Suzanne did not speak again as she got Beverly to the van, helped her from the chair to the seat, protecting her head as she had been taught and collapsed the wheelchair before adding it to the heap in the back. Then she paused, feeling an insane desire to flee, to run off into the misty morning and vanish, perhaps turn up in California on Jake’s doorstep. It’s your fucking duty, she thought. Beverly is your mother.
A little voice said, some mother she was. But sometimes she was a good mother and loving and always Suzanne was proud of her. When she came to school, it was an occasion. Here comes the charming Mrs. Blume. Her mother was always special, dressed up a little Bohemian but always attractive, her hair glowing, just enough makeup and never too much. The male teachers lit up. The principal would see her at once. She had that rich throaty voice that made everyone want to stop and listen—unless Beverly had a political bone to pick, like her objection to school prayer long before it was a cause everybody had heard of. Her mother might not be a practicing Jew, like Aunt Karla, but she was well aware of how the dominant culture tried to assimilate her daughter forcibly with Easter songs in school assembly. Then her mother’s visits raised hell, but a kind of hell that Suzanne was not embarrassed by. She had always agreed with her mother then, politically. It was not until Suzanne became a feminist that their fighting spread to the political arena. “I have no common cause with suburban housewives,” Beverly proclaimed. “Ladies in pearls are not my constituency.”
“I have no common cause with macho politicos who use women like toilet paper,” Suzanne had yelled back, just as strident, just as angry.
Suzanne’s becoming politically active had not brought them closer but given them one more thing to argue about. But after age seventeen, she had always been able to walk out the door, to escape. Gritting her teeth, she went around to the driver’s side of Marta’s van and climbed in. This time there was no escape.
20
Beverly
Beverly had been invisible for months. She spoke and no one heard her, for none had the patience to listen while she carefully, deliberately sculpted the words out of pain and air. She made gestures and faces no one noticed. She had no opinions or ideas, since no person listened to them, argued with them, was swayed by them. She was without purpose or effect.
She hated the physical therapy but she went through the motions. The speech therapy she gave herself to wholeheartedly. The occupational therapy she worked at. It was humiliating to be learning like a retarded toddler to dress and undress herself, take herself to the toilet, clean herself, feed herself, get in and out of her walker and her wheelchair. She could use the walker on even ground, but she tired quickly. The wheelchair appeared in some ways more dignified and certainly more comfortable, but it was too wide to pass through many doorways.
Her anger was feeble and throttled. She was often angry, but it was hard to express except by throwing things on the floor, again like a toddler in a high chair. She remembered King Lear, so angry, so foolish, so weak. She thought of herself as Queen Lear. She had lost everything and would gladly die on the moor.
Her speech therapist was a fat woman to whom she had taken an instant dislike the first day, but at the end of a week, she had to admit that Nancy was better than that Dr. Fish she had thought so wonderful in New York. Nancy pushed her hard. She began to get out not only almost every sound she needed to truly speak, but to form complete sentences, even if it took her five minutes. She came to respect Nancy, even to feel warmly toward her. She wished she could go on seeing her even after she left the facility, but it was too far away from Suzanne’s house. She’d be seeing a speech therapist whose office was a few blocks away.
Now Suzanne had finally come to get her out of this pastel prison. But Suzanne had lied to her, had never told her she had let go of Beverly’s home, the apartment where she had lived for the last thirty-one years, in the neighborhood where she knew everybody and everybody knew her. Here she was nobody, just an old lady in a wheelchair who drooled sometimes and couldn’t talk right. There she had been a character with politics, with a history, with a circle of friends—friends she would never see again. People she cared about. When Suzanne had blithely let go of that apartment, she had killed Beverly’s identity, her selfhood, her past. She was furious whenever she thought of that act of cheapness. Suzanne had no right to do that to her.
Now she was going to have Suzanne’s choices thrust down her gullet. Even the house was wrong, a big wooden object with trees and dark ominous rhododendrons and yews all around it, a huge waste of space. It was depressing, a turn-of-the-century monster upper-middle-class people had lived in with servants when her mother had come to this country. It was as if Suzanne had some nutty nostalgia for what Beverly’s mother had never enjoyed: the good life circa 1910 on a street occupied by professionals, yuppies, their precocious children, their computers, their pedigreed dogs and cats. Even their hamsters had pedigrees back twenty generations, all the way to 1994. They drove BMWs, Volvos, Jeep Cherokees, the higher range of Toyotas with an occasional Land Rover and Lexus. Someone else, usually Black or Latina, cleaned their houses. Sometimes another service person, usually white, walked their dogs for them. Beverly did not belong here. Even if she could speak fluently and forcefully, she would have nothing to say to people who lived like this. They had built a ramp so she could wheel herself into the maw of the dark enveloping house. The thought of actually living here was so depressing her eyes burned.
“You should be grateful,” the social worker said, “that you have such a good daughter. She’s taking you in. She’s remodeling her house so you can get around.” They kept telling her she should be grateful, as if to be forced into a corner of someone else’s life when she had always had her own, was something to grovel and mumble thanks about.
“Why…move out…good apartment…South End,” Beverly spoke slowly. It took her three false starts to get out the question.
“Mother, I haven’t lived there in twelve years! You know why I left.”
“Why?”
“I had to get Elena out of that neighborhood.”
“Should’ve…sent her…live with me.”
Suzanne said nothing, her mouth thinning as it did when she was angry.
“Marta…kept her…from jail,” Beverly said.
“She did, yes,” Suzanne agreed. “I’m glad you remember.”
“I remember…all,” Beverly said. “You think I lost…brain?” She wanted to say another word, but she could not recall it. She was always having to substitute one word for another. She knew Suzanne was trying to listen, trying to be patient, but sometimes while she was putting a sentence together like building a wall one brick at a time and then attempting to force those words out through her reluctant apparatus, Suzanne went off to another task, answered the phone, began another conversation.
She was put in a little room off the kitchen. She supposed it had been the maid’s room when this house was built. She imagined an immigrant Irish maid huddling there in tears after a sixteen-hour day of work. It had its own bathroom, whose door had been widened. There were railings everyplace. At least it would be far easier than when she had stayed here at Passover. She slept in a hospital bed, which she would never share with any man as long as she lived. She would never have another lover. No one would ever stroke her breasts again or touch her there or talk silliness to her late at night or in the morning. She would never be held in strong or wiry arms, never press her breasts against a broad hairy chest or feel an erection hard against her belly or thigh.
But her cat was waiting for her. Mao was thinner. His coat felt coarse. They weren’t feeding him right. Probably those two huge orange tabbies took his food away. She would fix that. He was ecstatic to see her, kneading her side, vibrating as if he were all purr-engine. She moved him to her good side where she could hug him. A little feeling had come back on her numb side, but she still could not move that hand. The leg she could move crudely, roughly, dragging it more than walking norm
ally, but at least it supported her.
She was exhausted from the move and she napped, Mao pressed to her side. Whenever she woke, he was there purring. He was the only friend she had left now, the only remnant of her own real life that had been stolen from her. Grateful, they wanted her to be grateful, for what? Grateful that Suzanne hadn’t thrown her out on the street? She had known bag ladies in her old neighborhood, and she was not convinced their life was any worse than hers right now. At least if she were a bag lady, she’d be in her own neighborhood. Her friends would help her out. They always had.
Karla, her silly sister, had always said she believed in an afterlife. What a word, after life. Well, that was what she was enduring: this was her after life.
21
Suzanne
Alexa appeared at Suzanne’s office. “Suze, we better have lunch together—somewhere with a bit of privacy.”
“Sorry, I can’t today. I just moved my mother in, and I have to interview some possible caretakers from an agency. How about we talk for a couple of minutes here?”
Alexa shut the door, looking around in the hall first. Suzanne assumed this was about Alexa’s battle to get tenure in the political science department, but Alexa looked at her accusingly. “Is it true you’re taking the Rodriguez appeal? Tell me it isn’t true.”
“News travels fast. I only decided last week to consider it. I’ve only begun to review the transcripts.” Suzanne sat down, trying to glance surreptitiously at her watch.
Alexa was a stocky blond woman who wore voluminous clothing, as if she were fifty pounds heavier than her real weight. She had a pretty face, round and motherly, and had recently married a chiropractor. “Suze, you can’t do it. It’s dirt. Dragging those children and their families through that trauma again. Let some cold-blooded shyster have it.”
“Alexa, I don’t think she’s guilty.”
“How can you believe her instead of twenty children?”
“I’ll be able to answer that question better, after I’ve read through the records. I haven’t committed myself yet. I need to know if there are genuine grounds for appeal.”
“That woman abused little children left in her care. If you get her off on some technicality, how could you live with yourself?”
“I can’t really discuss the case until I know the facts and the context. I’m not convinced she abused anyone. Have you read the transcripts?”
“I’ve read the papers. I think she should be hanged. The sexual abuse of children is one of the worst crimes an adult can commit, girlfriend, and you know that in your conscience.”
“But sending a woman to prison for thirty years for a crime she didn’t commit is also a terrible abuse, Alexa. Suppose somebody heard you calling a student Girlfriend and decided you were having an affair with her?” Suzanne stood. “I really have to keep that appointment at the agency. I can’t leave my mother home alone. Elena’s with her today, but most days she works as a receptionist.”
Striding down the hall with Alexa bobbing beside her, she was annoyed. Everybody assumed Maxine Rodriguez was guilty. Perhaps she had even assumed that herself before she had met the woman out at Framingham last week. Maxine came across as a dedicated woman whose life had been destroyed. She was gaunt and distraught, desperate, but Suzanne felt that pull, something that often made her take a chance on a client whose case felt reasonably hopeless. Suzanne had not decided to take on the case. The court of appeals had refused to review the previous appeal. She would need new grounds. However, in the advances of appellate court opinions she had been scanning just the week before, she had read an opinion overturning a similar case on the grounds that the children’s testimony had been rehearsed, prepared, essentially scripted for them. Alexa’s using guilt on her for considering the case made her even more determined to examine the record with care. Alexa was her friend, but she was also prejudging. Children were the sentimental heroes of this story, but Maxine also had rights and feelings and a life cut off at the roots.
Suzanne stood in the doorway of Rachel’s old room, where Elena was staying. Elena was being difficult about sharing the room with Rachel, who was home between returning from school and going off to Israel. Elena kept demanding Suzanne move out of her office and let Rachel stay there. “Look. I’m a lawyer. This is my law office. It is not anyone’s bedroom. You’ve been staying in Rachel’s room, and now Grandma is in the room downstairs. The two of you will just have to share a bedroom until Rachel leaves. It’s only ten days, Elena. Try to be reasonable about this.”
“I do not share a bedroom. I do not share a bed with a woman, even if she is my sister. I am not a child, and I need privacy.”
“Well, there isn’t any to be had.”
“Why don’t you sleep in here with her?”
“Elena, I’m glad to have you here, but you moved back simply to have a place to live. I also have Beverly now. I am not moving out of my office and I am not moving out of my room. I just rearranged and rebuilt half the house. I’m not about to rearrange the other half.”
“Fine! I’ll find someplace nice and private to stay. You’ll see!”
“Elena, if you want to stay with a friend for the next ten days, that’s fine with me. But we all have to make allowances for each other.”
“You make me feel like I don’t matter!”
“Elena, of course you matter very much to me. But you know that I have classes to teach, people depending on me to get them out of prison or to win appeals, your grandmother helpless downstairs. I have to live my life. I can’t just sacrifice it to you.”
Rachel was far more accepting of the situation. They were packing up some of her things for storage and others to go with her to Israel, or to follow her.
“I’m so sorry it doesn’t even look like your room any longer,” Suzanne said. “Nothing seems to be working out to anybody’s satisfaction.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll never live in this room again.”
“Rachel, why do you say that?”
“We’re getting married, you know that. You don’t expect Michael to move in here.”
“In Israel.”
“We want to be married in Jerusalem. What could be more special? You’ll fly over with Grandma. Elena if she wants to come. Daddy for sure and maybe his family.”
On one hand, Suzanne was glad that Rachel was not marrying right away. They had time to reconsider. More selfishly, if she had to manage a wedding right now, she would explode. She could not imagine where the time and energy would come from. On the other hand she wished Rachel were not going anyplace, particularly into danger. The logistics of a wedding that far away (all those expensive plane fares and hotels) made her taste anxiety in her throat like acid.
“Wouldn’t you rather put off worrying about marriage until after you get done with your year in Israel and get married when you come back home? You have a lot to learn this year and a whole new culture to get used to, without having to learn how to be married to each other.”
“We know we want to marry, Mother.” Rachel gave her a sweet smile. “We won’t change our minds. We’ve been talking about marriage for months.”
Suzanne found herself quietly weeping as she packed Rachel’s clothing for a year’s storage. They had never been separated by such distances, thousands of miles. When Rachel had gone to Europe, it had been with Suzanne, who loved traveling with her younger daughter. Rachel was a patient traveler. Unlike Suzanne herself, she did not mind when a plane or train was late or when they had to wait to get into a hotel room. She liked almost everything except men bothering her in the street. She liked strange foods (she had not been eating kosher yet); she liked museums; she liked city streets and markets and churches and shuls; she liked mountains and seas and rivers and forests. Rachel didn’t complain about the blistering heat in Arles or the early snow in Bergen. She didn’t mind the traffic jam on M-1 outside Heathrow so that they almost missed their plane trying to return a rental car to someplace with ambiguous signs. She liked
traveling by plane, she liked traveling by train, she liked taking the underground or the metro or whatever. She was a perfect equable traveling companion. They would never travel together again, she thought, wiping her streaming eyes.
They were both in an elegiac mood. Do you remember, was the theme of their chatter. Suzanne was glad she had some time to spend with Rachel in between the end of school and the beginning of summer quarter. She had not planned to teach this summer, but after Beverly had her stroke, she volunteered, convinced she would need the money. She had not guessed the half of it. She would need to put a lot of work into Maxine’s case, which she had almost decided to take. It was a political hot potato, and although Suzanne’s appeal would be strictly on procedural grounds, she did not doubt that the ambitions of the state attorney general and the lieutenant governor were as relevant to the case as any of the children’s well-rehearsed testimony.
“Do you remember how you used to cry when moths got into the apartment on Rutland Street and died there?”
“Oh, Mother, I’m sure I didn’t go around weeping about moths. But I do remember when Big Boy got sick and died, how terrible that was.”
Then a little later, “Mother. Do you remember how we rented a little house with Daddy up in Maine? It was out on a rocky peninsula. Once with a friend I tried to find it, but I discovered that Maine has maybe two hundred rocky peninsulas, and I couldn’t remember where it was.”
“It was on a peninsula near Bath. Called something like Five Towns. You were almost six….”
“You and Daddy seemed so together. When I remember it, everybody is always laughing. Everybody is glowing and happy.”
“It was just a week. You can be happy with anyone for a week, I guess. I just wish I could make Beverly happier.”
“I think she needs more and brighter lights in there. It’s hard enough for her to read without sitting in twilight.”