Shadows, page 5
Alex ordered a BLT, mayo on the side.
When the waitress left, Wanda said, “I meant to ask, aren’t you still supposed to be sitting shiva?”
“How do you know about that? Shiva?”
“I grew up with Jews. I had more Jewish friends than my own kind.”
“We didn’t sit shiva,” he said. “We never did anything that had to do with religion. My father didn’t believe in it. I wasn’t even bar-mitzvah’d.”
“Oh.”
She said it wearily, and now he could see a mournfulness about her that he hadn’t seen before. He felt a sudden desire to put his arms around her, draw her close, maybe put his mouth on her warm neck. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t object, almost sure she’d been coming on to him. There had been signals: body language, heat in their eye contact. She’d been working in the office for almost a year but it was only recently he’d paid attention. He’d been attracted to other women in the past but had never done anything about it. Why now? Maybe it had something to do with his being forty-five. Maybe he was a walking cliché, a man going through a midlife crisis. Maybe he needed to something more in the way of sex. He and Miri hadn’t had sex in months. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time they’d fucked.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“It’s my mother. She’s not well.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She has cancer.”
“Shit.”
“Exactly. I just found out about it. She called me last night and told me.”
“How old is she?”
“Young. Fifty-five.”
“Only ten years older than I am. So why don’t I feel young?”
“We’re not talking about you.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“It’s breast cancer,” she said.
“They have a high rate of cure for that, don’t they?”
“It all depends on how far it’s spread.”
“Do you have family who can help you with this?”
“My father and my daughter. They don’t know yet.”
“I assume you’re going to tell them.”
“My mother asked me to keep it to myself for a while.”
The waitress set their plates down in front of them.
“I don’t think I’m hungry,” Wanda said.
“Neither am I. Why don’t we go?”
He left a twenty on the table and they went outside. The sun was bright; it had gotten considerably warmer than it had been in the morning. It was one of those October days in New York that made the world special. The sky was gentian-blue, with a few cumulus clouds drifting across, and the air soft and warm. He put his face up to the sun and took a breath trying to get some pleasure out of it, but there was too much opposition for it to work.
He put his hand on her arm and they began to walk in no particular direction. After a while, he took her hand in his.
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Wanda asked, but she didn’t withdraw her hand.
“We’re just holding hands.”
“Someone might see us and think something else.”
“Let them. We haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Not yet.”
“Are you thinking we might?” he asked.
“Are you?”
“I asked you first.”
She didn’t answer, and they continued walking. “I just remembered,” she said. “You wanted to tell me something. I never gave you a chance.”
He was confused for a moment, not sure of why he had asked her to be here in the first place. Ostensibly, it was to tell her about the diary. Maybe that was the reason and maybe it wasn’t. He suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to tell her all kinds of things: about his boyhood, his feelings about his sister and his father. He wanted her to listen to how he felt about his wife and his mother and the diary and what he’d already learned from it. All this was filling him up and ready to burst out of him, but as abruptly as it had come, the feeling vanished. He realized that what she had learned about her mother had devastated her. What would anything he had to say mean to her now? “Let’s save it for another time,” he said.
Chapter 8
1943
Beginning at about the sixth grade and continuing through high school there were calls home about Clarice. Your daughter is fresh, she yells, talks back. When you think she’s in school she’s not. She’s cutting classes. Clarice was found smoking in the bathroom, again. There were also a few occasions when certain items that belonged to other people were found in her possession—a bracelet, a watch, a ring. She was never expelled, although he knew she came close. His father would take time off, go down to the school and talk to the principal. Whatever he said or did, it worked. The worst she ever got was a few days’ suspension.
Only he, the brother, knew about her shoplifting in stores because she never got caught. She kept the loot in her room. Sometimes she would show him what she had scored. It was mostly small stuff, like candy and gum, or cheap jewelry. Once in a while, she would swipe something bigger: a tee-shirt, or a pair of jeans.
“Why?” he asked.
“It’s fun.”
“What if you get caught?”
“I won’t.”
Clarice believed the stars in the heavens controlled destiny. When he was twelve and she was sixteen, she told him: “The moment you were born, the moment you took your first breath, it’s called the prana, it was all decided. The Universe is One Living Being with one material substance and one Spirit. Marcus Aurelius said that.”
She had taken him outside at night to look at the sky. “There it is. Look at that sight. Isn’t it fabulous?” Her voice was dreamy as if she were up there in that vastness among the galaxies along with the stars and the planets. “Everything we want, everything we dream of is decided by those heavenly bodies. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Heavenly bodies.”
She told him how stars were formed, how the earth was made, and how the light he was seeing from a distant star had begun traveling toward them thousands of years before. She told him about Nostradamus and that the predictions he had made in the 16th century, all based on the constellations, had come true.
“Is that possible?” he had asked.
“Absolutely. You have to know how to cast a horoscope and, of course, how to read one. I’m not Nostradamus, but I can tell you a lot.”
“You can predict my future?”
“Not this minute. It takes a lot of time. Right now, I can tell you this. You’re a Taurus. That means you’ve got a lot of good qualities. It signifies you’re a loyal person. You’re very caring. Sometimes you have a tendency to be stubborn, and you get overly emotional about things. Some other stuff, too.”
“What other stuff?”
“I have to cast your horoscope first. There’s a lot involved. It’s not just the day you were born, it’s the time you were born…the moment of your prana. At that exact moment, all the cosmic energy around you was absorbed into you. And exactly where you were born is important, too. That means the longitude and latitude. Then I have to look up the positions of the planets. Also, the exact placement of the Earth in space in relation to the Zodiac.”
“Boy! You really know all that stuff?”
She nodded, “Yes.” She told him about the Zodiac and the signs, the triplicities, and the elements of earth…air… fire…water.
“Did you do yours?”
“Of course. I’m a Scorpio. House of Mars, but Venus was involved. That makes me what I am. I accept it.”
“What do you accept?”
“My future.”
“You know your future?”
“Yes. Something very interesting is going to happen.”
“What is it?”
She shook her head.
“Come on. You can tell me.”
She smiled but wouldn’t say more.
He wondered if she really knew.
Chapter 9
When he got back from work that evening, Miriam was still not home. He had a fleeting thought that he was being ridiculous but he still felt compelled to take the diary and go straight to the basement. He had not considered opening it on the train surrounded by strangers with curious eyes. He switched on the lamp, filled his pipe, got it going, and began to read it again from the beginning.
I know I’m starting off wrong. I bought this book because of what happened. But I can’t get myself to write it down.
The second page:
I want to write down what I feel. I need to do this. I cannot tell anybody what I have done. I do not want to hurt anyone.
I write in the basement because I know I will have privacy. Nobody asks me what I am doing down here because my workshop is here and I am always doing something. Besides, nobody is interested in what I am doing. They are glad if I am out of their way. My family. A wife and two children. And a house. All I could ask for. The American Dream. So why do I feel that it is all for nothing?
F. told me she is pregnant. I am cursed. I know it. Is it because I have denied God all my life? Is there someone really who watches us? No. I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it. But why does this happen? Only a few moments of forbidden love. A few moments of weakness. One moment of moral failure in a lifetime. Is this fair?
She is going to have the baby. I am not surprised because I knew she was a good Catholic. She comes from an Italian family that would sooner see her die than get rid of the baby. I told her I will help. She says all right but we will never see each other again, at least not in that way. Of course. I did enough damage already. I don’t want to make it worse for her. Maybe she can find somebody to marry her and give the baby a father. A better father than I would be!!!
Three large exclamation points were scrawled after the last line with such force that the paper was torn.
When Alex came once more to the three stabbed exclamation points he paused, took a deep breath, then turned the page.
I never thought it would come to this. I never thought. Period. How could I do such a thing?
After that were several pages with just brief sentences or phrases written on them. Some were questions, cries for answers.
What am I doing?
Is it wrong?
I feel nothing but love. I am glad we made a baby, another life. Maybe it will be a good one.
It is real. Not fake. This love of mine.
How can it be bad? We created a new life.
Then there were some blank pages before one appeared almost all taken up with the small, backward strokes of his father’s handwriting.
I see her every day. I pass by the assembly area where she works. I look at her belly to see if there’s any sign of it.
She sees me looking at her. I know she doesn’t like it because nobody knows about us and she wants to keep it that way. Sure. So do I.
Sometimes I want to tell the world. I’m the one. It’s me who made love to this beautiful young woman. Me!
And it was exciting. I think maybe because it wasn’t married love.
I knew in my heart it wouldn’t end good, but I didn’t care.
Alex thought about Wanda and the excitement of clandestine love. Is that what he was looking for? He couldn’t deny his cock hardening when he thought about her. When was the last time that had happened with Miri?
I didn’t write here for a long time. It must be months. I got used to the idea of what happened. I made up my mind it was finished and that was that. She’s not in the shop any-more. They say she went to visit relatives out of state. She went somewhere to have the baby, that’s for sure. I hope everything will be all right.
Another page:
I know she was the one who started it. She gave me the eye. Why did she do that? I never went after any of the girls in the shop. Or anywhere else for that matter. So why me?
Did she guess I was a starving man? I don’t know.
Alex turned the page. Blank. The next page, also blank. Why did he skip pages? Now he came to what he’d read more than once.
I love my daughter. I love her so much. She is my life. I wish I felt the same about my son. But we do not see eye to eye. We are strangers, even enemies, in the same house.
He leaned back with the notebook on his lap. He realized he’d been sitting rigid as copper pipe. Exploring his father’s writing trying to find hidden meanings in the words was like stumbling through a forest of brambles and vines. He needed a break. His eyes closed…
⅏⅏
He had heard giggling and sprinkles of laughter coming from the bathroom. He had walked in there to find Clarice in the tub with his father. His father had a mass of hair on his chest; his arms were covered with hair and there was an abundance of it across his back, thick and shining with drops of water.
Clarice was eight then, four years older than he. Dad was soaping her with a washcloth and tickling her. Alex was jealous, he wanted to get in the tub with them.
Clarice laughed and squealed, twisting and turning. Neither of them paid any attention to him, until he cried, “I want to play, too. Can’t I play, too?”
“Not now, Alex,” his father said. “You go away now.”
He ran downstairs to find his mother. She had a dust rag in her hand and was wiping the top of the dining room table. “Mommy, Clary, and Daddy are having a bath. Can’t I have one, too?”
She stopped her dusting and gave him a strange look. He wasn’t sure if it meant she was annoyed or angry. “Not now, Alex. Can’t you see I’m busy? I’ll give you a bath after dinner.”
“But I want one now,” he cried.
His mother resumed her dusting and didn’t answer him.
⅏⅏
The door at the top of the stairs opened and Miriam called down, “Are you okay? You’ve been down there a long time.”
“What time is it?”
“Time to eat. Are you hungry? I know I am.”
“Sure.”
There was a memory pulling at him. Something was there but what it was eluded him. He turned off the floor lamp and went up the steps. A jacket that had been hanging on a hook had fallen. As he bent to pick it up he felt a pain in his low back. Age, as well as the past, was closing in on him. “Don’t look back,” Satchel Paige had said. “Something might be gaining on you.”
He tossed the notebook onto the kitchen table and sat down heavily.
“Still reading it?” Miriam asked.
He sighed. “I can’t seem to stop.”
“Why don’t you give it a rest? Forget about it for a while? Think dinner. Nourishment. How about some takeout fried chicken?”
“Fine.”
He went to KFC to get the chicken but he was unable to take her advice. He couldn’t stop thinking about Clarice and his father, the woman named F., and the sibling he now knew existed somewhere in the world.
He would have eaten out of containers but that was not Miriam’s style. She put the chicken, coleslaw, and fries into serving dishes and set the table in the kitchen with plates, napkins, and cutlery. She opened a bottle of white wine. In spite of all that was on his mind, he ate with appetite.
After he’d swallowed the last of his wine, Alex pushed back his chair and said he was going to continue with the diary.
“Aren’t you being a little obsessive about it?” Miriam said.
“I’m being a lot obsessive.”
“You could talk to me instead,” Miriam said. “We could talk to each other.”
“There doesn’t seem to be anything to talk about.”
“Are you serious? There’s a million things to talk about.”
He sighed. He didn’t want to get into this now, but he knew she was right.
“How about this, for starters?” Miri went on. “My mother has a boyfriend and she’s invited us to have dinner with her to meet this guy. What do you say to that?”
Alex stared at her for a moment, absorbing what she’d said. He smiled. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Wow! When did this come about?”
“Not too long ago, apparently.”
“I think that’s great.”
“Does that mean you’ll go when the time comes?”
“Of course. I wouldn’t want to disappoint Mabel. You know I’m crazy about her.”
Miriam swirled the wine in her glass. “She doesn’t know anything about us. I mean, what’s been happening.”
“What do you mean, happening?”
She sipped the wine. “You know very well what I mean. Our marriage. Where it’s going. Or where it went.”
“This isn’t a good time to talk about it.”
“You’re wrong. It’s the perfect time to talk about it.”
“I’m sorry,” Alex said. “I can’t.” He stood up.
“That’s right. Walk away. Go hide in the basement. Read your damn diary. Get lost in the past. Is that going to solve anything?”
“Jesus Christ! What do you want from me? I can’t think about anything else. I know I’m obsessed but I need to understand what that son of a bitch meant by writing what he did. Until then, everything else will have to wait.”
Chapter 10
Alex refilled his pipe and lit it, sucking hard, pulling smoke into his lungs. He felt like a piece of shit. He’d always prided himself on being honest with himself and with others. But he’d left Miri alone in the kitchen, knowing he’d told her a half-truth. He could deal with the diary. He couldn’t deal with their marriage. He still wasn’t sure what had gone wrong or even when it had begun to go wrong. Two years ago they’d celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary. They’d gone into the city to celebrate. Man of La Mancha and the Four Seasons, filet mignon, and to hell with the expense. As far as he knew there were no problems. They’d gone home and made love and all seemed to be well. So what happened since?
