Broken for You (32 page)

"All right then!" Margaret plowed ahead. Turning to the rest of them, she half-whispered, "Why don't you all go ahead. I'll join you in a minute." She extended her arms and made expansive sweeping movements, as if she were a Canadian mother goose herding the goslings to another part of the picnic grounds.

Then, having shooed the living away from Wanda's door, Margaret gripped .the edge of the door frame, took a deep breath, and prepared to deal with her mother—who had not only slipped into Wanda's room, but was now nestled among the pillows on the window seat. She looked disturbingly comfortable, as if she were planning to either take a lengthy nap or read the collected works of Leo Tolstoy.

She's in a bad way, your wounded bird,
Margaret's mother remarked, airily.

Margaret ignored her and spoke to Wanda's unmoving silhouette. "Is there anything I can get you, Tink?"
A length of rope?
Margaret's mother prodded.
Some sleeping pills?

Margaret forged on. "I hope you don't mind us moving your things downstairs. It just seemed as though this room would be more convenient."

Margaret's mother gazed out the window.
Too bad it's on the first floor,
she remarked.

"I'd be happy to fix you a plate and bring it in," Margaret continued through gritted teeth. "Bruce cooked the most marvelous meal."

Did he season it with strychnine?

"We're a completely vegetarian household now, did I tell you?"

Oh, really, Margaret! The girl needs psychiatric help, not lentil loaf.

Margaret advanced brusquely into the room and installed herself between her mother and Wanda. "The room is all right, isn't it? Will you feel comfortable here?"

Wanda looked up, her face a blank.

Be realistic, Margaret. The girl can t possibly stay. You must know that. Loo/{
^at
her. She's a basket case! Looney Tunes! She belongs in a bughouse!

Margaret spun around and began fluffing the window seat pillows aggressively. Her mother, unbudging, regarded Margaret with saintly tolerance. She reached out and traced her delicate fingers along the contours of a porcelain figurine which sat on a nearby table.

Your father was particularly enamored with this piece. He bragged about it, the way he bragged about everything. "What finds!" your father would say. "What treasures! Don't you understand? They'd go to waste if it weren't for me."

The figurine was a white porcelain parrot from the Meissen factory, c. 1739, one of the works of a gifted artist named Johann Kandler. He was famous for his attention to naturalistic detail. The bird was life-sized, about twelve inches tall, and so true-to-life that whenever Margaret tended it— on alternate Fridays—she always expected it to speak. But it never did.

Your father felt that Germans had no innate sense of delicacy or poetry, no ability to appreciate anything fine. "That's one thing I'll give the kikes," he'd say. "At least some of them have decent taste. But the krauts! They're all Sturm und Drang, sig heil, and sausages. It makes me sick think of the goods they must have smashed on Kristallnacht! What a waste."

The figurine was in perfect condition and, if Margaret recalled correctly—she was cursed with a near-photographic memory when it came to the inventory and assessment of these things—it was most recently valued at nine thousand dollars.

Your father did enjoy German women, however,
Margaret's mother continued.
He lifted to remind me that the typical German hausfrau could make him come in thirty seconds flat. He even fucked the occasional German Jew. 1 don't believe those encounters were consensual, but I'm sure your father enjoyed them just as much, if not more.

Margaret snatched the figurine and smashed it on the floor.
Well!
Margaret's mother said, sitting up.
If you're going to start that again, I'm leaving.
She swiveled off the window seat and swooped toward the door.
Be sure to check the room for razor blades before you leave!
Margaret leaned against the table. She was out of breath, her forehead was clammy, her balance unsteady. When she was able to speak again, she muttered,
"Quelle dommage."

Wanda looked up. Her eyes focused, brightened. The fixed bones of her skull appeared to shift subtly. The overlying skin softened and pinked. The muscles of Wanda's face, Margaret gradually realized, were trying to remember how to smile. She reached down and took one of Wanda's hands. Her skeleton felt dense and weighty now, no longer the hollow, crisp infrastructure of a creature designed for flight. "I'll get the glue, shall I? In case you feel like doing some fixing."

Wanda sat in her wheelchair, unmoving, absorbing a sense of being present with something completely exotic, almost naughty—
what was it?
—something to which she had not had access for what felt like an eternity. Was it a quality of sound? Something about this room?

She was alone, that was it. It was that simple. And she could stay alone as long as she wished. Forever, if she wanted. That long.

She had to pee. The bathroom seemed impossibly far away. She tugged her backpack onto her lap and started wheeling across the room, bumping into the furniture
(Ha!
she thought.
Like a bad actor!)
and slowing to a crawl each time the chair dragged over one of the oriental rugs.

The door leading to the bathroom had been widened. Inside, there were more changes. The claw-foot tub had been removed and there was an enlarged shower stall at floor level with a built-in seat and handheld shower unit. The sink and medicine cabinet had been lowered. Metal bars had been affixed to newly tiled walls.
It's handicapped-accessible,
Wanda marveled. Her astonishment was bipartite: half for the realization that she was the handicapped person for whom the bathroom had been remodeled, half for the fact that Margaret must have hired someone to make these alterations—
And for a tenant, for chrissake. A boarder.

The enormity of Margaret's kindness engulfed her, not as a comfort, but as a shroud. She dumped her backpack on the floor and hoisted herself onto the toilet. She peed. She pushed herself off the toilet and back into the chair. She wheeled to the sink and washed her hands. She stared at her face in the medicine cabinet glass.

The bruises and swelling were gone. There were no overt traces of the damage that had occurred under her skin. No sutures. No disfiguring scars. Most people would have considered that lucky. But her face now had a brittle fixedness and asymmetry—as if she were wearing a malformed, degenerating rubber mask. She reached into her backpack and pulled out one of her black markers. Slowly, she drew a heavy black circle around her reflection and spoke to the face in the mirror:

"You. Are. Here."

She opened the medicine chest. Someone—Margaret again, probably—had thoughtfully stocked it with all her medications, including the last of her Percocet. Wanda pulled out the bottle. She gave it a rattle. She regarded it with detachment.

It wouldn't take much,
she thought.
It wouldn't take many.

Margaret stopped in the entrance to the dining room. Classical music was playing softly. Laid out on the table were five, gleaming, mismatched place settings; Bruce and Susan had spent days scouring thrift stores in search of antique china and glassware especially for the occasion of Wanda's homecoming. Gus had instructed them all in the art of napkin folding, and each setting was graced with a white linen swan. From the kitchen came the workaday sounds of final premeal preparations: busy feet, cupboards opening and closing, serving utensils being set against platters, questions, answers—the bustle of a well-organized informal workforce. A family. Margaret stood quietly, marveling at the miracle of these sounds in this house.

"Hello?" she called finally. "Where is everyone?" Instantly, the swinging door inched open and Bruce peeked out, cheeks florid, chef's hat askew. "Well?" he said, edgily. When mealtime was imminent, he often exuded the nervous energy of a milling multitude. The door opened farther and Margaret saw Gus and Susan, attendant with platters, flush-faced and eager, putting her in mind of Santa's elves.

"I think we should go ahead without her. I'm sorry, dear. I know you worked especially hard on this meal."

Bruce sagged, a limp meringue, but when his assistants burst through the door and plunked their serving dishes on the table—Susan lisping jauntily, in a spot-on impersonation of a Southern belle, "Well, all I can say is, that child is goin' to regret it!" and Gus proclaiming, "Absolutely splendid!"—he puffed up like reconstituted potato flakes.

There were a few more minutes of back-and-forth between kitchen and dining room as more plates were delivered to the table, followed by a great clumping of heavy oak chairs as they settled at table— making them sound like a diminutive but dogged herd of migrating bison. Then they turned to Bruce—who had taken up a formal stance behind his chair—and gave him the kind of hushed attention that might have preceded the Sermon on the Mount. He donned his reading glasses and snapped a piece of paper out of his pocket.

"As prologue," he began, "we have Brie and Hazelnut Bakes. . . ." Meals—especially dinner—had become quite an event. There were naturally nights when Margaret's appetite failed—she took medications for edema, seizures, blood clots, etc., and their side effects occasionally left her feeling no desire for food—but she never failed to show up at the table, even if only long enough to savor Bruce's menu recitations. ". . . Our soup is Iced Melon with Violets, very mild, very cleansing. . . ." Although Bruce still retained his round contours, Margaret was sure that he'd grown lighter in the months since the day of his interview. He'd chosen Bon Bon, a small room on the third floor. When asked why he preferred this to one of the larger rooms on the second floor, he said, "Ma'am, I'm a fat, single, gay, depressed, Jewish boy from Alpharetta, Georgia. When I'm not cooking, I need to be as far away from a refrigerator as possible. If I do happen to get an uncontrollable urge in the wee small hours of the night to confuse food with love, at least I'll have to carry myself down and up three flights of stairs to do it."

That was Easter Sunday. It seemed a lifetime ago.

After the accident, Margaret suggested that he reconsider. "The mood around here is going to be awfully dreary." She could barely speak. No one at that time believed that Wanda would live. "Not the best for someone who's . . ."

". . . fat, gay, depressed, and Jewish?" he prompted, taking her hand. "No ma'am. I'm still movin' in. Y'all are gonna need good food now more than ever."

Maybe because he'd come to them during such dire times and nourished them at a cellular level, she had a special fondness for him.

He concluded his reading—"Ginger Cake with Lemon Icing and a Mandarin Orange Curacao Sorbet"—and Susan began clapping her hands with genteel enthusiasm.

"All hail the gustatory Jew!" she huzzahed. Gus and Margaret joined in.

Bruce blushed. "Oh, y'all stop now." He tucked away the paper, and— as Susan stood to light the candles—began to sing the blessing.

Wanda opened her bottle of pills and poured them into her hand. They were scored through the middle. She broke one. She broke another. All. Now there were twice as many. They filled both hands. She reached out and sprinkled them among the white porcelain pieces on the carpet. Outside and inside, the gray light darkened. Wanda did not turn on a lamp. She lowered herself to the floor. She scooped up handfuls of pills and porcelain.

No glue,
she thought.
So many choices.

In the other room, she paused to listen to the low, indecipherable tones of conversational speech. Laughter. The startling sound of a male voice lifted in song.

"It's bound to take some getting used to, being back here," Gus was saying. He dabbed delicately at a bit of bechamel sauce on his mustache. "So many changes."

"Do you think she'll stay?" Susan asked.

"I'm not sure that she has anywhere else to go," Margaret replied. "And anyway, at this point she doesn't really have a choice."

"Poor wee thing," Gus added.

They stared at their plates. The doorbell rang.

Susan spoke up. "I'll bet half a crown it's someone selling the
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
"

"Girl Scout Cookies!" said Bruce.

"The King James Bible," Gus offered.

"Cemetery plots!" Margaret hollered, laughing.

"NOT FUNNY!" they all hollered back.

"Party poopers." She bit into a ginger-glazed carrot stick for emphasis. "I'll get it."

On the way, she paused to listen at Wanda's door; all was quiet within.

Troy stood on the porch, a wide-brimmed hat in one hand and a yellow bouquet in the other. His oilskin coat glistened with water droplets, and his face and hair were damp. "Troy, dear!" Margaret said, more loudly than necessary. "Please, come in. I'm so glad to see you."

She ushered him into the dining room. "Look who I found! Out on a night like this!"