Not Me (17 page)

He drank some, passed it around.

Heshel held the bottle to his lips. It was coarse and bitter, but he swallowed it anyway.

They heard on the radio that Yad Mordechai was in a panic. It became clear that the presence of women and children was a mistake. Fear of rape and atrocity at the hands of the Egyptians made some go mad. One distraught man ran around the kibbutz shooting all the farm animals, the cows, the mules, the white horse named Atziel that everyone loved. Some of the young girls refused to stay inside the shelter anymore. Others cowered under the beds. But by then it was too late to evacuate.

On Naor, they called a meeting. Heshel listened with relief as the commander ordered the women and children removed that very night.

Lorries began arriving around midnight. The mothers took their children first, kissing their husbands good-bye. Most people tried not to cry. Then the wives without children got on. But some of the single women decided to stay. There was the radio operator. The nurse. Two women who suddenly formed themselves into the kitchen brigade.

Heshel saw that Moskovitz was not getting on the lorry.

“Get on!” he commanded.

She laughed at him. “Why should I get on? I’m a single woman. I have the right to stay if I have an essential job.”

“What job is that?”

“I’m the assistant PIAT operator.”

“We don’t even have a PIAT.”

“One is coming in tonight,” she said. “I have to be here if something happens to the operator. What good is an antitank weapon if you don’t have someone who knows how to fire it?”

“Fool!” he cried.

“Don’t worry,” she said, walking off, “I’ll stay out of your way.”

I was exhausted from everything. From reading. From visiting a father who told me nothing. From feeling I had to call April, and yet not doing it. The doctor had said something about a living will. I had no idea if he had one. I’d have to search his files. And while I’m at it, I thought, I might as well get the rest of his things in order. Box up the books. Call the used-furniture man. I wanted to get rid of everything. I began the arduous task of going through the house, room by room, drawer by drawer. I started in the dining room, by packing the china into boxes. I picked up a dinner plate—the good china, my mother used to call it, so ornate it could have made Catherine the Great blush—and I remembered clearly how Ella reacted the first time she had seen it.
Jesus,
she whispered,
I hope we’re not inheriting these!
and then how she said to my mother,
Oh! What a beautiful table!
It was the first of a long run of inconsistencies in our marriage. My eyes then fell upon the rose-colored candy dish that had graced our dining table for as long as I could remember, its edges scalloped with real gold, now chipped and worn—and suddenly I tasted the Bartons chocolates they used to keep there when we were kids. Did they even make Bartons anymore?

The chafing dish told me of the parties my parents used to give—usually to raise money for my father’s latest cause, Israel Bonds or saving the last Jews of India, but it also came out on New Year’s Eve when they sometimes had people over—and I remembered one year sitting on the landing, poking my head through the banister, trying to stay awake, watching them, me in my cowboy pajamas, listening to the din of adult conversation—so loud and incomprehensible, like waves crashing onto the shore—when suddenly my father rushed up, grabbed me in his arms and carried me downstairs, presenting me to the crowd like the crown prince; and even now, recalling the smell of scotch on his breath and the warmth of his hands through my pajamas made me weak in the knees.

I found Karen’s old violin, which my parents kept as a kind of memorial, leaning artistically against the buffet. When I opened the case, it gave off a damp, musty smell—like the Cheez Whiz box. Since the violin was always there, I’d never noticed it, and actually had forgotten she had played it. I’d forgotten she was musical as well as comical, as well as literary and delightful and perfect. I tried like hell to remember one tune she had played. I couldn’t. But, really, did it matter what tunes Karen played, if she played at all? Perhaps I was misremembering even now. Perhaps it wasn’t Karen’s violin. Perhaps it was my father’s. Perhaps he wasn’t a Nazi, or an Israeli, or a wallpaper salesman, but was actually a concert violinist. Or had wanted to become one. Or had forgotten that he was one. I looked at the violin. My God, I thought. It’s not hers. It’s mine.

It was true. For several gruesome months my mother insisted I learn an instrument. The torture ended when I told her that Mr. Jarâs—he was French, and thus suspect to begin with—liked to touch my bottom. But I was lying. Even now when I thought about it, I convulsed with shame. How could I have lied to my mother? And such a terrible, inhuman lie. No wonder I had blotted it out so entirely.

Very soon the apartment was cluttered with candlesticks and dessert trays, water pitchers and embroidered napkins, school photographs and kitchen utensils all waiting to be put in boxes. And then it struck me. These were not the innocent accumulation of a typical family life. These were the very clues I had been looking for! I stood there sunk up to my neck in stuff, and felt intoxicated.

I had to triage the evidence. For instance, a death’s-head insignia would have more title to my attention than, say, my mother’s Hummel figurines (girl at well, boy with sheep) or her Revere Ware frying pan with the handle you always had to screw back on. Where to start?

Over the past weeks, the intensity of my feelings about my sister, Karen, had grown from a benchmark of almost zero to something close to boiling. It was disconcerting and unexpected. It led me to believe she was hiding something from me. That’s why the first thing I did was move the candy dish and lay out her things on the dining table: her scrapbook, her junior yearbook (she never made it to senior year), a pile of drawings my parents had saved going all the way back to when she was two or three, a little jewelry box that held an assortment of cheap necklaces, earrings, rings, and pins. Among them was the high school ring she had never worn because it didn’t arrive until after she was dead. Next to the jewelry box were her toe shoes, worn and yellowed, the points darkened with rosin now turned black, a shoe box full of photos of her friends, almost none of whom I recognized, and then her diary. Her diary from the year of her cancer. It used to sit next to her bed, a simple black sketchbook with a thick cardboard cover sealed only with ribbon, once pink, now brown. I remembered looking upon it with dread. Even now I dared not open it. Nevertheless I put it aside; it was a clue.

Along with this I found something else. Her hospital wristband, with her name, blood type, and case number typed on it. This also I set aside.

I chose not to analyze or interpret or even feel anything at this stage—in fact, that was the most important thing of all, not to feel anything. I was collecting data, that’s all. I had to keep a clear head.

Thus I ferreted out my father’s little collection of Ella-nalia. There was of course the wedding book with its myriad of unidentifiable relatives and former friends. A manila envelope filled with birthday, anniversary, New Year’s, and Hanukkah cards she had sent to my parents over the years, signing both our names. I was surprised to find quite a few items of clothing she’d left in the guest room. When I first came upon them, I had the sense that I was looking at a ghost—that the empty dress on the hanger could hop down and saunter away. I gathered her dress in my hands and felt tears rise in my throat. I also found several pairs of shorts, a sarong, two bathing suits, mismatched socks, wooden sandals, and a straw hat. I laid them out on the couch. From the kitchen I took the Wüsthof chef’s knife that she had bought so there would be at least one sharp knife in my father’s house. It was, of course, dull. From the bookshelves I gathered a handful of murder mysteries and best sellers which I remembered her reading out by the pool or beside me in bed. Each of these items was like a talisman to me, a sacred object. I tried to find her scent on the clothes, but instead I got a nose full of mildew. I had the sense that there was no meaning in any of these items, and I did not mark them as evidence. However, I did find myself putting her sundress aside so it might breathe some fresh air.

I thought of my mother.

Somehow she had played no role in this. How was that possible? Everything around me, the sofa, the dining table, all the silverware, the china, the choice (oddly, none too good) of wallpaper, the chandelier, the illuminated wall unit, the buffet, the very sheets on the bed, the bedspreads, the carpets, the incongruous Louis Quatorze chests of drawers—everywhere I looked, there she was, but where was she? Why was she silent all that time? Would she remain silent now?

I had a picture of her in my mind, a small woman, dwarfed by my father, her long red hair done up in a bun, her house dress tied with a bow, her slender figure bent over my crying baby sister, or striking a casual pose while stirring the pot with her long wooden spoon. I could also see her later in life, when she went back to nursing in her creamy white shoes and white stockings, her figure fuller now, and her hair tinted, but still reddish, cropped much shorter and plastered with hair spray. In those days I suppose I held her in a kind of contempt, as teenage boys often do, and yet could not quite get around how much I needed her. I craved her comforting embrace, and no doubt still wanted to fold myself into her bountiful maternal flesh, but every word out of her mouth seemed idiotic to me, and when she hugged me, I cringed.

I found her hat. The one that floated across the pool. I picked it up with careful fingers, barely able to touch it, not wanting to disturb it. I placed it aside, for it was the only clue of her I had.

Of Josh there were many, many reminders in this little house, but I left them where they were, except for a copy of his last report card which I had taken with me from San Francisco for no particular reason at all. I found it crumpled in the pocket of my linen sports coat.

I now turned to what I thought of as the main course—my father. I took down his plaques from the walls, and pulled out several more boxes of them from the closets. Commendations. Meritorious Service. With Thanks from a Grateful Nation. Man of the Year. Letters from Presidents of the United States.

He was a one-man Jewish National Fund. He saved Ethiopian Jews, Yemenite Jews, Indian Jews, Iraqi Jews, Soviet Jews. He raised money, organized, fixed, schmoozed. One commendation proved he really did work on the Nuclear Freeze, even though I know he was secretly proud that Israel had The Bomb. There was a newspaper photo showing him protesting the Vietnam War, and yet I found he also donated to the creation of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. He even had, in his most recent commendation, a letter from ACT UP, for his “tireless efforts in support of equal rights for Gays and Lesbians and for combating complacency in the battle against AIDS.”

He was faultless. None of these were clues.

I had run out of room on the tables, the couches, the chairs, so I set out his other various treasures on the floor. His two rams’ horns, which he had learned to play and did so, much to my consternation, on the High Holidays, his five menorahs, his ritual spice box and candleholder, his collection of commemorative Israeli coins, his Israeli stamp books, his three-dimensional historical map of the Holy Land, his special prayer book which was small enough to keep in his shirt pocket, yet contained every prayer for every possible occasion, including, for instance, the prayer for seeing a great work of art for the first time, the prayer for washing your hands when you get up in the morning, the prayer for if you happen to walk past the kitchen and smell a fragrant spice, and about which he always said, “This book is yours, Mikey, when I’m gone,” as if I might want it. But there it was, on the carpet, right next to his miniature Torah (which of course was never supposed to touch the floor, but that was not my worry just then) and his books on Zohar, his seven-volume set of the Talmud which had stretched across an entire shelf, his miniature reproduction of the Chagall Windows which had stood on a little stand next to the telephone, and, most hated of all, the music box in the shape of the Ten Commandments that played
Hatikvah,
the Jewish National Anthem. I found, as well, a pile of browned and fragile advertisements for his wallpaper store in Hillside, New Jersey, announcing Father’s Day Sale, Back-to-School Sale, Mother’s Day Sale, After Christmas Sale, Veterans Day Sale, and, finally, Going-Out-of-Business Sale.

None of this was useful to me.

But I did find his driver’s licenses going back to 1953, several U.S. passports, his Social Security card, various bank statements and passbooks from financial institutions that no longer existed, expired insurance policies, and, buried in a shoe box with old photos of my mother on the beach—probably at Coney Island, her legs stretched out, her back arched, pin-up style—his citizenship papers. 1954. Newark, New Jersey. By order of…And beneath them their marriage certificate. 1949. Newark, New Jersey. An embossed invitation. The Avon Manor. Four
P
.
M
. Pressed within it, a boutonniere. And beneath that, a little envelope stuffed with items not in English, a train ticket, a note, a torn photo, a list of names.

These things I did put aside. These were clues.

I rifled through every drawer, every carton, every shelf, under every bed, above the refrigerator, behind the dressers, in the backs of closets, atop the highest shelves to find anything, anything, anything. Whatever seemed important or mysterious I placed in my corner of clues. And when I had done all that, and sifted through the wreckage of our family’s hopes, separating the useful from the un-useful (based almost exclusively on how it felt to hold the object in my hand—if it gave me a sharp, unpleasant sensation just above the groin, or if I saw my hand shaking but didn’t know why, or if it seemed to want me to put it down before I had a good chance to look at it—I knew it was a clue)—and, as I said, when I was done with all that, I went into the guest room to rest. I had to make a pathway to the bed and clear off a lot of junk from the covers—books, papers, drawings—but I believed, as I lay between a stack of
Commentary
magazines and an old adding machine, that I was on my way to finding the truth. Turning my head, I could see into the living room. Everywhere were piles I had organized by category. Items pertaining to Judaism, items pertaining to school, items pertaining to sickness and death, items pertaining to expressions of love. It was like looking at my own, personal, primordial soup. I had this feeling that all I had to do was reach out and give it a little stir, and life would miraculously appear in the form of a one-cell me. And if I was patient, that cell would grow and divide and multiply and evolve, and sooner or later would slog its way out of that mess and into the light of understanding.

I let out a deep breath and relaxed upon the pillow. I fell asleep, but I had terrible dreams.