She Is Me (5 page)

“I can still hear, Tony,” said Greta.

“I told you before, it was for her work,” Tony said.

“I’m not deaf and I’m not senile.”

“Work. I told you before.”

Elizabeth waited until they were done. She could tell her mother was not completely convinced. But she could also tell that her mother had decided she didn’t need to be completely convinced.

“Well!” Greta said. “Truthfully? I’m so glad you’re coming. So glad,” she repeated, her voice drifting into a weak near whisper that Elizabeth had never heard before. “My little girl. My sweet Elizabeth . . .”

Was she crying?

“Elizabeth can help you, can’t you, honey?” Elizabeth’s father said.

“She doesn’t have to take care of me —” Greta said, indignant now.

“With Lotte. She can help you with Lotte.”

“Yes,” said Greta. “Right. Grandma will be so happy to have you here. And Harry! We’ll have Harry all the time!” She paused. “Just don’t worry about me, sweetie.” Another uncomfortable pause. “There’s nothing to worry about, anyway.”

“Of course there’s nothing to worry about,” Tony said. Too fast, Daddy, Elizabeth thought. You agreed too fast.

“I can look after myself,” Greta said. “You come and concentrate on your work.”

You’re my work, Elizabeth thought. You. You will be my work.

In her bedroom, Lotte leaned against the pillows and watched the girl exit. A nice girl, although she was so tiny. Practically a midget. And with that big ass on her . . .

“Maria!”

The girl turned around, holding Lotte’s breakfast tray.

“Yes, Mrs. Franke?”

“Maria, you must lose a little weight if you ever want to find a man.”

Lotte watched Maria blush. Silly young woman.

“Honestly, Maria! Don’t be a goose. I speak my mind!”

“But, Mrs. Franke . . .”

“I have a lot of experience, my dear.”

Maria said, “But, Mrs. Franke, I have husband!”

Lotte surveyed Maria. Well then, she thought.

“You better lose that behind to keep him!” she said.

Maria giggled and left the room. Lotte hated having her here. On principle. It was one thing to have a housekeeper to tidy up and vacuum, to keep house. It was another to have a nursemaid, a housekeeper who was really a keeper, as if Lotte were an animal in the zoo.

“I’m very lucky, my dear,” Lotte called after her. “Very lucky to have you!”

True, absolutely true, Lotte thought. Fat ass or no, Maria was sweet and quiet and she made the smoothest, most delicious Cream of Wheat.

“But, Maria, darling, I’m afraid I just can’t afford an attendant right now. You’re a lovely girl. I’ll miss you.”

Maria returned to the doorway. She looked baffled.

“But Mrs. Greta, she pay me already. Don’t worry about nothing, I take care of you.”

She came to the bed and took Lotte’s hand in hers. She smiled, encouragingly, soothingly. Sad, stunted little dwarf, Lotte thought. Trying so hard. It was a shame Maria should have to go through this. Greta should have thought before exposing a poor, desperate immigrant to such disappointment and embarrassment.

“You’re very sweet,” Lotte said. She pulled back her hand. “You will kindly leave at once.”

By the time Elizabeth arrived at her apartment, Lotte had showered and dressed. She hadn’t fallen in the shower, a point of considerable pride, but the effort had been tremendous. Each step, each turn had involved a slow, concentrated physical attention, as if she were dancing in slow motion. Pulling on her girdle had been even worse. Greta sometimes teased her about wearing a girdle. Lotte barely heard her when she did. The girdle was simply a part of her day. Like brushing her teeth. Or eating. But today, she could almost hear Greta’s voice: “Don’t forget your truss, Mother!”

Lotte couldn’t bend enough to reach down to her feet to pull it on, so she had dropped the corset on the floor in front of the chair she sat in. Then she reached out her feet and slid her toes in. But then the girdle just lay there, motionless around her ankles. She couldn’t reach it. She stared at it awhile, a dingy, white elastic object that just then reminded her of calamari, which she loathed. What if Elizabeth arrived and found her this way? Staring at an inert girdle on a shag rug?

Lotte closed her eyes.
Knees! Knees! Knees! Knees! Movin’ up and down again. . . . Don’t you dare to frown again. . . .

She opened her eyes. It is a curse to grow old, she thought. She looked around. A box of Kleenex. Bottles of pills. An empty glass. The remote control for the television, it should rot in hell with all its buttons, who could manipulate such a contraption? Her cane. She reached for the cane, hooked the handle into the girdle, and pulled it within reach.

“Everything but my shoes and stockings,” she said when Elizabeth arrived with Harry.

Elizabeth bent down and pulled socks onto Lotte’s feet, slipped her shoes on, tied them.

“I got them from a catalog. Kenneth Cole.”

Harry was hugging one ankle. If only Morris had lived long enough to meet his great-grandson.

“Grandma’s pretty shoes,” Harry said, stroking her shoe as if it were a pet.

“Only three years in America and listen to him!” Lotte said.

“They’re not bad, not bad, Grandma.
Très chic.
”

“You have taste, Elizabeth. Look what a wonderful little boy you produced.”

As Elizabeth held Harry up so Lotte could kiss him, Lotte noticed Elizabeth’s shoes, rather clunky affairs, but fashionable, and nodded her approval. And that Harry! He was magnificent. Brilliant. End up a professor like his mother. A Ph.D., no money, too many opinions. She grabbed Harry’s face and pushed her lips against his cheek, over and over.

“Driving me nuts,” Harry seemed to say. He wiped the kiss from his cheek in a manner Elizabeth recognized.

“Where’s Maria?” Elizabeth asked. “Late lunch?”

“Maria? It has nothing to do with me, dear,” Lotte said. “Nothing at all.”

Elizabeth made dinner for her grandmother, called her mother with the news of Maria’s departure, called Brett to tell him they would be late, undressed her grandmother, helped her into her nightgown, then tucked her into bed. She was exhausted and wondered how her mother could stand it. It seemed as though she’d been with Lotte for months, not hours. I’m sorry, Grandma, she thought. I don’t mean to be disloyal. You can’t help it if you’re old. Old and selfish and stubborn. And a wave of love for Lotte brought tears to her eyes, tears of irritation and tenderness, the familiar poles of family feeling, wrenching and urgent. Thank God I’m here to help, she thought, and then, the next minute, Why didn’t I stay safe in my apartment in New York?

Instead, here she was, driving to her new home in her new car. The car had been an embarrassment for both Elizabeth and Brett. They laughed at how self-conscious they were about their choice. But they admitted to each other, late one night, as if confessing an unusual sexual desire, that it mattered.

“What tools we are,” Brett said.

Elizabeth thought of her essay on
Madame Bovary.
Brand names have replaced the cliché, she had written, as the instrument of banality.

“Slaves,” she said. “We’re slaves.”

Then, full of excitement, the slaves discussed what kind of car they would get. Not the academic’s customary secondhand Volvo station wagon, though they reread Stanley Fish’s essay “The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos” for the occasion. The Volvo was a safe car, which suggested they were responsible people and caring parents; it was expensive, which showed they were doing quite well; secondhand signified they were still of the people; Volvo meant East Coast and superior, understated taste; and the choice of a station wagon indicated they needed to cart stuff around but were not willing to be sucked into the gas-guzzling SUV rage. But Brett
wanted
an SUV, and Elizabeth wanted a
new
car, and neither of them actually liked the big, boatlike Volvo station wagon they test-drove, so they leased a Subaru Forester instead.

Where to live in L.A. had been easier than what to drive. They rented a little house in Venice Beach, just a few minutes from Greta and Tony’s house in Santa Monica. The real-estate agent called it a bungalow. Elizabeth liked the sound of the word “bungalow.” It was a bona fide Arts and Crafts bungalow, the agent said, which gave the house some architectural panache. It also gave it lower ceilings and smaller windows than they would have liked. On the other hand, the beautiful, rather wild-looking garden in front was cool and refreshing. Arts and Crafts bungalow, said the real-estate agent. And Elizabeth and Brett moved into a house with its very own brand name.

“A brand name,” Brett had said. “It’s a sign.”

Elizabeth drove up the alley behind the house and asked Harry if he wanted to press the clicker to open the gate, but he was asleep. She carried him inside and handed him, wordlessly, to Brett, and got herself a beer from the refrigerator. The phone rang.

“Sweetheart? Did I take my pills?”

“Yes, Grandma.”

“You didn’t write it down.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You have to write it down. That’s our system.”

Greta crouched in the dirt of her garden. None of her neighbors were awake. No one would notice her. She was getting up earlier and earlier. The light was just spreading itself thinly through the trees. She checked her PalmPilot for the dates of Lotte’s doctors’ appointments. She checked her own doctors’ appointments. She wondered how on earth she would be able to keep track of so many oncologists, dermatologists, radiologists, surgeons, gastroenterologists, gerontologists . . . Then she felt the heat of sickening shame and wondered how she had managed not to see a doctor until she had a huge malignant lump. She hated to go to the doctor, that’s how. Being married to one ought to have been enough.

Tony would rumble out of bed soon wondering what was for breakfast. Greta never understood why he had to ask this question each and every morning since he made his own breakfast and it was always toast with low-fat cottage cheese. Well, sometimes they had bagels around. Or low-fat cream cheese. Maybe that’s what he meant. Then he would read the newspaper, where he would discover what would become his Topic of the Day. He didn’t realize he had a Topic of the Day (unless, during an argument, Greta ungraciously pointed it out to him). And he was able to speak with considerable intelligence on any number of topics. But he had a habit of pouncing, as Greta saw it, on one hapless victim each day, and then parading it around, like a terrier with a rat between its jaws, waving it, shaking it at everyone he met, even after its neck had long been broken. One day it would be the Middle East, another Latin America. Sometimes the Economy, others the Electoral College, SATs, Oprah, Oil, Automotive Safety. Tony was interested in everything and gave everything its day in his court. Greta had never read the paper very carefully. She lacked “curiosity,” according to Tony, and perhaps he was right. But now, especially, his energy and obsessive attention to the worries of the world exhausted her.

She wondered when Elizabeth would show up today. She came by practically every day. Elizabeth had become relentlessly considerate. It frightened Greta, emphasizing the gravity of her condition, and it moved her.

Later, when she went in to sit with Tony over coffee, he read the
Wall Street Journal.
The stock market appeared to be today’s Topic.

“It’s like the weather,” she said. “You have no control over it. The forecast is never accurate. It’s crucial and meaningless at the same time . . . and you never invest anything anyway.”

“There are real opportunities in the technology arena,” he said, his voice warm and loud with pleasure, with almost boyish excitement. “Yes, it’s true, the NASDAQ reflects the realization of just how overvalued technology stocks were in the high-flying nineties . . .” This is my first break after my first six weeks of chemotherapy, she thought. “. . . and true, I know, I agree that within the rarefied atmosphere of the tech bubble . . .”

She was so relieved that she still had hair.

“Even so, there is every indication that the well-managed global information and communications companies will grow as these huge new markets open up . . .”

She’d slept in a nauseated stupor for three days each week after watching all those chemicals drip into her arm, but she was beginning to feel a little better today.

“I mean, the Developing Nations are
hungry
for information,” Tony said. “Don’t you think?”

“I have to go to my mother’s,” she said.

Tony put the paper down.

“Don’t say ‘take it easy,’
please,
” she said.

“Sorry.”

Greta shrugged. She sipped some coffee. It took some of the metallic taste away. She couldn’t stand water anymore. And it used to taste so good. Bottled water of course. God knows what was in tap water. You could get cancer from tap water. She wondered if she would die. Everyone dies, she reminded herself. But will
I?

“Do you really have to go?” Tony was saying.

Greta was still trying to finish up the last few jobs she had started. Soon she could stop work completely until she was better. Would she get better? They spoke of five-year survival rates. And even the odds for that were not what one would hope.

“You won’t be able to keep this from your mother forever,” Tony said.

“Watch me.” Why should her mother spend her last months worrying about Greta’s last months?

He made a sound that fell somewhere between a laugh and a sigh.

“I have to interview the new companion,” she said. “Then I’ll come right home.” She had noticed that she was required to justify her behavior these days; every outing, every move. As if she were a child. People tried to make things easier, she knew. But they were not very good at it. Yet. Perhaps they would improve with practice.

Her mother was probably thinking exactly the same thing.

“I hope to God this one works out,” she said. “She’s a little older, anyway. Someone Mother can talk to. In English.”

Tony folded the paper, took a breath. She waited for the lecture: take it easy; don’t be so hard on yourself; it’s okay to be scared. “Just don’t . . .”