The Good Neighbor (18 page)

Who would look for Mrs. Feldman who didn't know where she'd gone? Some of her lady friends already lived in retirement villages or assisted-living communities. Others still lived with their husbands. Her friends, her family, her neighbors? We'd all know where she was.

“How about change-of-address cards?” Did people send those anymore? Mrs. Feldman could do that. Even if it took envelopes and stamps instead of e-cards and Excel spreadsheets. I could do that for her. I pictured an assembly line of me, Noah, and Mrs. Feldman stuffing and licking and stamping and addressing. “As for the memories, you take them with you.” I'd think that would be the easy part.

“I couldn't take them all. The walls, the floors, the plates and spoons and cups. They all have memories attached to them. They make me remember.”

“You'll take as much as you can. A cup, a plate, a book, a figurine. Better yet, I'll help you write down the things you don't want to forget, then you can just read them. We can get a journal, or a binder. It will be like a combination of an inventory and a memoir. Or we can do it on the computer. I'll bring my laptop over later and we can note everything you have. You can tell me stories about everything and I'll type them.”

“And these would be just for me?”

“Yes, unless you wanted to share them with someone. Is there someone? I could make copies, or e-mail…”

“No.” Mrs. Feldman gathered the waist of her blouse in her hands. “I'll keep my stories to myself. But thank you, Elizabeth.” She smoothed the fabric she'd crumpled and looked at me as if she'd forgotten to say something or was searching for one particular word she couldn't find. Even I sometimes faltered for the right words. More than sometimes. So I waited.

“No matter what, we should make a list of everything you have,” I said to break the silence. “Then if you're getting ready to move, you can look at the list and decide what to take. Do you know what the next step is?”

“If an apartment opens up, I'm next on the list. I'm pretty sure the boys paid for me to be at the top of that list. Chop-chop! They said you can't do that, but I didn't believe them.”

I didn't either. Not sure what to say or do, I rose from the chair, shook some Ajax onto a sponge, and scrubbed the sink, which was already clean and dry.

“Come sit down, Elizabeth. I can't believe I'm saying this, but stop cleaning my sink.”

I stopped and I sat.

“You're not planning to leave Good Street again, are you?”

“Not anytime soon.” I had to remember why I was here. To have a life I could afford in a decent house in a decent neighborhood, not too far from work and near decent schools. I wondered if all I'd ever be able to hope for, strive toward, was “decent.”

Mrs. Feldman walked into the living room and came back with the little pirate box. She handed it to me and I assumed she was bequeathing it to Noah. “Would you save this for me? I mean, not for me. But would you keep this once I've gone? Moved.”

She opened the silverware drawer, reached into the back, and handed me a small bronze key. I was sure I could've opened the box with an uncurled paper clip, but I didn't want to dispel the myth that its contents were safe.

“Of course I will, but if this is so important, shouldn't you keep it?”

“It won't do me any good.”

She handed me the box; it was the first time I'd felt its weight. “What exactly is in here?”

Mrs. Feldman raised her index finger to her lips as if to shush me. A lump formed in my throat and my thoughts ran amuck. I put the box on the table, picturing ashes, bones, drugs—none of which I really thought were inside, but my imagination had been in turbo drive lately. I said nothing. Mrs. Feldman said nothing. Noah stayed in the living room, engrossed in more LEGO building. Sometimes silence was more disturbing than a toddler banging on pots and pans.

“Don't worry, Elizabeth, if no one comes, just throw it away after I'm gone.”

This time she didn't mean after she'd moved. “Who is going to come looking for this?”

“I'm not sure.”

“When are they coming?”

“Probably never.”

“Are you sure you need me to do this? Maybe you just need to keep the box.” I pushed it across the table toward Mrs. Feldman, who pushed it back.

“No, please, keep it.”

“What is in here?”

“A secret.”

As much as I hated to admit it, I was growing frustrated with my friend, likely the way she felt about me and Mac. “What did you
do
?” I held up the box, unsure what I was touching.

“I put it in the box.”

“Tell me what's in here.”

Mrs. Feldman looked out the window. “It was easier to keep secrets back then. We didn't want to trouble anyone. We were embarrassed. Ashamed. Now it's the opposite. Today people tell the truth and take what's coming.” She paused. “Like you'll do, Elizabeth.”

Mrs. Feldman muttered a few more words, never looking at me, or anywhere but out the window. I didn't know if this was a confession or a breakdown or a touch of dementia, or maybe all three. If this were Rachel or Jade, I'd have smacked them. Just to bring them back to reality. But no way was I going to slap Mrs. Feldman.

Instead, I grasped each of her hands tightly enough so that she turned and looked at me. “Mrs. Feldman, stop!”

She was still.

“Geraldine! Geraldine, look at me! Who is going to come for this box?”

“My daughter.”

I let go of her hands.
My daughter
. Such simple words, but they might as well have been Mandarin or Swahili or Urdu.

I looked at this woman who'd been like a mother and grandmother to me, who was more maternal than my own mother, whose face filled my memory bank. I rifled through my mental files for a reference, a spark, a pinpointed moment where I would have my aha moment. Mrs. Feldman looked the same on the outside, but she'd flipped herself open to reveal another half. I could see it, empty. Her mouth curved into a frown, set deep with the lines of age and worry. And sadness.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“I don't know.”

*   *   *

I insisted Mrs. Feldman come home with us. We sat together in the living room, and I prompted Noah with question after question about school, LEGOs, pirates, and Maya—anything I could think of, so the conversation stayed focused on him. Then I offered Mrs. Feldman books, magazines, and the remote control while I went upstairs for Noah's bedtime rituals. I needed to spend time with him, end the day on a note of normalcy. For both of us.

Back downstairs, I didn't know where to begin. I reclined in my dad's chair to feign nonchalance. Was it my job to coax this information out of her? If she wanted me to be her secret's keeper, perhaps she should have been prepared to tell me everything. My head throbbed, as if my brain were full and I needed to upgrade its software. I needed more space for all the secrets. Mine, Mrs. Feldman's, and even Rachel's. Rachel, who would be here later.

“Secrets get under your skin,” Mrs. Feldman said without looking at me. “They become so much a part of you they become invisible—to your head, to your heart—because they have to be. It's the only way to protect yourself.”

Enough with the mumbo jumbo. “Where's your daughter?”

“I don't know.”

“Is she alive?” I wondered if this was a resurgence of grief, a moment in which Mrs. Feldman had forgotten what year it was, and that she'd mourned a child decades ago.

“Honestly, I don't know. I gave her away. I was fifteen when I had her.”

I sat up and the recliner snapped to attention. My insides ached. My hands held my stomach, which twanged with a phantom flutter. “I'm so sorry.”

We sat in silence, my comfort unbalanced. An empty, almost-hungry feeling passed through me.

“I know what it's like to lose a baby.” I had never said that aloud before. I didn't really know, I only sort of knew. A pregnancy had prompted Bruce and me to marry. “I had a miscarriage right after Bruce and I got married. I wanted that baby so badly. I always knew I wanted kids, and then I got pregnant and felt like my world was wrapped with a big bow.” I remembered shopping for maternity clothes, wedding invitations, honeymoon trips, cribs …

“I know,” Mrs. Feldman said.

“No one knew. Ever.”

“I knew you were pregnant at your wedding, and I knew you weren't pregnant the next time I saw you.”

“You never said anything.”

“Of course not. That secret was yours to keep. As was mine.”

“So why tell me now?” It was flattering to be trusted, but also encumbering.

“I'm tired. Tired of wondering if one day the baby I gave away when I was just a baby myself will show up looking for me. Or maybe her children. Or her grandchildren. But if I'm not here…” Mrs. Feldman's voice caught in her throat.

“Did you want to keep the baby?”

“That wasn't an option, dear. It was 1944. This was a
shanda,
a disgrace to my parents, and to me, and to anyone in my family who knew. A nice Jewish girl getting pregnant? Let alone by an Italian boy whose father made pizzas and whose uncles were priests?” It wasn't sinister at all. It was young love. “They found out about the baby and Tony, and in two shakes my parents drove me to Staten Island. But this was not a trip to summer camp.” Mrs. Feldman shook her index finger back and forth like a metronome. “No, no, no. This was the Lakeview Home for Jewish Unwed Mothers. When I got home seven months later, my parents and half my family had moved from South Philly to the Northeast. They might as well have moved us to the moon. I wasn't ever going to see my old friends again. No one mentioned the baby ever again. I never saw Tony again. Ever. The talk of the family that summer was that I was going into the eleventh grade when school started again. I was a grade ahead. One thing about pregnant Jewish girls, they brought in the best tutors for us.”

“And then?”

“And then nothing. I graduated from high school. I worked at Gimbels. I met Sol. I got married. I was supposed to forget. Not just ‘not mention it'—but really forget. No one went to a therapist in those days. There were no support groups. Behind my parents' back I wrote a letter to one of the very nice nurses at Lakeview. I begged her to put our new address in my baby's file. I put three silver dollars I'd gotten as birthday presents from my nana over the years into the envelope as a bribe, or I thought that maybe, if the nurse was very nice, she would put them in the file and one day my daughter would know I cared about her. I just knew that if my daughter ever wanted to meet me, the records would likely only have my parents' South Philly address or a phony address. How would she find me? I don't know if my daughter ever looked for me, or if that nurse ever even received the letter.”

“You never tried to contact that nurse again?”

“No. It wasn't like now. No tap, tap, click, click. And honestly, Elizabeth, I owed it to Sol to be a good wife and to the boys to be a good mother.”

“And you were.” I had no idea what kind of a wife or mother Mrs. Feldman had been, only what I'd assumed based on our relationship. I was beginning to think I didn't know Geraldine Feldman at all.

“But Mr. Feldman must have wanted to help you find her, and your sons must have the means to dig through whatever red tape there is to get some answers. Things are different now. You know that. You could have started looking years ago.”

“Elizabeth, when I said it was a secret, I meant it. The boys don't know about the baby. None of my friends know about the baby.” Mrs. Feldman sighed in a tone filled with regret, not joyfulness. “She'd be seventy now and I still think of her as a baby. Sol didn't know about her either. I lied to him for our entire marriage.”

I bit my bottom lip. She'd never told her husband. Every time someone asked how many children she'd had, she'd said three when the answer was four. Every time there'd been a conversation about mothers and daughters, Mrs. Feldman tucked back the secret a little further, perpetuating the lie.

My angst about Mac, Pop Philly, and Jade were blips compared to what Mrs. Feldman had gone through. What she was still going through after seventy years. Her trust was a gift. As was my newfound perspective.

“I will do whatever you need me to do,” I said.

Mrs. Feldman had relaxed into the sofa cushions, and it made her appear pliant and frail. “Thank you, dear. I know it's a lot to ask. I know it was a lot to hear.”

I thought of all the hours playing with paper dolls, eating cookies, steeping tea, talking, dusting tchotchkes, and folding napkins. “It's nothing.” And it was nothing. Nothing compared to the manicured and delicate, yet strong, maternal hand she offered throughout my childhood, and still. “But it might help if I knew her name. Do you know what her adoptive family named her?”

“I don't know anything about her except for her birthday, of course, and the name on her birth certificate. I'm sure her new family changed it. She probably doesn't know her real name. Her beautiful name.” Mrs. Feldman touched her lips as if to keep it inside.

I knew what she was going to say next. I just nodded and she nodded back. Our bond had always been strong, sealed the day my parents brought me home to Good Street from Rolling Hill Hospital. I asked the question even though I knew the answer.

“What did you name her?”

Mrs. Feldman smiled and told the rest of her secret. “I called her Elizabeth.”

 

Chapter 19

Tensies

I
SAT ON THE
floor by Noah's bed, my head against the side of his mattress. His wispy breathing sounded like a baby's. His eyelids still fluttered as he slept, and I imagined he watched swashbuckling adventures unfold before him. I brushed the plush royal-blue carpet with my palm, knowing that with each stroke, the hue changed even though I couldn't see it. There was so much going on I couldn't see. I knew that now more than ever before. Mrs. Feldman had a daughter. Rachel was avoiding me. She hadn't shown up tonight, hadn't answered texts, and my calls went straight to voice mail. She
had
updated her Facebook status with vague annotations of busyness and joy. Why weren't people just busy and joyful instead of busy and joyful and sharing it with the world?