If I Told You Once: A Novel (23 page)

I was in love, after all. People in love can never be trusted.

*   *   *

Joe told me later that when he had opened his eyes and seen my face hovering over him, he thought I was an angel. You had light shining all around you like a halo, he said, and a holy look on your face. I thought I was dead, in heaven, I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.

After that first dinner, Joe came to see me nearly every day. I don’t know what it is, he said, but I can’t seem to stay away from you.

My angel,
he called me.

Silly Joe.

Each time he came my mother made him drink one of her herbal teas to soothe his throat. He regarded her with a mixture of respect and fear, and obediently drank, holding the mug in both hands like a child. The bitterness made him cough.

He never again mentioned his lady friend, or his debts, or the other silly things he had spoken of at our first dinner.

We made wedding plans. I dreamed of a white cake decorated with flowers, a dress like a wedding cake, a bouquet of roses like silk and spun sugar.

Joe prepared to move into the apartment with my mother and me. It made sense, after all; there was so much room since my brothers were gone. And I didn’t want to leave my mother alone. She would be glad to stay near us. She would help take care of Joe, fix her tea for him every day, since his throat never seemed to mend.

Joe often said in those early days that he couldn’t live without me.

Of course he didn’t mean that. It was just love-talk.

Ilana

There was something not quite right about it all, though I could not put my finger on what it was.

I told myself it was because I had never had a wedding myself and had never even attended one. I did not know how courting people were supposed to act.

I had followed Anya’s instructions, and it all had happened the way she predicted.

And yet there was a feeling of unease, it was like a bad smell hovering in the apartment, like an ugly stain on the back of your skirt that no one will mention.

Sashie was happy, but she seemed happier alone, in front of her mirror trying on the hat with the white veil, than she did when she was with Joe. Her conversations with him were strained and formal. And Joe himself did not seem quite real to me, he did not give off the living heat that Shmuel had. I sometimes found myself watching Joe closely to make sure he was breathing. I thought that if he were sliced open he would be bloodless and dry; he would be made of mealy translucent layers like an onion.

But Sashie was happy, and that was what mattered, wasn’t it? She had never found much happiness with me. I admit this. Now I hoped she would be able to find some kind of happiness away from me. This was my gift to her.

Sashie

The wedding was small, we could not afford much. My mother did not want to waste money on a white dress I would only wear once.

I suppose you’re wearing
that
to the wedding? I said.

She was still in her widow’s black.

Of course, she said.

Black at a wedding is bad luck, I said, and anyway it’s
so
unattractive.

Don’t talk to me about bad luck, she said darkly.

She wore her black dress but everything was lovely just the same, as elegant as I could make it. There was a small ceremony in an office at the courthouse, we were in a hurry you see, no time to rent a hall and have music and dancing. It was just us, and my mother, for Joe had no family. But he looked fine and dashing in a dark suit, and he smiled at me so charmingly.

We were married then, it was all official, written indelibly on paper.

There they were, our names, side by side.

Later we came back to the apartment which I had decorated with fresh flowers everywhere, and drapery (what are you doing with my bedsheets, my mother had said), and Tessie and Marianne came in to eat cake. Annabelle had been invited but declined to come, or so my mother said. Joe brought in some of his friends and they stood in a corner slapping each other on the back and laughing loudly, and it was good to hear the rumble of male voices in the room again after all these years.

Right from the start Joe was properly respectful with me in front of other people.

He hardly touched me. Only when absolutely necessary. He seldom even met my eyes.

This was as it should be. We were not like those couples who rubbed and drooled on each other in public. We were better than that. More refined.

When the guests had left the apartment was strangely quiet again.

My mother said softly: Be fruitful and multiply.

She swept the floor clean of crumbs.

Joe drank a last cup of wine. And then another, because the bottle was nearly empty anyway.

We went into my bedroom.
Our
bedroom now; he brought over two suitcases full of his belongings earlier in the day. I had pushed together the two beds that had once been my brothers’.

Joe smiled at me and began to remove his clothes. When the jacket came off I was slightly disturbed to see the yellow sweat stains at the underarms of his white shirt. I’ll need some bleach, I thought.

He removed his shoes and I saw that his socks were full of holes, his toes protruded obscenely. This I did not like, but I told myself: he needs a woman to look after him, that’s all.

The socks came off. His feet frankly repulsed me.

He looked up and noticed me watching then, and I quickly rearranged my face, I did not want him to know what I was thinking.

He seemed to misinterpret my expression, mistaking it for an amorous one, because he unfastened his trousers, and let them fall to the floor, and then began dancing, waltzing around me in wide circles with his shirttails flapping.

His hair which had been so carefully slicked back now flopped forward in sticky strands.

I turned and turned to keep my eyes on him. He looked narrower somehow, less impressive without his jacket and with the beard growth that had begun on his jaw. And his legs, it was the first time I had seen his legs.

There was a
great
deal of hair on them.

Joe would require some polish, I realized.

He stopped his spinning and came close and began to tug at my clothes.

Oh stop it Joe, I said, that’s so uncouth.

Without stopping it, he said: What on earth do you mean? This is what married people do.

Oh, I knew this, of course.

I knew what marriage meant. I had thought about it.

It was just that it seemed so very different now that I was facing the ugly bald fact of it. Now that I was staring down the barrel, so to speak.

It seemed very
unsanitary,
this thing we were going to do.

And undignified.

I thought of my parents standing together, my mother with her hands on my father’s chest. I did the same to Joe.

That’s right, he said with wine on his breath.

I looked up at him and wondered where he had spent his childhood, and what his mother’s name was, and whether he was left or right-handed. I hardly knew this man.

All that was not so important. It could come later.

We went and lay in the bed then, and I felt better once we were between the clean white sheets. He lay against me and I asked him to turn out the lights because I did not like to see him so terrifyingly close, with his amazing profusion of pores and tiny hairs in odd places. He did, and I liked that much better.

Joe did his duty then, he consummated the marriage and it was slightly uncomfortable but not too bad, though he frightened me terribly by gasping and groaning as if he were in pain.

And his hair pomade left a mess on the pillow, I discovered the next morning.

As we spent more nights together I learned to accommodate him better, and I even looked forward to the times in bed with him. He worked long days, and these nights in bed were the only time I had alone with him, the only chance I had to discuss private matters.

As time went on I discovered that the best time to voice my request and demands was early on in the proceedings. He was alert and impatient then and gave in quickly. And
after
the act was the best time to tell him less pressing news, when he was relaxed and purged and half (or wholly) asleep. He would agree to almost anything then.

Joe?

Hmmm?

Joe, do you find me attractive?

Of course I do. How many times do I have to tell you?

I know, but … Joe?

What?

Do you think I look like my mother?

Could you lift your head a minute? My arm’s falling asleep. There.

Do you?

Do I what? Oh, I don’t know. A little bit. There’s a resemblance.

Do you think I’ll turn into her when I get older?
Much
older, I mean.

God, I hope not.

Why not? Joe? Do you not like my mother?

Oh, I like her fine, I guess. It’s just the way she looks at me sometimes, makes my skin crawl.

How does she look at you?

And the way she talks to herself at night. Haven’t you heard her?

Yes, but
how
does she look at you?

It’s that look widows have, I guess. Dried up and lonely, thinking about what they’re not getting anymore.

Don’t talk about my mother like that.

Gives me the creeps.

Joe?

Joe?

The two beds often drifted apart in the night, and we had to push them back together.

In the mornings he was bleary-eyed, bloated, I hardly recognized him. But once he had washed and shaved and dressed for work, Joe looked as handsome as ever. This was the Joe I adored.

At night we kept the lights off and when he touched me in the dark I pictured the daytime Joe in my head, in his hat and gloves and fresh-shined shoes. That helped.

The apartment seemed much smaller than it ever had before. I could not help noticing the way my mother and Joe brushed against each other in the tiny kitchen, squeezed past each other in the narrow hallway. In the mornings, as Joe tramped back and forth between bedroom and bathroom in various states of undress, I noticed my mother watching him. I’d previously thought she was frowning at the puddles of water he tracked on the floor. Now I wondered if she were looking at something else.

One night a bit of paper slipped from Joe’s pocket and as he bent over to retrieve it I saw my mother’s eyes linger on him much longer than the situation demanded.

I knew I was being ridiculous. My mother was an old woman, after all.

Yet she climbed the stairs faster than I; and from behind, with her skinny arms and her hair in two long braids, she looked like a little girl.

I tried to spend as much time alone with Joe as possible. I found myself forever shutting doors, sliding my chair closer. I wondered if my mother noticed, if she felt neglected.

But she seemed quite happy with her new privacy. Of course, my mother has her own version of happiness, it is not like other people’s.

I intended to redecorate the apartment but I was soon distracted.

I discovered I was pregnant.

When I told my mother her face softened as it had not in years.

I told Joe and he was overjoyed, he picked me up and spun me around. He had never done that before, and it made me want to vomit, but I was glad that he was glad.

He was so happy for me that he went out with some of his friends to celebrate and did not return until dawn, rumpled and smelling of wine.

I do not need to tell you about the pregnancy, about the birth.

That’s a process my mother loves to talk about, she is fascinated by it. I am not.

It’s a story that has been told a thousand times.

It’s always the same, it does not bear repeating.

*   *   *

Jonathan was a beautiful baby, it was an easy birth though my mother was horrified that I had gone to a hospital and actually enlisted the aid of a doctor.

He’ll be cursed, she said, you’ll bring evil luck down on us all.

My mother. After all these years she still clung to those peasant superstitions.

She conceded to come to the hospital afterward, where she cradled the baby and crooned wordlessly. Jonathan was perfectly healthy, with dark hair like his father’s and startling blue eyes like his grandfather.

Joe was red faced and bursting with pride. He took the baby in his arms once, and looked terrified, and never picked him up again.

I might hurt him, he said.

He went out to celebrate and I did not see him till I came home.

Jonathan was a beautiful baby, as I kept telling myself and everyone kept telling me. But I was tired and listless in the weeks following and the grayness of the apartment oppressed me. His screams, the odor of him, his needs, they oppressed me.

My mother cared for Jonathan during that time. My milk stopped and I tried to explain to her about formulas and sterilization, but she brushed me away.

I never knew how she fed him, but Jonathan was plump and happy. I saw no bottles, no boxes of powder in the kitchen; it was as if she were nursing him herself.

I lay in bed and heard them talking in the kitchen, her voice and Joe’s rising and falling, too close together. Talking about me, I knew, conspiring together. I heard laughter, the baby crying. Wailing, without pause for breath, like a teakettle. What were they doing to make him scream like that?

The screaming went on and on, and I was no longer sure if I was awake or dreaming. I could not stand it, I rose and went to the door and peered down the hallway to the lit kitchen which glowed orange like a furnace. I saw Joe sitting in a chair and my mother bending close over him and I was somehow not surprised to see them like that, their mouths so close. I had expected it. My devious mother.

Then my mother shifted, and I saw her hand working and there was the flash of a steel blade dangerously close to his face. She’s going to cut his eyes out, I thought, and this did not surprise me either. My mother was capable of anything.

I ran into the kitchen to grab her arm, and I saw the scissors in her hand. I realized she was trimming Joe’s hair, the way she used to trim my brothers’, with newspapers spread over the floor to catch the trimmings. She and Joe both stared at me, surprised.