Broken for You (35 page)

As she darted into the kitchen, Gus stood up, pulled out a chair, and waited; he seemed confident in his impression that Wanda did not desire assistance. Around the table, an eggy-eyed, dumbstruck silence prevailed.

A full minute passed as she made her way from the dining room door to her place at the table. Gus held her chair as she awkwardly hinged
her body into it and set her walker aside, then he moved to the sideboard and began fixing a plate of food.

From the kitchen, Margaret's voice broke the silence. "I wonder if Troy has experience building escalators. Does anyone know his telephone number off the top of their head?"

Gus delivered Wanda's plate to the table. "Thank you," she said. Then she jerked her napkin into her lap, barked out seven digits, scowled at her bed of spinach and eggs, and began to eat.

Wanda wanted to know more this time. She questioned Margaret about the minutest details: "Where did this piece come from? Who designed it? How was it made? What is it called?" She listened intently. She was assiduous in her documentation. Her clipboard came out of storage and her legal pad was reappropriated for a more traditional use: She made notes and sketches on sheet after sheet of yellow paper as Margaret spoke.

In most cases, Margaret could give scant information about her things, other than what was provided on the insurance schedule and what she'd been able to glean from reference books and her father's correspondence. There was nothing personal. Nothing about the people who'd owned them and from whom they'd been stolen—besides the fact that they'd lived in France at some point between 1933 and 1945, and they were Jewish.

Wanda pressed her. "These things need to have stories, even if the stories aren't true. What we don't know, we'll make up."

"We will?" Margaret was dubious.

"Actors do it all the time. They call it 'personalizing the prop.'"

"They do?"

"You've lived with these things a long time, Margaret. You must think about who owned them, invent stories for them, don't you?"

Wanda opened a cabinet—they were in the smaller downstairs parlor—and picked up a figurine. "Start with this."

Margaret replied automatically: "Staffordshire bulldog, twelve inches tall, circa i860, valued at three thousand five hundred dollars."

"Those are the f
acts," Wanda said. "I want the
story
."

Haltingly, Margaret began. "A schoolteacher in Chartres—his name was Ernest—spent a good part of his savings to buy this for his younger sister in Paris after her beloved dog died. She . . . Simone . . . always thought it the ugliest thing, but she couldn't bear to part with it."

Wanda nodded thoughtfully. She carried the homely bulldog to the hearth. After studying it for several seconds, she took a breath and let it fall. Pieces skittered along the floor, originating from the point of impact and shooting out in all directions. Wanda squatted—her pain so evident that Margaret winced—and stared, picking up certain fragments and inspecting them. With effort, she stood again. She stepped awkwardly on some of the larger pieces, breaking them further, until she seemed satisfied with the result.

"I like that story," she said, so quietly that Margaret thought she might be talking to herself. "Write it down for me, please. Write it all, whatever you can think of."

The dogs in the cabinet started wagging their tails. Margaret smiled.

"Very well, Tink. I'll write it down."

It was clear that Troy was fully qualified—and eager—to take on the planning and supervision of their construction projects. There was the escalator, of course, which Margaret realized she'd be needing herself at some point. There would also be necessary modifications to the main floor of the carriage house, since—to Margaret's surprise and delight— Wanda had asked if she could use it as a studio.

"How would you feel about Troy moving in?" Their current field of operations was the library; Wanda was sorting fragments of several smashed Meissen harlequins and two completely decimated commedia dell'arte troupes, Margaret was working on the fictionalized version of her insurance schedule. "Since he'll be working here for the better part of every day," she continued, "taking meals with us and so forth, I thought it might be more practical if—"

"Your house," Wanda cut in, "your decision."

Margaret enjoyed Wanda's new way of speaking—now that she was speaking. It was a kind of verbal shorthand, efficient and unadorned without being rude. Familial. Yes, that was what Margaret liked; it was
language one would hear spoken among "family" in the broadest sense of that word—not only blood relatives, but consorts of all kinds. A language shared by people secure in the knowledge that words are not the real adhesive of love.

"Good," Margaret said. "He's in then. Let's break. Tea?"

Later that afternoon, Troy arrived and began unloading boxes into the foyer. Just before Margaret began taking him on a tour of the house, Wanda emerged to lean in her doorway. "When did you get the Chevy ?" she asked.

He turned to face her and mopped his face with a bandanna. "Fifty-three days ago."

Wanda was stone-faced. "You should have bought a Ford." She went into her room and slammed the door—conclusively squelching Margaret's hope that they'd share the Aviary Suite.

Margaret took Troy upstairs so that he could see the rooms on the second and third stories. He lingered at the door of a remote corner room on the second floor: the Soldier's Room. It was the last one Margaret showed him and, of all the rooms in the house, the one she found most difficult to visit. It was also the most spare and eclectic, containing a hodgepodge of nineteenth-century furnishings—-all of which, Margaret noted with embarrassment, were slightly dusty: a four-tier rosewood whatnot, a knee-hole writing table with barley twist legs, a painted pine marriage chest from Hungary, an overstuffed Victorian reading chair and ottoman. The room's prior furnishings had been moved to the upper floor of the carriage house almost thirty years ago, along with the rest of Daniel's things.

Some of the porcelain soldiers displayed here commemorated real people: Louis Napoleon, the Duke of Cambridge, Wellington. Others were commissioned representations of high-ranking officers in military finery, astride their horses, posed next to cannons or flags. These Margaret had placed behind glass doors on the shelves of the whatnot. Most of the figures, though, were of the callow, the low-ranking, the nameless. Teenagers in oversized uniforms from the Spanish Civil War, privates wearing rumpled Union blues or Confederate grays. Margaret's heart was raw for these boys; she imagined them more than any of the other pieces in her house as carrying the spirits of their owners. They stood in a place of prominence above the Italian tile fireplace, a ragtag infantry stretching the entire length of the mantel.

"This'll do," Troy said.

"But Troy, dear," Margaret protested, "there's not even a bed."

He walked in. The resonance of his footfalls seemed to startle the room and awaken its inhabitants. Margaret could feel the soldiers coming to attention. She could hear distant echoes of marbles rolling across the floor, books being thumped open, blocks being toppled. The laughter of rough-housing boys. She caught a glimpse of Daniel at seven, brandishing a wooden sword that Stephen had made for him. He was slaying dragons.

There were built-in cherry wood bookcases flanking the fireplace, and above these, quarter-moon, stained glass windows in shades of amber, garnet, amethyst, and jade.

"This faces east, doesn't it?"

"It does."

"This room must be pretty in the morning."

Troy picked up a young Irish soldier and cradled him in his hands.

Who could have believed it,
Margaret thought wonderingly.
A young man, in this room again, after so long.

"Don't worry, ma'am," Troy said, his eyes still downcast. "I've got a sleeping bag."

Wanda was surprised by how easy it was. Most of the time it took no effort at all. She remembered the theatrical manner in which she and Margaret had hurled pieces against the pebble wall and watched them shatter all those months ago. It had been unnecessary. All it really took was the simple act of dropping them.

The way the pieces broke depended on several factors: the type of clay from which they'd been made, whether they'd been thrown or hand-built, the temperature at which they'd been fired, the type of glaze, the manner of decoration, their shape, size, weight, porosity, and thickness, whether they were dropped singly or in groups, and the surface on which they were dropped. Wooden floors yielded one kind of break—even the kind of wood affected the result, Wanda discovered—and, of course, using any of the fireplace hearths guaranteed the most dramatic and thorough breakings.

The pieces all had their own music, too, brief but distinct. A porcelain soup tureen could thud hollowly, darkly, like the striding bass notes
in Monk's '"Round Midnight." Shattering aperitif crystal might remind her of the crisp jubilance of a bebop trumpet. The cacophony of dessert plates dropped en masse could imitate Bird's raggedy sax.

She began to vocalize as she worked, emitting a kind of half-sung accompaniment for the pieces as they fell, and then improvising vocal codas—short requiems after they lay still, silent, and in pieces.

She loved the random shapes. She knew early on that she wouldn't want to manipulate them much further, unless it would be to drop them more than once and/or walk on them. No nippers, certainly. She pondered the ethics of employing hammers, deciding finally that she might use them—but only occasionally, and only as a last resort if she couldn't get pieces sized for her purpose in any other way. She didn't know yet what that purpose would
be,
but Margaret trusted her, so she tried to have faith.

Some days were breaking days. Some days were sorting days. She sorted logically—by color, shade, size, shape—but she used other means too, means which she couldn't explain even to herself. She had a special place for pieces which attracted her, spoke to her in some way, setting them aside until she had a clearer idea how she could use them.

Sometimes she broke several pieces before sweeping and sorting the fragments; at other times she would break only one item at a time.

Often she'd wake in the night, unable to sleep. She'd hear quiet, acoustic music: solo guitar, hammered dulcimer, cello and violin, Guatemalan flute. These were the kinds of things Troy listened to when he couldn't sleep. She pictured him in the nearby dining room at the massive antique desk which now served as his drafting table, working on Margaret's construction plans in his calm, meticulous way, standing in a circle of light on the other side of her bedroom wall. She'd get up then. Drop a couple of birds. Sort pieces.

Eventually she realized there could be only one source. And—accepting her natural inclination toward narrative—she also knew that her mosaics would illustrate only one subject.

She began poring over Margaret's collection of books on Judaism and World War II. She examined hundreds of photos. She took notes, made sketches. There was so much to learn, so many stories to tell.She walked the rooms of the house with Margaret—who had imagined owners for every single piece, from the largest Chinese garden seats to the smallest snuffbox, from the most valuable and rare items in the collection to those which were more common, less dear. Sometimes Margaret's imaginings were scant: "Moshe. Widower. Wore garters. Fed pigeons. Shot in the head, in the night, in a forest." In most cases, though, her stories were full of details: "Adele, nine years old, sitting at a school desk, proud and straight, wearing a plaid blouse, white anklets, her hair in braids. She was going to be a journalist. She loved horses. She won the school essay competition and her grandmother gave her this as a prize. When she starved to death, she was holding a pencil."

Soon these fictions began to blend with points of fact, and Wanda could no longer separate them. Was the father with the bloodied head who waved to his children from the yellow taxi real or imagined? Did the little boy who was pulled from the pickle barrel really exist? Her head swirled with ghosts, her dreams were full of the persecuted, the condemned, the dead—all telling their stories. She did not mind listening. It did not cost her in the way it cost Margaret. She knew she was taking dictation, but for what kind of document? She wasn't sure. How would she use these words, these stories? She didn't know, not yet. She could only keep prospecting.

"What do you call someone who derives pleasure from the bread of affliction?" Bruce asked. He was making challah while Wanda studied a kosher cookbook.

She looked up and waited for the punch line.

"A 'matzochist'!" He paused and frowned at her. "That's a good one. You're supposed to laugh."

Wanda smiled and laid her book aside. She watched Bruce's hands— so practiced, so full of ease and grace.

"How did you learn to do.that?" she asked.

"My
bubeleh.
Grandma Katz. She was my first and finest culinary arts professor." Bruce punched his fist into the center of a large mass of dough; it sighed audibly as it deflated around his hand. He divided the dough in half, divided one of the halves into thirds, and then began
rolling each third into a long strand. "'Slow down, boychick!' she was always saying. 'Cooking is not to rush. It's a prayer. A gift of love. It's family. It's standing in the company of your ancestors and feeling their hands, helping you.'" Bruce started weaving the strands into braids. "When you're Jewish, everything that matters happens in the kitchen." Wanda closed her book and stood up. "Teach me," she said. "Show me with your hands. Tell me what it means."

One day she found a book leaning against the door of the Aviary Suite. A note said, "I found this at St. Vinnie's sandwiched between
I'm Mad at You, Ernie!
and
The Wonderful Feast.
The other two will go to Ethan and Bruce, respectively. You get this. Love, Sus." The book was a collection of artwork and writings made by children interred in a Jewish ghetto called Terezin from 1942 to 1944. The children were secretly schooled there. They wrote poems. They drew pictures. They made collages out of torn office forms, trash, wrapping paper—whatever they could find. Somehow they had access to paints, too, and there were bright images of numbered bunk beds, flowers, fairy tale towns. Some of the paintings were abstractions of color and pattern. One child drew a long row of stick figures holding hands and riding the boxcars—not jammed inside but standing on the roofs, as if they were daring circus performers or stunt artists. Terezin was built in the shape of a star, Wanda learned. Its prisoners were marked for extermination from the moment they arrived. Of fifteen thousand children who passed through, a hundred survived. They were stars of light, imprisoned within a star of darkness.

Wanda smoothed her hands over the pages of the book. Studying was not enough. She'd never understand anything if words and pictures stayed only in her mind; she needed them in her body. She began copying the children's poems and line drawings onto brown paper grocery bags and flattened cardboard boxes. She did the same with the other stories—those that Margaret had made up, and those that had really happened. She rummaged through the household garbage and made collages from what she found there: bills, receipts, labels from canned goods, newspapers.

By now, she'd smashed the contents of many rooms. She'd accumulated several boxes of fragments and a huge palette of colors and shapes. In her mind, she was seeing pictures. Imagined amorp
hous forms were becom
ing defined. There still were techniques to learn, problems to solve, but the studio was nearly habitable. She was almost ready to start.

"You could use more sets of protective eyeglasses," Margaret said as she wrote. "Respiratory masks and gloves too." Over the dessert course one night—chocolate ginger cake with pear glaze—she and Wanda were making a list. "And books on mosaic-making, don't you think? I might have something in the library, but they'd be more in the nature of art history books. Nothing on technique."

"I know a bit," Wanda said. "I helped my uncle tile a bathroom when I was eleven."

There was instant silence. It was the first time Wanda had ever shared anything like a family story.

"It was a pink bathroom," Wanda continued, ominously. She was staring at a bit of pear glaze as it ribboned off her fork.

They waited. Nothing. End of story.

Margaret sighed and resumed. "All right then. What else?"

"Adhesives," Wanda blurted. "Grout, too. I'm not sure what kind."

"For what you'll be doing, you'll want sanded." It was Troy, in his corner, drafting plans. "Unless you'll be using tight, uniform joins."

"What?" Wanda said.

"And you'll want to try mixing a couple of ways. It should feel like cake frosting when you're done."

"What?" Wanda repeated, looking suddenly feverish. Margaret fought off an impulse to feel her forehead.

Troy's brow was still furrowed over his plans. "The consistency of the grout. It should be like frosting."

When Wanda didn't respond, Margaret asked, "How is it you know all this, dear?"

"My sister back home has a flooring business." And he did look up then, but not at Margaret. He stared at Wanda as if she were the only person in the room. "Mosaic techniques aren't exactly the same, but I can show you a thing or two. If you want."

Margaret looked at Gus. Susan looked at Bruce. Troy looked at Wanda. Wanda broke her dessert dish.

Once the plumbing and wiring were roughed in and the bathroom was usable, everyone helped move in supplies and furnishings. Afterward, they ceremoniously donned safety glasses and gathered around a large worktable.

Gus brought out a chilled bottle of sparkling apple cider and popped the cork. He then filled nine eighteenth-century tankards, all painted in the Chinese style, which Margaret had retrieved from storage. "To Wanda's new studio!" he proclaimed. "You've done a brilliant job in here, lad," he said. "Cheers!"