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Issue # 45 Fall 2021

Prose

Edited by Lynda Schor

 

 

 

Rosaleen Bertolino
Dresses in the Afterlife

 

Here, in Mexico, Maxine Owl keeps the photos of her deceased husband and daughter in the wall safe, as if, like her passport and extra cash, they are valuable to others, and might be stolen. From upstate New York via detours to Key West, Sedona, and Santa Fe, she now owns an art gallery in this small city popular with expatriates and tourists. There are rumors about a tragic past, but no matter how drunk Max gets, she refuses to discuss it. She keeps even boyfriends at a distance, and she hasn’t had one of those in a long while.

Forty-six years old, she lives alone and prefers it that way. No one else to worry about, not even a cat. Late at night, she sits in her hilltop home and plays solitaire on her cell phone in the dark. She’s had trouble sleeping for years and gotten to the point where nothing much works. Warm milk, melatonin, Ambien, Benadryl, pot, sleeping pills—they all helped until they didn’t.

 Lately, she’s been thinking of moving to San Pancho, a little village on the coast north of Puerto Vallarta where the cost of living is lower, and she can take a nice, long vacation until she figures out what’s next. Yesterday, she put her house on the market; the for-sale sign will be bolted to the wall next week. The real estate agent assures her that she’ll easily get twice what she paid for it. A pile of money, a fresh start.

 Three a.m., alone in the dark, losing a game. That’s when the motion-sensor lights outside flash on and Max hears footsteps.

 Someone walking across her veranda.

 Her house and garden are secured by high walls with razor wire at the top, wire intended to slice open the palms of trespassers. Has she left the front gate unlocked? She looks out the window and sees a shiny red dress float past and out of sight.

 Perhaps it’s a ghost.

 Perhaps she’s dreaming.

 Perhaps robbers are trying to lure her outside in order to burst in and ransack the house. She’s been robbed before, not at the house but the art gallery while she was distracted by customers, the thief slipping in and snatching her laptop and purse.

 She checks the front-door bolt, runs to the second floor, peers out the bedroom window. No one in the yard that she can see. Wind shivers the jacaranda trees. “Who’s there?” she shouts in Spanish, making her voice as deep and loud as possible.

 No response, except for the crickets, who go silent at her voice, then sing on. The lights have switched off and the walled yard is dark again. No point in calling the police, who in this country aren’t often to be trusted anyhow. What would she say? I saw a dress?

Maybe she was dreaming and only thought she was awake. She doesn’t remember seeing a body, not even a head. The dress was long and shiny, with a full skirt, its red the color of lipstick, of cherries, a female color, though not hers—she’s more of a purple and black person and doesn’t wear dresses. But if she dreamed the dress, what can it mean?

 Right after the accident that killed her husband and daughter Max saw black spiders throbbing on the ceiling, worms slithering under her skin. Nothing like that in years, but tonight she has a headache. So maybe that’s all this is, a kind of migraine halo.

 It’s times like this she misses Theo most. His girth, his bulk, his common sense. He might say, go back to sleep. He might say, I’m going outside to take a look around. Tonight he says nothing at all. He hasn’t said a word to her since he died.

 Max has consulted clairvoyants and fortune tellers, hoping for contact, without success. A frail medium in Vermont shook like an epileptic and told her they were happy. Bullshit. How could they be happy after dying in a car wreck?

 Suddenly tired, she climbs into bed, pulls the sheet over her head, and dozes through the dawn, through the sky warming to blue. When she wakes, the cicadas are deafening, and she’s late for work.

  But when she steps outside, there on the dry grass is a red dress.

  Her heart thuds. Is this a joke? Her front gate, built of sturdy iron bars, is locked. The street is empty. The coils of razor wire along the top of the walls gleam intact.

  The dress is big, cut for a large woman, maybe even her size, the hem dirty as if dragged on the ground.

  She picks it up. The satin is synthetic and the front is warm from the sun and smells of faded perfume. Under the top skirt is a petticoat of stiff red netting, which puffs out the top skirt and makes the dress rustle. There’s a tear in the skirt and a dull stain on the bodice. The seams are frayed. Who, except a child, would ever want to wear such a tatty thing?

  Could the dress have blown over the wall? Not likely. The walls are high, the dress is heavy—it would’ve caught on the razor wire. What should she do? Lock it inside or leave it lying on the grass? Stuff it in the garbage with the coffee grounds and banana peels? She mashes it into her leather tote and checks the locks twice before she leaves.

 

  The gallery is empty except for her sullen assistant. Maribel, absorbed by her cell phone, doesn’t even look up when Max walks in. Annoyed—what does she pay Maribel for if not to greet potential customers—she drops the tote onto her desk. “Hel-lo!”  

   Maribel waves, ignoring Max’s sarcasm. Two sales today. One a coup—a landscape that’s been on the wall for two years. The couple who bought it paid cash and Maribel’s already contacted the shipping company. Instantly, Max forgives her. She thought they’d never sell the piece.

   But as they debate what to hang in its place, Max wonders about the gleam in Maribel’s eyes. Maribel has the keys to her house—for bringing art back and forth, to check on the place when Max is out of town.

   Maribel won a residency for six months in Madrid right out of art school. Now, stuck in her hometown through inertia and lack of opportunity, she seems restless, accumulating tattoos and piercings and not much else. Max reserves a space at the entrance for Maribel’s work, which, although it rarely sells, attracts attention and walk-ins. Conceptual stuff—twelve-foot zippers, a dollhouse built from trash. At the moment, a giant hourglass filled with buttons instead of sand is on display. 

Max pulls the dress out of her tote, magician with a rabbit.

Maribel’s eyes crinkle, amused. “For me?” She doesn’t look the least bit guilty.

 “Last night I heard footsteps,” Max says. “Saw a dress float past the window. What the hell, right? I thought was dreaming. This morning, there this was, lying on the grass.”

 “Seriously?” Maribel’s face glows. Yes, she looks thrilled, which is in itself suspicious. Max has never seen Maribel thrilled before.

 “I think someone’s trying to freak me out.”

 Maribel’s expression becomes flatter. “Who would want that?”

 “You tell me. The gate was locked.”

 “Wow.” Maribel’s fingers spring away from the dress as though the fabric is hot. “Maybe a ghost? I wonder who lived in your house before?”

 “Ok, right,” Max says. Maribel’s remarks make her stiffen, too much like those charlatans that she once spent a fortune on. She’s lived in the house for three years without a hint of the supernatural. Why now that she’s trying to sell it? Exactly the kind of thing to muck up a deal. She crams the dress back into the tote. “See you later, possum.” And goes next door to Felix’s bar, which even though it’s just past noon is already almost full.

 Bars make money; art galleries don’t.

 The bartender mixes her Scotch and soda the way she likes it, light on the soda, three ice cubes. Cheers. Bubbles, peat, and bitter caramel in her mouth. The first sip always the best.

 She takes the vacant table at the back so that she can peek in her purse. The dress is still there, a glossy crumple. How did whoever left it get in and out last night? Were they watching while she shouted from the window?

 Who besides Maribel and the real estate agent have a key to her house?

 The housekeeper and the gardener, of course—both of them old, humble, loyal. The culprit can’t possibly be them, though maybe their children or grandchildren? No, even their kids wouldn’t play a joke like that. If those kids were going to rob a house, they’d wait until she was out of town, slip in as inconspicuously as cats. And no one in that family would discard a fancy dress. They’d sell it at a garage sale or cut away the frayed pieces and sew what was left into a gown for a plaster saint.

 She’ll change the locks.

 “Heya!” Felix plunks himself down at Max’s table, gripping a frosty margarita. Gnarled, pot-bellied, red-nosed, he reminds her of a German Christmas ornament. “Just got back from PV. Fresh fish breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Those shrimp skewers, ever had one of those? Met the cutest little senorita, too.” This is so obviously a lie that Max perks up.

 “Well! Picture?”

 Felix fumbles with his phone, wait, wait, here, and Max is disappointed to see she actually exists. Not pretty, but sexy—plenty of cleavage, dramatic make-up, and at least sixty. But Felix is a gnome in his seventies, so lucky man.

 “Better get yourself tested,” she says.

 Felix flushes the color of raw meat. “I’m too old for that.”

 “For an STD? Don’t think so.” This comes out sounding meaner than she meant. Maybe the woman wasn’t a prostitute, and if she was, so what? “Sorry. I’m a jerk.” Remorse loosens her tongue further. “The strangest thing, last night. I heard someone outside, walking around on the veranda. Saw something, too.” She yanks the dress from her bag. “Found it this morning.”

 Felix raises his thick white eyebrows. “Big party last night?”

 “Nope. All by myself, 3AM. Heard footsteps. Saw the dress float by my downstairs window.”

 “Looks like your size,” says Felix. “Never mind! Just kidding. Maybe one of your neighbors was getting romantic and threw it over the fence.” His wet fingers leave a mark on the scarlet skirt. This violation annoys Max, even though the dress is cheap and worn.

 “It’s a ten-foot wall. Razor wire all along the top.”

 Felix winks and hums the theme song to “The Twilight Zone.” He scratches his hairy ear. “Bet it was kids horsing around. I can come over and look.”

 He’s probably right, Max thinks. But tonight, she wouldn’t mind a little company.

           

           

 “Nice place,” Felix says. What everyone says the first time they come to your house, even if you live in a tarpaper shack. It’s modest by expat standards, two small stories of concrete block, plastered and painted white. The downstairs an open living-kitchen space; the upstairs two bedrooms and a bath. A spiral staircase leads to the rooftop terrace. The view is why Max bought the house—the dark mountains to the north and west, the red-roofed town spread out to the south and east. Queen of the hill.

 Felix wants to see where she found the dress. He circles the spot and gazes around the yard, his face impassive, like a TV detective. She watches him, expecting a grand pronouncement: the culprit, Colonel Mustard in the library with a rope.

 “Why don’t you have security cameras?”

 “Should I?” More money out the door. Felix doesn’t have to scrimp like she does. The bar is full every night and he’d like to expand, more stools, maybe a kitchen. He’s offered to buy out her lease if she ever decides to close the gallery. She hasn’t yet told him that she’s about take him up on the offer. Some uncertainty holds her back. She wants to be able to change her mind.

 Back inside the house, she pours them glasses of Scotch and makes grilled cheese sandwiches. Gooey and crunchy and good—the secret is mayonnaise on both sides of the bread.

 Felix inhales his and stretches his arm along the couch like he owns the place. “Ever been married?”

 Max stops chewing. Where did that question come from? “Yep.”

 “How many times?”

 She doesn’t like where this is heading. “Two.”

 “Three for me,” says Felix, as though number of spouses is a contest and he’s won. “Children?”

 “Can we move on?” says Max, blood pressure rising. A mistake to have invited him here. If he keeps pushing, she’ll claim a headache and ask him to leave. She gulps the rest of her Scotch.

 “Oh sure, sorry, delicate territory.” He looks like a child who’s just been scolded for doing something it doesn’t think was wrong.

 Although he’d promised to stay awake with her, he falls asleep on the couch, snoring like a lawn mower. But if something happens, she can wake him.

 It’s almost 4 AM and Max aches. Not emotionally but literally, physically—her hips, her feet, back, neck. She stands at the window, staring into the dark yard.

 Zipping down the highway, on their way back from the mall where they’d just bought Betsy her middle-school graduation dress—navy blue chiffon with spaghetti straps—too grown-up for a thirteen-year-old in Max’s opinion. They’re late for lunch at Theo’s parents’ house. Max is driving because Theo put a nail through his thumb the day before. All of them tired, cranky, when Betsy screams, “there’s a bee in my hair!” Max turns to look, why does she turn to look? The truck comes out of nowhere. The thud and crackle of metal against metal, shattered glass, crushed flesh, blood. Darkness comes and after the darkness, light, the light people are said to experience as they are dying, a warm yellow light into which she wants to melt even though she knows it might not be real, that it might just be her brain trying to make dying comfortable.

 She fought it. Her daughter needed her, and her husband—how would they survive without her? But when she came back, they already were gone.

           

 In the morning, Felix and Max take their coffee outside. No clothes on the damp grass. “No bodies, either,” he says. His eyes are kind.

 “No heads in coolers,” she says, relieved. They bump fists.

 He yawns. “No offense to your couch, but I prefer my bed.”

 Later that day, a man comes and changes every lock—the front gate, the front door, the back door, the door to the roof. He installs two video cameras, one at the front gate, facing the road, and one at the back of the yard. Max doesn’t give anyone the new keys—not Maribel, not the housekeeper or gardener, not even the real estate agent—not yet. She wants to see if anything will happen.

 At the gallery that afternoon, Maribel confesses that she’s a witch, the good kind, and Max believes that Maribel really believes that.

 “Can you do a spell to make the gallery profitable?” she jokes.

 “I can try,” says Maribel.

 Max regards her with suspicion and affection. How amazing to be young and certain of impossible things. She blows her a kiss and heads to the bar.

 A few days pass and nothing happens. The change of locks and the video cameras appear to have done the job. But what about the red dress? She still hasn’t solved that puzzle. Word has spread, through Felix or Maribel or maybe both, and people keep asking her to tell the story. Some shiver or cross themselves, others eye her skeptically as if Max herself has done something distasteful, like whip off her panties and wave them in the air, just for the attention. Her real estate agent is concerned. “You will have to declare it,” he says.

 “That I found a dress in my yard?”

 “Yes.”

 Jesus. Maybe it’s some creep trying to get her to lower the price.

 Late that night, tipsy and unable to sleep, she takes the dress from the closet and fingers the satin. As a little girl she would have loved a dress like this—bright as a red balloon. It does look close to her size. She undresses, puts it on. The dress is by no means a perfect fit. Hard to breathe and she has to lift the skirts to walk. The netting scratches her thighs.

 The outside lights flash on.

 Max freezes. Maybe it was a bat winging too close to the motion sensor, a non-event. The lights switch off. The yard is dark again. She tiptoes downstairs and shines a flashlight around, just in case. No movement. But there’s something on the grass.

 Her spine is ice. It’s a blue dress. Small, sized for a skinny teenager. Like the other, it’s long and formal, but with a different personality—puff-sleeved and high-waisted, with a sash, like an old-fashioned bridesmaid dress, its fabric both rough and slippery, as if made of powdered fish scales or spit and sand. This one, too, is frayed, with perspiration stains under the arms, a sour smell, and somehow sadder because of its pale innocent blue.

 She checks the video footage, but there’s only a cloudy swirl when the lights flashed on. All the years of waiting with nothing, and now this. Is Betsy trying to reach her? Max pushes the thought away. It’s been twelve years. But if it is her daughter reaching out at last, what is she trying to say and why did she wait until now to say it?

 It’s almost midnight but she texts Maribel anyhow. “Come over with your witch gear tomorrow night.” Despite the late hour, Maribel responds instantly. Thumbs up.

 She arrives just before sunset, with sage, feathers, powders, and cups. She’s dressed like always in high-top sneakers, skinny black jeans, and a plain t-shirt. Max is disappointed, having thought she might arrive in embroidered robes. Maribel’s gaze is steely and her nose rings gleam as she studies the dresses.

 Max’s daughter, if she’d lived, would be twenty-five, the same age as Maribel. If her daughter had turned out like Maribel, she wouldn’t have been disappointed, not at all, but she might have been worried. Maribel is one of those twenty-somethings who don’t seem have a social life. She spends her evenings babysitting her nieces and nephews and once in a great while Skypes with an artist she met in Madrid.

 Maribel decides they’ll summon the spirit up on the terrace.

 The sunset is creamy with clouds, the sun a smear of blood red. “Would you like a drink?” Max asks, wanting one herself. Maribel nods.

 When she comes back, Maribel’s arranged the cups in a square, filled each with a colored powder, and lit the sage, which spills ruffled white smoke.

 Maribel says they should wear the dresses and pulls the blue dress on over her t-shirt and jeans. It’s too big. She looks ridiculous and sulky, a little bit insane.

It takes two shots of tequila, but Max finally puts the red dress on, like Maribel did, on top of her clothes. The zipper won’t even zip. She’s scared. What if something actually comes? What will it say? Who will it be?

Maribel sprinkles orange powder on Max’s head and waves white smoke around. Max stands with her eyes closed while Maribel circles her, humming. Stay calm, she thinks, but she isn’t. Do people age after they’ve died? She tries to project openness, positivity. Forgive me. I’m sorry. I will always love you.

What if the spirit when it comes doesn’t love her back? What if it hates her? What if it’s intent on wrecking her already wrecked life? Max wants another drink but is afraid to move.

The sun slips down and the sky turns a vivid pink while Maribel stands as still as a statue, head bowed, chanting something Max can’t make out.

Max’s nose itches. Slowly she lifts her hand to scratch it. She waits as long as she can stand it. “Well?” Her voice sounds loud and petulant, but her feet hurt and she’d like to sit down.

“Sometimes spirits are shy,” says Maribel. “We might have to try another time. Maybe when the moon is full. I’ll have to research.”

How do you research summoning ghosts?

Sick with disappointment, Max pours herself more tequila. Foolish of her to hope for contact, she should have learned that by now. She drops into the nearest chair.

Maribel crawls into the hammock and swings back and forth. She hikes up the dress and plucks a cigarette out of her pocket. Lights up, bounces a foot, and smiles at Max. Cool as a cucumber. “When I was a little girl we had a fantasma who lived in the kitchen,” she says. “At night she came out and pounded on the table. Later a neighbor told us a lady killed herself there.”

“I’ve never seen a ghost,” Max admits. “Not once in my entire life. What do you think that means?”

Maribel stubs out her cigarette on the tiles and shrugs. “Maybe you did and didn’t know it.”

Max considers this. Maybe. Or maybe this whole thing is Maribel’s latest art project. She could have dropped the dresses into the yard using a window-washer’s pole, or a drone. She could be documenting it all in some edgy little video that she’ll post on YouTube, or display at some snotty Mexico City gallery along with the two dresses and drawings of the dresses, etc.

“Is this one of your art things?”

Maribel’s black eyes flare as she struggles to a seated position. The hammock rocks. “What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean? You’re young and bored, why not stir up a little excitement.”

When Maribel finally answers, her voice has an icy edge. “What makes you think I’m bored?”

Max has caused offense and isn’t sure how to navigate back to safe ground. She plucks at her satin skirt. “I think you could do better than this town, that’s all.” Although perhaps this sideways apology only digs her in deeper.

Smoke curls up from Maribel’s cigarette. Her face is expressionless. She doesn’t speak.

“If you moved to Mexico City, maybe you’d have a social life. You could get yourself an interesting boyfriend, for instance.”

Maribel looks away, her pretty brown foot tapping the tile. “I like girls.”

I’m an idiot, Max thinks. That shouldn’t have been hard to figure out, if she’d been paying attention. But Maribel is an employee, which has given Max the luxury of not thinking about her much at all. Now she can’t think of anything to say that won’t make it worse.

The sky is a rich lavender. The wind gusts. Across the road, the neighbor’s rooftop laundry line flaps wildly and a dishrag flies off.

“Maybe the wind blew the dresses here,” says Max, relieved. “That explains it. No ghosts. No art experiments.”

“If you believe that,” snaps Maribel. “Why do you ask for help from me, a witch?”

Good question.

“Maybe even ghosts are afraid of you. Maybe you should go fuck yourself, because I am only trying to help and you don’t appreciate.”

“Okay,” says Max. She’s never seen her assistant enraged before. As a peace offering, she passes the tequila. She thought she knew Maribel, but she doesn’t. Friendly but not friends is Max’s motto. Because if you let people get too close, they become inconvenient in all sorts of ways. They want to know things about you, secret, sad things, things they say aren’t your fault, then hold against you, and bring up during fights. Max is doing just fine not forgiving herself; she doesn’t need anyone else helping out with that. She can feel like shit all on her own. Long before she arrived in Mexico, she learned to seal herself closed like an envelope. It really is time to sell the house and move on.

Maribel passes the tequila back. They are well on their way to being drunk. The sky is indigo and their dresses swell and flatten in the wind like sails.

That’s when the motion-sensors flash on and something balloons past them and lands in the grass below. Max’s heart is a runaway horse. Maribel puts her finger to her lips.

They creep downstairs and out into the yard.

Another dress on the dark grass. Tiny, a girl’s size, polyester organza as yellow as the center of a daisy, with tarnished silver sequins and an odor like an exploded firecracker. Perhaps there’s a factory in heaven that churns out damaged, dirty dresses and rains them down on guilty mothers.

“What does it mean?” whispers Max, faint with gratified horror.

“I don’t know.”

Before leaving, Maribel gives Max a fierce, sweet hug. Tears spring into Max’s eyes. Good to leave town while everyone still likes her. Best that way.

           

Max wakes late the next morning. Through the open window, cicadas already sing their harsh, grating tune. Downstairs, the three dresses are draped on chairs in the living room. The slippery red, the sandy blue, the crisp yellow. She sits on the sofa and regards them. “Speak,” she says. “What do you want me to do?”

No answer.

What should she do? Her heart is like a dull, old bell. Maybe she’ll run away. Pack a bag and slip out. Let the real estate agent take it from here.

But word has gotten out. That evening, a priest rings her doorbell and when Max doesn’t answer, slips his business card under the door with a note. He is willing to perform an exorcism. People leave offerings at her gate. Flowers, hair ribbons, baskets, notes to missing girls. Her real estate agent won’t return her calls.

Felix calls. “There are people in town who want to dig up your yard. What’s going on?”

“Three dresses now.”

He laughs. “What are you going to do?”

From inside her house, Max watches a family tie a pink ribbon to her gate. “Have another drink? I don’t know. What do you suggest?”

“I’m ready to buy your lease out anytime, sweetheart.”

“I know.”

 

Maribel has talked Max into another cleansing ritual. Put on the dresses, see what happens. This should mollify those who have petitioned to excavate Max’s garden.

“I believe the yellow dress will fit my niece,” says Maribel.

“No!” says Max, stamping one foot on the floor, putting her foot down, literally.

“Why not?”

“Why not? Because I don’t want the entire town at my house. Privacy. Heard of that?”

“You think it’s better to keep the miracle for yourself.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Maribel snorts. “What makes you think that the dresses have anything to do with you?”

Well, for one thing, it’s her house isn’t it? Then she relents. It’s that, probably, or men with shovels. “Fine. But not everyone in town, please. Not the whole parish. Not the priest. You, your niece, that will be ok.”

“My sister, too.”

“Why?”

“Because Chela is only eight.”

 

At nine-thirty or so, when Maribel, her sister, and niece arrive, the dark sky is curdled with clouds and the rising moon is a lopsided egg. Maribel’s sister, plump and curly haired, looks nothing like her but little Chela is a dead ringer—small and skinny with a kittenish face. As Max feared, there are at least fifteen more people trailing behind—little boys with plastic pistols, young mothers with babies, leathery men, a few in suits and cowboy hats, whispering adolescents, an old lady with a crutch and one leg. Dogs, too, slinking about. They cluster around the closed gate, peer in.

Max will never feel at home in this country—that’s probably one reason she’s still here—it feels safer on the margins. But she can tell they think she’s being rude. Selfish foreigner, hogging the miracle as though she owns it.

“Fine,” she says, and opens the gate.

They flow in, greeting her politely, even the little boys, who holster their toy guns in their waistbands.

On with the dresses. Three tawdry princesses. Max, Maribel, little Chela, who lifts her crisp yellow skirt and twirls.

Waiting, Max had thought they would be silent, but the boys begin a gun fight (‘you’re dead, I killed you,’ one insists), people gossip, several men pass a bottle. Maribel is wearing bright pink lipstick while Max, shivering, can hardly breathe in the tight dress.

Clouds curtain the moon. Flashes of lightning above the mountains. Thunder. Max would really like a drink. She wonders if they’ll all be struck by lightning or drowned in a storm of clothes. One raindrop, then two. More. Fat, juicy drops. Soon it’s pounding down so hard you can’t see. People shriek and run onto the veranda for shelter, pressed together, steamy, wet, friendly. Maribel is laughing. It’s as silly as a birthday party. Jostled and warm, Max wishes she’d thought to buy a cake.

By the time the rain has tapered off and everyone has left, the yard is a muddy mess from the combination of rain and all those feet. Could it look any worse if they had dug it up? Wrapped in a bathrobe, Max cautiously inspects what’s left of the grass with a flashlight. There’s something white under the plumbago, which turns out to be a disposable diaper folded up tightly like a nasty present.

Then she sees a small white bundle on the seat of a chair. A discarded baby? Heart thudding in her ears, she approaches. It’s a christening gown, soaking wet, linen, with lace at the cuffs and collar, embroidered with plastic pearls and exuding a faint scent of mothballs.

Babies don’t know to protect their hearts, that’s why they’re able to sit as erect as buddhas. It’s life that teaches you to slump. Her daughter’s gravely little voice; she always sounded like she had a cold. The clarity of her blue eyes. Her skin soft as pudding.

Back then, right after, a neighbor said to her, it could have happened to anyone of us. Yes, but it hadn’t. And in the grocery store, people swerved their carts away.

Before the accident, Max had taken for granted that her husband and daughter would always be in her life—leaving empty toilet paper rolls on the bathroom counter instead of in the wastebasket where they belonged (Theo) or shrinking away from her jokes like a salted snail (Betsy, age thirteen). Now it seems to Max that her entire life with them was nothing but a mirage—families aren’t real, they don’t last. Only loss endures, like bones.

The tiny gown is sodden and silent in her hands. What will happen next, that’s what she wants to know. Is she ready? Will she ever be? And what if Betsy and Theo have been here all along, and all she needs to do is turn around and look?

 

 

 

 

 

Amy Cotler
Trying

 

Four years into our marriage, babies appeared out of nowhere. Strollers popped up around every corner in our downtown industrial neighborhood. Each day, they grew plumper and sweeter, like juicy peaches in the sun. I wanted a bite. My biological clock had kicked in and I was its slave.

When the elevator opened on the 20th floor to a generic doctor’s waiting room, we’d been trying to conceive for too long. So, I’d told my husband not to come, though he’d asked, as usual. What could he do anyway?

The room was clean, but with jaundiced walls. The air smelled sanitary. Vertical shades covered the window, except for a small crack, which let in a peek of the skyscraper across the street, grey against a grey sky. I was shivering slightly from the frosty day outside, so I didn’t take off my coat, though I spotted nowhere to stash it anyway. A nurse eyed me from her desk, calling out my name. I nodded and sat on one of the padded banquettes lining the wall. Women from a different clan surrounded me. All had something unnatural about the uniform color of their hair. Wigs, I thought, orthodox Jews.

By then, I’d sat in wait for so many infertility doctors I knew the drill. The talk is sad and muted, though sometimes a woman would break in: Have you been here before? And then on occasion we’d share our stories of trying. In this room, no one looked up, save one, a young woman who met my eyes then quickly looked away. Like the others, she was dressed black, white and gray.  My people, but not my people, I thought. I’m a secular Jew.

The waiting room was unnaturally silent — all women, except for one man in a high-topped fur hat and thick wool coat, which he hadn’t taken off.  I hadn’t removed my hat, nor my coat either, though the women had theirs neatly folded on their laps. Do orthodox women find warmth in their faith? Perhaps they do. For me, the extra heat emanating from my puffy goose down coat felt like a hug. A child sitting on one gray lap began to cry. Her mom shushed her. I’d heard these women are expected to give birth regularly.  Who knows how many children they already had?

My body began to remember, as it always did, that I was no stranger to uncomfortable doctor visits. But the experience hadn’t inoculated me. Instead, each visit grew worse. After the allergenic get stung the first time, their reactions grow stronger and more violent with each sting. My first sting came in a gynecologist’s office at 17 years old. I was a virgin, so was especially uneasy when the doctor invaded my privacy by inserting a cold speculum between my legs. Almost immediately, there was the sharp snip. The explanation when I looked up into the doctor’s impassive face? “I removed a polyp,” he said. Stunned, I rode home in silence. His violation without warning superseded the pain. Is this what it means to be a woman? I wondered.

By the time I reached this office, I’d been scolded by medical professionals numerous times. “It’s tough on our end,” one doctor complained to me before a third surgery to remove an endometrial cyst. “Redheads have sensitive skin inside and out.”

I am past insemination, I thought, in that office, remembering other tries, other times a doctor turkey-basted my husband’s tadpoles way up inside me. On the first try I’d let out a short cry. Immediately, the nurse silenced me. “If you think this is painful,” she said, “you should try childbirth.”

As it turned out, DES, the medication my mother took during pregnancy, gave me a congenital deformity. I had a closed cervix, hence the pain. Those little boys couldn’t swim up, so I had to be dilated. For my second try, I self-hypnotized, working with a shrink who taught me how, so I wouldn’t need any pain meds, which I worried might affect my child-to-be. “You’re very hypnotizable,” he told me, after quickly putting me under three times. I was. It helped when I rolled my eyes back, my mind walking slowly down steps to the sea. There may have been pain, but it was far away.

Still, I could not get pregnant. So, on that day, in that office, I was there to find out what else was wrong. A nurse ushered me into a standard gynecologist’s examination room filled with posters for pills, a diagram of the reproductive system with a plastic facsimile on the counter. I noticed a cotton ball on top of a bottle of alcohol, waiting. I strained to keep my eyes on that bottle, but couldn’t avoid the shiny stirrups at the end of the table, waiting for the doctor to ask me to skootch my butt forward, so he could pry.

On the phone, before my appointment, I was told they would shoot dye up into my tubes and uterus to read my anatomy, to understand why I still couldn’t get pregnant. Why hadn’t they done this earlier? That’s not the way it works. First you try, having sex when you are ripe for a year or more, sticking a pillow under your butt, or climbing your legs up the wall or whatever you think might help just one sperm to make contact. Then they do more, much more.

Above me, the ceiling had a fan, but it wasn’t running. The door was out of sight. I only imagined his breath on my vagina. Then I heard him snap on his gloves, and the chilly speculum entered. Something sharp as the dye entered me. I screamed. “You must be quiet,” he said, “You’ll frighten the women in the waiting room.” I should, I thought, then they’ll know.

The pain subsided and I was up, ushered out too quickly. I walked unevenly to the desk, past the women, who cast their eyes down, or so it seemed, not me, never me, I imagined them thinking. Down the hall, doors slid open; a fog descended inside the elevator. They opened again to the sting of cleanser in the building’s lobby. I lurched out into a street. It was too bright, the cold slapping my face, a jumble of noise, someone yelling at a newsy. I raised my arm up weakly and a checkered cab pulled up to take me home, downtown to my husband.

The grungy stairs leading up to our loft lay ahead of me, in sharp contrast to the sterile doctor’s office. Slowly, a tad doubled over, I hiked up. The walls seemed to push up against me, whispering, almost there, almost there. Key inserted, door open, I sat down on the floor before I could reach our bed.

My husband rushed over. “Oh no. You should have let me come,” He stood above me, looking down at my white face, blue lips.

“I thought I could handle it,” I told him.

“But this is too much,” he said, though we had to wait for the results.

 That night my husband slept softly beside me, while I squirmed, my body buzzing impatiently, waiting for my child. In the darkness, I heard the insistent replay of my doctors’ voices, all of them oddly irritated that they couldn’t get me pregnant. Of course, I didn’t know then that the ending would be as it should have been, only that I couldn’t control the now.

But I could stop trying. So I did.

As it turns out, at the same time, our daughter Emma was waiting inside Lisa, her birthmother’s body, curled into the fetal position in her womb. She occasionally noshed on the pizza that Lisa snacked on during her after school shift at Domino’s, down in Tennessee.

When I found out that she would be ours, I read too many articles. In one, I heard babies cry in the language they hear in the womb. I wondered what a German cry versus a French cry might sound like, but mostly whether Emma would cry with a southern accent. I knew I couldn’t tell the difference between cries, yet it was easier than wondering whether she’d miss one special southern voice. 

I didn’t know then that our newborn daughter would be so long and thin, that she’d hang off the pediatrician’s baby scale when he weighed her on her first visit. She’d be 2 days old, fair and hairless, born to a stranger, in small hospital in the deep south. A uniformed nurse would sit me in a rocker, where’d she hand me a swaddled newborn who I’d pull toward me, cradling her head in my lap.

Then, as I tipped back to rock, I would hear Lisa’s doctor tell me how healthily Lisa ate while pregnant with our daughter, and that she loved broccoli more than pizza. I love broccoli, too. Its bright green crunch is exhilarating.

 

 

 

 

 

Carole Rosenthal
Chapter 3 from The Goldie Files

This excerpt from a novel called The Goldie Files, set primarily in New York’s East Village, takes place as an old man dies in his hospital bed, a murder mistaken for a natural death. Days after the funeral, the old man’s son, a filmmaker, meets a close childhood friend to discuss newly emerging information about his father’s life. Uncovering the old man’s choices will lead to a trove of Nazi-plundered art and terrifying family crises.

 

Xanthea
1983

I couldn’t get back in time for the funeral.  I talked to Marty from the Caribbean where I’d been chasing a skip-trace who’d made off with one of the Richter Gallery’s paintings. On the phone, Marty sounded down-and-out about his loss, especially about “things” that he and his father would never share. What kind of things? The two of them had shared an unnerving competition in real life, I’d noticed even as a kid. What are you competing for? I’d asked once. Marty’s answer, bottom-line bullshit: My mother’s approval.  A college therapist told him that over twenty years ago, when we were students together. The Wisdom of the times, blame Mom, blame families, a hotbed of adversaries.  But I didn’t learn that lesson. Lonely and displaced from a rural setting, raised by a long-dead Brooklyn grandmother, I longed to be part of something larger, like Marty’s family—a clan that consisted of noisy aunts, uncles, and children across the street.  They lived across the street from me and stirred wistfulness and envy in me. I studied them, I invested them with promise and glamor and refused to see them through Marty’s eyes, or with his cynicism, until separate experiences taught me more. When the family’s conflicts grew to involve me too, I copied Marty’s demeanor. 

Waiting for Marty in Larissa’s café, a casual neighborhood joint where we’d been meeting for years before he moved to L.A., I slouched against a patched vinyl back booth and considered the tone I’d detected on the phone, an I’ve-Got-A-Secret flash underlying Marty’s shock and the grief. I wasn’t imagining it, I knew Marty much too well. So I’d arrived early to snag a seat facing the front door for an unrehearsed-for view of him when he walked in.  But the cafe was filling, and Marty was typically late. Twenty-five minutes so far. He could be maddening.  Mr. Royalty. Marty, The Prince. That’s the way his mother treated him, like a prince.  

Meanwhile, my empty stomach growled audibly after a third cup of coffee and I knew I couldn’t hog this booth to myself much longer. Other customers hovered, long-haired East Village types in chains and dark glasses and black-buckled boots eying me with resentment, a few bearing last night’s tattered glamor and specks of glitter. One of the all-night clubs had just let out. In this neighborhood, storefront clubs sprouted up, illegally, then disappeared fast, known only by word of mouth. More folks humped in jackets and great-coats exploded through the front door, stripping gloves and blowing on their fingers, assessing the table and booth situation before jostling to the counter to settle for take-out. Hot borscht, Ukrainian soup, Larissa’s specialty.  

I looked out the window. Steam-clouded, no views. No sign of Marty. Normally, Tompkins Square Park at the end of the block, enclosed in stern iron railings, is a hub of activity, kids streaking by on roller skates, ancient immigrants and young mothers lining its benches, hippies in semi-occupation sleeping under the band shell, and I might expect to see Marty’s long stride. But today even drug dealers were staying home to keep warm instead of scouting potential customers and hissing their wares (“Elavils, ecstasy, sensimillia, V’s, hash . . . “). 

Lately though, dealers no longer hissed at me when I passed, though it took me a while to notice. What changed? A stupid question. A frequent mistake of my generation, we’d been catered to as young for too long. Did I still imagine myself as one of those delectable long, tall Sallys like in Little Richard’s song? These days I have a daughter only a few years younger than me when I first moved here. Last week, a well-known hawker suddenly, casually, sped off, pulling up his collar as if spotting a nark when I checked him out.

Time has finally made me respectable. At least I’m still tall. 

But the neighborhood trends young, so it’s easy to deceive yourself. All these kids rushing around me on the streets. Kids. But I was no longer one of them. I’d been living here even before the East Village was called the “East Village”–and Marty and I had sneered at this designation devised in the 1960s by real estate agents to drive up rents. The term itself implied arty panache and when I moved here from Brooklyn, Marty and I had our own sense of panache, we scoffed at anything captioned commercial. I prided myself on being tough and tender, living in one of the edgiest parts of town, long considered a slum. High crime rates, yet low rents. The East Village teemed with underground excitement for us, with artists and writers and anarchists and filmmakers. Artists could only afford low rents and, as students, we already considered ourselves artists. Our apartment featured a kitchen with a bathtub in it, an old-fashioned clawfoot with a lid that doubled as a kitchen counter when it was not in use. Marty and I hiked to classes at Cooper Union on streets that felt exotic to us, our own street nearer the river featuring a last straggle of old-time peddlers selling vegetables and old clothes from the backs of trucks, calling out bargains. Our downstairs neighbor, a drag singer billed as Coco “The Crooning Coconut,” introduced us to poets and artists who hung out at Stanley’s Bar on Avenue B before we migrated to The Dom on St. Marks Place—which later became the Electric Circus and Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable and eventually Lady Carpenter for female ex-cons. Lou Reed played there, getting his start. 

We’d escaped from Brooklyn. We’d thrilled at becoming ourselves.

Anyway I still live here, around the corner, a building I bought with my ex-husband. But Marty doesn’t. He moved to LA last year to pursue his career as a filmmaker. I missed him a lot. “That’s what real adults do, you know. They pursue their careers,” he’d said when he made the decision, and we laughed ironically at the concept of “real adults” and at the discrepancy between what we knew but didn’t fully take in. This week, sad circumstances returned Marty to New York. He took his father to the hospital, where his father died of a massive stroke.

That death grieved me. His father had been important to me. 

But my career was in crisis, and I hoped to discuss that subject with Marty too. Somehow it was dividing into two careers, neither bringing in enough steady cash. I was an artist first, a painter, but I’d also become an investigator for art galleries and collectors recently, almost by accident.  My dealer, Gaby Richter of Soho gallery fame, had discovered my talent for tracking down “borrowed” or missing art pieces and identifying the people who stole it. Often—surprise, surprise—the culprits turned out to be collectors themselves. The shift didn’t feel unnatural in the beginning. 

Gaby persuaded me to work for her and then for some of her friends, investors, collectors, other dealers, and it paid well. I was grateful, but the work was spotty. Also secretive, requiring delicacy, not one of my natural traits so I’d had to focus on that part. Ever since the Marlborough Gallery scandal, the defrauding of an entire estate, attention had glared on the art market, its mystique and prestige tarnished. Yet soon the art community was reinvigorated by large sums of money. Head-spinning amounts at auction, prices rocketing by the early 1980s. A Van Gogh sold for forty-eight million dollars, and a Julian Schnabel for $93,500. Schnabel was my contemporary. So why wasn’t more money coming my way? Hard to figure out. Gaby controlled my gallery income and she swore she had future wonders in store. But Gaby was unreliable, a source of my problems too, because she pushed in opposing directions, she wanted me to produce saleable canvases for her gallery but also to hire out my services, to be a tipster. Investigative services take time, time when I could be working on my paintings. Some years I made a lot on my art, other years, nothing. I had the feeling that Gaby was pushing me harder as an investigator lately than as a painter.

I had a new series I was stoked about, abstract, emotionally expressive, semi-autobiographical, and I needed Gaby right now to broadcast its value.

I was thinking about my fresh paintings from this series and my relationship with Gaby when I heard Marty’s voice calling to me from inside the restaurant, and by the time I spotted him he was almost upon me— 

“Thea! Xanthea, Thea!” 

He was elbowing through the clumps of hoverers, swinging a briefcase, a goodlooking man in his forties but long and loose-hinged like an adolescent, his red hair tucked under a fedora, one forelock springing free. He pushed the fedora back on his head like an old-fashioned newspaper reporter when he caught my eye. Very natty, that hat on his father who’d looked like a 1950s movie actor, but not Marty’s style. No more than the short tweed overcoat that didn’t quite fit. His mother’s doing most likely, forcing warm clothing on him. Marty had always been concerned with style, with having the right look, but he’d dumped his heavy outerwear when he moved away. The costume displayed him at odds with himself, no longer at odds with the father. 

I rose, he hugged me—the faintest reek of mothballs—and we kissed hard.  Not romantically, of course, no tongue.  Never romantically, not even during the brief period we’d been engaged to get married, a purely practical move.

Platonic love, the best kind, it never deserts you. 

“Sorry I’m late.” He leaned back and regarded me with deep approval.

“You’re always late.” The words popped out of my mouth. 

He dropped the briefcase onto the formica table, then slid back into the booth. “Sorrier than usual today.”

“Oh, Marty, I’m sorry. Really sorry, what a lot to go through. How are you? How’s your mother doing?”

He was staying in Brooklyn in what had become only his mother’s apartment, and that apartment had been robbed during his father’s funeral. A crime of opportunity, the police called it. Not uncommon: burglars read the time of the funeral in the local newspaper and know that nobody would be home, they’d all be at the burial services. 

“That’s the reason I’m late. The police came again.”

“Again? They have a suspect?”

“No, today they brought a test, new equipment for fingerprints.  Rookies, they train rookie cops on crap like this. So why waste a teaching opportunity when you could bother a grieving widow?” He snorted, anger replacing the pain, easier to deal with in the moment. “They don’t expect to solve it. Crimes like this are a dime a dozen to them.”

I teared up. 

Marty thought the tears were for him. Mostly true.

“It’s insulting and I’m insulted for you,” I said. “Today, they come for fingerprints? They wait four days? Anybody would have cleaned up by now.”

“Especially my mother.” His anger grew wry.

“That’s true. Your mother’s a neatnik.”

“Now she’s a widowed neatnik.”

“What were the police thinking?”

“The usual. Not much.”

That was usually my line. I grabbed his hand. Long fingers. Then I realized he was waiting for me. Directing the moment, as usual.

“You said on the phone that you wanted to pick my brain.”

“I do. But smile, Xanthea, relax. I need to feel normal for a minute. It’s good to be with you.”

I smiled. Marty, compelling, always the director. He’d directed our games as a kid, inventing elaborate scenarios for Cowboys and Indians, and Doctor, and Movie Star. Yes, he’d wanted to be a professional actor before he became one, which he did,  and then decided to bag that bit in favor of directing his own films a few years ago. He’d received good notices as an actor but meaty parts in films seemed to dry up. Never the leading man type, mostly he’d been cast in Hollywood movies as the likeable sidekick, the one who never gets the girl. There was a reason for that. The sidekick didn’t want the girl. Or at least this one didn’t, he had different preferences.

That was the crux of his difficulties with his father. I’d accepted him whole, whatever his sexuality, but his father couldn’t. He wanted his son to be “a real man.” Like he was, presumably.

“Okay, that’s better,” Marty said to me.

“You told me that the crooks didn’t get much.”

“Not from us. Maybe they heard us coming home and fled. They only took my father’s gold watch, some of my mother’s jewelry, and a metal strongbox with papers. I liked that watch.” He smacked the table. “It had good proportions for a man’s wrist, and a nice weight. I don’t know what the papers were. He liked to doodle and I think maybe he saved a few. I’m not sure.”

“Your father kept doodles?” That struck me as odd. 

“He kept a lot of interesting stuff, not the kind of stuff cops care about. It’s   obvious these rookies don’t necessarily expect to solve the crime. It’s part of the routine they’re learning. Crimes like this are a dime a dozen.” Marty couldn’t drop the subject, attached to the insult. “You should have seen these guys, all excited to catch a real perp but all disappointed until they’d spotted my mother’s slouch hat with the red plume on the end table where she left it. Then they practically fell all over each other. ‘A pimp hat! Look, look! The perp must have had to leave quickly!’ They carried on like they’d found the Pimp-of-the Year. They kept yelling, ‘Evidence! A clue, a clue!’ They tried to confiscate the hat, to take it down to the station-house. My mother was furious. It’s my Borsalino, she screamed, and started swatting them with it. It’s mine, you idiots! I bought it from Saks.’”

I pictured Marty’s mother, tottering on too-high heels, snatching the hat, its plume bobbing outlandishly as she smacked the cops repeatedly. 

I laughed.

Marty did too.  I was always a good audience for him.

“Laughing feels great,” Marty said. “This is a nightmare.”

“But you’re okay?” 

“I’m okay.” Marty stared down, concentrating, pretending to scrutinize Larissa’s never-changing menu. “I want to show you something but let’s order first.” He swiveled. 

“Where’s our waitress?” 

I could see Roma, bent over another table, wiping it down. She didn’t see us. 

“There are things I didn’t know. A complication.”

“What do you mean?” 

He fumbled with the leather briefcase he’d been toting, also his father’s. Embossed gold initials glinted. B.B.—Bernard Beiderman.  

“Look at this.”

He dumped a pile of papers, a heap of cards, valentines, birthday greetings and gilt-edged letters written carefully on linen stationary. Also Playbills and ticket stubs. They splayed from folders and criss-crossed. 

I reached for a folder and toppled a sheaf of pencil drawings onto the floor.

I bent to pick them up. And blinked.

Realistic drawings, not quite fine art but with details sketched in, the style somewhere between Heironymous Bosch and early MAD magazine.

“Marty, what is all this?” I lowered my voice. “It’s porn.”

“My father’s art work. You didn’t remember his doodles. Did you know my father could draw?” Ironic, deadpan, Marty leaned back and studied me. 

My startled reaction seemed to delight him.

“I knew he liked art.” A flush rose.

I saw his father’s signature, B. Biederman, shaped into a phallus, jammed between the splayed thighs of a naked and writhing woman in a landscape of coiling couples.

“Your father did this?” Marty nodded. “Were these papers in his briefcase?”

“They were inside my father’s desk at work. At work! Can you believe that? The first night I sat shivah at the apartment, my father’s boss tugged me into the kitchen and asked to talk privately. Remember Otto Felter? He told me I’d better come over to the office as soon as possible. Your father left a lot of personal stuff there, he said.  Personal, he kept repeating.” Marty’s father was a salesman at Otto’s Fur Vault.  "So I went the next morning, wondering what he was talking about, and this is all stuff I pulled out of his desk.” 

I felt my eyebrows lift. That Bernie kept personally revealing items at work told me that he considered work the place he’d have the most privacy. Marty’s mother and relatives in the building were not the hands-off types. 

“All pornography? No, what’s the rest of this stuff? Are those letters?”

Marty swiped his forehead. Sweat stuck a ringlet to his brow. “The letters, you’ve got it. All stuff he didn’t want my mother to know. There’s more and worse. Worse than porn.”

“Porn isn’t necessarily bad. Everybody has fantasies.” I was embarrassed and had many thoughts that I’d didn’t want to share with Marty, not because erotic drawings violated any special pristine category labeled “parents” for me—I’d had no parents for a long time. “It’s stuffy here,” I added, trying to batten down my composure.  

He thrust another folder at me, more drawings, and then gestured—impatiently. I shuffled through lush photocopies that appeared to be stained glass, but soon realized the figures were biblical, costumed in loose drapery, and that the images were actually Xeroxed copies, vivid miniatures from an illuminated manuscript. An edge of Latin chopped off made me see that the photocopies had been copied themselves. There were several black and white drawings outlining details in pencil, while omitting others. I assumed the pencil drafts were by Bernie Biederman though for what reason I couldn’t imagine. What a specialized interest. Bernie, a man of many parts.

“Did you know your father was particularly interested in medieval art?”

“He never talked to me. I barely knew he was interested in art.”

“Yes, you did.” His father once took us to the Metropolitan Museum and encouraged my own early interest in art, praising paintings I brought home from school. Marty jutted his jaw. I didn’t want to bicker. I didn’t want Marty to shut down. 

I opened other folders that yielded souvenirs, the ticket stubs from many years past, museum brochures, business cards that I didn’t stop to examine, and stubs from ballets and other shows.

“What is all this?” 

Marty continued to look ironic. His default expression. He didn’t know either. 

“It’s a crazy combination of stuff he hid. Porn. The Bible. Keepsakes and correspondence. Why did your father keep this secret? What’s in the correspondence?” I reached for the letters.

Marty placed one hand over them, protectively. “I don’t know if I want you to read these before me. I had to stop reading, it’s too confusing.”

“Was he having an affair? Lots of people have affairs, Marty. Your mother didn’t like attending cultural events, and he did things without her. That in itself, isn’t a sin. He needed someone to share his interest with.”

“My mother liked theater,” Marty snapped. “She wished I’d do musicals. You’re on the wrong track. Here’s the question you should be asking—who was my father going with to these art shows and concerts?”

I didn’t like the word should, but of course he was right. That was my next question. I pictured Bernie, his dad, composed, intelligent, restless. I never thought Marty’s mother appreciated his special qualities. I didn’t like my next question either. “Did he have a lot of affairs?”

“Not affairs. No plural. That’s the big shock. This is all a long exchange of letters from a single relationship over many years, just one relationship.”

“A mistress?”

“More than a mistress. A lot more than sex. A full relationship with a woman who is not my mother. It’s as if he was a bigamist, he seems fully committed to her.”

“You don’t know—” 

“Yes, I do. It’s a relationship going on now for twenty-six years.” 

“How do you know?”

“Look at the dates on the letters.”

“Did he have children with her?” Astonishment made me factual, almost distant as if suddenly outside of myself. Twenty-six years? Marty’s father had been involved with this woman when we used to pop back and forth across the street as children to see each other, before college and the East Village?

“Who is she? Anyone you know?”

“I didn’t even know my father.”

“Did he have children with her?”

“Child-ren?” Marty’s two loud monosyllables, made the nearby customers twist to  stare. “You mean I might learn I have a half-brother? Isn’t this enough?” 

I pressed my finger to my lips. I smoothed my voice. “So what did you think, that he was too old? Old people act out fantasies too.”

“Fantasies? Affairs? What are you talking about.” He brought his voice down to the level of a stage whisper.

Immediately Roma, the chunky waitress with bad feet, emerged, brandishing order pad.

“A kielbasa omelette with hash browns.” 

“Blintzes,” Marty muttered. “How you doing, Roma? You miss me?”

“Marty, you making lots of money in Hollywood?” Roma brought him a glass of water. 

“Yep, I’m getting rich,” he winked at Roma. Marty had been shooting industrial documentaries, the low end of the movie mill, but this past year he put together a first full-length film on 35 mm, featuring a once-major star. Unfortunately, the film lingered in post-production. All the rough footage and edits were still in hock to a film lab. He couldn’t show the film to distributors because he couldn’t afford its release. “Want me to make you a star?”

“Make me a star, Marty!” Roma quivered with pleasure. Her haunches wagged as she limped away.   

“Listen, you’re not getting it.” Marty shook his finger at me when she was out of hearing. His voice stayed low.  “We’re not talking here about fantasies or a few affairs.  I’m all for a hot sex life, you know me. Even for my father. But these letters!” 

“Let me look.” 

He rifled through several. He handed me one.

“Not just sex.  Read this. They’re so passionate. He’s like a schoolboy in love.  The relationship goes on through to the last hospital stay. Hot talk, yeah, but he gives financial advice and writes about his feelings.  Feelings about everything, his life, his history, he even writes thoughts he has about me—and he’s full of shit. Lies, a lot of lies he’s telling her about his relationship with me.” He paused to let that sink in. “Like he’s so proud of me. Like he’s the model father. If only my relationship with him was the way he wrote about it. Completely fictionalized and sentimental, nothing like the reality where he specialized in putting me down. Mr. Family Man. Family, the importance of family, that’s why he couldn’t leave my mother. He’s big on self-improvement so he even sends the woman clippings of courses they could take together at The New School. And he buys fancy houseplants for the two of them that they could raise together. The plants have names, as if they were kids.”

I eyed the letter, now open.  “What’s her name?”

“Goldie.”  He pointed to a Park Avenue letterhead.  “Her real name is Gilda —Gilda Levine. Goldie is her nickname.”

He waited for me to begin reading.

The letters were divided into two groups, his and hers.  Hers, gilt-edged and carefully scrolled in handwriting like a Fin de Siecle artwork, ranged from conventionally romantic to bedtime babytalk.  (“The monster of your love frightens me, you naughty totteleh ...  I dream of your sweaty keppy between my breasts.”) When the sweet talk broke off, she issued practical instructions to Bernie Biederman about a trip she was taking to Vienna and schedules for watering the plants. 

  His, a thicker pile, scrawled in ballpoint pen with words crossed out, were first drafts to her on lined yellow paper.  He must have kept them as a record, a journal.   They read like journal musings.  Ponderous advisories and self-examinations, interspersed with declarations of love, complete with pet names.  (“Goldie-pie, a gorgeous woman like you ought to give yourself credit for making me come alive . . . . “ he wrote.  “Tonight, your taste, your zest, my beloved Pie, still tingles upon my tongue.”)

  What?  I clapped my face.  

  It would be hard for Marty, or Marty’s mother—God forbid, if she ever found out—to pooh-pooh this as an old man’s fling. To say nothing of the greeting cards with anatomical details penned in. One showed a soft-focus man and woman embracing and a gigantic erection drawn between them. “Suck on this all-day lollipop,” read its caption in ballpoint.

  Marty tapped his fingers.   “I wonder if anyone else knew about this?”

  “Otto Felter did.” Puzzling. The Bernie Biederman I remembered was very discreet. 

  Marty said nothing. He passed me a Polaroid snapshot, carefully handling it by the edge.  “Here. This is a picture of her, Goldie Levine. Did you see the gold edging on all her stationary?”

  A handsome, well-preserved woman about sixty or so, in a modest gold-flecked bathing suit with her stomach sucked in, stood by a backyard flower garden in what could have been Queens or Brooklyn and you could see the brick house in the background. Gold bracelets stacked down her arm, and a small breeze ruffled curls as she squinted into the sun.

  I passed the photo back to Marty. Our food arrived. I poked at the onions and sausage. We stopped talking. We ate. The woman’s age surprised me. Of all my mixed-up responses, this was the only one that pleased me. Gave hope for my future sex life. Maybe an old photo, maybe she didn’t even look that good.   

  I glanced up. I wanted to laugh. You never really know people the way you think you do.

  “So what are you going to do?” 

  “I’m going to get in touch with her. Probably call. What do you think? I’m stunned. She must be freaked out. She loved him and maybe she doesn’t know he’s dead yet. I have to get in touch with her, I owe my father that courtesy.”  

  “You should wait.  It could open a can of worms.”

  Marty narrowed his eyes.

  “She must know,” I insisted. “Wait for a little while. Remember, your father’s boss knew, he would have told her. Besides, wouldn’t she have called the hospital?”

  “Yeah.” Marty forked a piece of blintz into the sour cream and into his mouth.   “They wouldn’t tell her that kind of thing. She’s not a family member. In any case, I want to meet her. I need to know more about my father.”

  A dark thought slid out. “Did your father leave this Goldie money?”

  “Not in the will. He left everything to my mother. The big chunk is insurance money.”

  “Maybe he was giving this woman money.”

  “Can it!” A vein popped out on Marty’s forehead.  “What’s the matter with you?” He followed my thoughts, all right. “You’re not a criminal investigator, you don’t have a right to any conclusions. Your brain has limits and we both know what they are. You think the robbery was connected to his death? Go softer. Sometimes there are coincidences. Go softer. This is my family.”  

  I flinched. Learning about the mistress—I’d idealized Bernie Biederman for a long time, although I knew as well as anybody that Bernie had multiple sides.  

  I was saddened. “Your father got me started on a painting career when he gave me my first set of watercolors as a middle-school graduation present.”

  “He was good to you maybe. To me, a stranger. Who was that man who sat behind his newspaper in a recliner and ignored me in the kitchen every night?” He flung out his arms. 

  “Marty, your sleeve is in your blintzes.”

  “Look, I’m going to call this Goldie Levine.” 

  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

  “What? You think it’s like betraying my mother, sneaking off and seeing her secretly, like he did.”

  “You don’t know who she is or what she’s like.  People are unpredictable, you don’t want a family ruckus or a real calamity.  What if she tells your mother?”

  “She won’t.  She kept the secret too long.”

  Marty’s face squeezed and I saw his mind was made up. 

  “Go slowly then. Do what feels right.”

  Marty reached over to scoop the pile of leftover hash browns on my plate. “Do you mind?”

  “Oh, Marty.”

  “Oh, Marty what?”

  He swept the photo, the drawings, and the letters and cards back into the briefcase. I paid the check while Marty fumbled in his pocket. That’s how things sometimes went with Marty. I paid.

  He lifted the briefcase and handed it to me. “Take this,” he said. “I can’t keep it. I have no place to put it. Just hold onto it while I’m here because I’m staying at their apartment and my mother will find it.”

  I hoisted the briefcase, then pushed it back at him and sighed. “It’s heavy. Can you carry it for me on the street?”

  “Sure,” he said. He grinned and squeezed my shoulder. He’d gotten his way.

  A group of three standing customers shifted, waiting for the booth.

  Marty donned the ill-fitting tweed coat he’d inherited and his father’s fedora. He snapped its brim.   

  “So what do you think of this vintage wardrobe? My father had good taste. The armholes are too tight, and it’s way too short. My mother wants to buy me a new coat.  I told her to save the money, I like wearing something that belonged to him.  I feel like I’m wrapping myself in my father, finally getting intimate with him. Filial osmosis.” 

  Maybe he expected sarcasm, skepticism showing on my face. Because he went on defensively—

  “I don’t care how that sounds, it’s the truth. It’s a long time coming. If I don’t know who my father was, how can I ever know who I am?”

  A dab of sour cream dotted his chin. I pointed to it. He didn’t pay attention. I reached up and brushed it off with my finger. I didn’t want to argue with Marty. He was too busy arguing with himself. Besides, I’ve often asked myself the same question.  Fathers. My own left my life when I was ten. Not exactly a neutral subject for me.

  I opened the door and my mouth to reply.  A cold wind blew off the sidewalk and down my throat.

 

 

 

 

 

Lynda Schor   
The Blouse

 

Theodora stands beside the blouse rack, perspiration pouring between her breasts, unable to make a decision. Her shoes stick to the polished concrete floor as if there have been sodas spilled and not cleaned up. She will not be able to stand this much longer. Her suit is gray and has an ivory pinstripe. The blouse she likes is white silk, which would be fine, except she has come looking for a black blouse, like the kind Claudette Colbert or Veronica Lake might have worn. Some silk or satin, or flowing rayon. She has already scoured antique clothing stores, as well as thrift stores without success.

She has a problem with decisions, but especially around clothing, as if she has a blurred image of herself. Sometimes she buys something she feels great in, that fits her, not only size-wise, but in every way. Then suddenly she will feel that the dress, or blouse, or pants no longer look right on her—how she could have been so wrong.

  She wonders whether it has to do with her childhood—her mother made her, and her older sister Marjorie, wear hand-me-down clothing whether they liked them or not, or even if they were completely out of style or the wrong length. It was rare for her to take them shopping and have them pick out something they adored. Sometimes her mother knitted sweaters for them that usually had something weird about them. Like puffed sleeves, one puffier than the other, or sleeves that were way too long.

  As for life decisions—she found if she waited long enough things often got decided by themselves. Or by chance. She once gave a talk to the students and faculty at Pratt Institute about chance vs. control, and how grateful she was for her children, and for other paths in life that, if she thought more about, she’d never have taken.

  She felt guilty for spending so much time thinking about and looking for the right clothing for this occasion, the party Marjorie is making for her oldest daughter’s bat mitzvah. Thinking about control, Marjorie has made it clear that Theodora is not to appear in jeans, and her children have to look “normal” as well. Her boys don’t even own dressy clothing—and they’ve never owned suits. Marjorie has even offered to buy suits for the boys, as well as shirts and ties.

  She hates herself for all the time she is spending on something as trivial as the right clothing. In fact, she has already bought one blouse she liked and removed the tags. Then she decided it wasn’t right somehow. The fabric was lovely, but the wide sleeve was annoying. And under her suit jacket it bunched up.

 

  Her friend Marla brought over five or six of her blouses. She said Theo could borrow one of them for the occasion. At first glance none seem right. Marla picks a white one out of the pile on the couch and holds it up.
“What about this?”

  Theo doesn’t even want to try it on. “It’s cotton,” she says, wrinkling her nose.

  “I’m only trying to be helpful,” says Marla, running her hands through her thick kinky black hair, newly cut very short. “It’s not cotton, I wear this on very dressy occasions.” She walks over to the mirror, which is not full-length and only shows a portion of one’s body at a time, and removes the shirt she’s wearing without any modesty, something Theodora admires.

  “I don’t know why you can’t just pick anything simple and conventional-looking to make your sister happy,” says Marla.

  Theo says nothing. She’s not sure why but she can’t capitulate. It has to be okay for the bat mitzvah, but it has to work for Theo too.

  “Can my sister hide a deeply dysfunctional family under some very conventional clothing?” she says. “You don’t know what they are doing out there in the suburbs—having key parties and swingles—while I am tarred as the black sheep of the family because I’m an artist, and live in Manhattan, and have wild hair.” She pulls on the bushy reddish afro that surrounds her narrow face. “Marjorie’s daughter was friends with Joel Rifkin, who turned out to be a serial killer,” she says. “And I’m weird?”

  There is one blouse of Marla’s that Theo would love to borrow, a royal blue silk that she wore to the singles event arranged by a friend, and where they met the psychotherapist they both liked. But Marla wouldn’t lend that one.

  “It might get sweat on it,” she said. “I don’t sweat, but other people do.”

  “That’s okay then,” said Theo. “I wouldn’t want to get sweat on your blouse.” Eating and smoking are the only functions Marla would admit to, and she was always trying to curtail both.

 

  She pictures herself at Marjorie’s party. It is really Emma’s party, but it seems like it’s Marjorie’s. First of all, why a big bat mitzvah celebration when none of them are at all observant, and have never gone to shul, or observe any of the holidays. She wears the borrowed royal blue blouse of Marla’s, with the neckline that plunges, revealing just the tip of a cleavage. Her reddish curls reach to her shoulders, creating a sharp line before the slinky rayon descends weightlessly down each arm into flowing sleeves. It is too hot, and Theodora has removed her jacket.

  “You and I match,” says her brother-in-law Craig, placing his arm, inside a brown pinstriped jacket, alongside her hip and staring at her neckline. He has pale blue eyes, and greasy black hair, and is always somewhat subtly inappropriate—there is something creepy about him—a lack of boundaries maybe. Later they will find out that he’s been screwing the young female students in his music program.

  Marjorie comes over with a drink for Craig. “How can you say that?” she asks. “Brown and gray don’t match.”

  “By what rule?” I ask. If Marjorie could have told every guest what to wear, she would have. She’s anxious that Emma might have some friends arriving in unpredictable garb, such as a long sweat shirt to just below the crotch, or a tuxedo jacket with shorts, a green streak in their hair, or a black Mohawk tipped in platinum or magenta and greased with coconut oil.

  Caught between her desire to look extreme in some way, and to look just right to please Marjorie, she can feel the sweat beading under her arms and running down her ribs, along the sides of Marla’s blouse, which darkens.

  “Have something to eat,” invites Craig, leading her to the enormous buffet table filled with colorful foods. “Would you like some of this?” He points to something that looks like hummus, surrounded by deviled eggs. He is nothing if not a practiced host.

  “It will take a minute for me to see what’s here,” she says.

  “Try some of this,” says a man with a short beard, kissing his fingers to indicate perfection, as he holds up a cracker with some purplish pate.

  “Dr. D’Alessandro, this is my sister-in-law, Theodora,” says Craig.

  “Do you know how they make pate?” says Theodora, wrinkling her nose.

  Her boys, looking like miniature store dummies in their small suits and ties, are gobbling food at the end of the long folding table. She has to admit they are less active than usual, perhaps an effect of their clothing.

  She has nothing to say to Dr. D’Alessandro, so she decides to tell a joke. While looking over the cheese platter for something she likes, she says, “What’s the difference between lime Jell-o, and a Jewish-American princess?”

  “What?” asks Dr. D’Alessandro, pulling on his reddish-greyish beard, and leaning forward a bit as if to hear better.

  Craig has a strange look on his face—a combination of embarrassment and dismay, as if his features don’t know what to do with themselves.

  Theodora knows she shouldn’t continue, but it seems too late, like when she changed her mind and realized she needed to get off the ski-lift at Hunter Mountain. “Lime Jell-o wiggles when you eat it,” she says.

  There is a long moment of silence, and then Dr. D’Alessandro bursts out laughing.

  Theodora doesn’t know whether it’s intentional or an accident, but the tray of vegetables and dips Craig is carrying spills all over Theodora, most on her pinstriped skirt, but the creamier dips land on Marla’s blouse, where the liquid is rapidly absorbed by the crepe. The cream remains on the surface and gleams pale on the royal blue.

 

Marla holds up one of her blouses to her mirror image and moves around trying to get a whole picture.

“Which are you wearing on your date with the gorgeous psychotherapist?” asks Theodora.

“I’m not sure. I may wear a simple black dress,” she says. “Something sexy. You’re sure you’re not jealous?” asks Marla.

“Of course not,” says Theodora. “I’m glad he likes you.”

She is glad the psychotherapist likes Marla better and that they don’t have to compete for him. Then maybe Marla wouldn’t be so upset that Theodora is having an affair with Marla’s therapist. Something Marla can’t seem to get over.

“Don’t tell me when you’re going to his house. Lie to me,” Marla implored when she found out. “You know it’s not right for you to be seeing my therapist, so at least take some responsibility by not rubbing my nose in it. You’ve already ruined my long therapeutic relationship with Pavel.”

“I thought because you’d quit therapy that it was okay to tell you,” said Theodora, pouring some wine for her friend. “I hate having to lie to someone as close to me as you?”

They were sitting at the small table in one corner of the living room, under Theodora’s loft bed. Marla looks into her glass deeply, as if Theodora might have poisoned her wine. “Well I did quit. Because of you and Pavel. He can come see me if he wants me to be in therapy. And I want you to lie to me. I asked you to. If you don’t like it, it’s too bad. Pavel is supposed to be a tabula rasa to me. And it’s perfectly normal for me to feel this way.”

“What?”

“You ruined my tabula rasa,” said Marla, drinking her wine in three gulps.

“Why not work it out in therapy with Pavel,” suggested Theodora. “That way we’ll all get along better. If you care about our relationship.”

“Our relationship would be fine if you weren’t fucking my therapist,” said Marla. “Besides,” she said, “I don’t want to work it out. I didn’t choose the situation and I’ve already spent four hundred and twenty dollars discussing it.”

 

It was weird having to lie to Marla whenever she went to see Pavel, as if she and Marla were married. Marla had, in fact, introduced Theodora to Pavel because he had something to do with helping people get jobs and he was helping Theodora get her materials ready for a proposed series of writing workshops for corporations, honing her proposal and her syllabus. Somehow they ended up in bed, the job forgotten after the last proposal revision.

Pavel is at least twenty-five years older than Theodora—a father figure who is all-accepting, and that she can also sleep with. Pavel doesn’t care what Theodora wears, or what she does when they aren’t together. He is in an open marriage with a tall, freckled redheaded woman who is at least fifteen years younger than Theodora, and who seems to be bisexual. 

Mostly they didn’t go anywhere except to his apartment, a co-op on West 105 Street, in which the living room was almost completely filled with an enormous bed. One of the first times they were together they took a walk in Central Park. A woman was riding a horse who wouldn’t allow himself to be led onto the bridal path, but kept walking across a field of grass to an exit.

“He wants to go home,” laughed the exasperated rider, wiping some sweat and some dark hair off her forehead, kicking the heel of her tall boot gently into the horse’s flank. “He wants to go home, so let him,” shouted Pavel, with his slightly foreign accent,”there he goes.”

After a few more tries the rider shrugged, and the horse headed to the exit.

“Yayy,” shouted Pavel.

 

So different from Larry Lo, who she adored, but who broke up with her painfully four times because, as he said, she was inappropriate for him. If he weren’t Chinese would it matter so much that she was eight years older, an artist, and had two children?

 

Theodora wonders why she bought the gray pinstriped suit in the first place. It wasn’t really her style, and she hates skirts. Perhaps a strapless taffeta ball gown would have been a better choice, a bit satirical, it might be more fitting for the occasion.

The pinstriped suit reminds her of when she was in art school and dating the engineer, Simon, she’d met at the magazine she’d done some layouts for during the summer. They were interesting to each other mostly as an exotic species. Since both the engineer and she were living at home at the time, Simon on West Seventy-Second Street in an eight-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, and she, in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. They had a hard time finding somewhere to meet, so he invited her to go to an engineer’s convention in Boston for a weekend. She told her mother she was spending the weekend in Chinatown at her friend Carole’s house.  The first night she did spend at Carole’s mother’s apartment. They stayed up all night sewing a new style sack dress out of a soft pinstripe gray wool, so that she’d look fashionable. She felt so good in that dress, and enjoyed the weekend in the enormous room in the hotel, in spite of the fact that his father owned a diamond mine in Africa. They had apricots and cream for breakfast each morning, and lobster every evening. He managed to eat an entire lobster without once using his white prehensile fingers, so skilled was he with utensils, including the tiny lobster fork. When we slept together it felt as if he was using utensils in bed too, turning me gently and neatly with two spoons, not getting anything too moist on his fingers. Years later they met on a street in Manhattan, after he’d already married the wealthy woman from the right family who he’d been dating on and off even then, while he was seeing her, Theodora. Simon told Theodora that he nearly fainted when he saw her step off the airport ramp in Boston in that dress.

Theodora was surprised. “Soon after, that sack style became the height of fashion,” she said.

“I know,” said Simon. “But it was a new style then, and it looked weird to me.”

Later on she read somewhere that wealthy people knew how to dress from a very early age—what styles and which brands—and that was a signal to other wealthy people that they were from the same class. Sort of like some species of birds.

 

The last time Theodora went shopping for a blouse, she began to get dizzy after looking at so many, and ended up spending ninety dollars on sweat pants and a sweat shirt with 9-inch shoulder pads. She should probably wear one of the many blouses she owned—she really couldn’t afford another blouse anyway. But the black one was too sporty, the white one made her look as if she were going to work in an office, the aqua one was the wrong color for the suit. The satin vintage bed jackets for sure were inappropriate. Many others she’d sold when she wanted to get rid of some stuff so she could clarify her identity.

Most of what was in style didn’t look good on her. Or else she just didn’t like it. Marjorie would like anything in style no matter how grotesque—high-necked lacy tops, stripes and polka dots, nylon and other synthetic fabrics—all fine.

At the Singles party there were so many men that it seemed impossible to see any individuals and she’d almost panicked. Perhaps had she worn the pinstriped suit instead of the aqua blouse and some jeans someone really special would have been attracted to her. Instead, men seemed to regard her tentatively, confusedly, as if unable to make a choice.

She felt angry at Marjorie for even planning such a stupid party, and recalled a long-ago shopping trip with their mom. Marjorie did something to make their mother Julia angry and she scolded Marjorie in public, in the Rainbow clothing store on Kings Highway. Theodora got very upset watching this, and became more and more miserable until she became aware of the cool moist sensation on her legs and socks. She realized she’d wet herself.

“Take her right home,” Julia told Marjorie. “I have some errands. I’ll be home later.”

Marjorie didn’t speak to Theodora all the way home, and she, walking with her legs apart, felt ashamed. They’d discussed that time recently, as they often did when one of them recalled something from the past. Marjorie never realized that Theodora was so mortified by her scolding, probably because Marjorie enjoyed it when Theodora got yelled at. Marjorie was angry at the truncated shopping trip and embarrassed at having to walk all the way home with a little sister who smelled of urine. Who knew anyway? Maybe Marjorie didn’t mind being scolded that much and Theodora only imagined that because she felt so horrible when she was yelled at. Maybe she peed to get Julia’s attention by being naughtier.

    

Then Theodora noticed the magenta tube top, lying across a counter, glistening with phosphorescent sequins which covered its entire tubular form, and glowed from red all the way to pearly purple when she moved it, like the scales of a snake in midday desert sun. Or the tail of a mermaid. She tried it on on top of her t-shirt, and watched her midriff glisten, her red hair glowing and clashing right above, her red lips pouting. This was exactly the right blouse—if you could call it a blouse.

 

When she arrives at the bat-mitvah party Theodora checks her coat, under which is her sleek gray suit, black stockings and black low boots. She is very discreet, and compliments the massive amounts of food and the decor. As it becomes more crowded, and warmer Theodora feels perspiration flowing from under her arms and between her breasts, into the one hundred percent wool of her suit jacket. When the band begins to play, her brother-in law Craig leading and playing the oboe, she removes her jacket, placing it over the back of her upholstered chair. Like a flash of lightning her magenta midriff lights up the entire room, causing everyone to reflexively cover their eyes. Her glistening competes with the crystal chandeliers, the candles on the tables, and the early sunset glow, the gleam of the ice, and the moisture on the bottles of fine champagne. The band plays Jewish songs, and klezmer, and Theodora dances with everyone, including Emma, the bat mitzvah girl, who is wearing a mini-dress with thigh-high boots.

She isn’t prepared when, weeks, months, or maybe years later someone who was at that bat mitzvah tells her how wild she’d been and how weird she’d looked in her phosphorescent magenta tube-top. She couldn’t be more surprised—her memory is entirely different, and she pictures herself on that occasion exactly as she’d felt: very much herself, her most vital, passionate, and mysterious.

 

 

 

    

    

Kelly Watt
The Voice Inside My Head

 

I awakened to the howling of the wind across Lake Huron this morning. Howling and howling. It’s pleasant here in summer, but come fall, the landlord told me it howls all day, and all night long. It’s only August but the wind started up in the trees and the walnuts fell, hitting the tin roof, and exploding like gun shots. I startled awake. A dog barked. I lay in bed briefly wondering if it was Derek, the long-haired dachshund I had seen skulking in the cedars a few mornings before. In the local Foodland there was a picture of him on the bulletin board. Why had I even browsed the board? I never do such things. I’m just renting in this lake town this summer. I have nothing to buy and sell. Still, I looked and there was the photo of Derek: long black floppy ears, chestnut muzzle, wary distrustful eyes.

LOST, the notice said. Call this number if you see him.

I called and the volunteer said Derek was the product of a puppy mill. He had just been rescued from a life of enforced breeding and had slipped the leash of his liberators and gone AWOL in the historic village of Bayfield. For years nothing but cages and now complete freedom. He was unsocialized. Fearful of strangers. Wouldn’t come when called. After I hung up, I wandered Tuyll Street, calling: “Derek…here boy!” But no luck.

 

It was the howling and barking that conjured the VOICE. I heard it as soon as I got into the shower. I often hear the VOICE, I never talk about it with friends, never mention his name, but he is there living inside my head all the same. Gaslighting, criticizing, sneaking his two cents in every chance he can get. It was a snicker at first. You’ll never find that dog. You’ll never save him. You’ll never accomplish anything in your life at all.

It took me thirty years to track down the man with that voice. To find a name for the whispers in the dark, and even then I wasn’t sure. First, I discovered a photograph in the medical library: veterinarian school. He never graduated. Tall, handsome, athletic. Posing on the lacrosse team with his mates. A foot taller than everyone else. Thin face, expressionless blue eyes. Later at the Toronto Metro Reference Library, I tracked him down by his former addresses in the Might Directories. Those heavy burgundy tomes used to record such things, along with middle names, job descriptions, spouses and children, before such details were no longer allowed.

I wooed him for years. Seduced him bit by bit. There had been no need for seduction on his part. When I was a child, I was captive. Trapped in a foster home. Too young to understand, to have words for ... and there had been threats: Don’t tell or else…

As an adult, I researched phone numbers. Called his school friends, his sister. In a cheery voice some brave woman I hardly recognized said things like: “I’m just doing my genealogy. Researching family history. Looking up people from the past, you know?”

How innocuous it all sounded. I almost believed it myself.

 

Bark, bark goes the dog. Derek is probably still out there, I can hear him as I step out of the shower, towel dry. Measure the coffee grounds. I wonder if I should go out looking for him again?

 

It took two years to get up the nerve to pick up the phone and call the VOICE. Hours spent watching the clock, staring at the phone, practicing what to say. When I finally did —I shook when I heard him.

“Hello?”

“Hello? … er I used to live with your niece Janet in a foster family. You must remember her? We met years ago. I was wondering if we could meet for coffee? I have some photos I’d like to show you.”

The VOICE was gravelly, conspiratorial.

“Yes, I remember Janet walking down the street in her swishy skirts.”

Swishy? I repeated the word silently. My heart like an anvil on my lungs. My palms sweating. Did I laugh? God, I hope not. But yes, I think I did.

I told him my grandfather’s last name. “Pocock. Janet told me we were related. I just wondered … if our families … were really connected, you know?” I stuttered, my ear jammed against the phone listening.

“Pocock, he had a nickname in my time,” the VOICE said. “You know what they called him? Peckerwood, hehehe.”

Thump, thump, went my heart, the blood thudding in my temples. I tried not to gag. Peckerwood is no relative of mine, I thought.

It was over ten years ago. I wore a leopard coat the day I first went to meet him as an adult. I don’t know why I chose that coat. It seems insane now. Dressing up like Zsa Zsa Gabor to go rake out the stalls. Wade into the traumatic muck. It was a fake fur coat. Pretend leopard. Lots of spots. I had a tape recorder in my pocket. That was why I selected it in the end. I could slip the recorder into the pocket and clip the mike to the outer folds of the fabric. I had tried on all sorts of jackets and sweaters with just this in mind.

I had knocked on the door. I’d arranged for my detective friend to wait not far away in his truck, a black Yukon GT. Just in case … in case of what?

I knocked and a very tall, thin, elderly man came to the door. I was shocked. The nemesis of my life had aged, become frail. How could this aging narcissist have caused so much pain? I doubted myself instantly.

“Hello, thanks so much for inviting me …”

“Come in, come in,” he said. Just like that I slipped into his lair.

Was it him? My anonymous tormentor, whom I knew of only as “uncle?” I thought I recognized the thin patrician nose. The tall, tall legs. The hands fluttering about, elegant and cruel and articulate.

“Sit down, shall I get you coffee?”

“No, no, nothing for me,” I said. Never take sustenance from the devil, I told myself. Not one sip or bite. Persephone was trapped in Hades every winter for eternity, because she ate a few measly pomegranate seeds.

“Surely, I can offer you a chocolate?” he said, holding out a box of truffles. I smelled their buttery sweetness. Belgian chocolate, my favourite. I wanted it to be other then, I wanted this to be the congenial family visit I pretended it to be. I wanted to take the chocolate and share and laugh. I wanted anything but the dismal truth, this dreadful moment, this devious mission.

“No,” I said. “I’m watching my weight.”

“Life isn’t worth living if you can’t eat chocolate,” he said, dismissing me with a sniff.

I thought of chocolate, all the chocolates—chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, chocolate bars in little squares, crunchy and plastic tasting. All the culinary bribes I’d taken as a child. What was it in the end? Nothing but sugar the colour of shit.

“I don’t miss it,” I said.

There was a radio playing old pop songs in another room and I found it hard to think. My gaze wandered over to an open door of what looked like an office. Was it there that he lured his victims? Were there notes? Photographs? God forbid! I heard the station announcing the hour, the signature horns of CFRB, a warning sound that had haunted the days of my childhood, if I’d ever been a child. I wasn’t sure now.

I showed him two photographs as a test. First, a professional portrait of my stunning young mother, then an ordinary one of myself as a little girl.

“I wondered if you remembered us?” I said. I laid them both down on the coffee table in from of him.

He automatically picked up the one of me and said, “What a beautiful little girl.”

Bile burned my throat. Sweat broke out in my hair. I excused myself and ran to the washroom, where I evacuated in seconds. This is what they meant when they said, scared shitless. I had no idea it could be literal. The room reeked. The smell made me reel. I sat there panting, ashamed. Nauseous. He must be wondering now. Who is this strange woman and what is she doing in my house? Had he recognized me? He’d seemed so calm, so unaware. Maybe I was just one of many. Nameless, faceless. Victims #333. I was furious.

I checked my tape recorder … it ticked on. It was working. I cleaned myself up, washed my hands, splashed water on my face. Rinsed my mouth. Prayed to any angels that might be out there listening: Please help me, give me the courage to ask the right questions, to find out what I need to know.

Before I left the bathroom, I looked in his medicine cabinet. Playing sleuth. Nancy Drew. What was I looking for? Dodgy pharmaceuticals? Sexual toys? Whips, ropes, handcuffs? What could there be? There was only cough syrup and dental floss and aspirin. That’s when I understood. Pedophiles look like ordinary people. They can be normal in every other way. You can’t tell by appearances. I took a deep breath and went back out into the room.

He took me upstairs. Turned out, he was an amateur sleuth himself. A genealogist.

“My family go all the way back to a relative of Henry the Eighth,” he said showing me his family tree on a bulletin board.

I shuddered thinking of all the decapitated heads. Dispatched wives. Disposable women and girls. The upstairs room was full of books. Mysteries and thrillers. Stacks of paper littered the floor. Old boxes. Signs of a disordered mind, I told myself.

“I haven’t quite finished, I’m still working on this … I’ve gone all the way back to 1812, but anyway, here are the photos of my family. My sister, Elizabeth, you may have met her … your mother knew her. They were meant to be friends. This is my sis before she got so disgustingly fat.”

I winced. The slur, the misogyny right there. He certainly sounded like the VOICE. It must be him, I told myself.

“That’s my mother,” he said, coldly. “She didn’t suffer fools gladly. There’s my former wife.”

“They’re both lovely,” I said.

“She’s gone now,” he said. “I have a new girlfriend. She’s slim, athletic, likes to travel. We’re having a good time.”

A heterosexual male with a girlfriend. An ordinary sex life. Perhaps I was mistaken, and it was not him after all, it just sounded like him and I was going nuts, chasing ghosts.

“The two sides of our family didn’t get along much,” he added. “Janet your foster mother’s side and my father’s side.”

“Do you ever see Janet’s daughter Mindy?” I asked him.

“No, never,” he said. “Not in many years.”

Another beautiful little girl ruined, I thought.

“She doesn’t come around?”

“No, she’s not interested in knowing anything about the family. Her grandmother told her to keep away from the McRae’s, keep away from my father and me.”

My breath caught. “Why is that?” I blurted out, my hand protectively cradling the tape recorder. Say something, anything.

“I guess she thought we were dangerous, hehe. Probably just jealous.”

That laugh again. It had to be him. I felt filthy suddenly standing next to him.

“And my mother? She was sent to stay with your sister Elizabeth for a few days, wasn’t she?” I asked.

“Yes, your grandfather and my father were neighbours once. Friends. I vaguely remember your mother, but she wasn’t around much. She took a liking to a friend of mine. Spent the whole weekend tramping around with my best friend Chuck, hehehe.”

Tramping? I shivered. Had his family harmed my mother too? Had it been two generations of predators instead of one? That would explain my mother’s mood swings, alcoholism. She had probably wanted to escape them, to escape you, I thought.

“How long did she stay?” I asked, my skin prickling.

“Just a weekend. My father got it into his head that my sister Elizabeth and your mother should be pals. But your mother didn’t have the time of day for us.”

Something unspoken hung in the air. Did he remember me now?

“Did I tell you your grandfather Pocock was called Peckerwood? Hehe.” He quaffed another truffle, pronouncing it delicious. Enjoying my discomfort. His eyes were blue, so blue, it hurt to look at them.

It was him.

I didn’t know what to say. What did I think would come of this? Justice? A confession? An apology? I felt helpless and had to pee. My body kept betraying me. It couldn’t tolerate his proximity. Everything about him reeked of the maliciousness I remembered. I felt afraid to be standing so close. These things ran in families. Maybe evil was like a virus, something you could catch, its invisible particles could attach to your clothes, your hair, accompany you home and infect every happy moment in your simple life elsewhere. The life you were trying to build from the post-traumatic rubble of your childhood.

I excused myself to go to the bathroom again. I peed some more. I stood up, wiped myself. My urethra burned. My stomach ached, empty and acidic from too much tea. I was thirsty but didn’t dare ask for a glass of water. You can’t press charges if you’re not sure, and even if you are it’s unlikely you’ll get justice, so you better be sure, the victim services’ officer had said over the phone. I sat back down again and tried to pee again. When I had finished, washed my hands, I went back out to the room and sat opposite him. He crossed his legs. His hands were in his lap, long fingers, effeminate. A snake sunning itself.

I had found him. Now what?

He showed me more photos of people I didn’t know or want to know. Everything was in black and white. How would I know who had brown hair or black? Blue eyes or green? How would I ever recognize his sick little pals from these indistinct snap shots of the distant past? I asked him where he had lived.

“In Toronto not far away.”

 Had he come to visit Janet and the other girls like me that she took in?

“No, not often,” he said, not meeting my eye.

He didn’t see the other family members much either. Besides his niece Janet, they were all men.

He told me one of his cousins had been a hopeless alcoholic. He died young and left all his money to the children. Guilt, probably. To make up for what he knew was going on but was too powerless to stop? In my case, there had been two main pervs: one fat, one thin. The pudgy bully who bred horses was dead. I learned from the VOICE that he had died a grisly death from cancer. In the end he had sat in the town square in a wheelchair. He was deaf and had lost a leg. He was the short, chubby, smelly one. The tall, thin one with the VOICE was his sidekick. The uncles I had called them, as we called all close family friends in those days. They had no other names. But I was right. I was sitting across from him.

“A terrible death,” the VOICE said, a crease of worry between his brows.

There’s some justice in this world.

What had he said to me all those years ago? In that deep sardonic tone? Critical and mocking? You are nothing but the daughter of a whore. You are no one. Your parents didn’t want you. They left you in a home. You are nobody. We can do with you whatever we want.

I had cried and pleaded. It was dark in the shed. I’d been locked in by the chubby one. Then the skinny one entered. His face was often covered, with a hat, a mask, a hood. A haunting presence in the shadows without a name. I had buried what little I knew of him in the holes in my memory that terror made.

My cell phone rang. I startled. It was my detective friend.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

We had set up this charade. That was my cue for the code words. “Everything’s good, but I’m in an interview right now, I’ll have to get back to you.”

“Good. Talk soon.”

I signed off, apologized, made some excuse, pretending to be someone more important than I really was.

In my mind, I wanted to be someone heroic, a woman who tracked down criminals, who put pedophiles in jail. We often ended our therapy sessions like that, my therapist and I, play acting. I would pretend to call the police, then the imaginary police would come and handcuff them, cart them off to jail, while I shouted: You bastards! You’re going to rot behind bars! Brave and furious.

But it was all fantasy, I saw now. I was no crusader. I was no heroine. I would go on to tell and nothing would happen, not a single thing. I had been warned—historical cases like mine rarely resulted in convictions. I had to have a witness. I had a premonition of this loss, sitting in the VOICE’s living room. I was a grown woman but, inside, I was still that powerless little girl, wearing a silly leopard coat, clutching a tape recorder and fantasizing about justice. The world had changed, but not that much.

It was time to go. I stood at the door. I thanked him even as it made me gag.

“No problem, call anytime,” he said.

Then I had a thought …

“One last question. Why did Mindy’s grandmother not like your side of the family again?”

His eyebrows crossed. I had been too insistent. He looked at me and I stared into those pale eyes, the emptiness in them chilling.

“She said we were the bad side of the family, hehehe. You don’t want to piss off my cousins or you end up dying in a car accident on a country road at night,” he added.

My cheeks burned. Was he threatening me? Did he know why I was here?

“Why do you say that?”

“Liam is the one you want to talk too,” he said. “He was in the car when that girl got killed. Heather McDonald,” he sneered. “Everyone called her Piggy. She was fat. A talker. Liam was driving the car. She got thrown, went right through the windshield. It was nasty. A police officer at the scene threw up when he got there. Awful mess,” he said. He was staring right at me. He didn’t flinch.

My entire body shivered. I shook, right in front of him. As if I were Piggy crashing through the windshield, or the officer who had arrived at the scene and vomited from the horror.

“Shame,” he said, smiling. “She was such a pretty girl.”

He shook my hand. His flesh touched mine. I walked out into the drizzle, grey skies, wind. There had been a wind those days on the farm, too. A howling wind sometimes at night. Dogs that barked.

No one will ever believe you if you tell, the VOICE had said.

We’ll get back to you after we investigate, the police said, when I finally went to them, but I never heard from them again.

 

This morning, there were more sexual assault allegations in the paper. New women come forward every day. I scanned the article as always, looking for his name. Nothing. Then I got dressed, took my coffee out to the lake. Sat staring at that vast mysterious expanse that is Lake Huron. All that water, restless, rising and cresting in white waves.

I heard the barking again and thought of poor Derek. Still out there. Would someone give him a home before the coyotes got him? Or would he fall off the bluff, after wandering off alone? Could you even socialize a dog once he’d been abused for so long? That was something I would have to ask the rescue volunteer when I got up the courage to pick up the phone one more time.

 

              

 

 

 

 

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