The Sisters Weiss (28 page)

It was an obsession.

At first, he was happy to accommodate her, smiling slowly, ready at a moment’s notice to drop everything he was doing to lose himself in her. But then, one day, a day that was the same as every other day, he shrank away and said: “Rivka, I’ve really got to finish this paper. Can’t you find some other way to amuse yourself?”

Walking into the bathroom and closing the door, she turned on the faucet and wept as quietly as she could, devastated. For a few days, she kept her distance, wounded to the core, until finally he noticed.

“Come here, babe,” he said, opening his arms. She was only too happy to run back into them, reveling in his acceptance, the terrible panic and fear and sorrow lifting from her as if they had never been.

“It’s not good for you to be cooped up all day cleaning and cooking me meals, babe,” he said, patting his rounding stomach. “I’ve gained about ten pounds in the last few weeks. My pants are getting tight on me. And please, please stop ironing my undershirts and my sheets!”

“I want to be good to you. I love you so much!”

At the word “love,” he seemed to flinch. It was subtle, but visible. “You are a good girl, Rivka, but you are trying too hard to please me. Think about yourself, won’t you? I thought you wanted to get into college. Have you done those SAT practice sheets I left for you?”

The truth was she’d stared at them, confused and bored, noticing the streaks she’d left on the windows when she’d cleaned them and the dust in the corners of the ceilings. She didn’t want to admit to him that she had no clue at all how to answer any of them. But she took his scolding to heart, trying harder.

“Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, and the first scientist that made systematic studies of how children learn.”

What followed were five alternative sentences, one of which, supposedly, was a better way to phrase this idea. She tried to figure out which little bubble to fill in. But all of the sentences were equally incomprehensible to her, and equally boring. Besides, what was wrong with the original?

The math was even worse:

The stem-and-leaf graph above shows the distribution by height, in inches, of pines in a grove. What percent of the pines are over 45 inches tall?

She could not make heads or tails out of that one either.

In the evenings, he tried to help her, patiently going over the material, until they both finally had to admit it was hopeless. Her education had not been very thorough to begin with, and she had stopped it early. There were enormous gaps that needed to be filled in. It simply wasn’t possible to get a terrible education, not to mention skipping over two years of high school, and go straight to college.

“Why don’t you enroll in some GED classes where you can get your high-school-equivalency certificate? There’s plenty of time for you to study for college.”

“You think I’m stupid!” she cried. “But I know more than you will ever know! You’re completely ignorant about your own religion. Why, you can’t even recite the simplest prayer, Shma. What will you do when you are about to die? That has to be the last thing a Jewish person says!”

“I’ll recite the ‘Star Spangled Banner,’” he deadpanned, annoyed. “You knew when you moved in with me I wasn’t religious. So what’s the problem now?”

She began insisting that they have a traditional Friday-night Sabbath dinner, with Sabbath candles and wine. Wanting to keep the peace, he reluctantly went along with her, because the sex was great, and his house had never been cleaner. And truthfully, he had affection for her. She was like a little kitten, soft and cuddly and defenseless. Even when she tried to be wounding, her claws barely made a scratch.

“Here, you recite the kiddush over the wine.” She handed him a siddur.

He broke his teeth forming the Hebrew words.

She laughed. “You sound like a white skullcap.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You know, those white skullcaps they give out at bar mitzvahs for Jews who know nothing.”

He was not amused. “Where is all this coming from, Rivka?” He was weary.

“Maybe I didn’t learn much in school, but I know better how to live than you! How can you treat every day the same way, with no Sabbaths, no holy days? It’s monotonous and dreary (words from the SATs!). What do you believe in? Anything?”

“I believe in love. I believe in beauty.”

He might as well have said he believed in Coca-Cola and good movies. “Love? Beauty? Were you created by love and beauty? Did they form you in your mother’s womb? Do they stop planes from crashing, babies from being born with deformities? Who do you pray to?”

“I don’t pray. I meditate.”

“What does that mean, really, except to look at your stomach and think no thoughts at all?”

“Are you unhappy with me, Rivka?” he interrupted, his voice calm but his jaw clenched. “Because no one is forcing you to stay, you know.”

She straightened her back, bunching her lips together defiantly, but soon collapsed, lowering her head and weeping into the steaming chicken soup. “I feel like such a failure, Simon. I feel stupid and worthless and sinful.”

He took her in his arms, whispering lovely things to her, and, as always, they wound up in bed. It was the only thing she could give him, the only value she had, she thought.

He began coming home later and later, with one excuse or another. And when she complained, he felt trapped. She was in his house, in his bed, with no place to go. If only there was the human equivalent of the ASPCA where he could drop her off, he sometimes thought. But the more responsible and obligated he felt, the more he wanted out. His eyes began to wander.

“So, tell me about your cousin Hannah. How was it living with her?”

“Why do you want to know?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

“Oh, just curious. I’d like to know more about your family.”

“Why, because my aunt Rose is famous and rich?”

“Is she?”

“Hannah never told you?”

He shrugged, pretending indifference.

“Rose Weiss, she’s a famous photographer! She had a show in the MOMA museum just last year and they still have many of her pictures in their collection. You should go see them! They’re wonderful! You never asked Hannah about it?”

“No. But I will.”

“You talk to Hannah a lot?” Her voice was strained.

“I see her in class, Rivka, that’s all.”

She couldn’t put her finger on it, but after that conversation, things began to change. He seemed more distracted when they were together and spent more time out of the house studying, or so he claimed. She too began to change.

“Where have you been!” she shouted at him when he walked through the door.

“Oh, just in the library.”

“Until midnight?”

“So I went out with a few friends … Gee, Rivka, chill out!”

She immediately felt guilty. “It’s … I just get so lonely when you’re gone.”

He held her, brushing away her tears, wondering how he was going to extricate himself from all this suffocating drama.

“Maybe you could take me out with you, to meet your friends?”

He felt sad for her and guilty. “Sure. What about tomorrow?”

He took her to a local pub, a college hangout. The air was thick with the smell of alcohol and boozy laughter. She downed one drink after the next, until she too felt like laughing. The next morning she felt sick, throwing up in the toilet until her heaving finally went dry.

Simon was sympathetic, but also a bit amused, which infuriated her.

“You’ll be fine by tomorrow,” he told her. “And next time, drink Shirley Temples.”

She didn’t ask what that meant. But the next day she wasn’t fine. She felt ill, the nausea growing worse and worse. She spent her days roaming from bed to bathroom. He was concerned.

“I’ve made you an appointment at the health clinic at 2:00 P.M.”

“Are you going to be there, too, Simon?”

“I would, babe, but I’ve got classes. Call me and tell me what the doctor says. Take care of yourself, honey!” He hurried away.

She got dressed and ready to go too early. Then, she sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. For some reason, a passage she had read in one of her SAT questions came to her. It was from a novel written in 1899. A woman’s overbearing husband, wanting attention, wakes her up in the middle of the night complaining that one of the children has a fever, insisting that she is a bad mother for sleeping through it. While she checks her perfectly healthy child, her husband falls asleep. Now, unable to go back to bed, she sits out on the porch:

An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish. It was like a shadow, like a mist passing across her soul’s summer day. It was strange and unfamiliar; it was a mood. She did not sit there inwardly upbraiding her husband, lamenting at Fate, which had directed her footsteps to the path which they had taken. She was just having a good cry all to herself.

She wept, not even knowing why, feeling ill and ill used and unreasonable. She put on her coat, getting ready to go, when, for no reason, she turned back, looking up. Sticking out on top of the bookcase was the glitter of red wrapping paper.

A gift, she thought, all her anguish lifting like smoke. He had gone out and bought her something to make her feel better. Simon! She climbed up on a chair and reached up. It was a large, heart-shaped box. She shook it gently, and it rattled with tiny thumps. Delighted, she envisioned exquisite little chocolates in silvery paper. There was a card. Carefully, she eased it out of the unsealed envelope. As she read it, her hands shook. She replaced it, wetting the edge of the envelope with her tongue and sealing it closed, replacing it and the box where she had found them.

Walking into the bedroom, she packed her suitcase. It seemed heavier than when she had first come, weighing her down. She opened the front door, then locked it behind her. As she walked toward the subway, she saw a public mailbox. Opening it, she threw the key inside.

29

The phone call from Hannah came at 2:00 A.M. “Mom, I thought you’d want to know. Rivka has finally called.”

“Oh, Lord! It’s been over two months. Is she all right?”

“I don’t know. But she says she needs our help. She sounded desperate.” There was a brief silence.

“Hannah?”

“I’m not taking her in again, Mom,” Hannah said flatly.

Again, there was a pause as Rose gathered her wits about her, throwing off the last vestiges of sleep. “I thought she went home.”

“So did I. But apparently not.”

“So, where has she been all this time?”

“Why do you care?”

The sharpness of her daughter’s response to so innocent a question convinced Rose not to probe further. “Did she hint she wanted to move back in with you?”

“She wasn’t really clear on what she wanted. She sounded high…”

“Oh, no!”

“Okay, not exactly high, but pretty incoherent.”

“Did you offer to take her back in?”

“No,” she answered curtly.

This wasn’t sounding at all like her kind, compassionate daughter, Rose thought, confused.

“I offered her your house instead. I hope you don’t mind. We did talk about it.”

“Yes, but that was months ago…”

“I’m sorry. But I didn’t know what else to do with her. I simply can’t have her moving back in here with me, all right?”

“Did something happen between the two of you?”

Hannah didn’t really answer, mumbling something vague and unconvincing about needing her own space, then hanging up the phone.

*

Oh, God, Rose thought when she opened the door. Rivka stood there silently, looking like a survivor of some natural disaster, a hurricane or a tsunami. There were dark circles under her eyes and her long hair was matted and unwashed. As for the clothes, they seemed beyond the powers of dry cleaner or washing machine.

“Rivka?”

“Aunt Rose,” she said dully.

“Well, I guess you’d better come in,” Rose said awkwardly, her heart torn.

She walked in without a word, putting down her small valise.

Rose stared at it. The small, battered suitcase dragged on subways and off buses that had once held all she owned in the world. She felt a lump growing in her throat. “Do you want to take a shower, change clothes?”

“Aunt Rose, can I have something to eat first?”

“Right,” Rose said quickly, hurrying into the privacy of her kitchen. She leaned forward heavily, gripping the counter with trembling hands; then, she took out the kosher food she had purchased early that morning: corned beef on rye, coleslaw, potato salad, and a Dr. Brown cherry cola.

Rivka took an eager bite, then stopped, picking out the meat with her fingers, then ravenously digging into the rest of the meal.

“It’s glatt kosher,” Rose murmured, holding out the packaging she had brought along from the kitchen, having expected to be cross-examined before the waif would agree to touch a bite. But she didn’t even glance up.

“Oy, it’s not that. It’s any meat…” Rivka said, finishing off the potato salad and coleslaw.

“Are you a vegetarian now?”

“No, I…” She tried to speak, but her mouth was full of food.

Rose watched her, appalled. Her hunger was ravenous and pitiful. “I bought you a piece of chocolate cake, too, from the kosher bakery on Broadway,” Rose suddenly remembered, hurrying to get it and placing it in front of her. “Would you like a cup of tea to have with it…?”

But before she could finish, Rivka had already polished off the cake, not even asking if it was parve and thus permitted to be eaten along with meat, something any observant Jew would have surely asked. Had she lost her faith? I won’t ask, Rose thought. I don’t want to know. “Well, if you want anything else to eat, just go into the kitchen,” Rose said, barely able to speak. “Your bedroom is the second door from the left down the hall. There’s a private shower, towels. Make yourself at home. We’ll talk later.”

Rose went directly to her own bedroom. Closing the door and stretching out on the bed, she parted her lips swallowing huge gulps of air as she tried to clear the enormous lump in her throat. But it was no use. Silent tears rolled down her cheeks as she remembered those first terrible, hungry days after she’d run away from home, riding the empty subways downtown and uptown all night long, the rancid smell of the cars screeching along the filthy subterranean tracks, the gnawing sense of doubt about where her next meal would be coming from when the little money she had ran out. She’d survived that way barely two days, the end coming with frightening intensity at 2:00 A.M.