About a month later — a month filled with talks whose substance I’ve blocked, their anguish my only memory of that time — I persuaded Judith to stay at Hayden for a while.
How long is a while?
she asked.
Till you’re better.
How will we know when that is?
she asked, and I had no answer.
On the Monday after the holiday, Edith and I met for lunch. She had a favor to ask me: would I take her place at a conference on new computer technologies for librarians? The conference would begin the next morning, in New York. I could take the train and stay in a decent hotel — would the Algonquin do?
I agreed to go. The break would do me good.
After lunch we walked over to the main library’s staff lounge. We were sitting on one of the sofas, drinking coffee and discussing the details of the conference, when the door swung open. It was Roberta.
“I don’t like to bother you,” she said, “but I need to let you both know about a change in my plans.”
For a few moments, no one said anything. In this brief lull, my hands remembered the small of Roberta’s back, its firmness beneath the thin shirt she’d been wearing when I found her in the Mason Room. We had swayed slightly as we stood there; I felt that sway now.
“Change of plans?” Edith said at last.
“My mother’s ill,” Roberta answered. “My parents need my help, so I’m leaving the university.”
Her fingers toyed with the strap of her bag. “I’m looking for an apartment and a part-time job in Manhattan — downtown, so it’ll be easy for me to get to my parents’ place. They live in Hoboken.” She paused, as if the revelation of so much personal detail had tired her. “I’ll stay in touch with my advisors in the writing program, but I won’t be taking any more courses — I’ve dropped out of the program. And I won’t be coming to work at the library after this week. Friday’s my last day.”
She addressed her words to Edith. My temples pulsed. I looked down at the floor to steady myself.
Edith’s face registered honest concern.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “Very sorry, for you and your parents. For us too.” Her voice warmed. “Though of course I’m sure you’re doing the right thing. Not many people would drop everything for a family member, would they?” Her eyes expressed admiration.
“I’m not dropping everything,” Roberta said quietly. “I’m doing what needs to be done. I don’t expect my mother to live another year.”
“Oh,” said Edith. “I see.” Roberta’s seeming matter-offactness was confusing her.
Another brief silence; then Roberta looked directly at me.
“Matt, I’ll be in tomorrow afternoon, as usual,” she said.
Her unstated question hung before me.
“I won’t be here, Roberta,” I said. “I need to go to the city myself for a few days. A conference. But I’ll be back on Friday.”
Something flickered in her eyes. I drew, finally, a real breath.
“Well then,” Roberta said. “I’ll see you Friday.”
I
ARRIVED AT PENN STATION AT DUSK.
Seventh Avenue was jammed with cabs and buses; everything lay coated under a heavy mist, not quite a drizzle, which muted the traffic’s sounds and colors. A few umbrellas bobbed in the pearl-grey light.
I walked up Seventh and east on Forty-fifth Street to the hotel. Outdoors, my body had seemed to float in the warm dampness, but as I entered the Algonquin’s lobby, the oppressive humidity moved in around me. Well-dressed men and women sat in deep chairs near the bar; laughter punctuated their conversations like ice cracking in a glass.
My room was small but nicely appointed. I turned up the air-conditioning; the cold air chilled me without relieving the pressure at my temples. It would be better, I decided, to go outdoors again. As I passed through the hotel’s glass revolving door, I saw myself reflected — a brief, dim self-exposure.
Outside, I entered a deeper, opalescent greyness. I decided to walk. Heading across town, I went as far as Lexington Avenue, then turned south and walked to Gramercy Park and west again to Fifth Avenue. Although the air was still damp, the skies had begun clearing. As I moved up Fifth, the evening light deepened into a steel grey. On the shallow, wide steps of the Public Library, a few men sat staring vacantly. For several minutes I rested, leaning against the pedestal of one of the granite lions flanking the library’s entrance. Its stony coolness refreshed me. I glanced at my watch: eight-thirty. My energy felt oddly concentrated, my entire body light.
By the time I’d walked a dozen or so blocks up Fifth, night had fallen. I turned east onto Fifty-fifth Street. On the block halfway between Madison and Park, two well-dressed men passed me. Their conversation sounded genial, as if they’d just signed a deal over a good dinner; their laughter lingered around them, then faded. The street stood still as I continued walking. At the corner of Lexington Avenue was a chocolate-brown building, vaguely Moorish in style. A low, wrought-iron railing ran along its side, and a set of wide steps led to its front doors. I rounded the corner so that I was standing directly in front of the building.
I knew where I was. Holding the banister of bronzed metal, I ascended the building’s steps; they were steep, with a higher rise than I’d expected. A small plaque was affixed to the facade:
Central Synagogue, the oldest Jewish house of worship in continuous use in New York City. Built in 1870.
Pivoting on the top step, I surveyed Lexington Avenue. Across the street I could make out the awnings of a shoe boutique and a men’s clothier; they occupied two storefronts in an ugly apartment complex constructed of ersatz white brick. A seven-story red brick building — older, attractive — sat on the opposite corner. On the nearer corner, an old-fashioned street-lamp with a domed top stood next to a much taller traffic light. The streetlamp gave off a dull yellow, anachronistic glow in the humid darkness.
Judith, emerging from this synagogue, had descended these steps: a girl carrying a handful of mimeographed papers.
Look at these, Carol.
She hadn’t called the woman
mother
. Even then, she’d had doubts about
mother
and
father
.
Can I take some of these?
Carol had scoffed.
This stuff? — propaganda! Ernst Thalmann’s not even Jewish, for Christ’s sake!
But Carol had been unable to conceal her anxiety. Years later, in her journal, Judith had described Carol’s edginess.
The world these days is not a safe place.
For Carol, the past wasn’t the problem. She’d learned how to extinguish memory. But the future scared her; it wasn’t like the past, it couldn’t be refused. Carol knew: its danger lay not in what it would bring but what it would take away.
When Lottie and Sam left New York, Carol had been thankful. She had everything she needed — Len, music, booze, work. Then came the child — the infant returned literally from the dead, speechless and wailing, needing a mother. Carol knew that the three of them — the three who remained — would become a family, but not like other families.
A family of orphans.
Carol also knew: this was just the beginning.
The world these days is not a safe place.
My legs ached. I descended the synagogue’s steps and turned down Lexington Avenue. At Fifty-fourth Street a granite and glass building sat at an angle in front of a much larger building, glistening in the dampness. I craned my neck and looked upward, then scanned downward.
The two structures were interestingly configured. From news photos I knew that the bigger one was the Citicorp Building. Crossing Lexington, I walked a few yards toward Fifty-third Street until I found a short passage, recessed but well-lit, which led into the smaller building. The door at the end of the passage was locked.
I knocked loudly, and after a few minutes a guard appeared. He was affable; I sensed he was also bored. Quickly answering his questions, I handed him my university ID. He inspected it, hesitated a moment, and opened the door.
I was inside St. Peter’s Lutheran Church — the Jazz Church, the guard called it, explaining that weekly jazz concerts were held there. He flicked on some lights and took a closer look at me; then, apparently comfortable with my presence, he urged me to walk around. I listened politely as he gave a short but complete summary of the church’s features. Then he led me to a small chapel filled with Louise Nevelson sculptures. In about twenty minutes, he said, he’d come find me. Shaking my head, I told him that I wished instead to see the main sanctuary. In a moment the guard had lit the large stairwell across from the chapel, and to my surprise I found myself descending rather than ascending its graceful curve.
I had never been in a below-ground church. The sensation was one of peaceful encasement. The design of the central space was spare and pleasing. Rows of modern-looking pews, their seats cushioned with brightly colored covers, faced an altar that was set at an angle, like the church itself. The blond wood of the pews stood out nicely against the granite floors and white walls. A huge organ rose up along one wall. Toward the back of the church was a raised platform with more pews; behind these, at the level of the floor above (where I had entered), several windows let in light from Lexington Avenue.
I sat in the front pew. The altar was utterly plain, a long, low table covered with a low-hanging white cloth. The cross behind it was draped with red fabric. I imagined touching this cloth — it would be supple, warm as its color. The wrought-iron cross put me off; I sensed, without touching it, its coldness. Two tall white candles flanked it on either side.
Traffic noises drifted vaguely from above. The silence of the church was itself a sound, low and steady, sheltering. I closed my eyes, not knowing what I wanted to hear or see or feel. It had been a long time since I’d felt so alert.
I waited. Words, phrases, then a few lines came to me, pieces of different poems Judith had recited. I was hearing her voice, reedy and dense, profoundly erotic and powerful: an instrument of connection and release. I put my head down and cupped my face in my hands, and I wept for her and for myself. I wept for my terror and my silence, for Judith’s courage and her madness; for all our shared loss.
Somehow I heard the other voice. You gotta go now, the guard said.
A broad hand, a stranger’s, settling on my shoulder. The grace of touch.
You OK now? It’s time.
I
SPENT THE BALANCE OF MY BRIEF
stay in New York inside an icily air-conditioned conference room with several hundred other librarians, archivists, and computer buffs, most of whom were too techno-enthusiastic for my taste. When I returned to the university, I gave Edith a brief report. Then I sat down at my desk to tackle the three days’ worth of mail that had accumulated in my absence.
Behind me, the door to the Mason Room opened. My entire body went tight with expectation.
“Hello,” I said as I turned and faced Roberta.
She gave me a wan smile. “Hello,” she replied quietly. I watched her swing her bag off her shoulder and hang it on the back of the chair next to my desk. She was wearing a white T-shirt and her black jeans; her body seemed lanky, as if she’d lost some weight.
“Talk to me,” I said.
“Some tea first,” she said, sitting down.
I made us a small pot of tea; she drank a cup, swallowing noisily.
“Much, much better,” she said. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out a book and placed it on my desk.
“A going-away present. I thought you could use a fresh copy of the
Complete Poems
.”
T. S. Eliot’s elegant, anxious face stared at me from the book’s cover.
Roberta slouched back into the chair. Her hair, falling loosely around her shoulders, was glossy and dark against the near-whiteness of her neck. Her eyes danced briefly over my face.
“I’m moving on Tuesday,” she said. “In four more days. I’ve rented a studio in the city. A decent little place on a not-bad street in Tribeca. All I need now is a part-time job.”
“Doing what?” My vocal cords felt tense and slightly tender, as if I had bruised them.
“Anything — waitressing, retail, it doesn’t matter. I’ve got leads in a couple of bookstores. Something will turn up.”
She was flexing the fingers of one hand; I heard the knuckles crack softly.
“Your mother,” I said, “how is she?”
“Not good.”
She stood and began one of her slow circle-walks, tracking the edges of the room. I followed her with my eyes. When she had moved behind me, out of sight, she stopped. My eyes were closed but I felt her standing in back of me, close by.
“Roberta,” I said, releasing her name into the empty air.
In the room’s utter stillness, all I heard was the rhythmic sibilance of her breathing.
“Tell me why you’re going,” I said.
She didn’t answer me. I stood; she circled to my side, neither close nor far.
“I need to be back in the city.”
“There’s rather more to it than that,” I said. “Isn’t there?”
“I want the chance to talk with my mother and father,” she said. “Before they’re gone.”
“You don’t have to move to New York to do that.”
“Yes, I do. I need to go back to where I was when something got interrupted. It’s like I’ve been stuck on some kind of detour since I left.”
“What do you want to talk with your parents about?”
She hesitated; I could feel her gathering the words.
“The whole thing. The full story. I want my mother and father to tell me every single thing that happened during the war — to them, to my grandparents, to their friends. All the details.”
Something within me unlocked and swung open like a door. I turned, facing her.
“Listen to me, Roberta,” I said. “You can’t do that.”
She stared at me.
“You’re asking for something impossible,” I said.
She had begun crying. I had never seen anyone weep with such quiet, almost austere dignity.
“I’m their daughter,” she whispered. “Why didn’t they tell me, for Christ’s sake?”
“They probably thought it’d kill you,” I said. “It’d be unbearable to hear about so much horror. A child shouldn’t hear such things.”