Postcards from Pinsk

by Larry Duberstein

  “I didn’t know. So they run a soup kitchen out the back.”

  “It comes to that. Soup kitchen hold the soup. I’ll tell you, Orry, in the daytime there are windows of opportunity everywhere. Take the Boston Public. The Library over there. Newspapers and magazines, all there, sometimes a movie—and they pay the heat bill.”

  “It makes me proud to be a taxpayer.”

  “Oh me too. Gladly.”

  “But Pigford, you know that as a doctor I have to tell you this existence will kill you. Not the cold fresh air, which is largely to the good, and you do seem to manage cheerfully with your bills—but drink itself will kill you.”

  “I suppose something was bound to.”

  “That’s just talk and you know it.”

  “They say alcohol is a disease, I know that. But thirst can make you helpless too. Thirst can distract you so much you will do nothing right, and never care either.”

  “You said last night you were almost ten years on the street. Do you think you will last ten more?”

  “I will if you will, Orry. Just because I like your company.”

  Considering how much Pigford enjoyed his company, Orrin had to be slightly relieved not to see his friend again that same evening, or in the weeks to follow. It could easily have become a situation, he realized, and so had been careless on his part. He felt a twinge of guilt for having taken Pigford up and dropped him, though it was consoling to think that Pigford had not done badly on the deal.

  Nor had Orrin. True he went back to his lowgrade pleasure-poor existence, eating Celeste Pizza-For-One and watching the News, and it did make for a downcasting regimen. Yet he did not feel so cast down as he had before; something had changed. And though he could not quite identify it, he was already reaping some benefits. Once or twice he slipped into The Club on sleety afternoons, to make a few brisk sallies and slip back out in good face. Twice he ran into Ted Neff there and on neither occasion did he pry after details concerning Gail Summers, a sign of strengthening will. And he did in fact escort a woman to dinner: nothing sexual (nothing much gastronomical either—just the mildewed snapper) but you get back a sexual identity.…

  The woman was Amy Sugar, whose status as the only woman with whom he had gone to bed during his long marriage to Gail only served to certify the “nothing sexual.” With Amy, Orrin had experienced the curious chemical change that can take place when lovers cease to meet and are very much relieved to do so. Whatever had brought them together in raw physical collision became an archaism so abruptly that Orrin could neither recall nor imagine it the moment they had concluded. And now (some eighteen years later) Amy Sugar was like a boyhood chum. They could exchange their annual life-summaries with genuine pleasure, some nostalgia, and far more comfort than emotion.

  Orrin had definitely felt better since his evening with Pigford but it was well along in December before he managed to grasp the nature of his breakthrough. It was not that he had seen the Other Half living out the back door of McDonald’s, or tallied up his blessings in a tricky and difficult world. It was simply the notion of boon companionship.

  He needed a friend and he saw now that it did not have to be a woman. Indeed it could not be a woman, for two good reasons. It could not be Gail without her consent and it could be no other woman because he loved Gail. Moreover, the complexities of getting a woman were mind-boggling, life-draining, whereas his fellow man—some personable intelligent fellow to share the dinner converse or an occasional show—could be had with ease. A roommate was the thing.

  But perhaps fifty-eight-year-old men did not have “room-mates”? Then surely there would be other terms by which to categorize the position. Whatever Orrin chose to call it, he believed advertisement would bring him one, simple as that. If he preferred a youthful, footloose approach, he could pin up his notices in the laundromats and bookshops along Charles. If he preferred safety, there were the snob-housing bureaus and university bulletin boards.

  He could be brutally specific, write his own ticket. Did he wish to require tidiness and reliability, or would he prefer to harbor someone with a lengthy criminal record? Someone who eats righty but signs his name lefty? He could probably have the fellow made from scratch in the laboratory, for a fee. There had to be thousands of educated men desperate for decent affordable lodgings in the Boston area, and all he needed was one of them. Piece of cake.

  5

  Having no firm plans and no family (not so much as a shot of grog in prospectus until Clyde called at the last minute), it was Monday before Orrin realized that Wednesday was actually Christmas. The fact was further obscured by his own resolve to take a rest cure over the weekend, alternating sleep with TV football and plenty of fluids, to bounce back from a touch of influenza.

  He was no enthusiast of football but there it was, on every station, at every hour, and because the play-by-play announcers had the same soothing voices employed by the news readers, he did visit with them extensively. There were also snippets from old films—the Marx Brothers on ship-board and a Gary Cooper western, plus an ad for Miracle on 34th Street, which he could remember, clearly and fondly, taking the children to see one winter long ago, in Baltimore.

  Just once did Orrin foray out to the steep glazed sidewalks of the Hill. Tentative but upright, taking baby-steps, he fetched back more fluids from McCallister’s (the purely medicinal Bushmills) plus a clutch of magazines to read. True he still held to the postulate that only the desperately bored or the deeply fatuous take magazines, but this rule of thumb had always been waived in time of illness. Besides, he wanted a cultural leavening: immersed in the waters of our time, he might emerge a better, an updated man.

  And a healthier one. For he was very strict with his rest cure. His thermometer might be insensitive (continually registering only the first 98.6 degrees of his fever) but Orrin Summers was not. He knew when the joke was on him, he knew about the bootlegged degrees. From within his own skin, from the merest touch of cheek or forehead, he knew he was running closer to a hundred-and-one around the clock.

  Bed rest and fluids did the trick, though. By Monday morning his strength had returned. The sun bore through briefly and there were runnels of water carving trenches in the ice as he again inched downhill for breakfast. At The Paramount he ordered his regular, the Hessian Eggs, which was Greek apparently for hash-and-eggs and which they prepared with the same charm that infused their pronunciation. Cottage warmth and steamy windows, the privacy to peruse one’s paper at length, and they washed the dishes! Versus breakfast at home? Versus Rice Krinkies that were soggy and toast that was always cold by the time you had your coffee, coffee that was always cold by the time you found the cream and sugar? Nolo contendere, on all counts.

  At the office he consulted with Sarah on Gail’s present, in keeping with Christmas tradition. “I think it’s so sweet you’re getting her a gift this year,” said Sarah.

  “But I get her a gift every year,” he said.

  Of course Sarah was making reference to the divorce, and in her narrow way presuming it definitive. But divorce no more sundered the bond than the legal fact of marriage confirmed it; the true weld was in the relation and Orrin had every hope that when all the smog had cleared, Gail would see her way back to him.

  “I was going to say a week in Miami—that’s what everyone wants right about now—but no …”

  “No?”

  “Well Gail won’t appreciate your planning out her time, if you see what I mean. You did ask, Orrin.”

  “By all means,” he said, rescinding the scowl that had crept across his features.

  “But what about a membership? The Fine Arts or the Ballet. Something that gets her going without tying her down.”

  “Oh you are brilliant at this, Sarah, you really are. I will do exactly as you suggest. And I’ll only have a handful of things to shop for this afternoon.”

  “Mine’s done. I even have it all wrapped, and my turkey is in the fridge.”

  “Efficiency like that, dea
r lady, is the reason I love you, and so I am never surprised when you exhibit it. I wish I could send you to Miami for your gift but how would I manage next week without you? So I am only sending you as far as Worcester as it happens.”

  “Worcester?”

  “Julio Iglésias tickets!” he said; brandishing the pair. He had snapped them up downstairs at the Starr Agency twenty minutes ago in a moment of inspiration.

  “How could you know?”

  “Well I’m not as obtuse as you think, dear. After all, we are in here to pay close attention to the species.”

  “I never talk about music with you. Not a word.”

  “But you sing. You play the radio, very softly, and you sing along. And then you keep singing after the radio goes off.”

  “Do I?” He indicated the tickets in her palm as proof “I guess I must. Thank you, Orrin. It’s a lovely gift, Worcester. Shall I give you yours now too?”

  “By all means. Though on second thought better wait. It may be the only package under my tree on Wednesday. If I get a tree, that is.”

  Right after Trudy Pavenstadt’s hour, Orrin dashed over to the Downtown Crossing, where he picked out a watch for Corey and, for Jethro, a hockey game so large and elaborate that he had to taxi it home between rounds of shopping. Clyde and Elspeth were not so easy. The shopping itself was far from simple, for the stores were so jampacked with bodies (and the bodies so swollen with winter gear) that one had to alter one’s stance more often that Dewey Evans.

  In a glorified knickknack shop he saw a sign offering STOCKING STUFFERS FOR $10 AND UNDER and sensed there had been real change from the days of walnuts and oranges. Were people really investing a week’s pay in the Christmas stockings alone? He thought of Catholic families and of Finnish Lutherans, sixteen offspring strong, and he thought My God even the most extravagant person must have pause!

  Badly disoriented in a mackerel-crowded haberdashery, he bulldozed a standing mirror and found himself ankle-deep in jagged triangles and trapezoids that crazily, collectively, composed the ceiling. The mirror had loomed as a passageway, a lovely trompe l’oeil, and Orrin had simply “run to daylight” like all those scatbacks over the weekend. But now he saw that every shop was a maze of baffling mirrors, that every rack and cranny, every wall and hall only served to return one’s own sickly smile. Were Pinker-tons peering through from the other side?

  Or was this a subtle inducement to buy? Something carefully studied by those who study such things carefully? By putting you self-conscious, and therefore defensive, they impose an obligation to buy? Well, Orrin Summers bought nothing and felt they would be lucky he didn’t sue them after the attempt on his life.

  But the Christmas spirit never came to him and worse, for the first time since he was eleven in Schenectady, Orrin pinched something from a store. This was Elspeth’s gift, a slim gold bracelet from Eckersley’s, and he had logged twenty brutal minutes in a line trying to win the privilege of purchasing the thing. There were still six souls ahead of him, each one generating extensive paperwork, when a gigantic tide of thirst washed over him. Pigford’s kind; thirst as emotion.

  To make matters worse, a sharp pain came clawing at his left chest and he could see himself needing to drop dead on the quarry tile yet lacking the room to fall. This is not your heart, he told himself, not your heart. An obvious anxiety attack—but why always the left chest, why can’t anxiety ever attack the right?

  Meantime he inched gingerly past half a dozen mirrors (not in concealment, but rather fear of further carnage) and fled the jeweler’s eye. Orrin Summers was of course no common thief, he was simply a good man circumventing the Christmas rush, and at the same time guarding his delicately restructured health. Indeed he scratched down the street number of the shop with a mind to mailing them the full cost of the trinket plus tax and interest when he did the next check-writing at his desk.

  That he did not get to it, that afternoon or any time thereafter, owed more to the general disorder of his days than to any attempt at meanness on his part. When he came across this unfinished business weeks later—too late to act on it, unfortunately—Orrin had to console himself with the knowledge that it was only the thought which counted.

  Clyde had been kind, and yet his Christmas dinner proved to be largely a departmental affair—three faculty couples—and for the most part Orrin had enjoyed his lowgrade virus more. Plus it had to be conceded that the boys lost much of their charm whenever their sensors picked up a package of any kind. (Clyde and Phyll were either immune to this horror, or simply felt safest looking the other way.) In his discouragement, Orrin did take a lot of grog that day, though perhaps no more than was necessary to offset an apparent manufacturing error in its proportions.

  He got his true Christmas wish, or seemed to, six days later, when sitting up in bed he heard a bell, was momentarily confused by it, and then realized the sound was coming from inside his telephone. Someone has called me up!

  And the someone was Gail, a storybook ending to the bleak holiday saga he had undergone. For fourteen roaring seconds, tintinnabulation and salutation, the blues was history. His soul swam in the vortex of a loud hurricane of happiness. Hearing her lovely voice in the dim, Gail-less room, Orrin had no sense of having ever known sadness, or loneliness, or any emotion at all save joy. For those fourteen glad ticks in time, he was a blissfully married man with a blissfully rich past (which he had somehow misplaced, briefly) and a blissfully proper future which could obviously take care of itself.

  “I knew you’d call, really. Even though you never took my messages seriously, I knew you would call.”

  “I took your messages seriously, Orrin.”

  Something in Gail’s voice, some new element, less lovely, gave him slight pause. Though she did not elaborate, it did distinctly seem any elaboration might prove a downer. But this was only a tone, and possibly an imagined tone at that. Orrin could ignore it.

  “So will it be New Year’s Eve?” he said brightly. “Auld lang syne after all, my dear? Remember the time we walked out on the frozen harbor with two of Derek’s champagne glasses. And you said we were literally on the rocks—meaning the ice, you know, not our marriage—and—”

  “Orrin, I called because Dummer is very eager to close on the house today or tomorrow. It’s about taxes, I think. And we both must sign.”

  “Fine, when do we do it? We can continue this talk then, over a nice cup of coffee. It is just so good to hear your voice—”

  “I’ve actually signed it already. You should go anytime today or by tomorrow morning at the latest. He’ll leave it with the secretary in case he’s out of the office.”

  “But you called me. He didn’t call me. His secretary didn’t call me, you called, Gail. You must want to have a drink together, for auld lang syne.”

  “I really don’t. It’s just that Dummer feels you dislike him and back off all his suggestions. Anyway, he says he sent this to you in the mail and you didn’t send it back. So he thinks you’re stalling him.”

  “Of course I am. And naturally I dislike Dummer, he’s a bloody realtor for Christ’s sake, Gail. I never wanted to sell that house in the first place. I love it. It’s my home.”

  “It is sold. We both save money if we sign by tomorrow, that’s all. There’s no point in being obtuse.”

  “Oh surely there must be some point in being obtuse. Do you realize, Gail; that I put up those shelves in the front hallway with my own hands?”

  “Not with someone else’s hands, Orrin?”

  “Aha! You see, you do have back your sense of humor. I knew it was only a matter of time. Listen, Gail, are you sure you aren’t ready to come back?”

  In the ensuing dead air, Orrin could see her compressing her lips, see the critical narrowing of her eyes: not ready.

  “Well then let’s at least have some dinner tonight. After the signing.” More silence on the line. “Breakfast, then. Start the New Year off right with your basic Hessian Eggs. Gail, for Christ’s sake afte
r thirty-five years we could at least have a goddamned cup of coffee!”

  “Thirty-six. We could, yes, but we would be happier if we didn’t. Please go sign it, Orrin. If you don’t, you don’t. I honestly don’t care that much, although Ted says I could sue you for the lost gain—”

  “What? Ted said that, about the lost gain? What nonsense. And for my friend to encourage you to sue me. My lawyer! I could sue him, for conflict of interest.”

  “He didn’t encourage me in the least. Dummer said it and I simply called Ted up to get the legal reaction, if that’s what it’s called. Isn’t it pointless to lose thousands over just a stubborn reluctance to face reality? I mean, you’re the analyst, Orrin.”

  It was unbelievable but somehow she felt no guilt. None. It left him very little to work with.

  “Gail, I have not seen you in months, literally. It’s so absurd. You have become a figment of my imagination. In fact today is the first time in two months that I have even heard your voice, unrecorded.”

  “I did want to tell you something that I read last week, in somebody’s memoirs—I can’t remember who. Anyway, in Russia just after the Revolution, the marriage laws apparently became quite informal. In Pinsk, in 1929, the only requirement for divorce was a postcard. Either party could send one, to the other, and the marriage was done for. Just like that.”

  “This isn’t Pinsk or 1929, it’s here and now. And it’s us, Gail.”

  “It’s you, Orrin. I’m out of there, as they say. I don’t want to hurt you, Orrin, honestly I don’t. But I don’t want to see you either. I’ve said what I called to say, and now I’m going.”

  “Only on one condition!” he blurted out, but she stuffed him anyway.

  He sagged. The dead telephone was a lump of lead in his hands. It was as though he had spent months nursing a client up to a breakthrough and then, just as the change was palpably coming, she slipped down and slid all the way back to Square One, where she would for a time of course be unreachable. Gail had dangled the carrot; now he felt more helpless and out of touch than ever. But the little bugger started ringing again!