Dark Plums (25 page)

The coroner determined that Max had died of a heart attack. Adrianne moved around the house barely conscious, at times heaving with sobs and crumpling to the floor, at other times curiously calm as though someone else were living out this scenario.

She gazed at Max's empty chair. His presence hovered over her and she could sense him with her, angry and questioning. “
Meine liebchen
, I did not want to die, not yet.”

She telephoned Rabbi Zimmerman at the synagogue Max had attended in Manhattan, and two days later Max was buried in a Jewish cemetery in Queens.

Adrianne viewed Max for the last time after he had been prepared for burial at a funeral home on West 93rd Street. Wrapped in a white shroud with a tallis over him, a faint look of disappointment seemed to spread over his face. The plain pine coffin was quickly closed by the people who had prepared the body, and it was draped with a black cloth. Adrianne placed red roses on the coffin and asked for more flowers.

“It's not the custom with a Jewish burial,” said the funeral director.

The rabbi, who had come with Adrianne to oversee the last stages of the burial preparation, pinned a piece of black ribbon on her fox coat. His melancholy eyes sat deep in his pinched face.

It was raining when the hearse and two shiny black limousines carrying mourners drove from the funeral home on West 93rd Street to the cemetery. Inside the limousine with Adrianne were the rabbi and his wife, who was a small, nervous woman with a dark beehive hairdo, Max's friend Morris, and a white-haired couple.

“Will you sit
shiva
?” asked the rabbi's wife.

“Who, her, a
shikse
?” said the old woman, looking at Adrianne with sharp eyes that contrasted with her deeply lined face.

“What is sitting
shiva
?” Adrianne asked.

The rabbi leaned forward and gently explained that when a Jew died, it was the custom for people in the immediate family to mourn for seven days, seated on a low bench, while neighbors and friends brought food. However, since Adrianne was not Jewish and lived far away in the country up in Vermont, this would not be expected of her.

“But I want to sit
shiva
,” she said.

“Mourning takes place inside the heart. You can burn a candle for seven days and nights. That is part of the ceremony. It will be enough.”

They were driving through snarled traffic on the Long Island Expressway, past factories and then past miles of ugly row apartment buildings.

Finally, they reached the cemetery and drove through its grilled gates and onto a narrow concrete roadway, past miles of tombstones. Long ago Max had paid for this burial plot. “Max, why did you have to die? I don't want you here! I wish I had never even told the rabbi. I wish I had buried you in the Vermont hills,” Adrianne thought.

The ground was muddy, with patches of dirty snow. Bare tree branches swayed in the wind. It was raining hard, with occasional wet flakes. Adrianne shivered. The hole where Max would lie had already been dug out and covered with a tarpaulin.

Standing a few feet from the burial plot, the rabbi put up his umbrella to protect himself from the driving rain. He opened a prayer book and cleared his throat, then began to chant the
kaddish
.”

“…
Baruch dayan emei
…. Blessed is the righteous judge,” he chanted. “Man is like a breath … his days are like a passing shadow….

Thou dost sweep men away; they are like a dream, like grass, like grass which is renewed in the morning, in the morning it flourishes … in the evening it fades and withers…. Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom … dust returns to the earth as it was, but the spirit returns to God who gave it …”

Adrianne wept.

The rabbi closed the prayer book, placed it under his arm, and said, “Max Gottlieb had a hard life.”

Several women sighed, and the mourners all seemed to look at Adrianne as if she were the cause of his hardship. Wind tore at their clothing, and sleet was pelting down.

“Max was persecuted by the Nazis. He lost his wife—his first wife—and his children in the Holocaust. He worked hard all his life, and he had little joy.”

“But Max was happy with me, you bastards,” Adrianne thought. Her heart pounded and tears surfaced as her grief found expression in rage. The rabbi went on talking, but she no longer heard his words, submerged as she was in her emotions.

Then she saw that they were preparing to lower the casket and that the edge of the tarpaulin was flapping in the wind. She became
aware once again of the cold wind and rain blasting her face.

The cantor's wife, bundled in her heavy cloth coat, galoshes, and plastic rainhood, said, “Poor man,” with a glance at Adrianne, as if it were she who had killed him. Adrianne could imagine them gossiping afterwards. “He died making love. Her fault. She provoked him … after his money … young enough to be his granddaughter.”

Standing there in the cold, their faces wet with sleet, they all seemed to look at her with hostility, as if to question whether she had brought Max happiness or sorrow. They looked at her silver fox coat as if she had stolen it. “Yes, I hustled for it,” she told them with silent fury. “Maybe I even screwed some of you. I'm certainly more desirable than your frumpy wives.”

She was horrified by her thoughts. But they kept rising up.

The rabbi kept on chanting, sometimes in English and sometimes in Hebrew. The others wailed a mournful melody in Hebrew. Adrianne rocked back and forth, as some of the others were doing. She sobbed uncontrollably as the gravediggers lowered the casket and flung earth over it with their shovels.

Until now, she had not realized she cared for Max so deeply.

A gust of wind blew her silk scarf away. She watched it roll along the ground and land in a puddle. No one went after it.

The rain pelted down harder, and she shivered with cold.

Who will hold me at night, she wondered. Max, I love you, my darling. I love you, I love you, but it is too late. Can you hear me? Can you hear me after death?

An almost imperceptible current of wind, a touch like Max's hand touched her throat. She sensed his presence.
Meine liebchen, you will not lose me
.

Was this also an illusion? Like the old illusion that Alfredo loved her? She was scarcely aware any longer of the people around her, although she heard their chanting. Then the rabbi looked at her and said, “It's over. Time to go now.”

She wanted to fling herself over the grave, but again she seemed to hear Max say gently, “Don't make a fool of yourself. You'll only get wet and cold and come down with pneumonia. I know you love me, as I love you, eternally. Ah, if only I had been a young man when we met.” There was sadness in him even after death.

Afterwards, the others bombarded her with questions and superficial expressions of sympathy.

The next day she returned to their empty house in Vermont. Almost as soon as she had taken off her coat, she sat down at the piano and began to play the Brahms
ballade
Max had loved. The piano keys pressed down against her sorrow, and the beauty of the music soothed her. “This is for you, Max,” she murmured.

“
Meine liebchen
,” whispered his ghost, who caressed her hair as softly as a cool draft.

Without Max, who had sustained her, the prospect of staying here in the house was lonely and terrifying.

She decided to go back to New York.

Accordingly, she gave their landlord notice. She could no longer bear to be in this house without Max. Some of the furniture she sold to neighbors, and the rest she gave away to the Salvation Army. She returned the piano to the store from which they had leased it.

When she could finally bring herself to go through Max's papers, the securities he owned, the stocks and bonds were all confusing to her. Morris Kaplan said that Max had left everything to her, except for a small sum for his synagogue and another small sum for the State of Israel.

“If you manage these funds carefully, you will have enough money to go to college while you live on the interest. He loved you and wanted to be sure you would not have financial worries.

“I don't know what to do with all this money.”

“For the time being, leave the funds invested as they are. He invested wisely. There's enough interest for you to live on. When you know more about finances, then you can think about shifting investments around.”

“He was so kind. I can't believe it. It's hard for me to accept that he's gone, and that he's left me all this.”

Morris blew his nose and patted her hand. “He was a kind man. Accept it, and thank God for your good luck.”

On a sunny afternoon in April, Adrianne loaded her suitcases into the the Chrysler. The house was bare of furniture and she had cleaned it for the last time. She took her clothes and a few personal effects, along with her music books and Max's papers, after disposing of everything else.

The snow had melted. Everywhere around her things were green and budding. Fragrance filled the air and birds chirped. A little over two years ago, on a fine day like this, she and Max had gotten married.

At four o'clock she began her drive to New York. Compulsion guided her hands on the steering wheel, her feet on the pedals, her hand on the stick shift. She drove for hours through the country. The sun sank. Lights were turned on. As she approached the city, traffic grew much thicker. At ten o'clock she drove onto East River Drive and into the midst of heavy late traffic.

She had to see Alfredo. Had to see him, at least one last time. What if he were out? What if he had moved?

Lights were on in his loft. She drove slowly around the block to find a parking space, and she found one near his Cadillac. The car looked dusty under the streetlight. There was a large dent in the trunk.

She wondered if Michelle were still with him or if he had found someone else. “
Last chance … mustn't … shouldn't … Max, forgive me. I have to do this
.” Conflicting emotions whirled through her.

When she tried her old key to the street door, it no longer worked. “Alfredo,” she yelled. “Alfredo!” No response. She finally took her compact out of her purse and threw it up against a window. It smashed in pieces on the sidewalk. “Alfredo, let me in. Alfredo, it's me, Adrianne,” she shouted at the top of her lungs.

Still no response. A dog barked inside. She gathered her coat more tightly around her and waited. Then disheartened, she yelled once more and was about to walk off when a voice she recognized as Alfredo's called out, “Who's there?”

“It's me. Adrianne.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“Just a minute.”

The dog barked again. After a couple of minutes she heard the bolt slide back. The door opened a crack and Alfredo peered out. She drew back, frightened, as a large black mongrel barked and snapped at her ankles. This was like the dog of her nightmare long ago.

“Easy there, mutt,” said Alfredo, pulling at the dog's leash. “Come inside, baby. The dog won't hurt you.”

As soon as she entered the dark corridor, he bolted the door and took her into his arms. “
¡Preciosa
! You finally came back to me. Where have you been, Adrianne?”

“It's a long story.”

“No one saw you come in?” he asked with anxiety.

“No.”

This fear in him was something new.

His arms around her tightened; he kissed her wetly on the mouth. She breathed in his old familiar scent of sweat, alcohol, and tobacco while the huge mongrel growled at their heels.

He pressed against her as they climbed the creaking wooden stairs. His door had a lock on it, with a bar that hooked into the floor. Under the electric light she could see that his eyes were bloodshot and his face haggard. He wore a black leather jacket, a black T-shirt, and jeans. Around his neck hung a shark's tooth on a silver chain.

Alfredo unsnapped the dog's leash. It growled again and she shuddered. “Easy there, big boy,” he said to the dog. “Adrianne isn't going to hurt you.” Tentatively, she stroked the dog behind its ears. It sniffed her again and then slunk off, still watching her.

The studio walls were almost bare, discolored in areas where canvases had been hanging. Paintings were stacked against walls, and the place was full of big wooden packing crates.

They sat down on the old green couch. Alfredo's hands shook visibly as he lit a cigarette for her, then one for himself. When she had first met him there was a light in his eyes. That was now gone. His smile seemed forced. Yet he still had charm. She wanted to reach out and caress his face. After hesitating a moment, she did.

“So you came back to me, Adrianne.”

“I wanted to see you again”

“You've grown even more beautiful.” He stroked her, feeling the silky fabric of her dress. “Relax and take your shoes off, baby. Can I get you something to drink?”