The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (75 page)

But Alice had begun to scream. “Should we get your father?” Kyla whispered. “Do you think we should go get your father?”

“Our father’s asleep,” Janey said. “Our father’s resting. Our father’s asleep in the next room, and he doesn’t want to be bothered, and plus, she’s going to get over it.”

When do I think about you? Never, these days—almost never. When I was what, about twenty, I suppose, I finally got around to reading the little book you’d written about Sándor. It only took an afternoon, and when I finished, I put the book away, along with various old, disorderly feelings, and just left the whole clutter for about thirty years’ worth of dust to settle over.

Well, except for once, when Neil (a person who used to be my husband) returned from a business trip to somewhere and mentioned that he’d happened to catch a glimpse, on some highbrow TV talk show, of a man—perhaps the man I’d mentioned at some time—who seemed possibly to have been something of an authority on my uncle, or my mother’s uncle, or whatever it was Sándor had been to me. Naturally, that sort of called you up for a bit, and then you sank back out of my thoughts again.

But you know what, Peter? Yesterday at the service, I turned around at exactly the moment you showed up and slipped into the back row. So what do you think of that?

After the service, I walked through the park. It was raining and the sky was a kindly color, soft and gray. The fountains were steaming in the cold. I was glad for the mournful, commiserating weather—the gentle, chilly rain and the vaporous air. I’ll bet you were annoyed, though. You were probably scrambling for a taxi, running home for a hot shower and a nice, relaxing something or other before cocktails or a dinner. Or maybe you ducked in someplace to brood over a cup of coffee. Or not to brood.

In the park we were all bundled up. Everyone was wearing big, dark coats and silly, serviceable winter hats. I’d grabbed that beautiful old challis scarf of Lili’s—remember it?—from her closet to wrap around my head because I left my own particular silly, serviceable winter hat on the plane, in some fit of pure hysterical disorganization.

The children were covertly testing their galoshes in the puddles, and the adults were all soldiering on with big, black umbrellas. And then something happened. The rain got gentler and gentler, and then even gentler. And then it simply stayed where it was, hanging in the air like a beaded curtain. Everything halted; the world was between breaths—no motion, no sound…

And when the world started up again, what was falling was snow—large, airy clumps of it, like blossoms tumbling silently from a bucket.

In a moment everything was covered with big, white blossoms—us, the trees, the ground…The umbrellas looked like parasols. Everything was silent. Everything was muffled and remote, as though it were a picture. A distant brightness and the scent of flowers swelled into the air, and my heart fluttered as though I’d awakened in a picture of something that had existed briefly a long time ago—a memory.

But whose memory was it? Not mine, exactly; it wasn’t a memory of mine.

Did you look for me yesterday? Well, of course, you might not have recognized me. I wish I hadn’t been so timid! But
did
you look for me—did you have some thought like,
Yes, Anna must be here
…?

Imagine, talking about Lili all these years later! What would you have said, I wonder. For that matter, what would I have said, myself?

Because now, of course, we’re the same age, you and I, but the gap between us used to be so large! Especially when you first appeared—my eleven or twelve to your eighteen or nineteen. And naturally I developed a habit of thinking of you as the given—immutable, an adult; and I, a child, as open to scrutiny, correction, evaluation…So it didn’t even strike me until last night, hours after catching that glimpse of you (and then it struck me forcibly), that you probably didn’t even notice, back then, the things that felt, from the inside, like
me
—what constituted
me.

Did you ever hear that once when Lili cut her finger I fainted? The fact is, I’ve been waiting my whole life for her death. When I was little, years before you arrived, I used to watch her so intently…making breakfast, getting dressed for work…as though it was only my vigilance that would prevent her from vanishing off the face of the earth.

Even years after I left home, I knew when she was sick, I knew when she was frightened, I knew when something had happened to cause her pain. When the phone rang, I knew if it was Lili who was calling. And I thought surely that when she died a jagged line would streak through my heart, cracking it in two.

Well, as it happened, not at all. When the time came, as it happened, I was out in the desert, working quite serenely on some old bits of a pot, trying to grasp what they had to say about a group of people who seem to have once lived in that area, in vast pueblos. The sky was just
shining
, Peter—shining and blue—but all day long, messages were flying around right over my head.

And when I got back to Albuquerque, my answering machine was choked with frantic calls—Lionel’s, from Brooklyn, my son, Eric’s, from L.A….

But how did
you
hear, I wonder. I doubt your heart cracked in two. Did you learn from a colleague at whatever university you’re adorning these days? Or maybe one of those old men who sit all curled over on the park benches like fallen leaves spotted you and beckoned you over. Or maybe you saw the tiny notice in the
Times
; I imagine you’ve begun to check the obits these days, yourself.

A jolt, yes? Sándor, Lili, the apartment, even the sullen, dark-haired child who was me, shoved out onto the stage in front of you. I can just imagine your face: Human feelings! Right there for anyone to see—irritation, smugness, mortal panic, regret…I’m sure you cleaned it all up immediately, but it must have hurt, really, didn’t it? I’d love to know that it hurt.

Oh—the synagogue, I hasten to add, was Lionel’s doing, not mine, obviously. It was all arranged by the time Lionel got ahold of me. It was what your mother wanted, he said, preemptively. I’d absolutely sworn myself to niceness, Peter, but I’m afraid I let a long silence speak for me.

She’d have been appalled, yes? Or—what do you think?—maybe she’d just have gotten a big laugh out of the whole thing. Or is it possible that
was
what Lili wanted? Vaguely, I suppose. Who knows what sort of thing people simply suppress for decades. Or maybe she was hedging her bets there at the end. But, still—a synagogue? I doubt she’d set foot in one more than half a dozen times in her life—and as a tourist, at that. Certainly we were no more religious—she and Sándor and I—than potatoes! Not to doubt Lionel’s word, of course. He’s as honest as someone can be who can’t distinguish what he’d like to be true from the evidence in front of his face.

It’s pretty startling to see Lionel (of all people!) coming out of Lili’s old room in his bathrobe, that’s for sure. But I have to say he was good to her, after his fashion. He outwaited all the others, and eventually she was ready to be taken a little care of. She was pretty tired by then. You would have been surprised. Really, Peter—surprised.

A saint
, is what Lionel says, missing the point, as usual. And what I say is, all right, make people into saints if that’s what you want; there are worse things to do, I suppose. But I can’t help thinking that what Lili really died of was boredom.

Actually…I wonder now; I’ll bet you don’t even remember Lionel. That is, I think there wasn’t ever a time in my conscious life before Lionel was around, but he wasn’t around all that
much
till fairly recently. (Well, “recently.” You know what I mean—the last couple of decades.) But even when Lionel was around, I doubt you noticed.

Sorry. I exaggerate. I do you an injustice—you and Lionel both. I’m sure you noticed. I’m sure you noticed something taking up the best chair. Let me remind you—Lionel: Lionel drank his tea; he praised the pastry (even when he brought it himself); he’d suddenly speak up and drop onto the conversation some weighty, worthy, immovable subject that left everyone speechless; he actually seemed
delighted
when Mrs. Spiegel dropped in from across the hall (“for just a little moment,” as she always put it)…

But the fact is, Lionel sort of actually came into his own on those occasions when Lili disappeared into her room; at some point during those episodes, Lionel used, without fail, to show up, hesitating in the hallway, whispering, clearing his throat, clutching a basically useless offering of soup or coffee cake to be left at the door of Lili’s room.

During the period you were around, I know it didn’t happen so often—that Lili would just
vanish
, into the darkness behind her door. Oh, there were a couple of episodes, yes—and you, like everyone else, faded away, to leave us in “peace”—but when I was little, before you sat yourself down in our life, it was a pretty frequent occurrence.

Could you have known what that was like for me? I always, I think, simply assumed you did. But, really—how would you have?

That silence! I could cry, of course, but Lili was falling through darkness, down to a world where I couldn’t be heard or seen.

The whole apartment was silent when Lili was in her room. No visitors, obviously. There would only be Sándor, working in his room, or taking me back and forth to kindergarten or grade school, trying to entertain me with cards or alphabet games, and to make our small meals cheerful. Did I want to go out and play? No.

Go out? Go out and play, when Lili might just dematerialize forever in my absence? So you can imagine the state I’d be in, back in the days I was small, when Lili would reemerge from her room, as affectionate as ever, utterly tranquil, as though there’d been no break in continuity whatsoever.

I was in sole possession of that terrible silence then, and our apartment was full of conversation again, and laughter.

Constant visitors! All those men! Where could Lili have found them? There sure aren’t any around
these
days. Not that I much mind, Peter. But every country in Europe must have been represented, serially, on our sofa, wouldn’t you say? And then there were those big, rectangular Americans, too! But maybe you never noticed
any
of Lili’s admirers, come to think of it—even the handsome, boastful ones. To you, I’m sure, all of them would have been…just…
old.
And really, it was Sándor you were there for, wasn’t it.

Actually, of all those far-ranging types of men, there was only one that Lili had no use for: Lionel’s—that worried, deliberate, “cultured” type. She liked men who were fun—who drank whiskey, who would take her out dancing or to hear jazz, out into the world.

It never occurred to me until much, much later, of course, to marvel at the way she kept moving. She
worked
so hard, too. I think she’d cut back a lot by the time you showed up, but when I was very small she put in outrageous days at Dr. Weissbard’s office. Doing, I believe, the most tedious possible chores—the files, the phones, the bills, the checks, the appointments…Sándor would take me to school and pick me up, and sometimes one of Lili’s admirers would be drafted to take me to the park or the skating rink, but Lili managed to make me breakfast and dinner, she read to me before bed…It wasn’t until I had Eric and was working myself that I had any idea how much energy it all must have taken.

I never heard her complain. And I’d be very surprised if you did, Peter. I remember once trotting along behind her when she went into the kitchen for something to put a bunch of flowers in. She looked at the flowers as if to solicit their views on the matter, shrugged, and dropped them into a vase; I think no matter where she’d found herself, she would have experienced her life as a faintly comic, wholly inexplicable spectacle that was being rolled out in front of her.

Did it charm you? Did it irritate you? Did you find it childish?
You
, of course, were an adult. Oh, and here’s something else I remember, as if it were holy—Lili stretched out, frowning studiously at her fashion magazine, absently reaching out an arm for me to tuck myself under while I waited for the verdict:
No, this is not elegant
…