Redemption (6 page)

“Ike,” Sarah said after I had finished, “you're apologizing for God's grace. You're the luckiest man in the world, finding someone like this Elizabeth woman, instead of sitting around waiting to die of boredom.”

“I'm not dying of boredom.”

“Certainly not now. I'll sauté the shrimp in a bit of olive oil and herbs, fix some rice and the vegetable. Will that be enough?”

“You said ‘God's grace'?”

“That's right. I know you don't believe in God, but I do.”

“Oh, I believe,” I told her, “on and off—I just don't admire the way He runs things.”

“He doesn't run things. He leaves it up to that wretched lot they call cops and judges.”

“Spoken like a valid public defender. Do we have white wine?”

“A couple of bottles. I'll put one in the fridge.”

I admit I was nervous waiting for Elizabeth to appear; the scene on the bridge would not leave me. Grateful that it was another cold evening, I had built a fire—the second time I used the fireplace that winter. At six-twenty, the doorbell rang, and there was Elizabeth, her face flushed, wearing a pleated skirt, moccasin-style shoes, and wrapped in the big taupe sweater.

“Oh, Ike,” she exclaimed, “I'm so glad to be here. I took off from work early and walked all the way from home.” She solved my problem of how to greet her by throwing her arms around me and embracing me, and I found myself kissing her. She didn't draw away, and I took her sweater and led her to the fireplace.

“That wonderful fireplace,” she said.

“White wine?”

“Sure.”

“It's a long walk from Ninety-sixth Street.”

“A mile or so—nothing really.”

Sarah brought in two glasses of wine, and I introduced Liz and Sarah to each other, explaining that Sarah was one of my best students.

“Yes, in contract law,” Sarah said, laughing. “And I end up being a public defender.”

Dinner went well. Liz loved the shrimp and ate heartily and finished the fruit tart to the last crumb. I very hesitantly asked her what she weighed, and she replied that the last time she had weighed herself, it was one hundred and ten; and then she asked me why I was so uneasy about a personal question.

“It's just—well, I don't know. You don't ask a woman what she weighs.”

“I have no secrets from you, Ike. I never will.”

Before leaving, Sarah took me aside and whispered, “She's all right, Ike. She's a good one.”

“I think so.”

“Don't chase her away.”

“Not if I can help it.”

After Sarah left, Liz and I had coffee in front of the fire. I told Liz that Sarah liked her.

“And you have great respect for Sarah, so I'm glad.”

“She was one of my best students and she's a hell of a lawyer.”

“Then why does she have to work at night?”

“Partly because public defenders are underpaid—like so many people today—and I think, because she likes me.”

Liz nodded. “I can understand that.”

“You know, Liz, those agreements you signed when you were so depressed—they're all signed under duress. They wouldn't stand up in court. William Hopper is a millionaire many times over.”

She was silent for a few minutes, and then she said, “Ike, I want nothing from Mr. Hopper, only to forget that he exists.” Then, again, we sat in silence for a while, until Liz said, “Ike, last night I did something—oh, I don't know how to explain it, except that I had a nightmare of sorts about Sedge, and I was frightened, and I crawled into bed with you. I didn't want to awaken you but just to feel you there, and you reached out and put your arm around me without waking. I fell asleep like a child, and in the morning, I slipped away very quietly—”

“I know.”

“And you never said a word?”

I nodded.

“I love you, Ike.”

I thought about that for a while and then said, gently, “Liz, my dear, you've been through all kinds of hell. I reached out a hand to you. I'm an old man, and you're a lovely young woman. What can I offer you?”

“You gave me life and hope. You must care for me a little.”

“More than a little—a great deal more.”

“And you're not an old man, Ike. If age is the accumulation of a knowledge of pain and wickedness, then I'm older than you'll ever be. They say a woman who has just been divorced is not to be believed in her reactions, but I never really knew Sedge Hopper and I knew you from the first day. I know you ask yourself, Who is she?—this Elizabeth Hopper who stayed for years with a man who brutalized her and degraded her. But thousands of women remain with men who brutalize them. You can't know what it is to spend fourteen years—your growing-up years—attending a convent school, to be taught to love, honor, and obey the man who will be your husband. But now I'm breaking all those rules. I love you. I never thought I could say that.”

This was not a conversation that moved back and forth, like the dialogue in a play. I had no immediate answers for Liz, but I moved close to her and put my arm around her, and she laid her head on my shoulder. Then we sat quietly and watched the fire burn down to coals. For me, the closeness and warmth of her body were like a benediction. Love is a peculiar thing, and there is little love in what goes for it on the screen and in books, which is mostly a tearing apart of flesh and soul. I looked into myself for some truth, and that's the most difficult of all things—it's so much easier to lie to yourself than to others. And if the comfort and completeness I felt with Liz pressed up against my body was love, then I loved her; and at least I knew one thing with certainty, that I never wanted her to leave me.

“The fire is almost out,” Liz said. “Do you have more wood, Ike?”

“Everything is virtual reality today, Liz. That's not wood but some kind of pressed stuff that I bought in the hardware store. No more now, but tomorrow I'll buy some.”

“You're real, Ike. I'm real.”

“Will you come to bed with me, Liz?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

That night, I made no effort to make love to Elizabeth. That was still in the future, and in all truth, I was afraid. Lena and I had used separate rooms for the last few years of her life. She was a sick woman who fought desperately to live, and I had existed as a monk of sorts, successfully denying any libido. But Liz curled up against me, her head on my chest, kissing me gently and asking for nothing more. That way, she fell asleep. My own sleeping was less successful, but eventually I dozed off and slept.

In the morning I awakened about eight, and Liz was gone from the bed, and there were sounds and coffee smells from the kitchen. When I had showered and dressed and joined her, there was a royal breakfast of juice and cereal and eggs and yogurt and toast, and we sat over breakfast eating and talking until suddenly she realized that she had to go to work and dashed off with a hug and a kiss.

For the next five weeks, we lived together. Bit by bit, she brought her clothes to my apartment, and finally a suitcase packed with what was left. We never discussed this arrangement; it happened because we both wanted it to happen. After a month, I persuaded her to give up her apartment and to have the bit of mail she received forwarded to my address. When Sarah was not there, Liz did the cooking. She was a good cook, and our life settled into the pattern of an old married couple, yet newly married enough for both of us to be delighted with each other. My son's room became her room, and one day I bought her a gift of an easel and paper and pastel crayons, which delighted her.

And I made love to her, hesitantly at first, and then with wonder and absolute delight. We learned each other, and I found that love and the ability to make love was not a matter of chronology. Oh, I had my guilt that this was something I had never known before, guilt about the age difference, guilt about the passion of her love for me, guilt about the sense that I was taking advantage of her. Liz took a brown paper bag and printed on it:
THIS IS A GUILT RECEPTACLE. BREATHE INTO IT SLOWLY, FOUR TIMES. THEN CLOSE IT AND YOUR GUILTS WILL VANISH
.

As I watched the change in her—the awakening of a bright and lovely spirit—my own happiness responded. I tried to persuade her to give up her job, but she refused, declaring that she needed money of her own for the day when I tossed her back into the street—a bit of bitter humor that I did not take well. Weekends we explored the city on foot, went to the museums, to conceits, and to the theater. And once she said, “I'm so happy, Ike, that I'm frightened. I'm really terrified that this will end.”

“All things end, Liz—but not for a long time.”

“What will I do if anything happens to you?”

“Nothing will happen to me. I'm as healthy as an ox.”

She studied me for a long moment, her wide gray eyes fixed on my face, and then she said, “I take from you, Ike. What do I give you?”

“Life,” I replied.

“Oh, come on. You gave it to me. You saved my life.”

“If I did save your life, my dear, I saved the life of a frightened, broken woman. I took you home with me because I didn't know what else to do with you.”

“And you were afraid I would kill myself, left alone. And then you gave me a home and protection and love. But what did I give you, Ike?”

“I watched you unfold. I watched you come alive, and I found a wonderful woman, someone who loved me. I didn't know what love was; it's a cheap word that's everywhere. I found someone who became a part of me, someone I could talk to about anything; and as you unfolded, I unfolded. Do you understand that, Liz?”

“I think I do.”

“Everything changed. I began to see things with your eyes, with a kind of innocence that I had always rejected.”

“Ike,” she whispered, “you're not just saying that?”

“Believe me, Liz. I love you. Perhaps I have only a few years left, but if I can spend them with you—well, that's enough. I'm very lucky. I would ask for no more than that. If you left me—”

“I'll never leave you, Ike.”

I have a large library, a whole wall of the living room covered with the acquisitions of a lifetime; law books, court records, history, philosophy, and novels. When my son married, he took his books with him, but I still had
Tom Sawyer
and
Huckleberry Finn
and
Treasure Island
from my age-ten-to-twelve time and a hundred other novels that I kept and treasured. Books that I did not feel deserved keeping, I would give away to whatever charity accepted books, but each of them was weighed and judged before I parted with it. I never throw away a book; such an action rates high on my catalog of sins.

Liz's response to this wall of books was sheer delight and chaotic curiosity. Whenever she worked a late shift at the store, and a short one at that, there was time for reading. I have thanked whatever gods may be for my good eyesight and for my ability to read for hours, and very often we would both curl up with a book, sometimes in the early hours, sometimes in the evening. I never attempted to direct her reading or to recommend a book. In some ways, she was better educated than I was; but she was more hungry than I for words and ideas, and she had told me that aside from the few books she'd brought into her marriage home, there were no books in the Hopper house, except for a few oversized coffee-table tomes on hunting.

One evening, when each of us sat with a book, I asked her what she was reading.

“Daniel Berrigan,” she replied, holding up the book. “It's called
No Bars to Manhood
.”

I nodded.

“Have you read it?” she asked me.

“Yes—but that was a long time ago, perhaps twenty-five years. He's a Jesuit priest who was involved in the peace movement against the Vietnam War.”

“I'm not reading him because he's a priest.”

“I didn't say that.”

“But you were thinking it.”

“Possibly,” I admitted. “I was also involved in the peace movement at that time.”

“Perhaps I was reading it because he was a priest. It came out during my last year in high school. The nuns wouldn't allow us to even discuss Father Berrigan, and when I saw it here—”

“For heaven's sake, you don't have to apologize for anything you read!”

“Ike—Ike, I am not apologizing, only explaining—but when it comes to anything about you being a Jew and me being a Catholic, you shy away.”

“I don't shy away,” I objected. “We are what we are, and we love each other. It is 1996.”

“But my dear, dear Ike, we are because I am a Catholic and you are a Jew. That's why we know each other so well. May I read something to you?”

“Of course.”

“This was during the war, Ike, and Father Berrigan wrote, ‘I seek so simple a thing as—sanity. For I confess to you that I regard these people, who are my people, with a growing horror, this believing nation that sounds its prayers as it goes about the task of Cain.'” She glanced up at me. “Do you understand, Ike?”

“I think so,” I admitted uncertainly.

“Ike, you gave me something—Father Berrigan calls it sanity. You took me by the hand and led me from death to life. Sedge Hopper is a Catholic, and I have been struggling with that. Then I began to read this book, and I understand so much. I will always be a Catholic and you will always be a Jew. And it will never matter as something between us because there is nothing separating us.”

I thought I understood her, but I was not sure. I knew many Catholics, but never one who spoke about his or her religion. The next day, when Liz was at work, I read through the Berrigan book. I spoke to Charlie Brown, who is Catholic, but he shied away from anything deeper than the surface. The subject made him uncomfortable.

Liz was changing, emerging, becoming stronger. My role as a father figure, if indeed it had ever existed, was gone. Bit by bit, she was taking hold of my life, seeing to it that I ate properly, dragging me out for long walks in any and every kind of weather. At the same time, she and Sarah Morton were becoming close friends.