Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn

by Alice Mattison

  Marlene was not in the kitchen when Con returned there. The cigarette had been stubbed out on her plate. Con cleared the table, then went to the closet in the hall for more sheets and blankets. Someone was in the bathroom—Marlene, she assumed—so Con opened the door to the extra room, now vacated by Joanna. Naked, Marlene was just lying down on the bare mattress. Her slimness made her look young when she was dressed, but without her clothes she was an old woman, with slack, sagging breasts, and loose flesh at her belly. Like a victim of some disaster, she drew herself into the fetal position. “Oh—I’m sorry!” Con said.

  “Did you bring me a pillow?” said Marlene. She didn’t lift her head, but the tone made her question seem not helpless but amused, as if Con was too young and foolish to have thought of a pillow.

  “Don’t you have a nightgown?” said Con. Marlene’s bag was still in the study, and Con brought it in, opened it, and found a pair of dark blue satin pajamas. “I have to put a sheet on,” she said. “Should I help you?”

  She was exhausted too. She disliked coaxing Marlene’s arm into her pajama top, then supporting her as she pulled the other sleeve into position. She got Marlene to stand, helped her into the pants, and made up the bed. Then she awkwardly kissed Marlene’s faintly lined cheek and left her standing next to the bed.

  Con’s toes hurt where she’d bruised them on the train tracks. She had an anxious moment as she got ready for bed: Jerry might find another woman, one who’d last longer than the unnamed woman from her neighborhood. Well, none had lasted so far. And if he did, maybe he’d cheat on her with Con.

  She’d kept her own bed for herself. That night she awoke only once, and felt sleepers on all sides of her. How good to have Joanna temporarily near her, neither in jail nor in Barnaby Willis’s ambiguous studio, and not in Tim’s North Carolina apartment either. As Con fell asleep again, her mother’s ghost—dark gray, not white, looking as her mother looked in photographs from the forties: stocky, alert, kind, with a black coil of hair at her neck—moved toward her as if down a dark street. Con could recognize her perfectly though her mother’s shape was dark and the street was dark. “It’s Mommy,” she said to Barbara, who was there too. “I see Mommy.”

  “So do I,” said Barbara, before she returned to being dead.

  Chapter 5

  Before Marlene or anyone else woke up on Saturday morning, Con took a good look at the untidy contents of her mother’s wooden box. Gert had used it as a place to stick anything small, and it contained buttons, safety pins, and bobby pins, as well as a tangle of necklaces and other jewelry. It all looked familiar—a string of dark red beads, a square copper pin decorated with a copper twig and leaves. Turning them over, Con’s hands were unsteady.

  Today she’d have to manage Marlene and Joanna together, but she’d have Peggy for comfort and help. Joanna, just now, seemed calm; apparently she planned to join them for the whole day. Con still couldn’t figure out why she had suddenly decided to return to New York when Marlene was mentioned; maybe Joanna’s complicated interior had coincidentally shifted just as Con mentioned Marlene.

  Con ate some cereal and then Marlene came into the kitchen, dressed in black pants and a sweater. She said, “What’s funny is that I don’t remember going to bed last night.”

  “You had a long day,” Con said. Marlene liked grapefruit juice in the morning, and Con had bought some.

  “Was I appalling?” Marlene asked. Her voice was lower, without its usual ironic lilt. She sat down.

  “You were fine.”

  “I thought we’d talk, finally,” Marlene continued, sounding more like herself, “but you were looking after your ex.” She sat up straighter, and Con felt the same question from Marlene she’d sensed all her life. Are you with me? Shall we be outrageous together? But her actual question, as well, seemed to linger in the air. Was I appalling?

  “We can talk now,” said Con. It was eight o’clock. Maybe Joanna and Jerry would sleep late. She poured coffee and made some toast.

  “He was certainly making much of that ankle,” Marlene said.

  “It was a bad sprain.”

  “Not as bad as he’d like you to think, of course.”

  In the past, Con might have joined in the joke. “It wasn’t a fatal sprain,” she could say. “Jerry would like us to think it was a fatal sprain.” But Jerry had not made too much of the sprain. She said, “I had a good time with Jerry.”

  “I hope you didn’t go to the El Greco show,” Marlene said. “Or if you did, I hope you don’t object to going back.” She broke her toast into fragments. “Of course, I can go alone.”

  “We’ll go together,” Con said. She was tempted now to talk about the dazzling, vestigial structures of the lost Brooklyn Circle, but Marlene would claim she’d known it all her life, and the secret would be spoiled. It had been a good day despite the sprain, despite the risk and craziness. She remembered being afraid she’d be disbarred.

  Marlene and Con, as a pair, were not what they’d been. Pace had been everything; the conversation was just slightly slower. And there was a touch of panic behind Marlene’s remarks. Are you still with me? she seemed to ask. Even if I’m old? Con had the frightening thought that at last she had become the powerful one.

  Then Marlene said, “When I was young, in Brooklyn, my boyfriend and I—whatever boyfriend I had—if we had a free day, we’d take the subway to Coney Island and walk on the boardwalk. Even in the winter. Especially in the winter.”

  “Jerry and I should have done that,” said Con, which was almost like admitting they had become lovers.

  “I have a brilliant idea,” said Marlene, and though her tone was ironic, Con knew that she mocked only the word, not the idea. “Let’s do that. Let’s go to Coney Island!”

  Con instantly wanted to go—to be Marlene’s confederate in making this slightly outrageous plan—but she didn’t say so right away. “It’s cold,” she said. “And the El Greco show…”

  “We’ll do both. Coney Island in the morning, El Greco in the afternoon. Do you have walking shoes? You’re not one of those women who sacrifices comfort to fashion, I know that much about you!”

  “Of course I have walking shoes. Peggy’s coming too, you know.”

  “Well, I hope Peggy has walking shoes!”

  “And Joanna. Everybody has walking shoes.”

  “Joanna?”

  “My daughter.”

  “Of course,” said Marlene. “Quite a party. Is your crippled former husband coming along?”

  “No,” said Con, smiling, giving in. “He’s going to stay right here on the couch and recuperate from his horrendous injury.” Walking together on the boardwalk in sun and bright air—Coney Island was an excellent idea.

  “When the dogs had sprains,” Marlene said, “we immobilized the leg.”

  “I forgot you worked in an animal hospital.”

  “For years. Supposedly I was the receptionist, but I could keep the big dogs quiet, so they’d call me back when there was trouble. I don’t know what the rest of them were afraid of.” She put down her mug of coffee and looked at it steadily, as if it were a troublesome dog.

  “Yet I don’t think of you as a person who goes for pets,” Con said.

  “Pets, no. I never wanted a pet.”

  “But you said you were so good with them.”

  “A professional relationship,” Marlene said. “I’ll take a shower now.”

  But Con heard the shower running. “Joanna’s in there,” she said, but it must have been Jerry in the shower, because just then Joanna came into the kitchen, scratching under her arms, in sweatpants and a gray T-shirt. Her exuberant black curls were all over the place.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Joanna said grouchily, glancing at Marlene.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Marlene sat down again.

  “There’s only one kind of relationship with an animal. Either they trust you or they don’t.”

  “They trusted me to know what I was doing. I
never encouraged them to like me. I didn’t want them shedding on me and kissing me.”

  “Is that why you didn’t take Grandma’s cat?” Joanna said. “I still feel bad about that cat.”

  Con didn’t remember a cat. Then she did. She’d gone to her mother’s apartment in the first place to take care of a cat, a fat creature with orange fur that came off in handfuls. “But what happened to it?”

  “Well, Marlene wouldn’t take it. I asked her after the memorial service. She said, ‘Take him to the vet and have him put down.’”

  “No!” said Con. Surely they hadn’t done that.

  “Just because I understood them doesn’t mean I sentimentalized them. An electrician doesn’t necessarily like electricity.”

  “Of course he does, if he’s a good one,” said Joanna, but Marlene was still talking. “Sometimes I had to give them injections. If you’re sentimental, you’re not going to stick a needle into an animal—but they needed those shots.”

  The bathroom door squealed on its hinges and Jerry appeared in a bathrobe. The door had been squealing since Con had rehung it. Joanna moved toward the bathroom, then turned. “They taught you to give injections?” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Marlene would like a shower too,” Con said.

  “I’ll just be a minute,” said Joanna. “When are we going to the museum?”

  “In the afternoon,” said Con, while simultaneously Marlene said, “Coney Island first, in the morning.”

  “All right,” Joanna said.

  “It’s cold out,” said Con, sniffing the air at the bottom of a slightly open window. “You don’t have to come.”

  “Not that cold,” Joanna said. “The parachute jump. If they called it outdoor sculpture they could charge people to look at it.”

  “Haven’t they taken that down by now?” said Marlene, but Joanna was gone and Con didn’t know.

  They were alone again. Con put away the breakfast things, then sat down opposite Marlene yet again and picked up her coffee cup. “Marlene, you can’t imagine what happened,” she said. She had decided to tell Marlene about the return of the bag, but not about the Brooklyn Circle.

  “You know,” said Marlene, “you look like your mother. I always said you didn’t, but you do.”

  “Really?” said Con. She didn’t know if she wanted to look like her mother.

  “Of course, the hair is similar, and the height. I always thought your eyes were different, and your expression,” Marlene said. “But I found myself seeing her when I looked at you.”

  “So—the oddest thing happened,” Con said.

  “Of course, at the end she looked so confused. My god she could be stupid—stupid and boring.” Con drew in breath sharply, but Marlene kept talking. “But up to then. It’s a timid look—”

  “Timid?”

  “Well, alert. As if there’s something you might see if you turned your head, but you’re not sure you want to see it.”

  Now Marlene smiled slyly at her across the table. She seemed, just now, younger than Con, who was an old, frightened lady, struggling to understand the choice Marlene was asking her to make. The jaunty Marlene whom Con had loved as a girl had made her way gaily and bravely—somehow—through the Depression and World War II, and had never given up that gaiety, though her tone was skeptical and cynical. The stories she told, even of those hard years, were about success and pleasure. When she’d spoken of the Depression to Con, she had mentioned not poverty and joblessness but freedom to try anything. Marlene’s elbows in the black sweater braced her upper body on the table. Her flesh was old but her posture was sloppy and youthful, as she leaned forward smiling at Con. “You’re a nice girl, Connie, you always were,” she said with what sounded like pity. Her voice was low, now, and steady. “Now it’s my turn for a shower.”

  “But you loved my mother,” Con said in a low voice.

  “That goes without saying,” said Marlene.

  She stood, and Con rose as well. “Marlene,” she said quickly, “what was your husband’s name?”

  Marlene stopped, looked at her. “Lou,” she said.

  “Lou what?”

  She hesitated. “Brown,” she said then. “Lou Brown. You must have known that!” She left the room.

  Sunday morning and Con was still in her mother’s apartment, but as soon as she got her thoughts and the apartment organized, she and Joanna could leave. Today was the day, Con decided—as she lay in the dusty morning sunshine—that she would learn to control her memories. Sarah had said something Con didn’t want to think about, and she wouldn’t. Today she would think only practical thoughts. She would get herself and her daughter out of the apartment, to Penn Station, onto the train, and home to Philadelphia. That thought made her remember Jerry, someone else she would keep out of her mind as much as possible.

  She hoisted herself from bed more briskly than at any time all week, put on the clothes she’d worn the day before—she’d run out of clean ones—and set the table for herself and Joanna. Soon she was eating while gazing out the window at the elaborately irregular edge of the sky, a sleeping daughter behind her, and thinking what she recognized as her mother’s vaguely worried thoughts. Had she inherited the mood, which seemed to grip her face from within? Did moods fly out of a dying person’s mouth and attach themselves to survivors?

  The phone rang, and it was Barbara. “I’m in New York. I got a cheap flight, but I had to come right away.”

  “I thought you weren’t coming yet.” Con had assumed she’d have time to prepare for Barbara.

  “I saved a lot of money. Now we have to hold a funeral.”

  “Joanna’s here. She wants a rabbi. Where are you?”

  “A motel in Queens. I rented a car.”

  “Oh, Barb,” said Con. They cried.

  “Have you found the will?” said Barbara.

  “No—but, Barb, did you know Marlene is the executor?”

  “Marlene? Why? Why did you let that happen?”

  “I didn’t know,” said Con.

  “How could you not know? What’s wrong with you?”

  “Look, I didn’t know. I’ll see you soon.” Barbara was right, of course, but Con was not going to add something else to feel guilty about. She was pleased she’d see her sister soon, and wanted to stay pleased. “Just don’t think,” she admonished herself out loud—then glanced at the sofa, but Joanna was still asleep.

  For their outing to Coney Island on this November morning, Con wore a heavy sweater under her jacket, though it made her look bulky. Her winter coat was dirty. When she left the apartment—the others had preceded her—Jerry was at the table with coffee. He reached a long thin arm up and tapped her shoulder. “Wasn’t that fun?” he said.

  Con wondered whether he meant bed or the Brooklyn Circle.

  “Even though my ankle hurts,” he continued.

  “It was stupid to go up there. I’m glad we found the old train line, but I’m not glad we did that.”

  “Isn’t that where I proposed to you?” said Jerry.

  “Is that what it was? Do you want cereal?”

  “I’ll find what I need,” he said. “Come closer.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Con, but then she leaned over and kissed the hair behind his ear.

  Peggy knew the subways so well she had told Con just where her party should stand on the platform, so as to meet her on the train. She’d been surprised but not unwilling to add Coney Island to the outing. Marlene didn’t seem to mind the subway steps, though she gripped the handrail tightly. On the swaying train, she and Peggy greeted each other with theatrical glee. Peggy was beautifully dressed in a calf-length tan skirt and a short jacket. She sat down next to Joanna and that left Con with Marlene, who talked about how much she hated the war in Iraq.

  The Q train ran above ground much of the way; Marcus Ogilvy would have been pleased. It turned creakily at Brighton Beach and continued parallel to the ocean. At the first glimpse of the sea between b
uildings, Con cried out. Then she saw the parachute jump, the Ferris wheel, and the roller coaster, larger and stranger than she remembered them, extravagantly tall, or round, or undulant. Con, Marlene, Peggy, and Joanna emerged from the Stillwell Avenue Station just a block from the boardwalk.

  As predicted, the day was cold but sunny, and though it was only the beginning of November, the sun had the low sharpness Con associated with winter, when you always knew from which direction the sun was coming at you. She didn’t mind the cold, and decided not to worry that anybody else might. They were all more strong-willed and stubborn than she was. They had been free to stay away and had chosen to come.

  On the boardwalk, old people who seemed unchanged from those she’d seen years and years ago still sat on the same benches, huddled in coats and sometimes blankets. Marlene belonged to their demographic group but was not like them. Her black coat was open at the neck, and she’d knotted a white scarf under it loosely, so it left her throat exposed and rose and fell in the wind. She wore no hat. Her face with its prominent nose seemed large and individualized compared to the squashed faces of the people on the benches. Did other old people sink into anonymity? Marlene’s eyes were hooded, looking even darker than they had looked the night before, aware and critical. She turned to Con as they walked. “Gert and I picked up sailors here a couple of times,” she said. “We went under the boardwalk and kissed them.”

  “Not my mother!” said Con.

  “She was already married,” Marlene said. “She took off her ring and put it in her pocket, and once, she thought she’d lost it. We went scrambling around in the sand, but it was right there—she’d forgotten which pocket.”

  Con could imagine her mother taking off a ring and forgetting which pocket she’d put it in, but not taking off her wedding ring, not kissing a sailor. “You’re making that up, surely.”