Redemption (7 page)

She said that she wanted to go to a synagogue; and when I told her that I had not set foot in a synagogue since age thirteen, she answered, “That's your problem, Ike. Mine is to know all I can about you. If you will take me to a synagogue, I will take you to Sunday Mass.”

We went one Friday evening, walking down to the Free Synagogue on Sixty-eighth Street. I had made the mistake of telling her that observant Jews do not ride on the Sabbath, and she decided that for once in my life, I would be an observant Jew. The Mass followed two days later. My feet still ached, but fortunately the church was much closer to 115th Street. Yet nothing was done with stress; I had only to look at her and then ask myself: Why not?

For the first two weeks we slept together, she had frightening nightmares. She would awaken sobbing and crawl into my arms, but in time they became fewer and less frequent. She spoke a great deal about her life, about attending a strict convent school for so many years and laughing good-naturedly about some of the archaic Victorian “guidelines of ladylike deportment” the nuns taught her. But instead of a cold holding back, convent or no, she entered into sex with a passion that was almost too much for me. Once, on a Sunday afternoon, when we stretched out on my bed after a walk, I protested that it was sinful to do this in daylight.

“Oh, Ike,” she said, laughing, “you have the strangest catalog of sins that are not sinful. Your Puritan ancestors—”

“I have no Puritan ancestors. I'm Jewish.”

“Doesn't matter. You know, the Indians who helped them survive loved to have sex on a nearby hillside in the afternoon sun. The Puritans decided it was an affront to God, and slaughtered them.”

“Did you learn that in the convent?”

“No. Read it somewhere. And you've never done anything sinful.”

She kissed me, and that finished my argument. She changed, she flowered; and I was an old man falling hopelessly in love. But there was one thing she never spoke of—her life with her onetime husband. Aside from telling about her teeth being broken, she said almost nothing about her life with him. And then, one evening, the telephone rang and a voice announced that it was William Sedgwick Hopper, and that he would like to speak to Mrs. Hopper. I held my hand over the phone and called to Liz, “It's your ex-husband. He wants to talk. You don't have to. I'll tell him to buzz off and forget it.”

Liz stood facing me, her lips tight, a look in her eyes I had never seen before. A long moment passed before she spoke. “No, Ike. I'll talk to him. I'll take it in the kitchen.” And with that, she walked into the kitchen, closing the door behind her. When I heard her say hello, I put the phone back in its cradle. But closed door or not, her voice came through, a raging voice that I would have believed Elizabeth incapable of. “You bastard!” she shouted. “You rotten, unspeakable bastard! How dare you call me here—or anywhere else! Don't you ever call me again! Ever! Ever, do you understand?” Then there was a long moment of silence, and then again, Liz's raging voice, “Do you know what my response is to that? Fuck off, you miserable creep!” Perhaps a minute passed before Liz flung open the kitchen door and strode into the dining room, her arms flung wide.

“Look at me, Ike! Just look at me!”

“What did he want?”

“He wanted the gold bracelet. Can you imagine! He called to tell me that he intended to take action to get the bracelet, and that he had spoken to his attorney. Do you know what I said?”

“I heard you through the door. I'm proud of you.”

“Proud of me? Why, Ike? My behavior was deplorable. After all, he once was my husband.”

“Your response was magnificent, and we'll leave it right there.”

She was laughing now. “Do you believe it, Ike? Can you believe me? I never used that word before, never in my whole life! I know what Mom would have said. She would have said, ‘Now you've learned the Irish language!' I said it—and I am Irish. Don't you think that's very remarkable, Ike?”

“Very remarkable,” I managed.

Liz paused, a long, long moment then. When she spoke, her voice was low and even. “You know, Ike, it was Don Byrne who decided that profanity was the Irish language. Maybe because the Irish were brutalized for seven hundred years. You can get over that, but not easily.

“I'm not the woman you found on the bridge, or the woman Sedge Hopper knew. She died on the bridge that night. You healed me—but for what? I learned to hate. God forgive me, I hate Sedge Hopper with all my heart and soul. I never knew there were such thoughts inside of me. I know it's sinful and it's wrong, but I wish him dead. I wish him to burn in hell. I hate his guts. I hate his beautiful blond hair, his beautiful athletic body, his foul, vicious tongue, his sick, rotten mind. And now that you know what is inside of me, you can stop loving me.”

“Why, Liz? Why should I stop loving you?”

“Because hatred is wrong and destructive. Tomorrow, I'll confess. I'll tell Father O'Donnell what I feel—but I don't think those thoughts will leave me. I wasn't born to sell shoes, Ike. I know what I want to do now. I want to help other battered women. If it means going to school again, I'll do that. Do you know how it feels, Ike, to have your arm twisted until it breaks, to hide in your room with black eyes and a fractured jaw, to plead with someone to stop beating you?” Her eyes bored into me.

“Liz,” I said, “stop living that. It's over. You'll never see Sedge Hopper again. I love you for what you are. If you want to be a social worker, that's wonderful. As for your thoughts—they're normal. What else could you feel? It's been bottled up inside of you. Thank God it's out.”

“Do you believe that, Ike?”

“With all my heart. Now let's talk about something else.”

She threw her arms around me, kissed me. “Dear, dear darling Ike—do you see what you did for me? You made me a person!”

“You've always been a person—a good, beautiful person.”

“But Ike,” she said, her tone suddenly changing, “how did he find me? How did he get this phone number?” She drew back now.

“That's simple, Liz. He called your old number, and the recording gave him my number.”

“Can he find me here? Does he know where we live?”

“Liz, what's the difference? There's nothing to be afraid of.”

“No! No, no, no!” She faced me, erect and serious. “I will never be afraid of him again. I was always afraid of him, of his words and his fists and his guns, but no more. I will never be afraid of him—no, Ike, never. And you will be there for me, always.”

“Always,” I agreed.

Hopper did not call again, and as for his attorney, we never received even a letter. It would have been an easy matter for him to have found out where we lived. Evidently he'd given up his battle for the gold bracelet. Liz settled in. This was her home now, and she cherished every bit of the apartment. She consulted with Sarah Morton on each meal, did the shopping, and insisted on paying for the food she bought. When I argued that she would be wiser to put her small wages in the bank, she rejected the notion. When I mentioned that she was my guest, she opposed the idea indignantly. “I don't pay rent, and you've given me more than I ever dreamed of. I love you, Ike. If I had a million dollars, I would give it to you.”

Liz was one of those women who could turn her hand to almost anything. She restored order to a house that had not known order for years. She sewed back the buttons I had lost, did my washing, insisted that the laundry I used could not iron my shirts properly and ironed them herself. She was consumed with new energy that appeared to be boundless.

We began to invite my friends to dinner. There was general approval of Liz and, in some cases, envy. Charlie Brown advised me, “Marry her, Ike, while she's still under the influence of whatever you feed her. Otherwise, she'll wake up someday and ask herself what she's doing in bed with an old fart like you.”

When I repeated this to Liz, she looked at me quizzically and said, “What did you tell him?”

“All in good time.”

“You'd have to ask me first.”

“I'm too old.”

“What a cop-out!” she exclaimed. It was the first time I had seen even a touch of anger toward me in Liz.

“All right. Elizabeth Hopper, will you marry me?”

“Yes. Right now. I'll take the day off work.”

“It's not practical today. How about next week?”

“OK. Next week.”

“I'm Jewish and you're Catholic. Does that make any difference?”

“Not to me. Does it make any difference to you?”

“Good heavens, no,” I said. “How shall we do it?”

She threw her arms around me and kissed me. “Any way you like, City Hall or a rabbi or a priest—well, perhaps not a priest. How about a judge? You know enough judges.”

“Consider it done,” I said.

I was tired that Friday evening, and at nine o'clock, I told Liz that I was going to bed.

“But it's only nine!” She was alive, alert, glowing—a new Liz, a different Liz—as if our discussion of marriage had cut the last bit of bondage that had tied her to William Sedgwick Hopper. Her cheeks were flushed, and at that moment I thought her totally beautiful.

“I am old.”

Her eyes flashed with annoyance. “Don't say that—not ever again! You are not old. You're the youngest man I ever knew. When I was twenty, I often went to bed at nine. You have a right to be tired at any age, so go to bed and rest. Myself, I can't sleep. I'm going out for a walk.”

“Now? Alone? It's dark.”

“I don't care. I'll be all right, Ike. I'm just bursting, and I have to walk.”

“I'll go with you,” I said.

“No, no. I want to be alone and breathe and think. Go to bed, and I'll crawl in with you the moment I'm back.”

I let her have her way. Disagreements with Liz were infrequent, but I always let her have her way. There would be no memories of Hopper in our relationship. Liz put on a heavy sweater and left, with a hug and a kiss that did not lessen my anxieties. I undressed and went to bed. I decided that I would not sleep until she returned, but I must have dozed because the next thing I remember was Liz crawling into bed with me, her cold feet tangled with mine and her arms around me. I didn't look at our bedroom clock or know what time it was.

Since I'd met her, Liz had not missed a Sunday morning Mass. We talked a good deal about her Catholicism and my Judaism. When I said that I was a Jew without religion, she protested that I was a totally religious man. “I don't go to confession,” she said, “and I don't live by the pope's every dictum. I do go to Mass and I receive Communion. I try to live decently and I believe in God.”

This Sunday morning—just over two months after the incident on the bridge—at eight o'clock, with Liz at church for the early Mass, I opened my
New York Times
. There is a feeling in a certain circle of New Yorkers that if one does not dedicate himself to the Sunday
Times
, one will be lost to the flow of life. I know people who have not lived in the city for years, yet for whom the Sunday
Times
continues to be scripture. Whether anyone has either the time or the inclination to read the entire enormous paper, I don't know. I start with the news section, followed by the “Week in Review,” the magazine, and the book section—and rarely go any further. On this Sunday, the news section had a left-hand two-column article headed:
MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF AN OLYMPIC ATHLETE,
and reading on, I learned that William Sedgwick Hopper had been found dead at his desk after midnight Saturday morning, with a bullet hole in the back of his head. The details were sketchy, the police evidently unwilling to provide much information at this time, and the partners of the firm he worked for equally unwilling to discuss the case. There was some reprise of the investigation of Hopper's trading methods and some background of his history as an Olympic gold-medal winner but no mention of his divorce, or of Elizabeth—for which I was grateful.

I must admit that I was both relieved and satisfied that a brute had met his just deserts. I had never met the man, but out of Liz's fragmentary references to her experiences, I had a fairly full picture of him. I reminded myself not to share my reaction with Liz when she returned from church, since she was so wedded to her belief that vengeance belonged to God and only to God and that even a glint of satisfaction on my part would have disturbed her.

When she returned from Mass, glowing from her walk, radiant as she usually was on a Sunday morning, I showed her the paper. She said nothing as she read the story, but the happiness washed out of her.

“Poor man,” she said softly.

I couldn't help asking, “Why? Why poor man?”

“Because he never had a chance to live or to know himself.”

There was a great deal I could have said in response to that, but I swallowed my thoughts and said only that at least he would bother her no more.

“I never really wanted him dead. I always hoped he might change.”

“Such men never change, Liz.”

She simply shook her head, and I had a new insight into the mind of this woman whom I had met by chance and who had changed the course of my life. For the rest of that Sunday, she made no reference to Hopper's death—nor did I refer to the subject. That evening, back at my apartment—she was in no mood for entertainment—there were calls from both Charlie Brown and Harvey Goldberg, whom I had seen several times since our first luncheon and whom we now watched whenever he appeared on one of the networks to tell us whether the economy was going straight to the stars or straight to hell. Charlie shared my satisfaction, and Harvey Goldberg informed me that Elizabeth had a great opportunity for a piece of the decedent's estate. I took both calls in the bedroom, out of Liz's hearing, and reminded Goldberg that I was an expert in contract law and that Liz would be enraged at even the suggestion.