Too Many Men (70 page)

“I can invite Garth to New York if I do want to,” Edek said.

“Of course you can,” Ruth said. “But as he was part of my life, it would have been a good idea to discuss it with me first.”

“You would say you did not want to see him,” Edek said.

“Well, I would be saying it for a reason,” Ruth said.

“This reason is not a reason I can understand,” Edek said. He looked at Ruth. “Garth is like a son-in-law to me,” he said.

“Great,” Ruth said. “You’ve married him to me despite any participation on my part.”

“He can be a son-in-law to me even if he is not married to my daughter,” Edek said. “He is like a son to me.”

There was a silence between them. Ruth looked up, and to her horror saw that Edek was on the verge of tears. She felt terrible.

“I understand, Dad,” she said. “I understand how you feel about Garth.” Edek started to cry.

“He is like a son to me,” he said. “Garth is the only company what I feel very happy with since Mum did die. Except for you, Ruthie. With other people I do feel okay, but with Garth I feel comfortable. He does know me and I do know him.”

“Don’t cry, Dad,” she said. “I’m sorry I sounded upset. I do understand.” She did understand, she thought. Garth loved Edek. Garth lit up with love when he was with Edek and Edek was all right, in Garth’s company. She was glad Edek had Garth. She realized she had been holding her breath. She breathed out. Well, at least Zofia seemed to be out of the picture, she thought.

“I’m not angry,” Ruth said to Edek. “You can see Garth. But in New York? You’re not going to New York.”

T O O M A N Y M E N

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“I am going to New York,” Edek said.

“When?” said Ruth.

“With you,” said Edek.

“With me?” Ruth said. “What do you mean?”

“That is what I was doing in the airport in Warsaw,” Edek said.

“What?” she said. She was finding it hard to follow what her father was saying.

“In the airport, in Warsaw, I did change my ticket,” Edek said. He looked at Ruth expectantly and nervously. She still didn’t understand what he was saying. “I did change my ticket to go via New York from Warsaw,”

he said. “Now my ticket is from Warsaw to New York, then from New York to Sydney and then Melbourne.” Ruth was speechless. “I will stay with you a few days in New York,” Edek said.

“When did you change your ticket?” Ruth said.

“You did see me,” Edek said. “At the airport.”

“When you were getting upgraded?” Ruth said.

“I did not get such an upgrade,” Edek said. “There was nothing wrong with my seat. I did tell you this about the rest for the feet so you would understand why I had to go to get something fixed up.”

Ruth shook her head. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her father had tricked her. He had invented a whole dialogue of detailed explanations for his actions, which was fraudulent. Not true. How could he have done this to her? How could he have carried out that charade so master-fully? She hadn’t suspected a thing.

“You did believe me?” Edek said.

“Of course I believed you,” Ruth said.

“You should be more suspicious,” Edek said with a smile. Ruth was glad to see him smiling.

“Suspicious of you?” she said.

“Yes,” said Edek. “It was such a stupid story about the rest for the feet, and the chair what did not go back. Who has a chair what is broken like that, in a plane? Not even Polish Airlines.”

“I must be an idiot,” Ruth said. “I didn’t suspect a thing.”

“I love you, Ruthie,” Edek said. He looked much happier. He was clearly relieved that she had not gone ballistic about the news. “Gone ballistic.” That was a very contemporary expression, she thought. On the

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L I L Y B R E T T

whole she preferred more traditional expressions. She could have used

“exploded with anger” or “lost her temper.” She shook herself back to the present. She couldn’t afford to get lost, at this moment, in a welter of words.

“I did tell Garth what day we will be back in New York,” Edek said.

“And he will be there two days later.”

Ruth shook her head again. She wouldn’t have believed this of Edek.

She wouldn’t have thought him capable of orchestrating a deception and keeping it to himself for the entire trip. She hadn’t had a hint of his intention to accompany her back to New York. She had thought they would be saying good-bye in Warsaw. At the airport. She had managed to get flights that left more or less at the same time. Hers bound for New York, and Edek’s for Australia.

Her father had constructed a pantomime. A spectacle. He had run backward and forward to her at the airport, improvising explanations for his bizarre activity. She wouldn’t have thought him capable of this, or capable of keeping it to himself for the bulk of the trip. It was not easy to act out a lie. And she wouldn’t have thought it was in Edek’s nature to do it so well.

Edek was now looking quite pleased with himself. He bit into another
pontshke
. “I did ask Garth to come to New York two days after us because I did want to give you a chance to not have a jet lag still,” he said.

“Thank you,” Ruth said.

“Have your
pontshke,”
Edek said. “You did not eat one piece of it yet.

I am going to take you and Garth to a beautiful dinner in New York,”

Edek said.

“With my American Express card?” Ruth said, with a smile.

“With your American Express card,” Edek said. “You did say I should use it as often as I want to. And I want to take you and Garth out to a beautiful dinner.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t already made a booking at a restaurant,”

Ruth said. She picked up a piece of her
pontshke
. She put it in her mouth.

It tasted good. The sweetness of the doughnut soothed her. “This
pontshke
is very good,” she said to Edek.

“What did I tell you?” he said. “In Poland they got the best
pontshkes
.”

Ruth took another bite of
pontshke
. She thought of her father at Warsaw airport. She thought of him running from one side of the airport to the T O O M A N Y M E N

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other. Appearing and disappearing. She thought of the details he had provided her with.

“Seat 2B?” she said to Edek. “That’s what you told me you had arranged for yourself. Seat 2B.”

“Not bad, eh?” said Edek. “I did learn a lot about clues from my detective books. I did learn how to make sure people are not suspecting what is happening.”

“You did a good job,” Ruth said.

“I did learn all this from my books,” Edek said. “You put in such a clue.

Like what I did with the seat 2B, and then no one is suspecting anything. It is called a herring.”

“A herring?” Ruth said.

“Yes,” said Edek. “A herring.”

“Oh, you mean a red herring,” Ruth said.

“That’s it,” Edek said. “A red herring.” He looked very pleased with himself.

“You certainly know a lot about herring,” Ruth said. “Red herrings and pickled herrings and smoked herrings.”

Edek laughed. “I do not like so much the smoked herrings,” he said.

“I know,” said Ruth. “You prefer pickled herrings. Especially rollmops.”

“
Oy
, a rollmop is very good,” Edek said. “We did not have a rollmop in Poland.”

“I think that’s because rollmops are Jewish,” Ruth said. She herself quite liked rollmops.

“You do like a rollmop yourself, Ruthie,” Edek said.

“That’s true, I do,” she said.

“I did not do such a bad job,” Edek said, wiping the last of the icing sugar off his plate. “You are not so easy to tell a lie to. You are not stupid, and you do notice everything what I do.”

“Really?” she said.

“I do watch you,” Edek said. “I see that you do watch everything. You are watching me and other people what are next to us. You are watching everything.”

“You’re probably right,” she said. Edek was right, she had spent her whole life watching and observing.

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L I L Y B R E T T

“And you know things, Ruthie,” Edek said. “Things what you did not even see.”

Ruth felt alarmed. Jolted. What did Edek mean?

“I see what you feel about the Jews who used to be in Lódz,” Edek said.

“I can see how you do feel them even though there is no more any Jews in Lódz.” Ruth was relieved. It was sensitivity and sympathy her father was talking about. “You can feel the Jews, Ruthie,” he said. “I did watch you in the cemetery. In the ghetto. In Kamedulska Street. It is like you was there yourself when the Jews was there. Sometimes I think that you do understand too much, Ruthie.”

“I’m not sure you can ever understand too much, Dad,” she said. She felt that her life had too much in it that she was still trying to understand.

“Why don’t you understand about Garth?” Edek said. There it was, the trick question. Why didn’t she understand about Garth? What was there to understand? They had a relationship once, and it ended. That was it.

“What is there to understand, Dad?” she said, wearily. “That you love him?”

“What you do need to understand,” Edek said. “Which is not such a hard thing to see is that Garth does love you. You will see that in New York when we are all together.”

“Thanks, Dad,” she said. “I’m going back to a mountain of work and you’ve arranged for me to see Garth.”

“You did already too much work in your life,” Edek said. “You did not have enough of other things.”

“I’ve had more than enough of everything that I have needed,” Ruth said. She felt annoyed. She had worked so hard to have a balanced life, and here was Edek flippantly suggesting a lack of balance. She had thought long and hard about balance. Her life was balanced.

“You didn’t have a man what was your husband for a long time,” Edek said.

“You can live without husbands, you know,” Ruth said, with what she hoped was obvious sarcasm. “Not every woman needs a husband. I don’t need a husband. I don’t need a man in my life.”

“Column down, Ruthie, column down,” Edek said.

“I’m calm,” she said. “The world is a different place, now, Dad. Women don’t need a man in order to be happy and fulfilled.” She felt distressed.

T O O M A N Y M E N

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“I’m happy,” she shouted at Edek in case he hadn’t understood. She was close to tears. Why was it such a difficult concept to grasp? Nobody thought men were unfulfilled or unhappy if they didn’t have wives. On the contrary, many men who didn’t have wives were seen as lucky. Happy bach-elors. Envied by other men. And attractive to women. A tear ran down the side of her face. She wiped it away.

“If you are so happy why do you cry?” Edek said.

“They’re tears of frustration,” Ruth said.

“If you are so happy,” Edek said. “Why do you move your leg so up and down, and do such funny things with your eye?” Ruth felt exhausted.

“Don’t pick on me, Dad,” she said.

“I am not doing a picking,” he said.

“You did have many men what did want to marry you,” Edek said. Ruth kept quiet. She didn’t have the energy to explain again that times had changed. That being married was no longer a top priority for quite a few women.

“You did have many men what did want to marry you,” Edek said again. “Too many men.” What had he just said? Too many men. She was beginning to feel haunted by that phrase.

“Who wanted to marry me?” she said to Edek.

“The two husbands for a start,” he said. “And maybe even the green card man.”

“That’s a joke, Dad. I had to pay him,” Ruth said.

“You had to pay him?” Edek said.

“I had to pay him four thousand dollars,” Ruth said. “Two when we got married and two after the final interview.”

“Oh, brother,” Edek said. “Four thousand dollars. You did not tell me this.”

“It was just another detail of what I needed to do to live in New York,”

she said. “Anyway, I was worried that you would be bothered by husband number three. The first two divorces were difficult enough for you. I didn’t want to burden you with divorce number three.”

“You are right,” Edek said. “Your divorces was more difficult for me than they was for you.”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” Ruth said. “I didn’t breeze through them.”

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L I L Y B R E T T

“Well, they was definitely not breezes for me,” Edek said.

Ruth was glad the conversation had veered away from the men who had wanted to marry her. There had been so few of them, anyway.

“Shall we go back to the hotel?” Ruth said. “I want to see if there are any faxes.”

“Okay,” Edek said. He looked at his watch. “It is nearly lunchtime,” he said.

“I saw a small vegetarian restaurant,” Ruth said. “We could have lunch there, after I check the faxes.”

“Vegetarian?” Edek said. “You can eat such vegetables when you go back to New York. Why do we not have some
pierogi
today? In New York you cannot get such good
pierogi
.”

“That’s true,” she said. “The
pierogi
in New York are good, but not as good as the ones in Poland.”

“You can say that, again, brother,” Edek said.

Ruth was looking for her purse to pay the bill, when she felt Edek staring at her. “That John and that Allan did want to marry you,” he said. Ruth groaned. “I went out with John what’s-his-name for about four weeks and Allan never wanted to marry me,” she said. “And I definitely didn’t want to marry him.”

“That Allan did tell me he did want to marry you,” Edek said.

“He was nuts,” Ruth said. “And so what if he wanted to marry me. You can’t measure a woman’s worth by the number of men who have wanted to marry her.”

“No?” Edek said.

“No,” she shouted.

“What’s the difference?” Edek said. “The main thing is that you could not see that from all of these men Garth was the one who did love you.”

“I could see that,” Ruth said.

They were both quiet. “We will be in New York on the thirteenth, yes?”