The Jew's Wife & Other Stories (20 page)

   “
There’s
nothing, then...to be concerned about?”

   
The young doctor
directed another frown at his patient.

   “
The test
results are not all in yet. But as far as I can see, there doesn’t
seem to be anything amiss. Her heart is strong. Blood pressure is
okay. Red and white count look good. The episode she experienced
seems to have been the result of fatigue, perhaps from
overexcitement. I’ll check her again in a couple weeks, but I don’t
anticipate any recurrence as long as she behaves
herself.”

   
The implication
that his mother had been behaving like a frenzied schoolgirl
started Father Walther wondering if Sidney Small did not bear some
responsibility for her condition. Last night he had been too
distracted to ask Small if they had been together during her recent
vacation. Was it possible that old cavalier had been the reason for
her extending her stay in the mountains beyond what she had
originally planned?

    “
I’ll be back
in the morning,” the doctor said.

   “
Will I be
discharged then?” she asked, her voice clear of the rasp that had
afflicted it yesterday.

   “
I don’t see why
not.”

   
The doctor
offered his hand to the priest. “Nice to see you again,
Father.”

   
After the doctor
left, his mother lay quite still beneath the carefully arranged bed
linen, her small hands resting on the fold of the cotton sheet. Her
index finger scratched absently at the flesh beside her
thumbnail.

   “
You look much
better,” he began, taking the seat Sidney Small had occupied the
previous evening.

   “
I guess I’ll
live.”

   “
You had a good
night? You slept well?”

   “
Like a
baby.”

   “
They gave you a
sleeping tablet?”

   “
I don’t really
know. They give me so many different pills.”

   
He laughed.
“Mother, you should ask. You have a right to know.”

   
She raised an
eyebrow and turned down the corners of her mouth. She had yet to
look him in the eye, but she had stopped picking at her thumb. Her
hands now rested quietly on top of each other.

   
She said, “Did
you and Sidney have dinner?”

   “
As a matter of
fact, we did.”

   
He waited for
her to say something more, but she merely stared at the wall
opposite the bed.

   “
He seems like a
pleasant fellow,” he added. Again, he waited for a response, but
she continued staring. “Quite a car he’s got there.”

   
Still no
response, not even a blink.

   “
We had Italian
food.”

   
She sighed,
resumed scratching her thumb, sighed again.

   “
Did I miss
something?” he asked finally.

   
She turned
toward him abruptly. “’Miss’?”

   “
About
Sidney—Mr. Small.”

   
Her brow creased
ominously. “What do you mean?”

   
His cheerful
smile abandoned him. He could not recall his mother ever looking at
him the way she was at the moment. It sent a thrill of—was it
really fear?—fluttering through his bowels.

   “
I didn’t mean
anything in particular. I was only...making a joke.”

   “
A joke? You
think Mr. Small is a joke?”

   “
No, of course
not.... “

   
She was staring
hard at him. Her color was high. “You don’t approve of him. Because
he has money. And because he’s a Jew.”

   
He was too
stunned to reply.

   “
Well, let me
tell you something,” she went on, raising her head from the pillow.
“You may think I’m just an old lady with only a few years left to
live. But I happen to appreciate the sort of attention Sidney shows
me. Those people in the project can watch someone drop dead and not
bat an eyelash. Half of them are alcoholics and the other half are
senile. I get tired of playing nursemaid. I spend half the night
sitting up with one of them, and the next day they don’t even say
hello to you in the hallway.”

   “
Mother, I had
no idea...“

   “
It’s no bed of
roses,” she went on, dropping her head back on the pillow. “Not
that I’m complaining. I can’t afford to complain. But I don’t see
why I shouldn’t have the right to enjoy myself when I get the
opportunity. God knows it doesn’t come my way that
often.”

   
He started to
speak but realized he was having trouble breathing. He tried
again.

   “
Mother, I don’t
know what to say.”

   “
Then, say
nothing. Think what you want. But say nothing.”

   “
I wish I knew
why you’re so upset.”

   “
I’m not upset.
I’m just tired of worrying about what ‘other people’ will think.
I’m tired of not having a life I can call my own. I’m not
complaining. I made my bed, and I knew it was my duty to sleep in
it. I did what a wife was supposed to do. I did my best to raise
you boys properly. Now all I ask is that I be allowed to enjoy the
few years I have remaining. I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m not
hurting anyone.”

   
He could not
believe what he was hearing. It was as if she were denying
everything he had come to believe about her marriage to his father,
as if that union and the loving family of his memories had been a
kind of fraud.

“
Mother, I don’t know what to say.
“I think you should try to rest.”

   
She had fixed
her eyes on the ceiling. He put his trembling hand on her own. She
did not respond.

   
He had no
appetite for supper. Nor did he any longer feel comfortable in his
mother’s apartment. He told himself this was because he felt ill at
ease there alone. But he knew his restlessness was really due to
the way she had spoken to him that afternoon. She had never
confronted him like that before. And yet the fear he had felt, a
sense that the floor of his identity was quaking and fissuring, now
seemed oddly familiar, not as something he had ever been
consciously aware of but as an experience so constant, however
latent, that until now it had passed unnoticed.

   
Eventually he
ate some cold cuts and made a cup of tea. He watched the evening
news but could not keep his attention on any of the situation
comedies that followed. His mother had told him it was not
necessary for him to return to the hospital that evening, but he
knew she didn’t mean what she said and, besides, why had he made
the trip here if not to be with her? He knew Sidney Small would
also be present. He wanted very much to avoid further contact with
that man. He hoped his mother would not make any foolish decisions
about that man. But she had made it clear that what she chose to do
was nobody’s business but her own.

   
He washed his
plate and replaced them in the cabinet over the stove. His mother’s
china, he realized, was no longer familiar. The set he would have
recognized—sets, actually, since she used to change her dishes even
more frequently than she bought new furniture— were long gone,
replaced shortly after he entered seminary. Only her original
silverware remained: thick oversize knives and forks that seemed as
antique as anything in a museum. They looked amazingly awkward
beside the cheap but manageable steel knife and fork he had just
used. He had grown up with that heavy dinnerware, embossed with
fancy designs that must have seemed the height of elegance in his
mother’s youth.

   
His second visit
to the hospital was uneventful but no less disturbing. It was as if
the woman he had confronted that afternoon, clearly an imposter,
had been removed and the one he recognized as his true mother had
been put in her place. They talked about all the usual things in
the usual calm way, with no reference to Sidney Small, her lifetime
of “duty” or any of the other issues she had become so emotional
about earlier.

   
But he knew the
woman he had visited that afternoon had not been an imposter.
Worse, he now suspected that the easy-going person he was chatting
with this evening about all the usual things, his parish work, his
brother’s family, was the imposter, a character she playing for his
benefit, and had been playing for some time, perhaps his entire
life.

   
After this
second visit he went straight to bed on the unopened couch. He knew
he should try to eat something more but had no appetite. Nor was he
especially tired. If he had been back in the rectory he would have
watched television. But even her television set now seemed alien.
He was afraid that when he turned it on he would see not the face
of a popular comedian but his dead father’s image staring back at
him, confirming the lie he and his wife had perpetrated on their
sons for so long. He decided to spend the day’s last conscious
moments in the dark.

   
His mother had
seemed subdued, apologetic even, in contrast to the embittered,
belligerent woman he had faced earlier—more, in short, like the
easy-going person he recognized as Katherine Walther. He knew that
Sidney Small, who had sat at the foot of her bed tonight well out
of hand-holding range, was largely responsible for the change. As
the three of them sat chatting about the weather and his parish, he
realized that he would never again see his mother as a docile,
passive woman. All the years she had pretended to be a contented
with her lot when both he and his father were urging her to involve
herself in something other than her family and housework, she must
have been longing for a different sort of life entirely, one which
did not include her loving but humdrum husband. He could not
believe she ever entertained thoughts which amounted to infidelity,
but the seeds of rebellion must have been sown long ago in order to
produce the kind of complaint she had voiced this
afternoon.

   
As it turned
out, he was grateful for Small’s presence tonight. He had not
wanted to face his mother alone. He was also grateful to Small for
not asking if he had contacted his friend with the car dealership.
Small, in fact, had behaved with a deference that would have been
more appropriate twenty-four hours ago. He now knew that this man
and his mother were...well, lovers. If there had been any doubt,
her outburst that afternoon had swept it away.

   
When Small got
up to leave so the priest and his mother could spend the last
minutes of visiting hours together, Father Walther had insisted
that he remain seated. Instead, he left as well.

    CHAPTER TWELVE

   
With little more
than a homing instinct to guide him, he had not only tracked down
the hamlet where Sonny’s Garage was located, but had also found the
back road where the old house stood. The collection of abandoned,
rusting vehicles was unaltered, as fixed as a museum exhibit. The
same corn was baking under the midday sun. The sun itself seemed
not to have moved since the hour a week ago when the mechanic
brought him here for lunch.

   
There was no
reason for him to remain in Maryland now that his mother was on the
mend and Sidney Small was there to look after her. Why should he
waste the last few days of his vacation jostling for position at
her bedside? Besides, this sparsely settled track of New Jersey was
the only place where he had known any peace. Here he had felt
obliged to act like no one but himself, a stranded traveler
accepting the hospitality of strangers. No one had challenged,
goaded or deferred to him. Nor (with the exception of that woman
Anne-Marie) had anyone made any demands upon him. Everything he
wanted from a vacation he had, by pure accident, found with Martha
and Sonny.

   
A big dog he
didn’t recall seeing last week began barking angrily at him from
the yard. It was tethered, but so large and menacing that he
hesitated before pulling all the way up to the house. When he was
satisfied the animal could not break the chain holding it to a
stake midway between a derelict pickup and the rotting cousin of
Sonny’s old Plymouth, he got out of his new blue sedan and
approached the screen door at the side of the house.

   
He looked for a
bell, but saw none. He rapped hard at the splintery jam. No one
answered. The dog, infuriated now, was barking so loud that the
priest had to cover his ears. He knocked again, but in response
received only more maniacal barking. He had no desire to test the
tensile strength of that chain any longer than was necessary. He
decided he would try to find his way back to the garage.

   
As he was
backing toward the road the nose of the mechanic’s old car appeared
in his rearview mirror. Both cars had to slam on their brakes to
avoid a collision. Even the dog was momentarily shocked into
silence.

   “
Hello, Martha,
Sonny,” he greeted them after the two cars were safely parked in
the shade alongside the big frame house. “I was heading back north
and thought I’d stop by to say hello,” he went on as if he were
talking to two old friends from his parish. Only, he didn’t know
anyone in Holy Name’s congregation he would be this glad to see.
The mechanic nodded and followed his wife toward the screen door.
When he reached it he looked back at his visitor, still standing in
the dusty driveway.