As Close to Us as Breathing: A Novel (32 page)

“Howard!” she yelled again. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Come back!”

“Howard!” Davy and I echoed. Davy jumped up and down. “Hey, Howard!” he added, waving his arms, and I turned to him, telling him sternly, “This isn’t a game, you know.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“Not sure,” I warily said.

The Sailfish traveled on but the boys in it turned their heads our way. My mother called again and again and finally in the distance a hand shot up, Howard’s, and he was waving. He yelled something but his words didn’t reach us with any clarity. In a moment he’d gone past us and in frustration Ada began to jump, not unlike the way Davy just had. Davy mimicked her, calling out to Howard for reasons he didn’t understand, and between the two of them the racket was substantial. Several people on the beach below us turned to stare. A woman emerged from a cottage behind us, the second one in from the corner of Clinton Street and Beach Avenue, and she stood on her porch, wearing a housecoat similar to my mother’s, and glared in our direction. She looked so much like my mother, with dark hair and a similar face and build, and for a moment I thought this was our cottage, our life, moved in a flash from Bagel Beach to this other, better section of Woodmont, where the homes lined Beach Avenue in a trim, neat row and even had little lawns of mowed grass on which to play badminton, say, or to sit when you tired of the sand. Life here wouldn’t be a bad thing, I sensed, and I turned to this stranger, compelled to give her a wave.

Five twenty p.m. and Nelson was thinking about closing early. Mort and Leo would never know. A late Friday afternoon, especially one as sunny and bright as this one, was a lousy time for shopping. But just as Nelson was about to tell Kurt Hanson, the new hire, to pack it up and have a good one, Giorgio D’Almato came wandering in. “These new shoes are like heaven,” he said once he’d reached Nelson and shaken his hand. Nelson nodded, wishing Howard was there to hear this. Nelson then accompanied him to the front door and for some minutes they stood outside on the sidewalk, talking in the afternoon sunshine. The old man was now a grandfather of five, he told Nelson, the newest child born just in the last week. “Lucky man. You’ve got it all,” Nelson told his customer, a prick of envy in his voice. But Giorgio D’Almato didn’t hear the bitterness. He simply turned and began, in those shoes as good as heaven, his slow march north on Main Street.

In the kitchen at the Woodmont cottage Vivie pulled out a chair and dropped herself into it. She dragged out another chair, pointed, said in her firmest voice, “Nina, sit down.” Nina finished wiping the candlestick in her hands then came to the table carrying it, setting it on the kitchen table beside the two chickens that were now sitting in roasting pans, surrounded, in a way that made Vivie a little uncomfortable but a little giddy, too, by a profusion of garlic cloves. “You’ve got to drop this thing with Howard,” Vivie began, her voice still firm. “I know you’re out to get him. I see it,” she added. She was not yelling at Nina, or even scolding, but rather talking with concerned seriousness. “I know a thing or two about quarreling siblings, or in your case almost-siblings,” Vivie confessed. The girl was tearing up. “Honey, tell me—what’s wrong?” She leaned toward Nina. “What’s wrong with you?” At that Nina burst out. “Something,” she wailed, “I
know
something’s wrong with me. Something’s
terribly
wrong with me. But I can’t tell you
what.
”

A full heart is like a packed suitcase, Bec realized as she headed downhill toward the glinting ocean water and Beach Avenue. Feeling heavy with it all—the aching loneliness of a Friday afternoon—she forced herself to pick up her pace. In the next moment she could almost see it: the Shabbos table, set with candlesticks and wine cups, the extended family seated around it, and there she was at the table too, she and Tyler, and they were accepted by the family for what they were, a unit of their own design, a tight little package of love. Not so hard, really, she argued to herself, to set one extra place, to open a clearing for the unexpected, certainly it was possible, and when she turned onto Beach Avenue and to her surprise spotted Ada standing on the other side of the road facing seaward only yards away, and then saw Davy and then me, she rushed forward, calling to us in a voice filled with hope. Davy heard her first, turned, and upon seeing her across the street he offered a surprised, delighted smile, which led her to instantly drop to her knees and throw her arms wide. “Davy!” she called.

From Howard’s perch on the heeling Sailfish it looked like everybody was waving—his mother, his siblings, even the lady behind them, a stranger standing on her cottage porch. So he joined in, waved back. As loudly as possible he yelled, “What’s up? What’s going on?” but there was no way to hear what they were trying to tell him, nor could they hear him, he knew. He told Mark they should come about, and as Mark released the sail’s line Howard yanked the tiller toward him. The boat turned and a moment later the sail, which had gone fluttery with the loss of the wind, suddenly swung to the other side, gradually filling as it caught the breeze. As the boat came about, Mark, in the nick of time, ducked underneath the boom, but Howard, his attention on his family on the shore, forgot to duck, and as the boom shifted it slammed against Howard’s shoulder, causing him to lose balance and tumble backward off the boat. He splashed, went under, surfaced, spat. Treading frantically, he looked shoreward, toward Ada. Then he shouted to Mark, who’d already caught the loose tiller and was turning about again, heading his way, “Can
you
hear what they’re yelling?”

“Not under
my
roof!” is what Ada called over and over again, wondering as she yelled why she’d not known about the Irish girl and Howard. And if she didn’t put an end to it now, she figured, Mort would find out, and that
would
be the end of it—not only for Howard, whom Mort would surely punish to the hilt, but for her too, it would be the end of something beautiful, untouched, the end of something she didn’t even know the name of besides calling it
summer,
calling it
the cottage,
calling it
my time with my sisters,
which she needed, she realized, couldn’t possibly live without, or the other three seasons of the year would simply sink her.

As he rounded the corner from Clinton Street to Beach Avenue, Sal Luccino was imagining the roses, a solid dozen, he’d bring home that evening for his wife, Marie. Inspired by the wild roses he’d spotted along the shore, he’d come up with the idea of the gift just moments ago. By this point in summer, the busiest time of year, he and his wife hardly saw each other. The roses, he’d concluded, would let her know she wasn’t forgotten. He was just picturing Marie’s bemused smile and the roses in her arms when, having made the turn, he saw Ada Leibritsky on the sidewalk of Beach Avenue, screaming and jumping as she faced the sea. As if by rote, because for ten years already he’d always done so at this turn, he rang the truck’s bells. But then he did something atypical: he turned his gaze momentarily from the road, following the direction of Ada’s cries, until he spotted the boy, Howard, flapping in the water while his boat sailed on without him.

Eyes locked on Howard, Sal inhaled deeply, took his forefinger and thumb to his mouth, and gave the loudest whistle he could summon, a sound that soared across the water and rose in the air with the ease of a flying gull. Help, the whistle surely told Howard, was close at hand.

It was confusing then when Ada, alarmed by Sal’s sharp call, turned away from the water and toward the road, toward him, her eyes popping anew as she did, her mouth dropping open, her throat tightening as she struggled to yell, “Stop! Stop!”

So he did.

He hit the brake. But in the second before he heard an undeniable and awful thud and his head snapped back.

In the next moment he was crouched beside the truck, his mouth open as he examined the small body, back to the ground, head askew, beneath it.

Sal couldn’t help himself, the way he pursed his lips, began to whistle—this time a single, barely audible note of bewilderment—as he grasped Davy’s closest hand, open and outstretched toward him.

T
hat day, but moments after the accident, before I could fully understand what had happened, I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard an unfamiliar voice telling me to leave the scene. “Come away, come away,” this person urged, gripping my arm and tugging me forward. It turned out she was the lady on the porch to whom I’d waved the minute before.

For a good part of that afternoon I sat in her living room on her scratchy gold couch staring at either the old braided rug covering the floor, a faded watercolor of a pot of daisies on her wall, a photograph hung on the wall of her surrounded by her large and smiling family, or at the woman herself, a person who upon closer inspection looked less like my mother than I’d previously thought, older by some degree, and who, from her post at the doorway between her living room and front porch, kept a near-constant vigil over the events outside. In the midst of the commotion the woman never introduced herself, but I subsequently learned that she was Ida Rankoff, and in the summers to come I would bring Mrs. Rankoff several tokens of thanks for her help that day: once an actual pot of daisies and another time a blueberry cobbler that Vivie and I made after buying the blueberries at Treat’s. During these visits Mrs. Rankoff and I always sat on her porch, and though I’d be talking to her, nodding my head and smiling her way, simultaneously I’d be searching the accident scene, scanning the roadway’s black tar as if Davy had melted right into it and was still there, intact, just waiting for one of us to look hard enough to finally find him.

That day the only words I said to Ida Rankoff were the occasional “What’s happening now?” And though it was clear from the sounds of the outside world that much was going on—an ambulance had arrived, as had the police, as had, in time, my father—Mrs. Rankoff always answered, her voice a near whisper, “There’s no need for you to see this, sweetie. Just hold still.”

Davy was taken to the nearest hospital, in Milford, and his condition that night, following surgery to stop internal bleeding, was poor but stable. He’d been crushed by one of Sal’s tires and was broken all over—ribs, shoulders, pelvis, his left arm—but the internal bleeding was the worst of it. He was lucky to be alive at all, my parents were told. For the remainder of the afternoon and evening my parents hadn’t left his side, nor had Howard or Bec. Leo and Vivie stayed at the cottage with Nina and me. The hours there were long and quiet, and I spent most of them cradling Samson Bagel in my lap. Finally, Vivie told Nina and me that we might as well try to sleep, and we pulled out the sofa bed, crawled under a sheet, and lay there, wide awake. Nina didn’t laugh at me when I asked her if we could keep Samson Bagel there in the bed between us.

When the group from the hospital finally arrived home at midnight—since Davy was stable they’d been directed to get some sleep and return in the morning—they plodded through the back entrance and kitchen and then dropped themselves into their respective dining room chairs. In the next instant Nina and I were up and joined them, and a moment later Vivie and Leo did as well.

We had no idea what to do except sit in silence.

Davy was hanging in there, Mort said at last. We should pray, we should hope, he added.

And so we did, or at least I thought that’s what we were trying to do, each of us in our way, during the next long minutes of silence. But the silence felt complicated, troubled. When my mother finally broke it, her head raised, her eyes fixed on Nina, it was obvious that she’d been neither praying nor hoping. “He wasn’t sailing to the Irish girl like you said. He was sailing to West Haven, as usual. As usual, you damn liar. As
usual.
”

With that Vivie threw her arm around Nina and leaned forward, her body protecting Nina from the bullets of her sister’s words.

“She’s a child, Ada, please. A child,” Vivie implored.

“A child?” Ada asked, her eyes popping, her words menacing. “I’ll tell you who’s a child.
Davy’s
a child.” And with that she made a fist and shook it threateningly Nina’s way.

“But you’ve seen it yourself, Ada, the way Howard torments my girl. How could she not want to get back at him? How could she not, Ada?” Vivie’s voice had modulated from a pleading tone to one of indignation. She tightened the belt of her bathrobe.

“Nothing justifies a lie,” my mother declared.

Vivie responded by pushing her chair, which was catty-corner to Ada’s, away from her, the few inches she could, and there it was again, that old space, reemerged, between them. “That’s pretty funny, Ada. Coming from you,” Vivie said.

“That’s enough,” Mort snapped, cutting off the sisters and causing both women to turn, surprised, from each other to him. Then he asked, “What happened to her?” He was looking at Nina, at the bruise and bandage on her forehead.

When no one spoke, he asked again.

“An accident,” my mother said, her voice anxious. “Last night.”

“She’s fine,” Vivie added, still holding Nina close.

“Two children, two accidents,” Leo said, his voice so hushed he seemed to speak only to himself.

Mort drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Two accidents,” he finally repeated, his gaze so completely focused on Ada it seemed to cause the rest of us to disappear. But we were there, listening, as he said, “Ada. Howard has something going with an Irish girl, and you don’t call me? Last night Nina needs stitches over her eye, and you don’t call me?” He pointed past her, to the phone on the little table. Quickly, he shot a glance from it to her. After a long pause, he asked, “What am I, Ada?”

As he continued to drum his fingers, I stared at the center of my empty dinner plate, which, because I was too scared to blink, began to blur.

“Do I not deserve to know what’s happening in my own family?” Mort finally thundered. He pounded the table, and the wine cups at his end, including the silver kiddush cup, toppled over. Red wine, poured into the cup hours before, spilled onto the white tablecloth.

“Look at you, Ada,” he continued, ignoring the spreading stain. At that we all looked; his words seemed like a command. But what I saw was a moment of such deep anguish, such a private moment, I instantly regretted turning my mother’s way. She was tear-streaked, rocking back and forth in her chair, her crossed arms squeezing her middle and wrinkling her housedress, her hair utterly disheveled and falling over her face.

“You’re a mess,” Mort said, nodding. Then, gesturing at the dining table, which was perfectly set only minutes ago but was now in disarray, he declared, “This place is a mess.” He darted from his chair and rushed to the kitchen, where dinner preparations had been cut short and the chickens still sat uncooked in their pans on the kitchen table, the loaves of challah still sat in the bakery bags, used cooking utensils were strewn about the table and counters, and dishes were piled at the sink. “A mess!” he sniped, pointing into the kitchen.

As my father re-seated himself my mother rose. She stood for a moment as she’d done the day of our arrival: perfectly still, her eyes closed. But she was a shadow of that self. She held her body with such rigidity it looked contorted. And her grimacing mouth told only of pain.

Finally she opened her eyes.

“How dare you call my house a mess,” she told Mort, surprising all of us with her response. But she went on to surprise us further. Pointing to the spilled wine she said, “Morton Leibritsky, son of Zelik Leibritsky, father of Howard, Molly, and our darling Davy Leibritsky: that’s
your
mess.”

Furious, my father stood, while Ada, finished, dropped into her seat. Her tears began again.

Mort waited before glancing once more at Nina. “Look at this child. Look at that bruise. A
mess,
” he said.

“And there’s another child,” he added, his voice hushed, his eyes locked on Ada’s. “A worse mess,” he hissed her way.

While my father condemned my mother, and while the rest of us sat as if frozen, Bec stared dumbly in front of her, her eyes red, her gaze unfocused, her body not stiff, like ours, but slumped. Every so often she buried her head in her hands. “It’s my fault,” she muttered at long last. “I motioned for him to cross the street. But there was no truck then. I swear. No truck.”

At that Mort turned to her, glowered, opened his mouth as if to ask her a question, then closed it as if unable to find the words to speak. He dropped his head again, silenced by Bec’s confession. But by the way he’d looked at Bec the instant before, like she’d actually intended to harm Davy, he’d said plenty.

It’s hard to know how much time passed after that. Maybe another minute. Maybe an hour. It seemed we were deep into an endless span of night. My mother continued to rock back and forth in her chair. Quietly, she moaned. Bec continued to sit with her head buried in her hands. Vivie continued to console Nina, as did Leo. I continued to stare at the center of my plate. Howard, who’d seemed dazed this whole time, finally got up.

“You’re leaving?” Mort asked.

“Toilet,” Howard said as he walked away from us, toward the kitchen.

“Let’s not blame each other,” Leo offered some minutes later, breaking another tense silence. “Clearly it’s no one’s fault. We all love Davy, yes?”

I glanced up from my dinner plate.
Yes, yes, yes,
I wanted to cry.

But no one spoke; we were silent again, though this time the silence didn’t seem so fraught with hostility.

“Where were
you?
” Ada then asked Mort, changing the mood yet again. We were back to blaming. “You usually arrive by then. Why weren’t you here?”

At that my father turned to Leo, taking him in fully for the first time that night. “I wasn’t here because this man’s a goddamned
invalid,
” he snapped. “I was taking care of
him.
”

The words caused Nina and Vivie to jump up, defiantly. “He’s a better man than you,” I heard Nina whisper. I thought I was the only one. But Vivie repeated Nina’s words verbatim. “Yes, he’s a better man than you,” she told Mort, her voice quavering. She and Nina then looked at each other, surprised.

All the while Leo stared into his lap, sadly.

As Vivie sat back down, careful still to place herself at some distance from Ada, she said, “Nobody’s an invalid. Let’s not get carried away.”

“A little late for that,” Mort answered, clearly insulted. After a moment he said, “Where’s Howard? Why’s he not back yet?” He looked around and then asked about Howard a second time. By the third time his wrath was full-blown, his voice the loudest that night. “Goddamnit. Where the hell’s Howard?” he cried again and again.

In fact Howard had not gone to the bathroom but had left the cottage, snuck out the back door, and gone down to the beach. He spent a long night there, exhausting himself by hammering his fists into the sand, by racing a jagged to-and-fro in the dark, and by calling out to Davy, over and over.

Bec, too, went down to the beach, eventually. Her journey was at dawn. Making her way to the shore’s edge, she passed Howard, asleep by then on the sand. She was still in her New Haven clothes: pleated skirt, paisley print blouse, new hose. Once at the water, she felt its coolness on her ankles and shins. After a time she dropped down, first to her knees, and then she sat, letting the water rush into her lap, up to her waist, splashing as high as her chest. At some point she ripped her blouse at its collar then ripped her pleated skirt, many times, at its hem. When she returned to the cottage to finally try to sleep, I sat up, momentarily, to see her pass by me on her way to the sunporch. I almost didn’t know her, this woman in wet shreds.

Upstairs in the cottage my father spent the night alone, in the boys’ room, on Davy’s bed.

Nina slept upstairs too that night, on blankets laid on the floor beside her parents.

And that left me alone on the sofa bed for the first time that summer.

“What’s happening now?” I so often uttered as I tossed and turned that night. At one point I actually dreamed myself asking the question. I was in Mrs. Rankoff’s living room, still staring at her braided rug, her faded still life of daisies, and that happy photograph of her family on the wall. She was on guard at the door, as before, but in the dream she was bigger, filling the room as she did my mind, like a kind of omnipresence, a kind of god. “There’s no need for you to see this, sweetie,” she said in the dream. Then she commanded, “Now just hold still.”

To obey her I hauled in a deep breath and held it. I began to see stars. I began to feel like I was exploding. I understood, even in my dream state, that this deprivation was not what Mrs. Rankoff meant. But still I refused to breathe. To do so would have been to move one tiny speck past the moment of Davy’s accident. To do so would have been to leave him behind. That was the dream’s logic, and it was bigger, even more commanding, than the reenvisioned Mrs. Rankoff.

And so I didn’t breathe, didn’t move, and continued in my dream to see stars, then after a time to see myself weeping as I floated along with millions of stars in an otherwise dark and endless expanse.

Though Davy would live for the next week, he died on the eighth day after the accident. Between that first Saturday and the next my parents stood vigil at the hospital, with Howard driving them to the center of Milford, dropping them off, then returning late each evening to drive them back to us at Woodmont so they could get a little sleep. There were days when Howard would drive back again, to see Davy himself or to take one or another of us in for a visit. During a crisis like that it was good to have a thing to do, one useful thing, and that’s what the driving that week gave him.

Vivie also had one useful thing: she prepared our food, except when Mrs. Isaacson’s granddaughter Judy came by to take over that task. To everyone’s surprise, Judy, by then five months pregnant, was as unstoppable that week as she’d been lethargic all summer. But our crisis became Judy’s cause. She cooked for us, cleaned for us, shopped for us. In our kitchen, she and Vivie even argued once, gently, over who would sit for a much-needed rest, the pregnant one with the sore feet or the one who didn’t know minute by minute if her nephew would live or die. That’s how Judy with her newfound purpose put it, and Vivie, hand to her heart, sat.