Rockaway (18 page)

 

SHE AWAKENS TO the sound she's grown used to: crickets, grasshoppers, and cicadas, swarming bees, their relentless insect rasp. But the clear white light through the windows is seashore light, greenless and blank, and she remembers, after a moment, that she's back in Rockaway.

The buzz of wings in her ears transmutes to crashing waves, and instead of diapers and fruit and oatmeal she smells turpentine, linseed oil, the meager blots of paint on her palettes. And curry, left in the air from Avery's dinner the night before, the scent that had greeted her as she
walked into the kitchen, hot, tired, yoked with her suitcase and bags of fading vegetables.

“Ah, you are home now! And Emily is having her baby?” He'd beamed, as if beside himself to see her back, and heaped her a plate of basmati rice. She realized that with Bernadette in Sri Lanka the empty house must have seemed very lonely, and so she ate her dinner in the kitchen with him, just to be polite. They sat facing each other and sweating at the rusting, unstable TV tables he and Bernadette always ate on. She showed him the zucchini and tomatoes and basil she brought from Connecticut, and over their curry he boomed for her a long speech on Sri Lankan produce. She finally interrupted to ask if anyone had called while she was gone, if there were any messages. Only her parents, he told her. They were missing her, looking for her, sounding worried, why was she not answering her cell? No, no, there is no emergency, but they called many times; they will call again tomorrow. She must be missing them, too, he stated loudly, When is she going home, Why did she not tell them she was going to Emily's, She must call them, She must let them know she is fine, When is she going home? All proclaimed in his thundering voice, yelling rebuke at her, chastising her stubborn, pointless flight, her hideous self-indulgent selfishness, and she winced over her plate. Then she remembered how he and Bernadette used to yell at each other, blasting the house with their lilts, how she
used to cringe, sitting on her bed and eating her dinner in her room upstairs, at the harsh familiar clap of their words until the day she realized, spotting the beige plastic snailed in each of their ears, they were both just hard of hearing.

She promised Avery in a modified return yell that she'd call her parents first thing in the morning. He nodded, satisfied. What an idiot she was, to think Marty might have called, looking for her. Wondering when she was coming back. She hadn't called him from Connecticut. Let
him
wait for the phone to ring, she'd thought. Let him wonder about her, what she was doing, what kind of small or large gap his absence might be creating in her carefully occupied-else-where day. Let him wonder if the lack of him digs in sharp, if it leaves a print. Or if it's just rinsed away, like a footshape in sand swirls off to grainy water beneath a wave.

It's Friday night, she thought, watching Avery chew. He must be at Itzak's for shabbes dinner. Practically down the street. She pictured the family singing like some flame-of-God, End of Days church choir, Itzak pouring her a fat snifter of brandy, Marty nudging over his prayer book so she could see, under the table placing her hand on his thigh.

She didn't bother to ask Avery if anyone else called. Instead, she inquired if he'd heard from Bernadette, how she was doing.

“Yes, she is calling me from home every Sunday. The surgery for cataracts is very successful. I am very relieved.”

I think I left something to drink in the fridge, she thought to herself, and squeezed herself up to look. Two Heinekens, good. German beer, my shabbes Kiddush. The thought amused her. Should dig up some storm or birthday candles around here, recite the blessing. Avery'd get a kick out of that. She chuckled to herself.

“She is staying now with our oldest daughter Celeste, in Colombo. Our home used to be there, before we are coming here to New York. But when we married, we lived first in Trincomalee. Also by the sea. Always, we are living by the sea.”

“That's nice.”

“Here, I will show you . . .” He got up eagerly, his swollen knees almost tipping the TV table, and disappeared to rummage through boxes in the storeroom off the kitchen.

“Oh, no, don't bother,” Sarah called. She hadn't a clue where Sri Lanka was, didn't really care. “That's okay,” she called again, pouring her beer into a glass. She expected an atlas or a globe, a travelogue of every single, poignant place by the sea he and Bernadette ever lived. Her mouth burned from the curry, and she hurried to swallow half the glass of beer before he came back.

He returned with a flowered, gold-ringed photo album, moved her food aside, and propped it open at the first page. A sepia-toned wedding photo of Avery and Bernadette clutching hands, younger by forty years, with thick hair and full-toothed smiles, their stretched lips a brownish
black, his military uniform bland as mushroom, her satin gown a dull spread of milk.

“Nice,” she said lamely. “You both look really happy.” She wondered if they'd shouted their vows at each other. She finished the beer and opened the second bottle.

“And here, we are on our honeymoon in Bombay. Here is our first child, Peter, with Bernadette in the hospital. And here is our daughter Celeste, and here is Bernadette after giving birth to our younger son Kirin, and here are Celeste and Nissa at school . . . Nissa, she is now a doctor!” The cellophane crackled up, peeling back from the smiling photos like a layer of dead skin, and he carefully smoothed each page down as he went.

“Yeah,” she said, sipping her beer. “Bernadette told me. It's wonderful.”

He passed through the beaming births, parties, and school graduations of five children and seven grandchildren. By Kirin's third birthday the photos turned to Kodachrome, the children's cadmium yellow plastic toys, school uniforms in barite greens and aniline blues, the girls' lipsticks red as alizarin beets. All primary hues, lurid as parrots. The photos reminded her of the book of shells upstairs, and her own little half-painted shell, all those vivid, glossy color plates putting her attempt at a shell to shame.

A photograph is a dead image, a painting gives life!
Not always, she thought. Not necessarily.

“Peter and Kirin are living here now with their families in New Jersey. We are hoping to bring Celeste and her sisters soon, with their families. They are grown-up women now, of course, but it would be good, we would like to have them here.”

“That's nice,” Sarah said again. She gingerly poked the album aside, so she could get back to her food. “Could we . . . ?”

“Oh, I am sorry. Excuse me.” Avery closed the album, and wedged it between his thick thigh and the arm of the chair.

“So, when is Bernadette coming home?”

“Very soon. I am hoping to have her back soon, we must ready the house.”

“For what?”

“For winter. We must take the screens down. I must check the shutters and the storm windows. It is getting very cold here, during the winter months.”

“Sort of hard to imagine that.” She waved her hand in front of her face to indicate heat.

“Ah, this is too spicy for you, this food?” he inquired.

“No no, it's great.”

“It is hot now, but then unexpectedly will be very cold. Bernadette helps me with the house every year, now. I am too old to do this all alone.”

“Oh, you're not old, Avery.” She guessed he wanted her to say that.

“I am sixty-four!” he announced. “Bernadette and I are married forty-two years.”

“Congratulations.” She toasted him with the last of her beer. She got up, looked again in the refrigerator, although she knew it was no use.

“Tell me, you are seeing Pearl at Emily's? Her hip is better now?” he asked. Yes, she told him, Nana's hip is good, much better. And yes, Nana will be coming home next week. Very soon. Just a few days. Coming back to Rockaway, back to her own house. Sarah looked over Avery's bald head, at the calendar hanging on the kitchen wall, a giveaway from the pharmacy on 116th Street. It still showed August—a picture of a robust, cheery octogenarian in a deck chair, holding a kitten and a bottle of Centrum Silver—but no, Sarah remembered, it was actually September. September 5th. Almost fall.

“Well, that is good, Pearl coming home. I am missing her.”

“Yeah, Nana's great.”

“A wonderful woman.”

“She's so sweet, letting me stay here all this time.”

“And her return is good for you as well, then! You will be going home, too!” he declared. “You must miss your own home, with your family. Eat more, the spicy food is good in this heat.”

He reached to spoon out more curry, but she got up again, hastily, almost knocking over the rickety little table,
and told him she was full, thanks, the trip back from Connecticut was really tiring, a train, a subway, a bus, all just to get home, or get here, a long day, sorry, she really just needed to go to bed. Looking in cabinets as she said it, searching,
There's
something, she thought, thank God. She said good night to Avery; he shrugged, and pleasantly, silently nodded good night. She dropped her beer bottles in the trashcan, stood awkwardly until he moved his dishes to the sink, his back to her, then, reaching into the cabinet, grabbed the dusty, unopened bottle of cooking sherry. As she left, suitcase in one hand, sherry in the other, she saw Avery lean to reach into the trashcan; he removed her bottles and dropped them into the glass-recycling bag with a dull double-clink. She saw him retrieve out the photo album, and open it again on the empty TV table. He started right back at the beginning wedding photo, turning and smoothing the pages very slowly. The cellophane crackled after her up the stairs.

STILL IN HER sleep T-shirt, she makes herself coffee with the last of an expensive bag of beans. She counts them out into the grinder. Twenty-nine beans. She can't believe it takes twenty-nine beans just to make one cup of coffee. It
seems excessive, wasteful. She finds rye bread dusted with hoarfrost in the freezer, but there is no milk. The butter she'd left in its dish on the counter has gone rancid in the heat. She will have to go shopping, ride the pink bicycle into town. Maybe stop at the bakery for a fresh seeded rye. Or a challah. No, wait, it's Saturday, they'll be closed. Should've brought a loaf of zucchini bread back from Emily's. The thought of going anywhere, doing anything, of pedaling thirty torrid blocks just to buy food, exhausts her. And what's the point, you're leaving soon, why spend the money, why bother stocking up on food? She inspects the refrigerator again, wishing she'd saved one of the Heinekens. She breaks off a slice of frozen rye bread and gnaws at it, presses it against her overhot cheek.

The house is very still. Avery, he's working at the dime store, she thinks. She looks out the kitchen window, toward the ocean, sipping her coffee. Bitter. Probably that weird tap water here, all those minerals, God knows what's in it. She brushes a caraway seed from her chin. Maybe go for a long walk if it cools off later, if the beach isn't too crowded. Maybe even go swimming, if the jellyfish aren't bad. You can't leave here without even once going in the ocean, how crazy would that be? What a waste. Nana's coming back soon, you'll have to leave soon. Go home. Go somewhere.
Tick tick tick
. It's so hot, the air so airless and flat. Why didn't Avery ever install a ceiling fan in here? She could call Emily, see how they're all
getting along. How the baby's doing. If they've planned for his Bar Mitzvah yet, if they've started his college fund. She could unpack, do laundry. Then start repacking. She spots the wall calendar again, August still hanging. She tears off the old month, crumples up the page, and tosses it in the bag of paper recycling. There, September, 2001. A photo of a trim, business-suited mother doling out One-A-Day Vitamins to her orange-juice-sipping children. You have been here almost four months. The clamshell she found on the beach her first day is still on the kitchen sink, now cradling a dirty-looking, flesh-colored sponge.