Conundrum (12 page)

Even though Raff’s accident occurred sixteen years ago, as I stared out the plane window, tears dropped hot onto my cheeks. I couldn’t i
magine a more devastating end to childhood innocence than what Raff had experienced. His first year away at college. His life as an adult opening up to him with all its promises and potential. The heavy burden of guilt he would now carry around with him for the rest of his life, regardless of my mother’s a
ssurances of his blamelessness.

The
fun
,
adventurous summer
I had eagerly awaited was replaced
by
Raff carr
ying
Steve’s death in his arms everywhere he went, an invisible weight that bent him over
and made him sluggish
and enveloped in ennui
.

That summer,
Raff
had
crawled into himself, like a snail retreating into a shell. No one questioned his two months of depression or his unwillingness to
join in our activities.
We gave him a wide berth, spoke in quiet voices around him, the hushed tone you hear in hospital corridors.
And then the dreary, oppressive summer ended and Raff returned to college, sending me into my melancholy and music, the horizon of my own future
now tainted
dark and foreboding.

Chapter 7

I had no trouble picking
Mandy
out of the crowd loitering by the cars along the curb
at JFK Airport
. Her bright face, her dancer’s body—petite yet muscular
—gave her away. With an enthusiastic wave, she beckoned me over to her car and gave me a vigorous hug. She wore khaki shorts and a gray tank top, and her thick dark hair wrapped around her face and tickled her shoulders. I searched to see some family resemblance but found none. Maybe she favored her mother.

“How was your flight? Got all your stuff?” she asked.

I nodded as she grabbed my suitcase and tossed it into the trunk.

“Great, then we’re off to Dad’s.
D
o you need to stop, get something to eat?”

“I had a meal on the plane—if you could call it that. But I can hold out until dinner.” I had left San Francisco at seven a.m., and it was now nearly four in the afternoon, New York time.
The air smelled like every other airport, but felt thicker, muggier. Heavy clouds
filled the sky
.

“They’re predicting rain, but it won’t be more than a brief thundershower,” Mandy said, getting in behind the wheel. I sat in the front seat and took in the city sights as we drove along the
thoroughfare
, the traffic heavy but unimpeding
.
Mandy gave a rambling, enthusiastic monologue—my personal tour guide—pointing out buildings and relating trivia facts that started fleshing in my surroundings for me.

I had to ask.
“I have this odd memory of a giant globe alongside the highway.
Does that make sense?
”

Mandy laughed. “The Unisphere—from the World’s Fair. It’s still there. In Flushing, Queens.
M
y folks took you kids there,
with me and Becka
. You ate this giant lollypop
—
you know, those rainbow spirals on a stick? You threw up in the car on the way home.” Mandy laughed as I shook my head.

“You’d think I’d remember that,” I said.

“My mother had a fit because it was their new car—a Lincoln something. Dad pulled over, off the road, while Mom tried to clean the floorboards.
I remember being grossed out by the smell.” She smiled and patted my arm. “Don’t worry, no one holds that against you.
Do you remember the little cedar boxes Dad bought us there
, at the
f
air
? I still have mine.”

T
hat little jewelry box
sat
on my dresser, among a few other mementos from my childhood. I had no
previous
memory
of
where I got that box, but as soon as Mandy mentioned it, the gift shop appeared in my mind in minute detail. Shelves filled with small statuettes of the Statue of Liberty,
snow
globes of Rockefeller Center, miniature versions of the colo
s
s
a
l
Unisphere of various sizes
—
some
that functioned as
piggy banks. Models of various planes and space capsules hanging from wires overhead, illuminated by bright spotlights.

The rush of memory startled me, coming from some strange cache in my brain.
I could see my uncle Samuel at the counter,
in a dark
-
green tailored shirt, with
gold
cufflinks,
buying the
varnished
cedar boxes while Mandy and I clamored excitedly at his side.
How many times had I been to New York? Maybe many of my memories got tangled with others so that the places I daydreamed of, locales from my childhood, were miscatalogued in my brain as Los Angeles and Marin County.

“I still have my box too. Who else was there with us? Was my mother there?”

“I don’t think so. Not sure.
”

We talked about shows currently playing on Broadway, kicking around ideas of how to spend the
n
ext few days. Mandy had bought tickets for the ballet, hoping I was game. I told her I was up for anything.

“Where’s Nathan?” I asked, suddenly remembering her son.

“At Dad’s. We’ll be there soon.”

I recognized Central Park as we drove alongside it—the green lawns and pathways. We drove up the Westside,
Mandy giving me a roundabout tour of Manhattan,
passing theaters and the Lincoln Center, until we turned onto
Seventy-sixth
Street and parked.
The brownstone buildings crowded together
,
and people filled the streets, hurrying, shopping, waiting for buses.
A small Greek restaurant took up the corner, with patrons sitting on small café tables under a drooping awning. Street markets dotted almost every block, with fruit
perched
against the buildings in crates and displays, barely allowing room for foot traffic to squeeze by.
I wondered if New York had its own distinct aroma, for the smells of the traffic and the streets and the trash bagged up in piles along the sidewalks triggered recognition in me.
San Francisco, with its briny air and ocean breezes, had a different redolence
—
fresher, cleaner. But even though the air in New York felt stale and damp, it still invigorated me.

I followed Mandy into a posh, well-preserved older apartment building, hefting my suitcase along. To my relief, Mandy passed the elevators and opened the door to the stairwell.
She stopped abruptly.

“Oops, forgot about your suitcase. My folks are on the next floor, so I always take the stairs. Do you want to use the elevator?”

“No, I’m good. Elevators and I don’t agree.”

Mandy studied my face and nodded. “Well, I guess we’ll pass on the visit to the top of the Trade Towers
, then
. Although, a lot of people like walking up the stairs at the Statue of Liberty. We can do that, if you
want
.
And t
he Staten Island Ferry is fun.
”

I followed Mandy up to the second floor and down the hallway to apartment 2A.
She
opened the door
,
and within seconds I was bowled over by a small person with a head full of black hair. Two big round eyes looked up at me and shrieked in delight. Nathan’s little arms wrapped around my knees
,
and I worked
to balance myself.

“Hey, sport,” Mandy said to her son, “don’t tackle her.”

“Hi, cousin Lisa!”

“He’s very excited you’re here,” Mandy said, disengaging Nathan’s arms from my legs. “Go get your sketch book. I’m sure Lisa would love to see your drawings.”

“Okay!”

Nathan flew out of the room and Mandy called out
,
“Hey, we’re here.
Pop
, where are you?”

A tall, lean man came in from a back room.
I instantly recognized his oval face and kind eyes
, and his resemblance to Rafferty was uncanny
. His thinning hair on the top of his head was gray
and not the chestnut brown
I
seemed to
remember, but his manner and the way he walked toward me was more than familiar. Samuel Sitteroff was lodged in my memory, and although I couldn’t bring to mind any specific moments of my childhood with him,
I knew I had spent time with him, had sat on his
couch
and watched TV at his house, eaten at his table
,
and gone to the
z
oo with him. How had I erased him entirely?

I
now
realized
I had spent many childhood summers
over here, in this apartment, and my lack of memory agitated me. Head trauma, or some horrific pain—I had nothing to blame for the blank pages in my
past
. Was something wrong with me? Did anyone else have these
lapses of memory?
It seemed so incongruous to me that I could recall dozens of verses of random rhyme and entire scenes from plays but couldn’t
call to mind things
that really mattered.
Maybe I
had been
so wound up as a child, I
hadn’t
pa
id
any attention to my surroundings.
Or was there another reason?

While my mind ruminated over this perplexing problem, Mandy had gone into the kitchen and brought out a tray with a pitcher of lemonade and glasses. The apartment was a little to
o
cold for my liking, with the air conditioner running—an appliance I
never had need of in the temperate climate of Marin. My uncle gave me a hug and gestured me to sit in an upholstered chair beside the couch. Nathan was soon back at my side, tugging on my sleeve.

“Look! Look!”

He showed me all the pages he’d colored in his Superman coloring book
,
and I made the appropriate noises of being astounded by his artistic prowess.
My uncle and cousin chuckled as they watched on, Mandy sidling up to her father on the couch.
The apartment was tastefully appointed, with some artwork and family photos adorning the walls. The colors were a bit dark
,
and the stained wood molding around the doorways and windows were elegantly milled, from an earlier time perhaps.
A charming and welcoming apartment, with big windows.

After Mandy got Nathan set up with his crayons, he retired to the dining room table to draw. Once Samuel was assured I didn’t need to eat yet and we finalized our dinner plans,
we spent the next hour catching up. I tried not to let show all the emotions that had been ravaging my heart over the last two weeks, but I’d never been good at concealing my feelings. Perhaps my uncle’s soft bedside manner
—
his gentle questions that didn’t feel like prodding
—
lulled me into a feeling of safety.

Soon I was in tears, despite my best efforts, detailing everything from my miscarriage, my fears over my marriage, and my mother’s attempts at sabotaging my happiness for the sake of “family unity
,
”
to the reason I had come.
We had a long discussion about leukemia and its pathology. My uncle had always wondered why my father was told his leukemia was “emotionally induced.” Samuel had spoken to my father’s doctor when he visited Nathan in the hospital before his death. The doctors, as expected, had no answers or postulations as to how anyone acquired leukemia. It was the mysterious disease of the decade, and even twenty-five years later, medical researchers were still flummoxed.

Samuel discounted the idea that
a person
could
will
himself such a disease.
He had doubts about my father’s depression, though, and that surprised me. My mother had painted a grim picture of my father’s mental state, his death wish, his feelings of bad blood. Samuel dispelled all that with a description of a young man who was exuberant over life. Sure,
my father’d
had a tough early childhood, but Samuel remembered
Nathan
as happy, easy-going, and even-keeled for most of his adult life. That is, until years into his marriage with my mother. That’s when Samuel noticed a change in my father’s temperament.
But,
he admitted,
it was possible
Nathan
was bipolar. Often the symptoms didn’t manifest until a person was well into their twenties. Samuel just wasn’t around Nathan during those years
—
a whole continent of land
had
separat
ed
them.