The Border of Paradise: A Novel (5 page)

“What if it’s not? She’s a beautiful girl. She ought to be going on dates and daydreaming about what to name her beautiful children.” Mrs. Orlich sighed. “At least she’ll have less time for these things when school begins again.”

In the meantime Marianne would call, rarely and randomly, and ask if she could visit. I always said yes. When she arrived on
the stoop, her forehead damp and her armpits charmingly sweaty through her blouse, I’d fall for her all over again. The thought of her in a convent, unreachable, gave me a knotted stomach and a sudden inability to breathe.

On one of these visits she followed me into the kitchen, where I poured her a glass of iced tea. She had a few swigs. “Where’s your mother?”

“Headache. She went up to bed a few hours ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“She’ll be all right—she gets them in summer when it’s too hot out, and I bring her damp washcloths for her head. How’s your day been?”

She said, “I helped Father Danuta for a few hours, cleaning out the Sobczak house. Then he told me to skedaddle before I got heatstroke.” Her glass was now empty. “Thanks for the tea.”

Mrs. Sobczak had died a few days prior. I knew her as the old lady who wore the most elaborate hats in church, and had been a widow since she was barely twenty and saddled with two kids, who later died in the Great War; I doubted Marianne knew anything about her. But I was proven wrong when she continued: “I tried not to get depressed about it. Father Danuta said she was beloved by so many people—and so she wasn’t lonely, even though her husband and sons had died—but as I was going through her house I kept thinking,
This is the hallway she went down every day,
or
This is the stove she boiled hot water on,
and I couldn’t help but imagine her in that house, doing all of those things alone for so many years.”

“I think about growing up and being alone all the time,” I said. “You’re my only friend.”

When I said this, I was certain that I was also Marianne’s only friend, and yearned to hear her say so in return. Instead Marianne continued, as if she hadn’t heard me: “When I told Father Danuta what I was thinking, he said, ‘Well, Mrs. Sobczak had Christ with her. She had faith to keep her company, just as all of God’s children do.’”

I’m not sure what I said to her then. I probably waited for her to change the subject, or maybe I put her glass in the sink and went to the broom closet for a box of checkers. I knew better than to ask her if she believed fully that Christ kept Mrs. Sobczak safe in all that emptiness. I wish I could tell that girl now that mortal love is no bulwark against loneliness.

Those curious months came and went like the seasons I’d marked them with. One moment she was the Church Girl, which was Marty’s unclever nickname for her, and the next she was no closer to the religious life than any other neighborhood girl. My neuroses loosened their grip—on Sundays Matka still picked out my clothes, but I no longer needed her to dress me. I grew brave enough to glance at myself in mirrors, or shop windows, and see my true and rapidly maturing self. I attributed these blessings to Marianne, my guardian angel, whom I would walk to my house from St. Agnes for Latin and board games and whatever else entertained us. I interpreted her change from Church Girl to regular Jane as a sign that in the battle between the nunnery and the sacrament of marriage, the latter had won; I only hoped that it meant I had won, too.

Then during geometry class one of the sisters came to fetch me, a rare interruption. I was too nervous to ask her why. The halls were long and empty, dotted with too-short water fountains, and we silently walked through clouds of foul air erupting from the boys’ bathrooms.

Mr. Pawlowski was sitting on one of the leather benches outside of the principal’s office. He stood when he saw me.

“Davy,” he said, “I’ve come to take you to the hospital. Your father’s had another attack.”

“You’d better go,” the sister said, and put her hand on my shoulder, which made me flinch.

After Mr. Pawlowski started navigating his Rolls-Royce away from the curb, I expected him to say more. He did not. Finally I asked, “How did it happen? Is he going to be all right?”

Mr. Pawlowski sighed. “Your mother is already at St. Mary’s” was all he said, and we sat in silence while I fretted.

When we got to the hospital, Matka saw me and stood, and she blinked in confusion as though trying to figure out why Mr. Pawlowski had brought a monkey to see her.

“How is he?” Mr. Pawlowski asked.

She looked at him and shook her head. Obviously she had been crying. Her thin arms wrapped around me, and she put her head on my shoulder. She said, “He’s alive, Davy. It will be all right.”

We entered the new decade with my father in a coma—and yet instead of getting worse, my neuroses seemed to be abating. Father Danuta had been making appearances at our home for months, going up the stairs with his bag, and for hours he sat with my father and mother in their room, praying. I prayed, too, with them and alone; yet Ojciec remained in his hospital bed, which had been moved into our house by loyal factory employees, as December of the previous year came and went. The fact that we had skipped the Pawlowskis’ Christmas party that winter weighed on me more than I’d expected it would. Marianne told me that she’d sung again for the party, and she sang the carol again for me alone when my mother went upstairs, her voice breaking in parts from the softness of it.

One day she and I stopped on the way home from weekday Mass. I was still fourteen. She was still fifteen. On the wet bench I touched her pale, cold knees. It felt like early spring and the snow was melting into its customary dips and hollows, and when Marianne asked how my father was doing I was afraid to answer, because the more times she asked, the more I felt the unkind passage of time. She looked at me expectantly, her eyes the same mossy hue I see at the bottom of the river when I swim with the children. I said, “Father Danuta and my mother say it’s in God’s hands.”

“Of course it is.” She put her hand on mine. “Don’t you like me, David?”

I almost said,
Do you need to ask?
but laughed instead. We’d been such a curious neighborhood twosome for years, with each having no friends but the other, so I did the bravest thing I’d ever done: I kissed her. I want to say that she tasted like sugar, but she didn’t taste like anything. Kissing her was like dipping my lips into the rising stream of a water fountain, and perfectly blissful. I kissed her again and again with my fingers in her hair, and she kissed me back until she gently put her hands to my shoulders and pushed me away.

“Not here,” she said. “Let’s go somewhere more private. I know a place.”

As we walked, Marianne asked, “Do you think you’ll marry me?”

I tried not to stop dead, forcing myself to keep walking as I said, “Why, do you want me to?”

She smiled. “I asked, didn’t I?”

I held her hand. She led me down streets and familiar alleys till I saw that we were going around the back of St. Jadwiga, where there was a ladder attached to the side, leading to the flat part of the roof. She began to climb with determination; I followed without arguing. I could see up her skirt and saw that she was wearing a pair of white panties with lace trim, and I saw her caramel-colored pubic hair sprouting from the sides. Immediately I paused on the ladder, embarrassed and excited by my body’s reaction. She hauled herself over the side.

Next we were on the small roof. All of a sudden we were closer to Heaven, and I was lit up with hormones and fireworks, and closer to jumping, too. I had never felt my blood beat so hard. I could see the neighborhood all around, its bricks and streets and parked cars, and the people milling about with their hats on heads and jackets buttoned tightly around themselves, and I saw stray cats prancing into alleyways. Then she turned and beamed her bright smile at me, and I loved her. I reached for her hand and kissed it. I said, “I love you,” and she laughed in a manner that could to my ears only mean
Yes
. We stood on the roof and looked out at Greenpoint. She pulled me to her, biting my bottom lip with her square teeth, pressing a thumb into the side of my neck, and I thought I would turn to ash and fly away on the wind.

The roof is where we rendezvoused then, both of us taking great care to preserve her innocence. I never even kissed her on the neck, which seemed like one dangerous erotic breach of many. To think of putting my hand or hands on her breasts or thighs was out of the question. I took care to be a gentleman out of gratitude and respect; I was also still feeling the remnants of a disgust with my own body, so I was happy with what we had—butterfly kisses, mouth kisses, embraces. Mild Marianne, my girlfriend, was the most stable thing in my life. For most of the year I went to school and she went to school; then I accompanied her to daily Mass; then we went back to the Orlich house and I tutored her in Latin until six o’clock, which is when Mr. Pawlowski came to fetch me, and I ate dinner with him and my mother in our dining room while my father was comatose in his bed upstairs. In the summer Marianne and I had even more free time to ourselves, and then came fall again, which is when Marianne insisted on celebrating my birthday because no one else,
including Matka, had remembered its passing. There was a surprise yellow cake, which she had baked and carried in a wicker basket. We ate cake on the roof, saying very little to each other, though she did sing the Polish equivalent of “Happy Birthday to You.” “It’s a song that means ‘May you live for a hundred years,’” she said, and put her hand on my thigh for a moment before tucking it back under hers.

I worried, in the meantime, about Mr. Pawlowski. As my father was indisposed, Mr. Pawlowski naturally took over certain aspects of the manufactory. He’d served as my father’s assistant since my grandfather died, and I’d turned a mere fifteen in the year Marianne sang to me. All responsibilities therefore fell to him, but purely in duty and not by name. There was the chance that my father would return to us, and his name, after all, was the one embossed above the keys. Still, I feared that Mr. Pawlowski would usurp my position as the owner of the Nowak Piano Company when I was the only son of Peter Nowak himself.

So it was a miracle when, in the middle of one Tuesday night, I was awakened by a flurry of activity in the master bedroom. It was the Polish nurses and my mother, who slept in a cot beside my father; they were all exclaiming that Ojciec was awake. When I entered the room, Matka ran to the door and grabbed me. “Davy, look!” she cried, her face wet. “Our prayers have been answered!”

I did look. He was propped up in the bed now, his gaze watchful. Soft bags drooped beneath his eyes; the lamps drew blobby shadows across his face. He was also looking directly at me, unblinking, and then he beckoned me to come closer. He smiled and said, “How have you been, David?”

The room went quiet—the nurses, who were scrambling for a glass of water; Matka, who was weeping—everything silenced itself.

“I’ve been well,” I said, which sounded ridiculous in its ordinariness. “It’s good to see you’re awake.”

He nodded. “Good marks in school?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Do you remember what the pin block is for?”

“It holds the tuning pins in place.”

“And what kind of wood do we use for our pin blocks?”

“Beech,” I said.

He nodded again. “Good. Good.”

“Ojciec,” Matka said, “I’m going to call Dr. Herms.”

“All right.” Ojciec closed his eyes. One of the girls tapped his shoulder, then lifted the glass of water to his lips, dribbling water on his chin.

The prognosis was not good. Ojciec went to the hospital and returned with pills and the knowledge that it was very likely that he would have another attack, and whether he would survive that one, no one could say. He was stoic as he faced the possibility of a premature death. There were matters to be attended to, one of those matters being the question of the factory and its ownership. It was as much of a surprise to me as I’m sure it was to Mr. Pawlowski when Ojciec insisted that I be named the owner of the Nowak Piano Company without delay. The act of signing papers with a lawyer was both ordinary and momentous; I, the only son of Peter Nowak, had triumphed, but the context for my triumph certainly wasn’t a celebratory one. I was shocked to find that I felt no better—no prouder, no loftier—after being named the company’s president. I was in tenth grade, and still going to high school. What kind of company president wore his school uniform to the office, and came in each afternoon after school was out?