East Into Upper East (21 page)

Ma also loved roaming the streets. She was completely uninhibited by the city, which she treated as her neighborhood bazaar. If she saw something of interest on the opposite side of the street—it might only be a colorful display of fruits—she would not hesitate to cross against the lights, holding up her hand to stem the torrent of traffic. She was always intrigued by what people were selling out of cardboard boxes on the sidewalks, and after some decent haggling, she came away with their, often stolen, goods. She brought home trinkets for Tammy—not that Tammy didn't have everything in the world, but as a gift from Ma's own hands, and what did it matter that this was paid for out of Tammy's money (they had made a tactful arrangement about Ma's expenses). She also came home with some purchase she had made for Ross—her first present to him was a T-shirt with “You're My Best Grandpa” printed on it.

It was of course a joke. He never wore T-shirts, he was always in jacket and necktie, which would have looked natty if they had not been frayed. “Put it on,” urged Ma, snapping her fingers at him as if to give him rhythm, “you must be a little bit with-it.” But she grew serious when he pointed out that he was nobody's grandpa. She said that, on the contrary, he was everyone's—that he and she had both reached a stage where they were only there to help others along their paths. She said she knew of what great service he had been to
Tammy and waved aside his disclaimer that, in view of the fact that he had no money at all, it was the other way around. As if that mattered a hoot, exclaimed Ma. He admired her attitude of complete nonchalance about who paid the bills, having never really got used to being unable to pay any himself.

It was not difficult for the three of them—Tammy, Ma, and Ross—to live together because they never got in one another's way. Tammy was taking a variety of courses in psychology and religious philosophy; Ross followed his own routine of reading the papers in the park, or in the coffee-shop where he ate all his meals; Ma went out on her excursions, cooked spicy little messes for herself, had long afternoon naps, and watched TV. She felt fulfilled in the knowledge that she was of use to Tammy. She encouraged Tammy in her attendance of classes and was disappointed if she dropped one, as she often did. When Tammy expressed disappointment with what she was being taught, Ma said that it was always good to learn—she had great respect for book learning, possessing very little of it herself. But Tammy longed for something quite different. She couldn't say in words what that was, but her face took on an expression of yearning. Tammy had a very pure face, with clear eyes and clear skin; her head was small and reared up from a long neck, so that she seemed always to be straining upward, in the direction of something beyond her reach.

One day Ross was sitting in the park reading the afternoon paper; he had already read the morning one. It wasn't really a park but a triangle of grass set at the intersection of four busy crossroads; here he was in the middle of the city's traffic without being a part of it. Looking up for a moment from his paper, he saw a strange sight: this was Ma escaping from a car that was about to run her down. She was going as fast as she could, making for the safety of the little park. But she was laughing as if it were a game, one hand hitching up her orange sari, so that her brand-new golden shoes were visible; she clutched a handbag under one arm, a red umbrella under the other. Still laughing, she made it to the park where she stood and shook her fist playfully at the driver of the erring car. She sank onto the nearest bench, which happened to be the one occupied by Ross.
“Did you see that? The rascal,” she said, as though about a favorite grandson. She was tugging at her sari, which had come partly undone in her flight, and she adjusted something at the front and tied a string at the side, pulling her garment together. “He saw me perfectly well but he said let me have a game with this old madam. But I won—you saw me win? Oh, it's you,” for she had thought she was addressing a stranger.

“He had the light.”

“What light? He could wait for a minute, my goodness, what is there? And for a person my age.”

“You run pretty fast for a person your age.”

Having fixed her sari, she began on her hair, sticking a lot of hairpins into her mouth, which however did not inhibit her from talking. He had noticed her habit of commenting on whatever happened to float into her mind—in this case, the little park in which they sat: “How refreshing,” she said, “a small paradise of peace in all this hubbub.” It did not seem to bother her that the grass was worn away in big patches, and was anyway not very green, or that several benches were broken and all of them unpainted; besides herself and Ross, the only occupants at the moment were two bundled figures, one stretched out, one hunched up, both asleep.

She showed him her red umbrella: “I bought it just now from a man who let me have it very cheap. When it rains, at once the price shoots up, so I said better buy now, why waste? Oh shame!” she cried, for having opened the umbrella to admire it, she found it torn at the center spoke. “Cheating an old lady! And such a nice boy from Ghana with a big big smile—wait till tomorrow, he'll hear from me so he'll forget to smile.”

“Tomorrow he'll be back in Ghana. And there are plenty of umbrellas in the house, since you don't believe in waste.”

“I love this pretty color.” Probably she was thinking, as he was, of the huge old umbrellas in the brass stand at the entrance door, some with animal heads, none of them colorful or ever used, the property of people who had died. This silent thought led her on to others that were spoken: “Did you see the pretty moonstone ring I bought for Tammy? Of course it was not costly, but I wanted only to give her something in return, as you do. You've given her so much.”

“That's not the general opinion,” said Ross.

“Oh, she's told me how you loved her mother and cared for that
poor soul! And I've seen with my own eyes how you love Tammy, sitting up for her every night, waiting for her to come in. No need to be shy,” she interpreted the expression on his face.

“How would you know I wait up for her? You're always fast asleep and snoring.”

She laughed: “Yes, I can sleep in peace because I know you're awake to welcome the child when she comes home. That's what makes it home for her—that you're there. Again you're shy. You should be proud and glad.”

Now it was his turn to laugh: proud and glad! Never had such scintillating words descended on him.

But it was true that, however late it was, he was always awake when Tammy came home. This was due both to insomnia and habit: or perhaps the insomnia had become a habit from the time he was always starting up, listening into the night for what Grace might be doing. He had not trusted her for a second. And what a relief it had been when Tammy was there in her vacations to ask, “Is she asleep? Is she all right?” That was all he wanted, someone to care with him, for a moment. Not that he meant to burden Tammy or have her carry a share of his burden of her mother—on the contrary, it was his ambition to keep her as she was, young and free.

Even now, four years after her mother's death, it was what he wanted for Tammy. That was why he asked: “How long is she staying?”

“Who?” Tammy asked. “Ma?”

He grimaced at that name: he didn't call her that—he didn't call her anything, and the first time he had heard Tammy say “Ma,” he had asked “Whose Ma?” with the same face as now. “Has she settled down for good, or what?”

“She likes it here. Well, it's all right, she's not disturbing us—unless you mind all the smells, her oil and so forth?”

“They're potent, although one could get used to them, if one had to. But does one have to?”

“She's got nowhere else to go, that's the thing. And we brought her here. It's not her fault it didn't work out. And she still thinks we need her. Ma is very simple, really. But of course if you want her to leave, Ross, then she'll have to.”

Ross had been living in the apartment for ten years. When he first came, Tammy was thirteen and at boarding school, since no one
knew what else to do with her. After Grace died, she left everything to Tammy and nothing at all to Ross—it had been one of her taunts to Ross when she was alive: “He's hanging around because of my will, but just wait and see,” which had made Tammy feel ashamed. She had felt generally ashamed about the way Grace had treated Ross; and when she didn't leave him anything, Tammy was relieved to be able to make some amends.

The day after she bought the red umbrella, Ma showed up again in the little park, with a green one. She waved it at Ross from the middle of the street—this time the traffic stopped for her—and when she joined him, she said, “See, I made him change it. He was a good boy, after all.” She sat down and chattered away, though he didn't look up from his paper and rattled it ostentatiously whenever he turned a page. That didn't make any difference to her, she continued to share her thoughts with him. Suddenly she poked him with her green umbrella: “How is it you're not married and no children?” she repeated the question she had been asking since the first day she met him.

He brought his paper closer to his nose, but she was undaunted: “Look at me: five children and twenty-one, no, twenty-two grandchildren.”

“Why aren't you with them?”

“Tammy needs me.” When he lowered his paper to look at her, she nodded to confirm he had heard right: “Tammy needs a mother.”

“Tammy has had enough of mothers.” He folded his paper, not that he had finished it but to show he was departing. She put out her hand to hold him back—it made him jump, maybe because her hand was preternaturally hot, or because he was not used to anyone touching him.

It had been in this same park that he first met Grace. Even then the grass had been patchy, and though the benches had been intact, the people sitting on them had looked derelict. He himself must have looked the same; he had just lost his job—the wholesale clothing firm where he had been employed as accountant had gone bankrupt—and at the same time, by the sort of mischance he was used to, he had been turned out of his place to live. Grace had sat down at the other end of his bench, as far away from him as possible—she never wanted to be near anyone, and like himself hated to be touched. But she had started a conversation with him; it was her
habit to talk to strangers in a way she never would to anyone closer to her. He had felt flattered that she should address him—this tall, beautiful, aristocratic,
poetic
woman: for this was the impression she conveyed right till the end. She wasn't particularly well-dressed, she had bought no new clothes for years, but whatever she wore took on a stateliness as of sculptured drapery. And she spoke in the lazy drawl of someone who was used to being listened to with admiration, adoration; also without looking at her interlocutor, dropping her words into space for him to catch as best he could. And then, as abruptly as she had sat down by him, she got up to leave, and he gazed at her in panic, thinking that he was never going to see her again, that she would remain to him as only this moment of vision. But she invited him to come along home with her, and she might as well have rubbed two fingers together and made sugared sounds to induce him to follow: he trotted along beside her, with no reflection but ready to give himself up to her body and soul.

During the years of living within the Gothic ruin of her apartment, he had felt the need for occasional excursions out of it, as for daily doses of fresh air. Yet he never strayed far—only to this little park and a nearby coffee-shop and a few utility stores—so as always to be, as it were, within earshot of the grotesquely ornate, turn-of-the-century, scrolled and sculptured corner block where she lived. And he remained tethered to this routine after she died: it was still the same places he went to, and also at the same hour every day, so that he could be easily tracked down, if anyone had had any such intention. In addition to the little park, Ma began to show up in the coffee-shop where he ate his meals. The customers here were like himself, regular and solitary, and they were all served by the same elderly waitress, Stella, who knew everyone's order without being told. She was amazed when, for the first time in all the years he had been her customer, Ross was joined by another person—and what a person! At first Stella was haughty with her, as she was with any new customer, and especially one who could not be socially placed. But Ma melted her with motherly fondness, calling her her child, though Stella was as old as she was. Ma desired a hot chocolate; it came out of a machine and had a froth of synthetic cream on top,
which adhered to Ma's upper lip. And from under this white fringe she smiled at Ross and congratulated him on the coziness of his little dining place, though it was a dark hole with two serried rows of glass-topped tables, which could be easily wiped off by Stella whenever she happened not to have her hands full.