“Please don’t go,” I said.
She nodded her head.
“May I?” she asked, tapping on the top of the Scotch bottle.
“Please.”
I watched this woman who had never been here before take charge, find the glasses, fill them with ice, make the drinks.
“We’ll feel better after this, yes?” she said and smiled slightly. She did not sit but did a little pirouette in the center of the room, put her hand to her head, and said, “My cigarettes—ah, yes,” and reached into the pocket of her sweater and took out a light-blue package. She lit one and her voice deepened with the first drag as she settled into a more familiar place.
“Ah,” she said, sinking into my mother’s chair. She watched me very closely as we spoke of New York and of Paris, of the house in Maine, her life, her singing—my mother hovering on the periphery of each subject but not mentioned.
“Do you like it here in Greenwich Village?” she asked. She smiled again, absently, weakly. She stood up suddenly and turned her back to me.
“You are so much like her—so beautiful and so sad.” Tears fell in her voice. Tears had been falling in her voice a long time; it was worn by water.
“I should leave.”
“Don’t go away,” I said, touching her back lightly, “please don’t go.”
With her back still turned to me, she began snapping her fingers, singing very softly in French, and the room turned dark. Berlin, I thought, it’s Berlin. In the darkness I heard an accordion, a violin, a piano, a drum. “Oubliez,” “regardez,” “l’histoire,” “déjà,” “l’amour,” “il ne me quitte pas”—each word was rough-edged and sounded as if it were being pulled from her. She was making the words work as hard as they could, as if she were trying to help herself explain something, as if through these hard, nasal words filled with bitterness something might come clear to her. The accordion faded, and the piano, and I listened to that voice alone in the dark trying to make some sense.
“Jacques Brel,” she said, turning to me. “Another drink?”
I nodded.
“We will feel better soon,” she whispered. She filled our glasses with Scotch, took two large gulps, precariously put her glass down, lit another cigarette, and sauntered into the bathroom. “We will feel better soon.” She began singing again. She reappeared some time later, her eyes heavy with mascara ind eyeliner and eye shadow. Dark lipstick stained her mouth, there was high color in her cheeks. I could not take my eyes off her. She had begun her drunken cabaret dance toward my mother, swaggering to her in the dark. She was posed in the doorway of death, one hand on her hip, one hand on the frame of the door. “Oh, Christine,” she said in her gravelly voice, looking straight ahead, then closing her eyes, rubbing her cheek on her shoulder, “oh, Christine.”
“Come here,” she whispered and took a few steps forward, moved her shoulder toward me and tossed her head, all style now, all nerve. As she stepped forward her voice took on a different tone; it was a great, consoling hug. “Come here. Oh, please, come.”
I moved toward her. “Sabine,” I said. We were caught in the dance that those who are still alive must do. We were doing what we had to.
“Come here.” She was smiling now, laughing almost. “Come here,” and under her breath the one word, the unbearable word, the word we could not do without, “Christine. Come here, Christine.” Her look was the look of twenty-five years ago, when my mother was my age and she too was my age. I walked to her, I turned away, I moved closer. She was fearless now. I saw her as my mother must have seen her. She was beautiful and strong.
“Sabine,” I said. She looked at me with her twenty-year-old eyes. My mother stood before her again as she ran her hand through my hair and the look did not change back.
“Christine, Christine,” she whispered. I nodded my head and she touched my dream body. I took her hand in a motion of my mother’s, confident, elegant, her lovely hand, her manicured hand, and laid it on my hip where it rested finally. Her soft hand. The trip she had begun thousands of miles away through this long year since my mother’s death had ended finally.
I moved her weary hand up my side and onto my breast. She sighed. I wondered what this hand might do with its firm, nostalgic touch.
“Christine,” she whispered. “Oh, Christine.” I kissed her hand and looked into her dark eyes. She pushed the hair from my face and smiled, tossed her head away from me and looked back, giggling, pouting, squeezing my face in her hands, stroking my head, pressing me to the floor.
“Don’t stop,” I said as we kissed. “Please don’t stop.” Her eyes sparkled. Life could be controlled, the world could be managed, true love would not be broken up. Lives would not be wasted, cut short. Things could be held in place. I loved her very much in that moment with her great saving kisses as she pressed her body that suggested everything onto mine. I loved her as my mother must have. Here, now, everything fell into simple order.
A voluptuous sorrow was propelling us now into a darkness so great, so complete that I could feel it entering me even as Sabine slowly unzipped my dress. With each movement we were going deeper and deeper into that darkness where we might be with her again.
“I will see you again,” I whispered. I was losing sight. She touched me gently and the silence deepened. My mother was calling us from far off. Her voice came nearer as we kissed long and deep. Her voice moved into my mouth. “Sabine,” I said. For a moment she was with us, in me, or I in her, in the center of that darkness where she was still alive, and we talked to her. “I love you,” Sabine said. “I’ve missed you so much, Christine.”
She was warm and safe and she put her great arms around us in the dark. “Oh, Mom,” I said. “I love you.”
But then the light started to come back quite suddenly, in a matter of seconds. “Why?” I said, and I began to cry. Sabine’s eyes were closed but she too was crying when she heard my voice and knew. She did not open them for a long time, but when she finally did she saw that I was not Christine and she began to sob. She touched my face, hating what her hands told her.
Our bodies were so heavy with sadness it seemed they might fall through the three floors of the building onto the street. Though we lay perfectly still, I felt my body of lead to be falling.
Sabine lifted herself up slightly and looked at me. “Ah” was her love call in French to the other side of death where we were sure my mother was, whole, smiling, waiting for us. “Ah,” she said, lifting my face up and seeing my mother again in my calm, even gaze. She smiled. As she dipped into me her sighs were muffled by my flesh as she took my breasts in her mouth, kissed my stomach, and parted my legs, taking me along to the place where it was safe. We moved very slowly, carefully, deliberately, and the descent offered great pleasure as we burned slowly into a fine ash. To die with her. To be nothing but ash. To mix together. To end.
There was rest in that gray ashen place. We were up to our waists in ashes until our waists dissolved, too, and we were not anything anymore—nothing, no one, ash on top of ash on top of ash with her.
From that ash, the world rose up again and called us back, shaped us, and we could not ignore its round call; we were back in my room and we knew that she was far, far away. Betrayed, I gave out a long, loud wordless cry into the empty space and the tears began. “Sabine,” I cried. Her name came back again. I hated it.
“Oh, Sabine,” I said. She shook her head sadly, put a finger—for the world insisted on fingers and we could do nothing about it—she put a finger to my sticky, swollen mouth and outlined it.
We dragged our grieving bodies over every inch of my apartment, lost ourselves, saw ourselves differently, changed the ending of the story for a while, but we always returned. Only our lovemaking could relieve the pain and longing that each of us had created in the other. The warm liquid our bodies gave up changed the atmosphere. It was smelly and dreamy and we floated in the world our sorrow made. We explored long into the day every curve, every contour of it.
“Speak only in French,” I told her.
“Say nothing but with your eyes,” she said.
“Sing me a song.”
“Now you sing me one.”
“Turn over on your back.”
“Put your hair up in a bun.”
“Put on your mother’s bracelet.”
“Let me kiss your ankles.”
“Let me drench you in cologne.”
“Make it all stop.”
“Make everything disappear.”
Day turned into night and night gave way to dawn and dawn to day until we were finally able to sleep in the light, entwined. When I woke up it was dark out. She was sitting up in bed smoking. She turned her head toward me.
“How could I help but love you?” she whispered, smoothing down my wild hair with her hand. I smiled. She reached over me and turned on the light. I put my face in the pillow. I felt some peace.
“I fed China,” she whispered. “We are old friends. Are you hungry?” she asked.
“No, not really. What time is it?”
She shrugged. “I have to leave in the morning.”
“Have you been up long?”
“No,” she said.
We spoke very quietly and barely moved so as not to disturb the calm. We thought that if we did not draw attention to ourselves, if we did not alert sorrow, it might not seek us out.
“Why didn’t you come to the funeral?” I asked very, very quietly.
“The press,” she said, “I couldn’t bear to face them.”
I nodded.
“It was very hard. Fletcher punched one reporter. I never saw Fletcher punch anyone before.” We lay in silence for a long time. Even though we were quiet and did not move, it was coming to get us. I thought of the press, how they described us all, all the things Fletcher said.
“No, that’s not really it,” she said finally. “The real reason I did not come was Michael. Your father loved her as much as I did. It would not have been fair to him. It would have hurt too much.” She looked away. “Fletcher is in New York, too, yes?”
“No, Sabine. He’s still in the Black Hills on the reservation. I never hear from him anymore. Sometimes I think I’ve lost him for good. All my letters have been returned.”
Sometimes I imagine my brother’s massive, muscled arm pointing those letters back to me, refusing this world.
“C’est bizarre. Je ne sais—”
“I miss him, Sabine.”
“Oui,” she said, “bien sûr.”
She was slipping into French. She looked tired but calm. She sat straight up in the bed now, leaned over me, and looked into my eyes. She had come to tell me this, whatever it was she was about to say.
“Vanessa,” she said. “Do you know, Vanessa…”
I could see it in her posture. I could hear it in the changed cadence of her speech, in the pauses around her words, the way her voice faltered suddenly. There was quiet, and out of the quiet she finally said, “Your mother loved you so much.” The words hung in the night like stars where I could see them shining. “She loved you so much. I wonder if you have any idea at all. She wanted you more than anything in the world.” She paused. “Did she ever tell you about that afternoon at the psychiatrist’s?”
I shook my head. Sabine could not know. My mother had died. She had told me nothing. She was always so mysterious, a retreating, exhausted figure, deceptively close, but when I tried to talk to her or reach out my hand I could never touch her.
“Christine had just learned she was pregnant with you a few days before. We were in New York together for the weekend and she had an appointment with the psychiatrist. She never talked about what went on there, but she seemed very nervous about going this time and she asked if I would come with her. So, of course, I did.” Sabine lit a cigarette. “It was an office on Madison Avenue.”
“I know where it is,” I said.
“A beautiful view, modern, very chic, the way only New York can be.”
I thought of my mother walking into that office with its thick carpets and glass tables and how the objects in the room must have seemed to float before her eyes and how frightened she must have been.
“The psychiatrist came out and told Christine to come in. He was very tall and he bowed his balding head as he spoke. He spoke in a very quiet, reassuring voice. I had never seen your mother so panicked. It was not like her to show it, but she could not control herself this day. ‘I will not come in without Sabine,’ she said. ‘Very well then,’ he smiled in his kind, patient way and we both went in. His office was very large and elegant, very beige, magnificent.”
I saw my mother, as Sabine spoke, sinking into the beige carpet as if it were quicksand. I, too, minute inside my mother, must have sunk with her as he closed the door.
“‘I’ve just received the results from your pregnancy test,’ he said gently. ‘I think that it is important for us to talk about it right away’ Your mother was shaking.
“And then he said, T have told you many times that a child is not a good idea for you at this time. I am being prudent and conservative in my judgment, I believe. You are in precarious mental health and cannot go off your medication now. I must recommend that you do not have this baby. I can arrange everything for you. It will be quite painless and it will be safe. I am only telling you what I truly believe is best.’
“Your mother stood up. She was not shaking anymore.
“‘Prudent,’ she said, evenly. ‘Conservative. Not have this baby’” And I knew how her mouth shaped to hold that word,
baby
.
“I will have children. I will write poetry. There is nothing you can do about it.’”
My mother grows large and rises above the carpet. The floating objects of the room spin into her hands and she smashes them against the great, wide Upper East Side windows, and speaks now from the clarity at the center of her anger. “I will have children. I will write poetry. There is nothing you can do about it.”
“She was radiant,” Sabine said. She rubbed her belly through her dress and moved about the room furiously like an animal protecting her unborn, snarling at the man in her dazzling anger, in her crystalline, in her jewel-like anger. I will have children, she stated, lucid in the perfection of her anger.
“And she threw the objects of art at the psychiatrist,” Sabine said, “and hissed at him until he was silent.