She tried to remember when did she get into bed; certainly it was well before dinnertime. She hadn’t had dinner, but she wasn’t hungry.
John Wosileski stared at the television, although, if he was asked, for the life of him he wouldn’t have been able to tell you what show he was watching.
Miriam Kessler bit into a cold chicken leg, and when she’d eaten all the meat from it, she sucked on the bone.
Right there in the booth in Junior’s, right in front of her friends and the cute guys in the booth across the aisle, Beth Sandler started to cry and couldn’t stop crying.
Only Valentine, so it seemed, was spared.
S
ummer days somehow operate on a different equation for time than the other seasons. They move languidly, lacking definition; they meld together, so that effort is required to keep track as to whether today is Wednesday or Friday. When Miriam Kessler thought about the days passing, about keeping track of them, she did not picture drawing big, red
X
s with a Magic Marker on a calendar on the wall. Rather, as if the calendar were a bingo card and, instead of plastic chips, time was marked with pebbles and stones.
Miriam did need to keep track of the week. There were appointments with the beautician, appointments with the obstetrician, Fridays were for heavy cleaning, and on this Tuesday the game was to be played at Edith Zuckerman’s house, and so under the noonday sun Miriam and Valentine walked there; Miriam
schvitzing
profusely, and a thin line of perspiration broke out on Valentine’s upper lip.
“Do you believe this humidity? It’s the humidity, not the heat.”
Miriam took a tissue from her purse and mopped at her face and around her neck.
Edith was standing at the door to let them in when her attention was directed beyond them. “Hey, look at that.” Edith pointed into the branches of a white birch tree.
“What?” Miriam said. “I don’t see anything.”
“Oh. They’re gone now. But there were two birds, pinkish-yellow ones, beautiful,” Edith said. “Do you believe it?”
“I believe it,” Miriam said. “Would you believe I saw them once before. In the winter, and I was worried about them. Canaries. They must have flown out a window.” Miriam took this as a good omen, that the canaries survived, maybe flourished even. An omen that let Miriam feel lucky as she took her seat at the table.
Valentine sat off to the side of the game, on the couch. At this stage of things, Miriam preferred that Valentine not be left alone any more than necessary. Suppose there was some prenatal complication requiring emergency medical attention and Miriam wasn’t there? Then what? Better Valentine should come with her and sit and read a magazine or just stare out the window, which was something Valentine could do for hours on end.
On the morning of the twenty-second of July, Pete Wosileski, John Wosileski’s father, was loading crates from the warehouse onto a truck, the man was an ox, and then the next thing you know,
bam!
He was lying on the ground with his skull broken.
While at work in the butcher shop, John got word that his father was dead, killed by a loose stone that fell five stories from an abandoned building, as if hurled from the heavens, to hit him
square on the head. This was the high point of John Wosileski’s summer, in so far as it broke the monotony.
The butcher, Stan Stanislawski, gave John a week off from his job, and he promised to provide smoked meats for the gathering after the wake, which would be attended by John and his mother and, of course, Father Palachuk, and perhaps a few of Pete’s bowling buddies, but that would be it. “Tell your mother not to worry about food. I’ll send over a ham,” Stan said. Maybe some of John’s fellow teachers would’ve attended the wake, had they known. But with school not in session, who would’ve spread the word? The former Plattsburgh relatives were his mother’s family, and they were too far-flung to make the trip regardless, and they never liked Pete either. But they would send flowers, carnations mostly, and mass cards.
John Wosileski took off his bloodied apron and went to the bathroom to wash up before going to his mother. He looked in the mirror and said, “My father died.” He said, “My father died, my father is dead,” several times over not because he didn’t believe it was true, but because he had a need to say it out loud, as it,
my father is dead,
is a turning point in a man’s life. So to speak, John was now the man of the house. Because his father died on a Thursday and therefore was likely to be in a state of mortal sin, John prayed for his eternal soul, which was in purgatory at best, assuming all went according to what they’d been taught.
Mrs. Wosileski did not pray for her husband’s soul; she was content to keep him where he was.
Going to his mother, John found her in the middle of preparing lunch, as if nothing at all had happened. Oh, he did not expect to find her weeping, a distraught and grieving widow. Rather, he
watched for signs of lifting spirits, for a lightness in her step, a flicker of life in her eyes. He assumed that she would be cheered by his father’s death. But thus far no pleasure was revealed. It was as if oppression had permeated her being, the way the smell from the Polish sausages had permeated their apartment. Also, Mrs. Wosileski had been denied the satisfaction of seeing her husband suffer.
Mothers are born to suffer and children are born to torture them. At least that’s the impression you’d get from listening to The Girls. “I’m sick,” Judy Weinstein said. “Physically ill. He’s doing this to torture me. I know it. Three Dragon. California. Who goes to college in California? He was all set, going to Brandeis. And even that, Boston, is far away. But now it’s UCLA or nowhere. California. I never heard of such a thing.”
Edith Zuckerman exchanged one tile and asked, “Does he know what this is doing to you?”
Sunny Shapiro called, “Mah-jongg,” and then added, “Of course he knows. That’s why he’s doing it.”
“The boys are worse than the girls,” Edith said. “Be thankful, Miriam, that you have just the daughter.” Then, remembering that being Valentine’s mother was no great shakes, she said, “Ah. Boys. Girls. It doesn’t matter. Either way, they’re the death of us.”
The tiles were dumped into the center, and after turning them facedown, Sunny, with hands spread, moved them about, to wash them for the next round. Miriam got up from the table to help herself to a smidgen of marble cake, which frankly wasn’t the best she’d ever tasted but it was edible, while Edith said to Judy, “They
make us bleed, these kids. And tell me, what can we do? Not a damn thing except love them.”
Children making their mothers bleed sounds like stigmata. Stigmata for all women, not just the saints and martyrs, unless you’re of the school that believes all women, by virtue of being women, are saints and martyrs.
“Hello,” he said, pleasantly enough, but clearly addressing a stranger. He didn’t recognize her. Her own father and he hadn’t a clue as to who she was.
“Dad, it’s me,” she said. “Joanne.”
“Joanne?” He cocked his head as if he were trying to place the name. In fact, he was trying to place the name.
“Your daughter.” Joanne tried to help him out, but it did no good.
The nurse, an extra-large black woman, came into the room wheeling a cart, and Mr. Clarke brightened at the sight of her. “You know, some days are better than other days,” she said to Joanne. She had an accent, one of those lilting ones from the Caribbean, and a gold tooth, a gold incisor. “Today, he’s so-so.” To Joanne’s father the nurse said, “How you be today, Mr. Clarke?”
“Good,” he said. “I’m good. How are you?”
“I’m fine, thank you,” the nurse said, and then she asked him, “Do you know who I am?”
“Yes,” he said. “You’re Vivienne.”
“That’s very good. And you’re ready for your dinner now, Mr. Clarke?” Dinner, in the nursing home, was served at five in the afternoon. A bedtime snack—usually a cookie—was handed out at seven-thirty, and lights were out by eight.
And yet, Joanne was feeling far sorrier for herself than she was for her father. He didn’t know enough to feel sorry for himself; it didn’t shame him any to be on a toddler’s schedule, and it didn’t cause him grief to have forgotten that he had a daughter. He didn’t miss her any more than he missed staying up for
The Tonight Show
with Johnny Carson, but Joanne felt she’d been discarded like an old shoe, dropped in favor of oblivion, and the pain of that, albeit irrational, smarted nonetheless.
If nothing else at all, nurses are breathtakingly efficient, and this nurse set up a tray in a jiffy. Then she said to Joanne, “Why don’t you feed him? He makes a big, big mess of it when he tries to do it himself.” She uncovered the dish, and Joanne saw steam rise from the ravioli on the plate. “Go ahead. He likes to be fed. It’ll be fine.” The nurse misinterpreted Joanne’s expression. Not exactly misinterpreted, but she took it to mean that Joanne was nervous, unsure about feeding her father while a professional looked on as opposed to what it was: furtiveness sprung from a seed of guilt.
Joanne sat beside her father and prepared to feed him his dinner. She shook out the napkin and tucked one corner of it into his pajama top, the remainder acting as a bib. The silverware was exactly the same as that used in the Canarsie High School cafeteria. Joanne stabbed a ravioli, the bite-sized kind, and she brought the fork near to her father’s mouth.
Mr. Clarke’s eyes opened wide and a little cry escaped from him as if he were waking from a nightmare. Which maybe he was, waking from a nightmare. Who could tell what was going on in his mind or what was left of it. With his hand clamped over his mouth, he recoiled from his daughter. Joanne dropped the fork. It, along with the speared ravioli, clattered against the floor.
Forks on the left, Valentine set the table, and Miriam went to the refrigerator for two slices of cheese.
“No cheese for me,” Valentine said.
“What is this about?” Miriam asked, and not for the first time either. “We’re not religious people, Valentine. But if you want to be a religious person, there’s a whole lot more to it than abstaining from cheese on your burger. I’m sure that Mrs. Weinstein would be happy to go over all the rules with you.” Miriam was a great believer in the powers of reverse psychology.
“It makes me nauseous, that’s all,” Valentine contended. It is true that pregnant women have all kinds of bugaboos going with food combinations, but usually it’s that they make everyone else nauseous with their sardines and sour cream or the way they’ll eat butter; just butter, no bread, no nothing. Just munching away on a stick of butter like it’s a carrot.
Miriam set the burgers on plates alongside healthy portions of french fried potatoes and a kosher dill pickle for each of them. Lest Miriam be accused of hypocrisy—that she insists on a kosher pickle while disparaging Valentine’s bit of
kasrut
—kosher dills were the pickle of choice for the same reason she bought kosher frankfurters. The taste, the flavor, the overall quality of the product. A choice between an all-beef Hebrew National frank or an Oscar Mayer wiener which is nothing but bologna, that was no match.
Sitting across from her daughter, Miriam poured ketchup on her cheeseburger while Valentine closed her eyes and thanked God for hamburgers and trees. Miriam wondered when, and if, her daughter was going to get back to normal. Then she wondered what that
was for Valentine. Was Valentine ever normal? Miriam couldn’t recall.
“Miss Clarke.” The fat nurse with the gold tooth and the accent caught Joanne on her way out. “Come sit a minute with me.” She led Joanne into a small conference room, where she offered her a cup of tea. “There’s nothing like a nice cup of tea to soothe the soul.”
“No, thank you,” Joanne said, although she would have liked a cup of tea. She was always doing that, refusing something she wanted, driven not by shyness but spite, which was ridiculous. Who was she fixing, but herself?
Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face,
she remembered her mother telling her, but she never listened.
“I been working here more than twenty years now, Miss Clarke, and I see many sad things.”
“Yes,” Joanne said, “I’m sure you do.”
“It’s very hard on the children when the parents get like this.” She passed a hand over her head, indicating the going of the mind. “I can see you are a good daughter, Miss Clarke. But I see too, you are all alone. There is no man. No children. This is not a good thing.”
Joanne felt her blood rush to her face, which grew hot and throbbed like a toothache. She groped for a response, something along the lines of
Mind your own damn business, you fat cow,
but the sound of the pulsating in her head drowned out all words, and when her mind quieted, the nurse was already talking again. “A puppy or a kitten. A living thing to love. We all need the love, Miss Clarke. I tell you the truth.”
How dare she? How dare this woman, this woman who empties
bedpans for a living, poke her nose into Joanne Clarke’s life? How dare she, this woman who gives sponge baths to demented old men, dispense advice to a teacher? The nerve of some people.
“Are we finished here?” Joanne spoke tersely.
On a hot summer day, such as this one was, the Kings County Mall was an oasis. Cool air, an escalator gliding effortlessly, a fresh water fountain, plenty of foliage, walls of glass, shopping to die for, and a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream stand all under one roof. What more could you ask for in life?
With Valentine in tow, Miriam entered Tiny Tots, an emporium for all of a baby’s needs. Miriam got out her list: crib, bassinet, changing table, bottles, diapers, a mobile, a rattle, a few outfits in white and yellow, colors which were gender neutral, as opposed to pink and blue. Pink or blue outfits would have to wait until after the baby was born because you can’t put a girl in blue or worse, a boy baby in pink; that’s the sort of thing which could scar a child for life.
While Miriam and the salesman discussed the safety features of the various cribs, Valentine wandered off down the aisle, coming to a full stop alongside a white cradle. Valentine knelt down and set the cradle into motion. “Ma,” she called for Miriam. “Ma, come here.”
Excusing herself from the salesman, Miriam followed Valentine’s voice until she found her daughter, her head moving like a metronome, keeping time with the rocking of the cradle. “Ma, could we get this instead of a crib?”
“It’s not very practical,” Miriam pointed out. “You can only use it for the first few months or so, and then you’re going to have to use a crib regardless.”
“Please, Ma.” Valentine looked up at her mother, her blue eyes begging wide. “Please,” she implored.