Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn
Page 21
“No, we did it. All kinds of things. Your father was in the army. We didn’t do anything wrong—just kissed the poor boys. It’s nice to do a little extra kissing when you’re married.”
“Still…” said Con.
“They were going off to be killed, and your mother was a sucker for any homesick boy. Even I. I’ve never been a mother, but I felt like a mother to those sailors. I wanted to give them my breasts.” She paused and seemed to consider a thought, then spoke again, glancing at the ocean. “Of course, if they said something stupid, I told them it was stupid.”
They walked side by side down the wide boardwalk with its smooth, clean planks, laid in diagonal sections. It had been restored, spruced up. The sand was mostly clean, speckled with the footprints of gulls. The sea was calm, and light scoured everything; anything might be visible, even young Gert and Marlene: two saucy but essentially sensible women taking off their shoes and holding them carefully as they stepped onto the sand. They squinted in the dim light under the boardwalk at sweet, foolish gentile boys—one blond, one redheaded—in middy blouses. Con tried to believe it. “Was it being adventurous that made you friends, you and my mother?” said Con. The idea in her mind was of moderate license, limited license: Gert and Marlene were prudent in their disarray, their disloyalties and experiments. Maybe if she saw it that way, she could imagine her timid mother participating in such activities.
“Adventurousness?” said Marlene. “I never thought Gert had much of that.”
“Then what was it?” Con said. Joanna, with her dilapidated gray backpack hanging off one shoulder, was now walking on Con’s other side. Peggy had dropped behind to stare at the water, looking in her long tan skirt like a nineteenth-century heroine. Con followed her gaze, then searched for ships and found one far away—a low smudge.
Marlene had not spoken. “What was what?” said Joanna.
“I was wondering what made Marlene and Grandma such good friends,” Con said. “They were so different.”
Joanna made an impatient noise, then seemed to become distracted. Maybe her cell phone had vibrated. The next time Con looked for her, she was leaning against the railing at the edge of the boardwalk, shielding the little phone with her body.
Con was trying to remember something. She had found letters from Marlene in her mother’s apartment. Where were they? Had she thrown them away? Would she have done that? She remembered the feel of reading the letters, on brittle onionskin that rattled when handled. Something in the letters had troubled her, but she couldn’t remember what it was. “Marlene, did you really think my mother was stupid and boring?”
“Oh, Connie,” Marlene said. She stopped where she was. “She was sometimes stupid, and often boring. She just was. But I loved her so—she rescued me.”
“Rescued you from what?”
Marlene was silent. Then she said, “After the war—well, it was a bad time.” She paused. “For me. Gert got to New York with you kids. Abe wasn’t even out of uniform. She found a tiny little apartment, and when I needed a place to go, she just said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ So I went to her. I slept sitting up in a chair, or I slept during the day, in her bed.”
“She was kind.” Con didn’t think of Marlene as someone for whom things had ever been difficult, someone with no place to sleep, even temporarily.
“Not particularly kind,” Marlene said. “She was matter-of-fact. About that, about other things—well, it’s a boring story.”
“I won’t be bored. Tell me,” said Con, but Marlene had started walking again, and then turned around to look at something. They had passed Peggy, who had gotten ahead of them as they spoke, but now had stopped to talk to some people on a bench. Apparently she had asked for a light for her cigarette. Con sometimes forgot that Peggy smoked, she saw it so little. But Marlene had seen the gesture, and wanted one of Peggy’s cigarettes. “Forgot mine,” she said. The three older women now walked together, two of them smoking. Con, on the right, closest to the ocean on the wide boardwalk, turned to look at the others. Peggy was windblown, shrewd, beautiful, her gray curls blown back across her face, baring her forehead. Marlene looked mysterious.
“Are you tired?” Con called.
“I’m just starting out.”
“Did my mother really kiss a sailor under the boardwalk?” Con said. She was shy about asking for details about the other time—the time after the war.
“I told you she did.”
“I can’t picture it.”
“Well, she wasn’t your mother yet.”
And then, at the thought of Gert—young, almost thin, in a striped linen dress and a hat, pacing methodically next to her glamorous girlfriend, her wedding ring in a pocket, as she turned to kiss a stranger and make him feel better about the prospect of dying—Con felt something enter her body, something familiar but new. At long last, grief for her mother shoved against her like a clumsy passerby, and she stopped where she was. For a moment the others didn’t notice; then they turned.
“Is the smoke bothering you?” said Peggy. Joanna approached, looking as if she had something to say, but Con didn’t want to listen. She wanted to negotiate with the spirit that seemed to have entered her, the gigantic disembodied person informing her limbs and torso, pressing its way into her blood vessels and bones. She didn’t want to speak, waiting to receive it. Peggy came to stand near her. She put out her cigarette. Con tried to shake her head, to tell her that wasn’t necessary, but even that seemed like unnecessary trouble.
Marlene stood where she was, her dark eyes suspicious, her large, skeptical nose even more adept at sniffing out foolishness than usual. “I’ve lived too long as a smoker to start questioning it now,” she said. “Obviously I know all the arguments.”
Con had to answer that. “No,” she said. “My mother. I was thinking about my mother.”
She said it to Peggy, who said, “Let’s walk on the sand,” stepping back to help Marlene down the steps from the boardwalk to the beach. Joanna followed them. They made their slow way toward the water—the four of them, over the packed, damp sand, pocked with summer’s cigarette butts, with broken shells and bits of trash. At the sea’s edge, small waves rolled to the shore. Con looked for Joanna, and when she came near, put her hand on Joanna’s arm. Joanna patted her shoulder awkwardly. Con wanted to sit on the ground but it was too cold. She sat anyway. Her mother had lived so briefly—longer than the sailor, possibly, but any human life is brief—and had done so little—nobody does much—and now she’d been gone for so many years. Con had never missed her mother. She had not enjoyed her enough to miss her. She had thought of her only now and then, of the look of her mother’s face, or the shape of her body as it turned, of its puzzled pause on the way to whatever was supposed to happen next. Con had not missed Gert, but Gert missed Gert, that was the horror. Con could do without Gert, and when Con in her turn died, Joanna could do without Con. But Gert couldn’t do without Gert. Con could not do without Con.
A radio, turned loud, played distorted music of a kind Con couldn’t name, the wailing kind. “Oh, stop,” she said, almost to herself.
Marlene turned in the direction of the radio. “Turn that down!” she shouted. “We’re having a memorial service. This woman’s mother died.” It was bizarre. The people—a young couple in jeans—didn’t understand or didn’t care. The loud, ugly music continued. Con stood. Joanna still looked as if she wanted to say something. “What?” Con said. Joanna spoke a few words, but Con couldn’t make them out.
Marlene strode across the sand, clutching her coat as if it might have dragged in the sand. Con saw her talk severely to the young people with the radio, and after a while they moved away down the beach. It was possible to hear Joanna above the sound of the wind and the small waves. “Barnaby Willis,” she said.
“What about him?”
“I’ll tell you later.” Con nodded, and put her arms around Joanna’s shoulders as they walked together across the sand. “I’m cold,” Joanna said.
“I’m not hungry,” Joanna said. “I’m cold.” She pressed crossed arms into her chest and walked more clumsily and heavily than the sand and wind seemed to make necessary. Con looked for Peggy, who came last, still gazing at the ocean. Marlene led the way. Con fell back. She didn’t need to feed Joanna or consider Peggy’s mood. Now she did miss her mother. All those years, she had said she didn’t miss her mother, but she did. She scarcely remembered a time when her mother, a timid woman, had cared for her or even advised her. Her mother was a friendly but unsurprising companion. But there had been something. They had looked out at life together, the two of them, Gert and Constance, with the same—she didn’t know how to put it—the same note playing in their heads, the same color filling in the spaces around people and events. Con even knew how the note sounded, and it was the same as the way the color looked: between pink and orange, clear. Not that her mother would have described life as a color, or color as a sound. A certain practical, essentially accepting glance at what was outside of them united Gertrude and Constance Tepper, and all these years Con had had to look around all by herself, without that accompanying gaze emanating from someone beside her. The loss was no less than the shape of thought, and she was astonished that she hadn’t known about it. Now she walked carefully, holding onto her mother’s absence. For the rest of her life, she wanted to remember and notice the shape of the empty space beside her.
“We’ve walked to Brighton Beach,” Peggy said now, spreading her arms to gather the four of them together. “Let’s go to a Russian restaurant.” At some point they had returned to the boardwalk when Con was not noticing.
“Of course,” Marlene said as they hesitated—as if continuing a conversation that had not been interrupted—“that wasn’t all she did for me.”
“Who?” Peggy said.
“My mother,” said Con.
“Oh, of course,” said Peggy. “No, you were friends for years and years, weren’t you? What was that like? Did you babysit?”
“Never babysat,” Marlene said. “She was perfectly aware that I’d stab them with diaper pins. I didn’t do much for her, truth to tell.”
“Of course you did,” said Con. “She was afraid of everything, until she’d talked to you. ‘The oven’s making a noise, I’d better call Marlene.’ ‘The super yelled at me, quick, call Marlene.’”
“Advice is cheap,” said Marlene. Con again sensed Joanna’s impatience, at her side. It would be better to change the subject. Joanna now led the way off the boardwalk on the side away from the ocean, and they began walking to Brighton Beach Avenue.
“Well, this neighborhood has certainly changed!” Marlene said, as they passed modern apartment buildings. “It wasn’t so cozy and safe, you know, in the old days. Coney Island was famous for crime. You had to watch out for pickpockets—all kinds of things. This feels kind of tame, I have to say.” She put a hand on Con’s arm as if to slow her. Maybe she was tired after all.
“But what I started to tell you,” Marlene said, “Now, promise me you won’t be shocked. Maybe your daughter will take an interest if I tell her just one story from those days. Maybe this will prove we weren’t so boring and stodgy. I think your daughter thinks nothing exciting happened.”
Joanna said nothing, and Marlene kept talking. “Well, in the forties—after the war—I had a boyfriend who was—how shall I put this—maybe a little too colorful. Nothing he wasn’t involved in, one way or another. Of course I didn’t realize this when I started going out with him, and when it became obvious, I foolishly imagined I could reform him. Hah. No luck. Meanwhile, though—well, it was a pretty close shave, and your parents saved my skin. His too—at least for the time being.”
“What happened?” said Peggy. “What did he do?”
“It was all my fault,” Marlene said. Again, she stopped. “Or, sort of my fault. I said I’d go to Coney Island—the story happened right here—with Abe and Gert and the kids, and I thought I’d get bored, so I told my boyfriend to meet me on the beach, and we’d pretend it was a coincidence. Then I insisted we put the blanket down right where I’d told him we’d be, and sure enough, Gert and I are lying there getting a tan, watching you children play in the sand, and along he comes. So I acted surprised, you know—and the two of us went off together. So far so good.
“Anyway—” she put her other hand on Joanna’s shoulder and patted it. Joanna shook her off, but Marlene persisted, and Joanna allowed it. Now they walked again. They had reached Brighton Beach Avenue, the Russian neighborhood under the el train, and Marlene was briefly distracted by the Russian signs advertising all kinds of businesses. Everything was in the shadow of the elevated train—the one they’d come on, the usual grimy el, not Marcus Ogilvy’s vision of light and lightness, but more than acceptable if elevated trains please you. Peggy pointed out Russian delis, Russian insurance companies and gift shops, a drug store, a travel agency, a Russian psychic.
“Well,” Marlene said, “wouldn’t you know, my boyfriend and I are strolling on the boardwalk, just enjoying the sun and the day, and what should happen but he runs into a man who owes him money—and they talk, and he says something, and the other guy says something. And the next thing I know my boyfriend slips away from me, and the next thing I know there’s a scream, and people running and shouting. Well, the upshot was he’d stabbed the guy. Or somebody stabbed the guy, and later the man identified my boyfriend and me. He’d seen me too, of course. I thought my goose was cooked. But Gert and Abe—you never knew this about your grandparents, my dear,” she said, patting Joanna’s shoulder again as they made their way up the avenue. “I hope this isn’t going to shock you. They told the cops I was on the blanket with them the whole afternoon—they said we both were. We got off. The guy who was stabbed was not a great witness, and the cops didn’t think they had enough of a case—they forgot about it. You can’t imagine how relieved I was. Well, that’s the kind of life we led in those days—but you should have heard Abe. I had to promise over and over I’d never have anything further to do with the guy. That was an easy promise to keep!”
“But you didn’t keep it, did you?” Joanna said in a low voice.
“Oh, sure I did,” said Marlene. “Look, here’s a restaurant.” She stopped. “My father would have liked this one.” They were led through the warm, dark room to a table, and as soon as they’d settled themselves, Marlene declared that they should order the lunch special, several courses. “This is the way it’s done,” she said. “We won’t need dinner. Later, we’ll have coffee and cake.”
The place was quiet, with Russian ornaments and cloth hangings they could scarcely see in the dimness, and Con felt inordinately grateful for the warmth, for chairs, for the change of scene, which said one part of the day was over and a different one had begun. It would be a good thing if, here at the restaurant, they talked about nothing but food. When the waiter came, Marlene said firmly, “I want Ukrainian borscht, stuffed veal, and potatoes,” and he was charmed. Maybe American old ladies didn’t usually order so much food. Peggy asked for soup and chicken, but instructed the man to leave out potatoes or rice. “Carbs?” she said, and he nodded. Con ordered a full meal, carbs and all. Joanna just asked for coffee. “I’ll pick something later,” she said. But the coffee seemed to cheer her, and she talked about the parachute jump and the Ferris wheel. “How often do you see something that big with a shape?” she asked. “With lines?”
“But the phone call…?” Con said.
“Did you hear I got arrested?” her daughter said, looking at Peggy, who nodded. Joanna told her the story anyway in a low voice, leaning toward her as if to exclude Marlene, but of course it was just the sort of story Marlene liked. She proposed flying to North Carolina immediately to picket the police station and the bar. Then she praised Joanna for criticizing the war in Iraq. “Weapons of mass destruction!” Marlene said, her voice liquid
with sarcasm.
“Was the call about what happened at the bar?” Peggy asked then.
“No—Well, maybe. Maybe he’s decided my life is too interesting. He likes women just active enough to haul things around his studio.”
“Barney,” said Con. “The sculptor Joanna works for.”
“I went to art school, you know,” said Marlene. “I was an artist.”
“I’ve heard,” said Joanna. Her voice was flat. She looked at Marlene as if it hurt her neck to turn her head in that direction. Con realized with a mixture of dread, weariness, and excitement that something was going to happen. It had seemed odd all along that Joanna had joined them. Something made her want to be with them—to return to New York in the first place—and it wasn’t pleasure in Marlene’s company. But for the moment, Joanna ignored Marlene and explained to Peggy who Barnaby Willis was. “One of his former interns needs a job,” she said tensely. “He doesn’t need two of us.”
“This is terrible,” said Con.
“He gets me for free—the foundation pays,” Joanna said. “And he’d still rather have her. I suppose he likes the way she sucks his cock. He told me I could do what I wanted and get the rest of the money for doing nothing—he won’t tell.”
“Does she suck his cock literally or figuratively?” said Peggy.
“Both, I assume,” Joanna said.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Con said, but Joanna shrugged. “I asked too many questions, even about his work. Maybe he does this when the intern figures out he’s not God. I don’t care.”
“Does that mean you’re going back to North Carolina?” Con said. “What will you do?”
“There’s not much for me there,” said Joanna, “but I’ll still be a sculptor. That’s what I’ll do.” She shrugged with one shoulder, as Jerry often did. “And make money somehow.” She shook her head as if to shake that topic out of it. “I hate borscht. Do they have any other kind of soup?”
She ordered a large bowl of chicken soup with meat dumplings. The other soups arrived, and soon the main courses. The food was good, but Con was sorry she’d ordered so much. Now she was hot. Marlene chewed steadily beside her. When Con raised her eyes, Peggy smiled. Still, the meal was tense, and the tension came from Joanna. It continued to seem anticipatory, and as they ate, with desultory talk about the food, Con felt like turning to see if Barnaby Willis, dragging one of his outsize steel sculptures, was about to stomp into the Russian restaurant so as to discard her daughter more publicly. Or would Tim do it? “Are men ever worth it?” she said. That seemed like a safe topic. The male waiter was out of earshot.