October 26, 2012--Chapter 13: My Liver

This is about a love letter from my father to my mother.  While he was quarantined up in the Adirondack Mountains, with a form of Tuberculosis.  It’s dated about six months after they met, well before she convinced her parents to allow her to marry him. 

Growing up, my favorite days were those when I was sick.  Not that sick, but sick enough to stay home from school but not too sick to enjoy the soap operas on the radio, tea and toast served by my mother, and the chance to play with her button box and clothespins.  These she brought to me on a wooden breakfast tray.  And truly best of all, she brought them to me in my father’s bed where I would be ensconced until I passed two days without any fever. 

This was in part to take me out of my bedroom, which I shared with my younger brother, bringing me into a version of isolation to protect him.  But there may have been another reason why my mother set me up this way, in the bed besides hers.  Perhaps it was all to keep my germs away from him.  Then again, maybe not. 

*    *    * 

I was reminded of this during a recent visit to Florida to see my elderly mother.  She is fully compos mentis, and so when she raised her sweater to show us where some of the capillaries in her chest had apparently ruptured, causing a fan-like pattern of discoloration, I was, I must admit, shocked and averted my eyes.  Not because I am squeamish about medical things, but because, by doing this, she was also exposing her bra and bear midriff.  The sight of both was not only unexpected but set off memories of other, much earlier such sightings.  

I wasn’t prepared to have those resurrected either; and so I quickly moved to divert all of us, her from her exploding capillaries, me from that bra, asking, almost as a non sequitur, if she had found that picture I had asked her to search for of me and Henry Cross.  From the time when we lived together as brothers even though he was the son of our maid, Bessie Cross, and I was white and he was black.  She in fact had and rushed to her bedroom to retrieve it. 

The photo showed us squinting into a harsh summer sun, me on my tricycle and Henry, shirtless, standing behind.  We were six and eight; but already, peering at this through time, and with the knowledge of what ultimately drove us apart, I could see his handsome threat and a sense of his awareness of how temporary this arrangement would be.  I also noted enough strength to comfort me that maybe he had managed to survive.  I knew at once, if these stories were ever to become a book, this picture must be its cover. 

It was in a leather album of the kind many families keep, with the images displayed chronologically, affixed to the pages with small stick-on corners.  In this case beginning with foggy pictures of my grandparents arrayed in hierarchical rows with their brothers and sisters and then subsequently with their own children, my aunts and uncles.  Thereafter was the appearance of the cousins.  

But slipped in among these were others of my parents, taken well before I was born, perhaps even before they were married.  Most were from a weekend outing in Tamiment, Pennsylvania, at a rustic camp, with log cabins in the woods surrounded by pristine lakes.  There in one, alone in a canoe, was my very buff father, bare chested, with his legendary perfect posture, perfect moustache, and a look of enormous accomplishment—it wasn’t every Jewish man of his era who was so obviously capable of maneuvering a birch bark war canoe on a lake in the wilds of Pennsylvania. 

But then again, from the picture next to it, of my mother in quite short shorts, framed seductively in the doorway of the first aid cabin, sporting a bandaged knee, of which she was clearly proud, hips tipped alluringly forward, I sensed that his feelings of accomplishment and her pride were perhaps more interconnected than the separate photos would suggest.  

I was eager to know if this weekend in the woods was after or before they were married and vowed I would ask my mother about that, before returning to New York, hoping that since my father had died nearly ten years earlier, she might tell me the truth; and if she did, I would finally be able to pose the many other questions I had been gathering throughout my life.  Including what had happened subsequently to transform, let me call it what it was, their animal intensity into anger.  

We were in Florida on this occasion for the unveiling of my cousin Larry’s gravestone.  He had died suddenly the year before, while on a treadmill, the first of our generation to pass away, sending seismic waves among the cohort of cousins; and so as the weekend was ending and it was getting to be the time for us to leave, it was not feeling propitious or appropriate to break the mood of grieving to ask my mother about things that might only add to her unhappiness.   

It was getting late, all the relatives had left my mother’s apartment where we had gathered after the service.  I was moving toward the guest bedroom, wanting to begin to end that difficult day, when my mother said, “I think there is another picture of you and Henry that’s a better one than I gave you.”  And although we were both weary, she asked if I could pull yet another box of family mementoes and photos from the floor of her closet because she was certain that’s where it would be.  

She began to sift through envelopes of unsorted pictures, humming to herself in a melody of remembrance--  

“Look at Uncle Morris always with that cigarette dangling from his mouth.  You know he died of lung cancer.  How he suffered.  And my sister Hattie with the leaf pasted to her nose so she wouldn’t get sunburned.  Look at Rose.  She was so tall and beautiful; it’s so sad that she was never happy.  But her mother, my sister Estelle, was no mother to her, leaving her home alone when she was only three in such a dark apartment.  And Mark in his uniform.  He was so handsome.  Dad’s sister Madeline.  She was some athlete.  Look at this picture of her when we went to Tamiment together.”

Tamiment again.  Exhausted as I was I could not resist, “Mom, when were you there?  There are those photos of you and dad from the same time.  The one of him in the canoe and you with the bandage on your knee.”

“Oh that was some time.  Though Madeline was impossible.  She was with us and she never let your father alone.  All she wanted to do was have him play tennis or handball with her.  That’s how I skinned my knee—I insisted I too wanted to play handball.  You wouldn’t know if from looking at me now, but I was quite a good player.  I could kill the ball with either hand.  Dad and I played in tournaments together in Brighton Beach.  But that Madeline.  She almost ruined that weekend.  We didn’t get away that often and I’m sorry your father insisted on bringing her along.  I didn’t understand why at the time; but now . . .”  She trailed off.

I wanted to know, “Was this before I was born?” 

“Oh sure.  Many years before.”  I knew it wasn’t until they had been married for nine years that I was conceived.  “In fact,” her voice became a hush, “I shouldn’t be telling you this,” she flipped back to the picture of him in the canoe, “but that’s silly because it would not be a big thing today.”  She looked up at me, “You know I was quite liberated for the time, I didn’t need to wait for Women’s Lib. I had my hair bobbed, I smoked and drank whisky in Speakeasies.” 

She smiled up at me.   “Yes, I want you to know, we were there together before we were married.” 

“I always wanted to know, but why do you now want me to?” 

“Because you only saw us after things had become so awful.  At my age, you never know, this may be the last time we have a chance to talk like this.”  I shuddered because I knew it was true.   “I want you to know that we loved each other at that time, and in that way too.” 

She paused to gather her strength.  She was seated on a bench beside her bed, hunched over.  Her breathing had become labored.  “You know that’s why I was attracted to him and why, in spite of my parents not wanting me to see him much less marry him, I insisted.  I fought with them.  Because he was, look, so handsome.”  

She was smiling now in her remembering, looking down at the photo in her lap, holding herself, rocking gently, “And, and I loved having sex with him.  That too.” 

I waited to see if she would say more.  But she resumed her humming, clearly not wanting to continue.  I of course wanted to ask, “But what happened?’” but it felt like too much for this day.  Maybe for any day.  So I reached over to her and we hugged for a while.  And she fell asleep in my arms.  I was reluctant to let her go, but I did and lifted her to her bed, tucking her in as she so many times had done for me.  

Over coffee the next morning, we did not refer to the night before, just talked on about nephew Mark and his wife Judy and their new house and the weather in Florida and New York. 

Then it was time to leave for the airport.  I could not help but think, as I had the last few years when departing, considering her age, that maybe this would be the last time I would see her.   But she as always, as she waived to me, shrinking in the rearview mirror asI drove off, asked again if I would be warm enough back in the city.  

*    *    * 

In New York, with that picture of Henry Cross, we never found the second one, I returned to my reveries of being sick and staying home from school and being taken care of by my mother.  Some of these now altered by what I had learned in Florida.  That time which had seemed so innocent to me was now clearly more ambiguous—I knew how happy my mother had been to have me there, in my father’s bed, and to be able to tend to me so lovingly.  But I also knew, without ambiguity, that something very disturbing had happened between them, after the love and passion, and that somehow I had been drawn into the middle of it. 

The literal middle because, I was now remembering, even when not sick, my mother frequently invited me into their bedroom to protect me from the terrors of my recurring nightmares.  I would scream out from my bed, which was pushed up against the wall separating our two bedrooms, and to calm me she would come for me and bring me into their room where she would settle me between them, actually in the crack between their two adjoined twin beds, where I lay face down, peering at a sliver of floor, trying both to resume sleep and somehow create enough white noise in my head to drown my demons as well as whatever sounds or words they might utter.

One winter I developed a severe case of the croup; and since I had what I later came to understand to be a weakness in my lungs similar to my father’s, there was fear that it would become pneumonia, which was much more life threatening then than now.  I was thus in for a long siege and would be taking over my father’s bed for at least a week.  My mother therefore not only needed to make sure I was comfortable, fed, medicated, and above all warm; but she also needed to make sure there was more to occupy me than just the boxes of buttons and clothes pins—they might be enough to get me through a cold, but the croup cum pneumonia was a different sort of challenge to her preoccupying skills.  So she arranged for me to have a steady supply of comic and coloring books, as well as cardboard, oak tag, scissors, paste, and various kinds of tape.  With these I was able to construct crude airplane models and, as my culminating project, I managed to fabricate a tiny Jeep, using, I thought ingeniously, the cellophane wrapper from a pack of my father’s Camels for the windshield.  It was quite a little masterpiece; at least my mother and I thought so.  Though when my father got home and my mother showed it to him, his only comment was a curt, “It’s good to see for once that you managed to complete something you started.”  That did not help speed my recovery. 

There were also times when I was left alone—my brother was in school and my mother needed to go grocery shopping.  These were sweet moments when all was quiet except for the periodic ticking of the radiators.  I daydreamed about the coming spring when I would prepare my vegetable garden and thought about summer trips up to the Catskills.  But I also seized the illicit opportunity to go through my parent’s closets and chests of drawers.  Tentatively at first but then more boldly.  There was the forbidden excitement of slipping into my father’s green corduroy jacket and even more when wrapping myself in my mother’s fox stole, trying on a pair of her high heeled pumps, and wobbling in them as I clopped across the room, catching fetching glimpses of myself in the mirror above her vanity. 

I loved the silken feel of my mother’s stockings and the intricate engineering that went into the construction of her boned girdles and brassieres.  Though tempted, I was never adventurous enough to try them on, fearing that I would somehow get trapped in them and would be thus discovered, writhing on the floor, a miniature Houdini, while attempting to free myself, of course, just when my father got home from work.  

There was nothing in his closet quite so tempting except perhaps his athletic supporter, but this I knew would somehow fall right off me and thus did not present an equivalent opportunity, as did my mother’s lingerie, to be so daring, though in its most important dimension it was more than daunting.

One time when my mother was at the beauty parlor, I found a small locked box at the bottom of her lowest dresser draw, but needed to slip it back under her nylon slips where it was clearly hidden when I heard her coming up the steps.  But I got right back to it the next day when she went out; and with the same dexterity I felt had been on display in the fabrication of the cardboard Jeep, with a crochet needle I quickly managed to pick the tiny lock. 

It was full of letters from many years ago—I knew this from the cancelled stamps from that earlier era.  They were all addressed to my mother, using her maiden name, and, it was obvious, all were from my father.  From the postmark I knew they were written in 1927, it looked like May, and were apparently mailed to her parent’s home in Brooklyn from Saranac Lake, New York, up in the Adirondacks. 

The first time I just looked at the envelopes, turning them over and over, examining the images of George Washington on the three-cent stamps, holding them up to the light to see what might be in them, to see if somehow I could read a phrase or sentence without removing the letters from the envelope. This proved fruitless, though I did see a word that looked like educable or edible through a translucent corner of one envelope.  Nothing more.  

And so the next time I was sick and home alone I quickly snuck the box back to my father’s bed where I was again settled, and on the breakfast tray opened the lock, determined that I would at least take out one letter and read whatever I could without fully unfolding it.  The one on top, which I had previously rotated in the light, was as I had left it a month ago.  I lifted it again and this time took the letter from its sleeve.  It was folded in a manner so that I could read what appeared to be a third of it without unfolding the rest.  It was dated May 22, 1927, and I read:

My Dear Pullet, 

They even manage to get the New York Times delivered all the way up here.  Not that anyone who lives in these parts can read anything more than the label on a bar of Lifebuoy, though from the smell of things in these woods I wish more of them would unwrap that bar of soap than just squint at it.  And so I read that story about Lucky Lindy who somehow managed to fly himself across the Atlantic Ocean without winding up sleeping with the mermaids.  Though from his reputation I’m sure that wouldn’t make him too unhappy.  And it wouldn’t make me unhappy either if I could be sleeping with my own Mermaid.   I promise you I’d even figure out a way to play upon her scales.You asked me how I’m feeling—well come a little closer so you can be the judge of that.  And you asked about my lungs—when all I think about are yours.  And about my liver you were wondering, we’ll it’s in edible condition.  So much so that . . . 

His remaining words slipped away under the fold and before I could even think about what to do, my heart was thumping, I heard my mother on the steps.  Somehow, though quivering, I managed to get the letter back into the envelope, it into the box, the lock secured, and the box back in the drawer before she appeared at the bedroom door radiant in the afternoon sunlight streaming in.  

Was I warm enough, would I like some toast and tea?  I made a chocking sound in response, attempting to say, “Yes.”  It was such an unearthly croaking that she was alarmed and asked anxiously if I was relapsing and should she telephone Dr. Handleman to see if he could come right over to give me a shot.  To that frightening suggestion I managed a miraculous recovery and a clear-throated, “I’m fine.  Yes, tea.” 

*    *    * 

Now, every Sunday at the stroke of noon my mother calls.  I know she attempts to place the call at that precise moment as yet another way to keep track of her decline, which she insists is occurring, though it is undetectable to the rest of us.  She remains quite perfect. 

So when she called the Sunday after my most recent visit to Florida and my recovering the memory of that letter, since she had said she wanted me to know I told her that I had just remembered finding dad’s letters to her from Saranac Lake when I was still a child and sick in bed. 

She was silent for a moment.  Then said, “Someone’s at the door.  I need to call you back.”  While I waited, I fretted that in my greed to know I had pushed too hard, too far.  I knew she had said she wanted me to know about that time and what had happened; but why hadn’t I let her tell me at her own pace, in her own way?  I know she had said there might not be much time remaining.  But still. 

I was beginning to wonder if she would in fact call back when the phone rang.  Without even a hello, she said, “I have six of his letters in a box in my dresser.”  I could see it again.  “I have been wondering what to do with them as I have been going through my papers, making arrangements.”  I knew she was getting everything ready even though it seemed, I hoped, premature.  “When I just got off the phone I put them in a manila envelope and am sending them to you.  Do whatever you want with them.  I don’t want them here anymore.  I’m not even sure why I kept them.  I meant to throw them away when he died.  Maybe I thought you would want to have them.  So you will.” 

“Mom, it’s OK.  I’m sorry I went back to that time, but you had said you wanted me to tell me what had happened. 

She interrupted, “There’s the doorbell again so I have to run.  I’m going downstairs now to put them in the mailbox.  I love you.”  And hung up. 

I must admit, in spite of my unyielding guilt for upsetting her so, I could not wait for the letters to arrive.  Would they be as I remembered them?  What else might be revealed?  And what more did I really want or need to know?  

The mails were swift that week and I had them in two days.  But I let them sit, now out of their leather box, beside my bed on my night table next to Tony Judt’s Postwar, through which I was slowly making my way.  For more than two weeks they sat there.  I also made little progress in my reading.  I considered that maybe I too should let them be and do what my mother had thought to do—get rid of them.  As my Aunt Madeline used to say, when insisting on just living in the moment, “That was then and this is now.”  That seemed to be good advice in this circumstance as well.  To let the past alone. This was certainly now. 

During the two weeks, on Sundays, at noon, my mother and I maintained our routine, talking in turn about every living member of the family with her concentrating as always on all the illnesses, near deaths, losses of jobs, and marital tsouris, not out of any feelings of schaudenfreud, but rather out of her unending love and concern for everyone’s health and well being.  

The second Sunday, at the instant we rang off, I stopped resisting and opened the letter on top, almost tearing it in my new haste, the same one from May 22, 1927.  It did in fact have the wily reference to his liver; and below the fold where I had been reluctant to venture decades ago, he continued: 

. . . And about my liver you were wondering, we’ll it’s in edible condition.  So much so that when Lindy makes his way back here maybe we’ll broil it up and make a small private party out of my organs. 

The rest of it, and the rest of them, were in a similar playful, sexy vein.  I confess that then as before I was instantly aquiver.   Who had been that man who I certainly never knew, so forbidding and unsatisfiable?  When I would bring home a report card with a 98 in Algebra he would say, “What happened to the other two points?”  It was inconceivable to me that this fierce and dour man could at one time have ever been thinking about using any of his organs for anything other than digestion or elimination.  I could only learn that from my mother. 

And so on the following Sunday, I sat by the phone watching the digital clock flip toward noon.  And at its stroke, there she was, still obviously in full powers, not further declined from last week.  So I took the chance.  After an update about Cousin Herman’s latest surgery, I said, “Mom, I read dad’s letters,” expecting her doorbell to ring again.  But there was silence at her end.  “They are amazing.  He seemed like a totally different person than the one I remember growing up with.”  I wasn’t sure she was still on the line, “No?” 

I waited.  There was only the static of a long distance connection.  “He was.  You did not know him.  He became bitter.  He grew up with money and when he wasn’t able to make much on his own, always scheming and failing, he grew angry at the world.  And especially with me.  He blamed it on me.  When I went back to work he saw that as evidence for all to see that he had failed.  He couldn’t make enough to support the four of us.  Now everyone knew.  His wife needed to work.  It was not a time when women worked because they wanted a career.  They worked because their husbands didn’t earn a good enough living.  He resented me for it.  He didn’t talk to me for four weeks after I started, though he took my paycheck and put it in his checking account.”  I thought I heard her snicker, “That he did.” 

“You did once tell me that.  And how from the money he gave you, from the money you earned, you managed to save enough to help pay my college tuition.” 

“Yes, that’s true.  And of course you remember, how could you not, what he did when my brother sent me a washing machine so I wouldn’t have to do the laundry by hand?” 

“I do remember that.  That was awful.  And,” I took a chance, “and cruel.  He made you send it back.” 

“It hurt so much.  He was so jealous of anything my brother did.”  She paused. “How ironic considering his own brothers, and especially his sister Madeline.  How he would make excuses for her.  I can’t tell you.” 

I knew we were moving into even more painful territory and told her, for a change, that I needed to run, that there was someone at our door. 

*     *    * 

For some inexplicable reason, my mother’s mentioning Madeline brought back another wave of memories.  All still from those times when I had to stay home from school to recover from a cold or Strep Throat, and even once Scarlet Fever.  Always in my father’s bed; always lovingly tended to by my mother.  She once, when inspecting me, found a tiny corn growing on my smallest toe and cared for it as if it were a tumor, dabbing it with ointment and wrapping it with lamb’s wool. 

I think it was then when I had Scarlet Fever that I recall my father being in the bedroom, his bedroom, more than was typical when I was sick.  But I am not sure because Scarlet Fever induces such high fevers that during those ten days there were times when I was so delirious I am not certain if what I experienced was real or imagined.  So I share this only tentatively. 

I remember it being late afternoon because of the light that had flattened in the room, illuminating the window that looked across a vacant lot beyond which was my friend Heshy’s house.  It was at this window that I signaled to him with small mirrors of the sort the Lone Ranger used to signal his scout Tonto, special mirrors that we obtained by sending in ten Cheerios box tops and 25 cents.  But then again it must have been evening because when I roused from a hot, dream-filled sleep, I saw my father standing by that window.  Had he come home early from work or was it later than I thought? 

Since I had done nothing that day but lie in a half sleep and thus did not have anything to show him that I had accomplished, I lay still pretending to be asleep.  

I had never seen him so interested in what was going on outside.  When he came home so tired from his long days he always just collapsed in his scuffed corduroy chair in the living room and waited for supper.  Even if there were street games going on he never showed any apparent interest in them or anything else.  Just seeking to recover, have something to eat, smoke a few final Camels, maybe listen to the radio for a half hour to Stan Lomax’s sports news, and then slump off to bed.  I was thus quite surprised to see him so interested in what might be out there, that was capturing his attention.  I thought something must be going on at Heshy’s.  There was certainly nothing occurring of any interest in that lot.  The most that ever happened there was when from time to time the shoemaker, John Inusi, would drag out a canvas sack and from it dump another load of leather shavings onto the small mountain he was building. 

I began to cough and this alerted him to the fact that I might be waking.  As if I had caught him at something, he turned and bolted from the room.  As you might imagine, this further aroused my curiosity; and though my mother had forbidden me to get out of bed on my own, fearing that if I did the fever would attack my brain, I did pull myself up and managed to get to that window, supporting myself along the way by leaning against her dresser and when I got to the window, holding myself up by clinging to the poll of the standing lamp. 

The fever also had the effect of blurring my vision, but in spite of that I could see quite well enough.  There framed in her bedroom window was Heshy’s sister Gracie.  Her father, Mr. Perly’s pride, literally manifesting the truth of his belief in the progress inherent in dialectical materialism, since she was as endowed above as Heshy was below.  

The light was such that even I, in my bleary state, could see that framed in her window she was packed into just her panties and brassiere.

*    *    *

It was another Sunday and at 12:00 and the phone rang.  Without preliminaries, my mother picked up our conversation as if a mere few minutes had passed since last week. 

“I to this day do not understand the things he let his brother Sonny get away with.    Always calling attention to your father’s used cars, flaunting in his face his own new Cadillacs.  He needed to get one every year?  I always thought he bought them to belittle your father. And why your father accepted his bags of hand-me-down pajamas I will never know.  True they were silk and from Sulka, but it was humiliating.  And as rough as your father was to all of us, so critical of everything we did, why did he make such excuses for his brother?”  Without pausing she answered her own question, “I can tell you why, because he was rich and lived in that house on Jamaica Bay.  Even though he was a crook and made most of his money in the Black Market.”  She spat, “I hated that house and all the antiques.” 

“I always wondered about the same thing.  What power did Uncle Sonny have over him?  And that was an awful house.  Not just the way it was furnished.  But also because everybody living there was so miserable.  What I remember most was Uncle Sonny sitting alone upstairs in that leather-lined room off their bedroom, watching westerns on TV, Hopalong Cassidy, with a never-empty glass of Johnny Walker next to him.” 

“And his sister.  Madeline.  Did you ever wonder about her?”

I could not think of what to say.  

Though we did not have a good connection I thought I heard her crying softly.  Though I asked, “Are you OK mom?”  I was I confess hoping that maybe someone would knock on her door. 

Before she could again make that excuse, the line went dead.  Then there was the dial tone.  I called right back but it rang and rang and rang.  She had switched off her answering machine.  I tried to reach her repeatedly through the day but always met with the same frustrating result.  I was so tormented by the pain I felt I was causing that I even made a few calls to the airlines to see if I could get to Florida that evening.  There were no seats to be had.  I did pledge to myself, in my now mountain of guilt, that if she wouldn’t take my call by early Monday afternoon, no matter the cost, I would fly to Florida no later than Tuesday morning.

So you can imagine my relief when at precisely noon Monday, the phone rang and it was her.  This time there was no roll call of family matters, no inquiries about the weather up north. She just began, “You saw those pictures of us in Tamiment, you know from before?”

“Yes.”

“Remember how you noticed that his sister Madeline was with us and I told you how she spoiled the weekend?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Well she did more than spoil a weekend . . . .  She ruined my life.  At least that part of it that we have been talking about.  How he stopped touching me.”

I whispered so as not to interrupt her, “I do remember your mentioning that when I was in Florida.”

“And you also remember, darling, how when you were little I took her into our apartment after she had her hysterectomy?” 

“Yes, I do.” 

“How she stayed for two months?  How I cooked for her and changed her dressing?  I did everything for her.  I even put her in your father’s bed.  You remember that?” 

“Yes,” and though I knew this would bring back the pain, I added as gently as I could, “And I always wondered why .” 

“Me too, my sweet.  I wondered why I did this.  Because she was not a good person.  I know you came to feel differently about her toward the end of her life.  You had a special relationship with her.” 

“That’s true even though I knew you never liked her and I felt guilty to be so involved with her.  That it might hurt you.” 

“It did.  You know I Iove you but that did hurt me.  Deeply.”

“I’m sorry, but I felt she needed someone.  She was growing older and alone in the world.”

 “That may be true but to me and to your father she was evil.”

I was shaking, realizing how oblivious I had been at that time.  That through my devotion to Madeline I had betrayed my mother who had given up so much of her life for me. 

I now more than ever needed to ask, to go with her to wherever this might lead, “She was evil?”

“Yes, that.”  I could hear her labored breathing.  “She made him do things.  He was a very stubborn man and I couldn’t get him to do even the simplest things for me.  But for her, there was never anything he wouldn’t do.” 

“I sensed that.”  

“He even made me bathe her when I took her in.  That was the worst.” 

“I can only imagine.” 

“My darling, you cannot imagine.”  I was trying to. 

“He even brought her flowers.”  She began to sob, “He never, never brought me flowers.” 

We cried together until I heard the phone rattle as it dropped to her counter top.  In the background I could hear her running water in the sink.  She then hung up the phone.

*    *    * 

As I struggled to take in the full flood of what my mother had been telling me during our interrupted bits of conversation, knowing she would say no more and we would need quickly to resume the former structure of our weekly calls—more about the family and the weather in New York and Florida and less about it--finally, as I went back over my memories of especially those times when I was sick and my mother was out of the house, when she left me alone in his bed, there was yet another flicker of remembering something real or perhaps hallucinatory. 

I think it was again when I had Scarlet Fever, and thus my uncertainty about its reality.  Feeling somewhat stronger, I moved into the living room, to sit in my father’s chair to listen to the radio and to take in the odor of his body that had penetrated the fabric.  Perhaps thinking that breathing in some of it would somehow strengthen my lungs. 

I must have slipped into a half sleep or reverie because the next thing I remember noticing was that the sun had shifted, flattening against the window that looked out onto East 56^th Street.  The house was still and so I assumed my mother was not yet back from her chores—she had indicated she needed to make three stops, the last one at the bank which was quite outside the perimeter of our neighborhood so I should not worry if she returned later than usual. 

I was in fact feeling much better.  So much so that I thought I would go “camping.”  There would still be time for that.  By camping I meant gathering my hard-rubber flashlight, my Cub Scout mess kit, and illuminated compass (all hand-me-downs from cousin Larry) and “hike” to the campground “cave,” in reality the interior of my mother’s walk-in closet.  Where I would settle down by the “fire,” nestled in against the wind among her scented nightgowns and dresses.  

In my mind I would conjure up images of the Lone Ranger and Tonto alone under the stars on the High Plains of the Old West.  Waiting to ride into town the next morning to help the grieving widow make the mortgage payments on the ranch and drive away the cattle rustlers who were plaguing her.  And then depart, before anyone could thank them, leaving as their only trace, a single silver bullet. 

I went to my bedroom first to gather my equipment.  And then to my parent’s bedroom and her closet.  The sun was clearly setting—it was streaming from the front of the apartment all they way back to my parent’s bedroom, probing for the door of my mother’s closet as if it were a spotlight. 

It was not latched.  It had been over-painted so many times that it never did.  All was silent.  

I pulled the door open.  The smell of camphor jumped out.  And the light fell in among the coats and dresses and shoes and garment bags.  Reaching all the way back to where I was planning to settle. 

If I am remembering correctly, it fell on my mother as well.  

Who was crouching in the back, at my campsite.  Naked.  Pulling silently at her face. 

END OF PART ONE