The Border of Paradise: A Novel (4 page)

On one of those days I was sitting on a stool in that robe when the bell rang. I got up and peered through the peephole at Mrs. Orlich. The fish-eye effect of the peephole made her look like a Kewpie doll in an enormous camel coat.

“Hello?” she asked. “Francine?”

“No,” I said.

“Oh! David? Are your parents home?”

“They’re not back from church yet. They’ll be here in a little bit.”

“Oh.”

I wondered if she wanted me to invite her in to wait. Not wanting her to, I didn’t ask, and she didn’t inquire. Finally she said, “Do you think they’ll be very long? I’d like to speak to your mother.”

“They should be back soon.”

“All right.” She turned to look back toward the street. It wasn’t snowing, but she must have been cold, because her nose and ears were bright pink, and she shivered even with that coat on. She didn’t seem to want to leave. “I’m praying for you,” she said. Then she hurried away, and I watched her leave with astonishment. Praying for me? Did the Orlichs chat over dinner about how David Nowak was damned? Did they speculate about whether he still said his prayers? (I did, fervently, daily, nightly, as if to make up for my lost Sundays.) What must Marianne think? I began to chew on my lip, shortly feeling the hot sting of a wound. I’d convinced myself that Marianne, whom I hadn’t spoken to since Christmas, hadn’t noticed my absence, but if Mrs. Orlich was praying for me…

My parents came home soon after. I was still at the kitchen table. “What’s wrong with your lip?” Matka asked, unbuttoning her coat.

I said something about biting down wrong on a piece of toast.

“It looks like it hurts. Put something cold on it.” She removed her coat and hung it in the hall closet. “We have leftover pot roast.” She glanced at my father, who climbed the stairs without acknowledging either of us, and in his silence I was certain he blamed me. All of Greenpoint knew that the heir of the Nowak Piano Company was ready for the funny farm, thanks to my sartorial prohibitions.

“When did you have your toast?” she asked.

“Breakfast.”

“You still want pot roast? Your father is probably going to want to eat soon.” She entered the kitchen. “And you’re wearing my robe. I don’t know why you do these things—these things that you know Ojciec won’t like.”

I tugged at the belt. Finally I said, “Mrs. Orlich stopped by.”

Matka opened a cupboard. “What did Caroline want?”

“She wanted to talk to you, but she didn’t say about what.”

“Did she leave a message?”

“She didn’t say much,” I said, and hoped that would end it.

“You mean you don’t want to tell me what she said. Go on.”

“She really didn’t say anything to me,” I said. “She said she would come back and tell you herself.”

It was true. Hours later, my father was hidden away in his study, my mother was cleaning the kitchen, and I was in my room, reading, when I heard the doorbell. Mrs. Orlich had returned. Sensitized to the sound of my name, I put down my pen, went to my open bedroom door, and stood in the hallway to the left of the top of the stairs, which allowed me a view of Mrs. Orlich’s cobalt hat through the railing.

“Please, come in and have something to drink,” my mother said.

“No, no,” said Mrs. Orlich. “I’ll be out of your hair in a moment.” She said something else, so quietly that I couldn’t hear, and then: “Francine…”

“Yes?”

“I want you to know that I don’t think ill of you or Peter at all. Not because of David. I know that you’re doing the best that you can with him.”

“That’s kind of you, Caroline.”

“I mean it. I wouldn’t come to your house, in this weather, without Bunny, if I didn’t mean it. I—I know you’re good people.
I know that David is a good boy. You see, I think that his type of neurosis is only temporary. I know an analyst who says so. Now don’t worry—I didn’t mention your family by name, of course, but I’m acquainted with an analyst, a very good one, and I took it upon myself to ask him what he thought of the situation as I presented it in the abstract. He said that David was unlikely to have any serious, permanent neurosis. A phase. Hormones. Adolescence. Boys, especially very bright ones, are so likely to have trouble.” In a louder rush she added, “I also wanted to let you know that my Marianne has taken an interest in your son. I think he made quite an impression on her at the Christmas party. I know she’s been looking for him in church; I guess you could say she has an infatuation. And I know they’re still young, and these matters are so far off, of course, but I’ll let you know right now that I’d be happy to have Marianne marry your son one day. Out of all of the boys in the neighborhood, you have such a sweet, good-looking boy. I don’t think ill of your family in the slightest.”

I was afraid that my mother would climb the stairs and see me, so I ducked back into my room and sat in my chair, staring at my World’s Fair poster with its painted, abstract sphere. In my room the walls were a patchy white, and there was a single window above my bed for the moonlight and the nightmares to come crawling in. As I’d guessed, I soon heard Matka’s footsteps, and then she was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed.

“My bug,” she said, though I was too old to be called that childhood nickname. She studied me for a while as if deciding something, and then she left. I hadn’t said a word, but my mind was shouting,
Marianne!
I even found myself smiling. And then, in the middle of all that happiness while I dazed and dreamed, I heard my mother shriek my name, and as if waking from a deep sleep, I staggered down the hall and into their bedroom.

My father was lying on the floor, pulling his shirt from his chest and moaning. I’d never heard him make such a sound; it was like a noise that I’d think a moose would make, but it was Ojciec crying out, and it terrified all the happiness right out of me. My mother screamed my name again, and told me to call our doctor.

As my mother drove us to the hospital behind the paramedics, I thought of things to say and then discarded them. When
you’ve got so many things to say, you end up saying none of them; there’s never any way to know what is the right thing to say, and I didn’t want to upset her further. But the truth was that I resented Ojciec for interrupting my tiny moment of triumph—one that even Matka could share in.

He’d had a heart attack. The stress of reviving the manufactory after the war had done a number on him, and Dr. Herms said it was nothing to sniff at. But my father’s “ticker,” as Dr. Herms called it, could last Ojciec to old age if he took better care of himself. He listed a number of suggestions, which Matka took down in her notebook. God willing, Dr. Herms said, Peter would live to see his great-grandchildren’s christenings. I couldn’t help but daydream that those great-grandchildren would have Orlich blood in them, mixed with mine. What kind of son thinks these things in such calamitous circumstances?

I thought Matka would burst with joy as we walked to St. Jadwiga. She’d sneak looks at me, making sure I was still there, and then look at Ojciec as if to say,
Look, I have done it.
I’d been to the Cloisters with my parents on occasion, more for “tourism within New York” reasons than anything, on par with visiting Lady Liberty, but St. Jadwiga was the holiest place that I knew, and entering the double wooden doors was obviously my return as the prodigal son. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know who would treat me as though I had never left, and who would act as though my afflictions—whatever they knew of my afflictions—were contagious. I was afraid that someone would accuse me of heresy, or possibly worse. But I came in flanked by my parents, and immediately we were greeted by the Orlichs, who descended like a flock of friendly gray pigeons, including Marianne, who had on an ashy sweater glittering with beads. “David, it’s
so
good to see you,” she said, her face brightening, and she grabbed my hand. I was so surprised by her warm skin that I flinched and almost pulled away, but she drew me close to a pew, and let go to briefly kneel and make the sign of the cross before scooting deep into the center, where she patted the wood beside her for me to sit down.

My parents were still talking to the Orlichs. As I moved closer to Marianne, while still maintaining a safe distance of about a
foot and a half, I saw Mr. and Mrs. Pawlowski approach them. The group enfolded my parents, and everyone immediately looked at me. Their voices lowered even though I couldn’t hear what they were saying to begin with, and in their murmur I heard someone say “immense disappointment.” The phrase leaped out at me like a jackrabbit.

The church began to fill—the hefty butcher, straining in his suit, with his wife and three girls like something out of a fairy tale; the moron with a flattened face, who brought his widowed mother sorrow, and who also had a persistent cough that often interrupted holy contemplation; the Stopkas with young Emily and her older, tomboy sister, who was at that time twenty-two and neither married nor dating, and who I am sure is a lesbian somewhere now and surely happier than I am—all the people came in, and Marianne put her hand in mine, and I squeezed it, mostly from terror, but hoping that she would interpret it as affection. “Look,” she said, the interior falling to a hush, “let’s make room for our families.”

Though she never said so, my return to St. Jadwiga also sparked Matka’s next suggestion: that I spend time tutoring Marianne in Latin. She was interested in Latin, and the local girls’ school, St. Agnes, wasn’t an institution that placed much importance on the education of young women other than to make them amiable brides, or maybe nuns. And I’m sure that Mrs. Orlich had a hand in the arrangement, too, ending in a conspiracy of study sessions that doubled as playdates, with Marianne and me being lightly supervised in living rooms while our mothers sat at someone’s kitchen table and drank tea or wine.

In the beginning there was the bright spark that was Marianne; next there was the magnetism that drew us together and prickled my skin; and then, finally, the intimate conversations that served as kindling for a bonfire.

She wasn’t naturally gifted at languages. Her grammar was awful, and she found it difficult to retain almost any amount of vocabulary. Still, I liked spending time with her, this girl who brought beauty into my life and kept my afternoons from being long and empty. Later I realized that this—to not have to ask for
anything from a person, and to be contented still by her existence—is a great gift, and one that I wish I’d appreciated more when I had it.

On one of those infinite, limited days, in the early weeks of summer, Marianne asked, “Do you think I would make for a good nun?”

“A nun?” I thought of the nuns at my school in their habits, smacking students with rulers. “I can’t imagine you living that kind of life.”

The corner of her mouth twitched, and I hurriedly added, “But what do I know? The only nuns I know are the ones at school, and I’ve never known anyone who’s become one.”

“I know how ridiculous it sounds.”

“No, not ridiculous,” I said, knowing that I’d disappointed her, and she rolled her eyes at me.

That summer, Marianne spent an inordinate amount of her time in St. Jadwiga, praying for hours, and when she wasn’t praying, she was helping Father Danuta with feeding and clothing the poor. Marianne didn’t tell me any of this herself; I learned of it from Mrs. Orlich, who had become attached to Matka, and now came to our house two or three times a week to see my antisocial mother.

“That girl,” Mrs. Orlich said, “will be the death of me. Of course, we consider ourselves as observant as any other family in the neighborhood, but this is an extreme Bunny and I just don’t feel comfortable with.”

Matka said, “It can’t hurt for her to do some charity.”

“It’s not just charity. Of course I’m fine with charity and good works, but she prays for hours, too. The amount of time she spends praying, she might as well be praying for everyone in Greenpoint, one at a time. And she keeps mentioning joining a convent after she graduates.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that. It’s not unheard of for girls to be intrigued by a religious vocation when they’re young. I imagine it’s a phase.”