7.
Since my meeting with Laura, my work improved a bit and I began to feel like I belonged. Then, in the middle of the night, I received a phone call. The feeling of being woken at 3:00 in the morning made it seem like a nightmare. It was Uncle Malcolm, and he was crying. Grandpa had died. My father wanted me to come back home for the funeral immediately. I wanted to ask why he hadn’t called me himself, but I didn’t. It would have sounded selfish and like a veiled reproach at this moment of sadness. Still, I wanted to know; were the two brothers simply sharing the responsibility of calling family? Or was my father unwilling to share any emotion—even grief—with me? I dressed and flew back to New York.
Grandpa was frail and in poor health all his life. Grandma told me he came to America from Riga in 1915, already in poor health, and was convinced he probably would not live much longer. He seemed to have been born old, wearing wire rim glasses and a three-piece suit. Unlike Grandma, who was once beautiful and even seductive, I couldn’t imagine Grandpa ever being young. His younger brother, after whom I was named, was a medical student who contracted typhoid while treating soldiers during the great influenza epidemic. Grandpa, the frail older brother, outlived his younger sibling by half a century. His good health was thanks to Grandma, who ministered to his every need despite his petty cruelties and mockery. He retired at age fifty a very wealthy man, and went to his office at the Empire State Building every day. Of course, he also needed to be away from Birdie. The idea of even a single day alone with her in their apartment was impossible. Yet, her devotion and care were what kept him alive.
I flew back for the funeral just before Christmas break, aware that an era in my life was ending. I had been deliberately kept in the dark when my mother’s father (Gramps) died of stomach cancer, so this was my first real brush with death. I loved Grandpa dearly, especially after the miraculous time in New Hampshsire, but mostly I was sad for Grandma, and couldn’t imagine how she would survive his absence. At the funeral, she saw the small, round pebbles that the mourners left on the as yet-unmarked headstone and flung them as violently as she could back at the mourners. Then she fell to her knees.
“How did you allow this to happen!” she railed at some unseen divinity above. “How can you take my Harry from me?”
She prostrated herself on his grave, screaming and clawing with her fingernails in the dirt, calling out a hostile, indifferent God for allowing this. Most of the mourners were my father’s and Malcolm’s wealthy colleagues and friends. No one moved or spoke a word. Her tears and her grief were without measure and without end. With a wail from the shtetl, she threw off the assistance of the rabbi’s arm and refused to stand. She would not return to the limousine. She would not listen to her sons. Centuries and cultures were crossed, and no one knew where to look. Uncle Malcolm sniffled and wiped his glasses. My father seethed. His salt-and-pepper moustache twitched, but he would not stoop to raise her up. That duty fell to me. I went over and tried to reason with her—but she pushed me away, too. “I’m staying here with my Harry,” she said rocking back and forth. “Go home.” I looked back at my father. He glowered, teeth bared. A snarling dog.
Twenty minutes had passed since the rabbi had chanted the Kaddish in Hebrew and departed. A parade of black Cadillacs was waiting, motors rumbling. Chauffeurs scratched their heads under their caps, wondering when their shifts would be over. This was not what a funeral was supposed to look like among sophisticated New Yorkers with second homes in Scarsdale or Rye. Some of the guests began glancing at their watches. They couldn’t leave—how could they—their limos were blocked! No one could leave until Grandma chose to release herself from Grandpa’s grave, and that was not going to happen. Not now, not ever.
I returned and knelt beside her. “Grandma, please get up, let’s go.” But why should she listen to me? Why should the end of a lifetime lived with another person who was everything to her be regulated by the clock or other people’s expectations of appropriate grief? What was time to her? Finally, she allowed me to gather her to her feet. But as I lifted her up, she collapsed back down again! My father’s look told me that this was done to deliberately embarrass him, that she was doing it for effect. I thought it must be weakness from kneeling, combined with exhaustion and not having eaten. But, whatever the cause, she could not stand. She announced to all who could hear her that she would never walk again. Malcolm and I had to lift her up and literally carry her back to the limo while people coughed and bowed their heads in both real and embarrassed expressions of sorrow.
When the seven days of sitting Shiva were done, Grandma still refused to walk. Malcolm and my father took her to see a specialist. Tests showed she was in the final stages of pancreatic cancer. A month to the day after her Harry’s funeral, I returned to New York to bury my grandmother.
On the flight back to Madison after her funeral, a single image kept popping into my mind: watching Grandma being zipped into a black plastic bag. Since her cancer was inoperable and in its last stages, she had been allowed to die at home, but was in a morphine-induced haze when I arrived. We never spoke again. Once she was placed into the bag, I followed the gurney down the hallway along with two EMT technicians. We walked past the cedar closet, which still contained that musty copy of Bomba the Jungle Boy and the picture of my father with the squirrel, past the fruitwood telephone cabinet with its carved bust of Shakespeare and the little stool where she sat talking and giving advice to everyone about the best butcher for kosher meat on the west side of Columbus Avenue, and where she told me to bring my parents back together. The elevator doors slid open, and she was wheeled in. The elevator itself was identical to the one I used so often during the seventeen years of my existence—but no—I had never seen it before. This was the freight elevator: no mirrors, no art deco molding, no highly polished wood, just a vault used to transport the dead. Once she was wheeled inside, its steel jaws snapped shut and I never saw her again.
I phoned Laura when I got back to Adams House, just to hear the sound of her voice. I felt terribly lonely. It was the beginning of the new semester, but I still had to re-take the Ancient Philosophy final I missed due to Grandma’s funeral. Dwayne was back in Brillion now—and I didn’t speak to anyone else in the dorm besides him. I hadn’t even unpacked my suitcase, but Laura offered to meet with me. Her Master’s degree was in Philosophy, and she offered to help me with the make-up exam.
She told me to meet her on the second floor of the Wisconsin Historical Society building. I had never been inside before, even though the cavernous limestone building was just across the street from the Memorial Union where I went every day. She said we would meet at a long wooden table on the second floor. There, she said, she would tutor me on the pre-Socratic philosophers. I was exhausted from the funeral and the flight and didn’t feel like studying. But I needed to pass, and she offered to help me scrape through.
When I arrived, she was already sitting at the long wooden table, going over her notes from when she was an undergraduate in philosophy. She looked up and smiled, but she was very professional and wore glasses, which I had never seen before. I sat down beside her, and tried to think about Plato. She had removed her long black coat, and was dressed in jeans and a black leotard. Between her fragrance and the silhouette of her breasts, Heraclitus and Zeno’s Paradox didn’t stand a chance. After an hour, I accidentally touched her thigh. I apologized and stood up, confused. I said I needed to leave. Then she rose and offered to show me more of the museum, since I had never been. She took me past the Ojibway Indians to a place with baskets and moccasins and beaded dresses encrusted with tulip-shaped flowers. I remember a dress decorated with tiny cones—“tinklers”—which the Indians had fabricated from empty snuff tins. They hung from the dress like miniature silver bells. I tried hard to look at the displays, just as I had tried to concentrate on the pre-Socratics; but Laura clasped my hand, and at her touch, my body flooded with fire.
I felt a kind of confused panic. Yes, I loved it, but this wa
sn’t supposed to happen, not here, and not now. I had to do something to distract myself from the burning inside. I released my hand from hers and walked toward the nearest exhibit, a large display case. I came across a miniature Indian Village, which had been discovered near La Crosse more than 700 years ago. A group of longhouses, all clustered together in the form of a parabola, bore the unforgettable inscription: “Can you imagine living in a longhouse with sixty of your relatives?” I laughed out loud and looked around to share my amusement with Laura, but she had gone. I called her name twice, but there was no reply. I remember thinking that women had a habit of disappearing from my life.
“I’m close by,” she whispered from somewhere.
But I couldn’t find her anywhere. Then, a slender finger appeared from below, beckoning me to meet her on the floor underneath the exhibit. I took a breath filled with both joy and fear, and crawled underneath the Oneota Indian Village. There were no guards in sight, so in the glimmering light, I felt like I was entering a subterranean world: secret, damp, dark. The smell of earth and ancient trees seemed to embrace us, and by the time I crept beside her it did not seem unnatural to see a squaw breastfeeding in the opposite case. In the darkness, Laura slowly pulled her leotard over her head. I was stunned at the magnificence before me.
Her breasts were even larger than in my fantasies, and her nipples were set like garnet jewels against her ivory skin. There were clusters of fine black hairs surrounding each nipple. Strange and exotic, the sight went with the musky regions we inhabited. She gently held the back of my head and lowered me until my mouth was buried in her breasts.
I was barely conscious of where we were, but wondered: can I remain here forever? I had only kissed one girl previously, and I’d fumbled with the clasp of her brassiere for hours until finally I gave up and let her do it. As she unhooked the tiny silver clasp, in my mind’s eye I saw Adar rub his stubbled jaw and twitch with anger. He asked me if I knew what I was doing. I knew I would never be able to levitate now. By the time she’d removed her bra, I was no longer aroused, and her gentle, forgiving smile only made me feel worse.
I never told Adar about the incident—it would have been impossible. But as I climbed on top of Laura, he was gone. My family vanished, too. My eyes were closed, and she wrapped her arms around me and transported me into an ancient world. I wanted this moment to last forever. And then, when I was certain she must stop and take us back above ground, she unbuttoned her jeans and gently guided my head between her legs. I kissed her in places I never knew existed.
Just before we re-emerged from our dim cave, she took my hand and placed it deep inside her body. I felt like I’d lost my single self and had crawled inside another being whom I would forever be part of. My hand emerged and we both licked my fingers. We walked back to my dorm along the lakeshore path, holding hands. It was late and bitterly cold. The moon was full, and added to the magic. I had escaped into a beautiful dream, better than any novel, sweeter than any fairytale. Every few steps along the way we stopped and kissed. I wanted to stay with her all night. My world had changed into something I could never have imagined, and it seemed that if we held each other long enough, our bodies might literally freeze together; here beside the lake, we might literally become a single person. Then she kissed me and put her tongue inside my mouth. She told me she loved me. I didn’t know what to say to this, so I told her how funny it was that we loved one another, and I really didn’t even know her, not even her last name. She dropped my hand.
“Did I say something wrong?”
We were near my dorm now, and she turned her head away.
“Why are you crying?” I asked.
“I’m married.”
She was married to another graduate student. We wouldn’t be able to see one another again, she said. Not like this. Then she turned around and walked back in the direction of the Union. After a moment’s hesitation, I ran toward her, intending to follow, then I stopped. This was not what she wanted. I turned back. The last thing I saw was her mane of black hair waving from side to side as she disappeared back into the night.
Once she disappeared, I crawled down by the lake and clasped my knees, shivering. I made no sound. I wasn’t angry. How could I be? What had happened was completely unexpected and so beautiful. But also terrible. I felt numb, like I wasn’t really there, just a shadow. The freezing wind off the lake felt like it might suddenly blow me away like a dead leaf. To sail off into the night, skimming the frozen surface of Lake Mendota. Grandma was dead now. There would be no more Care Packages with Tam Tams and Dostoevsky. Laura was dead, too, in a way.
When I returned to my dorm room, my unopened suitcase still lay on my bed. Had Laura invited me to that place to study, or with another intention all along? I would never know. If only I hadn’t mentioned not knowing her … her last name. She was married and would never see me again, not in that way. I started to think that maybe the whole thing was my fantasy, except for the moon burning above me on Lake Mendota, laughing.
Second semester was nearly over when I received something that made my hands shake: a blue envelope marked with my name. Something in me knew exactly what it was and who had sent it. It was unexpected, yet in a sense, I had been anticipating it ever since my arrival in Madison. My fingers trembled, and I put it inside my thermal undershirt against my skin. The envelope seemed to possess its own burning life, like a little blue flame. I brought it back to my room, sat down at my desk, and with my pocketknife, slit it open. This was not a letter to be ripped open with my fingers.
Henry,
It has been five months since you left me. Leaving me like that, without warning or even a note, was the hardest thing I have ever had to endure in my life. I have never felt so betrayed. I even thought about tracking you down, wherever you were, and.… But I have come through it and believe the experience has brought me increased inner strength. Despite my anger, I feel as though there is too much unfinished business between us to simply forget about our Union and go on our separate paths. We need to acknowledge what happened, talk about it, and learn from it. For this reason, I am offering the following plan.
I am entitled to a week’s vacation in my new job. I propose that we meet at the YMCA Hotel in Chicago next weekend to discuss things. If all goes well, I have the opportunity to spend a couple of days visiting you in Madison. If not, I will return to New York by bus.
I hope you will answer me. But if you do choose to ignore this letter, I will never contact you again for the rest of my life.
In friendship,
Adar
The bus ride to Chicago was terrible. It snowed the whole way. I had the crazy fear that the driver was drunk and we’d crash or get stuck and end up in a snow bank. The passengers would all escape, and I’d be left alone somewhere, freezing. I was really petrified about this happening, but I realized my fear was tied up with my anxiety about seeing Adar. What would it be like to see him again? What were his actual motives in arranging this meeting? Was I right to accept his offer? Part of me was excited about having a chance to make things right. Another part felt a kind of dread he might secretly be motivated by revenge. What if this was a trap to lure me back to New York? I hadn’t told anyone about my trip, and suppose something did happen to me, or what if I was murdered…?
Arriving at the Chicago YMCA at 1:00 a.m. was seedier than anything I could have imagined, and made the Port Authority Bus Terminal seem like the Plaza by comparison. I checked in, and as I wrote my name in the register, a tiny eighty-something-year-old desk clerk with a mouth full of dazzling white, ill-fitting false teeth leered at me. Your “friend” is waiting for you upstairs, he said. It was all too clear what he was thinking. As I walked to the stairwell, he shouted after me, “You better tell him I get off at midnight, and he still owes me for that aspirin and shit—this ain’t the Waldorf, ya know, there ain’t no room service.”
I knocked at the door, but no one answered. I knocked again: silence. Finally, I unlocked the door an
d let myself in.
He was sitting there at a small wooden desk at the back of the room bent over a piece of paper. The only light in the room was a candle on the desk, and the reflection of a neon sign outside with the letters Y, M, and A blinking in orange. The C had burned out.
He quickly turned over the sheet of paper he had been writing on as I walked in. There was something sinister about this tiny room. It was the sort of room I imagined drug dealers or whores frequenting. Or worse. Supposing you were planning a murder… .
“Henry.” Adar’s face remained averted, and he gazed out the window, bathed in the lurid orange glow.
“Why are you sitting over there like that, in the dark?”
“Reflecting on the past,” he said, with a familiar twitch of his jaw, “and on us.” I moved closer to the middle of the room, and saw by the candlelight that he was much thinner and unshaven. He was sweating, and looked like he hadn’t slept for days. He probably had a fever.
“Aren’t you well?” I asked. He kept his face averted.
“Doing all right,” he muttered. “I’m okay, so long as …”
“What?” I couldn’t understand him because of the low timbre of his voice and the crackling sign outside. “I asked if you were well.”
Adar cleared his throat and said something. His voice was so hoarse I couldn’t hear.
“I’m doing fine,” I said. I wanted to sound fine, but not too fine. “I’m a freshman at the University of Wisconsin. But I guess you knew that? I’m better now … better than before, I mean. I mean I’m doing better than when I left… .” I was nervous, and couldn’t stop filling silences with the sound of my own voice. I cut myself off and blurted, “Before I say anything further, I want to apologize to you, Adar. For leaving in that way. It was a cowardly thing, unworthy of me, and—I’m very, very sorry.”
Then there followed a long and terrible moment of silence, during which the only audible sound was the sign outside. Then Adar’s body shuddered, and he stood up for the first time. Is he crying, I thought? Is he actually crying? I suddenly remembered his laugh, which wasn’t even a real laugh; it was an old man’s laugh. But I’d never heard him cry, and it made me afraid. In that moment, I had the very distinct feeling that one of us was going to die here. Why had I come? I had fallen into a trap. I had to get out!
The Poison Tree Page 20
