The Ghost of Hannah Mendes (8 page)

She gave him a friendly tap on the shoulder.

“Julius, don’t you have a job to go to?”

“I thought I’d take the day off and spend it with you.”

Uh-oh, she thought.

The doorbell rang again.

She threw her long legs off the bed, pulling a robe around her, pushing her curly, copper-colored hair off her forehead.

She really was a stupendously beautiful woman, the man in her bed congratulated himself, unaware that this was the end and not the beginning. Really stunning in a big, Cindy Crawfordish, voluptuous sort of way. He lifted his head to get a better view, propping his chin on his palm, almost as delighted with her as he was with himself.

She walked, lithe and noiseless as a cat, to the armed fortress that was her front door. Beneath all those crossbars, bolts, locks, and chains, she knew there was a peephole. But with all the scratches and accumulated dirt, you couldn’t really see anything through it anyway, even if you made the effort to unearth it. Besides, if she couldn’t recognize the voice, there was no way she was opening the door.

There had been a time, she recalled, when—fresh out of her ivy-covered dorm in Boston—she’d never even asked who it was, happy to open the door and speak to anyone: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hare Krishnas, March of Dimes volunteers, salesmen, neighbors, strangers…It had taken only one bad experience to end all that.

“I’m going to look through the peephole, and if I don’t open the door it means I don’t want you, so just go away, got that?” she said, having found this statement very effective for most callers, and well worth the minor unpleasantness it sometimes caused.

She held her hand against the door, as if willing it to stay shut. The banging became more insistent.

“Who is it?”

“Suzanne, don’t you recognize me? It’s your grandmother.”

She leaned her back up against the door, surveying the wreckage that was her living room, and beyond to where her naked new companion lay waiting for her imminent return. Her shoulders sagged.

“Well, well, perfect timing,” she whispered to no one in particular, opening the bolts, deadlocks, chains, and assorted iron bars.

Neither woman moved.

What was called for here? Suzanne considered, the taste bitter in her mouth (her fault? her recent partner’s?). Polite cheek-brushing? Outstretched arms? Full kisses, sighs of familial warmth and exhilaration?

“Please, Suzanne, I’m too old to play games. Are you going to invite me in, or encourage me to leave? Either way, I really want to know soon.”

Suzanne opened the door wide, feeling an unreasonable sense of defeat as she watched the old woman invade her home. A few months ago, I
would
have slammed it in your face, she thought.

Catherine’s steps were hesitant and contemplative, full of painful awareness of the transformation that had taken place since Renaldo’s departure. All the posters were gone, those beautiful Impressionist prints from the Musée d’Orsay; the Bronzinos from the Uffizi; and the Italian Renaissance prints from Venice. Suzanne had brought them all home after her senior year at the Sorbonne, the way she’d brought back Renaldo.

Instinctively, she searched the shelves holding the glazed-ceramic animals from Mexico and Brazil that Suzanne had begun collecting under Renaldo’s influence. They, too, were gone, the shelves empty and dingily bare. Even the large, bright canvases depicting healthy, brown women in Aztec splendor—Renaldo’s specialty—were no longer visible.

Except for the photographs on the piano, anyone could live here, any Bronx shopgirl, any Flatbush Avenue secretary, Catherine thought, feeling a little heartsick.

“Here, Gran, sit down, you must be exhausted,” Suzanne said suddenly, pushing a few scattered clothes to one side of the threadbare couch to create a small island.

Catherine nodded gratefully, looking for some sign of a thaw. But Suzanne’s face was tight and silent as she leaned back against the wall, her arms crossed defensively, one leg swinging with nervous abandon.

She was queenly, Catherine thought with a touch of wonder, taking in her height and slimness. Those long, shapely legs flashing beneath the skimpy robe, those elegant cheekbones, that posture…. Nothing like me or Janice. The beneficiary of some long-lost DNA contributed hundreds of years before by some royal Gentile princess who had married into the Nasi clan at the height of its wealth and power.

“Really, Grandmother, you could have called!” she said peevishly. “I would have been happy to save you all the steps up here. And”—she hesitated, taking a deep, defiant breath—“if it has anything to do with all those things Mom and Kenny have been badgering me about, I wish you’d save your strength. I’m not going to change my mind.”

“Badgering? About what?”

Her toes dug listlessly into the brown-and-red kilim rug beneath her. “The stuff about moving back home, socially correct parties, Junior League. The bribes: car, apartment, et cetera. I’m twenty-five years old. I’ve got a good job. I have my own home. I’m
never
going back to Scarsdale, so you can just…”

“What happened to your prints from Paris and those beautiful ceramics and the antiques? And where are all Renaldo’s paintings?” Catherine interrupted her.

Suzanne surveyed her grandmother coolly, reaching for a pack of cigarettes. Without asking permission, she lit one and took a deep drag. “I’m redecorating,” she said calmly, lips stretched tight over teeth.

“The bed’s cooling off, Suzanne,” a deep male voice called.

Catherine’s appalled eyes caught her granddaughter’s. She was surprised and grateful to see a blush creep up the young woman’s cheeks.

Not completely lost. Not yet. “I’ve heard those temperature controls on waterbeds are so fragile. Is the repairman almost done?” Catherine asked innocently.

Suzanne stared at her, and then both of them broke into a grin.

“I’ll go see, Grandmother.”

He left, disgruntled, and with a distinct lack of grace that banished any sense of regret Suzanne might have felt. Actually, she felt relieved.

“Tea, Gran?”

“Actually, I was hoping to treat you to an early lunch.”

“Well, uh, that’s, that’s very…but you know, I’m a strict vegetarian these days, and no milk or cheese or eggs either,” she said coolly, waiting for a reaction. There wasn’t any, so she kept going: “Rainforests are being destroyed. Food supplies are being squandered. Animals are needlessly suffering all in the name of cattle production, even though we no longer need meat for survival. Besides, with all those hormones they inject into beef, it’s just poisoning us and the whole ecosystem,” she argued, beginning to feel a bit cheated and inexplicably flustered, somehow, at Catherine’s equanimity. “The only thing that’s preventing us from moving forward is this stupid connection to the past….”

Catherine listened patiently, swallowing hard. “What about a seafood restaurant, then?”

“Grandmother! Fish are living creatures, too! Besides, they boil lobsters live, and oysters are actually swallowed live! I mean, cannibalism!” She shook her head. “But there is this vegetarian Buddhist restaurant they just opened up a few blocks from here. The upstairs is actually a temple with these fruit offerings around an altar.”

“Whatever makes you comfortable, Suzanne dearest,” Catherine said with determined cheer and a distinct sense that strangulation was slowly settling in over her vocal cords from inhaling all that cigarette smoke.

“It’s not a question of comfort, Gran. It’s a question of the planet’s survival!” Suzanne exclaimed passionately.

Catherine was about to bring up the issue of tar and nicotine pollution to the planet’s (and her own) survival, but thought better of it. The young were so full of love for their own ideas, so oblivious to contradiction. They were sure no idea they’d thought of could possibly have been tried or thought of before. “You know, the rabbi of our temple once remarked that before the Flood all people were vegetarians and no one was allowed to kill and eat animals.”

“Really?” Suzanne said skeptically.

“I remember it distinctly.”

“But the Bible is so full of animal sacrifices, meat-eating…”

“Well, I’m not the one to ask. I only remembered that little bit. Is it far, your Buddhist temple?”

“No. Just around the corner. Wait here a minute and I’ll throw some clothes on.”

Five minutes later she was back, looking—Catherine admitted, amazed—more beautiful than ever, despite the strange outfit. The skirt, a swirl of blue Indian cotton, touched her ankles, and the top clung to her breasts like a dancer’s leotard. And the silver jewelry! Where in heaven’s name was that from? Calcutta? Afghanistan? “Come, child, help me get up. I’m feeling a little weary.”

She was light, almost weightless, Suzanne thought, comparing her grandmother’s white, clearly veined, and almost transparent skin to her own rosy, tanned arm. A tenderness and a strange feeling that was akin to grief welled up inside her as their hands touched.

She fought it.

5

A wind, gentle and warm enough to make them forget to button their coats, flapped their clothes against them as they strolled down Mulberry Street, creating a soft murmur that took the place of conversation.

Suzanne walked slowly, wondering at each step if she should turn back. But the thought of a carte blanche lunch was too tempting to pass up. She seldom ate out these days. Money was tight, now more than ever. Certain grants hadn’t come through, and she and all the other counselors at the rape-crisis center had agreed to take a 30 percent pay cut rather than close down or fire staff.

Besides, there wasn’t a scrap of food in the house. And she was hungry.

Still, the battle scars from the recent war with the family throbbed, threatening to rupture and bleed anew at the smallest jarring motion. If this was going to be yet another family onslaught—she brooded—another sea of whiny
mea culpas
and justified self-pity cushioned in vague threats, well, she just wouldn’t stand for it, free lunch or no free lunch. There was
no way
she was going to sit back and listen to that crap. No way.

Did they even realize, she wondered, how thoroughly they’d destroyed her best (her only?) real chance for happiness? Or how deeply she sometimes despised them all? If it hadn’t been for that little private chat among her mother, Kenny, and Renaldo a few months back, Renaldo would be up in her apartment right now, laughing and singing Spanish love songs, his strong brown arms splashing color magically over blank white canvases, instead of…

Her eyes misted.

Renaldo.

She glanced at her grandmother, her throat tightening, her eyes unfriendly. She had no proof, of course—Gran had been too savvy to broach the subject with her personally—but she didn’t doubt for a second that her grandmother had been at least as guilty as the others for what had happened. Direct confrontation was seldom her style. She was The Matriarch, puller of strings.

It wasn’t too late to send her packing.

She considered it, glancing at her malevolently.

But somehow, her grandmother’s delicate, slightly bent frame with its silver crown did not play well as the proud, formidable opponent who had so infuriated her only a few months before. She felt her anger drain as she walked on, brooding.

Catherine didn’t notice her silence, all her attention focused on hiding her own growing panic. Her brave and foolish foray into Central Park notwithstanding, her view of New York remained unchanged: It was a safari park, a place to be passed through in a closed, moving vehicle, windows tightly rolled up. It was seldom she found herself exposed to the city on any street below Madison and Forty-fourth. She looked around at the grungy streets and even grungier people, unnerved.

“Perhaps we should hail a cab, dear,” she suggested, trying to keep her voice steady.

“What for? It’s just another block or two. Isn’t this place great! All these little boutiques and outdoor cafes. And you have to see the Festival of San Gennaro.”

Catherine glanced at her sharply. “You go to that, do you?”

“Sure. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. All those holy statues and the flowers and music and great food. It’s so colorful and interesting. Sometimes I wish…”

“Go on.”

“It’s just that the Italians seem to have such a great time. The stuff we do is so sterile, so boring. Like Passover, all those long-winded recitations and that inedible food, and the little groans from the men and the kids fidgeting and all the women left behind in the kitchen.”

“Italian Catholic children don’t fidget, and their fathers don’t groan on the hard benches in church, and all that great food, why, it gets magically cooked while the women dance in the streets, I suspect.”

“Just forget it. It’s not possible to make you understand.”

“Why do you say that? I understand exactly what you mean. I used to feel the same way.” She shook her head sadly.

“You?” Suzanne looked at her, startled, waiting for some explanation.

None followed. Catherine looked ahead, clearly finished with the topic. Or perhaps, Suzanne suddenly wondered, taking in the slight trembling motion of her head, she’d simply forgotten what she’d meant to say.

The restaurant was an odd mixture of fake Chinese and genuine Delancey Street old-fashioned, its decor consisting of fringed red lanterns and a genuine pickle barrel.

“This used to be a kosher deli,” Suzanne explained.

“I thought you said this place was vegetarian.”

“It is.”

“What’s this, then?” she asked, pointing to the “sweet-and-sour pork” on the menu.

“Oh, it’s not real pork, Granny! It’s made out of bean curd, and I assure you it’s just as delicious as I remember the real thing. Although, as a vegetarian, I haven’t tasted that in quite some time,” she pointed out with some righteousness.

Catherine supposed that was true, but it didn’t please her. Eating vegetarian food on the ground floor of a Buddhist temple hardly qualified as a link with family tradition.

They ordered many dishes, although Catherine took no more than a spoonful of each, leaving Suzanne free to devour the rest. She did so, with gusto, then eagerly ordered dessert. It came covered with ice cream and a good number of flaming sparklers, which sent floating ash everywhere.