Other People's Lives (2 page)

Louise herself had gone to Oberlin College, where she took an overdose of various pills when she was alone in her practice room. She did not blame her cello or even the college, where she had managed to last less than a month. She had spoken to very few people and nobody made any sense. She was furious at her doctor, who had left Birch Hill and moved, for his wife's sake, to California. The climate of wintry New York State was ruining her, she had told people. She was
from
California, this whiny bitch, and, in Louise's opinion, looked it.

When Louise finally left Birch Hill two years later, it was because her father could no longer afford it. His business was being badly affected by the Recession. In the meantime, Birch Hill had become much more expensive and Louise was not the first patient who had had to leave in such a peremptory way. Either you went back to your family or you went to a state hospital.

In open conferences, through which Louise sat dumb and purposely slightly over-medicated, it was clear that no one could see sending her to a state hospital. She was not, they said, “state-hospital material,” despite her suicide attempt, which no one remembered as well as she did. By this time she had gone through so many changes of doctors that her attachment was not to a particular person, but to the place itself. She felt at home in Birch Hill in a way she could not imagine feeling anywhere else.

“
Ma petite,
” her mother's brief and occasional letters to her had begun. Only one person, a doctor freshly back from Vietnam, suggested that she go to London. He was accustomed to dispatching people, helicoptering them here and there; he did not know Louise at all and spoke in a cold, dismissive, patronizing voice, as if she were not in the room. Up to then he had been doodling on a lined medical form, and when he surprisingly raised his donkey's face to say “London,” his brayed contribution ended in a yawn.

“Why don't
you
go there?” Louise said. “Or even better, go back to Vietnam.”

Stockholm was out of the question, though everyone was very impressed with Elisabeth's reputation. Louise had, on her own, written to Elisabeth several times, but the only time she ever got an answer was one year at Christmas: a picture of Elisabeth's two small, handsome, towheaded boys—naked, absorbed, and agile, playing at the seashore. Serious and European, their smiles bent the sun. “These are my
nephews,
” Louise had said, marveling over and over again. And it was true, but so what?

The Dominican Republic
was
mentioned, though Louise's father had never at any point in her life suggested that she come and live with him. He had often invited her to visit—for a month, for a summer, and before she was sick, might even have meant it.

In the end, Louise's social worker came up with a solution. She knew a family in New York who had a very large, old apartment and only one child. For various reasons which she did not go into, they could no longer keep up the rent and were now seriously looking for a boarder.

“The Tobeys,” Mrs. Zeitlin said with great accomplishment in her voice. “Dennis and Maria Tobey.” She stared around the room, squintily raising her tinted prescription glasses, as if removing them altogether would allow her to see what she was looking for.

“They live in Manhattan, these people?” the director asked her.

“
Dennis Tobey.
”

They lived in Manhattan, on the West Side, not much more than a crosstown bus ride away from any analyst Louise would be referred to. She would have the advantage of living with a family, and the assurance that though her father could no longer afford Birch Hill, he would still be able to take care of her living expenses in New York.

“Dennis Tobey!” Mrs. Zeitlin said excitedly, rushing up to Louise as soon as the meeting was over. “I'm so glad I
thought
of them. It'll be marvelous for you, Louise. Absolutely marvelous.”

Still in the slowed dullness of her medication, Louise said, “I don't know who that is. Who they are.”

“Louise,” Mrs. Zeitlin said over-gently, taking her hand and speaking in that particular social worker's voice, “Dennis Tobey, the dancer.” And then gripping and shaking her so it seemed to Louise that Mrs. Zeitlin had suddenly become a ridiculous carousel of her long red hair and her whirling long peasant dress, “Louise! Dennis Tobey! The dancer! Dennis Tobey.”

Dennis Tobey, it turned out, was a dancer whom Mrs. Zeitlin had once studied with. Very early in his career he developed some kind of revolutionary and idiosyncratic combination of modern dance and ballet, and whenever he performed, there was no newspaper or magazine issue that came out without acclaiming him. He was an ordinary smalltown boy; he was a phenomenon. He worked day and night and, through singlemindedness, turned himself into a revered, living genius and a figure of glamour. People trailed after him constantly, but Dennis—pale, taut, ascetic, idiosyncratic Dennis—lived only inside his mind through his feet.

“You could always tell how far away he was,” Mrs. Zeitlin said. “And I don't mean detached. I mean committed.
Completely
committed. You could see the ideas rushing through his head and his body so that he couldn't stand still long enough to listen to you.”

On a cultural-exchange tour with his company through the Soviet Union, Dennis met a Russian dancer—Maria. The faraway, committed Dennis fell in love, and Maria, the Soviet ballerina, defected. Later, in New York, they married; it was a very romantic story, and Dennis' career was in no way changed. Every new dance he created was acclaimed as before. People still trailed after them constantly—pale, taut, idiosyncratic Dennis and beautiful, energetic, high-spirited Maria. Much later, even, they had a child, a son. Only recently, within the past two years, Dennis had become very sick—Hodgkin's disease—and was frequently in the hospital. Without him, naturally, his company had fallen apart, and now that he could no longer dance and make a living, the Tobeys needed a boarder.

“Imagine it, Louise! You'll be living with the Tobeys. I envy you. Really. Aren't you excited?”

Louise had no interest in dance, and knew nothing about dancers. She was being carried off to the Tobeys' as other people were being carried off to state hospitals.

“I think maybe I'll go to Australia,” Maria was saying. “The weather is better. What do you think? Also the parking problems. Even also I think the schools.”

“Australia?
You?
Before you knew it, you'd be starting up with a kangaroo. Where
you
should go is Pago Pago. One grass skirt and you'd be in business, a water buffalo would get you around. No meters, no tickets. Maria,
liebchen,
I've just solved all your problems.”

The kitchen faucet burst out suddenly, but over the running water Louise heard Maria say, “It's not in my mentality, Arthur.” Arthur and Joan Tepfer, Bert and Reba Axelrod: they were Maria's neighbors, these people, and were constantly in and out of her apartment as if it were an extension of their own. Their children played with Matthew, and the strange, unfinished arts-and-crafts projects that Louise had first seen strewn around the house mostly belonged to Joan Tepfer. She was always starting something new, and left what she could not finish with Maria, who usually could and did not seem to regard it as an imposition. She did not seem to regard it at all. “You're so inventive, Maria,” Joan and Reba would say. “Isn't she marvelous?” They meant it, and would watch, fascinated, as Maria's hands rapidly pulled and shaped the various materials, calling out at the same time, “Matthew! You're slamming the God-damn refrigerator!” Or, “Damn it, I also forgot about the cheese.”

Maria worked as a dance therapist in a community rehabilitation center for drug addicts, and since there had been a cutback in staff, also did much of the arts-and-crafts work, which she had picked up from watching. Creativity was something she connected solely with Dennis.

Louise remained standing in the hallway, listening. It meant she had to face the pictures of Dennis, but still she would not go into the kitchen: Arthur Tepfer made her nervous.

“No, Arthur, really. I am sick of that God-damn parking. I am sick of that God-damn car. I think maybe I'll sell it. What do you think? Only I love it to drive, it's a very good car, only it's always breaking. I am a
very
good driver, Arthur. Only I don't like the tickets.”

Arthur Tepfer began whistling a German marching song. He said, “Who told you to get a foreign car? I told
you
not to, I told Dennis. If you had to have a foreign car, at least it should have been a Volkswagen—you'd feel at home in it, first of all, and as soon as you said
Achtung
it would have to listen.”

“
One
time be serious, Arthur. Just today—now—I went to the hospital again, and I
found
a parking place. Legal. When I came out, no car. I can't find it. Some stupid bastard has just pushed it! It could have rolled down the hill, I don't know. Also, I don't even
like
the East Side. It's not in my mentality.”

Joan said, “Oh, Maria. How is Dennis?” She said it in a very reverential voice, the same way all the people in the building always said it.

“How is Dennis? How is Dennis? How do
I
know how is Dennis? Dennis doesn't know
who
is Dennis. I am sick of the God-damn parking, it's a
terrible
hospital. Only parking for doctors.”

“Are they giving him any new drugs? Is he still getting radiation?”

If Maria answered this, Louise did not hear it. She yelled out, “Matthew, please! Clean up the cat shit, we're having dinner. And afterwards, baby, angel, no television until after all the homework.
Please.”

“Why do you push him about
homework,
Maria?” Joan said. “If the material was interesting intrinsically—
you
know
—alive,
he would do it. It would be like play.”

“Play!” Maria said. “Exactly! He's a good boy, Matthew, really. But that's what he does—play.”

Louise already knew exactly how Matthew played: he sat over a large chessboard by himself and moved both sets of pieces, exclaiming to himself and crinkling his small, fair, freckled face in absorption and a kind of gleeful, separate happiness. It struck Louise as being strange, but all Maria ever said was, “Oh, chess. I don't know how it goes, the pieces. Dennis taught him, he was very little.”

Matthew's other way of playing was drawing. He made very colorful, elaborate pictures and sang songs to go with them. Often they were about space and space ships—a topic in which Louise had no interest. She tried to follow the melody line as he sang, but had trouble; in fact, had trouble with Matthew altogether. No matter how much Louise tried to talk to him or play with him, Matthew gave back the same short, fishy stare. Often he simply got up and walked away. Naturally. What did she expect?

Joan Tepfer said, “I really don't see why you took him out of private school. At his age! At seven! To be regimented so young. Everyone knows what public schools do, Maria, and you
care
so much about his education. It's obvious.”

Early in the morning when Louise was in her still strange bedroom, trying to get up, she heard children's voices calling up from the private-school cars, waiting outside. “Adam, Jonathan, Jennifer.” It had a singsong quality, and in repetition had the far-off wonder of an echo. “Adam, Jonathan, Jennifer.” They ran down then, bundled up and yelling greetings. “Have a good day, kids”: mothers had come out with them, wrapped in coats and sleepily waving, on their way to walk the dog. Or “Bye, muffin”: fathers hugging extravagantly, spruced for the morning, halfway into the
Times.

“
Je suis desolée
”
—
it only meant “I'm sorry”: Louise's new French course. “
Je suis desolée,
” an idiom she hung on to, it was part of her morning collection. “It was empty, forlorn, and apparently abandoned”—Rip Van Winkle (American Lit). And from a Katherine Anne Porter story, the two words “sour gloom.”

“Adam, Jonathan, Jennifer”—it was from “
Wozzeck,
” that children's street song, when no one was left on the merry-go-round which kept turning. Empty, forlorn, and abandoned. In the sour gloom.

The school cars blew their horns and zoomed away down Riverside Drive. “Matthew!” Maria would call brusquely from the kitchen, where she was making sandwiches. “Hurry up! I know you have only to walk, but it's late. Again. Also I'll be late.
Again.
I have for you Frosted Flakes and Red Cheek apple juice. Also Skippy peanut butter. Crunchy. Come
on,
Matthew, angel, hurry up!”

No one had ever asked Louise what were her favorite foods, and bought them.
Je suis desolée:
I'm sorry, merely, sorry. That's all.

Arthur said, “
Achtung,
Matthew! You heard your mother. A little heel-clicking would make her happy…What that kid needs, Maria, is a strong male image.”

“Always no problem with
that,
” Maria said, giggling strangely.

“Maria, I mean it,” Joan Tepfer said. “I can't
understand
why you changed his school, it's not good for him.”

“It was show, only. Charity. I had to.”

“
Charity?
For God's sake, he had a scholarship! Do you know how many people would donate whole buildings to get their kids in there? Let alone get them scholarships.”

“It's the same thing for black children. For show only. So they can say, we have these many children from Harlem and these many children of famous persons. So they can think always, here is the son of Dennis Tobey, so sad, so wonderful. Not just Matthew, a little boy in the school. Like other children. He is
not
like the other children there, Joan. It was
not
good for him. They are too rich.”