The Houseguest (6 page)

She didn't move at first, didn't look away. A tack-sized dimple appeared in her cheek—the sort of dimple that precedes a smile. “He sent you, did he?”

Abe held out his hand, and she placed hers on top in what seemed a continental gesture. Did she expect him to press his lips against it? To bow? Something in her gaze made him stammer. Was she beautiful? Not exactly. There was nothing remarkable about her face except her eyes, from which he found it impossible to look away. They were not brown, not green, neither gray nor hazel, but some combination of each. They were large but not round, narrow eyes beneath narrow brows; they emanated expectation.

“I'm glad to meet you,” he told her, shouting slightly to be heard over the din of travelers. “My name's Abe Auer. You'll be staying with us.” When she didn't respond, he added, “How was your trip?”

“My trip,” she said. “It was miserable, of course. But I wasn't expecting more.”

There was a slight slant to her mouth when she smiled. She had straight teeth, a large nose, a pinprick mole between her cheek and
upper lip, a way of looking up at him from downcast lids. By now, they were the only two people on the track. The fog began to lift and the sun burned a gash in the clouds. A few fat raindrops fell then ceased, as though sodden rags were being wrung dry above them. Abe realized that they'd been standing still on the platform, that he'd been waiting, hovering, when the normal thing to do would have been to start walking, showing her the way.

“Can I take your bag?” he asked.

She didn't answer right away. Had she not understood, or was this air of hesitation a tic in her manner? A beat was lost between question and answer, but what she was doing with it, where her mind went in that moment, he didn't know. “A gentleman,” she said as he reached for the suitcase, and then added, “I do appreciate it. I haven't much, but even a few possessions grow heavy when dragged across the sea.”

“You speak such good English. I wasn't expecting that. Where are you coming from exactly?”

She told him that she'd lived in London for a time. Germany, also, many years ago. Rumania as well. But now, now she was coming from Warsaw. Her ship had arrived two weeks before, and she'd spent the time sleeping in a cot in a hallway of the Joint Distribution Committee. She told him all this as they began to walk. The crowd had fled. Only the vendor remained. He tipped his hat to them as they passed.
What did he think?
Abe wondered, watching them leave together, his own prosaic figure next to hers.

“I was told there'd be a house here, warm water. A little food.”

“Yes,” he said. “My wife is cooking, so more than a little.”

Her suitcase was light in his hand. The energy of the moment swept him along, making him feel as though he could carry three bags and a trunk on his back. He led her away from the tracks toward the main staircase of the station. When he glanced over his shoulder, she was lingering behind, looking up at the sky. He wondered if maybe a few screws had been shaken loose by whatever trauma she'd endured. He
stopped and waited for her. When she'd caught up, he said, “It's not far to the house. Nothing's too far from anything in Utica. We have the mountains nearby. Parks. Even a racetrack. When the horses get too old in Saratoga, they send them here. Really, they plod more than race, but we all enjoy it.”

She didn't answer. She didn't move.

“You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?” he said.

She shrugged. “I feel a bit . . . I don't know the word in English.”

“Say it in Yiddish.”

“I can't think of it in Yiddish, either.”

“
Tsemisht
? Confused? Exhausted? Uncertain?”

She gave a weary smile then nodded. Then she did something he was not expecting, something for which he couldn't have prepared himself. She reached for his hands, took his short, wide fingers with her long, slender ones. They felt smooth, cold, and bloodless, just the opposite of the air around them, which was warm and damp. They reminded him of the metal of the train on which she'd ridden, the steel railing surrounding the deck of the ship that had carried him across the sea more than two decades ago, his own body when he'd first arrived in New York, always cold, always hungry. Were all things that came from that other world cooled to the temperature of the contraptions that carried them? The journey drained youth and hope, the very things it was meant to restore. Why not warmth?

“You're very kind,” she said. “I can tell already. A kind man. Imagine it. I didn't know there were any of you left.”

“I do my best,” he said.

“I'm grateful,” she answered. “The world has not been kind to Ana Beidler.”

He paused for a moment, absorbing the fact that she was talking about herself. Then he nodded and led her down the steps to the street below.

WHEN THEY ARRIVED
at the Auers' house, Ana Beidler's hat was taken and hand shaken by each member of his family almost before she'd walked through the front door. Abe mumbled introductions that were rendered superfluous by his wife and daughter's boisterous greeting, by Max Hoffman, whose unending smile revealed his unease as much as the sweat on his forehead. Her suitcase was taken upstairs. She was shown to her room to wash up and settle in while everyone else moved toward the dining room to wait.

For dinner, Irene had prepared a leg of lamb, and alongside the lamb, she'd prepared a roast. For side dishes, she'd prepared carrot tzimmes and cabbage stuffed with rice. She'd prepared a kugel as thick as a brick, and a salad made of beets, and for dessert she baked a rhubarb pie and a chocolate cake. Abe and Irene and Judith and Rabbi Hoffman stood nervously in the parlor as the food sat cooling on the dining-room table. Their guest had gone to bathe. “I must bathe,” was how she put it, following Irene to the spare room. Abe had assumed she meant a twist of the handle and a toss on the face of whatever come from the spigot, but Ana's definition was more continental, more languorous.

They sat around the living room waiting, and while they waited, Abe forgot about himself, made his actions mechanical. He smoked a cigarette, poured himself a second glass of cream sherry. Finally, they heard the water drain upstairs. Judith was slumped over, her head resting on the table. She pushed herself up as though it required great effort, then set to finishing another drink.

“I'm cold,” she said. “I'm freezing!” This was an unbearable habit she'd developed, announcing her own minor physical discomforts as though they were events of great importance.

“So put on a sweater,” Irene said.

“It's an icebox in here. Am I the only one who's freezing?”

“You're the only one,” Abe said. “We're not running the heat in June.”

“Maybe I'm not really cold. Maybe I'm just so hungry that it's beginning to affect my circulation.”

“Hush,” Irene said. “Who says such a thing with a refugee at the table, a person who probably hasn't had a meal in months?”

“Technically, she's not
at
the table. She's been bathing for an hour.”

“And who knows how long it's been since the woman's had a real bath?” said Abe.

“Real bath, real cold dinner.”

“I'm sure she'll be down soon,” said Max. “Any minute now.”

Abe leaned back in his chair and sighed. This, he thought, was the problem with good intentions. People expected things for their generosity: a future favor, a pat on the back, a grateful refugee who knows how to take a quick shower. He was about to get up and pour himself a scotch when footsteps sounded overhead, slow at first, and then faster as the sound moved down the stairs.

The woman who stood before them then only mildly resembled the one he'd met at the station. Her mess of hair had been washed, combed out, and dried, then tied on top of her head in elaborate plaits secured with gold pins. Gone, of course, was the damp overcoat, but also the plain, dark dress, in place of it now, an impeccably tailored blouse, Adriatic green satin silk, gathered just so to show off her collarbone. An egg-sized brooch rested against her throat. Her lips were painted red, her fingernails lacquered, her fingers banded in gemstones and gold.

“So sorry to keep you waiting,” she said with that accent, the one that sounded nothing like the country speech of Abe's youth, nothing like the guttural Yiddish of his parents.

“Shall we eat?” he asked.

Ana Beidler took her seat at the table between his daughter and his wife. The dishes were passed. The wine was poured. She smiled and pushed forward her glass, drank half of what he gave her in a single draw.

“What a lovely brooch you're wearing,” said Irene. “Is that mother-of-pearl?”

Ana raised her fingers to her neck. “This? A man gave it to me. A director of the Bucharest production of
A Wounded Star
.”

“You're an actress?” Judith asked.

“Was an actress. The theaters in Europe have been shut down for years now. The Jewish theaters.”

“Are you . . . were you . . .”

“Was I famous? Is that what you'd like to know?” She smiled then, and though Abe could not read the precise meaning behind it, he saw in her expression something that stopped him, that made him put down his fork and sit back in his chair. That ever-present fog in his head cleared for a moment. A rush of joy, almost like pain. His skin tingled. The blood pulsed against his veins as he realized . . . there was something familiar about her.
Oh,
he felt a part of himself saying,
I remember.
And yet he didn't. It was something else, a sense she exuded that was unique to that other world, that other place. Everyone at the table was watching her, but she was looking only at Judith. “My dear,” she said. “I'd like you, sometime, to sneak away from here, back to the station where your father fetched me, and go back the way I came, just the last part, back to New York, and once you're there, board the Third Avenue elevated. Head in the direction of 14th Street, a southerly direction, I believe. Look for the theaters. The playhouses. Ask the gentlemen there if they have not heard of Jacob Adler. Of Israel Rosenberg. Of Schiller in London. After they nod, and assuming they haven't thrown you out for an idiot, ask if they know of Ana Beidler of Bucharest, of Odessa, of London.”

Abe watched her speak, wondering what it was that made it impossible for him to stop watching. Was it the slightly gray complexion of her teeth? The gaunt contour of her cheeks? Or was it the vanity in her eyes—that sickly ghetto fantasy of being not just accepted and embraced by the outside world but also somehow,
impossibly, revered? She drank down the remainder of her wine and held Judith's gaze before speaking. “Ask after Ana Beidler, one of the founding members of the Vilna Troupe, friend of both Jacobs—Adler and Gordin—and watch their faces. Ask about . . .” She paused for a moment, and when she opened her mouth again to speak, her painted lips parted widely, sharply, like the wings of an exotic insect, into what struck Abe as an unnatural, almost deranged smile, one that retreated as quickly as it had appeared. Instead of continuing with her monologue, she looked at Abe calmly, demurely, and asked if she might have another glass of wine.

He reached for the bottle and found it empty. “I'll see if we have another,” he said.

“I'll join you,” said Irene. “To check on dessert.”

He rose, gave a small nod to those remaining seated, then followed his wife down the hall. There was no door between the kitchen and the hallway, and so they spoke in hushed voices.

“Well,” Irene said, “this should be interesting.”

He sighed. “It's only for a month or two. How was I to know Max was going to stick us with some meshuganah actress?”

“A beautiful, glamorous actress. I forgot to get berries for the cheesecake.”

“Who needs berries? It's sweet enough as is.”

“You think my cheesecake's too sweet? I've been making it for twenty years, but you wait until now to tell me?”

“I didn't say ‘too sweet,'” he said.

“You're watching your figure now? If I'd known, I would have made a fruit salad. Surely Miss Beidler's not going to have any; a woman in show business has to watch her figure. It'll end up in the garbage.”

“That, I doubt.”

“We'll see,” she said, as they passed each other in the doorway. “We'll see.”

But they never did get to see what Ana Beidler thought of Irene's dessert because by the time they returned to the dining room, the place where she'd been sitting was occupied only by a crumpled, lipstick-smudged napkin.

“Where'd she go?” Irene asked.

“Unclear,” said Judith. “She gave a very loud yawn and then walked upstairs.”

“The restroom?” Abe suggested. But a few minutes later they heard her come out of the upstairs bathroom and go directly to the guest room, closing the door behind her.

THAT NIGHT, WHILE
Irene showered, Abe undressed, took off his shirt, and studied himself in the mirror beside his dresser. His middle was domed but still muscular. The hair on his chest and stomach was graying but not gray. He smiled at his reflection. He still had all his teeth, a decent face, a respectable hairline.

“What are you doing?” Irene said, coming back from the bathroom with a towel around her head. “Admiring yourself? You need to put your best foot forward now that we have a beautiful actress sleeping down the hall?”

“That's just what I was thinking,” he told her.

She dried her hair with a rough motion, hung her towel from a hook on the door, opened a drawer, slipped into her nightgown, then walked toward him, stood very close so that their torsos touched. He loved it when they stood like this. He loved the feel of her body beneath the thin silk of her gown. When they fought, when they bickered, when they disagreed or bristled at each other, this was the place they returned to, the posture that reset them. There was a magnetism about it, more mechanical than erotic. When the world impinged or distorted, they came back to each other, to this position, the way a spring recoils from distortion. She leaned forward slightly. He put his hands on her face, lowered his head as they let their lips come
together. Her lips tasted of sweet wine. Her hands reached for him, and as his body reacted, the familiar heaviness returned. She kissed him. He let her kiss him, but he couldn't do more. She looked away, walked to the other side of the bed, and slid beneath the covers. When he did the same, she turned her back to him. Her back was covered by a gown with small yellow nubs on it—flowers or bows, he couldn't tell which. The windows were open, but the night was quiet, the breeze too light to stir the trees. The only noise came from the guest room down the hall, dresser drawers being opened and closed, footsteps, small sounds.