The Ghost of Hannah Mendes (9 page)

“Fried pineapple. My favorite,” she said between bites, thoroughly enjoying herself.

“Are you all right?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you have what you need, dear, to get by?”

Suzanne put her fork down slowly, dabbing the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “Do you mean, do I have enough money for food?” she asked, suddenly amused. “Plenty. But when someone else pays, it does wonders for my appetite.” She grinned.

“Well, at least you’re not getting insulted. Young people these days think they have to prove something all the time, and even if they can’t really manage alone, they foolishly refuse to ask their families for help out of some ridiculous pride.”

Suzanne felt her jaw twitch. “Considering the recent past, I’d appreciate it, Grandmother, if you wouldn’t bring up family help, caring, et cetera, et cetera.”

“I don’t understand…”

“Eleven months ago, when I wanted to marry Renaldo, Grandmother,” she said, lifting her eyes from the napkin she’d been rolling into tiny balls. “The point is, last year, where was my wonderful, caring family then?”

“I don’t remember you ever discussing Renaldo with me,” she answered weakly.

“Okay. But Mom and Kenny knew we were planning on getting married. They must have discussed it with you. And I’m sure you didn’t tell them to wish me
mazel tov
,” she accused, accurately.

“I had no idea it had gotten that far,” she muttered, shocked, betraying herself. “What I meant to say was—”

“Just stop! It’s done. Renaldo was an honorable man. Family was vital to him. He wasn’t about to get into a relationship where people treated him like the sleazy Puerto Rican boyfriend of the girl in the nail parlor. He couldn’t take it. But what’s the point? He’s gone.”

The click of other people’s forks against their plates became suddenly almost deafening.

“Suzanne, whatever else was involved, it was never personal. We never had anything against Renaldo
personally
.” She bit her lip, sorry to have said so much. “We were all devastated at how hard you took the breakup. Heartbroken, believe me. These things happen. Why do you insist on blaming your family, yourself…? We never wished either of you any harm.”

She saw Suzanne’s bright face suddenly fade and darken, her lips twitching for control. She reached out impulsively across the table, taking her granddaughter’s hand in her own. “Child, he was a married man twice your age, from another culture!”

“And another faith! Don’t forget that!” Suzanne wrenched her hand away.

“Another faith,” Catherine admitted. “But also a man with two grown children and a wife!” she went on doggedly, ignoring the sharp turn onto thin ice that the conversation had suddenly taken. “You were so innocent, so inexperienced.”

“He was a brilliant, talented artist! A man full of life, of joy! He’d been separated from his wife for almost five years. Catholics don’t believe in divorce.”

“And
we
Jews,” Catherine said with a strange defiance, “don’t believe in intermarriage!”

“Oh, really? Does Mom know?” Suzanne added nastily. Then, seeing her grandmother’s face blanch, she softened her tone. “Look, Gran, as far as I’m concerned, there is no
we
. What can you expect, after all those years of Hanukkah candles and Christmas trees, Passover seders and Easter candy? It’s all garbage, just artificial gimmicks that separate people. It just causes hatred and misunderstandings.” …‘Imagine no religion, nothing to kill or die for…,’” she sang.

“And no Festival of San Gennaro.”

Suzanne paused. “That’s different. That’s cultural,” she said slowly. “I mean, we should all respect different cultures, customs, art, music…”

“Just not your own,” Catherine said, her voice rising unexpectedly. To her great shock, she found tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Gran?”

Catherine took out an immaculately clean, hand-embroidered and monogrammed handkerchief from her bag and dabbed her eyes. “I have something to tell you, Suzanne…” she began impulsively, then hesitated. The conversation had not gone at all the way she’d expected. She’d meant to lead up to this subject tactfully, making it sound like a beautiful new beginning, or at least a chance for a decent last chapter. Now, it would sound like so much blackmail.

She saw the sand hemorrhaging inexorably through the aperture of an hourglass. There was no time for another such meeting, which might go more smoothly. It was either going to be now, or it was not going to be.

“Suzanne, I’m dying.”

She watched the slow, predictable look of wonder and horror pass over her granddaughter’s features, and then something less expected. A look of curiosity.

“I’m seventy-four years old, and my young doctor says that with the proper care I might reach seventy-five. Except that I don’t plan to have the proper care, not if it’s painful or ugly….” She held up a hand as if warding off a potential flood of objections.

There were none.

She looked at her granddaughter, surprised and grateful. “You know I’ve always been a spoiled, cowardly woman, and I see no reason to change now.”

“
Abuela
.” It was Suzanne’s turn to reach out for her across the table littered with the cold remnants of the odd meal. She had not used that childish term of endearment for many years.

“Don’t you dare cry, Suzanne! That’s why I’ve taken you to this public place. You know how I hate emotional scenes. I have something I need to ask of you. Yes, it’s blackmail, the worst sort of blackmail. A dying request. There is no way you can get out of it, so just set your mind on doing it.”

Suzanne gulped down the last of her Chinese tea.

“That’s right. Not a word. You’re trapped, so just listen. I want you to do a job for me. A little research. I have in my safe a few pages of memoirs written in Portuguese by one of our distant Spanish ancestors. I want you to help me track down the rest of it.”

“How distant?”

“It was written in the 1500s.”

Suzanne looked at her speculatively.

“I know a little bit about finding rare books and manuscripts. Your grandfather Carl was a great collector, you know.”

“What’s it about?”

“Doña Gracia Mendes. She was a young widow with a small child when she inherited the greatest fortune and one of the most successful trading companies in Europe. She was an intimate of kings and queens. And then, for no apparent reason, she just fled, and began openly declaring herself a Jew.”

“So, you already know what happened?”

“Yes and no. I’ve read about her in some history books. I more or less know what she did. But none of the books explain why.” She peered into Suzanne’s face. It looked blank. “How can I can make you understand? It was like a rich German aristocrat in the middle of Berlin in 1936 calling Hitler and telling him that he’d decided to be a Jew! I mean, it was the height of the Inquisition. People were being burned for changing their linens on Fridays, or because no smoke came out of their chimneys on Saturdays, never mind praying in synagogues! And the Inquisition didn’t just burn you—they tortured you until you implicated every last member of your family. Then they confiscated every scrap of money or property you owned and turned it over to the Church and King; they took your children away and put them into monasteries or convents. She had so much to lose. In some ways, it was insane for her to behave as she did, yet, incredibly brave as well. I don’t know. I’ve never really understood. She had everything. Why did she risk so much? So will you do it for me?”

“Do what?”

“Travel to Europe to look for the manuscript.”

“
Abuela
, I can’t just pick myself up and…First of all, you can hire a dozen scholars to do this for you who know Spanish and Portuguese. Who are at home in the book stacks of old, nasty libraries all over Europe. Besides, if you’re ill, I think I should be here.”

Catherine hesitated. “I don’t know if I can make you understand. But I feel I’ve let someone, something, down badly. I’ve betrayed some kind of commitment, some trust. I didn’t have much else to do in life, and the little that was my duty, I didn’t do it. I don’t want to hire someone to give me a report, the way I hired maids to polish and dust my heirloom silver. Before I die, I want to understand where it is I come from, and what it’s all meant. It’s really a family matter, and not some archaeological dig. You’re my family.” She shrugged. “I’m asking you to help me.”

Suzanne looked at her blankly, flustered. The whole thing was ridiculous: traipsing around Europe in the hopes of finding a few more pages of a manuscript that had been missing for hundreds of years. Trying to find motivations for a long-dead ancestor by cruising along the Grand Canal, or walking through the streets of London. How could you ever really know anybody’s motives, even your best friend’s, let alone someone who lived hundreds of years ago?

“I just don’t know, Gran…”

“Listen, Suzanne. I haven’t made up my will yet. Remember that!”

“Gran!” She was absolutely shocked. She looked across at her grandmother, watching against her will the light flash off the two large diamond rings she wore on either hand. She thought of the apartment on Fifth, of the stone country house in Connecticut, of the rare antiques and books, with a horrified and almost helpless fascination.

What the rape-crisis center, the ecology groups she belonged to, could do with funds like that! So much could be accomplished.

And then, quite unbidden, some other images came to her. Leisurely strolls through museums, libraries, and galleries. Good hotel rooms, fine wines. And maybe…(Her mind flashed the image of Renaldo, leaning on the railing of the bridge spanning the Grand Canal.) A trip to Europe. All expenses paid.

Blushing pink with shame and excitement, Suzanne looked into her grandmother’s eyes. She looked all right. Maybe the doctors were just being alarmist. And if this would really make her feel better, if this was really what she wanted…

“Look, this is just theoretical, okay? But let’s just say for a minute I agreed to all of this craziness. Then where would I need to go, and how soon?” she asked, smiling with more accommodating sweetness than Catherine had ever dreamed possible.

6

It was Vivaldi’s
Mandolin Concerto
, Francesca Abraham realized as the radio alarm went off. Lively, unrelentingly upbeat, it was probably the perfect tempo in which to start the day. Covering her head with a pillow, she reached out blindly and urgently, desperate to shut the damn thing off.

Five more minutes, she negotiated with herself. Or maybe ten. Why was sleep such a delicious treat this time of morning and such a boring burden when she turned in at night?

Fifteen minutes later, she dragged her petite, shapely legs over the side of the bed and stood up. Her eyes felt heavy and her head spun as she crossed the floor. Mind over matter, she thought wearily, slapping on wrist and ankle weights and feeding a cassette into the recorder. It was a fifteen-day program guaranteed to reduce her thighs and firm her buttocks.

She didn’t stare at Jane; it was too depressing. Instead, she looked at one of her backup girls, a blond Barbie who started like plastic perfection and then slowly began to melt, sweat dripping down her face and making big dark circles under her armpits. Fifteen minutes into the tape, and the girl’s smile was gone, her breath was coming hard, and you could tell she was hating every minute. I love that girl, Francesca thought, her whole body crying out for mercy.

She was only on the fifth day.

The shower, set to the merciless massage setting, hit her like biblical punishment. When it was over, she sat on the cold edge of the tub staring at her pink, naked flesh in the full-length mirror. Everything about her proclaimed powerlessness and vulnerability, she thought, discouraged. Petite body, small face, little hands and feet. Like a china doll, her mother’s friends used to exclaim over her, convinced they were paying her a compliment. Even her hair, she thought, running her fingers impatiently through the damp golden brown ringlets that curled romantically around her face. A Botticelli angel, a boy in college once called her, begging her to let it grow. Right! That was all she needed: wild curls cascading down her back like a doomed Shakespearian virgin, or a rock star.

She squared her slender shoulders, leaning forward. Only her eyes pleased her. Large, brown ovals with flecks of amber and gold around the irises, they dominated her delicate, narrow face, giving it a cool strength. She rubbed the sleep wrinkles on her cheeks and forehead.

In four years, I’ll be thirty, she thought, rubbing harder.

She sighed, opening her closet and flipping through the hangers, mourning once again that she lacked the trampoline tautness necessary for the latest fashions. The tight, ass-hugging skirts that looked so chic on Bendel’s window dummies underwent an alarming change the moment she tried them on, becoming indistinguishable from those Lycra creations long favored by Puerto Rican schoolgirls.

It was the old-fashioned stuff that looked best on her, she knew: the full-skirted girlish dresses, the heart-shaped necklines. No one wore that anymore, except as evening wear. It had been a year since she’d said “Fine” to anything as frivolous as “Why don’t we have dinner?,” and nearly two since she’d broken her engagement to Peter Aronson. Evening wear was not a justified economic expense for Francesca Abraham.

Peter, she thought, stepping into the gray, pinstriped skirt of a severely tailored suit. He was married now, to a girl she’d known from expensive, horsy summer camps. They’d bought a house in Short Hills, New Jersey. A charming Tudor with a Jacuzzi and a circular driveway, Mom had informed her accusingly. They’d just had a baby, too. A little girl.

She opened the drapes and pressed her forehead against the cold glass. The gray March sky was flattened against the hundreds of identical windows of her unknown neighbors. Far below, a hint of green winked against the silver branches of winter-shorn trees. She listened to the ceaseless city sound of vehicles conversing. My Rapunzel tower, remote and inaccessible, she thought. And me with short hair.