Emily opened her door to find Moshe standing right outside. He looked anxious.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
Moshe leaned into the bedroom a little. “It’s not a catastrophe,” he whispered. Then he turned and walked, and Emily quickly followed.
“I’ve already done most of it,” said Moshe.
As soon as she walked into the room of windows, Emily was met with the smell of coconuts.
“People have brought up just about everywhere over the years,” he said. “This used to be a wild place, you know, so don’t worry too much.”
Then Emily saw Jonah lying under the table by the window. And she understood. He was drunk. He’d been drinking, all those days. Coconut rum. Orange liquor.
“I don’t want to ask your grandmother,” said Moshe. “But you see, there’s still the stain there, that’s what I don’t know what to do about. We just need to make sure nobody can see a mark.”
Emily watched Jonah carefully. His chest was rising and falling, so he was alive at least. Although, even if his chest wasn’t rising. He was a person who knew how to hold his breath.
“I feel responsible,” Moshe was saying. “We’ve been drinking together in my office. He’s been so celebratory the past few days. I don’t know. I kept refilling his glass. I shouldn’t have, I know how you young people can’t keep up, but I did it anyway.”
Emily knelt beside Jonah. “Are you okay?” she whispered. She felt very close to him, suddenly. Maybe they had reconnected. Maybe that wasn’t something that you worked at. Maybe it just happened.
Jonah looked at her, eyes like two harvest moons. “I’ve had better days,” he said, and Emily laughed.
“This is like old times,” she whispered. “We used to play games under the table.”
“We should get this cleaned up quickly though,” said Moshe. “Before Bubbie and your Auntie see.”
“I’ll get it right out,” said Emily. There was already a cloth on the floor, and bottles and bottles of solvents and a huge metal bowl full of water. She mixed proportions, took a cloth and started to scrub.
“I’m so sorry,” said Jonah.
What would Harpo say in a situation like this? He’d probably find something positive and say that. “It smells really nice in here,” she said, and it was true, it did.
“Oh God,” said Jonah.
“No really,” she said. “It actually does.” She’d expected to be disgusted, but she wasn’t. The whole room smelled like a cocktail, or a rum cake. “It’s really more coconut than anything.”
“You should let me clean up,” said Jonah. “Just an hour to sleep and then I could do it.”
“I don’t mind.”
“You don’t?” He sat up painfully. “Usually these things make you snap.”
Emily sat back on her heels. “I snap?”
“You don’t like these kinds of surprises,” Jonah said quickly. “Not that anybody should. Especially from the help.”
“I’m not like that,” whispered Emily, but maybe she was. She listened to all the family’s stories about being Russian royalty. She didn’t even seem to want to hear the real ones. She’d been given the opportunity to hear a story that was true, and she hadn’t pursued it. Great-aunt Sonja’s love story was clearly untrue, and she hadn’t asked any questions at all.
She put all her weight into her shoulders and scrubbed as hard as she could. She felt like a cord had caught around her neck and pulled tight. All she’d wanted was to be nice and forgiving and happy like Harpo. But she was a Groucho. Still.
Jonah reached for her hand, but Emily sat up, pulled away. “The stain will set,” she said. “I have to get it out. It’s just lucky you’re not dead.”
“All those times…” But Jonah didn’t continue.
All those times. Emily blinked away the memory of dark nights, dark rooms, laughter filtered underneath the dining-room door, and so many tears that she felt like she was drowning. “Next time, it might not be a joke,” she said.
“What?” said Moshe. “Alcohol poisoning? I don’t understand the two of you.”
Emily scrambled to her feet, then reached for the bowl. “I’m going to get more water.” Moshe followed her out the door.
Emily stopped outside the dining room and watched the crack beneath the door. There was always a little draft, a breath of cold air that came through no matter how hot it was. When she was little, she used to lie there and listen in on the grown-ups’ parties. She heard Moshe walking to her side. She didn’t turn around.
“The first time Jonah died was when he was nine years old and I was six,” said Emily.
“I don’t think Jonah really died though,” said Moshe.
The first time might have been a Seder, but it probably wasn’t. The adults were all in the dining room, having a fancy dinner. Beneath the door, there was a tiny strip of bright yellow light. She was playing by herself because Jonah was in one of his moods.
“I don’t think he was really dead,” said Moshe, “not for any appreciable amount of time, anyway.”
“I was only six,” said Emily. “Five maybe.”
“Did he tease you? Is that what happened?”
“He used to do it a lot,” she said, and her voice was brittle. “He used to pretend that I killed him.”
Emily could always tell that it was coming. She could sense an edge to his jokes, an energy building, a strange upsetting tension that she could neither account for, nor explain. Then he’d tease her. He’d tease and he’d tease until she’d turn around and shove him. Then he’d always fall down dead.
“He’d goad me into hitting back, then would fall down and pretend to die.”
“That’s too bad,” said Moshe.
Emily didn’t respond. It was more than too bad. It was scarring. It had scared her. After a moment, she heard Moshe leave the room. She continued into the kitchen and wrung out her cloth.
Emily hurried back to the room of windows, but Jonah wasn’t on the easy chair, or underneath it. She ran to the table. He wasn’t under there either. She sat down heavily right in front of the stain.
She remembered seeing him dead on the ground, where she’d shoved him. All those times. She’d picked up his hand, dropped it, and, when it fell back to the ground, she thought that meant he was dead because that’s what she saw on TV. She’d never understood the pulse part of things. Then she’d always rushed to get her mother’s compact, click open to the mirror, hold it under Jonah’s nose. Jonah had explained earlier that when a mirror didn’t fog up, it meant the person wasn’t breathing, he was dead.
“He probably went to sleep it off,” said Moshe, from the opposite doorway.
“It wasn’t just playing dead, you know. He’d lock me in the cellar, hold the doorknob so I couldn’t get out. Sometimes he paddled me to the dock and left me there.”
“That I remember.” Moshe was trying not to laugh. Emily could hear him trying to silence it, and that effort to stop was infuriating.
“I was little.” Emily scrubbed vigorously. “He told me that we were all the way in Kingston. And that the lights from the lodge were really prison lights. I believed him.”
“He was just trying to get your attention,” said Moshe.
“He had my undivided attention. He always did.”
“He felt self-conscious because you were always so smart.”
Soon, she heard Moshe leave the room. Emily dipped the cloth in the water and swirled it around. It had been so long ago. Jonah had been nice to her for decades, and she should just let it go. That’s what Moshe must be thinking. He was right too.
When the carpet was clean, Emily tiptoed to Jonah’s room, then to the kitchen, then to the room of windows again. Finally, she found him in the room of doors, curled like a larva beside the big wooden table. She found a blanket and covered him up and sat beside him. Here’s what she remembered most. She was sitting on a stair just outside the dining room, crying without sound, when Jonah appeared at the bottom of the stairs. She threw herself into his arms, and he nearly overbalanced, but grabbed onto the railing in time to save them both. But then, “Next time, it might not be a joke,” he whispered right into Emily’s ear.
“So I hear it’s been a long day for you, Emily,” said Blima as Emily wandered back into the room of windows.
“It’s not that bad,” said Emily. “Where’s Auntie Sonja?”
“She’s upstairs, looking for Doran. So. Jonah drank too much. That’s like our chef who used to drink too much. These men. Your Great-uncle Daniel nearly drowned the chef in the lake, he got so mad.”
“I’m not that mad,” said Emily, interrupting. For once, she didn’t want to hear another story. “I’ll just watch A Night at the Opera, then I’ll feel better.”
“All of this business with Harpo Marx,” said Blima.
“He’s somebody I can depend on.”
“How can you depend on a man who died in nineteen sixty-three? He’s dead, lovie. It’s unnatural when there are living men around.”
“It’s not like that. He’s just comforting. I put his DVD on, and I laugh, every time.”
“It’s easier for a man who’s dead,” said Blima. “He doesn’t have to do as much.”
“He never makes me sad. He never lets me down.”
Blima stood. “Let me tell you about Harpo Marx letting you down. A pretty girl walks by, who’s older than you and has long legs, then he’s off.”
“That was just in the movies.”
“That’s what he was like. That was Harpo. Except the real man knew what to do with the girls once he caught them.”
“What about Elijah? He wasn’t perfect. He went to those old people who loved that cow like it was their kid. And what did he do? He prayed for the angel of death to take their pet away. And it died. And those two old folks were devastated.”
“That’s easy,” said Blima. “Everyone knows that one. He did it because he saw the angel of death coming. He asked the angel to take the cow and to leave the old woman.”
“And he couldn’t have asked the angel of death to leave them both alone and just not come? He could have saved everybody. He had a pretty direct line to God, that’s what everyone says. Those people were old and poor and he just made them more miserable.”
“Sometimes, that’s the way things have to work.”
“Sometimes, people just want to look clever.”
“You don’t know Elijah. Anyhow. I’m the one who knew Harpo. You want to know about him? This is who Harpo Marx really was. One day, I had a fight with our mother. Harpo and I had just been out for a walk, and for a few minutes, she didn’t know where I was. She pulled me right into the great room in front of everybody—this was in the old days when the lodge was packed— and then she yelled at me in front of all those people. And Harpo didn’t help. He didn’t defend me. There was probably a girl there, he was always chasing after pretty girls. At first, I thought he just didn’t notice. But then he gave me a long look in my eye and I knew that he saw. He just did nothing. He just stood there while I cried in front of everyone.”
“That’s not true,” said Emily. “That can’t be true. Harpo was a good man.”
“He didn’t stand up for me. That’s your hero. A man who will leave a little girl alone.”
“Whatever.” Emily stalked away. “Everyone else says he was great.”
Emily slammed her door, and for minutes after, she could still hear the echo, the pop of air, the vibration in the walls. She hadn’t slammed a door like that since she was fourteen years old, and why had she ever stopped? It felt great.
She walked around the room, lap after lap, then stopped at the cabinet. On it was the postcard of the three most famous Marx brothers, the one she’d stolen from Ayala’s file. The Marxes were pressed into the frame, smiling boyishly, clearly caught in the midst of some great movement. And beside that, there was the picture of Harpo Marx without his fright wig and costume. Harpo just looked like a normal guy. She picked up the Harpo picture, the au naturel one, and took it with her on her next lap of the room.
Harpo hadn’t been mean.
Emily felt a breeze, and suddenly she knew what Harpo would do right now.
She ran to the window, then hopped onto the ledge. As she swung herself outside, she hit her leg and it made a horrible sound, thunderous, and she froze, half inside and half out.
Then Doran’s face appeared out of the window of the adjacent room. He leaned out, farther and farther, not saying anything, just fixing her with his weird dish-plate eyes. Emily’s leg started to throb. A bruise was forming, she could feel it. Should she go back in? What would she say to him if she did? He’d come around for sure and want to talk, or he’d just stand there in the doorway, silent and maddeningly weird. She manoeuvred the rest of the way out the window, and let herself drop.
She fell to the ground, stunned. That had hurt.
Emily picked herself up again and looked up. She had just jumped out of a window. She’d been caught at it too. Doran was still leaning out the window, looking at her with an unreadable expression. Well at least there was that. A normal person would have been appalled.
“Hey!”
Emily wheeled around. Ryan was walking toward her, Amy standing sullenly beneath the oak tree.
“Hey, Emily!” said Ryan.
Emily turned and limped down to the woods as quickly as she could. She’d just jumped out a window. And she’d been caught at it twice.
Emily limped farther and farther into the forest.
Harpo used to get tossed out of his school when he was in the second grade. His class was on the second floor, and two bullies used to grab him, hoist him up to the window and let him fall. Emily had always read that particular anecdote as mostly funny, and admired the scrawny little kid who picked himself up and marched himself back to the classroom until the day he just didn’t anymore. But now she knew that it hurt.