Grandma’s home was tidy except for the newspapers that were piled on top of the round kitchen table, The New York Times first, then The Observer, then The Wall Street Journal, and then the tabloids, Newsday, Post and News.
“Do you want a cup of tea?”
“No, I’m going to have to get going soon.”
“Get going! You just got here.”
“Last week of finals, Grandma. Perhaps you’ve heard.” Lily smiled just in case her grandmother decided to take offense.
“I’ve heard, I’ve heard plenty. How are the subways this morning?”
“They’re fine—”
“Oh, sure, you can’t even fake a polite answer anymore. Did you stand far from the yellow line?”
“I did better than that,” said Lily, putting milk in the refrigerator. “I sat down on the bench.”
Her grandmother squirmed. “Oh, Lily, how is that better? Sitting on that filth-covered bench, how many of those people who sat on it before washed their clothes that morning? And they’re sitting next to you, breathing on you, watching over your shoulder, seeing what you’re reading, hearing your Walkman songs, such loss of privacy. All the homeless sit on that bench.”
Lily wanted to remark that, no, all the homeless were lying on the steps of the 53rd Street church on Fifth Avenue, but said nothing.
“From now on, I give you money, you take a cab to see me.”
Lily wanted to button up her jacket, if only she had one. “So what’s going on with you?”
“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” said her grandmother, Claudia Vail, seventy-nine years old, widow, war survivor, death-camp survivor, all cataracts removed, a new pacemaker installed, arthritis in check, no mysterious bumps, growths, or distensions, but widow first and foremost, “On Sunday a child fell out of his sixth-floor apartment in the projects and died. This is on a Sunday. What are the parents doing if not looking after their child on a Sunday? On Monday a five-year-old girl was stabbed and killed by her brother and his friend who were supposed to be looking after her. The mother when she returned home from work said, ‘It’s so unlike him. He’s usually such a nice boy.’ Then we find out that this boy, age eleven, had already spent three years in juvenile detention for beating his grandmother blind. The mother apparently overlooked that when she left her child with him.”
“Grandma,” Lily said feebly, putting up her hands in a defensive gesture.
“Last Friday, a vegan couple in Canarsie were arrested for feeding their child soybeans and tofu from the day she was born. That mother’s milk must have been all dried up because at sixteen months the child weighed ten pounds, the weight of a two-to-three-month-old.”
“Grandma,” said Lily helplessly. Her grandmother was cornering her between herself and the fridge. Lily could tell by her grandmother’s eyes she was a long way from done. “Did anything happen on Saturday?”
“On Saturday your sister and that no-good man of hers came over—”
“Which sister?”
“And I told her,” Claudia continued, “that she was lucky not to have any children.”
“Oh. That one. Grandma, if life is no good here, why don’t you move? Move to Bedford with Amanda. Nothing ever happens in Bedford. Hence the name. City of beds.”
“Who said life is not good here? Life is perfect. And are you insane? With Amanda and her four kids? So she could take care of me, too? Why would I do that to her? Why would I do that to myself?”
“Did José bring your groceries this week?” The kitchen looked a bit bare.
“Not anymore. I fired him.”
“You did?” Lily was alarmed. Not for her grandmother—for herself. If José was no longer delivering groceries, then who was going to? “Why did you fire him?”
“Because in the paper last Saturday was a story of an old woman just like me who was robbed by the delivery boy—robbed and raped, I think.”
“Was it José?” Lily said, trying not to sound weary. Struggling not to rub the bridge of her nose.
“No, it wasn’t José. But one can never be too careful, can one, Liliput?”
“No, one certainly cannot.”
“Your door, is it locked? To your bedroom?” Grandmother shook her head. “Are you still living with those bums, those two who cannot keep their sink clean? Yes, your father told me about his visit to your abode. He told me what a sty it was. I want you to find a new place, Lil. Find a new place. I’ll pay the realtor fee.”
Lily was staring at her grandmother with such confusion that for a moment she actually wondered if perhaps she’d never spoken of her living arrangements with her grandmother, or whether there had been too many residential changes for her grandmother to keep track of.
“Grandma,” she said slowly. “I haven’t lived with those bums, as you like to call them, in years. I’ve been living with Amy, in a different apartment, remember? On 9th Street and Avenue C?” She looked at her grandmother with concern.
Her grandmother was lost in thought. “Ninth Street, Ninth Street,” she muttered. “Why does that ring a bell…?”
“Um, because I live there?”
“No, no.” Claudia stared off into the distance. Suddenly her gaze cleared. “Oh yes! Last Saturday, same day as the old woman’s battery and rape, a small piece ran in the Daily News. Apparently three weeks ago there was a winning lottery ticket issued at a deli on the corner of 10th and Avenue B, and the winner hasn’t come to claim it yet.”
Lily was entirely mute except for the whooshing sound of her blinking lashes, sounding deafening even to herself. “Oh, yeah?” she said and could think of nothing else. The sink faucet tapped out a few water droplets. The sun was bright through the windows.
“Can you imagine? The News publishes the numbers every day in hopes that the person recognizes them and comes forward. Eighteen million dollars.” She tutted. “Imagine. By the way, they publish the numbers so often I know them by heart. Some of the numbers I could have chosen myself. Forty-nine, the year I came to America, thirty-nine, the year my Tomas went to war. Fortyfive, my Death March.” She clucked with delight and disappointment. “Do you go to that deli?”
“Um—not anymore.”
“Maybe it’s lost,” said Claudia. “Maybe it’s lying unclaimed in the gutter somewhere because it fell out of the winner’s pocket. Watch the sidewalks, Liliput, around your building. An unsigned lottery ticket is a bearer bond.”
“A what what?”
“A bearer bond.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” said Claudia, “that it belongs to the bearer. You find it, it’s yours.”
Why did Lily immediately want to go home and sign her ticket? “What are the chances of finding a winning lottery ticket, Grandma?”
“Better than the chances of winning one,” replied Claudia in a no-nonsense voice. “So how is that Amy? She’s the one who spent last Thanksgiving with us instead of that no-good boyfriend of yours? How is he?”
Are there any men who are not no-good? Lily wondered but was too sheepish to ask, since it appeared that her grandmother was right at least about Joshua. It was time she told her. “She is fine, and…we’re no longer together. He moved out a month ago.”
For a moment her grandmother was silent, and then she threw up her arms to the ceiling. “So there is a God,” she said.
Lily’s face must not have registered the same level of boundless joy because Claudia said, “Oh, come on. You should be glad to be rid of him.”
“Well…not as glad as you.”
“He’s a bum. You would have supported him for the rest of your life, the way your sister supports her no-good boyfriend.”—and then without a break—“Is Amy graduating with you in a few weeks?”
“Not with me,” said Lily evasively. She didn’t want to lie, but she also didn’t want to tell her grandmother that Amy was actually graduating.
“When is it exactly?”
“May 28, I think.”
“You t
hink?”
“Everything is all right, Grandma, don’t worry.”
“Come in the living room,” Claudia said. “I want to talk to you about something. Not about the war. I’ll save that for Saturday’s poker game.” She smiled. “Are you coming?”
“Can’t. Have to work.” They sat on the sofa covered in plastic. “Grandma, you live here, why don’t you take the Mylar off? That’s what people do when they live someplace. They take the plastic off.”
“I don’t want to dirty all my furniture. After all, you’ll be getting it when I die. Yes, yes, don’t protest. I’m leaving all my furniture to you. You don’t have any. Now stop shaking your head and look what I have for you.”
Lily looked. In her fingers, Grandmother held an airplane ticket.
“Where am I going?”
“Maui.”
Lily shook her head. “Oh, no. Absolutely not.”
“Yes, Lily. Don’t you want to see Hawaii?”
“No! I mean, yes, but I can’t.”
“I got you an open-ended ticket. Go whenever you want for as long as you want. Probably best to go soon though, before you get a real job. It’ll be good for you.”
“No, it won’t.”
“It will. You’re looking worn around the gills lately. Like you haven’t slept. Go get a tan.”
“Don’t want sleep, don’t want a tan, don’t want to go.”
“It’ll be good for your mother.”
“No, it won’t. And what about my job?”
“What, the Noho Star is the only diner in Manhattan?”
“I don’t want to get another waitressing job.”
Claudia squeezed Lily’s hands. “You need to be thinking beyond waitressing, Liliput. You’re graduating college. After six years, finally! But right now your mother could use you in Hawaii.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Let’s just say,” Grandma said evasively, “I think she’s feeling lonely. Amanda is busy with her family, Anne is busy, I don’t even know with what. Oh, I know she pretends she works, but then why is she always broke? Your brother, he’s busy, too, but since he’s actually running our country, I’ll give him a break for not calling his own mother more often. Your mother is feeling very isolated.”
“But Papi is with her. He retired to be with her!”
“Yeah, well, I don’t know how that whole retirement thing is working out. Besides you know your father. Even when he’s there, he’s not there.”
“We told them not to move to Hawaii. We told them about rock fever, we told them about isolation. We told them.”
“So? They’re sixty. You’re twenty-four and you don’t listen. Why should they listen?”
“Because we were right.”
“Oh, Liliput, if everyone listened to the people who were right there would be no grief in the world, and yet—do you want me to go through last week with you again?”
“No, no.”
“Was there grief?”
“Some, yes.”
“Go to your mother. Or mark my words—there will be grief there, too.”
Lily struggled up off the 1940s saran-wrap-covered yellow and yellowing couch that someday would be hers. “There’s grief there aplenty, Grandma.”
She was vacillating on Hawaii as she vacillated on everything—painstakingly. Amy was insistent that Lily should definitely go. Paul thought she should go. Rachel thought she probably should go. Rick at Noho Star said he would give her a month off if she went now before all the kids came back from college and it got busy for the summer.
She called her brother over the weekend to see what he thought, and his wife picked up the phone and said, “Oh, it’s you.” And then Lily heard into the phone, “ANDREW! It’s your sister!” and when her brother said something, Miera answered, “The one who always needs money.” And Andrew came on the phone laughing, and said, “Miera, you have to be more specific than that.”
Lily laughed herself. “Andrew, I need no money. I need advice.”
“I’m rich on that. I’ll even throw you a couple of bucks if you want.”
His voice always made her smile. Her whole life it made her smile. “Can you see me for lunch this week?”
“Can’t, Congress is in session. What’s up? I was going to call you myself. You won’t believe who’s staying with me.”
“Where?”
“In D.C.”
“Who?”
“Our father, Lil.”
“What?”
“Yup.”
“He’s in D.C.? Why?”
“Aren’t you the journalist’s daughter with the questions. Why, I don’t know. He left Maui with two big suitcases. I think he is thinking of un-retiring. His exact words? ‘No big deal, son. I’m just here to smooth out the transition for Greenberger who’s taking over for me.’”
“Meaning…”
“Meaning, I can’t take another day with your mother.”
“Oh, Andrew, oh, dear.” Lily dug her nails into the palms of her hands. “No wonder Grandma bought me a ticket to go to Maui. She’s so cagey, that Grandma. She never comes out and tells me exactly what she wants. She is always busy manipulating.”
“Yes, she wants you to do what she wants you to do but out of your own accord.”
“Fat chance of that. When is Papi going back? I don’t want to go unless he’s there.”
“You’ll be waiting your whole life. I don’t think he’s going back.”
“Stop it.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m home, why?”
“Are you…alone?”
“Yes.” Lily lowered her voice. “What do you want to tell me?”
“Are you sitting…listening?”
“Yes.”
“Go to Maui now, Liliput. I can’t believe I’m saying this. But you should go. Really. Get out of the city for a while.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this. I don’t see you going.”
“I’d go if I weren’t swamped. Quartered first, but I’d go.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Did I mention…gladly quartered?”
After having a good chuckle, Andrew and Lily made a deal—he would work on their father in D.C. in between chairing the appropriations committee and filibustering bill 2740 on farm subsidies, and she would go and soothe their mother in between sunbathing and tearing her hair out.
“Andrew, is it true what I heard from Amanda, are you running for the U.S. Senate seat in the fall?”
“I’m thinking about it. I’m exploring my options, putting together a commission. Don’t want to do it if I can’t win.”
“Oh, Andrew. What can I do? I’ll campaign for you again. Me and Amy.”
“Oh, you girls will be too busy with your new lives to help me in the fall, leaving school, getting real jobs. But thanks anyway. I gotta go. I’ll call you in Maui. You want me to wire you some money?”
“Yes, please. A thousand? I’ll pay you back.”
“I’m sure. Is that why you keep buying lottery tickets every week? To pay me back?”
“You know,” said Lily, “I’ve stopped buying those lottery tickets. I love you.”
“Love you, too, kid.”
2
Hawaii
Hawaii was not Poland. It was not the wetlands of northern Danzig, rainy, cold, swampy, mosquito-infested Danzig whence Allison had sprung during war. Hawaii was the anti-Poland. Two years ago Lily’s mother and father had gone on an investigative trip to Maui and came back at the end of a brief visit with a $200,000 condo. Apparently they learned everything they could about Maui in two weeks—how much they loved it, how beautiful it was, how clean, how quiet, how fresh the mangoes, how delicious the raw tuna, how warm the water, and how much they would enjoy their retirement there.
Lily knew how her father was taking to his retirement, enjoying it now in his only son’s congressional apartment in the nation’s capital.
How her mother was taking to Hawaii
Lily also could not tell right away because her mother was not there to pick her up from Kahului airport. After she had waited a suitable amount of time—which was not a second over ninety minutes—she called her mother, who had come on the phone and sounded as if she had been sleeping. Lily took a taxi. The narrow road between the mountain pass leading to the Kihei and Wailea side of Maui where her parents lived was pretty but was somehow made less attractive by Lily’s crankiness at her mother’s non-appearance. She rang the doorbell for several minutes and then ended up having to pay the cab driver herself ($35!!!—the equivalent of all tips for a four-hour morning shift). After ringing the bell, Lily tried the door and found it open. Her mother was in the bedroom asleep on top of the bed and would not be awakened.
Some hours later, Allison stumbled out of her room. Lily was watching TV.
“You’re here,” she said, holding on to the railing that led down two steps from the hallway to the sunken living-room.
Lily stood up. “Mom, you were supposed to pick me up from the airport.”
“I didn’t know you were coming today,” said her mother. “I thought you were coming tomorrow.” She spoke slowly. She was wearing a house robe and her short hair was gray—she had stopped coloring it. Her face was puffy, her eyes nearly swollen closed.
Lily was going to raise her voice, say a few stern things, but her mother looked terrible. She wasn’t used to that. Her mother was usually perfectly coiffed, perfectly made up, perfectly dressed, perfect. Lily turned her frustrated gaze back to the TV. Allison stood for a moment, then squared her shoulders and left the living room. Soon Lily got up and went to bed in her father’s room. Of course Grandma was right—something needed fixing. But Lily was the child, and Allison was the mother. The child wasn’t supposed to fix the mother. The mother was supposed to fix the child. That was the natural order of things in the universe.
The next morning Allison came out, all showered and fresh, with mascara and lipstick on her face. Her hair was brushed, pulled back, her eyebrows were tweezed. There was even polish on the nails. She apologized for yesterday’s mishap, and made Lily eggs and coffee as they talked about Lily’s life a little bit, and it was then that Lily broke the bad news that she didn’t think she would be graduating this year because she didn’t think she had enough credits.