Tell Me a Riddle (11 page)

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Authors: Tillie Olsen

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BOOK: Tell Me a Riddle
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Page 43
around me. No more in
my
house. You go to them if you like.''
"Kind he is to visit. And you, like ice."
"A babbler. All my life around babblers. Enough !"
"She's even worse, Dad? Then let her stew a while," advised Nancy. "You can't let it destroy you; it's a psychological thing, maybe too far gone for any of us to help."
So he let her stew. More and more she lay silent in bed, and sometimes did not even get up to make the meals. No longer was the tongue-lashing inevitable if he left the coffee cup where it did not belong, or forgot to take out the garbage or mislaid the broom. The birds grew bold that summer and for once pocked the pears, undisturbed.
A bellyful of bitterness and every day the same quarrel in a new way and a different old grievance the quarrel forced her to enter and relive. And the new torment: I am not really sick, the doctor said it, then why do I feel so sick?
One night she asked him: "You have a meeting tonight? Do not go. Stay . . . with me."
He had planned to watch "This Is Your Life," but half sick himself from the heavy heat, and sickening therefore the more after the brooks and woods of the Haven, with satisfaction he grated:
"Hah, Mrs. Live Alone And Like It wants company all of a sudden. It doesn't seem so good the time of solitary when she was a girl exile in Siberia. 'Do not go. Stay with me.' A new song for Mrs. Free As A Bird. Yes, I am going out, and while I am gone chew this aloneness good, and think how you keep us both from where if you want people, you do not need to be alone."
"Go, go. All your life you have gone without me."
 
Page 44
After him she sobbed curses he had not heard in years, old-country curses from their childhood: Grow, oh shall you grow like an onion, with your head in the ground. Like the hide of a drum shall you be, beaten in life, beaten in death. Oh shall you be like a chandelier, to hang, and to burn. . . .
She was not in their bed when he came back. She lay on the cot on the sun porch. All week she did not speak or come near him; nor did he try to make peace or care for her.
He slept badly, so used to her next to him. After all the years, old harmonies and dependencies deep in their bodies; she curled to him, or he coiled to her, each warmed, warming, turning as the other turned, the nights a long embrace.
It was not the empty bed or the storm that woke him, but a faint singing.
She
was singing. Shaking off the drops of rain, the lightning riving her lifted face, he saw her so; the cot covers on the floor.
''This is a private concert?" he asked. "Come in, you are wet."
"I can breathe now," she answered; "my lungs are rich." Though indeed the sound was hardly a breath.
"Come in, come in." Loosing the bamboo shades. "Look how wet you are." Half helping, half carrying her, still faint-breathing her song.
A Russian love song of fifty years ago.
He had found a buyer, but before he told her, he called together those children who were close enough to come. Paul, of course, Sammy from New Jersey, Hannah from Connecticut, Vivi from Ohio.
With a kindling of energy for her beloved visitors,
 
Page 45
she arrayed the house, cooked and baked. She was not prepared for the solemn after-dinner conclave, they too probing in and tearing. Her frightened eyes watched from mouth to mouth as each spoke.
His stories were eloquent and funny of her refusal to go back to the doctor; of the scorned invitations; of her stubborn silence or the bile ''like a Niagara"; of her contrariness: "If I clean it's no good how I cleaned; if I don't clean, I'm still a master who thinks he has a slave."
(Vinegar he poured on me all his life; I am well marinated; how can I be honey now?)
Deftly he marched in the rightness for moving to the Haven; their money from social security free for visiting the children, not sucked into daily needs and into the house; the activities in the Haven for him; but mostly the Haven for
her:
her health, her need of care, distraction, amusement, friends who shared her interests.
"This does offer an outlet for Dad," said Paul; "he's always been an active person. And economic peace of mind isn't to be sneezed at, either. I could use a little of that myself."
But when they asked: "And you, Ma, how do you feel about it?" could only whisper:
"For him it is good. It is not for me. I can no longer live between people."
"You lived all your life
for
people," Vivi cried.
"Not with." Suffering doubly for the unhappiness on her children's faces.
"You have to find some compromise," Sammy insisted. "Maybe sell the house and buy a trailer. After forty-seven years there's surely some way you can find to live in peace."
 
Page 46
''There is no help, my children. Different things we need."
"Then live alone!" He could control himself no longer. "I have a buyer for the house. Half the money for you, half for me. Either alone or with me to the Haven. You think I can live any longer as we are doing now?"
"Ma doesn't have to make a decision this minute, however you feel, Dad," Paul said quickly, "and you wouldn't want her to. Let's let it lay a few months, and then talk some more."
"I think I can work it out to take Mother home with me for a while," Hannah said. "You both look terrible, but especially you, Mother. I'm going to ask Phil to have a look at you."
"Sure," cracked Sammy. "What's the use of a doctor husband if you can't get free service out of him once in a while for the family? And absence might make the heart. . . you know."
"There was something after all," Paul told Nancy in a colorless voice. "That was Hannah's Phil calling. Her gall bladder.... Surgery."
"Her
gall
bladder. If that isn't classic. 'Bitter as gall'talk of psychosom"
He stepped closer, put his hand over her mouth, and said in the same colorless, plodding voice. "We have to get Dad. They operated at once. The cancer was everywhere, surrounding the liver, everywhere. They did what they could . . . at best she has a year. Dad . . . we have to tell him."
II
Honest in his weakness when they told him, and that she was not to know. "I'm not an actor. She'll know
 
Page 47
right away by how I am. Oh that poor woman. I am old too, it will break me into pieces. Oh that poor woman. She will spit on me; 'So my sickness was how I live.' Oh Paulie, how she will be, that poor woman. Only she should not suffer.... I can't stand sickness, Paulie, I can't go with you.''
But went. And play-acted.
"A grand opening and you did not even wait for me. . . . A good thing Hannah took you with her."
"Fashion teas I needed. They cut out what tore in me; just in my throat something hurts yet. . . . Look! so many flowers, like a funeral. Vivi called, did Hannah tell you? And Lennie from San Francisco, and Clara; and Sammy is coming." Her gnome's face pressed happily into the flowers.
It is impossible to predict in these cases, but once over the immediate effects of the operation, she should have several months of comparative wellbeing.
The money, where will come the money?
Travel with her, Dad. Don't take her home to the old associations. The other children will want to see her.
The money, where will I wring the money?
Whatever happens, she is not to know. No, you can't ask her to sign papers to sell the house; nothing to upset her. Borrow instead, then after. . . .
I had wanted to leave you each a few dollars to make life easier, as other fathers do. There will be nothing left now. (Failure! you and your "business is exploitation." Why didn't you make it when it could be made?Is that what you're thinking of me, Sammy?)

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