Con went online and found the City Opera Web site. Tickets for Turandot on Saturday night were still available. She retrieved her credit card from her purse and was just about to buy three—surely Joanna would not want to go to the opera with three old ladies—when she heard her daughter shuffle down the hall to the bathroom. When Joanna came out, it turned out she did want to see Turandot. “I’ve heard it’s decadent,” she said. “The music is supposed to be great but the story is sick.”

  The four of them couldn’t sit together, but Con bought two pairs of tickets, not far apart. Of course she’d sit with Marlene. She hadn’t been to an opera in years. She checked the Times Web site, which featured the various items of bad news Peggy had delivered the night before.

  “You deserve a night out after the week you’ve had,” she said over her shoulder to Joanna, but her daughter was no longer lingering in the doorway. She’d gone back to sleep, and Con didn’t see her again before she left for work. It looked like rain and she took an umbrella.

  “Here I come,” said an e-mail from Jerry, which she read when she got to the office. She e-mailed Peggy about the tickets. “Joanna’s coming,” she added. She e-mailed Marlene, who responded with her itinerary. She’d arrive at LaGuardia at 5:33 the next day, Friday, and stay for two nights. It would be good. They’d talk. Con could still say anything to Marlene. Friends envied her for Marlene. Marlene had never been predictable, and was not hard of hearing though she was old. She had remained grouchy but cheerful, while Con couldn’t remember when she herself had last felt cheerful. “Turandot,” Marlene wrote, “is about a Chinese princess who kills her would-be lovers!”

  Thursday was the first day in a long time when Con felt clear about what she was doing, and as if she and her colleagues weren’t working against one another. She received no more personal e-mails, and worked hard all day. At six thirty a familiar but unfamiliar shadow—not a visual shadow, a sense of the shape of a body, a laden body—became present behind her, and she turned, thinking it was one of the lawyers with whom she’d consulted intermittently all day. But it was Jerry, resting by dropping big nylon bags and stretching his long arms up and forward and out. Con stood. Jerry’s arms were stretched wide. His way of being pleased with himself was to look down the length of his nose, or seem to; Con knew you couldn’t look at your nose without being cross-eyed and Jerry did not look cross-eyed when he looked over his long nose and pursed his lips with pleasure, not exactly at seeing her, of course; at being seen. He was a little boy who knows everyone loves him, and divorce had not changed his mind. Exuberance makes any cluttered office look more purposeful and any floor less dusty, so Con, in her abruptly more attractive workplace, touched his outstretched arm though she didn’t hug him. He leaned toward her and she stretched to kiss his cheek. “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “Your colleague pointed the way,” said Jerry. “I came by train.” It had seemed simpler to meet her there than in Brooklyn. It didn’t seem simple to Con, but never mind. She kept him waiting while she answered a few e-mails and came to a stopping place. She turned off her computer. “You come when you like, you come to my office. Anybody would think we were married.” With some surprise, she heard affection in her voice.

  “We sort of are,” he said.

  She put her arms into her coat. “We haven’t been married for a long time, Jerry.” Now she sounded appropriately severe.

  “So what? Let’s go out for dinner.” He had behaved almost this way when she was married to Fred. He’d behaved like her brother.

  “Joanna’s at my apartment,” she said.

  “Oh, is that where she is?”

  “She wants me to pursue this,” Con said, “but I don’t want to. Going to court over a young artist who got drunk in a bar.”

  “It doesn’t sound to me as if she was drunk.”

  They took a taxi to Brooklyn because of Jerry’s bags, which seemed immoderately large and full. He’d have to sleep on the sofa. The shape of the apartment was amorphous enough that she sometimes dreamed of rooms she’d overlooked, but there weren’t any. She’d manage, but it would be crowded.

  As they stood at the curb with his luggage while a cab slowed for them, he said, “Some of what’s in here is yours. A package came for you.”

  “But I haven’t lived there for so long.” The bags went into the trunk of the cab and they got inside. “When did it come?”

  “A week ago, maybe two. I didn’t open it.”

  “I didn’t order anything—and I certainly wouldn’t have given that address,” she said, wondering if she had somehow given that address.

  “No, it’s a priority mail bag addressed in handwriting.”

  “A present from somebody I haven’t thought of in fifteen years?”

  “I guess so.”

  Joanna and Jerry had both walked in on her unexpectedly. They’d done this before, she thought. It suggested power. Joanna took after her father—or imitated her father—in ways Con couldn’t quite keep up with. Con herself always let everybody know exactly when she’d turn up, and phoned if she was late.

  In the cab they talked first about the potential sale of the house in Philadelphia, then about Jerry’s reason for coming. “It’s a huge Brooklyn secret that everybody could know abou
t—but nobody does!” he said. “Except me.” He laughed and squeezed her shoulder, as if she too knew the secret.

  “What was that name you mentioned? Marcus something?”

  “Marcus Ogilvy. Wonderful character. Early-twentieth-century transportation genius. Crazy genius. I’ll tell you.” But instead of telling her, he grew silent for a moment, then said, “But shouldn’t we do something about what happened to Joanna? Getting arrested for speaking her mind? And maybe for looking ethnic?” They had arrived, and Jerry paid. They eased his bags across the sidewalk and through the slightly crumbly but ornate doorway into her building. “We can’t just let it go,” he went on.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I didn’t say I wanted you to do something,” he said, holding the door for her. “I want us to do something.”

  “What us?”

  “We’re still an us. We’ll always be an us. Also, I’m moving to New York. The house should sell quickly, and I’m moving here.”

  “That’s nice,” said Con.

  “You don’t sound pleased.”

  “I’m pleased,” she said.

  They got out of the elevator. “Joanna told me she hasn’t had more than two beers at a time in the last three years.”

  “Hush,” she said. “She’s probably here.” He set his bags near her desk, where Joanna had set hers the night before. But she motioned him to bring them into the living room, down the hall. As he put them down, Joanna came ambling out of her room, talking on her cell phone, raising a finger to show she’d be off in a minute. She gave a little ironic wave at her father. She was beautiful. Con knew that already, but sometimes when she saw Joanna for the first time after a few hours or days, she was struck as if newly by her daughter’s sturdy, glowing body and face. Maybe the cops had been harsher because she was a beautiful woman of uncertain race. No wonder she’d become a sculptor; she must have been inspired by her own body. Her limbs were thick, tan, and rounded, her breasts firm and well-defined. Her head had volume. Joanna hung up and Con crossed the room and reached to take her daughter’s wonderful head in her hands. But in another moment they were arguing. Joanna quickly determined that her father too believed they should pursue her case, and her rage at the police and the people in the bar rose and escalated until she was screaming at her mother. “They carried me off to jail. They locked me up. What does it take to make you care? What does it take?”

  “Did they treat you badly?” said Jerry.

  “No,” said Joanna, quieting a little. She’d been in tears. “I will stipulate that they were polite, once I got there. I was given weak coffee. I was called Miss.”

  “But it was terrible anyway,” Con said. “You know I care. I just don’t—” She had e-mailed several people about Joanna’s case already, but she’d equivocated, saying, “Given Guantánamo Bay this is trivial, but…” Maybe she’d dissuaded while persuading.

  “Let’s get something to eat,” said Jerry.

  They walked—almost a family—and it was cold. Joanna in a puffy parka was warmer and bigger and walked faster than her parents, and Con felt like a small scurrying animal, the urban kind with matted fur, hustling to keep up in a light wool fall jacket that wasn’t warm enough. She hadn’t yet worn her winter coat this season. Jerry was never cold, and he strode long-leggedly along the street as if he’d lived here all his life, his open raincoat swinging and puffing behind him. Jerry always wanted Chinese food if possible, and he started negotiating the order before they got there. He liked to share, and scrupulously consulted his fellow diners, but had strong ideas and usually prevailed. Joanna let go her grievances to think about shrimp or scallops. They hadn’t decided when they got there, so they ordered winter melon soup while they studied the menu.

  “Barnaby agrees with me,” Joanna said then.

  “Who’s Barnaby?” said her father.

  “You know,” Joanna said.

  “Oh, right, your sculptor.”

  Barnaby seemed to be back in favor. Con wanted wine but didn’t want to order a glass lest Joanna feel encouraged to do the same, not that she’d drink too much while eating a quick Chinese dinner with her parents. Then Joanna ordered a glass of wine and Con did too. Jerry shook his head. He rarely drank; maybe he so enjoyed being exactly as he was that he didn’t want even the mild alteration in mood and thinking brought on by a glass of Chardonnay.

  “What does he agree with you about?” he asked Joanna.

  “Did you go to his studio today?” said Con.

  “I talked to him. He was horrified. I mean, we all know there’s intense pro-war feeling, but who would have thought I’d spend the night in jail? That’s what Barnaby said.”

  “What does an apprentice do?” asked Jerry.

  “I’m not an apprentice. I wish I were. Then he’d have to teach me until I know everything he knows. It’s a three-month internship.”

  “So you prepare material?” Jerry persisted.

  Joanna sighed. “I haul things around. Sometimes I just clean. Sometimes it’s wonderful and he shows me how to do things, holds my hand when I use the tool. Sometimes I go out for a sausage and pepper sandwich and bring it back to him. Then I pick up the pepper strips that fall on the floor.”

  The waiter came and they ordered a couple of main dishes. They’d decided on shrimp.

  Joanna continued talking as the waiter moved away. “Barney’s eye is wonderful. Sometimes he won’t talk—but sometimes he thinks aloud, and my head tingles,” she said. “A lot of it is knowing where to stand. Once I stand where he was standing, I see it just the way he did. I say ‘How do you know where to stand?’ and he says, ‘I look at the window and then back to the piece.’”

  “So it has to do with light?” Con said.

  “I don’t know,” said Joanna. “You do it a lot and then you see. I notice how he moves, how slowly or quickly he moves. I can tell when he’s thinking and when he makes up his mind.”

  “He lets you see that!” said Con.

  “It’s more intimate than sex,” Joanna said, looking up at her with a flash of frank pleasure in being understood.

  “So I guess I’ll have you around the apartment for a while?” Con said. “I gather you’re not going back to North Carolina in a hurry.” She was glad.

  “I shouldn’t have said what I did to Tim,” Joanna said. “I think I’d better stay away from him and from that bar. At least until I grow my hair down to my knees or shave it off. And have a nose job.” She paused as the food was brought and took rice, then reached for the shrimp dish. “But no, I’ll find someplace else if I stay in New York. Barnaby might have some room.”

  “Isn’t he married?” said Con.

  “People sometimes have an extra room.” She waved down the waiter and asked for another glass of wine.

  “That’s not what I meant,” said Con. This piece of the conversation was over, said Joanna’s chopstick, describing a boundary in the air.

  “When I bring everything from Philly,” said Jerry, “there won’t be much room.”

  “What?” said Joanna.

  “What are you talking about?” said Con. “Room in the city of New York?”

  Jerry looked startled, maybe embarrassed. “In whatever apartment I can get,” he said. “I assume I can’t afford a big one. So I may not have room for Joanna to stay with me. But if it’s possible—come live with me!”

  “I’m not sure you can afford any apartment in New York,” said Joanna, “but don’t worry, I’m not going to live with you.”

  “I’ve had enough of your opinionated remarks,” Jerry said cheerfully. “I put the house on the market. The real estate agent thinks it will bring in quite a bit. I may be able to afford a palace.”

  Con thought Joanna was rude but probably right. “It gets harder every week,” she said.

  Jerry changed the subject. “So, is he leaving his wife for you?” he said to Joanna.

  “I don’t think that’s an appropriate question,” said Joanna. “
He isn’t always at home. He’s got a couple of rooms in the back of the studio. His house is in the suburbs somewhere. I didn’t mean I’m going there.”

  “That sounds awful,” said Con, but Jerry was saying, “See? Barnaby has room. I’ll move in with Barnaby!”

  Con pressed “play” on her mother’s answering machine and heard her own voice. She sounded confused, childish, and pathetically ignorant of what was coming. “I don’t know how to stop the machine,” she had said. Marlene had said, “I have to tell you something.” When her voice said “she died,” Con was physically shocked again, as if she hadn’t known. She heard her own stunned, angry, helpless cries. In the background, Marlene was saying—tentatively at first, then more firmly—“It’s for the best. She was going to have a terrible time. It’s for the best. But think how it was for me, Connie. I woke up to it.”

  Finally, Con’s muffled voice asked, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” said Marlene.

  “Did you call 911? Are you really sure?”

  “I called my doctor. He certified that she’s dead. Don’t worry, Connie, I knew enough not to call you first, if she could have been saved. But it’s good that she wasn’t. When people are brought back from something like that, they’re never the same, and she was already—”

  Now Con’s voice was firmer. “Please tell me what happened.”

  “Oh. I guess I didn’t. I woke up,” said Marlene. “You know how I am. I wake up fast and I want to get going. She was on the foldaway bed in the living room. I got a neighbor to open it for me the day she came. I can’t do it myself—I’m afraid of straining my back. We kept it open, so she could lie down. So I went right past her and into the kitchen. I started coffee and got out things for breakfast. She never got up first so I didn’t think anything.”

  “Okay, then what?” said Con’s voice. Again she sounded like a child.

  “Then something made me go check on her,” said Marlene. “I’ll never know why. I touched her forehead and I knew.”