Apart From Love (27 page)

It brings back a memory. As a ten years old boy I used to stand right here, leaning against this very door, just as I am now. Wide-eyed I would stare in awe at my dad, watching him go through his morning ritual, which never varied. I can see him so vividly in my mind.
 

First, dad would soak a small towel in steaming hot water, and hold it firmly against his face, his eyes winking at me from the fogged up mirror. Then his eyes would turn serious, as he would go back to the business at hand.

He would lift the wet brush, using it to apply shaving cream to his chin, swirling the thing around and around, until the lather had formed into stiff peaks. At this point, he would put the brush down
—but
not before painting the tip of my nose with a dollop of white, fluffy cream.

Then he would stretch his skin between his fingers, until it was as tight as a drum, and angle the blade to it, and go through his first pass, traveling along the grain, shaving the hair with short, rhythmic strokes, and finishing it off with long ones. At this point he would bend down and let me help, let me lather his face for him, before straightening his back, and coming back up to the mirror, to study his jawline as if exploring some exotic, heavily wooded landscape. Then with a sure hand, dad would go through his final pass
—
the more dangerous one, when most accidents occur
—
this time, traveling against the grain.

It must be late afternoon, maybe five o’clock by now. My father, I figure, is about to come back. And here I am: his flesh, his blood. I am l
ooking directly at the mirror, wondering, Where is that boy? Is he lost? Can I still find him, hiding here, inside these eyes? And who are you, I ask myself, a traitor?
 

In this spot, I am nowhere. And nowhere is a hard place to escape. So after a while I start wondering, What now? What shall I do? Now that I am home, where can I go?
 

I have no will. I have no curiosity. Of its own, my finger is passing with barely a touch along the blade until suddenly, catching on a spot, it halts. Rust, perhaps. I raise my hand over to the light, careful not to tighten my hold over the thing. A cold shine can be seen in intervals, shooting up and down between my fingers along the metallic handle. I can sense the edge.
 

I can see my wrist, a vein twisting through it with a hard pulse. I can see the delicate lines, guessing their way across the skin. How frail is life. Better close your eyes. Close your eyes, I say. Do it.

I close my eyes and with a light, effortless relief, my thoughts are lifted, flying away from the moment. They are lifted, turning over the edge, cutting up and away, heading for a far, far time in the past.
 

I have no will. I have no curiosity.
 

What now, I ask. What if I have no blood. What if I am no longer here?

All of a sudden I imagine I hear voices on the other side, which makes me hurry up and with a shaky hand, lock the bathroom door. I glance at the mirror, seeing nothing. Nothing but murky glass.
 

And it is at that moment that someone gives a knock, and a strong jerk to the handle, and cries my name, “Ben? Open up! Please, Ben, open up!”
 

I freeze, feeling too numb, too indifferent to even think of an answer, because I may have spent hours here, in this stuffy place, and who the hell cares? I, for one, do not care about anything and anybody. Really, I do not. Damn it all! I am free of emotion, and so should everyone be, in a perfect life. I have no pity, I tell myself, no pity for anyone—least of all for me.
 

For a while, the noise! It agitates me. Then—silence.
 

So I hang my head, and I am not really listening, not hearing a thing, not giving a damn. Then in a blink, tears well in my eyes, which is when the door bursts open, and dad is there, throwing his arms around me. And despite my resistance, he hugs me, and without saying a single word, he pulls me out of there—
not before taking a moment to do something which to you, may seem dull
—
but to me, it is truly special:
 

Loosening his embrace, dad stretches out his right hand, and lathers his brush. Then, with a quick touch, he paints the tip of my nose
—
the way he used to do back then, in the old times
—
with a dollop of soft, fluffy cream; which turns me for an instant, as if by magic, into that long lost boy of years ago.
 

As Told by Anita

I
don’t know how we got to this place, Lenny and me, and I don’t really care to know. Let’s just say that what’s happening between us isn’t exactly clear. Yes, let’s leave it at that. At first I tried to tell myself he won’t touch me because of the pregnancy. I refused to admit that the heat between us had been cooling off even before that—but now, like, there’s no warmth left here no more.
 

Like ma used to say, when she called her customers to offer her usual special—I mean, the three dollar palm reading special—she said, “No, really? No warmth left? Trust me, it just looks that way—till you touch them embers. Red hot passion like that, it can’t never die out. But see, it can change its color and blacken him inside, and like, turn to hate, or contempt, or jealousy.”
 

“You better be careful,” she said, “‘cause when you least expect it, it’s gonna flare out again.”

Which forces me to take a hard look at where I stand, and like, avoid wasting time dreaming, or wondering about matters of the heart, fluid matters which may take me nowhere in a hurry, and which no one—not even ma—can’t never predict. I have a hunch that I must be real careful now, and stop acting on a hunch.
 

From now on I’m gonna knock myself out doing something totally different, like planning every one of my next moves.
 

At this point there’s one worry which is, like, blocking everything else in my head, and this is it: I’ve fainted once, I may faint again. So I can’t go on alone. And even if I could, I shouldn’t, really.

I must find someone here I can trust, someone willing to hold my hand and steady me, in case I’m too weak to stand straight. I don’t give a damn what this someone thinks of me. I swear I can take it, ‘cause now that I’m pregnant, it’s more than just me. My little one is curled here inside me. I must take care of him. That’s all that matters.
 
I so wish ma was here. Without her, the place I’m gonna hear the sound—the sweet sound of my baby’s heartbeat—is gonna be among strangers.
 

With her gone, where can I go? To whom shall I turn? Don’t laugh, even if—on the surface—my solution may seem absurd, totally absurd to you. I reckon I must win the trust of the women in this family, which is to say them Rosenblatt sisters, armed with their knitting needles, and spearheaded by dear old aunt Hadassa.
 

At the time I
told her not to trouble herself with coming to my wedding, and to stay as far as she could from me, which may have been the wrong thing to say to the old witch
—
but boy did it feel right!
 

You may think me crazy, totally crazy to even consider her. And maybe I am, ‘cause how can I forget: it was aunt Hadassa who came up with that bright idea, the idea of abortion. With the sweetest fake smile you could imagine, she told me that for sure, there was still time, it wasn’t too late to have it, and like, it could make things so, so much easier for me, because the way she sees it, I like to run around, and have my fun and stuff.
 

So right there and then I had the best fun I’d had in a long while: it was like, such a pleasure for me to let her have it! I swear, I was rude as hell! I shouted at her with such goddam delight, so she would know who’s who in this place, ‘cause guess what: the future of this family is right here, in my womb. Now don’t you forget it!

But from now on I must swallow my pride—even if it chokes me to death. I must hold my tongue with them sisters, and like, be nice, and show respect, which isn’t gonna be easy for me, ‘cause you can look far and wide—but for sure, you can’t find no witches more uglier than them.
 

I remind myself: above all, survival. So I must do something to turn them around, somehow, from hating me. I must, like, charm them into thinking of my baby as one of their own—even if to them, I’m always gonna remain the stranger.
 

Me, I’m used to being the enemy, but if they know what’s good for them, they’re gonna come around real soon and make peace.
 

It’s in my power to bring them out of that slow death—that endless, idle boredom of old age, and make them come alive again, the way it must have been for them back then, twenty-seven years ago, when Ben was a newborn baby.
 

I can just picture them spinsters, crowding around the crib, fat bellies hanging over the little wool blanket, trying to walk on tiptoe, stepping over each other’s warts, and carrying a bucketload of free advice, for which they wasn’t even asked, let alone thanked, ‘cause you see, there he was, so, so frail, and always crying it seemed.
 

So they must have wondered, like, was the little bundle of joy hungry or wet or sleepy, or was he just too cold or warm or sick or something. I can just see it in my head. They would tell his mama to burp him, and to clean his little tush and powder it—even though the three of them hadn’t taken care of one, I mean, not even once in their life.
 

And Natasha, she must have been close to tears, ‘cause like, being new to being a new mama, I bet she wasn’t sure if she’d done things right, and she couldn’t tell if there was enough milk in her breasts, ‘cause like, the baby won’t stop wailing. And them nipples, I’m sure they was hurting like hell.

It would be just like aunt Hadassa to say that if she was in Natasha’s place—which thank God, she wasn’t—she would ignore the pain. My, my, she would say, never mind a little discomfort, because you know, breast feeding is not for sissies, dear.
 

And she won’t back down, I’m sure—even though the three of them hadn’t done nothing even slightly close to anything of the sort.
 

And when all that advice won’t do much in the way of calming the baby down, they would tell Natasha that it was fine, just ignore the crying, because anyway, it was meant to make his lungs strong and healthy—even though aunt Hadassa had to stuff her big ears with a couple of cotton wads, ‘cause in spite of her own advice, I bet she couldn’t stand hearing it no more.
 

Now I could make her feel needed again. I could even stun her, by inviting her right in, to meddle in my affairs in full view; which is what I did last night, when I couldn’t take that noise in my head no more, I mean the old alarm clock, out there in the hall, which had become awful pesky with that loud tick-tock, tick-tock.
 

First I switched the light off, and held my hand just under the bulb to feel the air cooling off, and sat there in the darkening kitchen for a quite a long while, trying to amuse myself by touching my belly, and thinking about my baby, and about his future, about the long years ahead, which helped me tune out the minutes, ticking away.
 

Then I stood back up, trying to find my reflection, which looked real small and buckled right there, on the round surface of that black bulb. I wiped my tears—even though I didn’t have no sleeves on me—after which I went to the hall and piled some papers and stuff, right on top of the alarm clock, to muffle that sound.
 

Then I called her up, and said, like, “Aunt Hadassa, I need you—”

“What for?” she said, real cautious.

And I said, “I have an appointment, like, tomorrow at ten—”

And she said, “You do, dear? Nu, what for?”
 

And by the acid tone in her voice I figured she was thinking that by now, it was too late anyway, and that I should’ve listened to her when there was still time, time for a proper abortion, because my, my, now it was week number twelve already.