Shining Through (28 page)

Guber. He’d come to the house, checked my mother over and pulled me into the hallway, closing her door. He said, She’s got cirrhosis of the liver. She’s not just falling down because she’s weak. In his gruff Brooklyn voice, he’d gone on: Linda, not good. She’s got nervous system damage, jaundice, edema. She’s a mess, kid. You gotta be able to see it yourself.

I could. And although I knew the answer, I finally asked him, Can you do anything? He’d answered, Not anything that would help. Is she going to die from it? I’d had to ask, and he’d said,

“Yeah, kid. Six months, a year. What a waste. Such a beauty she was.”

Cookie had been standing beside me the whole time, listening to the doctor. She shook her head and said, Most of them get mean sooner or later, but she’s such a
cute
drunk.

SHINING THROUGH / 205

“Where’s Johnny?” my mother called out, her volume higher than ever.

“He’s over at the restaurant, checking if we can still have our reservation. You know you’re over an hour late, Mom.” She gave me an innocent, Oh really? look and fluttered her eyelashes. I wondered if she’d be fluttering if she’d seen the look on John’s face after sixty minutes of watching every taxi going up and down Fifth Avenue. I took her arm and, with Cookie on her other side, half led, half carried her toward the tree. She gawked at it, like all the tourists, but paid much more attention to the women’s fur coats.

“Beautiful!” she said of a passing sheared raccoon. “I’m dying to meet Johnny,” she went on. “He better be as gorgeous as you say or I’ll tell him, ‘Hey, my Linda’s got taste up her—’”

“Cookie,” I interrupted, “why don’t you take a walk around the tree. I’ll stay here with my mother.”

The minute Cookie stepped away, my mother grabbed my collar. “A blue wool coat? You marry a filthy-rich guy and he gives you
cloth?
”

“Mom,” I said, as softly and as gently as I could, “please be on your best behavior today. You know what I mean.”

She patted my hand. “I know, honey. Gee, you look stunning.

You look terrific in blue. And you’re wearing mascara, finally?”

I nodded. “So how’re things?”

“Fine,” I said.

“How’s the baby coming along?”

“Mom, I had a miscarriage. Over two months ago. I told you.”

“Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. I swear to God, I forgot. You know, who wants to remember something like that?” She pushed back the sleeves of her coat—a too-vivid brown, purple and cream-color plaid I knew would make John’s jaw go rigid—but the sleeves were too long and drooped over her hands again. I tried to make a cuff, but she pulled away. “Cuffs are for old ladies,”

she said. “I had one, you know. A mis. You weren’t even a year old when it happened. But the

206 / SUSAN ISAACS

doctor did the mis on purpose. We asked him to. You know what I mean?”

“Dr. Guber?”

“Nah! He was chicken. A guy on Queens Boulevard. Twenty bucks he charged, but Herm said, ‘It’s well worth it.’ Listen, I was just seventeen, and I already had you.” Her eyes filled with tears. I thought she was thinking about her lost baby. But then she said, “I loved your father.” She swallowed, sniffled and then hollered: “Merry Christmas, Herm!” A Negro family who’d been standing near us gave each other this-one’s-a-lunatic looks and edged away. My mother reached out and put her cold hand in mine. “You think he hears me?”

“I’m sure he does.”

“He wasn’t all that crazy about Christmas, to tell you the truth.

Him being a Jew.”

“Mom,” I said, “don’t mention anything about that to John.”

“Why not?”

“I just never got a chance to tell him. Not that it would matter.”

“You ashamed of your father?”

“No!”

“Jews are smart!”

“Shhh!”

“Where do you think you got your brains from? Me? Johnny wouldn’t care. Anyway, you look more like me, even though Herm didn’t look like one, or I’ll tell you, I wouldn’t have married him. Not with those dark beards and greasy hair like they got.”

“Well, just don’t say anything, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And—”

She cut me off. “You gonna give me a list?”

“Please don’t talk about him being a rich lawyer.”

She glanced at my coat again. “Maybe he has a nice Christmas surprise when you get back home.” Actually, John had already given me my gift: a gold pin shaped like a SHINING THROUGH / 207

butterfly, with two tiny rubies for eyes and emerald chips down its body. It was a little too large and a little too fancy: in other words, what he thought I’d appreciate.

Just then, John arrived. He was wearing his good navy suit with a red tie. His gray topcoat was open. His darker gray cashmere scarf was tossed around his neck with the perfect degree of casualness.

“Merry Christmas, Mrs. Voss,” he said. I could see he was shocked at how sick she looked, to say nothing of his reaction to her coat.

“Merry Christmas!” My mother was genuinely impressed. John started to button his coat, as if to cover himself. “Hey, relax.”

He took a small step back. “So you’re my son-in-law. Well, my girl’s
very
lucky.” She turned to me. “He’s some guy, Lin! You shouldn’t let him go out for a walk by himself.”

Cookie, realizing mother-daughter time had ended, rushed over. “Merry Christmas, sir!” she greeted John. Her voice was breathlessly girlish.

He seemed stunned to see this sudden servant who looked as if, any minute, like a chimpanzee, she might leap up and swing from branch to branch of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.

“Merry Christmas,” he mumbled. Then he looked at my mother, then at me. His eyes closed for an instant. When he opened them, he said, “I took care of the maître d’. Why don’t we walk over to the restaurant?”

After everything I’d told him about my mother, John’s idea of a perfect Christmas probably would have been giving her a year at a sanitarium as a present. But he knew I wouldn’t go for that, so when I started talking about what to do Christmas Day, he immediately suggested we bring her to the apartment, give her her presents (fast), have a (quick) dinner and say good night.

If he could have managed to have her slipped in the back door and brought up in the freight elevator, he would have. Not that I could blame him; unfortunately, I’d told him the truth about her, including her tendency to fall on her face, call out to strange men and to get my father’s attention, shout to the heavens. I 208 / SUSAN ISAACS

could see her making a megaphone of her hands and booming

“Herm, lover!” in front of our building, in front of the neighbors.

But I’d told him no dice, I wanted to treat my mother to Manhattan, take her to see the tree and then out for a dinner fancier than she’d ever had. I said, John, it’s probably her last Christmas. He picked a large, well-known restaurant that catered to blue-haired ladies whose idea of Christmas dinner was three martinis and a stuffed tomato: a respectable, even stuffy place, but no one he knew—no graceful people—would ever go near it.

“Isn’t he something?” my mother asked Cookie. “Better than a lifeguard. High-class.”

I took my mother’s arm to help her walk. John moved reluct-antly to the other side.

“Don’t worry,” my mother said to me, as she grabbed onto his arm. “I won’t say nothing to embarrass you, sweetpea.” She looked up at John. “You gonna buy me a cocktail, Johnny?”

“Hey—” Cookie called, from behind the three of us.

My mother didn’t bother to look around. “Big fat deal. It’s Christmas.”

“Mom,” I said, trying to sound calm, “you’re not allowed to drink anymore. You know that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it ain’t good for you,” Cookie blurted out. “You know that, Missus.”

My mother stopped, so abruptly that Cookie banged into us.

“And
you
know and
you
know,” she blared out to me and Cookie, “that I got six months, a year, tops. You don’t think I listened in when Dr. Creep came over?”

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think how to answer her. Then I started to cry.

“Come on, Linny, your mascara’ll run in front of Johnny, and you look so pretty.” I tried to absorb my mother’s calm, collected knowledge of her doom. I peered into her eyes—outlined with seven or eight times the

SHINING THROUGH / 209

amount of mascara I had on, coated with pistachio-green eye shadow—when she leaned toward John. It was a jerky movement, and he had to catch her so she wouldn’t fall. “You’ll take good care of my little girl?” she asked, still in his arms. “Promise?”

I think he was touched. At least his voice had a catch in it.

“Yes,” he said quietly, “I promise,” and stood her upright.

Somehow, we got her to the restaurant.

“Wow!” she said, looking at the wood-paneled walls and the eight-arm brass chandeliers. “Johnny, you sure can pick ’em!”

She picked up a water glass and clinked her nails against it. “Nice stuff.” Then she smiled at John. “Well, cocktail time!” It was two-thirty. “Come
on
. A big-money lawyer like you can afford a little gin. Order me a double, okay?” I made no move to stop him—I was too numb. How could my mother bear knowing? But I was also a little numb anticipating what her next move could be, once she’d had her double: making a pass at John; telling a few Jew jokes while winking at me broadly.

John called over the waiter, ordered us drinks and slipped away to the men’s room. It could have been in Cleveland if you judged by how fast he took off. “Oops,” my mother said, as soon as he was out of earshot. “Sorry about the rich business, Linda, lamb.”

“That’s okay, Mom.”

“I know I got a big mouth.” I didn’t give her an argument.

“But listen, while he’s gone…” I could see her trying to come up with her version of maternal wisdom. And she did. “He’s built like a dream! And he talks so cultured, Lin. He’s really smart.

You know, smart-smart. And so-o-o good-looking you could die.” Suddenly, her chirpy, life’s-a-party tone fizzled out. She touched my chin with her fingertips. “Baby, watch out for him.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Deep down, he’s a rat.”

It took me a minute to find the words. “What makes you think that?”

210 / SUSAN ISAACS

“Oh, Lin, I know guys. He’s not good, like your father. And I can see it in
your
eyes, how he feels about you. Don’t tell me no.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “Oh, Linda, I wish you could’ve found someone to love you.”

1 5

N
orth Africa, the Balkans, East Africa, Crete, Iraq, Yugoslavia.

The black cloud grew bigger, more poisonous, but I remember waking from an afternoon nap in May 1941—a few months after we moved to Washington—and, still in bed, looking through the sheer curtains at the red geraniums in the window box and thinking: My life is nice. Okay, almost.

At first, the best part of moving to Washington was putting all the New York furniture in storage; the sight of the movers carting off Nan’s couch was—up to that point—the greatest moment of my marriage. The next-best part was renting a pretty furnished house in a neighborhood not far from Washington Cathedral. John insisted the area was exclusive, but in spite of that, it felt comfortable to me; our block could have been plunked down in half a dozen spots in Brooklyn. The big difference was the rent (high) and the tranquillity (total). The streets were absolutely silent. No one in Washington hung out their windows and waved or whistled hello when you walked down the street on your way to the fruit man’s or the candy store—if there’d been a candy store, which there wasn’t. People sat back on their private porches, not on their it’s-okay-to-be-nosy stoops.

Maybe they’d decided life in Washington was too predictable to bother. What was there to look at? The men worked for the government and looked like lawyers, even if they weren’t. The wives all seemed to have been born in Alabama. They said “Ha”

instead of “Hi,” and they never sat 211

212 / SUSAN ISAACS

down unless they were sewing something. They needle-pointed pictures and piano bench covers and eyeglass cases: they repaired their mama’s old lace tablecloths; they made quilts for their beds and everybody else’s beds; they took endless hems up and down.

“Ha, Linna,” my across-the-street neighbor Lucy MacPharland said. She stood at my door with her sewing bag and a chocolate cake. At the beginning, I thought the cakes were welcome-to-the-block gifts, and they were, but later I realized that while it was okay to drop in unannounced, you never knocked on any door without at least a pound of baked goods.

“Hi,” I said. “Come in.”

“Sure you’re not busy?” she asked, as she pushed past me and walked down the hall into the kitchen. She set her cake on the table, where there already was a pecan pie. “Katie-Lou was here?”

The evidence was undeniable; Katie-Lou Wilcox edged her pie crust in overlapping scallops.

“This morning,” I said. I opened a drawer, got out the roll of waxed paper, and covered the evidence of Katie-Lou’s visit. I put it in the refrigerator, next to Bessie Campbell’s sticky buns.

Lucy elbowed me aside and snatched the percolator out of the dish drainer. “Well, now,” she said, and then murmured,

“three, four,” as she measured coffee. “Tell me every little thing that’s occurred since I”—they all actually said “Ah” instead of

“I”—“last saw you.”

“Let’s see. What’s happened since yesterday?” I murmured.

“Oh! I know! Cora Sue Young left”—I paused dramatically—“for a visit to her mother.”

“No! She said she was visitin’ her mama?”

“Rita Harwood saw her leave the house with a suitcase and get into a
car
.”

“Mah word, Linna!” She wasn’t just whistling “Dixie.”

What all the fuss meant was that one of our neighbors, whose husband was third man at the Argentinian desk at the State Department, had discovered a driving school instructor who had no interest in Argentina but a lot of interest in her.

SHINING THROUGH / 213

His parked Ford had caused comment long before Cora Sue confided in yet another neighbor, Rebecca Jean, that she was having an affair and was making plans to spend a weekend with her instructor—and not to practice shifting to second, either.