MONDAY, JUNE 28, 2021
CARROLL STREET, BROOKLYN
HOW CAN A BODY contain so many tears?
The two Joannas are crying, and the same idea comes to them at the same time. So many tears. There are five people in total in among the sketches and gouaches in Aby Wasserman’s big studio: the FBI psychiatrists awkwardly perched on high stools, the Joannas in an armchair and on an old sofa, with a dazed Aby lost for words. Without thinking, the cartoonist sat down next to “his” Joanna and can now read the distress in the other one’s eyes. She too is the woman he hugged fiercely after her Paris–New York flight three months ago. He should kiss her, comfort her. But no. He’s turned to stone.
They sit unmoving and silent for a long time.
“I need to get out,” says one Joanna, and the two women stand up, open the French door, and hurry onto the large balcony that looks out over the street. Aby follows them.
Now they’re out in the sunlight, with their bloodshot eyes, taking time out. Joanna has always believed in the benefits of being out of doors, she’s never been in any doubt that the wind, sky, and clouds bring answers the way storks bring babies. When she was a child, if the world seemed to be against her, she’d go out to find peace in the park on the corner of West and Providence. She’d run along the asphalt path till she was out of breath, till her lungs were about to explode and she flopped to the ground with her back on the close-cropped grass, her arms splayed out in a cross and her heart pounding. The universe infiltrated her with every breath she took, and she gradually reappropriated it. But today the shimmering maple trees on Carroll Street have no simple answers to offer them. One Joanna blows her nose, takes a long slow breath, tries to steady herself. The other wipes her eyes.
“I don’t want to steal your life,” says one, sniffing.
“Neither do I.”
“But I don’t want to lose mine either.”
“Aby?” says one of the women, turning to him. “Say something.”
It makes him jump. His eyes were darting constantly from one Joanna to the other. Only a discreetly swelling stomach helps differentiate them.
“I’m really sorry. I’m out of my depth. I…I just have no idea what to say.”
He looks down, contemplates the tattoo on his wrist: two palm trees on a dune. A tribute to his grandfather and the story of his life: as a child Aby saw “OASIS” on the old man’s forearm, and asked what the tattooed word meant. The reply was, You see, Aby, my boy, an oasis means water in the middle of the desert, a place of peace and sharing, so I had this tattoo done when I was twenty, because it represented hope for a new life here after the war, it’s a good-luck charm, do you understand that, Aby? Ein Glücksbringer. Little Aby repeated the word—Glücksbringer—and it fascinates him to this day that the German language has only one word, Glück, for happiness and luck: perhaps unhappiness is just being really down on your luck. On Aby’s twelfth birthday his grandfather told him that, no, the tattoo wasn’t the word he thought he’d read backward, it wasn’t OASIS but 51540, his prisoner number at Auschwitz. The day after the old man died, Aby had a tattoo done on his own skin, in the same place: this oasis whose secret meaning only he knows and that has been a source of strength to him. But the two women are looking at him, and the tattoo he’s staring at is no longer a refuge.
“So we got married, then? And we live here?” asks Joanna June. “What was our wedding like?”
Neither the “we” nor the “our” is premeditated. But they anchor into the language a sort of balance between Joanna Woods and this Joanna Wasserman, who’s carrying Aby’s baby. She’s not the perverse intruder, she’s the poor insider who got left behind.
A summer breeze quivers through the silver leaves, and the noise of cars recedes. “The winds must come from somewhere when they blow.” Why this poem comes to her, Joanna doesn’t know.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do. Legally…” ventures the first Joanna.
There’s no legal precedent, the other is about to say but immediately thinks, Fuck, that really is me all over, straight to the legal position. She remembers the Martin Guerre trial in France in the sixteenth century. An impostor called Arnaud du Tilh comes “home” to the village where Guerre was born, passes himself off as him, lives with his wife, and convinces anyone prepared to be convinced that he is who he claims to be. But in a spectacular twist, the real Martin Guerre returns, and the impostor ends up on the gallows. What’s the point of mentioning it, thinks Joanna, guessing that the other Joanna has remembered the same story at the same time.
“It’s completely different,” she murmurs.
Silence settles over them. A discreet tap on the glass makes all three of them turn around to see the FBI agents who—either timid or intimidated—dare not come onto the balcony.
“Make yourselves a coffee,” Aby says to get rid of them.
“What about Ellen?” asks Joanna June. “How’s she doing?”
“She’s okay, she’s having her treatment today. And…I took a job with Denton and Lovell. I’m handling Valdeo, for the Hexachlorion trial.”
“You didn’t? With that piece of shit Prior? You…you did that?”
“He’s not a piece of shit, that’s a cliché because he’s a billionaire.”
Joanna June knows, it’s so blatantly obvious: of course she would have done the same to pay for Ellen’s treatment, but also because, well, it is Denton & Lovell…Without thinking, she reaches her hand to Aby, who takes it, also without thinking. Seeing this small gesture, the other Joanna finds there’s no air to breathe, the pain crushes her chest. Her sister will always be her sister, but she has only one Aby. There are some loves that can be added together, and others that can never be divided.
“This is terrible,” says Aby, taking her hand too. “I don’t love both of you. I love just one woman, a woman whose name is Joanna.”
He can’t go on. The tears that were making his eyes shine start to flow, unchecked. So many tears.