A Place I've Never Been (19 page)

Celia grew up in a few rooms on the fourth floor of a brick apartment building fringed with fire escapes. One of hundreds, thousands of identical buildings all over Queens, yet she never got lost, never mistook one for another, never had any trouble distinguishing where her friends lived. You noticed the differences when you actually
lived
among so much sameness: Her building, for instance, had the drugstore across the street. And another building, where her friend Janet Cohen lived, was covered with climbing vines. And Great-Aunt Leonie's building had the lady who filled her balcony each year with expensive lawn furniture, and could be seen sunning herself in harlequin-shaped sunglasses and a white one-piece bathing suit as late as November and as early as March.

Across the street, on the stoop next to the drugstore, Hasidic boys traded “Torah Personalities” the way most boys trade baseball cards. “I'll give you a Rev Mordechai
Hager for a Yehuda Zev Segal!” “You've really got Menachem Mendel Taub?” There was at dusk the thwack of the jump rope against the sidewalk, the elaborate reverberating chants of double-dutch.

“
I see London, I see France
,

I see Celia's underpants!
”

Street games: Capture the Flag, Spud.

“
Eeny meeny miny mo
,

Catch a tiger by the toe
,

If he hollers let him go
,

My mother says that you are not It
.”

The Good Humor man, twice a day, ringing his bell. Chip Candy. Red, White and Blue. Nutty Buddy.

Upstairs lived Celia's mother, Rose, and her grandmother, Lena. There was no father; he had died before Celia ever had a chance to meet him, in a bus accident. Celia had rich uncles and aunts: in Westchester, in Great Neck, one in California. On holidays she'd visit them, watch her cousins as they played effortlessly in great pools, sleep in pull-out trundle beds in rooms that were impossibly big, impossibly good-smelling and filled with toys. Then she and Rose and Lena would head back to Queens, to the stuffy apartment house in the old neighborhood where the three of them had been left behind, presumably because her father, who was expected to get rich, died instead.

What they did, Celia's mother and grandmother, was watch television. Especially when Celia was a teenager and in college, when her mother had gotten so fat it was hard for her to move outside the apartment, and her grandmother was more or less bedridden.
In that overheated, shag-carpeted room with its plastic-covered flowery sofas, and shelves full of tchotchkes, and old dinner dishes piled on breakfast trays, they'd eat Pepperidge Farm cookies and fight over the remote control. Rose got up from her armchair now and then to do a little dusting or clean a plate. Lena stayed mostly in bed. All over the room were elephants: glass elephants, china elephants, stuffed elephants. They were what Rose collected, what everyone gave her. Every birthday, every Mother's Day, another elephant. The TV, in Celia's memory, never goes off. It is on at dawn when she gets out of bed and goes into the kitchen for milk (later coffee): morning talk shows, exercise shows her mother observes with detached bemusement while eating crullers. It is on at midday when she comes home for lunch: soap operas. It is on all night: the evening news, and then situation comedies and cop shows, and more news. Celia usually fell asleep to the sound of
Honeymooners
reruns, old episodes of
The Twilight Zone
she knew by heart.

The soap operas, however, were most important, in particular
The Light of Day
, which was Lena's favorite. It seemed to make her genuinely suffer, this show; if on Friday the heroine was left dangling from a small plane while a villain crushed her fingers with his shoes, there would be no living with Lena that weekend. What had drawn them to the show in the first place was a story line that occurred in the mid-seventies, concerning a sweet girl nun who found herself torn between her faith and the pleas of a handsome, severely smitten Jewish boy determined to woo her away from the convent. Anxiety bled with a little bit of love was the formula of this soap opera. If love for the nun started Rose and Lena watching, anxiety for her fate compelled them to keep watching—especially after the nun went off to a war-torn Central American country to do good works, and
wound up being kidnapped by guerrillas. The cycle was eternal, and designed to addict: an adored heroine had to be in trouble if you were going to care about her at all. Soon Lena and Rose became experts, they predicted things long before they happened: too much happiness meant something terrible, a psychopath, a car accident. Vague tiredness boded terminal illness or unwanted pregnancy.

For years, day after day,
The Light of Day
evolved. Hairdos changed, as did clothes. Occasionally new actors would replace old ones, the transformation explained by a quick car accident and facial reconstruction. The show seemed never to have begun (though Celia knew it had, once, before her birth). Apparently it would never end. And there was no assurance that the characters' suffering would end, either. Whereas in a movie you could pretty much assume a hostage taken at the beginning was a hostage saved at the end, here torture, detainment, misunderstanding might drag on for months.

The year Celia was applying to colleges, Lena became preoccupied with the fate of a couple on the show, a girl named Brandy and a boy named Brad. They were in love, but a series of miscommunications mostly engineered by an evil older woman named Mallory had led each to believe the other was cheating. Finally Brandy called Brad and left a message on his answering machine: “If I hear from you tonight, I'll know you love me; otherwise, I'll assume you don't.” Then Mallory stole the tape. Brandy assumed Brad didn't love her, but of course, Brad had never heard the message. Mallory continued to stir up trouble until finally Brad, despairing, sure that Brandy didn't love him, allowed himself to be seduced by and then to become engaged to Mallory. Brandy, in the meantime, kept almost finding the incriminating tape, which Mallory had saved and hidden inside a jade statue in the museum where Brandy worked. This jade statue seemed
to have mysterious powers. Then Mallory started putting drugs in Brandy's coffee, slowly addicting her, making it look like she was going mad.

All through this Lena roiled in bed, shuffling and moaning: “Oy, oy!” She said it was killing her; she said it was giving her an ulcer. “If I have to die soon,” Lena said, “let me at least die knowing that Brandy and Brad got back together.” So Rose wrote a letter to the show, and showed it to Celia first, to make sure the grammar was perfect.

Dear Sirs and Mesdames [it read]:

For many years my mother, Mrs. Lena Lieberman, aged eighty-nine, and myself have been loyal viewers of your show,
The Light of Day
. We have seen the characters through thick and thin, good and bad. Lately, however, my mother has been very disturbed by the extended troubles being suffered by Brandy and Brad. Surely seven and a half months is long enough for such a sweet and loving pair of young people to have to endure the evil doings of Mallory, not to mention painful and unnecessary separation! Life is short, as we all know. I myself lost my husband in 1959, and watching the travails suffered by Brandy and Brad, I can only think what a shame it is that they are wasting their youthful years apart when very likely anything can and will happen to them in the near future. Youth is golden, and should be enjoyed. If you don't mind my quoting the name of a rival (and in my opinion much inferior) program, each of us has only one life to live.

Sirs and mesdames, let me come to my point. My mother is an old woman not long for this world. She is sick, and her anxiety for Brandy and Brad is making her sicker. I doubt I am exaggerating when I say it could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. A life is at stake here, and that is why I am writing to ask you,
with all speed, to bring Brad and Brandy back together, marry them to each other, punish the wicked Mallory. Only knowing they are reunited in matrimony will my elderly mother breathe easy, and die peacefully.

Yours sincerely,

Rose (Mrs. Leonard) Hoberman

Celia didn't think much about the letter except to wonder whether her mother really was as far gone as she sounded, or whether this was some joke going on between Rose and herself. She was busy with her college applications, and filling out scholarship forms, and entering competitions (the Optimists' Club Speech Competition, theme: Together we will …; the Ladies' Auxiliary of B'nai B'rith; Young Women of Merit Awards), doing everything she could to scrounge up all the money she'd need for school. When she got the letter informing her of her acceptance, she couldn't wait for the elevator; instead she raced up the stairs, shouting, “Ma! Ma!” But her mother didn't hear her. She had a letter of her own. “Celia!” she said breathlessly as Celia ran into the living room. “Listen, listen! It's from the show!”

“Ma, I've got great news!”

“Listen to this letter, you won't believe it!”

Dear Mrs. Hoberman:

I received your letter, and was sure to share it with our writers and cast, all of whom join me in wishing your mother a speedy recovery. While it is our policy never to reveal what's going to happen on
The Light of Day
in advance—even the actors only see the scripts a few days before shooting—I believe I can assure you that all is going to work out for Brandy and Brad, and that Mallory will receive
her comeuppance.

In conclusion, let me say that viewers such as you and your mother mean everything to us here at
The Light of Day
; we hope you'll accept the enclosed autographed photo of Mark Metzger (Brad Hollister) and Alexandra Fisher (Brandy Teague) as a token of that appreciation.

Very sincerely yours,

Donna Ann Finkle

Public Relations Associate

“It's amazing,” Rose cried. “They listened to us! They answered!” And Celia, all at once, fell silent in her rapture, for she understood, as if for the first time, how rarely her mother had been listened to, and how even more rarely answered.

“Now, I'm sorry, honey, sit down and tell me your news.” But Celia was quiet.

“Celia. I'm waiting.”

Celia sat next to her mother on the sofa, indifferent to the crunch of plastic underneath her. For a year now she'd anticipated the moment she'd receive this letter, she'd imagined herself tearing open the envelope, reading the words “We are happy to inform you,” then throwing her arms up to the sky, because they signaled the end of one life—a life of stuffy entrapment, washed-out colors, dirty air—and the beginning of another, a glamorous life, a glorious life, a life of books and green grass and ivy-covered walkways. But now, sitting with her mother while Rose clutched her own letter, Celia saw that it wouldn't matter; she saw that though she might walk through those halls, she'd do so as a ghost, a guest, a stranger, the same way she walked the commodious halls of her Westchester and Long Island relatives. How could college make a difference when her
mother was still here, trapped in where and who she was? No matter what, Celia knew, she too would always end up back in this apartment, on this sofa. Never listened to. Never answered.

“I got in,” she said hopelessly. Her mother turned. “You did what?”

“I got in.”

Then Rose screamed in a way that reminded Celia of the noises Great-Aunt Leonie's parrot made. “You got in! She got in!” And jumping to her feet, Rose called toward the bedroom: “She got in! Mama, Celia got in!” She opened the window, leaned out, screamed so all the neighbors could hear, and the Hasidic boys across the street: “My Celia, Celia Hoberman, is a scholarship girl! She got in!”

Three months later, in August, Brandy married Brad. Mallory, exposed and humiliated, left town, swearing she'd be back to get even. Rose took Celia up to New Haven. Everything according to clockwork, except for Lena, who didn't die until two years later, and by then Brad was an alcoholic failure, and Brandy a famous TV talk-show host, played by a different actress and carrying the child of a mysterious stranger named Señor Reyes.

Celia came down from New Haven when her grandmother died, even though it was the middle of exam week. Her Westchester aunts and uncles were sitting in the living room, looking uncomfortable and crowded. Rose was serving them cups of tea. Without even saying hello, Rose instructed Celia to bring a plate of cookies in from the kitchen. Celia took off her coat and got the cookies. “You remember these cookies, Belle?” Rose was saying to her sister. “Seidman's Bake Shop? It's still around. The neighborhood hasn't changed that much, in the end.”

“They're delish, honey,” Belle said.

“You know, Celia's in the middle of exams at Yale. Tell Aunt Sadie your major, honey.”

“Art history.”

“Not too many career options there!” Uncle Louis said.

“My Marc's majoring in economics
and
political science at Brown,” Aunt Belle said. “He's planning on law school.”

“Now that's a sensible major.”

“Bring some more tea, Celia. The funeral's in half an hour.”

Celia went back into the kitchen. Her mother followed her, closed the door, and dropped herself onto a chair, looking defeated and collapsed.

“I feel so ashamed,” she said. “I feel like such a failure.”

“Don't feel that way, Mama,” said Celia.

“I do. They pity me.”

Suddenly Rose fell to the floor, weeping. “Mama,” she cried, clutching Celia's knees. “Mama.”

“Mama, no,” Celia said. “I'm Celia.”

“Mama, come back,” Rose called into Celia's scabby knees. “Come back, Mama. Mama.”

Lunch is still ten minutes off when Celia and Seth get back from the pool, so Alex takes them on a tour of Il Mestolo. “It was a wreck when we bought it,” he explains as he leads them down stony corridors to the room where Sylvie has set up her spinning wheel.
“Then slowly, over the years, we worked on it, picking up furniture here and there at estate sales. It wasn't until Francesca was born that we put in electricity and got a phone.”