If I Told You Once: A Novel (37 page)

I didn’t think you’d still be here! I blurted out when she came to the door. I could not stop staring at her feet, those stiff unnatural carved things in high-heeled red mules.

Were you hoping I was dead? she said sharply.

No … I …

She lifted her glasses to her nose and peered at me. Then she lifted a second pair of glasses and placed them over the first and looked again. She placed a third set on the tip of her nose before the other two and studied me through the triple lenses. Her eyes widened.

Ah, I know who you are, she said. I mean, not
exactly,
but I’d know that face anywhere.

I explained: I found your address in among Sashie’s things. It was written on an invitation. An invitation to her wedding party. I guess she forgot to send it.

She laughed at that; I saw the shiny white of her teeth, the bright pink of perfect plastic gums. She said: That was Ilana’s doing, I’m sure. I’m sure Ilana was supposed to give it to me and never did. She did not want me there, didn’t want me near her family, she thought I was bad luck. Always did.

You remember, then? I said, surprised.

Of course, she said. And you are—what? Ilana’s granddaughter?

Great-granddaughter, I said. And you’re …
Annabelle,
I said carefully.

Anya, she said. It’s back to Anya now. I’ve realized I can’t ever get away from it, so why pretend? Come in, come in, don’t stand in the hallway like a salesman.

I followed her through a room so layered with dust it looked like an archaeological excavation, and then we stood in her kitchen, which looked lived-in and tidy. All the cans and pots stood on the lower shelves where she could reach them.

Let me heat up some beet soup for you, she said.

No, that’s all right, I said, my great-grandmother makes it for me all the time.

Her face stiffened. Well,
I
don’t have anyone to make it for, she said stubbornly and shifted a pot to the stove.

I don’t want to bother you, I said, I just wanted to ask you something.

I told her my problem.

I thought … you might … do that sort of thing. Or know someone who would, I said.

What? she said. Just because it was done to me, once, that makes me an expert?

No, that’s not what I meant. I just thought you would know … how I would go about having it done, I said.

She was pressing close to me, peering in my face.

If you want to know, it’s true that I have helped women in trouble. When they had no choice. Many women. Right here in this kitchen! she said.

I could pay you, I said. Not a lot, but—

No! No more! she cried and her spit landed on my face. No more! There are doctors and hospitals for that sort of thing. They can do it right. I may look like an ignorant old woman to you, but I know that much.

You won’t help me, then? I said, looking at the floor.

I would only hurt you, you foolish child, she said. These things are dangerous. Don’t you think there’s a reason I never had any children? It was not by choice, I tell you. I went to that old herb woman for help and she damaged me forever, and I was only a little girl then. About your age. Are you listening?

Yes, I said.

Sometimes I wish I had never gone to her at all, I wish I had stayed at home and had the child. My life would have been completely different. I was always so jealous of Ilana. She had everything I didn’t. Everything I wanted and would never have. And no, I’m not talking about feet! she said.

I looked up from her wooden nubs. She put her thumb beneath my chin.

She has children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. Now maybe great-
great
-grandchildren even! And me, what do I have? Nothing. Other people’s children plaguing me, soup that no one eats. Little girl, you should think carefully about what you do next. Don’t make the mistake I did. Do you want to end up like me?

I said nothing. She had backed me into a corner.

She laughed. You look just like Ilana, trying to plot your escape, she said. She reached up and stroked my head. She said: Your eyes are like hers. But your hair! How did this happen? Was it an accident?

I like it this way, I said. It’s different.

Did Ilana ever tell you how she cut off my hair? At the time we were both desperate to leave, and she said it was holding us back. But I think she secretly wanted to do it all along. She enjoyed chopping it off. She was jealous of me, I think. We were jealous of each other, what a pair. We might have been friends if things were different.…

Anya poured a bowl of the beet soup and tried to make me eat it, but the deep redness of it turned my stomach. She grasped my arm with sharp fingers and pulled herself closer. Her false teeth suddenly frightened me, they were too white and much too large for her face. And there was nothing more for us to say to each other (though she did not think so: she had plenty she still wanted to tell me) so I left.

*   *   *

I went to the hospital. I tried to keep my mind white and blank. I did not want to think about what I was doing, I just wanted to get it over with.

Vito came with me but he was no help at all. We wandered the white halls, sat waiting on blue plastic chairs, got chased out of forbidden areas by nurses in ugly white shoes.

I did not know what to do, where to go, whom to ask.

I just want to get it over with, I said and held my stomach.

The lights buzzed above our heads. We heard footsteps, endless footsteps tapping along the hallways. Approaching, receding, approaching again. Never appearing. There was a brown puddle spreading on the floor.

I don’t think they can do it right away, anyway, Vito said cheerfully. I think they make you sign stuff and come back in a few days.

I don’t care.

And I think you have to get parental permission too, he said.

I looked at him. The harsh light had drained all color from his face, his nostrils were rimmed with pink and his pupils gaped. He looked worse than I felt.

Don’t cry, he said. Man, don’t do that. Listen, I have an idea. I know a place, a clinic, I have this friend whose girlfriend works there. We could go there, they would take us, they wouldn’t give you any shit. The only problem is it’s kind of far away.

No, I said. No, I’m not leaving this place until they take it out of me. I’m not leaving. I’ll sleep here.

He scratched his head, dry skin snowfalling on the shoulders of his black T-shirt.

And I might have sat there forever if I had not seen something at the end of the hall. Something that set my teeth on edge, that sent me flying.

Hey, Nomie, wait up, Vito panted. Hey, where are you going?

Hush, I breathed as we skidded around corners and slid on newly mopped floors.

Nomie! What’s the rush?

Shut up, I hissed and suddenly we were in the emergency room dodging around mobs of people in red-spattered blue scrubs and doctors shouting out medical terms that sounded lewd and obscene. And then a whole fleet of stretchers rolled in, people strapped to boards and wrapped in blankets and raising their hands up to the sky calling out to their gods and their mothers.

Nomie, Vito called and I said: Quit screaming my name! and then we were back out on the street.

The sunlight felt good and calming and I stopped running.

What happened? What did you see? he asked.

Someone I thought I knew, I said.

It had been Mara, in a pink uniform and rubber gloves, her dark brows slicing across her face. Had she seen us?

Mara. Somehow she had gotten her job back.

Mara

Oh, I knew this would happen.

Nomie has disappeared.

My mother is beside herself.

My grandmother says nothing. I’m sure she knows, she knows where Nomie is but she won’t tell us.

After all the yapping she’s been doing lately, now she won’t open her mouth.

This is all her fault, I know it. She’s been telling those stories, giving Nomie ideas.

Outside the snow tumbles down. A freak flurry in the middle of July.

My grandmother won’t tell us a thing, just sits there muttering about three old women following her. She doesn’t care about what could happen to Nomie at all.

How could she just vanish like this? my mother said.

She didn’t just vanish; she ran away. She’s at that age, I told her. I did not want to worry her unduly.

It’s mother, my mother whispered. Mother made her do this, I know it.

So you see I was not imagining things. My mother had come to the same conclusion about my grandmother.

We should put her in a nursing home, I said as casually as I could. For her own good, I said, her own safety. She’s blind as a bat, one of these days she’ll be hit by a car. Her room, it’s a fire hazard. This can’t go on.

Yes, my mother said.

I could see she liked the idea.

We really aren’t able to take care of all her needs you know. Much as we love her, I said. Much as we’d like to. And this place, so many sharp edges, those steep stairs.

My mother was nodding.

How I hated her then, her pursed-up mouth, her sucked-in cheeks as if she were constantly posing for a picture. But I needed her as an ally.

We need to put her where she can’t do any more harm, I said.

We leaned together, whispering. We did not want my grandmother to overhear us. It would upset her unnecessarily to hear what we were planning. She would not want us to waste money on such a thing, that’s what she might say.

I had saved some money over the years from my hospital jobs, it lay in a drawer beneath piles of dull sensible underclothes. I had been saving it for when Jonathan came back, for when we went away together.

But the nursing home was much more important. For my grandmother’s own good.

I thought of the apartment without her.

She was the cause of the oppressive, claustrophobic feel of the place.

Without her it would be so much pleasanter. Only me and Nomie, together. Nomie would be sure to listen to me without my grandmother distracting her every minute.

Just me and Nomie. Nomie and I.

And my mother, of course.

I would worry about that later.

For now I wanted only to remove my grandmother. To a better place.

I loved her, I was willing to make sacrifices for her. I was giving up my entire future, my chance to leave this apartment and go elsewhere—all so that her last days would be more comfortable.

My mother, as it turned out, also had a bundle of money hidden away.

From your father, she explained.

My father? She never, ever spoke of my father who had died before I was born. She had never even told me how he died. I assumed it had been something pedestrian, hit by a streetcar maybe, or a sudden heart attack while crossing the road.

We had long whispered discussions, made inquiries. My mother and I were closer than we had ever been, we were united in a common purpose. We heard of a place that sounded promising, I went to visit it. It was not beautiful, a tall stark building, but it seemed very secure. The residents were not allowed to wander about unattended. And when residents became too excited or too loud, they were gently sedated, gently restrained. There was a small cement yard—no messy flowers, harmful insects. I particularly liked the high iron fence.

It seemed perfect, and I wanted to move my grandmother there right away, but I was told that the place was full, and we would have to wait for an opening.

The secretary I spoke with did not say it, but I understood we would have to wait for someone to die.

This seemed inconvenient. I wondered if there were any way to remove this obstacle, hurry the process along.

I wanted to move my grandmother out of the apartment before Nomie came back. I did not want the two of them to have any more time together. It had occurred to me that my grandmother might be telling her all sorts of lies about Chloe, and my brother, and me.

I did not want that.

I told my mother all about the home and we were both satisfied. We needed only to wait.

We sat together companionably hunched over our cups of tea in the kitchen. In the dark front room in the middle of her labyrinth my grandmother sat knitting sweaters. Knitting her brow, knitting her fingers together. I don’t know how she found her way among the jungle of furniture; I wondered if she unrolled a ball of yarn as she went in, to help her on the way back. Perhaps she left a trail behind her, the breakfast crumbs dribbling from her dress.

I stared out the window and let my mother drone on and on about country estates, inheritances, precious jewels, royal blood, secret journeys, forbidden love, incest.

I was not listening carefully. What was she babbling about, I wondered. She knew nothing about love. Or incest, for that matter. She had never loved her brothers as I had loved mine.

All this time, of course, we were waiting for Nomie to return. The strange snow kept falling and the city seemed grimier than usual. Darkness gathered at four o’clock, the buildings swayed and leaned threateningly as if they were about to topple over and bury us all.

We had informed the police, of course. There did not seem to be much else we could do.

Just like her father, she was. Going off like that. Impetuous.

When she came back I would make sure she never went away like that again.

Where could she go? She had never lived away from the apartment, she knew no one. Only that boy with little bits of metal embedded in his face like shrapnel. And I had forbidden her to see him anymore.

When she got cold enough out there she would come back. And when she came back I would be waiting.

I will be waiting for you, Nomie.

I will be waiting, sweet one.

Just inside the door.

Nomie

Where did you get this car?

I borrowed it, Vito said.

From who?

I don’t know.

You stole it, you mean.

No, he said, it’s not stealing. I’m not going to keep it, so it’s not stealing. We’re just borrowing it for this trip.

The car was wide and slow and dignified. Foam oozed out of the tears in the seat and the floor was littered with newspapers and coffee cups. It was the first car I had ever been in aside from cabs. That made it seem luxurious.