Revenge (2 page)

As the door closed, all light vanished. I could no longer tell whether my eyes were open or shut, and I realized that it made no difference in here. The walls of the refrigerator were still cool. Where does death come from?

*   *   *

“What do you think you’re doing?” my husband said as he ripped open the refrigerator door.

“I’m going to him.” I tried to brush away his shaking hand and close the door again.

“That’s enough,” he said, pulling me from the refrigerator. He slapped my face. Then he left me.

*   *   *

Not one person in the crowd on the square knew that a young woman was crying in the kitchen behind the bakery. I was the only witness.

The afternoon sunlight streaming in through the window had darkened, as the sun began to dip below the roof of the town hall. The man on the square with the popular balloon animals performed now for only a few children. A group of people had gathered around the clock tower to take pictures of the automaton show as the bell struck five.

I knew I had only to call out to the girl, and then I could make my purchase and leave, but I refrained. Her starched apron was slightly too large, which made her seem all the more small and vulnerable. I noticed the perspiration on her neck, her wrinkled cuffs and long fingers, and I imagined how she must look when she is working. I could see her taking the steaming sponge cakes from the oven, piping on the cream, and arranging each strawberry with infinite care. I was certain she would make the finest shortcakes in the world.

*   *   *

Several years after my son died, when I began living alone, I received an odd phone call. The voice was unfamiliar but clearly that of a young man. He sounded a little nervous, yet he spoke politely as he mentioned my son’s name.

“What?” I gasped, for a moment paralyzed.

“Is he at home?” he said.

“No, he’s not,” I managed to say.

“Well then … I just wanted to speak to him about the reunion. For our middle school class. Do you know when he’ll be back?”

I told him he wasn’t home, that he’s living abroad, going to school.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” he said. “I was looking forward to seeing him.” He sounded genuinely disappointed.

“Were you friends?”

“Yes. We were in the theater club together. He was president and I was vice president.”

“The theater club?”

“We won the city competition and went on to the nationals. You remember, we did
Man of Flame
. He played Van Gogh, and I played his brother, Theo. He was always the leading man, the ladies’ man, and I was his sidekick. Not just on stage but in life. He was always in the limelight.”

Somehow it didn’t bother me that he was talking about a completely different person. Nor did I try to correct him. My son had read his picture books so well that it seemed quite likely he might have had a leading role in a play one day.

“Is he still acting?”

“Yes—”

“Really? I thought so. Could you tell him I called?”

“Of course, I will.”

After he had hung up, I held the phone to my ear for a moment, listening to the hum of the dial tone. I never heard from him again.

*   *   *

The bell in the clock tower began to ring. A flock of pigeons lifted into the sky. As the fifth chime sounded, a door beneath the clock opened and a little parade of animated figurines pirouetted out—a few soldiers, a chicken, and a skeleton. Since the clock was very old, the figurines were slightly discolored, their movements stiff and awkward. The chicken’s head swiveled about as if to squawk; the skeleton danced. And then, from the door, an angel appeared, beating her golden wings.

The girl in the kitchen replaced the receiver. I held my breath. She looked down at the phone for a moment, then she heaved a deep sigh and dabbed at her tears with the napkin.

I repeated to myself what I would say when she emerged into the fading light of the shop: “Two strawberry shortcakes, please.”

FRUIT JUICE

It was late in the day, and classes had ended. The library was nearly empty. I sat in a quiet corner, studying, when she appeared from nowhere and startled me out of my book.

“Are you busy this Sunday?” she asked.

Her question flustered me for a moment, I didn’t know what to say. She was staring down at the floor, half hidden behind a bookshelf.

“If you have plans, of course, don’t worry about it.” She held a book in her hand, and absentmindedly rubbed her palm along its spine. I knew her from class, but we had never spoken before, and I had never been this close to her.

“No, I’m not busy,” I said rather brusquely, to hide my confusion.

“Well … I was hoping you’d come with me somewhere.”

Was she asking me out? That seemed to be where this was going. If so, I had no objections. She seemed nice enough. At the same time, though, I knew better than to jump to conclusions—and her invitation felt more like an apology than an attempt at flirtation.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To a French restaurant,” she said with some hesitation, her eyes still fixed on the floor. “I don’t want to go, but I have to. We’ll have lunch … that’s about it. It’ll be painless.” Her whole body seemed to shrink with each word she spoke, as though she hoped to hide behind that bookshelf, deep in the shadows of the library. “I know this must seem kind of random. Just tell me if you don’t want to go.”

Sunlight streamed in through the window to the west, turning her long hair amber. I could hear in the distance the sound of basketballs bouncing against the gymnasium floor.

“Sure, I’d be happy to go,” I said. “Just to have lunch, right? Why not?”

I resisted the urge to press for details, or to ask why she had chosen me of all people to go with her. I worried that if she were forced to say more, she might shrink farther away and disappear altogether.

“Thank you,” she said, with obvious relief. Then, at last, she looked up and smiled slightly, but I felt a pang of disappointment.

*   *   *

“My mother is sick,” the girl told me in the subway on the way to the restaurant. “Did you know she’s in the hospital?” I shook my head. I had heard that she lived alone with her mother, but that was all I knew about her. A rumor had circulated around school that she was someone’s illegitimate child. I didn’t remember much about it.

“She has liver cancer. She won’t live much longer.” Her words were clear and audible over the rumbling of the subway. “The other day she told me that if anything happened to her I should contact this man, that he would help me.”

She pulled a business card from her skirt pocket. It was printed with the name of a relatively well-known politician, a man who had recently served in some important post, as minister of labor or perhaps postmaster general. The edges of the card were creased and worn, as though her mother had been keeping it for some time.

“How bad is she?” I asked, not knowing quite what to say. I was afraid of hurting her.

“Four months in the hospital. I’ve been home alone all that time.”

She was wearing a blouse with a floral pattern and a skirt of some soft material. The collar and cuffs of the blouse were neatly ironed. She looked older in these clothes than she did in her school uniform.

She was an inconspicuous girl, perhaps the quietest in our grade. She almost never spoke in class, and when asked to stand up and translate a passage from English, or to solve a math problem on the board, she did it as discreetly as possible, without fuss. She had no friends to speak of, belonged to no clubs, and she ate her lunch in a corner by herself.

Still, no one bullied her or treated her like an outcast. She wasn’t disagreeable, just easy to ignore. You could even say her silence suited her. The pale skin, the long, straight hair, the shadows under her eyes when she bowed her head—it all lent her a kind of tranquillity that I think we didn’t want to disturb.

But when someone did take notice of her, it seemed she was always apologizing for it—I suppose “apologetic” might be the best word to describe her. “I’m sorry, please ignore me…” You could almost hear her murmur the words, like an incantation, a way of conjuring a still place for herself.

“Are you meeting him for the first time today?” I asked, glancing down at the business card in her hand.

“Yes.”

“He never came to see you, even when you were little?”

“Never,” she said, shaking her head.

She was so close to me I wondered if she could feel my breath. The card trembled in her hand.

*   *   *

A waiter led us into a private room at the back of the restaurant, where the man was already seated at a table too large for three, sipping a garish red cocktail. For some reason I had assumed he would be accompanied by a secretary or a bodyguard, but he was alone.

A chandelier hung from the ceiling and flowers had been arranged around the room. The silverware gleamed, the tablecloth was blindingly white.

They barely greeted each other, exchanging little more than vague, meaningless grunts. She sat down without introducing me, and I realized the moment for such formalities had already passed.

Sitting with her back straight, she studied the menu from top to bottom, though she seemed to have little interest in selecting something to eat. This went on for a while. “Order whatever you like,” the man repeated several times, just to break the unbearable tension, but she was intent to make him stew in silence. I ran my finger along the edge of the elaborately folded napkin.

“Is there anything you don’t like to eat?” he asked.

“No,” we said at nearly the same time.

He ordered a great deal of food, speaking so quickly that the waiter could barely keep up. Clearly he was accustomed to giving orders. The dishes arrived one after another and we made short work of them, our chewing and swallowing the only sound in the room. The man downed another drink.

He was short and solidly built, but he looked older than he did on television. His hair was thinning and the skin on his neck sagged. There were liver spots on his face and hands.

I would have expected a man of his power and position to be more arrogant or condescending, but his daughter had fully succeeded in making him uncomfortable. He groped for topics of conversation and was disconcerted when nothing succeeded in coaxing a response.

“What’s your favorite subject in school?” he said. It was the kind of question you asked a child, and it occurred to me that there were more important topics he might have broached—her mother’s condition, their economic difficulties, perhaps the apology he owed them. I began to worry that my presence was inhibiting him, making things complicated.

“Classics,” she said, setting down her knife and fork and wiping her mouth with her napkin. “And English … and music. I guess music is my favorite.”

“Music, is it? That’s fine. How about you?” he asked me.

I blurted out “Biology” for lack of anything better to say. Biology, P.E.—What did it matter? We were just talking to fill the silence.

“Do you play a sport?”

“No, not really.”

“Ah, they’ve used truffles in this consommé,” he suddenly remarked with obvious pleasure. “Do you like them?”

“I’ve never had them before.”

“They’re something of an acquired taste.… And what do you do when you’re not in school?”

“Play with the cat, do the laundry, listen to music—stuff like that.”

The waiter brought out the fish course. The man had ordered sea bream with a pea-green sauce; his daughter had scallops meunière, I had a steamed lobster.

She ate with impeccable table manners, her back straight, her knees flush together, her feet planted evenly on the floor. She kept her eyes on her plate, and raised them only when answering a question and then only slightly, as though she were looking at a spot near the butter dish at the center of the table.

I glanced over at her whenever I had the chance. Her hair fell in dainty wisps around her face. She had nice features—an intelligent brow, a firm jaw—but she was difficult to read. On the one hand, she could be pretty tough on her father, but at the same time she was her usual apologetic self. She seemed to doubt that she was worthy to be eating these delicious scallops, or even to be here at the table.

Next came the meat course, served with a flourish by several waiters. I was already full, but the two of them went on eating almost greedily, so I forced myself to eat the meat as well.

“Do you play an instrument?” he asked. “The piano? The guitar? The violin, perhaps?”

“No,” she said. “We don’t have any instruments at home.”

He coughed, then his knife struck the plate with a harsh clatter. She shook her head, dismissing him.

I suddenly recalled that I’d spoken with this girl once before, at the beginning of third grade. Why had I forgotten it until now? It was after classes had ended for the day. I was passing the music room, but I stopped, sensing someone was inside. When I looked in, she was standing on tiptoe, reaching up to open the glass door of a cabinet. She was alone. I don’t know why I stood there watching her. I must have been curious. Or perhaps it was the glimpse of snow-white skin I saw on her wrist as she raised her arm. The cabinet door creaked and she took a deep breath as she reached for the violin inside. She examined it, almost fearfully, and then clutched it to her chest. “What are you doing?” I said. But I shouldn’t have interrupted her; I should have left her alone with the violin. She jumped at the sound of my voice. “Nothing,” she said, “I’m not doing anything,” and hurriedly replaced the violin in the cabinet. One of the strings must have struck the door, and a sound like the cry of a small bird floated across the room.

Dessert arrived: strawberry cake covered in a thick layer of whipped cream. The man wadded up his stained napkin and set it on the table.

“You’re welcome to your father’s as well,” he said, sliding his plate toward her.

An icy gust seemed to pass between them, and the word “father” hung in the air. I glanced over again and saw her devouring her cake, lips shiny with cream.

“No, thank you,” she said.

*   *   *