It seemed to her she could always smell her own body like decay, like something old and rotten left too long in the garbage pail in the kitchen. If she were really as strong as she had always thought herself to be, she would just swallow her own tongue. She would find some way to kill herself. Drag a radio into the bathroom and prop it in the shower stall, but she could not bring herself to do that. Suppose she did something wrong and ended up alive but paralyzed?
After her first stroke, she had tried hard, she had tried and tried. She had fought to get her strength back, to speak clearly, to move, to walk, to care for herself, believing she could recover. She had expected she would be herself, her own person again. She no longer believed any of that. What had been Beverly Blume was gone forever. Less than half herself was left, and that was dwindling. The caretakers provided by the service spoke to her as if she were feebleminded, a large floppy retarded child. None were like Sylvia, and she could not succeed in creating relationships with any of them. It was not the same women who came, and the way they spoke at her was like a performance on automatic pilot. They did not engage. They did their job.
Suzanne was walking her to and fro tonight. It was so boring. Suzanne was doing a good job walking her along, but Beverly could tell her mind was elsewhere. Suzanne had always been able to do that since she was a little girl, to be sitting one place but be mentally miles away. It had always annoyed Beverly. She would be talking to her daughter and then realize it was like talking to the radio: Suzanne hadn’t heard one word she had uttered.
“What…think about?” Beverly demanded.
“What? Oh, Maxine’s case. I was going over the arguments I’ll use before the Supreme Judicial Court.”
“What arguments?”
Unintentionally, Suzanne speeded up her pace, hauling Beverly along as she talked. Beverly forgot to listen after a while. It was all legal stuff. At least she had Suzanne’s attention. She asked, “Marry him, you?”
“Who?” Suzanne stopped cold.
Beverly laughed. “More…one?”
“Jake, you mean? No. Why should I?”
Beverly shrugged. “Did…Sam.”
“Marrying Sam was a big mistake, you know that. It’s not that tight a relationship. It’s fine the way it is. I can barely manage that.”
“Leave you…set up.”
“Marriage wouldn’t set me up. You didn’t think it would set you up, did you? Why foist it on me? Besides, I haven’t the time for it.”
Beverly jabbed her thumb at her chest. “Burden!”
“No, you aren’t.”
Beverly made a derisive noise.
“You’re my mother.”
Suzanne was such a wimp, unable to admit what a nuisance Beverly had made of herself by having two strokes and landing on her. Beverly could feel the money burning up. She noticed how they were trying to economize. They thought she couldn’t see how her care was costing more and more. Beverly shook her head. Denial, the young ones called it. Beverly called it willful blindness. Of course she was a burden to her daughter. She was a burden to herself. What a mess life was at the end, never resolved, never cleanly finished, never coming to a proper satisfying conclusion, a final resonant chord of completion.
Beverly plopped herself down in a kitchen chair and pointed at the other. Enough of this pointless staggering back and forth from the bedroom to the living room and back like a gerbil on a treadmill. For this she should struggle on? She dragged a pad over and began to print. NOTHING LIVE FOR. USING UP RESOURCES. PAIN. CAN’T DO ANYTHING MATTERS. TIRED. TIRED. TIRED.
“Mother, what do you want?”
HELP ME DIE. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE.
“Murder you.”
PEACE! HELP ME.
Suzanne looked into her eyes, staring and staring. It was the longest and most intense stare they had ever exchanged, at least since Suzanne was twelve or thirteen. Mostly they had avoided this kind of piercing scrutiny of each other, avoided offering themselves to it out of dread, a need for privacy, even out of delicacy. Now they stared and stared at each other.
“How long have you been thinking about…wanting to die?”
3 MONTHS, Beverly wrote. EVERY DAY. EVERY NIGHT.
“You’ve been talking to Elena about this.”
Beverly nodded. She printed carefully, NEED BOTH HELP. SOON. VERY SOON.
Suzanne was frowning. She did not look convinced. Inside Beverly’s mind, arguments chased themselves, tumbling over one another like puppies but trapped, mute. To get them out, that was the difficulty. She could only beg. Stare. Plead with her eyes. Help me. A last favor. Give me peace.
44
Elena
“Now he’s back on the talk show circuit with this father-right thing,” Marta said. “How can anyone take him seriously? Warmed-over Bly.”
Pudgy Miles was frowning. “He got in some licks. And judges, mostly men, mostly fathers, are going to like his line. The world is full of men who screwed up their marriages and imagine they want their kids.” He turned to Elena, sitting scrunched up in a chair, trying to make herself small and preferably invisible. “Now I need to be sure I can trust you as a witness.”
Elena blinked, insulted as if he had slapped her. “I know I was wrong and I want to try to make up some of it to Marta. We were worms.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that if you want to convince a judge that Marta is the injured party. He’s contesting the divorce, so we’re at war.”
Miles was the beige man, she thought: beige hair, beige skin, beige mind. No one had ever caught his eye across a room and clicked. However, she could hardly say her capacity for instant ignition had won her a lot of prizes. Maybe it was better to be beige or gray. His mind was nasty and sharp-edged enough.
“One thing we want to show is that you’re easily influenced by a man you’re involved with. That he was the active party.”
“Easily influenced. You’re not talking about Chad and Evan. You’re not going to bring that up!”
“Those records are sealed, since you were a juvenile, but I can have you mention it if I ask the right question. I need your cooperation. I’m telling you how I want to play it.”
“I’m the weak little slut who can be pushed around by any man. But Chad and Evan didn’t push me around. I was happy with them. Death just seemed like another bigger orgasm or the biggest high of them all. And I wanted Jim at least as much as he wanted me. I thought I wanted him anyhow.” She looked briefly at Marta. “I thought I knew who he was. I made him up.”
“He’s plausible,” Marta said. “I believed everything he said for years.”
“We need to establish Jim’s guilt, so we need to establish your relative innocence,” Miles said patiently. “I need your cooperation or I won’t use you.”
“I’ve been down this road before….” She sighed. “It’s always a story, isn’t it? Never the truth.”
Miles gave her a steady stare that said he did think it was the truth: that she was an impressionable idiot. Marta was waiting patiently.
“I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll say whatever I have to,” she said.
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do,” Marta said. “Understand that I want to forgive you. It’s healthier for both of us.”
Elena stood at the window looking out while they worked on their line of argument together. Boston was locked in the grip of a glacier. It had snowed and frozen over and snowed and frozen over. Sidewalks were lined with cliffs of dirty ice. On every street battles were waged over parking places. If someone had chipped out a place, it was theirs, by the unwritten law of the city. They might place a trash can or an old chair in it to mark possession, but if anyone moved that trash can or chair and took the place, it was often more than a war of words that would follow. She wondered if anyone had ever been killed in one of these battles. She asked Miles. He frowned and went silent for a few minutes. Then he said, “Almost. Dorchester District Court, 1994. William Procton parked in the place clea
red by the defendant Edmund Little. Edmund Little shot William Procton in the thigh. The jury would not convict him of anything more than simple assault. I don’t know if he actually served time. Basically, the jury thought Little was justified.”
Elena did not know if she were pleased or depressed that Rachel wasn’t getting married after all. She had hoped they would all go to Israel, which sounded like a great trip, especially in the winter. She was shocked when Rachel called her. A first. “How could I have been so mistaken about Michael?”
“How could I have been so mistaken about Jim? I made a much worse botch of things. At least you didn’t get married. If the rabbinical court hadn’t insulted you, you’d be marrying him and then you’d be stuck. Then you’d find out what he’s really like.”
A long silence while the satellite connection burbled and clanked to itself. “You’re right.” Rachel couldn’t help sounding surprised that Elena had been able to offer her some insight. “I’m trying to be satisfied with that.”
“I’m just sorry we didn’t all get to go and visit you,” Elena said.
Rachel said. “Mother’s been poor-mouthing me for months. Are you really eating cat food and sprouted potatoes?”
“Every night,” Elena said. “But I eat at the restaurant.”
“I thought you were fired?”
“Different restaurant.”
Rachel didn’t ask anything more about her job: who but another restaurant worker would? “It’s so beautiful here. It actually snowed in Jerusalem yesterday. It was like crystal and gold. Glittering.”
“I’m going back to school. But don’t tell Mother yet. Please.”
“Why? What could you be studying that she would object to? Let’s see, theological school. Studying to be an Episcopal priest….”
“You can do all the religion for the family. No, I just don’t want her getting excited and telling me what a great idea it is, so that I get contrary and don’t do it. I want it to be my idea, and I don’t want to tell her until I’m taking classes.”
“You know, she really wants to be supportive. You think she’s trying to butt in, when she’s just wanting to make it easier for you.”
“It’s better if I do it myself, at least till I’m launched and I know it’s working. Believe me, it’ll be better that way.” Elena switched gears. “Anyhow, don’t you think you might get back with Michael?”
“Are you going to get back with Jim?”
“But that was stupidity. Just gross. Marta’s pregnant! I wouldn’t be in the same room, believe me. He tries to corner me, but I won’t let him. With Michael, I met him. He isn’t married to someone else. He’s just young.”
“Well, I’m the same age he is, and I’m not going to take his insensitivity. I don’t even think he’ll be a good rabbi.”
“What do I know. He seemed, you know, like he cared about you.”
“Well, it was an act. I should think you’d understand that.”
Elena shrugged, realizing Rachel could not see her. “I’m an expert on being fooled. Being fooled and fucking up. I can just pretend a man is the way I want him to be and ignore anything that shows me how wrong I am.”
“Me too, apparently. Must be genetic.”
She did not tell Rachel about Sean. Her sister would be shocked that she had taken up with another man so quickly, never understanding how Sean protected her. She had loved Jim, and she knew that weakness lay inside her like a virus in abeyance, ready to swarm into her blood again if she gave it a chance. She suspected Jim knew that too, and that was why he had not stopped stalking her, waiting for her. Not lately, for he had seen her twice with Sean. Sean’s bulk made him impossible to ignore. She also neglected to mention Sean because her relationship with him, while pleasant, did not occupy much of her mind or emotions. Sean was damaged and could give a limited amount. He had wounds she did not push to explore. She simply made do with him and the time passed and took her out of danger.
He drank two or three beers to every one of hers, getting quieter and more withdrawn. She did not try to monitor his drinking after the first couple of times. He did not want her to take care of him. He was on his own lonesome road. She spent more time trying to figure out Robby, because he ran the waiting staff and she had to suit him to keep the job. She could hostess and go to school, that was her plan. He was quirky, mercurial, sometimes kind and sometimes sarcastic, demanding. She stepped around him carefully, learning to tell when she came into work what kind of mood he was in and pace herself accordingly. He gave her more leeway because they were the same age born on adjacent days. He also liked her style, as he remarked. He told her she moved well. Sometimes when they went to a different bar, they danced. He was fun to dance with. Sean would not dance, saying he’d feel like a performing bear. Going out with the kids passed the time. Sometimes when she thought back to the summer, she imagined she had succumbed to a high dangerous fever that had burned her up and left her debilitated, and that she was still slowly recovering.
45
Suzanne and Beverly
Suzanne thought Rachel, in trying to act cheerful, sounded so miserable, she ended up urging her to get back together with Michael. She could tell that rejecting that suggestion made Rachel feel better. Rachel had made a Mizrachi friend, Nava, a young woman with Moroccan parents. She was invited to the older sister’s henna party. Suzanne worried that the wedding preparations would upset Rachel. Perhaps it was too exotic to make her jealous. The henna party was all women, with hours of eating and giggling and dancing. Rachel wrote that she was sending photos. If Rachel was depressed by the wedding, her E-mail did not reflect it. Karla kept insisting they would get back together, but Suzanne was doubtful. If Rachel felt that Michael was in essential disagreement with her about something as important as her religion and her role as a rabbi, they would not reconcile. The rift had hurt Rachel and shaken her confidence.
Suzanne understood how the quarrel could cause Rachel to doubt her ability to command love. She had been down that betrayal road herself. She had been slow to suspect Sam, because even Victor, whom everyone had expected to be constantly running around, had seemed satisfied with her until she got pregnant. She had begun to suspect Sam when stories and schedules did not jibe. She had been shocked at the deceit as much as at the infidelity. She had been told a hundred times that she just didn’t understand temptation. It was her nature to fall in love rarely, to put her practice and her daughters before any man, and to have too much trouble trusting the love of one man ever to consider another on the side. She had no time for complications. She could still find buried in the bottom of her brain a hot core of anger, a seed she had never let grow but had never rooted out. It was there, radioactive but unacted upon—that old painful sense of betrayal she called upon in defending many of her women clients.
Sam had phoned her the week before, wanting to discuss Marta’s divorce and the situation with Elena. She had referred him to Miles, who surely could handle Sam and deal with his curiosity. Marta and Sam had never gotten along. She wasn’t about to say one word to him that might come back to haunt Marta or give him satisfaction. Sometimes she was fond of Sam, but she did not entirely trust him where Marta was concerned. They had old grudges they hadn’t aired or relinquished. Years ago, she had resolved never to be caught between them.
Suzanne had to muster all her patience, never considerable, to have a real conversation with Beverly. Beverly was sitting up in bed, while Suzanne sat in a desk chair dragged up beside the bed.
Beverly wrote, BETTER GAVE YOU KARLA FULL TIME.
Instead of denying the suggestion to avoid a fight, Suzanne pondered what Beverly had written. “Maybe so,” she said. “It was hard going back and forth. You had such different ideas about everything. With Karla, I went to shul. With Karla, I was supposed to be interested in food and to like to learn to cook. Eating was good. With you, any mention of religion set you off. You didn’t want to observe Jewish holidays, so if I didn’t spend them with Karla, I didn??
?t get any holidays. You were bored with food. Grab some takeout. Have a snack. You never ate much and you hated to cook.”
Beverly shook back her hair, struggling to speak. “Karla…fat.”
“I didn’t think that was so bad. Her house smelled like cinnamon and garlic and onions and rendering chicken fat. Her chairs were easy to sit in. She spoiled me, you said, and certainly she made me feel like something precious. But I couldn’t want to be her. She was a third grade teacher. I already knew that wasn’t enough to be.”
Beverly carefully printed, I MADE YOU SNOB?
“Let’s just say you had higher ambitions for me. Security wasn’t your goal, and you didn’t want it to be mine.”
“So not…all bad.”
“Of course not. But you two sure were a contrast. You were glamorous. You were a flirt—”
Beverly laughed, waving her hand as if to bat at a fly.
“You were always coming and going. You had boyfriends. If you entered a room, everyone knew it. You had politics. You took chances. But Karla was kinder. Gentler. And she was more…affectionate.”
SHOULD NOT HAD KID.
Suzanne knew she should disagree politely, but she could not, for she had often thought the same thing. When she was little, how often she had wished that Karla were her mother and Beverly her aunt. She had felt guilty for that wish, but she had not been able to keep herself from confiding it to Karla—who had been very, very pleased. She would have said that the two sisters were at war over her, except that her mother seemed rather satisfied to leave her to Karla at least half the time. “Well, I suppose I had two mothers. That must be twice as good as one. Basically, you know, you were flat out, the way I live now. I barely have time for anybody, and you were the same way. We’re alike in that. You gave first place to your work, because it was important to you—”