Goodbye Without Leaving (24 page)

53

It was a cold afternoon. I sat in Mary Abbott's apartment helping her pin up three black skirts and a black denim jumper. These were her postulant's clothes. I had bought her five pairs of black cotton tights and she had bought herself a pair of black sneakers and a pair of plain black walking shoes (for feast days, she said). Under her bed was a tin trunk in which all these things would be packed, including white cotton underwear, cotton socks in white and black, plain white towels, washcloths and a camp blanket.

“Everything in my life is in motion except me,” I said. “You're leaving me forever. Johnny's working on a big case, Little Franklin's growing up, and Leo's going to Europe any day.”

“I don't get him,” said Mary, her mouth full of pins.

“You'd like him,” I said. “He's kind of like you.”

“I don't mean him personally,” Mary said. She spread a skirt over her desk and smoothed it down. “I mean, why you need him.”

“My soul sort of cries out to him,” I said. “If you get my drift. I don't want to run away with him. I just feel destined to know him.”

“You are a pilgrim,” Mary said.

“You always say that.”

She sat amidst her black clothes, which lay in piles and heaps around her. She had pulled her hair back in a ponytail, which made her look very young and stark. When she took her glasses off to rub her eyes, she looked like a child.

I said, “Most people believe what makes them feel better to believe.”

Mary nodded.

“Johnny is unusual in this regard,” I said. “He believes what he needs to believe because he's in the big arena, but he also knows it. You and Leo don't have any reason to believe anything. Maybe I took up with Leo because he reminds me of you. Oh, lucky, lucky you! To know what your life will be like day after day, year after year. And to think that the life you're living has been lived the exact same way for centuries.”

“I don't think that's much consolation when you're lonely and miserable and thinking that you did the wrong thing.”

“Really? You?”

“Everyone. Except people like your friends the Grains. It's man's fate.”

“I just don't want to be left alone surrounded by a bunch of saps.”

She pinned up the hem and hung the skirt over a chair, an amazing sight since I had never seen her sew so much as a button before. Then she moved all her papers back onto her desk and began sorting through them. Her dissertation was finished. She was putting in the footnotes, and then her life would be tidily filed away. She looked down at her notes.

“Saps,” she said. “Martin Luther King, Jr. felt the same way. He said, ‘The laxity of the white church in general has caused me to weep tears of blood.' Is that the way
you
feel?”

“You shut up,” I said.

“You ought to sing again,” said Mary. “In fact, you should sing right now. You don't have to go on tour with Ruby to do it. In college you used to sing all the time. Remember that night you and I and Audrey Stein got all dressed up and went to Mickey's Rib House and you sang ‘Holy Cow'?”

“What a pretty song,” I said. “Little Franklin loves it. He seems keen on the New Orleans sound.”

“You sang ‘Holy Cow' and ‘Nobody Home,'” said Mary. “Everyone loved it.”

“Nobody believed that a white chick had ever heard of Lee Dorsey or Howard Tate,” I said. “Good old Howard Tate.”

“You were
good
,” said Mary.

“I was okay,” I said. “Let's have some tea or something. All this nostalgia is making me hungry.”

We went into the kitchen. I sat at Mary's nasty little kitchen table, which we had found on the street and carried upstairs to her apartment one hot summer night. This had always been my second home. When Mary left, I would have only one home. There would never be another place on earth where I would feel as comfortable.

“Sing to me while I boil the water,” said Mary.

“Perhaps you'd like to hear ‘The Doggie Poop Song,'” I said. “Another of Little Franklin's golden gassers.”

“Sing me some Otis Redding,” said Mary.

I sang “Good to Me” and “I've Got Dreams to Remember.” I sang “Your Feeling Is Mine.” Then I sang Smokey and the Miracles' most perfect hit, “I've Been Good to You.” We sat at the table and let the water boil away.

“Listen,” I said. “When it's time for you to go, I want to drive you up.”

“I think I have to go by myself,” said Mary.

I felt my scalp tighten.

“Listen,” I said. “I only want this one thing. I never asked anything like this before. You're my best friend. Don't deny me this. I'm losing you forever. Don't say no. It's unchristian.”

Mary brought our teacups to the table. She put some cookies on a plate. Soon all these things, which were second nature to me, would be in the hands of William Hammerklever, who was taking over the apartment.

“There are some things I want you to have,” said Mary. “I want you to take that red cashmere sweater you always liked, and the lamp with the glass globe.”

“I want to drive you up,” I said.

“I know you do,” Mary said. “Get the tear stains off your face. Johnny and Franklin will be here to pick you up any minute.”

“I mean it, Mary.”

“All right! All right!” Mary said. “I think it's dangerous. You'll just cry the whole time.”

“Don't you worry,” I said. “I can cry and drive at the same time.”

54

Inexorably it was spring. In our neighborhood the snowdrops and crocuses showed their heads. Buds burst out on the trees. From Little Franklin's window sparrows could be seen flying purposefully, their beaks streaming with urban nest-building materials: excelsior, string, shredded gum wrappers, and the papers from drinking straws.

Like an oncoming train, the day of Mary's leaving bore down on me. I sat with her while she packed up her apartment—she was leaving it mostly furnished for William Hammerklever.

“Getting a divorce, huh?” I said.

“Never,” Mary said. “He's Catholic. They just won't live together, except for major holidays and the children's birthdays. In fact, they'll always be married.”

“And what happens if he falls in love with someone?” I said.

“That's the price he pays.”

“Pays for what?”

“Listen, Geralds. The Church has sacraments. You take the sacraments and you pays the price.”

I sighed. How neat, I thought. How consoling. Even horrible emotional pain would have a reason, some terrible law one was compelled to obey.

Passover was coming, another oncoming train. I felt some primal urge to celebrate. Surrounded by my relentlessly assimilated family, I had nowhere to go. My parents had never had a Seder. Instead, we went to a series of Seders at the houses of more observant friends. The sense of spring coming, the scent of sweet renewal in the air, made me want to scream in frustration. What, as we learned in Anthropology I, were holidays if not old planting and harvest festivals? Perhaps Hanukkah and Christmas were originally about lighting up the darkest time of the year. It mattered not one jot. These were the oldest stirrings of mankind: that sense of beginning when the air turns light in the spring, or after the first chill in the fall. My deepest stirrings had no formal expression.

Pixie Lehar, whom I could never get used to calling Paulette Goldberg, had invited us for Passover, but the thought of it filled me with despair. I wanted my own.

And so I had taken Leo's advice and had begun a reading project. I read books with titles such as
What It Means to Be a jew, How to Live a Jewish Life, The Jewish Holidays Observed, The Jewish Household, Jewish Festival Cooking, The Passover Seder, Jewish Ritual in Modern Life
.

Watching me read these night after night, Johnny gave me a funny look. “From Catholic nuns to Jewish life,” he said. “What next? Chinese temple structure?”

“This is your son's true heritage,” I told him. “At Passover the father of the household goes through the house with a candle and a goose feather looking for
chametz
.”

“Oh, yeah?” said my heathen husband. “Does he get to wear a funny hat? And when he finds this stuff, what is it?”

“Leaven,” I said. “Any bread or flour hanging around. The woman does the cleaning and the guy does the inspecting.”

“How like life,” Johnny said. “As you would say.”

Like people plunging into swimming pools, I held my nose and plunged. Books were written about such subjects as breast-feeding, gardening and sustained prayer. Other people read them and found them useful. Now that I had done my reading project, was it a terrible presumption for me to have my own Seder?

It would be only the three of us. This was my trial run and I needed privacy. I wanted to have Passover alone in my own house.

I cleaned my kitchen, and since I was not about to sell my flour to our upstairs neighbor for a symbolic penny, I wrapped it in a cloth. Johnny found this oddly touching. While Little Franklin and Amos played with blocks at the kitchen table, I chopped up the
charoses
and gave each boy a taste.

“Yuk” said Franklin. “What's that?”

How was I supposed to tell this innocent creature, for whom the sight of a dead fly on the windowsill was unnerving, about slavery, pestilence, the slaughter of the firstborn?

“What's that stuff?” said Amos, pointing to the box of matzoh.

“It's called matzoh,” I said. “It's like bread.”

“It's a Saltine with no salt,” Amos said.

In the fridge was a nasty-looking shank bone the butcher had given me. Obtaining this bone gave me a thrill. Here I was, a grown-up, making a Passover meal in my own house. The Italian butcher, since he only had call for shank bones once a year, wished me a happy Pesach.

I roasted a boiled egg over the burner.

“Smells,” said Franklin.

The morning of Passover, I set the table with a white cloth. The matzoh was wrapped in a clean white napkin. I roasted a chicken and made eggplant caviar, since I did not think I was going to get anyone to eat gefilte fish. At Little Franklin's place I put a cordial glass and a tiny bottle of grape juice for his wine. “Oh, baby wine!” he exclaimed. All over the world people were congregating to celebrate Passover in large groups. What a pathetic table, I thought—three places set by a person who barely knew what she was doing.

I lit the candles and we sat down. It wouldn't be a proper Seder, but at least it would be an
attempt
at a Seder.

“Once upon a time,” Johnny said to Franklin, “the Jewish people were slaves.” I had made Johnny read the entire Haggadah the night before.

“What are slaves?” Franklin said.

“Slaves,” I said helpfully, “are people who have to work all the time.”

“Like Daddy,” Franklin said.

“No, sweetie,” Johnny said. “A slave is someone who is owned by someone else. We don't have that anymore. All men are free.”

“I think this is a little over his head,” I said.

Johnny was all in favor of this Seder. He liked history and he felt it gave Little Franklin a taste of ancient civilization.

“Slaves work for no money,” Johnny said.

“When we do pickup at school we don't get money,” Franklin said.

“It isn't the same,” I said. “Many thousands of years ago these people had to work for a wicked king called Pharaoh.”

This was more up Franklin's street, since he liked the idea of wicked kings.

“And then they didn't work for this guy anymore?” said Franklin.

“That's right,” I said. “They had to build bricks—the stuff with the apples in it is supposed to remind us of cement, but it's really delicious. We eat the matzoh because when the Jewish people fled from slavery they didn't have time to bake real bread, so they baked flat bread. All these foods are to remind people of the story.”

“Pass over a little of that eggplant, will you, Hon?” said Johnny.

“What's the chicken remind us of?” said Franklin.

“That we are now happy and free and can have a good meal,” said Johnny.

“Is this because people aren't mean to each other anymore?” said Franklin.

“Yes, my darling,” I said. “That's exactly it.”

“Were you Jewish when this bad king made people build bricks?” Franklin asked me.

“That was thousands of years ago,” I said. “Now eat your dinner.”

55

Like a good former graduate student, I read up on monastic life. This project got a little out of hand since, like many Jewish girls, I seemed fascinated with nuns.

“It's because it was the first and only alternative to wifedom and motherhood,” Mary said.

“I think it has more to do with clothes,” I said. We were driving upstate in Mary's car. The awful day had come. I had left Franklin and Johnny eating breakfast. Later Amos Potts was coming to play. It was Saturday, and pouring rain. The rain on the roof sounded like drumming on a tin can. Mary had sold her car to William Hammerklever and used the money as her dowry.

“Dowry?” I said.

“Lots of orders have them,” she said. “It's refundable if a person wants to leave.”

We drove a little while in silence.

“How was it at your parents'?” I asked. She had spent a week with her family in Connecticut.

“Weird,” she said. “I mean, they never expected my upbringing to backfire on them this way. They brought me up Catholic. They sent me to Catholic grammar school. They were very taken with modern intellectual Catholicism. My mother used to go down to the city to hear Dorothy Day speak. They never expected this, but they really can't say anything bad about it because it's the logical extension of everything they taught me to believe. Basically they're very bummed out. They get to come and visit in a month.”