You Saved Me, Too: What a Holocaust Survivor Taught Me about Living, Dying, Fighting, Loving, and Swearing in Yiddish (19 page)

You remembered his lack of generosity when you asked if you could buy two cemetery plots from his family’s section so your wife could be buried near her sister. He charged you $700 for them, which you didn’t think was right. Poor people like you often get pissed when their wealthy relatives don’t cut them breaks. How would a family discount have hurt his bottom line, you wondered?

I visited him once, with your permission. His house, in an upscale section of an upscale town, wasn’t huge or terribly flashy, but I could still tell he was loaded. He cultivated orchids, for God’s sake. And he had live-in help.

I tried not to look at him while he spoke because his eyes disgusted me. Gravity had dragged his lower lids so far down that the bloody insides showed. I get queasy when I look closely at bloodshot
eyes. His made me want to puke. But avoiding them wasn’t a problem because he didn’t look at me much either. Not the friendliest sort.

He told me that when your wives were alive, you’d see each other on holidays. Everyone gathered for Passover Seders at your mother-in-law’s house. After the women died, you two stayed in touch. You’d meet for lunch at the pancake house. He said you had a “native instinct,” whatever that means.

“He’s a hard worker and a good human being,” he said.

When he died at age ninety-seven, all he left to you was a hat. You knew he had a bunch of nieces and nephews, but still—a hat? At least it was a quality hat: forest-green velour decorated with a green satin cord that always reminded me of a yodeling costume. It came from the Swiss men’s clothing store, Fein-Kaller, a place that had been selling fancy clothes to fancy men since 1895. Someone from that institution embossed The Millionaire’s initials onto the inner lining of the hat in gold letters. You mocked him for only bequeathing you a stupid hat, but you loved that hat. You wore it whenever you got dressed up, even if you weren’t leaving the building.

Then it disappeared. You asked everyone around you to look for it. You asked me, continuously, to search my attic in case I’d stored it with your off-season clothes. All of us complied because we knew how important that hat was to you. It was your only valuable possession and your last link to your American family. The rest of them abandoned you after Bibi died, or maybe they thought you had pushed them away by not including them in her funeral. In any case, they’ve been replaced by a warmhearted family of Russians, and by me and mine.

“You’ve gained eight pounds,” the doctor said.

I’d brought you in for a routine checkup shortly after you’d left the mental hospital. The doctor held his stethoscope over your sleeveless T-shirt and listened. He heard strength. He looked at you and saw spryness. Then he had to eat crow.

“You and the rabbi tell me I’m eighty-two years old and you can’t do nothing. Over there, in the hospital, a woman, a little Russian woman, she gives me the medicine to make me better. I feel, not a hundred percent, but when I get the chest pain, I put a heating pad on and it goes away in half an hour.”

The doctor’s face was blank. He wasn’t going to admit that he’d failed to fix you.

But I’m sure I was smiling. Whenever you emerged from your depressions, I felt like the parent of a wayward child who has gotten back on his feet. I could finally let out my breath.

You’d moved into your own single apartment by then, in the same building as Vera’s. You still ate your meals and slept most nights at her place, which I know because you once told me I could sleep in your bed, “if you ever have a fight with your baby.” I don’t think the building manager would have allowed you to share her apartment, and your stuff wouldn’t have fit anyway, which was just as well. You liked having a place where you could be surrounded by your records, your framed pictures of the old days, and a coffee table that your late wife had hand-tiled.

We had our best moments in that apartment. One day, I sat on the stained carpet looking at your record collection. Johnny Mathis, Tony Bennett, an album of JFK speeches, and lots of Sinatra. He was your favorite, though you never told me which song of his you liked the best. Mine has always been “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning.”

I asked you the tough questions in that apartment, the things I wanted to know before you died.

Me: How long do you think you’ll live?

You: ’Til I die
.

Me: Why do you think you’re still here?

You: To keep an eye on you
.

Me: Do you believe in heaven?

You: Who the hell knows?

Me: I think there’s heaven
.

You: See, you afraid to die. Who says there’s heaven, the rabbis?

I told you we needed a plan so you could let me know if heaven exists. You nodded.

Me: What will the signal be? How will I know if you’re there?

You: When you dream about me
.

And one winter afternoon when it was already dark at 4:30, you handed me a brown paper bag in that apartment. The bag, soft with wear, was full of photographs and documents. You and Mendel after the war. You and your wife’s family celebrating a holiday. You patting your father-in-law’s cheeks after you’d shaved him. You and Bill in New York. Your naturalization papers. The mug shot that proved you were alive again.

“Don’t you want these?” I asked.

“Nah,” you said, flapping the idea away. “What do I need with them?”

The better question would have been: What do
I
need with them? But I didn’t ask that, of course. I was grateful and a little scared. I’d never been given custody of someone’s memories before.

Purim was my favorite holiday, too, but that shouldn’t surprise either of us. Not if we believe we’re two halves of Zeus’s whole.

My adoration of Purim is evident in the picture my father took of me sitting in the backseat of our station wagon. It’s morning and we’re about to leave for Sunday school. I must be about seven, and I am dressed in a regal gown. Okay, maybe not regal, but long and hand-stitched and definitely the color of buttercups. I’m also wearing a tiara, because what else would Queen Esther wear on her head? It’s the absolute best day of the religious school year because we’re required to dress up as Purim characters. I am delighted with my getup, as
evidenced by my giant front-tooth-free smile. This is almost a fluke. I didn’t give smiles away like some kids do. They had to be earned, which may explain why in most of my childhood photos I look pensive, except for the ones that show me crying. My parents liked to load up the camera when I was in tears. There I am crying in our play fort over a meatball sandwich they insisted I finish. There I am crying while wearing an adorable bonnet. But tears weren’t a factor in the Purim photo shoot. Queen Esther’s eyes were dancing.

Costumes weren’t the only good part of Purim. In my day, unlike yours, there weren’t house-to-house shenanigans, but we got to go crazy during the annual retelling of the Purim story. We were encouraged to wave
groggers
, handheld metal toys that growled when spun, and make whatever other noises we wanted—
even in temple—
whenever Haman’s name was read as a way to symbolically blot him out.

I wonder if hundreds of years from now they’ll read the story of the Holocaust during services and encourage the children to shake
groggers
whenever they hear the name Hitler?

You called me from an emergency room.
Oh crap
, I thought.
Not again
. I rushed over. This time they’d taken you to a hospital in a rougher neighborhood, the kind where gunshot cases are routine. When I found you behind a curtain, you looked like one of them. Blood covered one side of your face and had dripped all over your shirt.

“What happened?”

“The lamp. I stood up and cracked my head.”

The covering on this floor lamp was glass. You must have moved your kitchen chair too close to it. Later, when I went to clean up the blood, I saw that you had split that solid glass in half. Talk about hardheaded.

They’d already sewn you up when I arrived. They said I could take you home, which was a relief. I didn’t want to leave you in that scary place. But the bigger relief was that for once your problem was simple enough to be fixed with a needle and thread.

The doctor said it could be a day or two before anything changes. You know I’m not very patient, but I can wait. Surprised? I know—I’m usually running in and out of here to get to the next task on my list. But I’m all yours today; I have no errands or kid duties planned. I have no fireworks to watch.

That was years ago. We were sitting in the dark, the only light coming from the hallway, you in the bed, me in the chair on your left. Of course this was in an emergency room. I honestly don’t remember the complaint that time. It was usually chest pains, though you switched it up sometimes by insisting you’d had a stroke.

What I do remember is the pull. It was the Fourth of July, and for a change we had plans. We’d been invited to a party at someone’s lake house. This was a big event that we’d never been included in before, and I’d been looking forward to it for weeks. The kids and David were already there, waiting for me. And you didn’t want to be alone.

I was in a state, as my mother used to say. I couldn’t decide which of my actions would be more selfish: staying with you and abandoning my family, or going to them and abandoning you?

Max was six years old. What if he got scared of the fireworks and needed me, both for comfort and to hide him from braver friends? What if Carrie didn’t know anyone at the gathering and wanted to leave so she didn’t feel left out? I am their mother. They are my priority. Besides, I wanted to be with my family, which is a different kind of selfishness.

But there you were, alone in an ER bed, thinking you were close to death. We were waiting for the doctor to bring in test results. I knew I shouldn’t leave before the results came in. What if this time you were actually sick and needed me to make a decision? What if you freaked out and they ignored you?

We waited as the sky got darker, the fireworks nearer. Finally, the doctor whipped open the curtain, reading the file as he walked. Nothing serious, he said, but they’d admit you for observation. I knew it could be hours before they got you into a room, but I also knew you were okay.

I dashed from the hospital to the party, though you didn’t approve my exit. I couldn’t even find my kids at first, because they were busy having fun without me. Clearly, I’d dreamt up their neediness. I found David and tried to have fun, but all I did was worry about you alone in the ER. As soon as the sky filled with smoke from the final firework, I dashed back to the hospital. You were asleep in a single room.

No one had really needed me after all. I’d just driven myself crazy for nothing. This is a hazard for those of us continually trying to prove that we’re good. To whom, or for what? Impossible to know. There isn’t a shrink with a sharp-enough knife to dig that deep.

As the kids got stronger and you got weaker, prioritizing became easier. When you had a crisis, you came first and they understood. When they needed structure and routine—i.e., basic mothering—they came first and you didn’t always understand. You’d look at me with contempt when I cut a visit short so I could pick one of them up at school. It was as if they were fully capable adults and you were the child. Today, though, don’t worry; they will understand if I stay until after the stars come out.

Vera was your world. She was the timber that held up your roof, the legs on your table. When she suffered a series of strokes, you began to tilt, too. But not right away.

First, as you have so many times, you started a new family. This one was a sort of boys club. Every day you and two other men met at McDonald’s for lunch.

I don’t know how you met them, but probably the same way you’ve met everyone important in your life: by talking to strangers. They were nice guys, though clearly more middle-class than you’d ever been. The one who’d served in World War II sometimes brought his wife. The other, a former ad man, had lost his “bride” a few years earlier and still looked terribly lonely. The thing I liked best about them was that they put up with your weirdness.

You brought your own lunch to McDonald’s. On the day you invited me to meet the guys, you carried a pink reusable bag that looked like something hospitals give to new mothers for diaper storage. You pulled out of it a bruised pear; two plums; a sandwich consisting of a roll, a slice of cheese, and a leaf of lettuce; and a knife, all of them wrapped in paper napkins. You also pulled out a packet of Nescafé.

“Their coffee’s too strong,” you said, pointing at the golden arches.

But the McDonald’s boiled water was apparently acceptable, because part of your routine involved purchasing a cup of it for thirty-seven cents. The employees offered to give you the water for free, but you refused handouts.

After lunch, you would drive across the shopping plaza to the supermarket, where the pharmacists and the manager and probably every attractive female employee knew you by name. Then you’d go home to watch
Judge Judy
, cook your own dinner, walk down the hall to do your laundry, and visit Vera. That was hard. She couldn’t speak much at all, and she was never alone. Her daughter and various aides took care of her night and day. You’d written her daughter a check to help pay for the aides, but that was about all you could do.

Except tilt. Until one day you couldn’t hold yourself up any longer.

I should have just paid them. I should have put aside my guilt about barely contributing any money to my family’s expenses and asked David if we could use a hunk of our college or retirement savings to pay for your care. He would have said yes, right? He’s the nice one.