Stuffed (4 page)

The phone rings at 6:30 a.m. my sister. “Hullo? Hullo?” No one is there. I know it’s

“Coffee too hot?” I ask.

“Ummm,” she squeezes out.

I take the portable into the kitchen and put my coffee up too. We’ll talk about yesterday. We’ll talk about tomorrow. We’ll talk about our parents, our men, our kids, our work. We’ll talk about our weight, the wisdom of keeping a food diary, how good veggies poached in broth can be and whether we should go to a spa.

“You can have real coffee at the Birdwing Spa in Minnesota,” I’ll say.

“Yeah, but you have to go to Minnesota.”

“The Regency House Spa is near you. I’d come down.”

“I can’t live a week with no animal products.”

“What about the Kripalu?”

“It has cinder-block walls, and they don’t let you talk during meals.”

“Know anything about the Tennessee Fitness Spa?”

“Is that, by chance, in Tennessee?”

We talk till she has to leave to see a patient or another call comes through, or I have to meet my walking friend. We talk every day. Although her take on our past is fixed in amber and mine has no membrane, she’s my memory. There are things only we know. It was she who taught me how to smoke and hide the evidence and bunch socks in my bra. When I woke my mother to tell her “I think I got my period,” in the Jewish tradition, she slapped my face, then mumbled, “Do you know what to do?”

“Yes.” I lied, then asked my sister. It was my sister who taught me the facts of life by reading
From Little Acorns
nightly. It was she who beat me up when I howled at the good parts, then kept vigils with me by our bedroom window, waiting for the woman across the alley to take her nightly shower.

Do I trust her? Does she trust me? I keep a pound of the coffee she loves in my freezer. “I’ve got your coffee,” I remind her when she calls to say she’s coming. Always she packs her own can.

I don’t know if I could live without my sister. Picturing life without her is not possible. I love her as much as I love me.
Ma
soeur, c’est moi.

We decide to definitely diet. To launch it, we leave the world behind and head for three nights at a spa. No sooner do we turn into the driveway than my sister is making friends. She makes friends with the doorman, she makes friends with the bellhop, she makes friends with all the waiters and the startled funk aerobics instructor she drags into a corner and thumps her abs at. I hide and I shrivel, I shrink and I pale.

“Why do you have to make friends with everybody?” I ask.

“Why are you so unfriendly?” she says.

On the nature hike I’m last, she’s first. She scales the Ice Glen singing. People keep running back down the mountain to check on me, “Are you okay?” “Are you sure you’re okay?” At night, after dinner, my sister asks the waiter for two fat-free hot fudge sundaes to take back to our room, where she will simultaneously watch a video and return nine calls from patients who can’t live without her. Then “What happened?” my sister asks about the movie, and I have to break the spell to fill her in. Then she makes a few more calls, and she’s ready to turn out the light. Then she wants to talk. Then she wants to sing Patience & Prudence’s “Tonight You Belong to Me” in the dark. (I’m melody. She’s harmony.) Finally the Volk Girls are ready to sleep.

“Good night,
really.
” We laugh, and that’s when I hear it. It’s the sound my sister has always made at night, a sound nobody else makes, a hard swallow that ends with a push of air out her nose.

Something opens. Something closes. Something opens again.

I used to time my breaths to hers. Open, close, open. The sound of her breathing is the sound I fell asleep to the first twelve years of my life in the blue room we shared with organza drapes that met like bosomy aunts bending over to kiss us, the room I still dream of, the room I still long for, separated by a night table, one arm’s length from the person Siamesed to my soul—my sister, my half, my beloved Jo Ann.

Friday night at Great-grandma’s. Back row (left to right): Jerry Lieban, Herman Morgen, Jenny Geiger Lieban, Dad, Albert Wolko. Front row (left to right): Gertrude June Lieban Shultz, Polly Ann Lieban Morgen, Dr. E. Alan Lieban, Mom, Louis Lieban, Ruth Helen Lieban Wolko (Note: The three sisters have the same hairdo.)

LAPSANG SOUCHONG

I loved my family because they were family, separate from their behavior in the world or how they treated me. They were mine, I was lucky to have them. Their stories were my history, and their histories were spoken of with reverence. In 1888 a paternal great-grandfather brought pastrami to the New World. In 1916 a grandmother took home the trophy for “Best Legs in Atlantic City.” My grandfather won the land for his house in a card game with Jimmy Walker and was eulogized in
The New Yorker
by E. B. White. My father invented the first Hydraulic-powered Double-sided Garbage Can Brush, the Double-sided Cigarette Lighter so you never have to worry about which side is up when you go to light, the first Illuminated Lucite Single-shaft Fender Guide, which clamped to your fender and facilitated nighttime parking by showing you where your fender ended, the first See-thru Wristwatch, and the Six-color Retractable Pen and Pencil Set. (He was sold out by his partner, the mention of whose name in our family is still followed by spitting.) Dad opened the first frozen-food store in Greenwich Village, Penguin Foods. With a war going on, he figured working women would buy frozen food so they wouldn’t need to market every day. My mother was president of the Junior League for Child Care. Everyone was a star in the family galaxy, even Aunt Gertie, whose husband gambled away her money, then died, forcing her to sell dresses at Sachs, not Saks. Aunt Gertie had perfect posture.

I loved my family because they were Morgens or Liebans or Volks. We were part of each other. So I loved Uncle Al, even though he cheated on his wife. Uncle Al sat back and watched while his sisters scurried to please him. He wove his forearms over his chest, puffing his pipe like a chieftain while they kept his glass filled. Uncle Al was emotionally immune. He tolerated us. If he could say it the hard way, he did. This passed for genius.

An endodontist, Uncle Al was our family’s only “professional.” In that capacity he was our liaison to the medical world. When anyone had a health problem, even if it had nothing to do with teeth, they called Uncle Al for a referral. He knew the best rheumatologist, the best chiropodist, the best lung man. Uncle Al was famous in our family for two other things as well: the ability to write two different thoughts on a blackboard at the same time—one with his left hand, one with his right—and that he, and he alone, did Erich Maria Remarque’s root canals. When you have someone in your family who sets you apart, that person’s name is rarely mentioned without his credentials. Uncle Al was Uncle Al Who Could Write Two Different Thoughts on the Blackboard Simultaneously. And Uncle Al, Erich Maria Remarque’s Endodontist. I was impressed, even if I didn’t know who Erich Maria Remarque was and whether Erich Maria was a man or a woman.

Uncle Al didn’t smile, wore a bow tie, and was the eldest of the five remaining Lieban children. He was Dr. E. (for Elias) Alan Lieban, pronounced
lee
-ban, the German way, even though it was spelled
lie
. Lie-ban, a ban on lies. It was a name to live up to, a name meaning truth. But Uncle Al was far from truthful. After dinner Thursday nights at my grandmother’s, I’d slide under the table and eavesdrop. Uncle Al was having an affair with a Miss Dorsey. The name Lieban meant
lieb
ban then, a ban on love in a loveless marriage. Names so often meant something: Uneeda Biscuit; My-T-Fine pudding; Dr. Char-gin, the dermatologist on Central Park West who didn’t charge Aunt Gertie because she was poor.

When I was twelve, someone punched me in the mouth. A few days later the tooth that took the brunt of it started to ache. Then it throbbed. When it turned gray, my mother made an appointment with Uncle Al.

His office was in a penthouse on Central Park South. “You must be Patty,” the nurse said, opening the door. “I’m Miss Dorsey. How do you do?”

Miss Dorsey! She worked for Uncle Al? I imagined she’d look like Marilyn Monroe, but Miss Dorsey had hair like the man on the Quaker Oats box. She wore a white nurse’s hat and uniform, and laced white heels. “I believe the doctor is expecting you.” She smiled.

“Oh, Dr. Lieban!” She knocked on a dark paneled door. “Dr. Lieeee-ban, your grand-niece is here!”

We waited. The knob turned. And there was Uncle Al in a side-buttoned barber’s smock. It had a waistband and flared at the hips.

“Welcome.” He nodded, but he didn’t kiss me. Away from my grandmother’s table, he looked older. “Some tea, Miss Dorsey,” he ordered without looking at her.

I’d never been in a room alone with Uncle Al. I knew him solely from my grandmother’s and rare outings to visit his Airedales in Wappingers Falls.

“Do sit.” He extended his palm.

We waited for the tea in his dark, book-lined study overlooking the zoo. Uncle Al sat behind his desk. I searched my brain for something to say to a man brilliant enough to write two thoughts on the blackboard simultaneously and treat Erich Maria Remarque: What were my great-grandparents like when you were young? How come you never had children? Why does everyone hate Aunt Lil? Do you and Miss Dorsey do it
here
?

Uncle Al shuffled papers. He didn’t look up. The light from his desk lamp cast wild eyebrow shadows on his forehead. He read tracing words with his finger so his shiny head snapped side to side. Could he read two thoughts at the same time too?

Miss Dorsey came in with a tray. She set it down on Uncle Al’s desk. I watched to see how he looked at her. He didn’t. I believed that people who were having sex wanted to whenever they were together. That wild current passed between them. But Uncle Al spoke to Miss Dorsey in a dismissive way, as if she were a servant.

The room filled with the smell of burnt rubber. I had never had tea before. Tea was for the elderly. Coffee would stunt your growth. The hot drink for children was cocoa. Uncle Al continued reading while steam curled out of the spout. I wondered what he had looked like when he and his brother Uncle Jerry ran away from home to become song-and-dance men. I tried to picture Uncle Al with a straw boater and cane. I tried to imagine him smiling. I put him in a striped blazer. Now he was edgy with disdain, a bald man with sunspots all over his head.

The terrible smell filled the room. Uncle Al’s chair faced me, blocking the window. There was nothing to look at except the bookshelves and him. The smell was so bad, I started breathing through my mouth.

“Tea?” he said finally.

“Yes, please.”

“As a member of the American Academy of Dentistry, you must understand I cannot endorse the use of sugar,” he said. “And milk obfuscates the taste of tea. In China, as you may or may not know, they never use milk and sugar in tea.”

“Really?” I was intrigued.

“Do you know what tea is called in China?”

I’d read The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, but couldn’t remember if it was in there. I shook my head. Uncle Al was not pleased.

“Cha,” he said.

Black liquid streamed from the spout. Uncle Al handed me an ivory-colored cup with a gold rim. I decided to echo whatever he did. He flattened a napkin in his lap. He blew on the surface of his cup. He took a small slurp. The taste had a metallic edge, like blood. A bitter smoky taste too. I shut my nose down the way people do when they swallow medicine so they can’t taste it.

“Lapsang Souchong,” he said, raising his cup as if making a toast.

I rested mine on the saucer in my lap. There was no way I could take another mouthful. Uncle Al had an Oriental carpet. As he sipped his tea, I pretended to cough and, bending over, drizzled the contents of my cup onto the whirling blue and maroon pattern on the floor. The tea sank right in. Then I raised the cup to my lips and pretended to drink.

“Do you like Lapsang Souchong?” Uncle Al peered over the rims of his bifocals.

“Yes, thank you.”

“Would you like some more?”

“No, thank you.”

He rested his back against his chair and said, “Do you know what I do?”

“You’re an endodontist.”

“Do you know the difference between
endo
and
exo
?”

Another test, like cha. I knew Uncle Al wouldn’t just be judging me, he would be judging my mother, who produced me, and my grandmother, who produced my mother. He would be judging my school, P.S. 9, and the entire public school system. He would be comparing me to his other grand-nieces and -nephews, including my smart sister. If I failed the endo/exo test, I failed for everyone. I didn’t know the difference between endo and exo. The only Latin I was familiar with was
E Pluribus Unum.

Endo/exo. I started to panic. Were endo and exo like arrival and departure? Is it the
plane
that’s arriving or the
people
arriving to take the plane? Does departure mean people are departing on the plane, or that people who have arrived on the plane are departing and going home? Was daylight saving time fall forward, spring back? Or fall back, spring forward? When you trip, you fall
forward.
When you spring back, you
recoil.
But when you fall back in a line, you’re
back
in line. And when you lunge, you
spring forward.

Uncle Al waited for the answer. I thought hard, and then, as I so often did in school, I took a stab based on nothing, or worse, took a stab that was the opposite of what I thought was right because I was so often wrong: Uncle Al was an endodontist. He worked on root canals, which were
in
the tooth. So
en
meant
in.
But he took the roots
out.
Exit shows the way
out,
so endo was
out.
But the root was
in
the tooth, and that’s where he worked, so
en
equals
in. En
sounds like
in.
Yeah! No! Too obvious, it must be wrong! Uncle Al wouldn’t quiz me if it was that easy. Besides, if three outs
ended
an
inning,
maybe
en
meant out.

“Endo is out,” I said, feeling like the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and treads air until NONG! It realizes there’s no ground beneath its feet.

“No.” Uncle Al sighed. “Endo is in, exo is out.”

That was it. I was short on smarts, a marked girl.

Although having a root canal in my mouth annoys me every day of my life, the work he did has held up since the fifties.