If I Told You Once: A Novel (25 page)

And then a rather odd thing happened.

On the first floor of our building there lived an elderly woman who kept two dozen cats in her apartment. She had moved in long ago, before the screening process was established; she’d lived in the building for years, in spite of people’s polite attempts to dislodge her, and the cats. It was unsanitary; the smell; the very
idea
of two dozen cats! Not to mention inhumane to the cats themselves. Not to mention what people might think when they walked past our building.

What happened was simply: one Thursday, around twilight, it seems the cat woman stepped outside to empty some litter trays. She apparently locked herself out of her apartment. Now she had disappeared.

I discussed it with Mrs. Fishbein in the hallway. I’m sure she just wandered off, went into the wrong building, she was senile, that’s all, I told her. But Mrs. Fishbein shook her head with frightened eyes.

What would you do if it had been your mother? she said.

She closed the door between us.

I had hardly been listening, yet her words stuck in my head for days.

What
would
I do? The thought of my mother neatly, silently swept away. No one’s fault, no guilt, no one to blame. An extra room. No longer being reminded of what she did to my brothers, or how she felt about Joe.

A clean and empty space.

Terrible thought.

I pushed it away. Though it returned unbidden from time to time.

I loved my mother, after all.

But the thought lingered sometimes in the night as I lay listening for the street cleaners. The mind has a way of fixing on thoughts of dropping babies from windows or jumping from bridges or pulling triggers—possibilities, accidents you imagine in detail but hope
never
actually happen.

The cat woman did not return. Her apartment was cleaned out, the cats were taken away, and a nice-looking young couple with a grand piano moved in.

Our neighbors began coming home earlier and earlier on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I still loved the sounds on those nights: a crisp clean scuttling, like those amazon ants in tropical countries that sweep through villages devouring everything in their path.

Mrs. Fishbein clutched at my arm and whispered that one of the children from upstairs had gone for a bike ride near sundown on a cleaning day and had not returned.

It’s like the angel of death passing over, she whispered.

I told her not to be silly. Children like to run away from home sometimes, I said, but they always come back.

She shook her head and retreated into her apartment.

It was nothing, only talk. Those children were too noisy anyway.

Mrs. Fishbein began leaving strange things out in the street on cleaning days. A lamp, a quilt, a boxed cake, new gloves, bottles of pills. Little offerings for the cleaners, as if she wanted to appease them. As time went on the gifts grew more elaborate: she set up little shrines with lighted candles, incense, handwritten poems, a stuffed turkey, an umbrella, her own dresses and corsets neatly folded and tied with ribbon.

All of it gone, swallowed up the next day.

I mentioned her to Mr. Mizzer once, tried to get him to laugh about it. He frowned and shook his head and said: The cleaners can’t go on like this. It has to stop. We have to do something.

I was furious, but I managed to keep my voice level as I said: How can we ask them to stop? We
need
them. If they stop coming then everything will go back to the way it was, trash piling up, the drunks and prostitutes, the strangers on our doorsteps, crime and disease and horribleness everywhere. We
can’t
go back to that.

He retreated into his own apartment, which was full of musty books. Dust catchers, I called them.

The apartment building was so quiet now. I loved to wander the empty halls, peer out the windows at the sparkling streets.

One day Mrs. Fishbein tapped at my door. I don’t wish to upset you, she said, but on a recent evening I saw your husband walking with another woman.

I’m sure it was nothing, I told her.

They were
extremely
close, she said.

It must have been his sister, I said quickly.

They were embracing, she said.
Kissing, I’m afraid,
she added in a whisper.

His sister’s Canadian, and you know what
they’re
like, I told Mrs. Fishbein.

Of course I did not believe her for a second. Joe would never do such a thing; I knew him too well. He would never do such a thing to our family. I resolved not to say anything about it to him; I did not even want him to see that I was upset; it would worry him. So I concealed the whole incident from him which was easy enough to do since we seldom spoke anymore.

But somehow I could no longer sleep at night, and not even the cleaners could soothe me. And there was the matter of the matchbooks I found in his trouser pockets, taken from various nearby bars.

I finally decided to see for myself. I would do it for Joe’s sake. I would prove that Mrs. Fishbein was blind, and insane, and a babbling fool. I dressed myself carefully, gloves and a hat with a veil, and special galoshes to keep my shoes clean; and I set out that night to find him.

I had not been outside the neighborhood for so, so long. The streets were strange and frightening. So
dark,
and there were
puddles
everywhere, and people lounging against walls doing nothing in particular. I walked as quickly as I could; even the air seemed filthy, clammy, it clung damply in my lungs. And the noise: cars screeching, people calling out, the radios—is that what they call
music?

I brought the matchbooks in my purse, and strained my mind to find the proper streets. My side was aching, but I was determined.

I found him at the third bar I checked. A dark, smoky place, men and women pressed close together, talking too loud and laughing, and dirty sawdust on the floor. I saw him sitting in a corner with a woman. He had his arm around her, they were both smoking with their faces inches apart, talking and blowing smoke at each other. She had dyed hair, a tired sagging face. And yet they were smiling. Joe smiling! I saw him touch her breast in that public place.

I fled. Street-corner men called after me, hooting. I ran home as fast as I could. Oh, the relief of the clean bare streets. Oh, the lovely clean hallways, gray and antiseptic as a hospital. And finally the heavenly apartment with the sealed windows, the pure air, the sheets crisp as new paper.

I was distraught for days. I did not know what to do. I did not want anyone to know. Our domestic life was so perfect, I could not understand how he could do such a thing. Our lovely marriage, our lovely home, our lovely child. Joe would surely have a detrimental effect on his development. A broken family would traumatize Jonathan at this stage. I had to protect my child at all costs. I had to preserve our family’s reputation, if only for him.

I said nothing to Joe. I waited.

And then, in this time of strife, I discovered I was pregnant.

I was furious. I did not want another child. I wanted to concentrate all my energies on raising Jonathan, I wanted him to become a fine handsome man like his father, but I needed to carefully cultivate in him Joe’s good qualities and weed out the bad ones. I had no
time
for a second child.

I could not eat or sleep. I spent hours soaking in scented bath-water.

Mrs. Fishbein came tapping at my door again. How many sisters does your husband
have?
she asked.

I closed the door in her face.

I could not bear it anymore. I told my mother everything. She patted my arm, gave me a sharp look, and told me not to worry. I listened to her. I saw a strength, a certainty in her eyes.

The next day, a Tuesday, we again received notices in our mailboxes. The street cleaners were again upgrading their services: they would now come every night.

I meant to bring the notice up to our apartment, with the other mail, but somehow or other I lost it. That night I lay awake beside Joe’s dead and distant weight. The street cleaners shrilled like locusts.

The following day I lay in bed as usual long after Joe left for work. Then I bathed. I scrubbed the grouting between the tiles in the bathroom, then I bathed a second time. I took a dusting cloth and wandered through the apartment. I could not for the life of me find a speck of dirt.

I went into the nursery and lifted Jonathan. He was clean and powdered, his big eyes pure and innocent. He looked so like Joe, he really did. I promised myself that I would work hard to make Jonathan into the kind of man Joe
used
to be. The man Joe
could
have been if only he had tried a little harder. It would require a great deal of attention to keep Jonathan on the proper path. A great deal of cold baths and toothpaste, rules and tight-fitting shoes and bleach. But it would be worth it.

I thought of the child inside me, and it occurred to me that it might be a boy, and he might look like Joe, and in that case I would have to raise him perfectly as well. If it was a girl, I wouldn’t bother.

I laid Jonathan back down, covered him carefully, and dimmed the lights.

I came upon my mother crocheting quietly in the living room. I said: By the way, did you happen to tell Joe, the street cleaners will be coming every night from now on, they will be coming tonight, so he should come home early.

I didn’t tell him, she said calmly. I must have forgotten.

I said: I must have forgotten, too.

That night the street cleaners dipped and swooped like birds of prey, they circled like scavengers, they bored in like maggots, and I slept deep and sound.

Ilana

I had only wanted the best for her. I only wanted her to be happy.

I should have known better. I should not have trusted Anya.

It was mostly my mistake.

But I thought my daughter was somewhat to blame as well, though I could not have said why. She had handled her husband wrongly, there was something lacking, a coldness between them like a glass wall.

Perhaps it had something to do with that place we lived in, all cold smooth surfaces and high ceilings that made me anxious, too much space all around. We were rabbits in an open field.

There was no way to send down roots in such a place; it resisted me like a waxed surface repelling water.

I was glad to go back to the old neighborhood, where things made sense and I could find work to do with my hands.

There were the children, at least.

She could thank him for that.

She had gotten something out of the bargain.

Sashie

Back we went, to the old neighborhood, my mother and Jonathan and I.

We found an apartment in a different building on the same street as our old one. It felt just like the old place, same smells of cabbage and onions, same dripping faucets, same shouts in the stairwell.

The previous tenant had left behind broken-backed furniture, lamps that did not work. We did not bother to remove it before bringing in our own, so that the rooms were crammed with furniture, barely room to walk.

My pregnancy made it doubly difficult to squeeze between the sharp edges of bureaus and davenports and great hulking lumps of furniture I could not even identify. Everything festooned with ugly carved woodworking, carved gargoyles and leaves and enormous bulbous wooden fruit.

I knew I deserved better. I did not belong there. I had more refined tastes, I had hopes and aspirations. I needed gentler conditions, more delicate company.

My mother retreated and I didn’t care. She folded herself inward, hid her heart away.

I tried to keep the place clean, but dust seemed to spring up on surfaces overnight. Even just-washed dishes, drying in the rack, wore films of gray dust in the mornings.

I concentrated on myself, on maintaining my clothes, curling my hair, containing the mess and leakages and blooming stains and general untidiness of pregnancy.

My daughter was born. The details are not worth mentioning.

Even with the two small children squalling at all hours, the apartment seemed dull, barren, quiet.

By now I knew to attribute this to the absence of any men. Men bring life into a place. Without them there is only working and waiting. There is no story worth telling.

It was a pity Joe had not worked out as I’d hoped.

Luckily there was Jonathan. I had high hopes for him. I watched him grow and become bright and strong and handsome, and my mother watched him too with a kind of hungry anticipation. I knew she was thinking of Wolf and Eli, hearing their voices when Jonathan went running and laughing round and round and deep in the labyrinth of furniture, oblivious to our expectations.

It seemed he went into that forest of furniture a boy and came out a man, so fast do children grow.

*   *   *

I dreamt of a butcher shop on a poorly lit street.

It looked familiar, though I could not think where I had seen it before. My mother did all our shopping.

The fat butcher behind the counter wiped his hands on his apron, leaving red handprints. On the wall before him hung photographs of thick-bodied blond girls trussed in too-tight white dresses. I opened the door of the shop and entered and a bell tinkled above my head. The mat beneath my feet read
WELCOME
.

The photographs began to move and shift, the girls in the pictures grew until they filled the frames, they pressed their faces up close, as if the pictures’ surfaces were windows they were trapped behind. They pressed so close their breaths fogged the glass and I could see pimples, and shreds of dinner caught in their teeth.

The girls drew pictures with their fingers on the clouded glass.

Tallies, words, messages. To me?

What would you like, the butcher asked me. He spoke rudely and impatiently though the shop was empty. I looked outside at the vague dark street. I could not tell if it was late night or early morning, the light was indecisive, and I did not know what to order.