Before My Life Began (39 page)

“We've always worried a bit about Gail, as you know, yet I find, in truth, since she's with you—since I've come to know you somewhat—that I don't worry anymore.”

“So?”

We sat in black leather armchairs, facing each other across an oval table inlaid with a checkerboard pattern of wood veneers. Mr. Kogan's study was warm and dark, filled with books and sculptures, photos and plaques and tennis trophies, framed certificates that thanked him for service he'd given to hospitals and charities.

“So now that Gail and you are about to have a child, Hannah and I would like you to have something from us to help you get a start in your new life. We'd like to give you a gift.”

“You already gave us a gift.”

He looked out the picture window, at their backyard. He and Ellen gardened there together. Ellen could tell flowers by their scents, by the feel of leaf and blossom and stem and bud. She had won prizes at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for plants she'd raised, for her flower arrangements.

“You don't make things easy for me, do you? Well, I don't mind admitting that I'm nervous with you, David, nervous in the same way I'm often nervous before I have to talk to a patient about what I'm going to do. We won't press the analogy, though, all right?” He smiled at me. “I suppose it is true that I spend a good part of my life telling people about the terrible things I must do to them—invasive procedures, we call them—while trying, always, not to make them fearful.”

I didn't react. He said that when the baby was older he wanted to help Gail complete her college education. He would help put me through college also, if I wanted that. He would help me get started in a good job or a business. Would I at least promise to
think
about giving him the chance to do these things for us?

I told him that I already had a job.

What he wanted, he said, was for me to think not about the life I had, but about the life Gail and I and our child
might
have—about the kind of life I wanted to give them. He
was
happy that we had stayed together, that Gail had been strong enough to resist his pressure. He had told her so. He had apologized to her already. But the offer he was presenting to me now was something she did not know about.

“I tell her everything,” I said. “We have no secrets from one another.”

“Really? Everything your uncle tells you, you tell Gail?”

I gripped the arms of the chair, saw him glance at my hands.

“All you really want,” I said, “is for me to stop working for my uncle so that I can work for you, so that Gail and I can lead the kind of life
you
want us to have.”

“Not at all,” he said calmly. “You're a bright boy, David—I could see that at once, just looking at your eyes. Did Gail ever tell you that I have that knack—for reading a person's intelligence—that I used to be able to guess her friends' I.Q.s within five or ten points, just from being with them for a while and watching the light come and go in their eyes? So I know how bright you are, approximately. And how much you love my daughter, not approximately.”

I looked toward the sliding glass doors that led to the garden and was surprised, in the reflection, to see that I was hunched over slightly, that I looked smaller than Mr. Kogan. I sat up straight. I tried to think of what Abe would do were he in my place.

Mr. Kogan was telling me that my uncle was a bright man too—that he had spoken with him. Was I surprised? Was it perhaps possible that my uncle didn't tell
me
everything? And as much as he appreciated the efforts Abe was making to protect me and to keep things legitimate, he was still in a bad and dangerous business. Now that I was his son-in-law, Mr. Kogan wanted me out of that business. His motive was as simple and normal as that: to protect the people he cared for. I thought of trying to answer him, but the only arguments that came into my head were my father's, and when I heard my father's voice giving them to me, they sounded strangely feeble. I stood. I told Mr. Kogan that I thought our conversation had come to an end.

“You really believe your uncle is a good man then, don't you?”

I said nothing.

“I thought so. It's why I feel sorry for you.” He walked to the door and, his hand on the doorknob, turned and faced me. “And I feel even sorrier for Gail, because she
won't
feel sorry for you. She loves you too much. Don't you think I've seen some of the victims of your uncle's goodness come into the hospital, David? Don't you think I know about his back room and his secret trials? Don't you think I know about the black market babies—what doctor in Brooklyn doesn't?—about the way your uncle provides infants for couples who are not as fortunate as you and Gail?”

Suddenly the garden was full of light. I turned away, shielded my eyes. It was as if it was the middle of the day. I heard a strong humming sound and realized it came from floodlights. I looked through the window again, and despite the fact that I was looking at beautiful flowers, a lush green lawn, a stone birdbath, I thought of prison courtyards. I saw high stone walls, turrets, machine guns, uniformed guards pacing back and forth along ramparts.

“Sure,” I said. I spoke quickly, so that I could say what I wanted before Gail or Ellen came by. “And he does it for half the price your doctor friends charge. My uncle gives good value, Mr. Kogan. He never deals in defective goods. He doesn't put his arm around a helpless woman in his office, drop her cash in his drawer and then give her whatever he can get that's coming out of the gutter. The only thing your doctor friends are unhappy about is that my uncle cut in on their monopoly.”

Mr. Kogan studied my face. “I know you don't want medical advice from me, but if I were you I'd go lie down for a while. Your blood pressure is way up.” He gestured to the garden. “Or walk it off in the garden. When you've calmed down, I trust you'll speak with Gail about my offer and that you'll give me an answer. I won't press you. As for your uncle, you're free to believe whatever you want about him.”

He turned away from me. I wanted to grab his shoulder, to whirl him around, to smash the smugness from his face.

“Do you think I don't know everything my uncle does?” I began, and saw myself heading toward the questions I'd been saving. “Do you really think I'm dumb enough to believe that he's just some kind of Jewish Robin Hood?” I shook my head sideways, laughed. I felt better. I gave him the questions: “Let me ask you this, Mr. Kogan: in your business, don't you sometimes have to cut off a finger to save a hand, or a hand to save an arm, or a foot to save a leg? Don't you sometimes have to cut away a diseased part—a tumor, an organ—to save the body?”

“Of course. If I must—if there's no alternative.”

“Then you understand what my uncle's life is like,” I said. “It's the same for him.”

“You're talking nonsense,” he shot back, and he smiled at me in a way that made me want to ram my fist through his teeth. “But at least you're talking, yes?”

I was alone in the garden with Ellen, and I was frightened. I wanted to be with Gail, somewhere where it was cool and peaceful, where I wouldn't have to listen to the sound of my own voice inside my head, but Gail had fallen asleep on Ellen's bed. Did I want to go in and wake her, or did I have a few more minutes, so that Ellen could show me the section of her garden she loved especially? I said that I had a few minutes. She laughed, told me I shouldn't be shy about saying no to her. She wasn't above using people's unwillingness to refuse things to a blind girl, of course, but if I really didn't want to be there, she didn't want to keep me. Gail had told her all about our day—about Vincent, about Sheila, about meeting my grandfather, about my mother, about visiting Beau Jack. She knew how exhausted I must be, how divided I must feel. She knew how much I didn't like being around her father, having to talk with him.

“But come with me first, all right?”

She took my hand, led me past evergreens to a stone bench, asked me to sit down beside her. I breathed in and smelled something very sweet, but I couldn't tell if the scent were coming from the flowers or from Ellen. I started to withdraw my hand from hers, but she held me firmly, drew my hand to her lips and kissed my knuckles. She seemed to stare straight ahead then, her eyes wide open.

“Can I tell you how happy I am that Gail found you?” she asked. “Would that embarrass you?”

“I suppose. I don't know—”

“Of course it would embarrass you. We're alike in that way, aren't we, Gail and I? We tend to surprise others by our frankness, by saying what's on our minds, what we're feeling. Why do you suppose that is?”

“I don't know.”

“We're quite unalike in other ways, as you well know by now. I've thought about it frequently, you see, and I've come to the conclusion that I don't have the same need to be different that Gail has, precisely because I
am
different. We've always wanted what the other had. I wanted sight and she wanted to be wounded in some way, and I often think the only reason we've come to accept what we
don't
have is because what we do have is what the other desires. Do I make sense?”

“No. You sound like her.”

“See what I mean?” She laughed, touched my hand, let one finger come to rest on my wrist. “Ellen's the flower, she used to say, and here's Gail, folks, your erstwhile garden slug. So that I would imagine she does wonder sometimes if you're not too handsome and talented—too
good
for her. If she doesn't require some
disability
to deserve your love. Her great fear, of course, is that someday you'll wake up and feel that she tricked you into marriage, that you'll feel you can do better elsewhere. She's terribly afraid you're going to be disappointed in her.”

“I'll never leave her.”

“I know that,” Ellen said quickly. She faced me. Her eyes were moving in their sockets as if on a dark rolling sea, as if searching for light. “I'm glad we're here together this way—it's the place I come to when I want to get away from the world. My strongest visual memories are attached to this spot, to these few square feet of grass and trees and stone. Except for some violets and lily of the valley, there are no flowers here. Too much shade. I had some vision until the age of four. I remember what the world looks like. You knew that, didn't you?”

“Yes. Gail told me.”

“May I touch your face?”

I felt my heart lurch sideways. I stood. Ellen moved toward me, hands stretched upwards. She touched my face, found my cheeks.

“I've been taking a sculpture course at the Brooklyn Museum. Mother had me enrolled at the Lighthouse in Manhattan, but it was mostly elderly people there, for therapy, not for—” She stopped, moved her fingertips backwards along my cheekbones until she came to my ears. “I'd like to do your head sometime. Would you mind? You wouldn't have to pose—this will be enough, if you'll give me a few minutes. My fingers will remember your face.”

She closed her eyes, as if by doing so she would see me better, and I was relieved not to have to look at them. I thought of oversized marbles—the kind we'd called “killers”—rolling around in a shoe box. Unlike Gail, Ellen was strikingly beautiful—she had a smooth, fair complexion, a broad face that, except for her dark-brown hair, I thought of as being Swedish: high cheekbones, wide forehead, strong, straight nose with long, flaring nostrils, large mouth, dimpled chin. She had a wonderfully erect and proud way of carrying herself. She moved her fingers over my face very gently, let the tips float along my hairline, then glide along the ridges of my cheekbones, across my eyes. I tried to relax, to remember the stories Gail told me of how, when Ellen would walk around the house with a dictionary on her head, improving her carriage, Gail would tiptoe ahead of her in socked feet, moving furniture into her path.

“You have a beautiful mouth—full like Gail's. Especially your lower lip. You two must look very much alike to people. They say that's often the case with married people, increasingly with each year. I used to wish I had Gail's mouth when I was younger. I used to think my own was too thin and hard, that boys wouldn't want to kiss me, that they would be frightened I'd
snap
at them.”

She traced the outline of my lips with both index fingers. She moved closer, her sandals touching the tips of my shoes. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath. Her fingers trailed across my chin, along the curve of my jawbone, back to my ears. She was smiling broadly, her lips like satin. Tiny golden bubbles of perspiration were caught in the white hairs above her upper lip.

“Do you mind my telling you that you have a beautiful mouth? I'm certain that Gail has said so a thousand times. She
is
happy with you, David—happier than I've ever known her to be. That first night you met, she came home and—she so rarely shared that kind of thing with me that I didn't know how to respond, really.”

You
had your chance
.

Ellen put her fingers to my lips. Had I ever seen Charlie Chaplin's
City Lights
, Gail had asked one time, a movie where Chaplin falls in love with a beautiful blind flower girl? I hadn't. Well, Gail said, I'm probably the only human being in the world who was unhappy when the flower girl regained her sight.

“I wish there were more things in bloom now. August is the hardest month for the garden. In September we'll have chrysanthemums and asters and autumn crocus—to show their contrariness they produce their leaves in the spring, their flowers in the fall—but with the heat and humidity and lack of rain it's terribly difficult to get
anything
to want to bloom now. This is the time of year I always wish that we didn't live in the city. Do you ever think of moving out, David? Of just leaving all this and taking Gail and your child and going somewhere else, of starting all over again?”