Morning Is a Long Time Coming (20 page)

24

B
EFORE BREAKFAST
on Friday, Dr. Kopelman strode into my room carrying an X-ray and two booklets which he deposited on my lap.
Eat Well to Stay Well
cautioned one, while another one, titled
Taking Care of Your Ulcer,
pictured a radiantly smiling man on the cover.

“Well, well, well,” he said, blowing cigar ashes off his red-and-green checked tie, as he seated himself in the cushioned chair next to my bed. “Tomorrow, you graduate.”

“Tomorrow?” I asked, already feeling the chilling winds of the January world. It wasn’t as though I was surprised. It was only that I hadn’t been expecting it. Well, exactly what did I expect? This is, after all, a hospital and not a home for little wanderers.

Ted Kopelman looked downright pleasant. “Yep, but I’m going to give the commencement address right now.” He went on to tell me what a grave mistake it would be to ever underestimate an ulcer’s potential for destruction. Particularly when it developed in one so young. How my life has to be so disciplined that I can never again put food in my mouth without first determining whether it’s on the approved list.

And when the doctor spoke of cigarettes and booze, he reminded me of the Reverend Mr. Burton Benn’s zeal while addressing himself to the subject of lust and greed.

After we wished each other “goodbye and good luck,” Dr. Kopelman left and I felt my empty gut begin to suffer abrasions from rubbing against the breastbone. I threw a couple of chalky pills into my mouth and tried, with my most reassuring voice, to calm myself down.

It’s all right to be a little upset. It’s never easy being forced from a safe harbor. A safe harbor, nothing! This place is more like an institutional mother to me.

That’s when I began to laugh out loud. God, if anybody here ever found out that I have a filial attachment to the American Hospital, then they’d ship me upstairs to the psychiatric ward for sure.

Boy, I’m really something! I mean if on my birthday I gave myself a tape recorder with a few prerecorded messages such as: “Everything’s gonna be all right” and maybe an
other message saying “Lay down your sweet head, honey babe, and rest a spell,” then by Mother’s Day, I’d be, sure enough, sending that machine a dozen long-stemmed American beauties.

By the time Roger arrived, I knew exactly what it was I had to do. I just didn’t know how. How to break it to him. But we didn’t get around to talking about it. At least not right away because he came in all consumed by his opportunity to buy a bargain motor scooter—a Vespa with barely three thousand miles on it.

“Not a lot of power,” he was saying, “but very reliable. It could take us to Normandy, the south of France, and across to the Italian Riviera.”

“I’d love it! The sun, the wind, even rain! I wouldn’t even mind a little rain—honest! And fog! Fog so deep and mysterious you could get lost in it. But sometimes you’d have to let me drive too. You would, wouldn’t you?”

“Any time,” said Roger, smiling so broadly that I didn’t know whether or not he was sincere. He spoke of a two-man tent he’d seen. (I didn’t bother correcting the error of his gender.) “Very lightweight and compact. Every night,” he concluded, “we will lie together under the birds.”

“Stars,” I quickly corrected.

“Stars,” agreed Roger, before breaking away from his vision. “Has Dr. Kopelman said anything specific about being released?”

My stomach lining felt as though it had just been attacked by a particularly ferocious square of very coarse-grained sandpaper. “He came by this morning—I’m not positive about the time.” That statement was hastily calculated to bore, or better still to mislead. At least until I can figure out
how on this earth I’ll be able to tell him what it is that I know I have to tell him.

Roger, though, was not put off. He was directing all of his energies toward knowing. “Tell me what he said.”

I resisted the temptation to look away. “Said?”

“About your leaving here!”

“He—Dr. Kopelman—said that he was releasing me in the morning.”

“Magnifique!”
he cried, wrapping his wiry arms around me like so much ribbon around a Christmas gift. “To be together again!” Then he suddenly pushed me an arm’s length away as though the wrappings had a need to examine the gift. “What else? What else did he tell you?”

“Nothing that I didn’t already know. That I would have to live a carefully regimented life.”

He was looking me over very carefully. “I don’t believe you. He did tell you something else!”

“No. At least not what I think you’re implying. The ulcer has healed without complications. The great Kopelman himself referred to it as an unremarkable recovery. It’s only ...”

“Only what?”

“Only that I have to make you understand something, but I have no way—no words to make you understand.”

A vertical line as definitive as an exclamation mark sliced his forehead into almost equal sections. “Understand what?”

“What it is I have to do.”

“Which is?”

“I have to go to Göttingen—in Germany.”

“Göttingen,” Roger blinked. “In Germany.”

Progress was being made. “Yes! Yes!” I cried out, encour
aged. “That’s where I have to go tomorrow as soon as I’m released. If I wait, I won’t have enough money for the trip. Now you may think that this is a rash and foolish thing to do, but all I can tell you is that it isn’t rash. I’ve thought about it for six years!”

Roger’s forehead crease deepened. “Why are you all of a sudden discussing Germany? You never before mentioned Germany. Are you feeling dizzy? Did the doctor give you an injection?”

“No, I’m not dizzy and no, there’s been no injection! I’ll start from the beginning. That way it will be easier for you to understand.”

But how can I make him understand? How can I possibly explain to Roger what I’ve never been able to explain to myself adequately? “It was the year that I was twelve. A German prisoner-of-war camp was set up near our town of Jenkinsville and then ... well, what happened was ...” I could still feel some of the same feelings that I felt then, only now I have lost all the words. Where did I put those words?

“Ah, yes,” said Roger, looking at me in a way that I didn’t understand because I had never seen that particular look on his face before. “And now you wish to visit some German soldier? Someone who was very special to you, n’est-ce pas?”

Could it be that he’s jealous? He was sounding jealous.

“Roger, I was only twelve years old!”

He bumped his fist against his lips. “Sorry. Continue, please.”

“Well, one really hot day, some of the prisoners began passing out in the cotton fields. You don’t know how hot it can get in Arkansas! Once I remember it was so hot that I
turned on our garden hose and the water that came out gave me a first-degree burn. And another time—”

“Patty, tell me about Germany.”

“Ah, yes, well ... As I said, the prisoners began passing out in the cotton fields. So the guards took a bunch of them into town, into our store, for field hats. And that was how I happened to meet him. How I happened to meet Frederick Anton Reiker. From the first moment that I saw him, I knew ... knew that he wasn’t like them. Like the others.”

“Chose qui plaît est à demi vendu!”

“It wasn’t just his looks! Oh, I loved his looks, but more important, he was a wonderful man. And a pacifist, like you.”

“He convinced you of that? Every son-of-bitch Nazi soldier who got trapped in Paris after the occupation swore on God’s good name that he wasn’t like the others!”

“Roger, don’t you know that you never have to give a Jew lessons in German-hating?”

Roger made a few more bumping motions against his lips and I continued. “And anyway, jealousy is wasted on the dead.” I took his hand to kiss the inside of his palm. “It’s okay, I know you suffered a lot during the occupation. But Anton also suffered. I have always considered him as much a victim of the Nazis as Grandma’s family from Luxembourg. Well, after Anton escaped, I saw him just about dusk running along the railroad embankment and that’s when I took after him and hid him in some old abandoned rooms above our garage.”

“That was just after the war?”

“No, during. During the war.”

“Didn’t you realize that you could get into trouble with the authorities if you were caught?”

“Of course! Of course, I realized. I’m not dumb, you know! In my life, I’ve been confused, and I’ve vacillated a lot, but I’ve never NEVER been dumb!”

Roger’s shrug seemed to involve his whole body. “You know that isn’t what was implied.”

“I hope not, because I feel strongly about it. You see, some people—my lawyer, for instance, tried to build an entire defense on the proposition that I was dumb and simply couldn’t comprehend the consequences of my actions.”

“Your lawyer? You did get into trouble with the authorities?”

“Well, yes ... some. It wasn’t all that bad. I guess what I minded as much as anything else was the people on my side, like my grandparents, who were patronizing on the same basis as my lawyer. My father, now that I think of it, at least understood that I knew what I was doing. But for everybody else being twelve made me some kind of a dummy. Well, I wasn’t dumb and I did know!

“And even now I still feel a sense of pride, knowing that I did the best I could for him. Even after he died that helped. Oh, I cried about a beautiful person losing his life and I cried for myself ... for all I had lost.”

He gave short nods of his head. “Without an understanding of the inherent risks, your sacrifice would be without value.”

“Exactly!” I said, squeezing his hand. “Without an inherent value I—I ... say that again, please.”

“Certainly. If you did not understand the inherent risks
that you took on behalf of this man, then your sacrifices would be diminished.”

“Oh, my God, Roger, you know so much!” I cried out, grabbing his hand. But it wasn’t until I saw him wince that I realized my nails were cutting hard into his palms.

“Well, I don’t understand everything. If Frederick Anton Reiker is dead, then why go to Göttingen?”

“That’s the most difficult part of all to explain.”

As he rested his chin against an open hand, I could tell that he was preparing himself for a period of intense concentration.

“I can tell you that it has something to do with what I don’t have. With what I’ve never had ... with ...”

“Is it so difficult,” asked Roger with the most annoying kind of serenity, “to confide in me?”

“Damn right! And it’s hard for you too, and don’t you forget it! Exposing oneself isn’t easy, not for anybody. Maybe it’s particularly difficult for me. I don’t know. But all my life, it’s been so very important to avoid showing any weakness. I felt as though I had to appear invincible just to survive. And breaking old habits is still difficult.”

“But you know you can trust me,” said Roger. “Whatever it is, I’ll understand.”

“Don’t think it’s bad! It’s really nothing that’s bad. It’s not as though I’ve killed or stolen. Why, I never even break in line, drop gum wrappers on the sidewalk, or renege on library fines.”

Roger nodded with what appeared to be a solemnity concocted to match the occasion.

“Then why—please tell me why I’m so ashamed of it, Roger?”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

I heard myself sigh just as though I were experiencing a rapid and complete energy depletion. “For a while, all the time I was with you, I thought that I had given my old obsession the slip.”

I caught Roger smiling as though I were a frightened child needing only a few moments of his parental reassurance. “You’ve never experienced an obsession! Well, let me tell you, my friend, if you’re ever given the choice between an ulcer and an obsession, grab the ulcer. That only affects your body. While an obsession takes over your whole life.”

He wrinkled his forehead. “An obsession is affecting your life?”

“Not just affecting, Roger! Controlling. Controlling my life! Compelling me to do what is, at the same time, frightening and embarrassing.”

He shook his head. “I can’t believe—”

“You can believe because I’m telling you! This is not the sort of thing that anybody would get pleasure from making up. But before I tell you what it is—what the obsession is—I want you to know that the only time I really had it under control was the time I spent with you. At least that’s what I believed until Olivia Marcou. But understand, she didn’t create my monster, she merely revived it. So, I think that I’ll never be fully comfortable until I ...”

“Yes?”

“Until I follow it—the experience—to its conclusion. Whatever that conclusion may be. Now, do you understand?”

“I’m not sure I understand anything.”

“Oh, my God, Roger, weren’t you listening? How could anyone be any clearer than that? What I’m trying to tell
you is very simple. When Olivia Marcou comforted me on the way to the hospital, I knew that I had to be a part of a ... had to have a family!”

“Aha!” said Roger, tapping his own chest. “Allow me, madame, to show you exactly where a most exceptional husband can be found who with pleasure and pride will join with you in the creation of beautiful little children. Et violà! Ta famille.”

“Oh, no, Roger, no! Is that what you think I’m talking about—marriage?” I heard the word
marriage
spill from my tongue with a sharp, twisted kind of shrillness. “I’m not ready for that! I don’t know how to be what I’ve never had! I don’t want to
be
a mother. I want to
have
one. Don’t you understand I want Anton’s mother to be my mother too!”

I watched Roger carefully ease himself into the bedside chair as though he too had been recuperating from a very long and debilitating illness. Then he adjusted his polished metal watch strap. Releasing the catch and closing it. Releasing and closing. Closing and releasing. I felt the tension pull all of my own nerves into a thin, taut line. Releasing and closing ...

Then his hand moved away from the watchband to press for a few moments against the inner corners of his eyes. He looked directly at me. “Tomorrow morning,” he said in a voice heavy with leaden authority, “I will come to the hospital to take you home. You will recover your strength and in the spring we will tour France and some of Italy from our Vespa.”