Broken for You (29 page)

"So who died?" she asked.

"Hello, Mrs. K." The cat hissed at him. "Thanks for inviting me." "Sammy!" Irma called over her shoulder. "Did somebody in the building kick the bucket? This poor man got lost on his way to a funeral." Mr. Kosminsky was half-dozing in a recliner in front of the television and did not respond. "Never mind," Irma continued. "You're here now. You might as well come in." She lugged the cat onto her hip and pulled M.J. inside, elbowing the door closed behind him. She lowered the cat to the floor. His tripod stance and bulk made him look like a furry milk stool. "This is Maurice," she said matter-of-factly. "He has diabetes. He's deaf as a post. He won't bother you if you don't bother him." She turned to Mr. Kosminsky. "Sammy! Sweetheart! Say hello! Our guest is here!" Sam Kosminsky looked up at M.J. and smiled. "Welcome," he said. "Thank you."

"Let's eat!" Irma proclaimed. She disappeared into the kitchen.

M.J. helped Mr. Kosminsky out of his chair and into the dining area.

The table had already been set. Mr. K. took his place and indicated M.J.'s chair. He withdrew a yarmulke from his cardigan pocket and placed it over his head.

Irma emerged from the kitchen wearing large pink oven mitts. She laid out three steaming Salisbury steak TV dinners. From the fridge, she retrieved three dishes of fruit cocktail sprinkled with miniature marshmallows and flaked coconut. She took off her oven mitts and stood at the table across from M.J.

Mr. Kosminsky lit two candles, closed his eyes, and sang:
"Baruch atah Adonai, Elohaynu melech ha'olam
..."

M.J. had rarely heard Mr. Kosminsky speak, much less sing. He would have been surprised at any lengthy utterance from Mr. K., musical or not.

But the fact that Sam Kosminsky's singing voice was beautiful, liquid, sonorous—the voice of a Welshman, M.J. would have thought, had he not known different—made M.J. feel something akin to reverence.

". . .
hamotzi lechem min ha'aretz. Amen."

After dinner, they played a game of Scrabble. Irma won. At seven, Mr. Kosminsky excused himself, shook M.J.'s hand, kissed his wife, and went to bed. M.J. helped Irma clean up.

"That was nice, Mrs. K.," M.J. said. "Thank you."

"He's not well, you know, my Sammy."

"He looks fine to me."

"At least he dresses like a live person. You want coffee?" Sure.

"I know, I know: You take it black. Go sit out there. I'll finish up."

M.J. went into the living room. He had expected Irma and Sam's apartment to be more colorful, more cluttered. He'd imagined knickknacks, souvenirs, pictures of grandchildren, things like that. M.J. assumed that most old married folks would have acquired a lot of stuff. A lifetime of it. But for a place occupied by a couple in their eighties, the apartment contained very little that was not strictly functional. There were a few books, some framed prints. On top of the TV, Irma and Sam looked out of one of those stiff studio photographs. It was a few years old; Mr. K. had aged considerably since it was taken, while Irma looked about the same. Maybe even younger.

In one corner of the room was a small glass-fronted cabinet; Maurice had spent the evening sleeping next to it, but when M.J. approached, he half-opened his chartreuse eyes. He hunkered down and slithered his tail. He growled.

"Piss off, you old fur sack," M.J. growled back. "I want nothing to do with you." Maurice dropped his feral act. He looked crestfallen.

M.J. drew closer to the cabinet. Inside was a menorah, a set of silver goblets, a chalice. On one shelf was a single, saucerless teacup.

"That belonged to my daughter," Irma said. She set down a tray containing two mugs of black coffee and a plate of Oreos. "Before that, it was mine when I was little. It was the only thing that made it out with me." "Out?" "Of Europe."

Irma walked across the room and stood next to M.J. She opened the cabinet door and spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. "I was thirty in '42. Lucie was five. We were playing dress-up, having a tea party. They dragged us out and put us on a truck. I never saw Albert—my first husband— again. Lucie died in a transit camp."

Irma reached into the cabinet and lifted out the teacup. It was bright green mostly, rimmed with a fancy gold leaf design; on one side, a white oval enclosed a painting of an orange bird sitting on a branch. "Isn't that something? A person can almost hear it singing." She grasped a fold of cloth at the front of her muumuu and used it to wipe the inside of the cup.

"Sam came with the Allies," she went on. "I was as good as dead. He was so kind to me. A gift. He saved my life, in more ways than one." She tilted the inside of the cup toward M.J. "See that? The little bouquet there at the bottom?"

M.J. nodded.

"Poppies, penstemon, larkspur, rosemary. You know about perennials?"

"No."

"They're hardy plants," Irma said, "easy to grow. They come back, year after year. But they won't grow inside. They have to have fresh air. Sunshine." She looked up at M.J. as if she were going to say something more. Instead, she replaced the cup in the cabinet and crossed the room to the television. She kept the volume on mute. "My Sammy is a light sleeper," Irma explained seriously—even though it was clear that Mr. Kosminsky was quite the opposite; M.J. could hear regular, reverberant snoring from behind the closed bedroom door.

They drank coffee, ate cookies, and watched
Jeopardy!
It was a rerun; Irma knew all the questions. After a few minutes, Maurice limped over. He looked up at M.J. with big, watery eyes, and then, with more grace than anyone would expect from a fat three-legged cat, he leapt into M.J.'s lap and began purring and farting in equal measure.

"Well, what do you know about that?" Irma said. "He likes you."

At seven-thirty on the dot, Irma walked M.J. to the door.

"Want some free advice?" oure.

"You feel BLUE? Get up and DO!""I'll try and remember that," M.J. said.

He leaned down and kissed Irma on her rouged, papery cheek. Her eyes were green—the same green, M.J. realized, as Lucie's cup. She must have had her hair done recently; the skin at her forehead and around her eyebrows was tinged with orange.

"I want to see you in that shirt before I die!" she yelled, pushing him out the door. "And that could be any day now!"

Irma continued to pester him about the shirt. M.J. continued to dress in black.

Sam Kosminsky passed away a few weeks later. Among the funeral mourners were Rudy, many Aloha Lanes staff members and patrons, and M.J.—who chose this occasion to wear Mrs. Kosminsky's gift for the first time.

When Irma saw him—a one-man riot of pink and green in a sea of somber black—she laughed so hard she fell off her chair.

After that, M.J. wore the shirt on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Irma's bowling days—hoping that it would continue to have a cheering effect. For a while it seemed to work.

About a month after Sam died, however, Irma dropped out of The Hits and Missus. No one asked her to, of course, and there were numerous protestations, but Irma was resolute.

"A couples league is a couples league," she said. "I'd be a fifth wheel."

Her participation in the Tuesday morning Hadassah League declined as well. She'd show up, but oftentimes she either played halfheartedly and left early or didn't play at all; she'd sit, slumped, at the scorekeeper's desk, letting her cup of coffee get cold while the other ladies bowled. She stopped wearing lipstick.

One Tuesday, M.J. knocked on Rudy's door.

"Yeah. Come in." Rudy was in a bad mood; he was working on the books.

"I'm sorry to bother you but. . . Irma's not here."

Rudy looked up. "What?"

"Mrs. K. She's not here."

Rudy checked his watch. He frowned. He spun around in his desk chair and looked at the wall calendar behind him. He started massaging the top of his bald head in a circular pattern. He massaged with such vigor and rapidity that M.J. began to worry he might give himself
_a
blister. He stopped. He swiveled back to face M.J.

"But it's Tuesday," Rudy said. He looked like a medieval monk who'd just heard a rumor that the world wasn't flat.

"I know, Rudy," M.J. answered.

Rudy yanked open his top desk drawer and threw his car keys at M.J "Go."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!" Rudy was out from behind his desk and striding toward the door. "I'll watch the front. Now go!"

M.J. was at Irma's door in less than five minutes. He rang. He knocked. He waited. He was just about to kick in the door when it opened. There was Irma. Alarmingly—for it was well after ten o'clock in the morning—she was still dressed in her bathrobe. She was not wearing makeup. Her hair was uncombed. Worst of all, her roots were showing.

"What are you doing here?" she mumbled.

"What are
you
doing here?" M.J. answered.

"I live here."

"It's Tuesday morning, Irma. You've got someplace to go."

"I don't feel well."

"I don't believe you."

"Go away. I'm tired."

"Let me fix you something to eat."

"I'm not hungry."

"Coffee, then. I'll make it black."

The joke fell flat. Irma shrugged, turned around, and shuffled into her bedroom.

Maurice limped into M.J.'s view. He stared up at him and uttered a single plaintive meow.

"What do you want, fur ball?" M.J. barked. He started for the kitchen, but Maurice meowed again, louder and even more pathetically. "What?"

Maurice scampered down the hall, his belly swinging freely from side to side. He stopped just short of Irma's bedroom door and turned around. M.J. sighed and followed. Maurice went into the bathroom. He planted himself underneath the sink and looked up at the medicine chest.

"You want me to open that?" M.J. said, and then muttered, "Fuck all. I'm talkin' to a deaf cat." But he walked across the room anyway and opened the medicine chest. Along with the prescription pain pills, toothpaste, denture adhesive, mouthwash, Ben-Gay, and milk of magnesia, there was a box of Gamier Nutrisse Conditioning Color Masque Number 68: "Luscious Mango."

M.J. opened the box and removed various bottles and tubes: "Conditioning Color Masque Developer," he read aloud. "After-Color Conditioner with fruit extracts. Colorant. Fruit Oil Concentrate." He opened the instructions, to which a pair of clear latex gloves had been adhered. "Well, would you look at that! Isn't that clever?"

M.J. sat down on the toilet seat lid and began to read; he emphasized the most vital bits of information to himself by reading aloud: "'Never leave tip closed after mixing; the container might burst.' Jesus! 'Do not point either end of tube toward the face while opening or using.' 'If any mixture gets on your skin, dip a towel in shampoo and gently remove stain before continuing. . . .'" After a while, Maurice settled himself on the floor near M.J.'s feet and fell asleep.

When M.J. was sure he understood the procedure, he got up, gathered some bath towels, and began filling the sink with warm water.

"Irma," he called, snapping on the latex gloves, "get in here! We're going to by God infuse your lovely hair with lasting color and fragrant fruit oil!"

M.J. did not quit his job at the Aloha Lanes. Nor did he leave Seattle. Six months came and went without comment, and over time M.J.'s paychecks began to reflect a steady, substantial raise. Without being asked, he took on more responsibilities—including employee scheduling, firing, and hiring. He was good at it, which surprised him at first. Eventually he figured out that it was because—unlike Rudy, bless his heart, who saw only the best in everybody—he had an unerring eye for wankers. Furthermore, he didn't give a rat's ass if people liked him or not.

Rudy's incipient ulcer went into remission. And since he no longer had to function as a one-man Human Resources Department, he was able to focus his creative and managerial efforts on the resurrection of the Aloha Lanes. He secured a bank loan. He replaced the carpet. He got the fountain working. He installed a light show, fog machines, a new sound system. In order to attract a new generation of bowlers, he implemented "Rock 'n' Roll Bowl" on Friday nights—with a professional DJ and shows at ten and midnight.

"How can we get more families in here?" Rudy asked M.J.. "You know, people with young children."

"Make a playroom for their kids. It wouldn't take much. I could buy some toys and stuff at the Thriftko."

"We could put it in the newsletter, too; I bet we'd get lots of donations." So the two of them cleared out a large storage room and transformed it into a child care center. M.J. found a social services agency that helped place teenagers in decent jobs, and he hired a couple of good girls to run it.