Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth Read online

  “What do you think, Joan—shall we take up arms against a sea of troubles?” Anthony asked, and suddenly he was himself. I was taken aback: he’d never spoken as himself before. Even when he was being Anthony, he was acting. Now he’d dropped the stance, and I felt privileged. Maybe it was wrong of him to hide all the time, even if we derived pleasure from the theatrics. His uncensored voice was vaguely wistful.

  “Hamlet,” I said. “‘ To be or not to be.’”

  “Yes. A braid in back suits you, and you’ll have fewer tangles.”

  “I use conditioner. Can I ask you something?”

  “Yes, but turn around so I’m not talking to your shoulders. Your braid’s done, though the end is going to come loose without an elastic.”

  I turned towards him and absently scooped up a handful of sand, sifted the pebbles between my fingers. “Do you ever feel mean?”

  “How mean is mean?”

  “Very mean.”

  “That’s exactly the question the Maid of Orleans asked. Exactly what she couldn’t figure out. Was she mean? And if so, how mean? And did being mean to her mother count?”

  “I am mean to my mother,” I confessed, hanging my head. “I call her Mrs. L, I make fun of her, I do things on purpose to shock her, like barking or mooing.”

  “Barking and mooing, huh? That is serious. But, really, I don’t think she notices. As long as you don’t put frogs in her bed, you’re doing fine.”

  “Do you get along with your mother?” I asked.

  “Ah. That’s a hard one, Joan,” he said, and I lost him again. He’d gone back to his impersonations. “It’s difficult to say. I would say that it’s impossible to get along with her, and impossible not to get along with her. She is who she is.” He yawned. “You can turn off your flashlight. Waste of batteries.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  “So, who are your friends, Miss Malone?”

  “I don’t have any real friends,” I said. “The problem is I can’t invite anyone over.”

  “Of course you can. No one cares.”

  “You don’t know my mother.”

  “Everyone’s parents are meshuga. Parents are meshuga by definition. Believe me, no one will notice. When’s your birthday, Joan On Her Own?”

  “January. I’m twelve and a half.”

  “Do you think you can wait for me?” he asked.

  “Wait for what?”

  “For me to come and rescue you, and myself.”

  “I’ve been rescued already,” I said. “For the summer, at least.”

  “I’ve never met anyone like you,” he said. “Everything comes from inside with you—you never do or think things just to make an impression, or so someone will think about you in a certain way. You’re on a whole different plane, my love.”

  “Isn’t that bad?” I asked. It seemed to me that it was important to care about how you were seen.

  “No, it’s very good. Very good and very hard.”

  “I wish I knew more. But I hate reading facts, unless they’re about, you know, colour and all that stuff.”

  “Tell me what you like,” he said. He stretched out on his back and drew one arm over his eyes.

  “I like everything about being here. I wish the summer would never end.”

  “You’re going to go places, Maya. Your artist’s soul will take you far.”

  “I’m not an artist,” I said. “I can’t draw at all.”

  “Loving art is the same thing. It’s lonely, though. I hope you’ll let me come along. Will you? Will you let me come with you? Say in four years’ time?”

  In some recess of my mind I understood what Anthony was saying. But when you’re loved by someone—loved that way—and you can’t respond, love slides from you like water sliding from flippers. “I’m not going anywhere in four years,” I said. “Except maybe university.”

  “You’ll get married one day.”

  “No, I’m never going to marry,” I said.

  “And why is that?”

  “I’m just not. I can tell.”

  Very abruptly, Anthony stood up. “I hear the bells tolling,” he said. “They toll for me.” And he walked away in the direction of the dining hall.

  I’d almost forgotten about Sheila’s underwear, which I’d left drying on a rock. The delicate blue lace looked like the reflection of a bird on the rough granite, and I sat down next to it, hugged my knees. The world around me was suffused with silent light, as if newly created and waiting to be claimed.

  A series of unfamiliar sensations came over me. I knew my life was a tightrope act, with my mother’s nightmares perched at either end. Like her, I’d taken on a fugitive existence. I’d wanted to be a sparse person; I was hoping to keep my balance by shedding perspectives.

  But Anthony’s faith in me had left me with an addict’s yearning for more. If I were part of the hustle and bustle, if I let myself loose among the crowds—the possibilities stretched out like a beanstalk to the clouds. My mother would wait below, anxious but hopeful, as I climbed up. And each branch of the beanstalk would lead me to another chattery group of people. I would have friends.

  Friday, late. It’s been two weeks now since I began this incursion into the distant past. The days, like all my days, passed mysteriously in a sea of trivia that demanded my attention. I prepared for class, met with students, bought food, cooked it, ate it, cleaned up, walked Sailor, did laundry. There were memos, emails, even a semi-love letter from a small city in Peru. Someone I met last year, through one of those wild coincidences that but for the flap of a butterfly’s wings might never have occurred at all.

  It was February, the middle of the night, and I woke from a recurring dream I’ve been having for decades, a dream about searching for a place to live, perhaps temporarily, and then moving into or considering strange, rundown rooms and houses and wondering how to fix them up. Sometimes I can only reach the rooms by hoisting myself up through the narrowest of tunnels or funnels, with nothing to hold on to—a dreadful ordeal, but in the dream I have no choice.

  What if I’d not had that dream, not turned on the light at that moment? But I did, I turned it on. Sailor, who’d been snoring at the foot of my bed, wagged his tail; it’s always a treat for him, company at night. It was warm under my duvet and cold in the flat, but I was hungry, so I dragged myself out of bed, turned up the heat, and plodded to the kitchen. I made myself a lettuce and tomato sandwich and strolled over to the front window, as one does in winter—partly to ward off cabin fever, partly to check out the snow situation. It was very cold out, close to minus ten with the wind chill, and yet there on the sidewalk, next to a car, was a young woman shouting at a man who was shouting back at her.

  The man held on to the hood of his car. The engine was running, the door was open, and the man was trying to persuade the woman, or girl, to go with him. I could see by the sweeping movements of his arms that logic was on his side, but she refused to budge. Exasperated, protective, foiled, he grabbed her jacket and pulled. She tried to kick him and missed—the cold makes us all a little klutzy. That was the last straw for the man. He threw himself into the car in disgust and drove off, leaving his companion alone on the street. She clasped herself and frantically looked around for some place to duck into. No hat, no gloves, an inadequate jacket—like my students, who even in the midst of blizzards dress as if they lived in California.

  I hurried downstairs, opened my front door, and called out to her, but the wind swallowed the sound of my voice. I called again, urgently, because I was in my bathrobe and in precisely two seconds I’d be dead of hypothermia. She heard me this time, looked up. It didn’t immediately occur to her that I was inviting her in, because when, in real life, do fairy godmothers actually show up when you need them? “Do you want to come in?” I yelled in English, then in French. “You must be cold!”

  She nodded vigorously and climbed the icy helical stairs, grasping the rail so as not to slip, then followed me up the stairwell to the flat, then to the
kitchen, and then to wherever I moved in the kitchen, as if she were attached to me by a short cord. When I walked to the sink, she walked with me; when I went to the cupboard to fetch two mugs or to the fridge to take out a lemon meringue pie, she stayed close behind. She kept her coat on, and I had a fleeting image of one of those cartoon sleuths shadowing a suspect.

  “I’m Maya, by the way,” I said. “I teach art.”

  “I’m Tyen. I was doing a graduate degree in biochemistry at UBC,” she said. She was older than I’d thought at first, in her late twenties at least.

  “Who was that guy?”

  “My cousin. He’s mad at me. My family wants me to go back to Vancouver. I can’t go back. I’m mortified!”

  I’m used to second-language English, and I assumed Tyen had meant to say something else—fed up, for example. “I have a spare flat below,” I said. “You can stay there if you like—it’s empty right now. I just need to heat it. It takes about half an hour to warm up.”

  Tyen smiled and took my hand. One of the clan—what were the odds?

  “You have nice eyes,” she said. “They show what you’re feeling.”

  “Sugar? Milk? It’s skim…”

  “And your hair is the colour of the earth in Egypt.”

  “You’ve been to Egypt?”

  “Only for one day. My father took us all in a plane from Vietnam to Montreal when I was ten, and we stopped in Egypt. The earth there is exactly red.”

  “Is he a pilot?”

  “No, he’s a doctor. My mother’s brother was the pilot. My mother died when I was three—she stepped on a landmine, left over from the war.” She yawned. “I’m having jet lag. I flew in from Vancouver this morning.”

  “Why don’t you want to go back to UBC?” I asked, trying to slice the pie without making too much of a mess.

  “I was caught stealing,” she said, pouting. “It was mortifying.”

  “What did you steal?”

  “I filled in that I worked five more hours than I really worked … Your arms are so long. And your legs. Next to you I’m a shrimp.”

  “You know, probably no one cares about those hours, apart from you.”

  We spent the next three weeks talking about the fabricated worksheet, Tyen’s future, the respective lengths of our bodies. In the end she decided to complete her studies, but only if I promised to email her every day. I kept my promise, though I haven’t been able to reach her recently, because she’s been doing fieldwork in some Peruvian bog, miles from anywhere.

  But yesterday a letter arrived, filled with long descriptions of vein necrosis in leaves, period cramps, cravings for ice cream. In a PS she added, I can’t wait until I see you again. Stock your freezer with B&J organic chocolate-fudge ice cream. Next time I come I’m not leaving so be warned. Love me. Your Tyen.

  That’s all I have to report. I’ve been occupied, I’ve been busy, with nothing to show for it. Yet all the minute tasks that take me through my days seem important—crucial even—at the moment I perform them. Another kind of fabrication.

  Things are amiss with me. I know that. Things are not as they should be. Reliving that morning by the lake at Camp Bakunin, I feel exiled, almost, by the collapsed bridge between those hopeful stirrings and this land of nowhere, this coalition of no one, to which I’ve been relegated—have relegated myself. But at my back I always hear—something. Not time’s wingèd chariot, something else, just as rumbly and threatening. Not the future. The past.

  1969

  I left my heart at Camp Bakunin. School, now drearier than ever, held me prisoner, and I counted the days to my release. But in mid-April Jean-Marc phoned to say that the Bakunin group had disbanded. Mimi was leaving for a kibbutz in Israel, Anthony had moved to New York, Olga was running an artists’ colony, Sheldon would be touring with a rock band, and Bruno had joined a Jesus cult. In any case, the campsite was no longer available—the insurance company had discovered that there was no running water on the premises, and without coverage Jean-Marc couldn’t get a permit.

  I wept with frustration and disappointment. As if he knew how I’d take the news, Anthony called an hour later. I was sulking in my room, but I dutifully trudged to the telephone when I heard the ring. My mother and Bubby were superstitious about the phone, which they associated with dire news—though only if they picked up the receiver; I was exempt from the Curse of the Phone. I was therefore the only one who could take calls, and when I wasn’t at home, the rings went unanswered. If I was the one calling from somewhere, I had to use the secret code: ring once, hang up, call back.

  “Hello?” I said bleakly.

  “Yes, hello and hello again. Am I speaking to Miss Malone?”

  “Anthony!” I cried out. Maybe he’d fix everything, find a way to revive the camp. Maybe he was calling with the good news.

  “How are you, Joan?”

  “I just heard about Bakunin. Jean-Marc says we can’t go back. Isn’t there some way?”

  “Alas, I fear not. A good time was had by all, but—life moves on.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Neither can I. I was hoping to see you again, Joan. Are you all right, otherwise?”

  “I guess…” I said reluctantly. “Jean-Marc said you were in New York.”

  “I’m tripping the light fantastic as we speak. Ready to snap my fingers at poetry readings. Seems I’m too late, flower power has taken over.”

  “I know that song! ‘Me and Mamie O’Rourke, Tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York.’ That’s where the title of that book comes from. You know, Boys and Girls Together.”

  “Ah, yes. The illustrious William Goldman. I came across him only the other week, at a party. At least that’s who he said he was. He may have been an impostor.”

  “Really? You met him?”

  “New York is small, if you exclude the down and out.”

  “How come you’re there?”

  “Ah, who knows, Joan Malone. Who knows why we do the things we do?”

  “I was really counting on going back to Bakunin this summer,” I whined—with Anthony, as with my mother, I could whine as much as I liked. “Now I’ll be moping around in the city, with nothing to do and nowhere to go.”

  “Actually, I need you,” he said. “I need an assistant and you might be just the person, avid reader that you are.”

  “You mean, like a job?” For some reason the first thing that came to my mind was Miss Pride, in Boston Adventure, hiring Sonia Marburg to be her amanuensis—a word I’d had to look up.

  “Yes. Are you interested?”

  “I’m not sure I can do anything.”

  “You can do this. I’ve written a novel, I need you to read it and comment.”

  “Okay, though I don’t really know anything.”

  “I detect a theme here.”

  “I just mean…”

  “I know exactly what you mean—don’t I?” The question began as banter but wavered midway into uncertainty.

  “This call is costing you a fortune,” I said.

  “Is it? Well, money is no object when it comes to friendship. But you’re right, it’s time to say au revoir. I’ll be in touch. Take good care of your mother.”

  “Thanks for calling,” I said awkwardly, or at least that’s how I felt—awkward, inadequate. There was something Anthony wanted from me—cleverness, for example—and I wasn’t up to it.

  Two weeks later, a package from New York arrived in the mail, but it didn’t contain Anthony’s manuscript. Instead, he’d sent me a copy of Middlemarch, bookmarked with a postcard of a sweetly solemn group of Jewish black congregants, circa 1929, photographed in their Saturday best in front of the Moorish Zionist Temple. On the back Anthony had written, in minute print: Alas, the novel has gone up in flames. Following the example of that sad creature Mme Mozart one cold night I tossed whatever paper was at hand into the fire, for a few moments of warmth. I send you instead this cautionary tale, though not as a caution to you, Joan. You
would never fail to recognize pretension. Take it easy. Who knows what the summer holds for us all, and especially for you?

  Who knew indeed? Anthony’s hopeful speculation proved to be prescient, for that was the summer I met Rosie.

  My mother was convinced that my continued existence depended on her being in the house when I came home from school, and she’d arranged to work on Saturdays so she could leave the dry cleaners early on weekdays.

  But this morning I had only to pick up my report card and empty my locker and I’d be free to go. I’d finally graduated from Coronation Elementary School. This break in routine was creating havoc in the Levitsky domicile—or rather a focus for havoc. My mother wouldn’t be at home when I returned from school, and Bubby had strict instructions not to answer the front door.

  —mamaleh don’t forget a key my sunshine where are you—

  I emerged from my bedroom and Bubby handed me a clean towel, in case I was seized by a sudden urge to shower. I bowed, flung it open, and spread it around my shoulders like a cloak. “Meet me at dawn, and I shall have satisfaction,” I declaimed. My mother laughed, and panting with the exertion of being manic she raced past us, first one way, then another. She had to set aside Bubby’s lunch, a stew, and fill three glasses with juice and soda water—the soda bottles were too heavy for Bubby to lift.

  My mother placed an empty pot on the stove and repeated instructions my grandmother had heard, or not heard, every day for the past seven years. How to turn on the stove, how to turn it off, what to do if there was a fire, who to phone if she felt faint. The glasses of juice and soda water, protected from the elements by Saran Wrap, were lined up carefully on the bottom shelf of the fridge. Saran Wrap! What would we do without it? Our lives were held together by Saran Wrap.

  Bubby nodded patiently. She often spent the day baking, and had evidently mastered the finer points of turning the stove on and off without burning down the house. But in all the commotion of juice and stew and projected fire, in the commotion of trying to help my mother unfold the Saran Wrap as it stuck to itself, I did forget the key.