‘It’s been a very long time. Hasn’t it, Loli?’
‘Very.’
‘Almost twenty years?’
‘At least.’
‘Are you well? What a silly question.’
‘I’m fine, considering.’
‘Let’s go back to my room. This piano bench was not made for two people.’ I help her to her feet. She is shaky, but has no trouble when it comes to finding her way through the glass doors. ‘I see shadows. I see light and shadows. That’s how I find my way … They call them cotton wool spots. Diabetic retinopathy. That’s the diagnosis. Nowadays they have a diagnosis for everything. Everything. Soon I won’t see the shadows or the light.’ We walk arm in arm toward Mrs B.’s room. ‘How’s your sister?’
‘She’s pretty upset about Pop.’
‘I imagine she would be. He was her favorite.’
‘She was his favorite.’
‘Not true.’
‘It seemed that way.’
‘He’s a good man, your father. God knows it hasn’t been an easy life for him.’
‘I’m so sorry about Burt.’
‘Poor Burt never had a chance. When Sid and I divorced, I thought Burt was going to commit suicide.’ Mrs B. opens the door. We enter her shrinking world. There is a bed, a night table, and a small porcelain lamp on the table. ‘I love the light in this room.’
‘It’s lovely.’ The room is dark. The air is heavy. Not to Mrs B. She finds beauty in the ordinary. I have always loved that about her.
‘Would you mind opening the curtains?’ I open the curtains. ‘Open the doors too. Let some air in the room.’ I open a set of French doors that lead onto a patio where Mrs B. has planted the most beautiful garden: daisies, daffodils, pansies, parsley, Johnny Jump-Ups, and violets.
‘Your garden is beautiful,’ I tell her.
‘I love to garden. It’s my meditation.’
‘You always had a green thumb. I remember how envious my mother was when your flowers bloomed in late spring.’
‘Your mother never had a shred of envy in her body.’
I think about my mother … ‘You’re right.’
‘She was too kind, sensitive to ever be jealous of what someone else had.’ She stares into space. ‘Like Burt. Poor thing. Where was I before we started talking about your mother?’
‘Burt.’
‘Oh yes. So after Sid and I got divorced, Burt was never the same. We sent him to a psychiatrist. It didn’t do him a bit of good. Instead, he buried himself in those books of his. He did well in school. Went to M.I.T. The pressure nearly killed him, barely got through, such a sad man. When he met Lorraine, his ex-wife, he was so happy, if you could call it that. I never understood what he saw in her. Then one day, I realized she was just as unhappy as he was. They fed off each other’s misery. When he took a position at the University of Iowa, she didn’t want to go. She hated Iowa. Made him pay for it, told him he’d ruined her life. Honest to God, what people do to each other. Burt wanted kids. Lorraine didn’t. The more he tried to make her happy, the less she cared. She drove him crazy.
‘One day he had had it with her. He hauled off, hit her; out of frustration. Nowadays you don’t hit a woman, especially a woman with a good lawyer. That was it. She took him to the cleaners. He got thrown out of the university because of the scandal … spousal abuse. He had to sell the house. She got the bulk of the money.
‘Then he came home. All he did was sulk. Of course when I started going blind, he didn’t know how to deal with it. Good grief, if you can’t deal with life, you might as well lay down and die. That is exactly what he did. Found a gun at some secondhand store, shot himself … in our backyard.
‘There was no point in me staying after … I couldn’t take care of myself, and being near your father for all those years, all the memories, your mother’s death, finally it was time to move on. So here I am. It’s not so bad. It really isn’t; just another chapter in my life.’ She closes the French doors, draws the curtains. ‘I’m so glad you came to visit.’
‘I’d like to come again, if that’s all right with you?’
‘That would be lovely. It’s about time both Greene girls were back in my life.’
‘Better late than never.’
‘So true. Please give your father my love.’
‘I will. After I leave you, I’m going to the house … surprise him.’
‘He was never big on surprises, your father. He must have changed.’
‘I would hope so.’ I say my goodbyes.
‘Don’t take twenty years. I can’t wait that long. I probably won’t be around.’
‘Maybe next time, Dina and I will visit you together. The Greene girls together again for a return engagement at Mrs B.’s world of botanical enchantment.’ I close the door behind me, walk down the corridor, out into the late-spring daylight. It is a gorgeous day in Beechwood.
I walk down Worth Avenue, stroll by Beechwood elementary school. I kissed Ron Johnson in the corner of the playground. Maggie is no longer in my hair, on my fingers. She is still with me, but I’m afraid to keep her too close. Simone is with me too. I can’t stop swinging in the playground called mind.
The Good Humor man pulls up in his ice-cream truck right in front of school. I want to ask him if my mother told him she was going to kill herself. But it’s twenty years later. For sure he’s not the same Good Humor man. The kids run for the truck, much like I did when I was their age.
For some strange reason I feel hopeful about the future. My visit with Mrs B. has been an inspiration. Even though she is blind, I felt as if she saw all of me. How healing it is to be seen.
I continue my walk through town, pass the candy store, the drug store, down Post Avenue, turn right onto Bridge Court. I walk up the steps in front of the shrinking house. I have my key poised, ready for the hole. Open the door, enter the world of sick and dying.
Patty is sound asleep on the living-room sofa. I tiptoe into the television room. Pop is also fast asleep, talking his dream talk.
‘Hurry up, I wanna go up. I’m here. Come on now. Hurry up. Take me up.’ She is in his every sleep, every wake. She is in the bedroom. She is in whatever room he has left for her in his heart. I kiss him on his forehead. I listen for her. She has nothing to say. Where is that missing monkey? It’ll turn up sooner or later.
I let myself out of the house, walk to the Beechwood train station. It is three p.m. I have had a full day.
The train arrives; the train that my father took to work every day of his life. I am on his train, going to his city, looking out his window, rediscovering the tall trees, the endless train tracks, the two-story brick buildings, the almost perfect world I took for granted as a child.