They May Not Mean To, but They Do: A Novel (13 page)

“We have to get out of our cloister, Aaron. We are going to breathe some fresh air.”

She adjusted his cap, a tweed driving cap that did not cover his ears.

“Your big ears are going to freeze,” she said.

“Watch your language.” It was more than he had said in days, and Joy pulled off the hat and kissed his head.

“There.”

Sometimes she wanted to put her hands around his neck and squeeze the last lingering pretense of life out of him. More often, she wanted to bury not him but herself—bury herself in her down duvet and never show her face again. She missed him terribly.

She put on her warmest coat. Wanda pushed the wheelchair to the front door and Gregor made a fuss over them, shaking Aaron’s hand, then high-fiving him. Though the days of Aaron walking to the park with his little red wagon were gone, every cloud had its silver lining, that’s what they said, and Joy, unsteady and weak, took possession of the red walker herself for their outing.

“Won’t Coco be pleased, recycling and all,” she said to Aaron as she followed him out the door. She leaned down and whispered in his big ear, “I feel like the red caboose of the Old Jew train.” She turned to Gregor. “I’m the caboose,” she said.

“Good for you, Doctor,” Gregor said.

She often wondered if he thought she was a real doctor. He held the door and smiled and nodded encouragement.

The shock of the cold almost stopped her. The snow, banked up on the sidewalk, looked ponderous and old. But the sunlight and the sky, that blaze of blue sky, were miraculous after so many weeks of looking out the window at sky the color of an old nickel.

They turned into the park where Aaron had spent so many afternoons.

“Isn’t this nice?” Joy said. “Oh dear god, we’re free!”

Aaron, inside his heap of warm clothing, said nothing.

“Okay, Aaron.” She sighed, disappointed in spite of herself. “Have it your way.”

She sat on a bench blinking in the sunlight like a night creature.

“Koffee?” Wanda said.

Whenever Wanda said coffee, it seemed to Joy that the word began with a
k
.

“No,” she said. “Thank you, but I dare not.” Dare not. Where had that come from? A book she’d read? Her grandmother? Did all grandmothers use the same phrases no matter what era they lived in? “My digestion,” she added primly, as if Wanda did not know their digestive behavior, hers and Aaron’s, intimately.

“You go,” she said to Wanda. “Go get your koffee. I’ll watch Aaron.”

And that is what she did, gazing at him with the love of decades past and the angry exhaustion of a sleepless night and the terror of the days and nights to come.

I dare not think that way, she said to herself. I dare not.

The air smelled cold, but the sun gave the illusion of warmth. Snow that had piled on the bushes dripped, just a bit. It was almost like spring, which is just what the man approaching, pushing a familiar-looking red walker, said.

“It’s almost like spring!”

He was accompanied by a pink-cheeked woman who immediately began to speak in Polish to Wanda. This must be Aaron’s friend, Joy thought. She watched as the man settled himself on the neighboring bench. He adjusted his gloves and his hat and his scarf, then turned to her, obviously about to speak. Instead, he stared.

“Joy?” he said.
“Joy?”

“
Karl?
Oh my god. Karl!”

They clambered to their feet and embraced.

“Sixty years? I think that’s how long it’s been, Karl. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you recognized me.”

“Sixty-six years,” he said. “I would know you anywhere.”

They sat down again, on the same bench this time. So this was Aaron’s park friend Karl. This was
Karl
,
her
Karl.

“Karl,” she said. “You really are Karl.”

He was better-looking, in a way, than he had been as a young man. Old age suited his angular face. His face had been awkward for a young man’s face. Now it was distinguished. He wore a beautiful overcoat, and his scarf was elegantly tied. He exuded prosperity and confidence. Even the red walker looked natty. It matched his luxurious silk scarf.

“I wondered if I’d ever see you again,” he said.

She had wondered, too. “The world is strange,” she said.

“Wondrous strange.”

“You have met my husband,” Joy said, putting a hand on Aaron’s sleeve. “Aaron, your friend Karl is a very old and dear friend of mine.”

Aaron nodded affably.

“I’ve heard about you from Aaron. But I had no idea you were you.”

Karl lived right down the block. He was a lawyer, or had been until he retired.

“I’m still working,” Joy said.

“It’s something you love,” Karl said with such assurance that Joy felt buoyed.

“Yes, I do.” Must remember that.

They talked until the clouds washed over the sun and the cold could no longer be ignored.

“Very much money,” Wanda said to Joy, when they were out of earshot, rolling her eyes toward Karl and his caretaker.

“He was poor as a church mouse when I knew him.”

But Wanda’s English did not include church mouse or the past tense. She said “Yes” emphatically, and they made their way home.

20

Danny arrived at the apartment for dinner an hour late, but Joy had expected as much. He worked hard, such long hours. But since Aaron had become so sick, Danny made sure to have dinner with her at least once a week, no matter how busy he was. He did it to be nice, she knew. Which both touched and saddened her. We all prefer to have someone visit for our company rather than be kept company, but she must not be greedy, she reminded herself. He was here, and as always when she saw him in the doorway, she was happy, deliriously happy. Sometimes she thought she would swoon with love for him. He put his arm beneath hers to walk her to the dining room, and she felt safe for the first time in days, since he had last been to see her, to be exact. He comforted her, just by being in the same room.

On the other hand, there he sat, expecting to be fed. Thank god for Wanda, because Joy had forgotten to arrange anything for dinner. She tried to remember what exactly she had done all day that kept her from taking care of dinner for Danny, sweet exhausted Danny coming from work in the cold.

Aaron was in bed. He’d had his dinner already, leftover turkey meat loaf from Joy’s ordered-in dinner the night before. He used to laugh when Joy fed him from the various dinners they had ordered in, saying she was a genius at assembling and rearranging garbage. Wanda had made stuffed cabbage and a cucumber salad for Danny, which she made him every time he was there, despite the fact that neither Aaron nor Joy could possibly digest that particular meal. Danny never seemed to notice he was the only one eating it. Joy was having the meat loaf left over from the leftover meat loaf she’d given Aaron. She watched Danny wolf down the stuffed cabbage in huge, animal mouthfuls. She really ought to have taught him better table manners. It had somehow not held him back in life: he did have a wonderful wife and wonderful children and a successful career. But his table manners … disgusting.

“Mom?” he said, and gently wiped the corner of her mouth with his napkin. “Catsup.”

“Dribbling?” she said. “Time to put me out to pasture.”

She was excited tonight, Daniel noticed. She folded and refolded her napkin. She absentmindedly picked up a lipstick from the cabinet behind her and applied it at the table using the back of her spoon to make sure it was not on her teeth.

“Going somewhere?” he asked.

“What? No!” She put the lipstick back. “No. Where would I go?”

“Well, it’s great you were able to get out to the park yesterday, anyway. Was Dad’s friend there?”

“Oh yes. Mmm-hmm. He was there.”

“Nice, isn’t he?” he said.

“Oh yes.”

Joy wondered why she didn’t tell Danny who Karl was. She certainly had nothing to hide. “Daddy just lit up when he saw him.”

Karl had been so gentlemanly, waiting at the gate to the park to let her and her entourage out first. She thought wistfully of Aaron, what a gentleman he had always been. He still was sometimes, an instinct that had outlived his memory. Joy noticed it when she stood up from the table, the way he tried to stand up, his hand reaching out to help her pull her chair back.

“Good,” Danny was saying. “Maybe it will warm up for real sometime soon. This weather is ridiculous. And people don’t understand it’s a symptom of climate change, just like global warming. They think it counters global warming…”

She listened contentedly as he talked about energy, how we squandered it, how there would be no energy left.

“I have no energy. Can you people help me?”

“Mom.”

Danny had devoted his professional life to combatting climate change. If he occasionally lost his sense of humor when it came to the environment, you couldn’t blame him. She just forgot now and then, forgot not to tease him.

“Danny, I’m sorry. That was glib.”

“Sorry, Mom. It’s just that I deal with these idiots all day long…”

He patted her hand, and she had the urge to put her cheek against his, to press against his cheek, to kiss it, to grab both his cheeks with both of her hands and kiss him some more.

She could see he was getting restless.

“Wanda gave Daddy too much fruit today,” she said.

“Did she?”

Joy simply did not want to mention Karl, that was all. It would start up a whole conversation, wouldn’t it? All about the past. The past was too alive to her as it was without stirring up memories.

Danny kept looking at his phone, pulling it out of his pocket, staring down at it as he held it below the level of the table, as if that made it somehow more discreet, like holding a napkin in front of your mouth when you picked an annoying bit of food from between your teeth.

“It’s very rude, what you’re doing,” she said. “Is this the way it’s going?”

“Is this the way what is going?” Danny asked, still looking at his phone.

“Civilization. Everyone always looking at those electronic things.”

He looked up. “Sorry.” He looked back at the phone.

“People are going to forget how to talk to each other. That’s all.”

“I
said
I’m sorry.”

Joy could feel the tears welling up. She took a deep breath. Danny was dog-tired, he was overburdened at work, he had so much on his mind. The changing climate, the melting polar ice, droughts and floods, the girls getting into decent schools …

“How are the girls?” she asked.

Danny gave her a suspicious look.

“They’re very busy, Mom. They have a lot of homework.”

And birthday parties, Joy thought. It was mathematically impossible, the number of birthday parties those little girls went to. Homework and birthday parties, a balance of a sort. “I know, sweetheart. They work so hard. So do you.”

“Yeah,” he said, mollified. “We do.”

Joy hadn’t seen or heard from her grandchildren in over a month, but that was not why she asked about them. Danny was prickly about his family, as if any inquiry were a veiled criticism. She had asked about the girls because she had suddenly pictured them, like two kittens, their big eyes and silky hair, the way they snuggled into each other like kittens, then batted each other away. They were beautiful, sweet, eccentric girls. It was only natural that she missed them. Only natural that she asked about them. She understood they had their lives and that their lives were imperative and irresistible in that way that a child’s life is.

“I’d love if they called. You know, just to say hello.”

He laughed unkindly. “You sound like Grandma Bergman.
Your finger broken? You can’t dial a phone?
I mean, you can call them, too, Mom.”

Joy could not explain this to her son, would have been too ashamed even to mention it, but when she did call his house, everyone there was always so busy. It made her feel awkward and intrusive, out of step.

“Grandma Bergman,” she said. “Them’s fightin’ words.”

But there were circles under his eyes, his shirt was wrinkled and his tie rumpled, he’d been up since five, and still he made time for this visit. She got up to spoon out his ice cream herself.

She stood at the door watching as Danny, large and wilted and fiddling with his phone in his pocket, waited for the elevator, and she was glad for once that the elevator was so slow. She could not take her eyes off him.

“Your briefcase is so heavy, Danny. You should get one with wheels.”

He laughed, walked back, gave her another hug. Over his shoulder she could just make out the elevator door opening. She said nothing, holding her big, tired son in her arms. The door closed and the elevator began its slow ascent to some other floor. A high floor, she hoped, her face against his chest. Maybe the penthouse.

That night, Joy pressed her back against the cushions of the sofa. It was late, after 3 a.m., but it was not dark. It was never dark in New York, and tonight the cloudy sky reflected the city lights in a pale green glow. It was quiet, though. Those few hours when all the creatures of the city, the screeching, roaring buses, the howling ambulances, all seemed to take their rest, when the garbage trucks had not yet trundled out of their caves. She could hear Walter changing Aaron’s colostomy bag. God bless you, Walter, she thought. May the lord bless you and keep you and shine his countenance upon you.

But who will pay you? Not the lord. And there was no version of arithmetic in which Joy and Aaron’s social security was sufficient for the parade of helpers each day. It seemed almost Victorian, having caretakers. As if she and Aaron were large estates. She would have to go back to work soon, that’s all, maybe go back to full time to help make ends meet at Bergman House. How she would find the strength she did not know. Even with the caretakers there was so much she had to do for Aaron. She wasn’t complaining, she told herself stoutly, just being honest, though how she longed to complain sometimes, to let loose and curse the gods. She had tried it out on the children. The response had not been entirely satisfactory.

“I’m lonely,” she had said. “Even though Daddy is right here and even though I never feel as though I get to be alone.”