10

Susan had the phones removed.

It was several days after Peter told her the brain scan had revealed nothing (his disappointment, instead of touching her, made her irritable. ‘Now will you believe me?”).

After an argument with Tara: (“Susan, it’s all you talk about!” “What else am I supposed to talk about? What’s new at Bloomingdale’s? Jesus, Tara, what’s the matter with you?”).

And Maudey: (“Look, I’m sorry for taking so much time off but there’s nothing I can do about it. If you can’t wait until this thing is over, I’ll understand your replacing me . . .”).

And her mother: (“Nothing is the matter. Will you just leave me alone?”).

She decided one morning that it was her home, that no one (no thing, no power, no deity however malignant) had the right to offend her in her own home. And so she called the phone company (Tara dialed as if she were doing her the most monumental favor in the world) and arranged to have the phones removed (ripped out, shredded for all she cared).

And then Lou found out.

She was in the kitchen preparing dinner (resenting it; resenting everything for days) when Lou, who had come home and played with Andrea without noticing the three barren spots, one beside their bed, one in the living room, one beside her in the kitchen, entered, still unaware.

“What’s for dinner?” he asked innocently.

“Chops.” She volunteered no further information, knowing that soon enough they would be fighting. (Where to send Andrea? She’d surely hear them in her room.)

“Lamb, veal, mutton, what?”

“Pork.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s not in your heritage to make pork chops.” He lifted the lid on the skillet. “Lamb,” he announced, as if she didn’t know.

It suddenly, and for no apparent reason, occurred to Susan that they hadn’t made love in days (weeks?).

“Give a holler when it’s ready.” Lou left the room.

“I’ll holler, all right,” she said under her breath, now looking forward to it.

They ate, and he still didn’t notice.

Then, with Andrea ensconced in front of the nightly lunacy on TV, Lou called to her from the bedroom.

She joined him, closing the door after her. He was standing by the night table, looking at it, not in any of the attitudes she’d expected—neither exhausted patience nor condescending under­standing. He was angry.

They fought, as she had wanted. (“Susan, I can’t live in a home without a telephone. It’s insane!” “It’s my home, too, and I’m not having that thing call me here!”)

They tended Andrea. (“We’re just having a little argument, honey. Nothing to be upset over. Go watch ‘Three’s Company’. . . .”)

They calmed down. (“But how can we live like this? Susan, suppose someone has to reach us?” “They can call next door. That’s what my parents did before they had a phone. . . .”)

And finally they compromised. Lou would have another phone installed, for his use only. Susan was not to be expected to answer it if it rang; Lou would take all calls.

“How long is it going to be like this?” Lou asked, drained of all his anger (and sympathy?).

“Until it’s over.”

“Will you continue seeing Peter?”

“Yes.” (For all the good it will do.)

He made an attempt at holding her, failed (she broke away first, sensing he was about to) and joined Andrea, who was by now sullen at having been left out of the argument, in front of the TV set.

Susan, sitting on the bed, having won the battle despite the phone he would order (it wasn’t her phone nor her responsibility), decided to leave the apartment.

“I’m going for a walk,” she told Lou, who was beyond dis­agreeing with her about anything. (You don’t argue with crazy people, she thought, riding down in the elevator.)

Outside, it was cool and quiet; no arguments, no strained understanding, no unspoken blame. She turned north and walked up West End Avenue, past the doormen and the canopied buildings, now seedier than they were when she was a child and only the rich lived in them, past the schools (John-­John Kennedy had gone to Collegiate, diagonally across from their building, a source of West Side pride), across Eighty-­sixth Street (she had had no less than three friends who lived on Eighty-­sixth, between West End and the Drive), into the low Nineties where the side streets spilled garbage to announce the welfare hotels. And then, at Ninety-­third, she found herself looking up at one of the apartment houses, remembering the many times she’d entered its marble lobby, school briefcase pulling her to a slant.

It was Jennie Finkelstein’s building.

Jennie, who was here, in New York. Jennie, whose sympathy she had not yet drained.

Susan hurried into the building but was stopped by the locked interior doors (the first sign of deterioration—no doorman). She went to the row of tenant names and mercifully found it, Finkelstein, 6R, pressed its intercom button and waited by the mouthpiece.

Please be here, Jennie. Please!

“Hello? Yes?” A woman’s voice, metallic, called down to her.

“Mrs. Finkelstein?” Susan shouted into the mouthpiece. “Is Jennie there?” (“Can she come out and play? It’s Susie.”)

“Jennie? Who is this?”

“It’s Susan Goodman, a friend of hers from Hunter High. . . .”

“Oh, my God, Susie? Is that you?”

“Yes. I met Jennie the other day. She said she was staying with you. . . .”

“Wait, darling. Come upstairs. Nat, it’s Susie Goodman downstairs . . .” and the buzzer went off, clicking the doors open.

She pushed through them into the lobby and felt sickened by what she saw. The walls dirty, paint peeling (painted marble, not real as she had always assumed), the wooden mantel over the fake fireplace marred with initials, the carpet, once wine-­colored and elegant, now frayed and filthy. It was like meeting an old friend, once robust, who had been stricken and was now wasted away, giving only hints at what had once been. Stepping into the elevator, she again saw the scratched graffiti (Hector sucks) and felt a wave of resentment and anger. Who were these people who took it on themselves to destroy her memories? Were their names, sprayed or cut, their only proof of being? If so . . . before she could complete the awful thought, the elevator door opened and Susan saw Mrs. Finkelstein standing behind her door, peering out expectantly.

“My God, look at you!” she said. (Weren’t those Jennie’s words, too?) “What a sight for sore eyes!” (Those, surely, were not.)

She was escorted in, a princess from the past, and forced to have coffee with the aging couple. (Her mother had fared better than Jennie’s, Susan saw, for the woman was stooped, arthritic and worry-­worn. Nat Finkelstein also looked old, thin, badgered.)

“No, darling, Jennie went back to Washington over a week ago,” the mother was saying as they settled down in the living room.

Susan looked around at the furnishings. Had everyone of that generation bought the same things, had the same taste (lack of it)?

“So, what’d you think of our politician?” the father asked proudly.

“She’s wonderful, just wonderful.”

“And you, sweetheart?” The mother poured coffee. “Are you married?”

Right to the point. “Yes.”

“Children?”

Susan felt she should lie out of loyalty to Jennie, but she didn’t. “Yes, a daughter.”

“A daughter.” The father smiled. “A daughter.” And it occurred to Susan that this couple, aging badly and living in remnants of their former life, had one source of unabused happiness left—their daughter.

“You must be so proud of Jennie,” she said kindly. “One of these days we’re going to be hearing about Senator Finkelstein.”

“If only it were a different name,” the mother said, and for a moment Susan thought she, like her daughter, was poking fun at it. Then she realized it was a maiden name.

“She’s still young,” Susan said.

“She’s thirty-­seven. When I was thirty-­seven, she was already in school. . . .”

“Don’t complain,” her husband said. “She could have done worse.”

“I suppose. What’s your daughter’s name, darling?”

“Andrea.”

“Ooh, nice. Isn’t that a nice name, Nat?”

“Very nice.”

“Your parents must be delighted to have a grandchild.”

“Yes,” Susan answered simply, wanting off the subject.

She stayed as long as it took to drink one cup of coffee (sipping furiously) and then, as politely as she could, she took her leave, insisting that she had to be home in time to put Andrea to bed.

“Listen,” the mother whispered to her at the elevator, “if you know a nice single man for Jennie, don’t be bashful about telling her, okay?”

“Okay.” Susan blushed.

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

Downstairs, in the lobby, Susan noticed that several of the mailboxes had double locks. Another tribute to the angry army.

She walked over to Broadway, still not ready to go home and face Lou’s silent wrath. Strolling along, looking vacantly into storefronts, she realized something profoundly true, or so it seemed. Everyone was living with a horror of one sort or another; the Finkelsteins, caught in a hostile island from which they could not escape, Jennie and Susan’s mother, alone for the rest of their lives, perhaps Tara, too, Aunt Ida’s loss, everyone. But their horrors were explainable. Hers was not.

And then, as if hearing its cue, her horror returned.

She was at the corner of Broadway and Eighty-­eighth, heading south, when the pay phone next to her went off.

She startled, looking at it, thinking after a moment that there was no reason to assume anything. And so she crossed the street and continued to stroll, faking nonchalance.

And the ringing stopped.

At the corner of Eighty-­seventh, it happened again.

This time she refused even to look at the pay phone.

At Eighty-­sixth, there were two. Ringing. Calling to her, unmistakably.

She hurried on.

And at each corner, malevolent and all-­seeing, a phone waited for her, charting the course of her return home, letting her know, all too well, that there was no escaping the Silence.