The History of Love (30 page)

1.
WHAT I LOOK LIKE NAKED

When I woke up in my sleeping bag the rain had stopped and my bed was empty, the sheets stripped. I looked at my watch. It was 10:03. It was also August 30th, which meant there were only ten days left until school started, a month until I turned fifteen, and only three years left until I was supposed to leave for college to start my life, which, at this point, did not seem very likely. For this and other reasons my stomach ached. I looked across the hall into Bird’s room. Uncle Julian was asleep with his glasses on, Volume II of
The Destruction of the European Jews
open on his chest. Bird received the box set as a gift from a cousin of my mother’s who lives in Paris, and who took an interest in him after we met her for tea at her hotel. She told us that her husband had fought in the Resistance, and Bird stopped trying to construct a house out of the sugar cubes to say: “Resistancing who?”

In the bathroom I took off my T-shirt and underwear, stood on the toilet, and stared at myself in the mirror. I tried to think of five adjectives to describe what I looked like, and one was
scrawny
and another was
My ears stick out.
I considered a nose ring. When I raised my arms over my head, my chest became concave.

2.
MY MOTHER LOOKS RIGHT THROUGH ME

Downstairs, my mother was in her kimono reading the newspaper in the sunlight. “Did anyone call for me?” I asked. “Fine, thank you, and how are you?” she said. “But I didn’t say how are you,” I said. “I know.” “You shouldn’t have to always be polite with your family.” “Why not?” “It would be better if people just said what they meant.” “You mean you don’t care how I am?” I glared at her. “Finethankyouhowareyou?” I said. “Fine, thank you,” said my mother. “Did anyone call?” “For instance?” “Anyone.” “Has something happened between you and Misha?” “No,” I said, opening the refrigerator and examining some wilted celery. I dropped an English muffin into the toaster, and my mother turned the page of the newspaper, scanning the headlines. I wondered if she’d even notice if I let it burn to a black crisp.

“
The History of Love
starts when Alma is ten, right?” I said. My mother looked up and nodded. “Well how old is she when it ends?” “It’s hard to say. There are so many Almas in the book.” “How old is the oldest?” “Not very. Maybe twenty.” “So the book ends when Alma is only twenty?” “In a way. But it’s more complicated than that. She isn’t even mentioned in some chapters. And the whole sense of time and history in the book is very loose.” “But there’s no Alma in any of the chapters older than twenty?” “No,” said my mother. “I guess not.”

I made a mental note that if Alma Mereminski was a real person, Litvinoff most likely fell in love with her when they were both ten, and that twenty was probably how old they were when she left for America, which must have been the last time he saw her. Why else would the book end when she was still so young?

I ate the English muffin with peanut butter standing up in front of the toaster. “Alma?” my mother said. “What?” “Come give me a hug,” she said, so I did, even though I didn’t feel like it. “How did you get so tall?” I shrugged, hoping she wouldn’t go on. “I’m going to the library,” I told her, which was a lie, but by the way she was looking at me I knew she hadn’t really heard, since it wasn’t me she saw.

3.
ALL THE LIES I’VE EVER TOLD WILL COME BACK TO ME ONE DAY

On the street I passed Herman Cooper sitting on his front stoop. He’d been in Maine all summer, where he’d gotten a tan and his driver’s license. He asked me if I wanted to go for a ride sometime. I could have reminded him of the rumor he spread about me when I was six involving being adopted and Puerto Rican, or the one he spread about me when I was ten involving me lifting my skirt in his basement and showing him everything. Instead I told him that I got carsick.

I went back to 31 Chambers Street again, this time to find out if there were any marriage records for Alma Mereminski. The same man with black glasses was sitting behind the desk in room 103. “Hi,” I said. He looked up. “Miss Rabbit Meat. How are you?” “Finethankyouhowareyou?” I said. “OK, I guess.” He turned the page of a magazine and added, “A little tired, you know, and I think I might be getting a cold, and this morning I woke up and my cat had puked, which wouldn’t be so bad if she hadn’t done it on my shoe.” “Oh,” I said. “On top of which, I just found out that they’re cutting off my cable because I happened to be a little late paying the bill, which means I’m going to miss all of my shows, plus the plant my mother gave me for Christmas is going a little brown, and if it dies I’ll never hear the end of it.” I waited in case he was going to continue, but he didn’t, so I said: “Maybe she got married.” “Who?” “Alma Mereminski.” He closed the magazine and looked at me. “You don’t know if your own great-grandmother got married?” I considered my options. “She’s wasn’t really my great-grandmother,” I said. “I thought you said—” “We’re actually not even related.” He looked confused and a little upset. “Sorry. It’s a long story,” I said, and part of me wanted him to ask me why I was looking for her, so I could tell him the truth: that I wasn’t really sure, that I had started out looking for someone to make my mother happy again, and even though I hadn’t given up on finding him yet, along the way I began to look for something else, too, which was connected to the first search, but also different, because it had to do with me. But he just sighed and said, “Would she have gotten married before 1937?” “I’m not sure.” He sighed and pushed his glasses up his nose, and told me they only had records in Room 103 for marriages up until 1937.

We looked anyway, but we didn’t find any Alma Mereminski. “You better go to the City Clerk’s Office,” he said glumly. “That’s where they have all the later records.” “Where is it?” “One Centre Street, Room 252,” he said. I had never heard of Centre Street, so I asked for directions. It wasn’t that far so I decided to walk, and while I did I imagined rooms all over the city that housed archives no one has ever heard of, like last words, white lies, and false descendants of Catherine the Great.

4.
THE BROKEN LIGHTBULB

The man behind the desk at the City Clerk’s Office was old. “How can I help?” he asked when it was my turn. “I want to find out if a woman named Alma Mereminski got married and changed her name,” I said. He nodded and wrote something down. “M-E-R,” I began, and he said: “E-M-I-N-S-K-I. Or is it Y?” “I,” I said. “That’s what I thought,” he said. “When would she have married?” “I don’t know. It could have been anytime after 1937. If she’s still alive now, she’s probably about eighty.” “First marriage?” “I think.” He scratched a note into his pad. “Any idea the man maybe she married?” I shook my head. He licked his finger, turned the page, and took another note. “The wedding—would’ve been civic or a priest or any chance maybe was a rabbi married her?” “Probably a rabbi,” I said. “That’s what I thought,” he said.

He opened a drawer and took out a roll of Life Savers. “Mint?” I shook my head. “
Take
,” he said, so I took one. He popped a mint into his mouth and sucked on it. “She came from Poland maybe?” “How did you know?” “Easy,” he said. “With such a name.” He rolled the mint from one side of his mouth to the other. “It’s possible she came ’39, ’40, before the War? She would have been . . .” he licked his finger and flipped back a page, then took out a calculator and punched the buttons with the eraser of his pencil. “Nineteen, twenty. Most I’d give her is twenty-one.”

He wrote these numbers down on his pad. He tutted his tongue and shook his head. “Must have been lonely, poor thing.” He glanced up at me with a questioning look. His eyes were pale and watery. “I guess so,” I said. “Sure she would have!” he said. “Who does she know? Nobody! Except for maybe a cousin who doesn’t want to know from her. He lives in America now, the big
macher,
what does he need with this refugenik? His boy speaks English without an accent, he’ll be someday a rich lawyer, the last thing he needs is the
mishpocheh
from Poland, skinny like the dead, knocking at his door.” It didn’t seem like a good idea to say anything, so I didn’t. “Maybe she is lucky once, twice he invites her for
shabbes
, and his wife grumbles because they don’t even have for themselves what to eat, she has to beg the butcher to give her again on credit a chicken, This is the last time, she tells her husband, Give a pig a chair, and he’ll want to get on the table, which is not even to mention that back in Poland the murderers are killing her family, every last one, may-they-rest-in-peace, from my mouth to God’s ear.”

I didn’t know what to say, but he seemed to be waiting, so I said: “It must have been terrible.” “That’s what I’m telling you,” he said, and then he tutted his tongue again and said, “Poor thing. Was a Goldfarb, Arthur Goldfarb, someone, the grandniece I think it was, came in a couple days ago. A doctor, she had a picture, handsome fellow, was a bad
shiddukh,
turns out he got divorced after a year. Would’ve been perfect for your Alma.” He crunched on the mint and wiped his nose with a handkerchief. “My wife tells me it’s no talent to be a matchmaker for the dead, so I tell her if you always drink vinegar, you don’t know anything sweeter exists.” He got up from his chair. “Wait here, please.”

When he came back he was out of breath. He pulled himself back up onto his stool. “Like searching for gold, so hard to find was this Alma.” “Did you?” “What?” “Find her?” “Of course I found her, what kind of clerk am I that I can’t find a nice girl? Alma Mereminski, here she is. Married in Brooklyn in 1942 to Mordecai Moritz, wedding performed by a Rabbi Greenberg. Lists also the parents’ names.” “This is really her?” “Who else? Alma Mereminski, right here says she was born in Poland. He was born in Brooklyn, but the parents were from Odessa. Says here his father owned a dress factory, so she didn’t do so bad. To be honest, I’m relieved. Maybe was a nice wedding. In those days would break a lightbulb under his foot the
chassan
because no one could spare a glass.”

5.
THERE ARE NO PAY PHONES IN THE ARCTIC

I found a pay phone and called home. Uncle Julian answered. “Did anyone call for me?” I asked. “I don’t think so. Sorry I woke you last night, Al.” “It’s OK.” “I’m glad we had that little talk.” “Yeah,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t bring up becoming a painter again. “What do you say we go out for dinner tonight? Unless you have other plans.” “I don’t,” I said.

I hung up and called Information. “What borough?” “Brooklyn.” “What listing?” “Moritz. First name is Alma.” “Business or residence?” “Residence.” “I have nothing under that listing.” “What about Mordecai Moritz?” “No.” “Well, how about in Manhattan?” “I have a Mordecai Moritz on 52nd.” “You do?” I said. I couldn’t believe it. “Hold for the number.” “Wait!” I said. “I need the address.” “Four-fifty East 52nd,” the woman said. I wrote it down on my palm and caught a subway uptown.

6.
I KNOCK AND SHE ANSWERS

She’s old with long white hair held back by a tortoiseshell comb. Her apartment is flooded with sunlight, and she owns a parrot that talks. I tell her about how my father, David Singer, found
The History of Love
in the window of a bookstore in Buenos Aires when he was twenty-two, while traveling alone with a topographical map, a compass, a Swiss Army knife, and a Spanish-Hebrew dictionary. I also tell her about my mother and her wall of dictionaries, and Emanuel Chaim who goes by the name Bird in honor of his freedom, and his having survived an effort to fly that left behind a scar on his head. She shows me a picture of herself when she was my age. The talking parrot squawks, “Alma!” and both of us turn.

7.
I’M SICK OF FAMOUS WRITERS

Daydreaming, I missed my stop and had to walk back ten blocks, and with every block I felt more nervous and less sure. What if Alma—the real, live Alma—actually answered the door? What was I supposed to say to someone who’d walked off the pages of a book? Or what if she’d never heard of
The History of Love
? Or what if she had, but wanted to forget it? I’d been so busy trying to find her that it hadn’t occurred to me that maybe she didn’t want to be found.

But there was no time left to think, because I was standing at the end of 52nd Street outside her building. “Can I help you?” the doorman asked. “My name is Alma Singer. I’m looking for Mrs. Alma Moritz. Is she home?” I asked. “Mrs. Moritz?” he said. He had a weird expression when he said her name. “Uh,” he said. “No.” He looked as if he felt sorry for me, and then I felt sorry for myself, because what he said next was that Alma wasn’t alive. She’d died five years ago. Which was how I found out that everyone I’m named after is dead. Alma Mereminski, and my father, David Singer, and my great-aunt Dora who died in the Warsaw Ghetto, and for whom I was given my Hebrew name, Devorah. Why do people always get named after dead people? If they have to be named after anything at all, why can’t it be things, which have more permanence, like the sky or the sea, or even ideas, which never really die, not even bad ones?