Before My Life Began (40 page)

“Sometimes.”

“Gail tells me that your mother may remarry. That must upset you, given how much you loved your father. It's awfully soon, isn't it?”

“It's okay.” I shrugged. “I mean, who believes in grief these days?”

She laughed.

“There. I
can
get you to relax, can't I? Gail has assured us all that you do have a sense of humor. Only wouldn't it be easier to relax somewhere else than in Brooklyn?” Her hand held me above the wrist, her tanned fingers a pale bracelet around the short dark curls of my forearm. I wondered if she'd talked with her father, if they had set me up, but I was afraid to challenge her, for if I were wrong, if I showed that I didn't trust her…. “I've always wished I could wake up each morning and make my way down to a barn, by myself, and drink in the stillness that pervades the air before the world begins to make its noise. When I was younger I went to a special camp for the blind. They had lots of animals—goats and lambs and rabbits and pigs—and the wonderful thing about the animals was that they were always glad to see you, and that they were always happy when you touched them. People aren't like that.”

She moved her fingers to my shoulders, then along my neck and into my hair, grasping the back of my head with both hands, feeling the shape of my skull with her palms, pressing in with her fingertips and thumbs.

I felt myself drifting off, swaying a bit. I imagined her eyes being lifted from her head—she was on a table, a white sheet across her body, to her chin, and the eyes were being placed in a small silk-lined box. They were being taken downstairs, to be put in cold storage. The whites were parched, pebbled with hundreds of tiny imperfections. Ellen stopped, as if she heard someone approaching.

“If you think of other people in the world as walking around with large wet cloths draped over their faces, then you'll understand a bit how they appear to me. Can you imagine that? That everyone in the world has his or her head covered with a thin brown wet cloth—like armies of beekeepers, yes?—and when the cloths cling to their faces you can make out their features? Can you see what I mean?”

“No.”

“Because you don't want to.” Her voice was hard. “I think of the cloths as being brown. I recall the color brown most of all: my father's hair, a mug of coffee my mother once left on my dresser, the sandbox after rain, a Hershey bar that melted on my windowsill, my father's overcoat from the Army, the leather handle of his tennis racket, the oak banister in the front hall after the maid polished it, the beauty mark on my right thigh that I once tried to scrape off with the edge of a scissor….” She drew back, let her hands slip downwards. “I dream in colors, so that keeps the memories alive, you see. As if”—she tapped on the side of her head—“there are tubes of paint in here and the dreams squeeze the colors out into the waking part of my brain.”

She took my hand and led me away from the stone bench. I looked toward the house. Gail and her father were there, standing at the window of his study. When Gail saw me she waved.

“You can come visit us whenever you want,” I said. “You can stay with us after the baby comes.”

“I was nervous before,” Ellen offered. “Could you tell?”

“No.”

“Your presence reminds me that what I don't want is to end my days living here with mother and father, or settling for somebody—one of the nice lawyers or doctors or teachers that come calling—who can't give me what you and Gail give to one another.” Mr. Kogan opened the sliding door. “I've loved having Gail confide in me the way she has ever since she met you. That's meant more to me—our becoming friends—than I ever suspected it could, and if I lost that…”

Gail came to us, kissed me, told me that she felt better, that the nap had helped. She said that she'd dreamt about us walking in Ellen's garden, and that then—in the dream—the garden was suddenly ours and we were living in an enormous old colonial home—white with black shutters—on a hill in a small New England town, and that on every day of the year we put a fresh vase of flowers in each room.

“You dreamt about three hundred and sixty-five
different
days?” Ellen asked.

“No. I dreamt that I knew we did it every day.” She burrowed against my neck. “So tell me what you think: can we have a house and garden like that someday, David?”

Mr. Kogan laughed and told her to go easy on me. He told me that this was a childish habit of Gail's that he and Hannah had never been able to break, this way she had of parading her private hopes and desires around in front of other people, as if daring her parents to reject her, to refuse her her wishes. He apologized for not having cured her of the habit before she married me.

“You have my sympathy,” he said.

“Mine too,” Gail said. She squeezed my arm, and when she did, and when I saw the way Mr. Kogan smiled at me as he took Ellen by the elbow, to walk with her back to the house, it occurred to me that his offer had been sincere, that he was not being devious with me, that he might really be the good and honest man Gail claimed he was.

I wedged the fan between the sill and the raised window, turned it on exhaust to draw the hot air out of the apartment. I washed my face at the kitchen sink, took a Coke from the refrigerator, and went to the living room. It was almost midnight. The street was quiet. Nothing was moving, not even the leaves on the trees. Gail kissed the back of my neck, said that she was going to take a shower before we went to sleep. Would I wait up for her so that we could talk?

We were living in an enormous five-room apartment on Albemarle Road, near Ocean Avenue, about halfway between my mother's apartment and Gail's house. It was one of Abe's buildings—he owned five of his own now, in addition to those he managed for Mr. Rothenberg—a beautiful six-story red brick prewar apartment building with marble fireplaces in all the living rooms, doctors' and dentists' offices on the first floor, a garden in the courtyard, a doorman on duty twenty-four hours a day, and a lobby in which, in the central fountain, there were live goldfish.

“Do you know what I used to do to cool off when I was a kid?” I asked.

“Tell me, what did you used to do to cool off when you were a kid?”

“When there was a heat wave I'd get the winter blankets out of my closet and crawl under them, and I'd stay there until I absolutely couldn't stand it anymore. Then, when the sweat was pouring off me and I could barely breathe, I'd throw the covers off, spread-eagle myself on the sheet face up and sigh with relief.”

“What did Vincent say to you today?”

“Nothing.”

“You're not telling the truth. What did he
tell
you?”

Instead of answering, I pulled my chair to the window so that I could let the cooler air move past me. I closed my eyes. When I opened them Gail was standing beside me. She had both hands on her stomach, as if she were going to lift it like a watermelon, hand it to me.

“This is your child in here too, David, can you understand that? Can you get that through your thick skull? And this woman standing here like a perfect idiot is your wife, in case you hadn't heard, and your wife and your child-to-be have a right to know what's going on. We have a
right.”

“It's nothing to worry about,” I said. I let my head rest against her stomach. “Believe me, okay? Vincent is just a two-bit punk and Sheila's just trying to get even with her father for a lot of old stuff. That's all.”

“There's more. I know it. I know it and I don't like it.”

I looked up. “I don't like it either,” I said. “Just give me a little more time to think things through, all right? I'm trying. I am trying. Only things keep happening too damned fast and then all I want to do, like today, is just get away from everyone and everything, to crawl down into some dark place and to shoot anybody who tries to come in after me.”

“I love you.”

“I know.” I held to her more tightly. “I can hear a heartbeat. Is it yours or the baby's?”

She moved away, put her hand over her heart. “My heart was still up here, last time I looked. But David—”

“Yes?”

“Do you think I'm
very
ugly when I'm pregnant?”

“I think you're very beautiful.”

“Then why don't you want to touch me more, to play the way we used to?”

“Because it's hot and I'm exhausted.”

“That's not why.”

“I don't know. We get so carried away sometimes that I become scared I'll hurt you, that I'll stab the poor thing inside or…” I shrugged. “I don't
know.”

She kissed me, then left. A few seconds later I heard her turn on the shower. I went to the kitchen to get another Coke. I put the shopping bag on the kitchen table and began taking the baby clothes out, setting them down neatly around the table, keeping the stacks even. I put the package from Beau Jack in the center. I was happy to be home. I put away the dishes we'd left in the rack, from lunch, then cleared out the drain in the sink, scooping up the little bits of food with my fingers and dropping them into the garbage pail. I felt drowsy. Dress
British. Think Yiddish
. That was what Mr. Rothenberg said I should remember if I wanted success in this world. I smiled. I liked being alone in the kitchen, taking care of things, letting my mind float while the city slept, while all around me the world seemed motionless. I tried to imagine what Beau Jack had looked like as a boy of ten or eleven, and when I did I saw regiments of sea scouts—black boys eight and ten and twelve years old—marching down Linden Boulevard on Memorial Day. I saw their midnight-blue uniforms, their white belts, their black boots and white gaiters, heard the crunching sound they made as they shuffled along in close formation, eyes forward.

I dropped our paper napkins into the garbage pail, bent over and picked up a crumpled piece of paper that lay on the linoleum next to the pail. I opened it, to make sure it wasn't anything important.

CALL ABE RIGHT AWAY

The fist closed around my heart. I breathed in, told myself not to panic, not to jump to conclusions. I'd seen Abe in the morning and we'd gone over things he wanted me to take care of—rentals in some of his buildings, breaking in a new man for the Church Avenue collection route, getting Avie's mother into a hospital for tests—and he'd seemed distracted. I stood up straight, leaned on the sink, took in an enormous gulp of air. Damn! I recalled how, in the Classic Comics
of The Corsican Brothers
, whenever one of the brothers was in danger or pain, the other brother would know it and feel it, no matter how far apart they were.

Gail came into the kitchen, her hair wrapped in a blue towel.

“You should take one too, sweetheart. You'll feel so much better.”

I shoved the note in front of her. “Talk and talk fast.”

“Uh-oh.” She backed away. “Methinks the evidence hath been discovered.”

“When did it come?”

“I don't know.” She turned. “Time for a swift exit, folks. And as our poor heroine leaves her brave and beleaguered husband, our hearts are heavy, for—”

I grabbed her by the arm and whirled her around. “Don't lie to me. When did it come?”

“I'm not lying. That was a true answer. I know when I found the note, you see, but I really don't know when it came. You asked the wrong question, to which I gave the correct answer.”

I squeezed her arm as hard as I could. “Don't be so smart. There's no time. When did you find it?”

“You're hurting me.
Jesus!”

“I'll hurt you more if you don't tell me when you found it. You talk and you talk fast.”

“Jesus, David, your eyes are popping worse than mine do. Have you caught that from me too? Now we know that husbands and wives, living as they do in close proximity, are often said to—”

I slapped her. “Now you listen to me. When I get a message like that, you let me know at once, do you hear? And when I ask a question, you give me an answer.”

Her mouth was wide open, her hand on her cheek.

“You hit me.”

“That's right, and I'll do it again.”

“No you won't. Because I'm getting away from you—far, far away.”

She twisted from my grip, but I pulled her back, shoved her against the wall. Her head snapped backwards and her eyes closed, the lids clicking down like a doll's.

“Now we'll try it again, all right? When-did-you-find-the-message-and-why-did-you-hide-it-from-me?”

She was crying, softly.

“I would have told you in the morning. Jesus! It was just that it was so late and you'd been through so much already today and my cheek stings like hell, as long as you're so concerned. May I go get some ice so that the welts won't show tomorrow? I mean, let's be practical, after all, darling. Let's think, at least, of the neighbors and the family, of what others will think. Let's think of your mother's response. ‘Gail darling—didn't I warn you about that terrific temper he got? So now you know what I mean, yeah?'”

“Don't get too smart.”

I pulled her toward me and slammed her against the wall again, the back of her head thudding against the plaster. She blinked, shook her head sideways.

“Well, folks. I guess it must be a matter of life and death if our hero is so upset. Is that so, David? I'll answer you if it is. Is it a matter of life and death?”

“Maybe. Yes.”

“Abe's
death?” Her head wobbled as if she were drunk, but her eyes were bright with tears. “Then I'm really sorry. If I'd known that it was a question of life or death—especially Abe's death—I would have told you at once. You should know that.”

I slapped her again, with the back of my hand. I watched the red marks rise at once. “You just cut it out and stop making me do this,” I cried. “You just cut it out, do you
hear?”