Thy Neighbor (14 page)

She blew a raspberry of dissent.

“You most certainly do. I've never seen a person so in love with his grief.”

“Oh, and you're not?” I blurted.

“In love with my grief?” she said. “No. Lord, no. That's never been my problem. I have others. Plenty of others.”

“Like what?”

Her eyes narrowed and darkened, but there was fondness in them still. We were having her conversation now, and she liked it that way.

“Like terror,” she said, flatly. “I have a great deal of trouble with terror.”

“Pardon me, Mrs. Bloom,” I countered, as usual too rough in tone, “but bullshit. You look like you're about ready to invite the reaper himself in for a drink.”

“One for the road,” she joked, lifting her mug to the toast.

“C'mon. Seriously, you can't pretend that fear is your big problem.”

“I don't have to pretend. If there's one thing in this world there's no pretense in, it's terror. Terror is not polite.”

“Terror doesn't send cards and flowers?” I jibed.

She smiled wryly.

“He most certainly does not. But then, you know that well enough yourself. He comes in like a wrecking ball cut loose.
Kerplunk
.”

Yes, I know terror well enough, I thought. You are right there. But it does not come through the wall and lodge, as graceless as an unexploded bomb. It comes like a virus in stocking feet. A creeping malaise. Just the barest scratch in the throat, a dry swallow. The prodrome of terror is just this small, a bad dream, a waking too early, an unease when the light is coming up, unease at the very fact of the light coming up.

How is that? you say, when you are still capable of wonder. What is so wrong with the dawn? Or the night? Or these things that I see every day, and have always seen every day, but which now are so—so terrible.

How to explain exactly what
is
so terrible. You cannot.

“Kerplunk” is not the word I would choose.

But I do not have a better one.

Even memory fails here.

No parrot's line to fill the gap.

Uppp . . . wait.

Wait.

Here's one.

Just in the nick.

Clear your throat and enunciate.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.

Teach that to a parrot.

Yeah.

We are never at a loss for words, are we?

Even for a loss of words.

Time passed in Mrs. Bloom's kitchen the way it passes when I'm writing this.

Hours lost.

Total absorption.

Talking with her was like being on a really great first date, a chaste date, but a great one nonetheless: the kind where you look up to order another bottle of wine and the restaurant is empty and the waiters are closing out the till.

We just talked and talked and talked, and then she heated some leftovers and we ate, and we had more coffee afterward. And it was just as she said it would be. A relief from every other strained conversation.

For me, that even included the ones I had with Monica, because there, in that kitchen, with the reclusive, the surprising, the godsent Mrs. Bloom, there was nothing at stake. No ground to take or concede. No sexual taint. No teetering desire. No threat of any kind. And no booze, pills, powders, or weeds of any kind, either. Nothing. I was flat-out clean in the presence of another human being for the first time since my parents had died.

And whaddaya know? I remember everything we said.

Everything.

She told me a lot about my mother, especially my mother and Robin. Things I didn't know, but which rang so achingly true that I knew they must be.

“Your mother had an obsession with words,” she said.

“Yes, well, she was an academic at heart,” I replied. “I guess you know she had a PhD.”

Mrs. Bloom rolled her eyes.

“God, who didn't?” She threw up her hands. “She wore it as a badge of her superiority, and with it she made it very, very clear early on that my husband and I were not on her level . . . that no one in the neighborhood was on her level, except, with the right coaching, Robin. But that was much later. At first it was a hard transition for them. Very hard, I think.”

She paused, remembering.

“You know, I'll never forget it. She and your father had us over for dinner once when they first moved into the neighborhood. You were just a baby. They were like any young professional couple coming out of the teeming think pot of New York and finding themselves in the—what did she call it?—the great cultural wastelands of the company town, I think it was. Whatever that meant.

“Anyway, they were desperate for company. Your mom especially. She seemed so shocked by motherhood and the whole of her new life. She always seemed to be looking around in disbelief, as if saying to herself: God, what have I done?”

Mrs. Bloom frowned.

“Our evening together was a total failure, of course. We had very little in common and not much to say to each other. And, well, as you know, your mother was no cook, so we couldn't even take refuge in the food.”

She pulled a sour face, her mouth forming a moue of distaste, her nose crinkling in rebuff.

“Well, you see—” She sighed conclusively. “Your mother was bored, I think. Just terribly bored, and she remained that way for the rest of her life, except when she was with you or Robin. You were the bright spots in her terrible mistake. But the rest of the time I think she was dying of boredom. She was certainly dying of boredom that night with us.

“So . . . I guess she did what bored people do. She got drunk. My, did she get drunk. And she said sharp, insulting things, most of which my husband and I couldn't make head or tail of. Only her tone gave her away. Thinking back on it now, I suppose it can be a great blessing not to know enough to know when you're being put down. Ignorance can be bliss. Or protection, anyway, when you're having dinner with the likes of Diana Walsh. Then the real digs can't hurt you. You just coast under them none the wiser, and it just seems as if you're watching a scene in a play and wondering why the hostess is so awfully upset.”

She looked at me sympathetically, as if she knew that this had happened to me, and I nodded knowingly.

“That's how it was that night, anyway,” she went on. “I remember that so well. I didn't feel hurt by the things your mother said, because I didn't understand most of them, or I didn't value the things she was chiding us for lacking enough to care. She cared about the lack much more than we did. Maybe because it meant that she could find no company with us. No like mind, as she might have said. And that was clearly very painful to her. Very painful. And that's what I saw in her that night. A woman lashing out in pain and missing her targets entirely—which, of course, only infuriated her all the more.”

She laughed regretfully.

“Oh, it was dreadful. I felt so terribly sorry for her. I wanted just to reach across the table and take her hand and tell her that it was going to be all right. And I would have, if I hadn't thought that she would slap me away. But that was your mother for you, crying for help in the same shrill voice that was bound to turn help away.”

“Bound to?” I said angrily. “You mean
designed
to. She was so perverse. So incredibly perverse. I mean, you don't say ‘Mayday, Mayday' and ‘Die, peasant, die' in the same breath. But that was standard issue for her. You're lucky you didn't understand her. I did, and it damaged me for life. It was made very clear to me many times over, and in just the way you describe, that I was only just intelligent enough to know how stupid I was. I was not a bright spot in her mistake. I
was
her mistake.”

“Oh, Nick,” she cried. “Don't say such a thing. You must know how smart and sensitive and wonderful you are. You must know that.”

“On my best days, I know, a little,” I said. “And the rest of the time all I can see is the shortfall. What I lack. What I'm not. And now that my parents are gone, that's all I'm left with.”

“But that isn't true,” she insisted. “That simply isn't true. The person who came to my door knows his value, and wants to live and be happy. And he even knows his mother loved him very dearly.”

“I don't know. Maybe. But I also know that my mother was a pompous bitch. She should have worn a sign around her neck that said,
BEWARE OF THE DOG
.”

Mrs. Bloom's expression hardened with determination, but her voice was oddly pleading.

“Yes. Okay, so your mother was a pompous bitch. So what? She was also a wonderfully complex and brilliant woman who gave my granddaughter the best of herself—the absolute best of herself—and for nothing more than the pleasure of the giving. Do you have any idea how much your mother meant to Robin? Do you?”

“Some idea,” I said. “But not all.”

“Well, you should know all. She meant the world. She saved Robin from the doldrums of being such a strange and lonely child. That poor girl was a wretched orphan who had lost her mother and her whole sense of self, and she didn't have a soul in the world that could understand her.

“Lord knows I tried. But I was never bookish in that way. I didn't have the equipment. I gave her all the love anyone could give. I cooked for her—all her favorite foods. I played with her and tried to make her laugh. I nursed her when she was sick. I gave her hugs and pats and constant encouragement, and I think it helped a little. But I couldn't do the main thing. I couldn't open her mind. I couldn't free her capabilities.

“Your mother did. She took Robin, who was so isolated and folded in on herself, unfurled her like a flag, and set her flying proudly at full mast. And for that I will be forever grateful to her memory.”

She looked away out the back window and sighed long and loud.

“Her own mother could never have done as much, I'll tell you that. Karen was just a freewheeling sprite lost in a haze of drugs. She abandoned Robin on our doorstep and went off to destroy herself.

“But your mother picked Robin up again, and I think she even managed to take away the pain of that first abandonment. She filled that hollowed-out child's mind with beautiful words, and those words were like magic spells for all the hurts of the past. They shielded her, and I think they healed her.”

She reached out and grasped my shoulder as if to transfer the passion of her thanks.

“Did you know that your mother even bought books and maps and study aids for Robin? All the time. She even gave her one of those miniature tape recorders to carry around with her, so that she could recite poems into it.”

Her contagious gesture had worked. I was paying very close attention, staring at her face.

Her blue eyes were swollen and plump, like two berries popping from the reddened whites of her eyes, shining through the meniscus of tears.

“Oh, what was it your mother said all the time?” she said. She put her forefinger to her lip pensively.

“Emphasize the spoken word? Was that it?”

She mulled this. Shook her head.

“No, it was something fancier than that.”

“The oral tradition,” I said. “Cherish the oral tradition.”

“Yes.” She clapped her hands lightly. “The oral tradition. That was it.”

“She thought that language was meant to be heard,” I explained. “And you're right—she always gassed on and on about that.”

I spoke in my mother's exaggerated voice:

“‘Nick, there is a direct line from Homer to Beckett through Shakespeare. The Bard wrote plays for a reason . . . And why? . . . So that his words would be heard.
Aloud . . .
Remember, the muse sings. She does not scratch like a chicken in the dirt. It is the lowly so-called artist who does that, and he can make no claim to any title higher than scrivener.'”

Mrs. Bloom doubled over, slapping her thighs. I struck the table and threw back my head. It must have been a minute straight we were like that, tears rolling down both our faces, our breaths coming in gasps and great heaves of silent laughter.

“You do perfect imitation,” she hooted finally.

“Yeah, well, I ought to. I had to listen to it all day. Jesus. You know, she gave me one of those recorders at one point, too, but I just used it to play pranks on my teachers and friends, and then I lost interest and threw it in a drawer and forgot about it. I probably still have it somewhere.”

“Not Robin,” said Mrs. Bloom, the evenness coming back into her voice. “Heavens, she carried that thing everywhere, I can tell you. Recording everything—dinner conversations, her own thoughts, the cat purring. Everything. It drove me crazy after a while. I had to take it away from her for a day or two just to get her to run around outside and get some exercise.”

She chuckled wistfully, her eyes clouding with memory.

“But, oh, Nick, it really was her salvation. Her absolute salvation.”

And so she was mine. Mrs. Anita Olga Ivanova Bloom. Was my salvation.

Or do I overstate? Was she instead my goad? My gadfly? My lost soul's mate for an evening? Whatever.

I was there, it must have been, until midnight. Finally we said good night.

“You are welcome here, Nick,” she said as we parted. “Anytime.”

She paused deliberately, then added:

“But only if you want to. Only then.”

And I was so grateful to her for that last bit, which she emphasized and meant. In other words, don't add me to your guilt trip. Come if you want, I'll be glad to see you, but don't bother if a dragging case of the shoulds comes into it.

“I don't want anything to do with shoulds,” she'd said. “I've damn well had enough of those.”

As I was turning up the lawn, she shouted, “Oh, and Nick— If you're ever polite to me again, I'll slap you. Got it?”

“Got it,” I said, heels together, saluting.

You were the bright spot in her mistake.