Apart From Love (20 page)

Then, to the thin sound of,
As your bright and tiny spark... Lights the traveller in the dark... Though I know not what you are... Twinkle, twinkle, little star
, I get to my feet.
 

This, now, is where I must close.

I bend over as if to bow before my mother, the way she herself taught me to do, at the end of my little performance, so many years ago—but then, just before I can lift the album from her lap I sense a change: a slight movement.
 

She has lowered her head. And now, her long fingers start gliding over the clear plastic seal, feeling through it, perhaps finding the subtle impression of an edge, I mean, the edge of the first picture. It is raised—by the thinnest measure—from the surface of the page. Her hand slides over, now feeling the edge of the second picture. Her gaze seems to be focused straight down, at the void right there between them, in the middle of this page.
 

In awe, I stand back. She is looking now, looking directly at the missing picture.

As Told by Anita

T
he moment I come out of the bedroom—trying to forget what’s just happened between Ben and me—that’s the moment I see Lenny standing there, next to the entrance door. He takes a step forward to reach me, which alerts me at once to a threat, ‘cause I’ve seen him jealous before.

Me, I can tell how he must be feeling right now, ‘cause I’ve been there myself. From time to time, I would drive myself crazy thinking about him and Natasha, about her coming back here, or him going away with her. Then like, I would fly at him, with fire in my heart, crying that I hate, hate, hate him, and that I couldn't take his secrets no more, and whatever! And no matter what Lenny would say, I would end up going into a jealous rage.
 

Rage, it can like, scorch everything around you, and make it all rise up in smoke, till you don’t hardly know who’s your friend and who—your enemy, so you can’t really trust no one. And most of all, you can’t trust the one you hold dear.
 

At such moments I find that I miss being with my ma, who threw me out of her place long ago. I miss her, because inside—where no one else can see—I’m still a child, and because with her I’m at ease, and I don’t have to torture myself, and I don’t have doubts about nothing, ‘cause she makes things cut and dried, even if she has to slap me for it.
 

So even though we’re married now, I don’t really feel I belong here, in this place. An outcast: that’s me.
 

So I storm past him—but Lenny lays his hand on me. Grabbing me by the shoulder, he brings me to a standstill.
 

“
Stop
! Stop, Anita,” he says. “We have to talk.”

“Whatever,” I say, “I’m done talking,” even though we both reckon that like, the only thing I’ve swapped with him since this morning was my silence for his.
 

And he goes, “Maybe
you
are—but I am not.”

And I don’t say nothing, ‘cause like, what’s the point? Between his son and me, I bet I know whose story he’s gonna believe.

And so he presses on, “There is something, Anita, something I must tell you.”

“What,” I say. “You leaving me again, Lenny?”

“Going back to work,” he says, which takes the wind right out of me.
 

“Really?” I gape at him, and notice that his briefcase is right there on the floor, at his feet. “So soon? You sure you’re up to it? Like, with the limping and all?”

“Yes,” he says, and lets go of me. “It is time. I cannot afford staying home any longer.”

And, seeing that I stare at him as if to ask, Now, what does that mean, he goes on to say, “It means, jobs are hard to come by, Anita. Especially,” he adds, “at my age.”
 

“Fine, then,” I say, and lift his briefcase from the floor, to save him the trouble, and I hand the thing to him. But instead of taking it, he grips me again, this time by my waist, and turns me to the light, like, to read me.

“It is not Ben I want to talk to you about,” he says.
 

I wonder if he can tell what’s in the back of my mind, which is the place I keep words, words too long to make any sense, and other things I’m trying to forget.

“Really?” I say, hearing sudden relief in my voice. “It isn’t?”
 

And I press my head to his chin till I feel him wiggling his upper lip, ‘cause my hair is frizzy, and so it must be tickling his nose. And through the fabric, the thin cotton of this dress, I feel his hands on my body, his flesh against mine, and it’s coming forward, so I reckon he wants me, like, awful hard.

“Take it off,” says Lenny.

So I slip the dress off, ‘cause it don’t belong to me, but to Natasha. Wearing it must have been a mistake, ‘cause this thing brings her back to him, and for some reason, it brings out other feelings, which I’m not sure I get, exactly. So I step out of it, and see it puddling there, on the floor, like a piece of blue ice, melting.
 

Then, on the whim of a moment, I rise to the tips of my toes and stretch for a kiss; which he denies me. And instead, Lenny looks straight into my eyes, saying, “In a word: I want you to know that maybe, I have lied to you.”

Now, that’s just like him: lying to me; which he then doubts; which he wants me to know, so he’s protected from guilt.
 

And before I can point it out, or ask him why anyone would say,
In a word
, only to follow it with a full sentence—and a long one at that—Lenny goes on to say, “I have told you, just a minute ago, that I do not wish to talk about my son. But now that I think about it, maybe I have lied.”

I can see my image flashing across one lens, then the other, right there in his glasses. And it looks kinda small, and odd, too, ‘cause each one of them surfaces is like, a bit curved. There... Now my image has met the frame. It’s gone, vanished into thin air.
 

Me, I’m feeling, like, a tinge of shame—even though I didn’t do nothing wrong. So I’m waiting on edge, right there in front of him, now with my eyes lowered, holding my breath to hear him, ‘cause who knows what he thinks he’s seen.
 

To me, he’s the witness, and he’s the judge, a judge with a bias in favor of the other side. And here’s the accused, ready for the verdict. Here I am.

Lenny starts talking to me, and what he says isn’t nothing like what I’ve expected, and it takes my breath away.
 

“You may be looking at my son,” he says, “and at me. You may be watching us, thinking, These are strange people. This is not a family I would want to live next door to, let alone in the same home—but this, Anita, is the family we
are
.”

And in a whisper I repeat, “Yes, we are.”
 

And something makes me warm all over at the mere sound of what he’s just said, ‘cause like, if even he, Lenny, don’t barely know what’s strange and what’s not, then who knows? Is there anyone normal, out there? What is it exactly,
normal
?

And I don’t mind me being odd, when so are they, when so are all of us.
 

And I can see how, in the days to come, I’m gonna have to find my way, somehow, between them two men, ‘cause I get it: Lenny needs his son, and he can’t risk another split, another tear between the two of them. We must all try, as best we can, to forgive each other, and to accept us, accept the way we are.
 

I find myself awful glad to be near him, ‘cause at this moment I ain’t an outcast no more: he’s made me a part of something which—even if it’s damaged—still, all the same, it’s as close as you can get to being whole.
 

“We,” I echo, “are a family.”

“A family,” he admits, “with a load of secrets.”
 

Lenny raises his eyes to the ceiling as if to find the right words, which must be kinda hard for him, ‘cause now he takes his briefcase from me and like, tries to take cover behind it. At last he lets out a sigh.
 

“What I have to say,” he tells me, “is about her.”

In return to which I let slip, “It always is.”

He backs away, so I tell him, “Lenny—don’t you stop! I’m here, listening.”

And he says, “You may remember that time, five years ago, when Natasha came back, and you left, swearing it was all over between us.”

And me, I nod, “I do.”

And Lenny says, “I tried very hard to mend things with her. If we could start over, if life could go back to the way things used to play out, it would have meant so much! Not only for us—but for Ben, too.”

“Natasha,” he says, “had stopped giving piano lessons by then, and from time to time she would seem—how shall I describe it?—withdrawn. In spite of this, she acted as if all was fine, and so did I. For the most part, we were getting closer again, so who could ask for more? She and I managed, somehow, to settle into a daily routine—until one evening, just before going to bed., the phone rang.
I picked it up on my side of the bed; she
—
on hers.”

His lips tighten, and for a long while he don’t say much; which forces me to ask, “So, who was it?”

And he says, “
It was her doctor.”

And me, I ask, “What, was she sick?”

And Lenny says, “Yes,” which seems to take a lot out of him, ‘cause now he’s turning pale. “She was,” he reveals. “And still is.”

And so I run to the kitchen and bring him a chair and have him sit there and try, and catch his breath. Then I bring him a glass of water, which at first he tries to refuse.
 

So I give him a look. “In a word,” I tell him, “drink!”

So, he drinks; after which I ask, with caution, “So—what did the doctor tell you?”

He’s raising his eyes again, but the right words can’t be found nowhere close to him—not on the ceiling, or on the wall, or the floor, in this corner, or that. So instead, Lenny shuts his eyes and, like, stumbles into saying, “The doctor, he said: Mr. Kaminsky, the tests came back.”

“At this point,” he recalls, “I took a hard swallow. The doctor paused briefly—perhaps taking another look at the test results—and then went on to say, I have some difficult news for you. Your wife, I believe, has a form of Alzheimer's.”

I take the briefcase away from him, ‘cause it’s just about to fall, anyway.
 

And so Lenny can’t brace himself no more, ‘cause at this point, he don’t have nothing to hold on to, and nowhere to hide. Instead he just sits there, with the empty glass, saying, “Alzheimer's,” and then again, in a voice that is nearly gagged, “Alzheimer's.”
 

And after a long pause he adds, “At the sound of this word, Natasha was confused and I—I dropped to my knees. I remember, she could not get it, could not understand what was going on and told the doctor, Wait, hold on, I cannot talk to you now. Call back later, something is wrong here. No, not with me—with my husband.”
 

Lenny takes off his glasses and like, wipes something from the corner of his eye, and my heart goes out to him. And then, then the strangest thing starts happening to me. For the first time in ten years I feel not only for him—but for her, too.
 

I pity her, which surprises me, and allows me to watch the whole scene in my head, as if—by some magic—a curtain’s risen, and I find myself right there to watch, or like, to snap a picture of the past, of that moment between them:
 

I see him crouched there, on the floor at the foot of the bed; and her plopping the phone in its cradle, to stop it already, stop that voice, that muffled voice that keeps coming back, saying, Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?