As Close to Us as Breathing: A Novel (14 page)

The summer’s business, simple enough.

That same week, at Treat’s produce stand, Howard had begun noticing a certain girl who handled checkout, but he didn’t know her name or where she came from. In fact he didn’t recognize her at all from summers past. She was quick with numbers; he would often catch her adding up a load of them, her mouth puckered as she worked the equation, her round face freckled and topped by a frizzy mass of strawberry-blond hair. As he bagged tomatoes and cucumbers and endless ears of corn he’d glance her way, watch as she smiled at the customer before her, another Mrs. So-and-So, then drop her head in concentration as she added up the total, quick as anything. Megan, he finally learned on the same Wednesday afternoon that Davy stared stupefied at the start of Lucinda Rossetti’s picture. The girl at Treat’s checkout counter was named Megan O’Donnell.

Nearing the end of that second week, Nina finally finished
On the Origin of Species.
And she agreed, at last, to accompany me to the beach. As we lay side by side on matching towels, Nina explained to me as best she could how Darwin’s evolutionary theory rested on a process called natural selection. Over time, lots of time, she noted, random genetic mutations passed from one generation to the next and, if beneficial, helped in the ordeal of survival. Though I listened closely enough, there was much I couldn’t follow. But I didn’t care what Nina said as long as she was speaking to me. Our mothers and Mrs. Isaacson sat behind us and they were talking too, as always, the this-and-that of their lives a source of quiet but constant conversation. Mrs. Isaacson’s granddaughter Judy, for example, was still sullen, and that couldn’t be good for her unborn child, we heard. Though my tan was already so much darker than Nina’s, I still had this idea that we were as close in looks as the sisters jabbering behind us, their voices as familiar and comforting as the susurration at the shore’s edge of endless unwinding waves. Gradually, as Nina’s words sank in, I began to wonder if Ada and Vivie had passed enough beneficial and random genetic mutations down to us so that Nina and I were even closer than cousins, were more like sisters. A summer afternoon like this and such an evolution for a girl like me, wedged between two brothers, gave me hope for the ordeal of my own personal survival. I just didn’t have the words to explain the desire or the process. But, thanks to Darwin, Nina now did.

Friday once again arrived, and unlike in the previous week, Bec took a break from the family. She was feeling a little claustrophobic, she insisted, what with so many of us packed into such a tight space and all. But we knew better. Shabbos was soon to arrive, which meant the men would be returning, and the sisters, so entwined with each other during the week, would unravel and split, like branches on a tree. Two would find their energies rushing toward their husbands, while Bec would once again be alone. Come a given Friday she needed time to herself then, to readjust her expectations, to get to know herself once again as the solitary person that each weekend in Woodmont revealed her to be. For years already everybody knew that, figured as much, though no one ever said so out loud. But any Friday afternoon she wanted it, we gave her, gladly, all the space she suddenly needed.

“Going for a walk” was how she put it that Friday when she headed out shortly after lunch. “Need some air! Sure do!”

But ten minutes later, at the corner of Merwin and New Haven avenues, when she saw a familiar red and white Roadmaster parked in a nearby lot, she stopped all that business with fresh air and walking and instantly—because she couldn’t help it—broke into a run.

T
he companionship I had enjoyed that Friday afternoon at the beach with Nina didn’t last. When her father arrived for the weekend he’d come with another book for her, a biography of Abraham Lincoln, almost as thick as the book she’d just read by Darwin. Oh God, I thought, she’ll be gone for at least another whole week. Switching gears from science to history didn’t seem to bother her. Her ease in this matter had much to do with the note her father wrote her, a note for each book, which worked to pique her curiosity, no matter the subject. Of the Lincoln biography Leo had written:
Nina, This is my third Lincoln biography in ten years and still he retains what I call a mystery of character.
Nina didn’t read this one out loud as she had the last. But once when she wasn’t looking I glanced at the message tucked into the biography’s pages. Finishing it, I rather wished for a note like that from my father, but he wasn’t a reader like Leo. He didn’t write notes.

And so the third week of our stay in Woodmont came, July inched onward, and Nina was back to her metal chair on the front porch, reading. She’d still not even tried on the dress and jacket that Bec had sewn for her. She barely had a tan either. We could have been in the middle of New Haven, or back in Middletown, for all the interest Nina took in going to the beach. She remained porch-bound, always wearing shorts and a jersey, though since Howard had teased her, never one as tight as on that first day. The sisters were beginning to wonder what was up with all this ducking of sunshine, sand, and water. “Honey, you’re hiding,” I heard Vivie say to her the Monday morning of that third week. Nina’s answer was firm. “Go away,” she said, waving her hand and returning to the words on the page.

That same Monday Howard began to tease Nina again. “Whatcha reading, Nina?” he said, though he knew perfectly well what she was now on to, and as he waited for her answer—a predictable bark at him to leave—he began to sprinkle sand over her book and to drip water onto its pages from his wet hair. Mark Fishbaum was with him, as he typically was in the late afternoon after they were through with their sail on Mark’s boat. That day, as was their custom, Howard and Mark had lugged the Sailfish ashore then rushed back into the water for a quick swim before supper. The two had whooped loudly as they leaped into the sea, and then, dripping in their bathing trunks, revved from their sail and swim, they’d climbed up the beach and onto our front porch, where Howard started in with nagging Nina.

Mark was nicer, though, polite, mild-mannered, and he didn’t join Howard, whose teasing lasted only seconds, just enough to get a rise out of Nina, which allowed Howard to then throw his arms up over his head and yell a victorious, if not ludicrous, “Touchdown!”

“Are you through?” Nina retorted, wiping the sand and drops from the pages and glancing up for only the briefest instant.

The next day Howard and Mark sailed again, swam again, and climbed onto our cottage porch, dripping wet, again. This time, though, Howard dropped himself into a chair, said nothing, and simply began to towel off. To Nina’s surprise, it was Mark who said, “Whatcha reading, Nina?”

“You too?” she exclaimed. She almost jumped from her chair. Her body tensed and she looked ready to punch him.

“No, I mean it. What is it?” His tone of voice was calm, sincere, not undulating with sarcasm. After Mark repeated the question, he walked behind Nina, glanced over her shoulder and down at the biography on her lap.

When she looked up she was beginning to blush. “Just a book,” she answered. “On Lincoln.”

“Good?” Mark asked.

“Reasonably,” she said, and then she snapped it shut, shot up, and almost bumped into Mark as she opened the screen door and ran inside, both annoyed and flustered, away from him.

Though Davy had no idea what Lucinda Rossetti was getting at with that thick border of red at the bottom of the picture she’d begun, he finally responded by adding an inch of blue to the top of the page. He’d make a sky, no matter that the picture’s foreground didn’t resemble anything like grass. He sent it back, and on Wednesday of that third week, when Bec came in at lunch with the mail, she sang, “Letter for Davy Leibritsky!” in a voice just like the bellboy’s in the radio commercial who cried, “Call for Philip Morris!” At that Davy leaped from his chair. He tore open the new envelope, unfolded the picture, and then stood in the middle of the kitchen as befuddled as the week before. This time Lucinda Rossetti had added an inch of color to each of the three stripes—brown, gray, and blue—that she’d placed on top of the red border at the bottom. Grabbing the drawing from Davy, my mother gave voice to Davy’s silent confusion. “What the hell?” she said. After a moment’s more scrutiny she added, her voice charged, “Is it something Catholic? Is that what it is?”

“Don’t respond right away,” Vivie advised, stepping toward Ada and yanking the picture from her, stopping her before she had any more thoughts about Catholics or anybody else. “Give it some time,” Vivie told Davy. “Something about it might come to you.”

Davy, nodding, returned the picture to the envelope and placed it on the little table in the dining room on which the telephone sat. Resuming his lunch, he said, “I just don’t get her.” One elbow was on the table and his chin rested in the palm of his hand. “Elbows off,” Ada said. “Off.”

Because Nina was so preoccupied, I began to hang out at the beach with some other girls I knew, girls my age who liked to sunbathe as much as I did, and swim and play hopscotch in the sand, and chat long after lunch in someone or another’s cool kitchen, and who liked to collect shells and, especially, sea glass. Melissa Bornstein was one friend and Anna Weiss another. But I still longed for Nina, the person of summers past with whom I’d tanned, taken walks, and even sat beside while reading; the person with whom I gladly shared the sofa bed even though she tended to kick the blanket off at night; the person I’d tell everything to, if only she wanted to hear, and who I hoped would tell everything to me. But Nina wasn’t talking much that summer. Whatever her thoughts were, more and more she seemed to keep them inside. By that third week her mind was a hive of hidden secrets. As we approached the week’s end I began to say to myself of Nina, just as Davy had said of Lucinda Rossetti, “I don’t get her.”

Thursday of that week began with a cloudy morning, and for something to do inside Davy pulled the Bagel family out and he and I began to toy with them. Later that day he tried once again to make sense of the picture Lucinda Rossetti had sent, but once again the brown, gray, and blue stripes were indecipherable. Davy sat with the picture awhile, along with a box of crayons, then pushed them aside. By the time we met Sal for our Good Humor treat, Davy had traded in Lucinda’s drawing for Esther Bagel.

“Hello, Esther,” Sal said as Davy stood before him, holding Esther out. “What kind of day you having today, Esther?”

“Okay,” Davy, as Esther, said. “Ho hum.” Esther then scratched her head as if she didn’t quite believe her own words. “I’m here for a pick-me-up, Sal,” she said more forcefully. “You got anything for me?”

“Is it the regular?” Sal asked, concerned.

“Yeah, Sal,” said Esther. “It’s the regular.”

The regular was vanilla ice cream coated with chocolate, on a stick, just like the picture on the truck’s side.

“The regular for you too, Molly?” Sal asked, and I nodded. A moment later he handed me a toasted almond bar.

“All picked up?” Sal asked before we left.

“And then some,” Davy answered, still in Esther’s voice.

“That’s what I like to hear, Esther.” Sal winked. “Bye-bye, apple pie,” he called, and as he climbed aboard his truck we heard him whistle, sharp as a bird’s song, a remarkable sound that caused Davy and me to turn back for a better listen, then to jog beside the rolling Good Humor truck until Sal, spotting us, opened his eyes wide and frantically waved his hand with the cigar in it, motioning us to back off. “Oh, no,” he hollered, his voice firm but still friendly. “No, no, no.”

As the days of our third week in Woodmont passed, we could feel the end of July approaching. At Treat’s produce stand the peaches of summer were at their juiciest and selling nicely. As were the tomatoes. The strawberries of June had come and gone but the raspberries of August were beginning to ripen. Megan O’Donnell was still adding columns of numbers those long, hot summer afternoons and Howard Leibritsky was still unloading and bagging merchandise: green beans, heads of lettuce, and zucchini; blueberries, plums, and peaches. Whenever he could he would glance over at Megan, who had begun, at last, to glance back at him. Whenever their eyes met he didn’t smile and neither did she, and because of that shared seriousness Howard had a feeling that when he met Megan officially, when they finally talked, he’d find out what he already suspected: she was different from all those other girls he’d known, and not just because she wasn’t Jewish.

On Friday of that third week Nina and I were told to borrow bikes from the Weinsteins and ride out to Treat’s together to get tomatoes and several cantaloupes for the weekend. To my surprise, without a fuss Nina agreed, and off we went, flying on those borrowed bikes. When we got to Treat’s, Howard waited on us, or rather on me, for Nina hung back, close to the checkout stand, unwilling, or so it seemed to me, to engage with Howard. Instead, she gradually struck up a conversation with Megan O’Donnell, who stood only feet from her. Soon, Nina was talking away, laughing at times, nodding at others. Megan was doing the same. As Howard handed me one melon, then another, I began to sink dejectedly under their weight. Howard, too, seemed sullen as he eyed the congenial scene at the checkout stand.

“Hey, Nina,” Howard said to her coolly as he approached the checkout area carrying a bag filled with tomatoes. The phrase wasn’t so much a greeting as it was a call to attention. But for once Nina felt free to ignore Howard, and as she continued talking with Megan O’Donnell—I heard them discussing Middletown, which Megan was saying she’d once been through—Nina turned her back to Howard.

“Hey, Nina,” he repeated, this time with noticeable irritation. Finally he cut in to the conversation, speaking to Megan for the first time with a banality that had to be a letdown for him. “Three cantaloupes and a bag of tomatoes,” he told her, dropping the bag on the counter. He backed off but not without muttering to Nina, “Leave her alone, already, why don’t you?”

Megan was the one to answer his question. “It’s okay,” she said, smiling and nodding, which caused her frizzy bangs to fall into her eyes. “I’m really fast with numbers. I can always catch up.”

She looked at me first, then Nina, then Howard, without changing her expression. Howard obviously found the neutrality disturbing. For a moment it seemed like he might say something else to Megan, something more substantial that would turn her eyes specifically his way, but he merely coughed and then gave up the effort, staring off in silence with an expression that was rare for him, anxious, even vulnerable. In his frustration he kicked an already soggy fallen tomato, causing the red juice to splatter over both his sneaker-clad feet.

Nina looked at the sullied sneakers then at Howard’s perplexed face.

“Touchdown,” she said.

That afternoon Tyler McMannus came to the cottage—an official, legitimate visit—to pick up Bec and take her into New Haven. Mrs. Arthur Coventry would be coming to the shop for a fitting. In preparation for it, that morning Bec had asked my mother if she would try on the dress, now fully finished, which Ada was more than happy to do.

“Gorgeous,” Vivie remarked from her seat in one of the corner armchairs in the living room. Though we’d been up for some time, the sofa bed was unmade, and Nina and I were still in it, Nina sipping tea, me just lying about. Because of that, the one corner chair Vivie sat in was the only seating available in the room. Bec stood in the doorway between the living room and her sunporch. Carefully, she handed the dress to Ada, who put it on and then posed in a different doorway, the one between the living room and dining room. The space was wide enough to allow her to hold her arms out, and when she did she also spun on her toes, the dress’s skirt ballooning around her. Her dark hair was still braided from the night before, and it too flew out as she twirled.

“Hot dog,” she said excitedly. “I feel seventeen again. How do I look?”

She was asking Bec, who was inspecting her, inch by inch.

“Hold still,” Bec told her, smoothing out the skirt, slapping at it at times as if to tame it. A moment later she said, “Now turn. Slowly.
Slowly.
”

My mother complied. The dress was classically styled, with long sleeves, which we were told Mrs. Coventry had specifically requested, a low neckline with a collar, which Mrs. Coventry wasn’t so sure about and had to be convinced of, and a belt at the waist, which Mrs. Coventry was sure would be a disaster but had nevertheless, with Bec’s urging, consented to. From the waist down the taffeta took over and the dress flowed out. Though the fabric was stiff, it nevertheless hung in a way that seemed almost natural. The burgundy color against my mother’s tanned olive complexion was its most striking feature.

“Oh, Ada,” Bec finally said. “A bit big in the middle, but still, Vivie was right. It’s that color. It’s splendid on you.”

For a moment my mother couldn’t stop touching the dress, its sleeves, its collar, its stiff but flowing skirt. Though Bec sewed for us all she’d never made us anything this elegant. Even the enviable dress and jacket for Nina was a much simpler affair.

Ada shrugged. “Oh well,” she said, dropping her arms, resigned to finally parting with it. “For a moment I felt like Cinderella, dressed up for the ball. Yes,” she said, nodding. “I did.”

When she laughed, plaintively, her sisters joined her.

“Those ladies from New Haven,” Bec said, patting my mother’s back as she turned her around one more time. “You wouldn’t believe it. To them a dress like this is just any old day.”