You Are My Heart and Other Stories Page 15

  “I see that I’ve been indiscreet,” he said. “I should leave.”

  “Why?”

  The crisp directness of her question set him at ease. “I’m Bart Schneider,” he said, and he reached across the table to shake her hand. “I’m a physician. My wife and I are here for a few months, on a mini-sabbatical. I work with AIDS patients.”

  “You have a wife?”

  “Why yes—I thought I mentioned her.”

  “But only four times.” She laughed, and when she did, Bart found himself laughing with her.

  “You look younger when you laugh,” Leah said. “Before his death, Alex had not laughed for eight months.”

  “You kept count?!”

  “Of course not,” she said. “My goodness, but you’re literal. Je rigolais avec toi.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I was playing—making a joke with you,” she said. “You speak French, don’t you? I would have thought, watching you with the waiter, that you did.”

  “I did—I do,” he said. “Look—can we start over? Your husband died five weeks ago. What then? I mean, did you return to the States? Was there a funeral—a service of some kind?”

  “I sent Alex home—his body, that is—but kept his cello. It’s a Goffriller, and quite valuable. It’s probably worth more than the two of us—the three of us, for that matter—alive or dead. Shall I tell you about it?”

  “If you want.”

  He sat back and, while she talked, he watched her mouth. Her lips—thin, wide, sharply articulated and slightly bow-shaped—reminded him of Garbo’s, and he made a mental note to say this to her later on. It was the supreme and ever effective compliment—to compare a woman’s features to that of a movie star, especially to one from a bygone era: Lombard, Astor, Del Rio, Harlow, Bacall, Hayworth, Gardner, Brooks…

  “Alex’s instrument was built in Venice, in the early eighteenth century,” she said. “The body, neck, ribs, and scroll are of maple, the top is of spruce, and the end piece, tail piece, and pegs are of rosewood. Am I boring you?”

  “Not possible.”

  “The soul of the cello, however—” she said “—the technical term is just that—l’âme—a slender piece of wood that determines tone and timbre, perhaps a quarter of an inch thick, and set into the body between the back and the belly just below the foot of the bridge, is of pine.” She drew in on her cigarette. “Alex often said that a fine cello is like a good woman: warm and capricious. Nor does it like to be forced. The less power you apply, the more you get.”

  “I was remembering the photo on the poster—for your concert,” he said. “It seems to have been taken some years ago, yet I was thinking of how much more attractive you are now.”

  “So what I’ve been wondering about is this,” she said. “Do I, at the start of my career as widow, remind you of women in previous generations, afflicted with TB—the Camilles of their time, who, flush-cheeked and dying, represented an ideal of beauty? Will AIDS now do for some of us what TB used to do?”

  Bart felt himself stiffen. “Hardly,” he said. “AIDS ravages all those it visits in godawful ways, though if you were in the early stages, there would be no visible difference. AIDS has a long incubation time, thank the Lord.”

  “Have I offended?” she asked. “I am often more direct than is necessary.”

  “One of my most extraordinary patients was a musical savant,” Bart offered.

  “Was?”

  “He passed away several years ago, when he was twenty-four. His name was Ethan Goldfarb.”

  “His instrument?”

  “Yours—the piano—which is why he came to mind. Most musical savants are, of course, autistic.”

  “When we traveled by plane or train,” Leah said, “we’d buy a seat for Alex’s cello, and, on wide-body planes, for example—across oceans—it would sit between us.”

  “As if it were your child?” Bart asked.

  “More as if we were a ménage à trois,” she said. “But tell me about these musical savants.”

  “Though many of them can hardly speak or sign their names in any but the crudest way, they can, after listening to a sonata a few times, reproduce it faithfully, and with what seems genuine musical feeling. Most show this talent before the age of one, most are male, most are visually impaired, and they all play piano.”

  “You’ve studied them obviously.”

  “I knew Ethan.”

  “Do you know all your patients in the way you knew him?”

  “I hope so, though often AIDS patients will wander from clinic to clinic and doctor to doctor, with stops in between that further debilitate them. And there’s also this, that doctors have favorites too. Ethan was a favorite.”

  “If you’ll permit me a somewhat cold calculus—like Ethan, the other patients who come to you with AIDS—they all die, don’t they?”

  “No. Things have been changing in recent years. Antiretrovirals have made an enormous difference. Ethan, sad to say, was one of the last patients I lost.”

  “Yet it seems wonderful to me to have known so many people in their time of dying,” she said. “I’m envious.”

  “Don’t be,” he said. “I don’t miss attending funerals, and I attended hundreds of them. No pleasure, believe me, although I admit that I do sometimes find myself missing the years when the epidemic itself was exploding—when there was a sense of camaraderie among the doctors and nurses I worked with that was exhilarating, when we were discovering things nobody knew anything about, when we were desperate to save the world.” Bart stubbed out his cigarette. “But it was a terrible, godawful world.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “But you and I—this conversation—we’re going down a road that’s much too dark for such a pretty day, don’t you think?”

  “It occurs to me that where Alex is now, he and Ethan may have found one another, and that the boy may have replaced me as Alex’s accompanist.”

  “How long will you be staying in Grasse?”

  “We don’t stay here. We play here. We’re staying a few miles away, in Tourettes-sur-Loup. Do you know it?”

  “My favorite in the area, actually, whereas Grasse, which has its merits, is—”

  “Is what?”

  “Camus called it the capital of barbers’ assistants,” Bart said.

  “We’re here until Sunday. There’s our concert tomorrow night, and on Sunday morning we leave for Genoa.”

  “And between now and tomorrow night—?” Bart waited, and when she did not respond, spoke again: “You and Alex’s brother must be practicing together more frequently now that you have a new repertoire—”

  “I should revise what I said before, about your young man being Alex’s accompanist. In the beginning, you see—in the time of Corelli, Mozart, Haydn—it was the violin and cello that were considered to be accompanying the piano.”

  “Have you thought of going on tour as a soloist?”

  “To be alone on a stage, or on tour, has always seemed to me a kind of death. At the same time, I do dread the possibility that I may now be linked to Eugene forever, without Alex between us.”

  “Eugene is difficult?”

  “Eugene is in love with me.”

  “And—?”

  “And I’m not in love with him, though on the day of Alex’s death I was a bit out of my mind, so that when we were alone after the ambulance had taken Alex away, and Eugene comforted me…” She stopped. “But why am I telling you this? Can you explain that for me, doctor?”

  “Trust,” Bart said. “Or an intimation of trust.”

  “I doubt it. That’s a very romantic notion—a very male romantic notion, I’ve come to believe.”

  “You’ve clearly been through an ordeal, and—”

  “Eugene and I have a practice scheduled for later today.” She glanced at her watch. “We prefer early mornings or late afternoons, so what I was wondering is this: We can continue our conversation here, or—if you have the time and
interest—I could make you a cup of coffee. The apartment I’m staying in has a splendid view—and that way you would also get to see Alex’s cello.”

  When he woke, Leah was sitting a few feet from the bed, reading, and he saw, with relief—the shutters were open—that it was still daylight. Leah wore a thin, peach-colored robe. The cello, resting upright in its stand, was beside her.

  “I can’t make a decision,” he said, “as to which is more beautiful—you or the cello.”

  “Well, given its age, the cello certainly has shown itself to have greater staying power,” she said. She set her book down. “But we need to do something for you before you return home. Stay here, please.”

  She returned a minute later carrying a basin and pitcher. She poured water into the basin, dipped a washcloth into the basin, squeezed out excess water, and, starting with his toes, began washing him. The washcloth was warm.

  “There’s nothing quite like it, is there, when it’s good the first time,” she said.

  She dipped the cloth in the basin again, began washing his thighs and groin. Bart moved his hand so that it rested between her legs. She lifted his hand, set it back on the bed.

  “Your hands are very strong,” he said.

  “We have Messrs. Czerny and Hanon to thank for that,” she said. “I enjoy caring for you, you see—allowing myself to be tender. When I have this—you and me, in this way—I feel I can go on. Much of the time, of course, the prospect of joining Alex seems quite natural and inviting.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She stood. “I’ll make coffee,” she said. “You need to be alert on the drive home.”

  When she returned with coffee, he sat up. “The French are a very practical people,” she said. “It’s not the night of love that matters most, they say, but the cup of coffee in the morning.”

  “But it’s not morning.”

  “You would notice that, wouldn’t you,” she said. “But while you were sleeping, I found myself thinking about divorce. In the States these days, five minutes after a married man or woman falls in love with someone else, they divorce, and the family is destroyed, the children affected for the rest of their lives. Here, though things are changing—Americanizing, if you will—a man can still have his petite amie à coté, a woman can have her liaisons—her cinq à sept—and families stay together. Much more practical—much more sane—don’t you think?”

  “I’ve been married to the same woman for nearly forty years.”

  “Which reminds me,” Leah said. “Tomorrow night, after the concert, please don’t come backstage to congratulate me.”

  “Because—?”

  “Because if you do, your wife, who I assume is a not unperceptive woman, will know at once.”

  “And tomorrow, before the concert? I could—”

  “I am occupied all day tomorrow.”

  “Then this afternoon was—?”

  “Yes.”

  He set his cup down on the night table, pulled her down to him.

  “You have an admirable quotient of violence in you,” she said a short while later. “I like that.”

  “I noticed.”

  Bart tried to pull her to him again, but she stepped away from the bed.

  “I think we should leave things as they were,” she said. “You should go now. The afternoon has been wonderful. You are a dear and fascinating man. I will think of you often.”

  “Do you say that to all the boys?” he asked.

  “Don’t be vulgar,” she said. “Please. What we had was wonderful. Now it’s over, and we must be practical. I will think of you often, and with great kindness.”

  Lakewood, New Jersey

  Through the many months of what their hospitals called ‘assisted reproductive services,’ my daughters Carolyn and Michelle kept me informed about ‘options’: in vitro fertilization, embryo cyropreservation, intracytoplasmic sperm injection, intrauterine insemination, donor oocytes, donor sperm, electroejaculation, and a long menu of other high-tech procedures.

  What I insisted on—my only condition for the zero-interest, zero-repayment loans I offered—was that if child number one came into the world whole and healthy, they would each promise to try to have at least one additional child.

  “What you want to do,” I said, “is to keep a spare on hand,” to which suggestion they asked if I was joking, and did I really take such a pessimistic (‘tragic’ was Carolyn’s word) view of their futures. Or: was I recommending they have more than one child because of my experience in having been an only child?

  That probably had something to do with it, I admitted—how not?—but this was about them, not me, and I was just trying to be practical.

  All went well. Carolyn (at Mount Sinai Hospital, in New York City) had a boy, Michelle (at Beth Israel, in Boston) had a girl (the babies born four months apart), and two years after their first children were born, they became pregnant again (within a month of each other), and the second time around, and without benefit of assisted reproductive services, things reversed: Michelle had a boy, and Carolyn had a girl.

  My first two grandchildren, Amos and Shira, were born eight years ago, two years after their grandmother, Helene, my wife of thirty-two years, passed away. The next two, Deborah and Saul, were born five years ago, and the happy endings to these chapters in our lives—four healthy grandchildren, two fit and healthy mothers—enabled me to return certain memories to where they’d been living for most of my adult life: in a seldom visited, windowless room of my mind.

  Then, starting seven months ago, when the last remaining relative of my parents’ generation, my Uncle Herschel, died (he was ninety-three, and was hit by a car at the intersection of Broadway and 89th Street in Manhattan, when, crossing the street, he bent down to pick up a dime), the door to that windowless room opened wide, and feelings I thought I’d put away forever, especially after Herschel’s son Joey died more than forty years ago, tumbled out, and with a power that, like one of Herschel’s famous punches—he’d been a terrific amateur boxer, a Golden Gloves and AAU champion—stunned.

  When I was growing up in Brooklyn during the years following World War Two (I was born in 1938), my mother, Herschel’s youngest sister, worked as a registered nurse at Kings County Hospital. My father worked at odd jobs, mostly as a floor salesman at shoe stores on Flatbush Avenue, and sometimes, with Herschel, as a runner for the guys who controlled the gambling and numbers rackets in our section of Brooklyn.

  When I was five months old, my father contracted mumps. My mother claimed he caught it from hanging out with low-life; my father claimed she passed it on to him after exchanging saliva samples with one of the doctors she worked with. Though I stopped listening to their arguments about why I was an only child early on, my mother could still get to me when she told me what, in memory, she seemed to do every day of my life: that she loved me so much that if anything ever happened to me, she didn’t know what she’d do to herself.

  “If you go, Marty, then I follow,” she’d say. “You can count on it.”

  I’d say stuff back to her—that there was nothing to worry about, that I was in great shape, that I wished she’d stop talking this way—but nothing helped. When I was fourteen years old, though, I finally said something I’d been fantasizing saying for a long time, and I can date the event from the fact that it was the year my elementary school, Public School Number 246 changed into Junior High School Number 246. Because my friends and I were eighth graders who’d gone to P.S. 246 since kindergarten, we were allowed to go straight to high school instead of having to spend ninth grade in junior high the way new kids entering the school that year would have to.

  Three weeks after my fourteenth birthday, on graduation night, when my mother found out that my friends and I were planning to go across the river to New Jersey—to Minsky’s for a burlesque show—she threw a fit. Over her dead body would she let me go, she said, because she knew the kinds of jokers who hung around places like that and preyed on pretty boys
like me, after which she added her usual line about not knowing what she’d do to herself if anything happened to me.

  Because I felt humiliated by the thought of having to tell my friends my mother wouldn’t let me go to a burlesque show with them, I said that if something happened to me, she could always buy a new child to replace me.

  “Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?” she said.

  “You know,” I said.

  “I know what?” she said.

  “If anything happens to me, you could buy a new son the way Uncle Herschel and Aunt Rose bought Joey,” I said, “and the way all the others do—the ones you and Doctor Margolies sell—one of your black market babies.”

  She was so astonished, she just stood where she was, her mouth open in amazement, and sensing I’d wounded her the way I’d often hoped to, I added that because we were family, she could probably get a discount.

  That did it. She came at me, slammed me against our breakfront—I heard stuff shatter—raked her fingernails down my face, and then, before I could cover up, she started in slapping at me with both hands, one after the other—left right, left right—while screaming that I had a mind as dirty as my mouth, and if I ever dared talk this way to her again I’d wind up at the bottom of the Gowanus Canal in cement boots, after which she’d put on her best dress and her silk stockings and go out dancing. My father stayed in his easy chair like the lump he usually was, a low moaning sound coming from somewhere inside his chest.

  “And let me tell you something else, you ungrateful little stinker,” my mother said when she’d stopped slapping me around. “Nobody knows the risks we take. Nobody knows, do you hear me? We bring happiness into people’s lives that they shower blessings on us for, and nobody knows, do you understand? Nobody ever knows.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “And the good we do for people—helping young girls out of the worst kind of trouble, and young wives wanting to be mothers and cursed by some fucking heartless god to be sterile their whole lives—most of them from the best families, for your information, and I mean the very best—the daughters of judges and doctors and even rabbis—and nobody ever knows all the good we do.”