Things Invisible to See (6 page)

“Wave,” said Helen.

The little group at the curbside waved.

“They can’t see us anymore,” said Nell.

But Helen went on waving.

“When Hal and I said good-bye to the Crombergs in Berlin, they waved their handkerchiefs till our train was out of sight,” she said. “You never know when it will be the last time.”

“It’s a queer business,” said Hal, “when a wife can’t lay eyes on her husband without picking a quarrel.”

From the other end of the block, Fred approached with Grandma, wrapped in her sealskin coat, bulky with the sweaters she wore even in warm weather.

Davy thought: I don’t like Grandma but I like her braids. They make a little bridge across her head.

“No overcoat,” said Nell. “Fred has no overcoat.”

“Fred is the only man I know who puts on a three-piece suit to go outside and mail a letter,” said Helen.

“Stockbrokers always wear suits,” said Nell.

“He shaved his mustache,” observed Hal.

Nell shrugged.

“What else could he do? A client told him he looked like Hitler.”

Under the light banter, Grandma did not hear the good-byes, did not see Fred twinkle down the block to the getaway car waiting around the corner.

He made it, thought Helen. They’re on the way home. Out of sight, out of mind.

Grandma looked east from where they’d come, west to where they’d gone.

“Where’s Peter? Where’s Peter?” she asked.

“Grandpa’s in Grosse Pointe with Vicky,” said Helen.

“Never here when he’s needed!” Grandma cried. “I got two men coming to fix the porch. He promised he’d fetch ladders.”

“Hal, take her suitcase to the guest room,” said Helen.

But Hal had already gone into the house, and Helen picked up the suitcase and carried it up herself.

The guest room on the second floor was as formal as the attic was cluttered. A peach satin bolster, bedspread, and ruffled duster. A double-globed milk-glass lamp that turned into flowered moons when Helen touched the switch. Silver mirrors on the dressing table; cut-glass perfume bottles. Nobody ever used the perfume, which had aged to the deep brown of old woodwork. On the wall over the bed hovered an angel that Clare had painted. Its body followed the contours of a large crack.

In front of the open suitcase, Grandma examined, arranged, and sorted, as if appraising goods at a rummage sale. The black suit was in good condition. The blue sweater was mended on both elbows. Two nightgowns like flannel tents were wrapped around a jar of Kaopectate (the wholesale size) and five rolls of toilet paper. She had once had an attack of diarrhea in church and ever afterward kept an emergency supply of toilet paper wadded in the top of her stocking, the way some women carry money. And the pink ribbed underpants and sleeveless undershirts—it was a joke among Helen and Vicky and Nell while they were growing up that all the women in their family together hadn’t enough to fill one bra.

“Let’s put your things away in the drawers, shall we?” said Helen.

But Grandma wanted nothing put away. She hung all her clothes on hooks at the back of the closet door. “I want everything out where I can see it,” she said.

The radiators began to pound and clang. By evening a suffocating heat filled the house.

At bedtime Grandma locked her door. Unlocked it. Called out to Helen, who was already in bed, “Did you lock the door?”

“I locked it,” Helen called back.

“Good. I just wanted to be sure.”

The door of the guest room closed. The dresser bumped against it. Next came the scraping and dragging of the chest of drawers. But was the front door locked? Patiently, relentlessly, she dragged the dresser away from the door, opened it, and shouted into the hall, “Did you lock the front door?”

“I locked it,” replied Helen.

She was lying in the dark, her borrowed copy of
Outward Bound
open to her place, face down on her chest. When Grandma was asleep, she would turn on the light and finish the play. It wasn’t the sort of play she would have chosen, but she wasn’t on the committee to choose what the play-reading group would present every month. At least nobody swore in this one; she was thankful for that. She could hardly bring herself to say “damn” in front of the other women. Only Debbie Lieberman loved to swear and throw herself into the naughty speeches.

I’ll have to drop out of the group now that I’ve got Clare and Grandma to take care of, she thought.

She would miss that group. She would especially miss the women not connected with the University—women like those she’d grown up with—whose company she preferred to that of the other faculty wives.

She climbed out of bed, tiptoed over to Hal, reached across his chest, and snapped off the radio he used to put himself to sleep. He slept like a pharaoh laid out for the voyage to the hereafter; not a wrinkle perturbed his blankets. In college, halfway through his first night in the dorm, his roommate had waked him and then apologized: “I’m terribly sorry—I thought you were dead.”

She pulled the covers close to her chin. Hal liked fresh air, and he opened the window wide, even in winter; but the window opened over her bed, not his, and she felt the full force of the breeze. He was twenty years older than Helen, and there was no use trying to change him. She never knew his age till they got the marriage license, and she’d hardly ever thought of it since, except to marvel at the difference between their ages: when I was born, he was graduating from the University. When I was starting school, he was finishing his Ph.D. at Harvard. If anybody had told him, “You’re going to marry a kindergartener from Corunna …”

She felt at the foot of her bed for the comforter and pulled that over her, too.

Dear God, help Clare walk.

She thought she ought to say more, but she never prayed for more than one thing at a time, so as not to appear greedy. Besides, it was hard for her to hold more than one problem in her head at once. She prayed only for other people, and she never prayed for anything she felt was downright impossible.

The Lord’s Prayer and a poem she’d learned in Sunday school: these were the only formal prayers she knew by heart.

Once she’d heard a man on the radio urge all his listeners to pray for peace at the same time—he gave them the time and the words of the prayer—and he assured them that he would be praying too. A thousand prayers coming in at once would flood the mailrooms of heaven. A thousand identical prayers would sound like one large prayer and be easier to understand than a clutter of small ones, and God would notice and would incline His ear.

But maybe God would like the poem best? Oh, I always feel foolish saying words that aren’t my own. I sound like Clare now. I sound like that Mrs. Brewster who takes Clare to Friends’ Meeting with her on Sundays. Do I still remember that poem? Or have I lost it?

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,

And saw, within the moonlight in his room,

Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,

An angel writing in a book of gold:—

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,

And to the presence in the room he said,

“What writest thou?”—The vision raised its head,

And with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”

“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”

Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,

But cheerily still; and said, “I pray thee then,

Write me as one that loves his fellow men.”

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night

It came again with a great wakening light,

And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,

And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.

Good. I haven’t lost it.

Close to the window, an owl whistled. All those nights when she had gotten up to nurse Clare, she had heard the owl. No, not this owl, but its great-great-great grandfather, maybe. At the foot of the pine tree, Clare, as a child, liked to gather the white bones of ferrets and mice, small as darning needles, which the owl had picked clean.

So many things dying in that tree, or being born, coming into the world, going out of it. Never forget. No. Twenty years, but never forget. He came too early. Six months. Didn’t even live long enough to be named. She’d heard him cry. Through her drugged sleep, she’d heard the nurse’s voice: “Shall I bathe him? He’d fit in a teacup.” And the doctor: “If I were at my old hospital in Philadelphia, I could save him.” And herself in the bathroom—would she ever forget?—pumping her milk into the sink. And later, her face pressed to the glass partition behind which the preemies slept, each in its own box, begging him to stay, crooning to him the song her mother sang to her, though he couldn’t hear her through the glass:

“Here comes the sandman,

Stealing away on the tips of his toes.”

She could never sing that song to Clare. Kept it locked up inside her.

“He scatters the sand

With his own little hand

In the eyes of the sleeping children.”

Who cares for him now? Will we meet in heaven? He would be twenty years old—going off to fight, maybe. Good to be spared that. Gone.

Gone?

Sometimes a door opens in her sleep and she sees him, three years old, in a little blue coat and leggings, standing close to her. They are on a platform, waiting, and the train stops. She gets on, the doors of the car close, the train starts up, she reaches for his hand —but where is he?

She gets off at the next stop, in tears.

“Don’t you cry,” says the ticket man. “Didn’t you know the next train will take you back where you came from?”

“A boy in a blue coat and leggings?” murmurs a man in line behind her. “Why, he’s all right. Why, he’s waiting for you.”

She catches the next train, and it goes in the right direction, but it does not stop at the station where a little boy in a blue coat and leggings is waiting for her.

“Don’t you cry,” says the ticket man. “Don’t you cry. Didn’t you know the next train will take you back where you came from?”

“Your little boy’s waitin’ for you,” says the lady in front of her. “I saw him. He’s not goin’ anywhere. He’ll be there.”

But the next train goes farther and farther away from the platform where a little boy in a blue coat is waiting for her, and she can’t find the train back, though now and then she meets someone who says, “A little boy in a blue coat and leggings? Yes, ma’am. I saw him. He’s all right. He’s waitin’ for his mama on the platform. Take the next train west and get off at the seventh stop.”

But there’s only one train going west: an express.

If I could just find my boy, said Helen to herself. Or if he could just find me.

She turned over on her stomach.

And felt, in the same moment, a small hand drawing the comforter over her shoulders.

O
NLY WANDA KNEW THE
truth: her sons had been arguing since the day they were born, bawling at each other in the crib.

In the sandpile they’d argue: Red is better than blue. No, blue is better than red. No, dummy, red is better. Better! Biking up the street in summer, it was chocolate versus vanilla. Sledding: Snow is better than ice. No, ice is better. No, snow. They agreed on nothing and they took sides on everything.

When they started getting an allowance, they had to decide: Is Kresge’s better than Woolworth’s? When baseball season arrived: Is Babe Ruth better than Lou Gehrig? Goose Goslin better than Charley Gehringer? Willie chose the quiet, steady players who could be counted on in the outfield and who caused no scandals. Ben inclined toward outlandish pitchers and crazy hitters, who narrowly escaped suspension and got fined for bad conduct, their lives one long train of pranks.

Later they argued about girls in general (how did you do it with a girl?) and then about girls in particular (with whom? when?). As Ben’s knowledge outstripped his brother’s—Willie did not date very much; girls always expected you to pay—they argued about Marsha.

“She’s beautiful,” said Ben. “She’s Rita Hayworth and Veronica Lake.”

“Too much makeup,” grumbled Willie. “And her clothes are terrible.”

“She buys them in thrift shops,” said Ben. “She’s real saving.”

“Thrift shops! Her stepfather is rolling.”

“She loves bargains. She never buys the first dress she sees. She loves to shop.”

Willie stopped to consider whether this was a point for his side or Ben’s.

“What do women do when they shop?” he asked cautiously.

“They look at stuff. They—feel it. Marsha loves to touch things. Combs. Dresses. Magazines. She loves magazines.”

Not what his mother did, Willie knew. Wanda, with her grocery list, hunting down the cheapest cut of meat. He dropped the subject of Marsha and turned to Marsha’s real estate. They’d argued about this before. Which was better, the old grey duplex where Marsha lived before her mother’s divorce or the new house in Barton Hills she’d moved into after her mother married Dr. Deller?

“The new one has a lotus pond and two gardens,” said Willie. “You’d have to be crazy to choose the old house.”

“The old one had a sand lot,” said Ben.

“Marsha needs a sand lot?”

“And the new one is full of the first Mrs. Deller’s stuff. Those awful figurines on every table.”

“They’re probably worth thousands,” said Willie.

Ben parked the old Studebaker that he and Willie owned together (Wanda hated to drive) and hurried up the front walk. Usually Marsha made him wait, and Ben took it for granted that he would wait for half an hour in the library, just off the vestibule, during which time nobody would speak to him, not even the maid who let him in.

Today, however, the door opened, and Marsha slouched in the doorway. Black suit, black stockings, her huge black purse, and a white fur jacket. Her blond hair was piled high, and a diamond comb gleamed over one ear.

“How do you like me?” She grinned. “I got the jacket yesterday. It’s real rabbit.”

She pointed one toe and flashed a spiky heel studded with rhinestones.