As soon as her second daughter was walking, Elvira left again and descended on Bridget—who had three children of her own, but was always willing to take her sister’s as well. Again, Rollo pursued.
“He wants me when he hasn’t got me, but when I’m there, he’s out all the time. He just wants me there, in the house.”
This time she refused to return and Rollo went quite mad. He sat on the front porch of Bridget’s house—Elvira wouldn’t let him in—and beat his head against the uprights and moaned. Finally, Elvira wrested from him an agreement to which he had to testify in front of Bridget and her husband Chick, that she would return to him but each of them would live their own life with no questions asked.
“He agreed, but he didn’t keep his word,” Elvira confided to Belle. “He was always wanting to know where I’d been, and whether I had a boyfriend. But I didn’t care, as long as I could get out. I can’t stand being stuck in the house. And then”—she pointed to the carriage—“guess what! Oh, I cried and cried when I found out I was pregnant again. And Rollo wanted it, when he can’t even support us as it is.”
By now, Bridget had six kids of her own, and Elvira’s girls were in school. “I just can’t pick up and go, and I have no one to leave Terry with. I can’t stand it, Isabel, I really can’t.” It wasn’t the work that bothered her: for all her weight, she had great energy, and kept an immaculate house and was a superb cook. She couldn’t stand the confinement. But she had plans. One of these days…
Elvira was wondrous in Belle’s eyes because she said whatever she thought. Belle had never met anyone like her before. And her honesty allowed Belle to be honest too—as honest as she could be. Elvira knew exactly what was wrong with her own life: too much confinement and not enough sex. Everything else was fine. She loved her daughters and adored Terry. But she wanted to roam the world in search of fun. She had a rich hearty full-throated laugh, and she laughed often. “Oh, I always liked a good time!” she’d explode, laughing, concluding the story of one of her adventures, and wipe tears from her cheeks. Belle laughed with her, a thinner, more refined, politer laugh. She felt almost happy with Elvira and if she would not choose to be like her, she felt very grown up and sophisticated to have such a friend.
The two young women would walk into Forest Hills Gardens, where the lovely houses were, and Belle would imagine what it would be like to live in one of them. When she was with Elvira, she felt almost as if there were something ahead of her, as if she had not already died. She would imagine living in a lovely stone house in Forest Hills Gardens with a man something like the men Elvira told her about—dark, mysterious, sexual. She knew it was only a daydream, and she never connected the mystery man with her own dark, sexual husband; she didn’t want any of it to come true. She just wanted to imagine it. She could imagine herself different too, when she was with Elvira—sophisticated, experienced, free. Her mind danced with Elvira, and she felt she was getting better. She hardly ever cried anymore. And that December, after Anastasia’s first birthday party, as the two women pushed their babies together through the little parks that dotted the neighborhood, Belle saw a pale pink rose blooming, right in the dead of winter.
How I clutched at the idea of that rose, the one bright thing in the sad season of my birth! My mother told me about it often, always in the same awed voice, with wonder, and as if she had not told me before. The memory of it consoled me: every fall as my birthday approached and the leaves fell and the branches turned grey and the air too, as the very earth seemed to turn to ash, I reminded myself that sometimes roses bloom even in November. I didn’t feel responsible for the dying time of year, feel that I had caused the sad season, but that my coming had somehow brought mourning, grief, grey, bleak days, and that every year my birth was symbolized by such a season.
How would a person know such things, remember the season of their birth, the crying mother, the sorrow that was mostly masked when she was awake? Yet my daughter Franny feels like an intruder, feels unwanted, like an insistent monster who plunged through a wall of objections—and her feelings are accurate to what I felt, but before she was born. How could she know? Does emotion substantiate instantly into a child’s bloodstream, like the nourishment they absorb in the womb?
My friend Barbara Greenberg tells me I should think about this differently, should fasten on the fact that an infant born in November sits up alert and awake in May, their first awareness green and budding; whereas an infant born in May sits up to see the death of nature. But it isn’t my awareness that I feel this grief about, but theirs, the ones I came to, the ones to whom my coming meant sorrow: A cold coming they had of it, at this time of the yeare; just the worst time of the yeare, to take a journey, and specially a long journey, in. The waies deep, the weather sharp, the daies short, the sun furthest off in solstitio brumali, the very dead of winter. Yes, that was in December, and a very different birth, but it felt familiar to me as I read Launcelot Andrewes, as if my mother and father had to travail in an extraordinary way because of me.
I don’t remember the sullen baby I was, although I know the sullen child; I recall the sense of being unwanted and unloved, and always, always unsafe. All I wanted, when I was a child, was not to be a child, to be grown up so I wouldn’t be dependent upon those who didn’t want me dependent upon them, to be free and out and away. This would surprise my mother, I imagine. She was so careful to give me those things she had painfully lacked in her own childhood that she can’t imagine that the thing she really lacked wasn’t attention or education, but that lap, that “moja kochana,” that close embrace. Never having had it, how could she give it? For a baby rat taken from its mother at the moment of birth, before the mother has time to lick it clean, will in her turn, not lick her infant clean when she gives birth. And so on, down the generations. Even to the edge of doom, he wrote, and this is doom: unless there is some way to break it. The truth is it is not the sins of the fathers that descend unto the third generation, but the sorrows of the mothers. But when I was a young woman, I believed that I could break this chain by sheer will.
Time passed. Belle was more cheerful now she had Elvira, and Anastasia was growing every day. But she still did not speak, although by eleven months she was walking and by twelve was toilet trained (a great day for my mother). She was very fat, with plump dimpled arms and legs and a fierce determination. She liked to pound on the tables and hum at the same time, as if she were drumming the rhythm to a song only she could hear; and she loved Grandma and bacon. By late summer and early fall, she was sturdy enough that Wally could put her on his shoulders on days when he came home early from job hunting, and carry her off to the ice-cream store on the Boulevard. He never complained if drops of melted ice cream fell from her cone onto his head.
Soon after Anastasia’s first birthday, Belle and Jean planned a bridge party at the Manse Street house. Belle and Frances spent all day preparing thickly piled sandwiches and pastries filled with fruit and cheese for the party, Belle with pin curlers in her hair. She begged Momma to wear a new sweater she had bought to give her for Christmas, but gave her now, and Frances reluctantly agreed, a little surprised. Belle was excited. She had never done anything so elaborate before. And no doubt Anastasia felt that excitement and wanted to be part of it, because, although she was put to bed early so her mother could dress and do her hair, she lay there humming and hitting the side of her crib—she was too big for the basket now—watching her mother with wary eyes. Belle bent to kiss her, saying she should sleep now, and went down to greet her guests.
From downstairs the sounds of busy chatter and laughter rose, and with it rose Anastasia’s rage at being left out. She climbed out of her crib and made her way to the top of the stairs, where she stopped, baffled. She could not yet climb stairs. She stood there and roared: “I want to come down!” There was an aghast silence from below, then her mother appeared, white-faced. “Is that you, Anastasia!” But she did not go up for the baby. She turned back to her friends. “She’s never
uttered even a word before and suddenly she speaks a full sentence!” The women raved what a smart child, what an amazing event, but still Belle did not come to get Anastasia. The baby stamped her bare foot on the floor. “Now! I want to come down now!” Belle went up then, and carried her down, where much fuss was made of her. Belle sat her on the couch beside Grandma and gave her a bit of a chicken salad sandwich and she watched the women play. So that was how you got what you wanted! You spoke!
This event convinced Belle that she had mothered a genius, and she set about educating Anastasia with determination. She read to her daily, and played songs on the piano. She even began to play her own songs, the pieces she had studied when she took piano lessons—“Remember,” “Always,” and “My Buddy.” And Anastasia would sing along with her, stumbling over only a few of the words. By the time she was two, she knew all the nursery rhymes as well, and knew which ones were on which pages. When she was three, having used crayons and pencils for some time, she drew a perfect banana. Belle was deeply impressed, and saved the picture. For years after that she told Anastasia that she had known she would be an artist because she had drawn a perfect banana when she was only three.
Wally had found a job, finally, and was rarely home these days, spending his evenings at the chess club or, it was suspected, with a woman. Eddie spent most of his evenings in the old neighborhood at the Becks’, visiting Martha, who had lived next door to them in Brooklyn. Martha was small, dark, and pretty with huge eyes, but Belle and Jean did not like her. They said nothing. Ed finished the apartment for his father and immediately found himself a second job working nights at a pharmacy. Because of this, Belle was able to buy some clothes for him and herself, and to put a few dollars in a bank account.
Then one Sunday, Wally, who had not been home since Friday morning, appeared with a tall blonde on his arm, and announced they were married. He and Jill wanted to live at home, he said; she was famous, a chorus girl for Billy Rose, a long-stemmed beauty. There they were. Eddie moved his clothes down to the little front porch and began to sleep on the old couch. Jill spent the morning in bed and expected Momma to bring her breakfast in bed. Momma did. No one said anything. Jill would descend around two, her hair in curlers, wearing a crimson silk robe over her nightgown, and sit on the front porch sullenly filing her nails. At four, she dressed in very high heels and a clinging frock, her hair piled high on her head, and went to work. She’d come home with Wally around three in the morning. One night, after about three months, she did not come home with him and indeed, the family never saw her again. No one ever asked Wally what happened, and afterward, no one ever referred to his divorce—something they only assumed he had done. The entire incident was treated as something so scandalous it could not be mentioned. Eddie went back to his bed upstairs, and soon afterward, Wally lost his job, and in disgust, signed up to go to CCC Camp, a welfare project for young men unable to find work. He was gone for a year, and one summer Sunday, Belle and Ed and Anastasia drove up the Adirondack Mountains to see him, and although Wally seemed glad to see them, he paid little attention to them, and none at all to Anastasia. He stopped working, his shirtsleeves rolled up, his uniform smelling of wood chips, and stood beside their borrowed car for ten minutes. Then he went back to woodchopping, and they drove back to Queens. Although Anastasia was only three and a half, she thought it was strange. But she found much of grown-up behavior strange. The house was very quiet now, with both sons away evenings, and even Eric Terschelling came no longer, because he was in a TB sanitarium. He had to give up actuarial school, he was overworked, and he had to use all his savings to pay for the hospitalization. Jean and Belle and Momma spent evenings in the dining room, sitting at the round table listening to the radio, sewing, or crocheting, or knitting. At eleven, Belle always rose and made tea and toast, which was ready just as Ed came in from his night job, and the four of them would sit there drinking in silence broken only by desultory talk.
Then, suddenly, everything seemed to happen at once. Wally came back from CCC camp tan and more muscular than he had been, his frail body looking almost healthy. He found a job and moved back into his old bedroom. Eddie became engaged to Martha and they planned an October wedding. Eric was released from the sanitarium cured, and now devoted himself totally to his job with the insurance company. He and Jean became engaged, and would marry as soon as Eric could restore his savings. All of this passed around Belle in a haze of luminal and indifference. Except for Elvira, and the education of Anastasia, nothing touched her, nothing mattered. And then, one night in August, Elvira pounded on the front door of the Manse Street house. She had a black eye and bruises on her arms.
“Rollo went berserk,” she explained. “He followed me yesterday and saw me meet Al and get in his car, and when I came home last night, he gave me a present.” She presented her bruises for examination, satisfied by Belle’s dead-white horrified face.
“Come in, sit down, let me get you some coffee,” Belle urged.
“No, Isabel, I just came to say good-bye. I’m leaving him, for good this time. I’ll be at Bridget’s for a while until I can get my own place. But I’ll call you.”
Her face a mask, Belle clasped her friend’s hand and watched her recross the street and get into Bridget’s crowded car. Then she went upstairs to her bedroom and closed the door and sat on the bed and was startled when the wrenching noise emerged from her throat. And once it started, she could not stop. She cried the rest of the day and into the night. She did not go downstairs or tend to Anastasia. The only bright spot in my life, she kept thinking, My only pleasure, gone!
Several times Anastasia crept into the room and approached her mother, begging her to come downstairs and play with her, but Belle either ignored her or told her sharply to go away. Anastasia left and stormed downstairs the third time this happened. She decided she would play the piano herself, since her mother refused. Actually, she wasn’t sure she couldn’t already play, because she put her fingers on the keys along with her mother’s when Belle played to her. She climbed up on the stool but could not reach the keys. So she climbed down and spun the stool to get it higher. It spun around and around; she was delighted by it and was smiling broadly when suddenly the seat flew off the screw into the middle of the room, landing with a loud clank. Frances came running from the kitchen, cuddled her, comforted her, replaced the seat. But Anastasia did not want to be cuddled.
“Why is Mommy crying?” she asked Grandma.
“Not crying, no, Momma is tired, resting,” Frances assured her.
Anastasia gazed at her. Why was Grandma lying? Why did people always lie to children?
“I want to get up,” she said, and Grandma lifted her onto the stool. She put her hands on the keys, and brought out noises, but they didn’t sound anything like what Mommy played. Maybe it was because she wasn’t looking at the book. She reached up to the music stand and opened the Mother Goose Song Book. She recognized the songs, and turned to “The Owl and the Pussycat,” her favorite. She didn’t know why she liked it: it didn’t make any sense. Many of the rhymes didn’t make sense, but this one made the least sense of all of them. And when she tried to get Mommy to explain it to her, Mommy wouldn’t. Anastasia was sure her mommy, who was so smart, who could sing and play the piano and teach Anastasia to count and read the clock, knew what the song meant, but just wouldn’t tell her.
Scrutinizing the notes on the page, Anastasia put her hands on the keys. But what came out was still not “The Owl and the Pussycat.” A hot pulse of fury coursed through her body: she wanted to cry out in frustration. But she slid down from the stool and trudged out to the porch and climbed up on the daybed, where her coloring book and crayons lay. She opened the book quickly so she wouldn’t cry, and riffled the pages seeking a nice picture. There were no nice pictures in the book. They were all gross and ugly, simple big stupid things. She hated them. She hated her crayons, too: red, yellow, orange, green, blue, black, white, purple: bright ugly colors. She had seen a box of cr
ayons that had many shades, soft shades, and it was a big box. But Mommy said it was too expensive. These crayons were for little girls, she said. Anastasia hated being little. She scrawled wildly across one page, then another. The crying feeling was coming up in her throat again.
Grown-ups treated children as if they were stupid, and Anastasia was not stupid: she knew she could understand if they would just explain things. But they treated children as if they had to stay behind a veil watching, while the grown-ups spoke a secret language, or whispered, or lied. Anastasia sat on the couch, her small fists clenched. Frances, taking a pile of ironed clothes upstairs, noticed the child, and put the clothes down on a chair and came over to her and sat beside her. She stroked Anastasia’s hand and spoke softly to her. She held out her arms. But Anastasia refused to enter them. Her babcia was just like the others: she lied to Anastasia. Frances said, “Sweet baby, moja kochanie,” but Anastasia would not be consoled.
Would not be consoled, could not be consoled, Ed thought, sitting beside the bed on which Belle lay sobbing, her face and shoulders turned away from him. Never been right since…He took off his glasses and put his head in his hands. He was belching continually, but very softly. He pulled his head up suddenly, startled to realize that his hands were wet. He pulled his clean handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his glasses thoroughly; then he wiped his face and hands and put his glasses back on. Belle’s sobs were coming at longer intervals now. He continued to sit there, his body bowed forward, his hands loosely clasped between his knees, waiting.
Belle tried weakly to sit up and Ed moved swiftly to help her. He pulled her up and put the pillows behind her.
“Cigarette,” she said in a small voice.
He glanced around, looking for the Luckies, and pulled one out and put it between her lips. Then he lighted it for her. She inhaled deeply, her body still shuddering with unvoiced sobs.