How to Fall Page 11

  “No, no,” Devlin assured her.

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Maybe, maybe. A few pounds.” How stunning she’d look in a velvet dress the color of eucalyptus he’d seen in a window; but the garment needed lissomeness . . .

  “Damn, damn,” said Hildy.

  “I think you’re perfect,” said Devlin in the tone of a forced convert. Hildy, who had planned to leave her French fries untouched on her plate, now began to pick them up one by one, in silence. She was not usually silent. She could do the talking for both of them, he reflected; he was basically unsociable, though because he kept a hotel he had to pretend otherwise. He imagined that they would grow old together with a minimum of regrets.

  He might have told her this—it would have saved the evening. But he had blarneyed enough, and she was still eating those fries, one after the other.

  Lillian’s big apartment was decorated in colors that Maura thought of as Pallor, Jaundice, and Congestive Failure. (Maura had worked as a Nurse’s Aid while the kids were growing up. “My mother is retired from the health profession,” she’d heard that scamp of a boy say; such airs.) At Lillian’s place the two women often played Scrabble and talked about movies. At Maura’s—bright yellow walls, a tiled fireplace—they played gin rummy and recalled their childhoods.

  “People sussurate about the emerald hills,” said Maura. “But what I remember most favorably is the stone houses and the Liffey, slow as vaseline.”

  “In my time New York was swarming with Socialists,” said Lillian. “My parents were Reds, if you want to know the utter truth.”

  “Utter truth, there’s no such thing. I’ll knock with three.”

  Meanwhile Dev and Hildy talked about where they might live—her little house, so comfortable, his flat at the top of the hotel, so handy. They talked about which gubernatorial candidate was most deserving of their vote, the district attorney full of righteous indignation (“he hounds people,” said Hildy) or the excop, a charming rogue (“up to his nose in debt,” said Dev). The Red Sox lineup—each would have rearranged it, but differently. Their discussions sometimes subsided into lovemaking and more often flared into fights—that is, Hildy fought, Devlin grew silent.

  “Conflict is the stuff of life,” Maura reminded her son. His handsome face grew stony. “You always sidestepped trouble,” she sighed.

  “You don’t have to defend every damned one of your principles,” said Lillian to Hildy. “Swallow some of them; they’ll go down like Jello.” Then she stopped talking. It was too late to teach her daughter the value of hypocrisy.

  And after a while Hildy and Dev, the one delighting in battle and the other craving peace—acknowledged their differences and broke up.

  Maura, hearing this awful news, hastened on foot to Hildy’s house, ablaze in the spring evening. “You have broken my heart,” she shouted when Hildy opened the door.

  “Will you have some tea? Devlin and I . . .”

  “Whisky.”

  “. . . are too unalike in psychological stance, in cognitive style . . .”

  “Ice cubes are an abomination.”

  “. . . to remain together,” continued Hildy, trying to remove the offending ice with a spoon and then using her fingers. She handed the glass to Maura. “Devlin is interested in how things seem, I am interested in how things are. He caters to guests’ physical needs, I to students’ emotional wants . . .”

  “Yobba, yobba, stop blathering.”

  Hildy, who had been about to drink a cup of heavily sugared tea, abruptly dosed it with whisky. They were both standing in the kitchen, and Maura was still wearing her coat.

  “You’re a pair of stubborn cockerels,” said Maura. “Don’t you know that differences bring us together? Or do you want to marry somebody just like you? Your own self, if you can manage it. A clone with a dong.”

  Hildy sighed. Oh, she would miss this fearsome old lady. “That’s not what I want, really . . .”

  “It’s Devlin who should marry your own self. You’re soft and merry, when you leave off psychologizing and that. Make it up, girl.”

  Hildy stuck her finger in the adulterated and now cooling tea and rapidly stirred. “We’ll all stay friends,” she said in a weak voice.

  Meanwhile, Lillian was rushing by taxi to the hotel. “Mr. Fitzgerald is at the Chamber of Commerce meeting,” said the night manager. She took another taxi to Town Hall. She slipped into the back row of the meeting room. They were discussing the soup kitchen in the basement of the Unitarian Church. Some Yankee stood up to defend the facility. Devlin rose next, defending it also, and with energy. He could argue when he wanted to, couldn’t he. His shoulder in that well-cut jacket, his cleft chin, that little flag of eyelashes . . . Lillian sat straighter, sucked in her stomach.

  He turned as he was about to sit down, and saw her. He glided out of his row and into hers. He kissed her on the cheek. She turned to him, suddenly breathless, and clutched his upper arms. “Dev!”

  “Is the Chamber to have the benefit of your fabled energy?” he asked.

  “Forget the smooth talk. Call off the calling off.”

  “We’d make each other miserable, she so intense, me so . . . cautious.”

  “Paralyzed,” she said, and watched him stiffen. “Oh, Dev, you’re the son-in-law I always wanted,” in a gentler voice.

  He sighed. “Mr. Fitzgerald?” called the chairman.

  “I’ve got to make a presentation,” said Dev gratefully. He kissed Lillian again and slid away. She sat there for a few minutes, still feeling the touch of his lips.

  Then she got up and called a third cab. She arrived at Maura’s just as that lady was stumbling up her front stairs.

  “What can we do?” Lillian cried.

  “We’ll think of something,” said Maura. “Could you help me with this key, now.”

  The next morning Maura’s daughter’s daughter bore a daughter out in Cincinnati; and not until four days later, on the plane headed back home, did she have time to put her mind to the problem. “Whatever we do they’ll call it intrusion,” Lillian had groaned. “Intrusion’s a mortal sin.”

  But—Maura thought while unpacking—didn’t Hildy and Devlin require some gentle intrusion, if that phrase wasn’t what people called a pachyderm, no, oxyderm, well, something like that.

  She heard fire engines. They were always shrieking; usually it was somebody’s heart attack. What a darling great-granddaughter, that child in Ohio, Maura was her name, the fourth Maura in a row. Let the girl have the happiness I’ve had, thought Maura; and, happy, got into bed.

  Ten hours later, as she was uncapping her insulin, the telephone rang. “I’m in Godolphin Rehab,” said Lillian’s voice on the telephone. She sounded as strong as usual.

  “Good will mission?” asked Maura.

  “Chest pains,” Lillian thundered. “But the big Boston Teaching Hospital couldn’t find anything wrong so they transferred me here.”

  “Dearie!”

  “Oh, unlikely to be significant. But my young doctor worries when ancients like us get sick. And here he comes. I’d better get my feet back under the . . . blankets. Oh, hello,” she said to somebody.

  “I can hardly hear you all of a sudden,” shouted Maura. “Is something wrong with the telephone?”

  “Not with the telephone,” said Lillian feebly. “I’ll talk . . . later.”

  The person Lillian called her young doctor was one year short of retirement. He was confounded by his patient: sallow, tight-lipped, reporting pain. His examination revealed nothing. His equipment failed to register a complaint.

  “My feet are so cold,” wailed Lillian.

  He reached under the covers and felt their iciness, patted them in his kindly way, and found the drawer where nurses kept heavy socks. “And the chest pains?” he said, slipping the footwarmers onto her feet.

  “Come, go, come, go.”

  “I’ll be back in an hour,” he said; and an hour later he was back. “You look a little better.”


  “Much worse,” she assured him.

  “Well, we’ll keep monitoring you.”

  “Send me home, I’ll die there.”

  He scowled. “I won’t send . . .”

  There was a disturbance outside the room; a kind of screeching on the linoleum. Then: “Where is she? Lillian, where are you!” and a white-faced glistening little woman tottered through the doorway and collapsed onto the patient.

  It took a while to get her off—indeed, the patient seemed to be convulsively holding on to the assailant. When the staff did manage to peel the small woman from the large one they discovered that the newcomer was in diabetic distress.

  “Let me expire next to Lillian,” she gasped.

  “You’re not expiring,” said an elderly nurse with orange hair. “And I know that Mrs. Tartakoff would prefer a single room . . .”

  “No, no!” shouted Lillian. “No, no,” she repeated in a sickly voice. “Mrs. Fitzgerald must stay.”

  “. . . and the TV for the second bed isn’t working,” said the nurse.

  “Oh, oh, and me favorite program!” cried Maura.

  “We’ll get it fixed.” Attention turned to the broken TV. Maura lay down while her glucose was regulated; but she insisted on getting up to unpack the nightcase she had presciently brought. An aide spotted a brown bottle underneath the pink nightclothes. She thought of reporting this infraction; but she was going off her shift, and her boyfriend was waiting . . .

  By midafternoon the second television, at last repaired, flashed some anchor’s frosted grin. “Marvelous,” said Maura, and clicked it off.

  Each patient had a book. Each lay quiet, reading.

  Firm footsteps sounded in the hall.

  “Wssht,” said Maura.

  Lillian reached into her drawer and found her sleep mask and slipped it over her eyes. For good measure she turned her head into the pillow, though she left an ear exposed.

  But Devlin didn’t even glance at the first patient. He walked swiftly toward the second one, the one near the window, the one whose quilted bedjacket he had supplied himself a few Christmases ago.

  “Mother,” said the thrilling voice.

  “Darlin’,” said Maura. “Twitch that curtain.”

  The glide of the curtain reached Lillian’s ear. Cautiously she raised her mask. Below the curtain now concealing the other bed she saw the backs of dark brown trousers and dark brown shoes. The trouser cuffs lifted ever so slightly. He must be bending over her. They must be embracing.

  Then the feet walked to the end of the bed. Then they returned, four metal legs following them like a dog. Man and chair halted; then he apparently sat down. One trouser leg disappeared—that familiar, easy placement of ankle onto knee.

  The voices grew low.

  Ten minutes later Lillian heard new footsteps. Working woman’s sneakers, she’d know them anywhere. She reached toward her bedside radio. Rachmaninoff. She lowered her lids. Her daughter’s perfume filled her nostrils. She raised her lids. “Darling,” she whispered to those green eyes.

  “Darling,” Hildy whispered back. “Why didn’t someone call me yesterday? How are you feeling? What happened?”

  “What happened, happened,” said Lillian, still softly. “You’re not wearing any lipstick; put some on.” Her voice did not rise in volume; but it acquired the timbre that had once commanded the entire Women’s Auxiliary. Hildy frowned. “For me,” Lillian added, plaintive now, hand moving fast to her chest.

  Lillian herself looked green without her usual rouge, thought Hildy. She rummaged in her briefcase and brought out a lipstick and half a mirror; who knew, this might be a deathbed request. “There’s not enough light,” she muttered.

  And so it was with mirror raised in the left hand to catch the light from the hall, head thrown back, hair swinging, right arm curved to apply the make-up, though it might have been embracing a lover—it was a woman in this elemental pose that Devlin, turning in his chair, saw, just after Lillian, leaning recklessly out of bed, yanked the curtain open.

  “Hildy?”

  She paused in her beautifying. “Dev?”

  They exchanged a long, serious, and ultimately annoyed look.

  Each turned to the other’s parent.

  “What are you up to, Maura?” said Hildy.

  “Lillian, this is my busy season,” said Dev.

  “Be quiet,” said Maura. “Hildy, I’m a selfish old thing. I wanted you for me final illness. I wanted to lay me head on your deep breast. Ah, such machinations.” She closed her eyes.

  Hildy looked down at her own lap.

  Devlin gazed directly at Lillian.

  She gazed back.

  Oh, if only she dared speak her unseemly thoughts. The deep corners of your mouth, she’d say; the cut of your Italian suit; those mahogany eyes. I wanted just an occasional kiss on my cheek and a sometime glimpse of the shoulders, of the eyes. We are satisfied with so little, we weary ones; imagination and memory does the rest. But without that little we’re as good as gone.

  Lillian merely ran her tongue over her silent lips.

  After a while Devlin said, “Are you both all right? Really?”

  “Really,” sighed Maura, her eyes still closed.

  “Really,” said Lillian, though she knew herself to be an old lady at last.

  So the former lovers left the room, Devlin motioning Hildy to precede him. They stayed together until the parking lot. There they parted.

  Maura wriggled out of bed. She took a deck of cards from her suitcase. “Thank God for Insurance. I’ve stayed in worse places.”

  They played gin rummy until midnight.

  Madame Guralnick

  Fleurs de trash,” said Helene to her great-nephew. “Sprouting all over the place.”

  “What are you talking about, Tante Helene; and can I pour you some coffee?”

  Sweet kid. “Come see for yourself,” she said.

  The kid—he was thirty—got up from the breakfast table and sauntered to the window. Had he lifted his pale eyes and swiveled them slightly, he could have seen the YMCA tower and beyond it the turrets of the Old City. But like his great-aunt he looked down at the street.

  On the curb in front of the building stood a couple of garbage cans. Across them a stuffed trash bag rested like a corpse; on top of that lay a cardboard box. On the flap of the box someone had arranged three banana peels. They looked like flowers with golden petals. “Fleurs de trash,” echoed Toby.

  Helene’s great-niece, Toby’s first cousin, who had soundlessly entered the room a few minutes earlier, joined them at the window. “Artistic,” she said.

  The sanitation workers’ strike was in its third smelly day. Garbage rose in front of each apartment house, garbage crowned with gifts from passers-by: tilted soda bottles, paper bags humping like rodents, an old straw hat. Most citizens expected that the Mayor would settle the affair soon, even though yesterday he and the Chief Sanitation Engineer had called each other names in front of news cameras.

  Helene glared at the banana peels. Artistic? Ah, all sorts of oddities passed for art these days. Last month the Israel Museum had exhibited sculptures formed out of shredded plastic bags and crushed tinfoil and bits of rope. From this debris the artiste had constructed life-sized simulacra of Moshe Dayan and Golda and of representative figures too—a rich man in an astrakhan; a rabbi; a bent schnorrer who might have walked out of Helene’s Belgian childhood: give the man a coin, Lenya. The sculptress herself wore a dark green satin dress as shiny as a trash bag, designed by a clever Parisian. The haute monde of Jerusalem, hennaed to its roots, glided from form to form . . .

  “The street looks like Bombay,” Angelica remarked.

  “Harlem,” said Toby.

  “East Jerusalem,” said Helene.

  They drifted to the breakfast table—mustached Toby, who brokered businesses in New York; languid Angelica, married to a moneyed Indian; and Helene, at seventy-three the only remnant of her generation.

 
She was head of the clan. The large apartment was the family seat. Every Tuesday a Moroccan woman pretended to clean it. The other days Helene furtively scraped and scrubbed. On her knees!—this pampered youngest child of the proud Antwerp family who fled to Palestine, all six, just in time, with diamonds hastily sewn into their hems. Little Helene, dancing down the gangplank, smuggled one special gem in her rabbit muff.

  Her brothers fought in the ’48 war. Afterwards, for each in turn, Papa transformed a few diamonds into cash; then they went off to seek their fortunes in America, in France. Oh, how rich they got. Helene stayed with Mama and Papa in this very apartment in this very building, graced today with a mound of trash. Her parents, lean and erect as royalty, continued to mourn the cousins who had been left behind on the Keizerstraat, the friends who had flown into the arms of the Germans. What could you do.

  Her parents were dead, her brothers also. And now the children of those dead brothers traveled to see her: men and women already in their fifties. They came: and their children came too—Toby and Angelica and a dozen others. Some of Papa’s grandchildren even brought their own kiddies, not noticing the childless Helene’s meagre enthusiasm. She was the Tante, wasn’t she?—and so the fourth generation arrived to pay homage to her and to kiss the soil of Eretz Yisrael, avoiding of course the explosives, and the thugs, and the trash.

  Toby poured coffee. Angelica arranged a plate of pastries. Toby put a little velvet pillow behind Helene’s back. Angelica handed her yesterday’s Le Monde. “You look ravishing,” the girl whispered in her ear. (The girl was thirty-one.)

  “You like my dressing gown?” Its deep V revealed a cameo on a chain: a woman in profile. “The cameo? Pretty junk; I’ve had it forever. I would lounge en deshabille all day if we weren’t going to the airport. The cab comes at two.”

  They were leaving Jerusalem for Istanbul; they were off on a cut-rate gambling weekend sponsored by the Turkish government—plane tickets and hotel rooms for next-to-nothing. The wily Turks figured they’d get their money back at the tables. Toby was looking forward to a cautious flutter. Angelica had never been to Istanbul. And Helene? “Roulette I can take or leave,” she said when the weekend was proposed. Who proposed it? Nobody remembered. “But it’s another chance to visit Madame Guralnik. Maybe the last chance.”