Transcription
When the year grows old. On a Wednesday afternoon, Kay Feldman came home from Italian club, which was run by Senora Mele and filled with other misfits. Girls bright enough but too shy for the school paper, too prim or clumsy for modern dance, and one boy obviously crazy, who announced that he planned to read all of Dante before the end of 9th grade.
Kay called out for her mother and heard nothing. There was no note on the kitchen table, only half a cup of thickening coffee and an ashtray with stubbed out cigarettes. Kay's mother only drank tea, usually herbal tea, and she had never, as far as Kay knew, ever smoked a cigarette. Kay had never even seen an ashtray in their house. When her aunt Ruth came to visit, Kay's father made her go outside to smoke, even in the winter.
Kay could feel cold lines of sweat sliding down her sides. Kay called out again and walked through every room, telling herself that her mother had gone for a walk, which she sometimes did, and had just forgotten to leave a note, which was unimaginable. Kay looked through the rooms of their house, excited beneath her anxiety, wondering whether she would see something terrible. A body, not her mother's of course, but maybe some anonymous body flung across the bed, murdered by an anonymous someone else. Even better, murdered by her father, who will rot in jail, and Kay will change her name and never ever visit him.
There was no body. The beds were unmade, which was unusual, and her mother's typewriter, which sat on a small pine table in what they called the guest room, was missing. Kay heard a faint mewing sound and jumped. Her father claimed he was allergic to cats, and despite her pleas and her mother's wisful looks, there were no pets. Kay didn't think he was allergic at all. She thought correctly that he hated cats and didn't want to argue.
The mewing came from the basement. Kay walked down thinking about herself in the fictional third person, as she sometimes did. Bravely, Porsche Ives descended the creaky stairs into the dank basement. The Feldman basement was not particularly dank as basements go. Her parents would never do anything as suburban or hospitable as finishing off the basement, but it was usually dry, and the only smell was of cool concrete and minerals. At the bottom of the steps, Kay sniffed repeatedly in disbelief. Those confusing, disorienting smells with a sharp reek of cat pee and the ropey, sexy scent of cigarettes.
"Oh, hi honey. I didn't hear you come in." Kay's mother was wearing clothes Kay didn't recognize. Her straight blonde hair was pushed back by a wide black headband, and she had on a baggy black V-neck sweater, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Her pants were black, too, and she was barefoot.
"Is there a cat in here?" Kay wanted to grab her mother, shouting, "What kind of joke? What kind of demented game is this? Cigarettes and cats, and the bed's not made."
Kay's mother giggled. The giggle was more frightening than the cigarettes. Kay's mother did not giggle. She smiled pleasantly at her husband's elaborate puns, and she pretended not to hear Kay's rude remarks. "Yes, there is. He's not quite potty trained, but we're getting there. Did you know that even very small kittens will begin using the kitty litter within 24 hours? And they've got this new kind of kitty litter. It's green and it's incredibly absorbent and soaks up most of the smell. He's in the corner there. Whose cat is he? And why are you sitting on a folding chair in the middle of the afternoon in the goddamn basement?"
"Mine. Ours. How about calling him Blake? You know, tiger, tiger, burning bright in the forests of the night. What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? Do they still teach that at school? I think Blake is still my all-time favorite. I love Songs of Experience."
Kay stared at her mother. Her mother, the mother she knew, taught English as a second language in adult education and was always in the kitchen at 5:00 getting dinner started so the kitchen would be clean by the time she went to teach. Kay's mother wore khaki slacks with a narrow brown belt, brown flats, and pink or white turtlenecks. Sometimes she wore navy or mint green. When she went to teach, she put on a skirt and a cardigan with one of the turtlenecks. Kay's father said, trying to be nice, that Laura dressed like a lady. More often, he said she dressed like a nun.
"Where did you get those clothes, Mom?" Laura looked at Kay in surprise and looked down at her black pants. She shrugged. "I found them in the trunk. I can't believe they still fit. Isn't that nice?" At least her mother's verbal habits hadn't changed. Cheerful evasion, calling everything nice. Kay decided to act as though nothing else had changed.
"Are you coming upstairs? It's after 5."
"I don't think so, honey. I'm in the middle of something and it's going to take a little longer to get Blake acclimated. Look at him cowering over there. Do you want to pick him up?" Kay looked at her mother, who always warned her that animals carry germs, and looked at the kitten, a tiny bundle of strawberry blonde spikes. Yesterday, if they had somehow acquired a kitten, her mother would have suggested calling him Sunshine or Buttercup, and Kay would have rolled her eyes in contempt.
Kay picked up the kitten and could feel him squirming, brushing the back of her hand with a tongue like a tiny thistle. "So, what am I supposed to do? Do I have to make dinner?"
"Well, no. I wouldn't think so. Didn't you stop at Swenson's? You're not hungry yet, are you?" Kay was having trouble with the idea that this weird beatnick knew everything her mother knew and seemed able to make use of it in ways her mother was never able to manage.
"No, I guess not. It's going to be really mad, Mom, you know, when dinner is not ready."
Laura looked at her mildly. "Well, it won't be the end of the world if dinner's a little late. How anyone can eat at 6, I don't know. It always seemed to me that one had hardly finished lunch. I'll finish what I'm doing and then I'll come up. We can eat around 7. I'm not teaching tonight."
Kay said nothing. In her head, she repeated the airy sound of "one had hardly finished lunch" and felt a burst of joy blanketing her worries. Perhaps this would be something good, something better than anything had ever been.
Kay heard her father Martin come home promptly at 6:00 as he usually did and she heard him call out, hiding his surprise and his immediate anger at being surprised, with a jolly impatience. "Where the hell is everybody?" Kay lay on her bed stomach down and waited for him to find her. He would only hover in her doorway. He rarely came into her bedroom.
"Hi. Where's your mother?"
"She's in the basement."
"Come on, Kay. Don't be stupid. I don't have time for it." Copying her mother's mild tone, Kay said, "She's in the basement."
"For Christ's sake," her father stalked off. Kay walked quietly to the top of the basement stairs. She heard her father mumbling angrily, and she heard her mother's voice cut him off so softly, no words floated up the stairs. A few minutes later, Martin came up the stairs uneasy and looking for a fight.
"Did you do your homework?"
"Yes." Kay knew better than to tell him that she had just gotten home.
"All right. Why don't you set the table or something? Your mother said dinner will be a little late."
"No problem."
"You sound like a gas station attendant when you say that. Just say that will be fine like a normal educated person." In her coldest voice, Kay said, "That will be fine." She thought, "And I hate you, you fat fat evil pig. And I hope you die."
Kay's mother came up and made hamburgers, mashed potatoes, and a green salad. She didn't speak during dinner, and the three of them ate in silence, Kay watching them both. Laura put her own dishes in the dishwasher, and as Kay and Martin sat there, she turned to leave.
"Where are you going, Laura?" Martin couldn't move fast enough to block her way, but he wasn't going to sit by while his wife acted like some second-rate Sylvia Plath.
"Downstairs. I'm working on something and I find that the basement is the most comfortable place. Like your office at the college is for you. Fold out couch and all." Martin said nothing, and Kay watched his face turn a slow, swelling red. Her mother didn't stay to watch.
Martin went to read in their bedroom, hoping that tomorrow would find his wife in her usual clothes and her usual mildly depressed state, smelling like baby powder and not cigarettes. At 10:00, Kay called downstairs. "I'm going to bed, Mom. I did the dishes. Good night."
"Good night, honey. That was very sweet of you doing the dishes. I'll be up in a little bit."
"Well, I'm going to bed now." Kay had been ducking her mother's evening attentions for the last 4 years. Tonight, she wanted to be tucked in, but her mother stayed in the basement, resolute in black.
In the morning there was a note on the basement door. "Give me, oh indulgent fate. Give me yet before I die a sweet but absolute retreat amongst paths so lost and trees so high that the world may never invade through such windings and such shade my unshaken liberty." - Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea. As Kay was reading it for the third time, her father scanned it over her shoulder and then crumpled it and threw it in with the coffee grounds and the melon rind.
That night, her mother did not come up to make dinner. Martin went down and made more angry noises and came back up heavily, looking defeated and a little afraid. If Kay hadn't hated his guts, she would have felt sorry for him. "Stupid scared pig. Why don't you ask your mother to come upstairs? If she doesn't want to make dinner, we could we could bring him pizza." Kay didn't want to do anything that could be construed as helping her father. But she did want her mother to come upstairs, wanted her even more to witness her father's utter capitulation. To hear "bring in pizza" spoken by the man who had forbidden them to eat at fast food joints all their lives and had taken all the fun out of family vacations by insisting that Laura cook regular meals every night in whatever cabin kitchen she found herself in. Kay wanted to shout out with trumpets and banners. "You can stop now. You've won. He'll bring him pizza and he hasn't even mentioned the cat. You've won. Come back."
Kay went downstairs and smelled the smoke and the mothballs, but only a little bit of cat. The typewriter was going steadily. "Mom, I'm here."
Dad said, "Why don't we bring in pizza if you don't want to cook? We could get double cheese and peppers." Kay loved double cheese and peppers. And every time Martin went to a conference, Laura would hesitate and then yield, ordering a large for just the two of them, frowning as Kay ate three and then four slices. When Laura failed to smile triumphantly, Kay's heart sank. It was not a contest after all.
"If you want to," Laura said, balancing a Dunhill cigarette in the bowl of an unfamiliar crystal ashtray. "This ashtray belonged to my father. You never met him. He was a minor poet and a sweet man. My mother considered him a failure. I always thought so, too, but now I think he was just a sweet, soft person without ambition. Your grandmother admired ambitious men. Do you know what she said to me after she met your father for the first time? She said, 'Get pregnant.'" Laura pulled on her cigarette, looking younger and angrier than Kay had ever seen her. "Yeah, grandma was weird."
"So, Mom, the pizza. Should we order it? Just one large. We could get some of the cheese bread sticks, too. Whatever you want."
"I'm not hungry."
"Mom, did you eat today?"
"I'm fine, honey. See, Blake's having his dinner." They both looked at the kitten lapping milk out of a small Wedgewood saucer, which Kay recognized as having come from the set her mother kept on display in their china cabinet.
"Okay, we'll order pizza."
"Mom, are you sleeping down here?"
"Well, yes, I am. This project is taking up so much time that it seems easier just to get everything set down here. It looks a lot like my room at college." Kay looked around, unhappy but curious. It looked like the room Kay herself might have when she got to college. Plimpmped posters taped to the cement walls, a card table covered with two purple boutique scarves, a pile of notebooks, and a stack of poetry books on the cement floor, curling in the almost unnoticeable damp. Laura had unrolled an old Girl Scout sleeping bag onto the cot and added a few African-looking pillows. She had stacked two boxes of Martin's only book, discounted an autograph to make an end table, and put a small lamp on top.
"It's nice, Mom." Her mother beamed at her. "Thank you. Let the ambitious rule the earth. Let the giddy fool have mirth. Let me still in my retreat from all roving thoughts be freed." That's more of Anne Finch. Her mother looked at her typewriter. "I have to get back to work."
"What are you working on?" Laura's face closed abruptly. "I'm writing some things. I wrote a lot. I have to get back to work."
"Okay, I'm going. I'll call you when the pizza comes."
"Okay, fine." Her mother, who always had 10 words for every one of Kay's, pushed up her sleeves and started typing.
Kay and Martin ate pizza together silently. Laura said she was too busy to come up for dinner. And Kay's father ate six slices and threw the box in the garbage. He got his car keys and told Kay to clean up.
"Why should I clean up?"
"Just do it, Kay. I don't know what lunacy your mother is up to, but I can't correct papers, write a book, and clean the house." Kay thought of her mother, luminous in the basement, quoting that woman poet.
"I didn't say you should clean the house, did I? I just asked."
"Why should I clean up after the two of us eat?" Martin balled his fists and set them on the table. The picture of a man trying to keep his temper, but he wasn't. Kay knew he was only trying to scare her.
"Kay, please clean up the kitchen. Don't make this worse than it is. Don't make me lose my temper. Why don't you go downstairs and get your mother to stop this nonsense and tell her she has got to stop smoking cigarettes."
"I'll clean the kitchen if you're going to threaten me. You tell Mom to stop smoking. She's your wife." Her father walked out of the kitchen and Kay could hear that he didn't go out to the car, he went right to the bedroom.
Every day, not knowing what she hoped for, Kay went downstairs to visit her mother. Sometimes Laura was charming and recited poetry, but the next day she might turn weird and slow-moving, hardly able to answer Kay. Martin bought milk and fruit and dinner on his way home every night, and Kay cleaned up the kitchen after they ate the pizza or the fried chicken or the corn beef sandwiches.
On the 10th day, Kay went downstairs, not thinking at all about her mother. She was crying because she was 14 and 4 inches taller than the only boy who was even a little bit nice to her.
"What's the matter, honey?"
"It was just a shitty day." Since her mother's personality transplant, swearing was now no big deal. Kay was trying to figure out when she could ask for a cigarette.
"They happen." Her mother lit up and leaned back in her typing chair, turning to look at Kay. "My God, you got so beautiful this year. Every time I look at you now, I think the brightness of her cheek would shame those stars as daylight doth a lamp. Her eyes in heaven would through the airy region stream so bright that birds would sing and think it were not night. You are really just the Juliet. Romeo are a little hard to find in ninth grade though."
Kay smiled, thrilled to hear her mother, who used to tell her she could really be cute if she smiled more, talk in this quirky husky voice, a voice of lovers remembered, of disappointment survived. "No one likes me," Kay said, realizing that at that moment, petting tiny Blake, she didn't care.
"Then they are nearsighted fools and babies. It'll happen, honey. Give everybody two or three more years and you'll be beating them off with a stick. Maybe two sticks." Her mother ground out her cigarette for emphasis. "I have to get back to work. Come lie on the cot. You can take a nap while I type."
Kay lay down on the green dampish sleeping bag and put her head on one of the odd oblong pillows. Her mother pulled the folding chair closer to the cot and put one thin colorless hand on Kay's shoulder. She sang, "Oh, the summertime is coming and the leaves are sweetly blooming and the wild mountain time grows around the purple heather. Will you go, Laddy? Go." Kay didn't remember that her mother had sung to her nightly in that same breathy, bittersweet voice, rocking her in a small blue bedroom. Her mother sang until Kay fell asleep.
When she woke up, her mother was holding the kitten and staring at the air above the typewriter. "Mom, mom." The kitten jumped out of Laura's arms and tumbled over to his milk dish. Kay put a hand on her mother's shoulder and then both hands. She could feel thin skin shifting over ridges of bone beneath the dirty black sweater. Her mother didn't move and Kay waited. After a while, she could feel a slight heaving.
"What's going on?" Martin stood halfway down the stairs, peering at them, at their two sloping shapes rimmed by the harsh white light. When Kay was born, she could barely stop crying long enough to eat. And Martin would walk her all night up and down the apartment stairs while Laura put her head beneath two pillows and cried until dawn. For 6 months, they all slept on wet sheets. The only picture he had ever carried was of Kay, 4 months old.
"Nothing," Kay said. Every day had frightened her more as she waited for her father's move. Obviously, something was wrong with her mother. He could send her away and she might never come back. He could get rid of Blake, too.
"All right, Kay, go on upstairs." He sounded the way he always did when he talked to her, as though they were strangers forced to share a seat on a terrible train ride. Kay stood by her mother. "Upstairs."
"What are you going to do?" Kay asked, feelings of power, of supernatural strength surging through her chest. She will rescue her mother the way policemen shimmy through traffic to rescue toddlers. The way acrobats catch each other at the last impossible half second. She will swing past her father, leaving him fat and clumsy on the ground. And she and her mother will whirl through light-filled air, landing softly, not even breathing hard on their own tiny platform.
"I just want to talk to your mother privately." Kay stood still, squeezing her mother's shoulders, waiting for her cue.
"Martin." Her mother's voice was softer than the kitten's. Kay's father came down the stairs, loosening his tie. "It's me. I'm here," he said. And he leaned over the typewriter and took Laura's slack hands.
"Martin." Kay waited for her father's explosion, for him to yell at her mother for being stupid and repeating herself. She moved back just a little, only her fingertips resting on her mother's dusty shoulders. "Right here, Laura. I'm right here. I'm very tired. I'm not sleeping at night." Her mother's thin whine distracted an annoyed Kay who was trying hard to turn her into Anne Finch, into a blonde sequined acrobat, effortlessly flipping from one shining trapeze to the next.
"I know. I know you can't sleep. How could he know?" Kay thought thick and still under his gray conventional blankets. "How could he know what her mother was doing in the night in the basement? Let's go upstairs, Laura. All right, let's go talk to Sid Schwarner. All right, he can help you sleep."
Laura pulled her hands back angrily, and Kay thought, "Now leap into my arms now."
"Martin, I have to get back to work." Kay's father was smarter than she thought. He didn't yell or even try to take hold of Laura's hands again. "Of course, I didn't mean to interrupt. Let's go meet with Sid just for a little while and then you can get back to work. You can't work without rest, right? Even Shakespeare, even Blake, your all-time favorite, they all rested."
All right. Laura sighed and put her head down on the typewriter keys. And Kay felt the sigh tunnel through her spine and felt the cool metal keys of the typewriter thrown hot and hard behind her eyes. She went upstairs, not wanting to see her mother's slow ascent wrapped in her father's brown tweed arms. Kay could hear him through her bedroom door, talking urgently on the phone, muffling his voice like a Nazi spy, rummaging in the bedroom, dragging the zipper on her mother's ancient overnight bag. She couldn't hear her mother at all.
"All right, we're going. Kay, I'll we'll be back later. Kay, please come out of your room and say goodbye." Kay pulled herself off her bed and stood in her doorway. "Bye. Have a good time. Have fun." Laura looked in her direction and right past her. Martin waved his hand widely as though from a departing plane. "All right, K, take it easy. I'll call you if I need to. Don't wait up. Tomorrow's a school day."
"Yes, I know. Thank you for telling me." Martin rolled his eyes and opened the door, pulling Laura through it, still gentle, even when she just stood there as if she didn't know what doors were for.
He came back the next day without Laura. He told Kay that her mother needed a complete rest and would be home in a few weeks. He was brisk and oddly cheerful, displaying her mother's upbeat stoicism as though he had stolen it. For the next two weeks, they lived together as they had when Laura was in the basement. Martin brought home dinner, and Kay cleaned up the kitchen. She ran all her father's dark and light clothes together and washed his sweaters in hot water until he stopped making her do the laundry. She met a new girl, Rachel Gins, and on weekends she slept over at her house and they drank Roman Cokes while the Gins's were out at the movies. Rachel told Kay that her mother got electrolysis on her stomach. Kay told Rachel that her mother had freaked out and her father had carted her off to a funny farm. Rachel laughed and looked sad and didn't say anything. And Kay knew what it was to trust someone.
When Kay came home from her second weekend at Rachel's, she went down to the basement. Gripping the rot iron banister, Dominique Bovoir prepared to enter her past. Blake, whom Kay had been surreptitiously feeding tuna fish and bone fried chicken, was gone. The litter box was gone, and so was the 10-lb bag of kitty litter. The table, the chair, the poetry books, the journals, and the cot and pillows were gone. The typewriter was gone. The air carried only the faint sense of camphor and cigarettes and cat.
Kay stood in the basement pushing out deep uneven breaths. She will never forgive him. Beginning right now, she will never speak to him again. When Kay was little, she would walk from school to her father's office, and he would lift her right onto his desk and clear a place for her among the papers so she could swing her legs over the side while she drank cocoa from the mug with the sailboats on it. He introduced her to all the pretty girls who came in and out, and they all smiled at her in a nice way and played with her hair and stood very close to her father. When she was 10, he started locking the office door and then he said she was old enough to walk straight home by herself. Kay thought he was ashamed of her and she was ashamed, too. She wrote terrible things about him on the wall behind her dresser, but it didn't help. If her mother does not come back now, when Kay grows up, she will hire someone to murder him. Like that girl in New Jersey, she will hire some stupid guy to shoot her father in the head one night while he's reading Thomas Hardy. And she will say she doesn't know anything about it. She cries until she can barely see and locks herself in her bedroom.
When he got home, Martin rattled the doorknob a couple of times, insisting that Kay let him in. He didn't really want her to, and when she didn't, he shrugged and ate most of the fried chicken he had brought home for the two of them. He went to bed, nauseated, hating his life, still surprised by it. Kay wouldn't leave her room the next morning, and after a few minutes, Martin stopped pounding on the door. He had a breakfast meeting, and he said, feeling generous, "It won't kill you to miss a day of school, I guess. Your mother will be home a little later anyway." He left, relieved that he had spared himself another splenetic fight.
When Kay hears the car grinding out of the driveway, she opens her door and goes back to the basement. She is waiting for a sign and she wants to believe that she can sit there forever, that she is stonewalling God, not the other way around. The basement is not quite empty. And from her lookout on the stairs, Kay can see the scraps that have been left behind. She examines the stubby pencil. Nothing special, not even a tooth mark or a broken point. Kay puts it in her pocket and goes over to the corner where the cot had been. On the floor is an empty Dunhill Hills packet. Gold foil flowering out of the red box. Kay goes to her room and puts the box in her underwear drawer. Tiny tobacco flakes drifting onto her white panties. She puts on her black jeans and an old black sweatshirt, turning it inside out to hide the bright lettering. She would wear a headband if she had one.
Kay hears the car again and stands in the living room waiting to see just who her father brings home. She can hear them coming through the kitchen, hears her father grunting as he lugs in the suitcase. Here's her mother murmuring, "Thanks." Kay is barely breathing. Her mother comes into the living room unsiling. Someone has dressed her in her khaki skirt and white turtleneck, but the brown belt is missing, and her shirt tail waves in and out of the waistband. Kay wants to speak softly, to use her father's basement voice to win her mother back. They will read poetry and eat pizza, and in the end, he will shrivel up and blow away, leaving nothing behind but his dorky black shoes. They will be fine then.
"Where's Blake?" is what she says. And her mother's mouth bunches in familiar ugly ruffles.
"Here we go," says her father, looking at his wife. "Well, that's not an unreasonable question, is it? I mean, the cat's just gone. You know, you know that, right, Mom? Blake's gone. He had him put to sleep or something."
Kay's mother puts her hand to her forehead, also a familiar gesture, and goes to the bedroom without looking Kay's way. Martin follows her. Carrying her suitcase carefully in the rich late morning light, Kay locks her bedroom door and throws the black clothes under her bed. She takes out the smooth red box and unfolds the gold foil, sniffing. Kay lies down and closes her eyes. She falls asleep, the red box clasped beneath her pillow.
Psychoanalysis changed my life. For three weeks, four days a week, Maryanne told her dreams to Dr. Zurmer. Fat, naked women handed her bouquets of tiger lilies. Incomprehensible signs and directories punctuated silent gray corridors. Bodyless penises spewed aelia blossoms in great pink and purple arcs. She also talked about her marriage, her divorce, and her parents. Behind her, Dr. Zurmer nodded and took notes and occasionally slipped her knotted elderly feet out of elegant black velvet flats, wiggling her toes until she could feel her blood begin to move. Maryanne could hear her even and attentive breathing, but hear the occasional light scratch of her cigar-like fountain pen.
At the end of another long dream in which Maryanne's father frantically attempted to reach Maryanne through steadily drifting petals, Dr. Zurmer put down her pen. "Why don't you sit up, Dr. Low?" Maryanne didn't move, still thinking of the soft drifts and the few white petals that had clung to her father's beard as he struggled toward her. Dr. Zurmer thought she had shocked her patient into immobility. "After all, there are two of us in this room. Why should we pretend that only one of us is real, that only one of us is present?"
Maryanne sat up. "All these white flower dreams," Dr. Zurmer said, "What are they about?"
"I'm sure they're about my mother. I don't know if you remember, my mother's name was Lily, and she was like a white flower, thin, pale, graceful, just wafting around. Not a solid person at all, just a little bit of everything, you know, real estate, house painting. For a while, she read tea leaves in some fake gypsy restaurant. I mean, now she's a businesswoman, but then my father was the stable one, but she drove him away."
"Dr. Zurmer said he was stable, but he disappeared."
"You say she was wafting around, but she never left you. And she always made a living."
"Yes. He didn't disappear. My mother was having an affair. One of many, I'm sure. She was such a [ __ ] belle of the ball. And he couldn't stand it and he left." Maryanne was glad that she could say [ __ ].
"It's understandable that he would choose to end the marriage. Not everyone would, but it's understandable. But why did he stop seeing you?"
"He didn't really have much choice. She got custody somehow and then he moved to California for his work. I went to California once for about a week, but then I don't know, he remarried and then he died in a car accident." Maryanne started to cry and wish she were back on the couch, invisible.
"How old were you when you went to California?"
"Nine."
"How did you get there?"
"My mother took me by plane."
"Your mother took you by plane to California so you could visit your father. Sometimes she was overprotective. I remember he said that when I was old enough to take the plane by myself, I could come out there. I thought nine was old enough, but my mother took me."
"Of course. Why would you send a 9-year-old 3,000 miles away by herself unless it was an emergency?"
"Lots of people do. Lots of people behave selfishly and irresponsibly. It doesn't seem that your father thought nine was really old enough either. He however was willing to wait another year or two before you saw each other."
"It wasn't like that. I think it was. You are almost 40 now. I am almost 85. We are not going to have time for a long analysis, Dr. Low, which is just as well. I will tell you what I see when I see something. But you have to be willing to look. Your mother knew how important your father was to you. And even though your father had left her, she was willing to take the time and money to make sure that you saw him even in the face of his indifference. You must think about why you need your father to be the hero of this story. Tomorrow."
Yes. Maryanne went home less happy than she had been the first time they met. Three weeks ago, walking into that gray carpeted waiting room with its two black and white Sierra Club photographs and the dusty mahogany coffee table offering only last week's People magazine and last year's New Yorkers, Marianne knew that she was in sure and authentic hands. Despite an unexpected penchant for bright bulky sweaters made charming and European by carefully embroidered flowers on the pockets, Dr. Zur was just what Maryanne had hoped for.
On Tuesday, Dr. Zurmer interrupted Maryanne's memory of her grandfather shaving with an old-fashioned straight razor to tell her that beige was not her color. "Beige is for redheads, for certain blondes, not for you. My hair was the same color 50 years ago. Shatan, uh, chestnut, a lovely color, even with the gray, you would look very nice in green. All different greens, like spring leaves, maybe a ring or a bracelet as well to call attention to your pretty hands." Maryanne looked at Dr. Zurmer and Dr. Zurmer smiled back. "We must stop for today. Tomorrow, Dr. Low."
Maryanne went home and fed her cat. And as she put on her navy bathrobe and her backless slippers, she watched herself in the mirror. During the next week's sessions, Dr. Zurmer gave Maryanne the name of a good masseuse, an expert hair colorist, and a store that specialized in narrow width Swiss shoes, which turned out to be perfect for Maryanne's feet and sensibilities. At the end of Thursday's session, Dr. Zurmer suggested that Maryanne focus less on the past and more on the present. "Your mother invites you to her beach house every weekend, Dr. Low. Why not go? I don't think she wants to devour you or humiliate you. I think she wants to show off her brilliant daughter to her friends and she wants you to appreciate the life she's made for herself. Beach house and catering business and so on. This is no small potatoes for a woman of her background for the delicate flower you say she is. Life is short, Dr. Low. Go visit your mother and see what is really there. At the very worst, you will have escaped this dreadful heat, and you will return to tell me that my notions are all wet."
Charmed by Dr. Zurmer's archaic Americanisms and the vision of herself and her mother, walking on the beach at sunset, their identical, short, strong legs and narrow feet skimming through the sand. Maryanne rose to leave, not waiting for Dr. Zurmer's dismissal. Dr. Zurmer began to rise and could not. Her head fell forward and her half-moon glasses, which made her look so severe and so kind, landed on the floor. Maryanne crouched beside Dr. Zurmer's chair and put just her fingertips on Dr. Zurmer's shoulder. Dr. Zur did not lift her head.
"Please take me home. I am not well."
"Should I call your doctor or an ambulance? They can bring you to the hospital."
"I am not going to a hospital. Please take me home." Dr. Zurmer raised her head and without her glasses, she looked extremely vulnerable and reptilian. An ancient turtle, arrogant in its longevity, resigned to its fate. Terrified, Maryanne drove Dr. Zur home, regretting the Kleenex and Heath bar wrappers in the back seat where Dr. Zurmer lay pain dampening and distorting the matte powdery surface of her fine old skin.
When they approached a small Spanish-style house with ivy reaching up to the red tile roof and slightly weedy marigolds lining the front walk, Dr. Zurmer indicated that Maryanne should pull into the driveway. Maryanne could not imagine carrying Dr. Zur up the walk, although she was probably capable of lifting her, but she didn't think Dr. Zurmer could make the 100 yards on her own. "Is someone home? I can go let them know you're here and they can give us a hand." Dr. Zurmer nodded twice and her head sagged back against the seat. A thin old man, shorter than Maryanne, and leaning hard on a rubber-tipped cane, opened the door. Maryanne explained what had happened, even mentioning that she was Dr. Zurmer's patient, which was a weird and embarrassing thing to have to say to the man, who was obviously her analyst's husband. He nodded and followed Maryanne out to the car. It was clear to Maryanne that this little old man was in no position to carry his wife to the house, and that she, Maryanne, would have to stick around for a few more minutes and take Dr. Zurmer in, probably to her bedroom, perhaps to her bathroom, which was not a pleasant thought.
"Otto was all Dr. Dr. Zurmer said they spoke softly in Russian and Maryanne gently pulled Dr. Zur from the back seat, handing her briefcase to the husband, half carrying, half dragging Dr. Zur up the walk under his critical, anxious eye. Dr. Zurmer's husband seemed not to speak English or not to speak to people other than his wife. Maryanne was so focused on not dropping Dr. Zur and following Mr. or Dr. Zurmer's hand signals that she barely saw her analyst's house, although she had wondered about it with occasional pleasurable intensity in the last 3 weeks. Dr. Zurmer slipped out of Maryanne's arms onto a large bed covered with a white lace spread and said thank you and goodbye. Maryanne, who had not wanted to come and had not wanted to stay, felt this was a little abrupt, even ungracious, but she was polite and said it was no trouble and that she would find her own way out so they would not be disturbed. The old man had lain down next to his wife and was wiping her damp face with his handkerchief.
Maryanne walked down the narrow turning staircase, noticing the scratched brass rods that anchored the faded green carpeting and looking into the faces in the framed photographs that dotted the wall beside her like dark windows. Two skinny boys in baggy dark trunks are building a huge turreted sand castle trimmed with seashells, twigs, and the remains of horseshoe crabs, surrounded by a moat that reaches up to the knees of a younger, taller Otto Zurmer. In another, the two skinny boys are now skinny teenagers, sitting on a stone wall, back to back like bookends in matching sunglasses, matching bare chests, and matching fearless and immortal grins. Maryanne was conscious of lingering, of trespassing, in fact, and she only took one quick look at the photograph that interested her the most. Dr. Zurmer, whose first name Anna Marianne had read on the brass plaque of her office door, is sitting in a velvet armchair, legs stretched sideways and crossed at the slender white silk ankles. She cannot be more than 20, and she looks pampered with her lace-trimmed dress and carefully curled hair, and she looks beautiful. She peers uncertainly at the viewer, eager and afraid.
Maryanne spent the next week working harder on the book she was trying to write, staking the tomato plants in her small yard and getting her hair colored. It came out eye-catching and rich, the color of fine luggage, the color of expensive brandy, the kind drunk only by handsome old men sitting in wing armchairs by their early evening fires. Maryanne was tempted to wear a scarf until the color faded, but she could not bear to cover it up. And at night, she fanned it out on her pillow and admired what she could see of the fine, gleaming strands. She waited to hear from Dr. Zur and decided that if she didn't get word from her by Friday, she would leave a message with the answering service.
On Friday, Dr. Zurmer called. She told Maryanne that she was not yet well enough to return to the office, but could see her for a session at home. She did not ask Maryanne how she felt about meeting with her therapist in her therapist's home with little Dr. Mr. Zurmer running in and out. She simply inquired whether Monday at 9 would suit her. That was their usual time, and Maryanne said yes and hung up the phone quickly so as not to tire Dr. Zurmer, who sounded terrible.
Dr. Zurmer's husband let Maryanne in silently, but when she was fully through the door, he took her hand in both of his and thanked her in perfectly good English. "Please call me Otto," he said. His smile was very kind, and Maryanne said her name, and was pleased with them both. Dr. Zurmer sat in bed, propped up by dozens of large and small Battenberg laced pillows, her silver hair brushed neat and sleek as mink. She wore a remarkably business-like gray satin bed jacket. Maryanne couldn't tell if Dr. Zurmer's face was slightly longer and looser than before or if she had forgotten in a week exactly what Dr. Zurmer looked like.
"I feel much better today. A very tiny stroke, my doctor said, and no harm done, apparently. Thank you, Dr. Low. So, I will lie down during our sessions, and you will sit up." Maryanne began by telling Dr. Zurmer her latest flower dream, but wrapped it up quickly in order to talk about the photograph of Dr. Zurmer, not mentioning the boys. And she sat back in the little brocade chair, looking at the ceiling in order to talk about the dislocating, fascinating oddness of being in Dr. Zurmer's house. Dr. Zurmer smiled, shaking her head sympathetically, and fell asleep. Maryanne sat quietly, only a little insulted, and watched Dr. Zur breathe. At her elbow was a mahogany dresser laid over with embroidered crocheted runners, four small photographs in silver frames, and three perfume bottles of striped Morirano glass sitting on top. The little gold-tipped bottles were almost empty. One photograph, as Maryanne expected, shows the two young men from the stone wall in the beach, a good bit older, both in suits. They are clearly at a wedding with linen-covered tables and gladioli behind them, although there is no bride in sight. Another shows Dr. Zur and Otto, their arms around each other in front of the lighthouse at Gay Head, and the picture is not unlike one of Maryanne and her ex-husband at that same spot during the brief good time of their marriage. The other two photographs are of a dark-skinned woman in a bathrobe holding what must be a baby wrapped in a blue and white blanket. And finally, a very little boy with black curls, jug ears, and the same slightly slant long-lashed eyes as the woman.
As Maryanne reached the front door, Otto clumped toward her. "Tea," he said, waving his cane toward the back of the house. Maryanne said no and went home to look up the phone numbers of other psychoanalysts.
On Thursday, Otto called. "Please come today," he said. "She wants to see you." Maryanne had already set up a consultation with another analyst, a middle-aged man with a good reputation and an office overlooking the river, but she went. Dr. Zurmer was sitting up again, her bed jacket open over a flannel nightgown and her hair tufted in downy silver puffs. She stretched out her hand for Maryanne's and held on to it as Maryanne sat down much closer than planned.
"It seems that I am not well enough to be your analyst after all, but I don't think we should let that stop us from enjoying each other's company. Do you? You come and visit and we'll have tea. Maryanne could not imagine why Dr. Zurmer wanted her to visit. Why not? You're smart, a very kind person. You have a wonderful imagination and sense of humor. I see that in your dreams. Why shouldn't I want you to visit me? Otto will bring us tea. Sit."
Over pale green tea swarming with brown bits of leaf. Maryanne and Dr. Zurmer smiled at each other. "I was very interested in the photographs on your dresser," Maryanne said.
"What about them interests you? This is just a visit, remember? Tea and conversation." Dr. Zurmer pretended to slap her own wrist and smiled broadly at Maryanne, her cheeks folding up like silk rooting. "Touché," she said. "Bring the photos over here, please. And there's an album in the magazine rack there. Oh, look at this little Alexi. Everyone has these bathtub photographs tucked away. And this is Alexi and Cub Scouts. I think that lasted for six months. He loved the uniform, but he was not not scout material. And this is him with his brother Robert. You saw some of these on the wall, I think, at Martha's Vineyard. We used to stay at a little farmhouse, two bedrooms and a tiny kitchen. Friends of Otto's lent it to us every summer. Otto designed their house, the big house in the background here, and their house, I forget, in the suburbs of Boston. We were the house pets, but it was wonderful for the children. This is Robert's college graduation. I can't remember what all their armbands represent. He protested everything. Unfortunately for him, we were liberals, so it was difficult to disturb us. He did become a banker. There was that. And here is Alexi graduating. No armbands, just the hair, but it was such beautiful hair. I wanted him to keep it long. I thought he looked like Apollo. And here are the wedding pictures. Alexi and his wife, Naria, Lebanese. They met in graduate school. And this is my only grandson, Lee. As beautiful as the day, as good as he is beautiful. Very bright child. Alexi is a wonderful father. Father and mother both. This big one is Lee last year on his fourth birthday. That's his favorite bear. I don't remember now the train station name. Paddington. He's lovely. Lee is just lovely. Naria left them almost two years ago. She has a narcissistic personality disorder. She simply could not mother. People cannot do what they are not equipped to do. So, she's gone back to Lebanon. Also very self-destructive to return to a place like Lebanon. Divorced the mother clearly not a virgin. She will care for her father in his home for the rest of her life. Who can say? Perhaps that was her wish."
Dr. Zurmer said, "Narcissistic personality disorder," the way you'd say terminal cancer. And Maryanne nodded, understanding that Naria was gone from this earth. "And this is a picture Alexi took of me and Otto two years ago. Those two lovers, the gods made them into trees or bushes. Filamina, so that they might never part. We look like that. Yes. Already beginning to merge with the earth." Dr. Zurmer lay back and the album slid between them. "I cannot really speak of loving him anymore. Does one love the brain or the heart? Does one appreciate one's blood? We have kept each other from the worst loneliness and we listen to each other. We don't say anything very interesting anymore. We talk of Lee, of Alexi. We remember Robert."
Maryanne waited for the terrible story. "He died in a car accident right after the wedding. I am still grieving and I am still angry. He was drinking too much. That was something he did. Alexi, never. My bad. Russian jeans. He left nothing behind. An apartment full of junk. A job he disliked. Debts. I thought perhaps a pregnant girlfriend would emerge, but that didn't happen. I would have made it so if I could have. I have to rest, my dear." Dr. Zurmer sank back into her pillows and asked Maryanne to go into the bottom drawer of the mahogany dresser. Maryanne brought her the only thing in it, a bolt of green satin, thick and cool, rippling in her hands like something alive. Dr. Zurmer tied it around her waist, turning Maryanne's white shirt and khaki slacks into something dashing, exotic, and slightly delightfully androgynous. "Just so. When you leave, please say goodbye to Otto. He likes you so much. Such a lovely girl," she said, mimicking Otto's accent, which was, if anything, less noticeable, less guttural than her own. "If he's not in the kitchen, just wait a minute. He's probably getting the newspaper, going for his constitutional. Be well, Marianne. Come again soon."
The man sitting at the kitchen table was so clearly the slightly bigger boy from the photographs, the bearded groom, that Maryanne smiled at him familiarly, filled with tenderness and receptivity as though her pores were steaming open. He stared back at her and then, with great courtly gestures, folded the newspaper and slid it behind the toaster. "You must be Marianne."
"Yes, I just wanted to say goodbye to your father. I'm on my way home," she said.
"That will please him. I'm Alex Zurmer." He looked at her again, at her deep brown eyes and long neck, his own sweet baby giraffe, and watched her blunt bony fingers playing with the fringe of the glimmering green sash. Alex shrugged, lifting his palms heavenward, as struck and grateful as Noah, knowing that he had been selected for survival and the arrival of doves. He watched Maryanne's restless, slightly bitten fingers twisting in and out of the thick tassled ends, and he could feel them touching his face, lifting his hair. "Let's have tea while we wait, Maryanne," he said, and he rose to pull out her chair, and she very deliberately laid her hand next to his on the back of the chair. "Let's," said Maryanne, "Let's put out a few cookies, too. If you use loose tea, I'll read the leaves."
We hope you've enjoyed this Spiegel and Growl by Spotify audiobooks production of Come to Me by Amy Bloom. Narrated for you by Amy Bloom. This audiobook has been presented by Spotify audiobooks. Copyright 1994 by Amy Bloom. Production copyright 2024 Spiegel and Growl by Spotify audiobooks. All rights reserved. Thank you for listening.