"And I was never beautiful," his mother said, and he believed that that was something he would have to make up to her. Someday when he was a man. Yes, he would have to make it up to her, and yet she said it proudly, as if it meant that everything she"d got she had got straight. And he would have to make it up to her because his father who"d lived off her money and sat home on his behind had left them both without a word. When he, Joseph, was six months old. And he would have to make it up to her that she had come to work for Dr. Meyers, really a Jew- once you were one you always were one- though he said he was a Catholic, and the priests knelt at his feet because he was so educated. And he would have to make it up to her because he loved the Meyerses, Doctor and Maria. When he was with them, happiness fell on the three of them like a white net of cloud and set them off apart from all the others. Yes, someday he would have to make it up to her because he loved the Meyers in the lightness of his heart, while in his heart there was so often mockery and shame for his mother.
He couldn"t remember a time when he hadn"t lived with the Meyers in White Plains. His mother got the job when he was two, answering an ad that Dr. Meyers had put in the Irish Echo. No Irish had applied, so Dr. Meyers hired Joseph"s mother, Helen Kaszperkowski, because, he had explained with dignity, it was important to him that the person who would be caring for his daughter shared the Faith. Joseph was sure he must have said "The Faith" in the way he always said it when he talked about the Poles to Joseph and his mother. "I believe they are, at present, martyrs to the Faith." He would speak of Cardinal Mindszenty, imprisoned in his room, heroically defying Communism. But the way Dr. Meyers said "The Faith" made Joseph feel sorry for him. It was a clue, if anyone was looking for clues, that he had not been born a Catholic, and all those things that one breathed in at Catholic birth he"d had to learn, as if he had been learning a new language.
But of course no one would have to search for clues, the doctor never tried to hide that he was a Jew, or had been born a Jew, as he would say. He would tell the story of his conversion calmly, unfurling it like a bolt of cloth, evenly, allowing it to shine, allowing the onlooker to observe, without his saying anything, the pattern in the fabric. He had converted in the 1920s, when he had been studying art, in Italy, in a city called Siena. Joseph had looked up Siena in Dr. Meyers"s atlas. He had been pleased when Dr. Meyers came into the library and found him there, rubbing his finger in a circle around the area that was Siena, touching the dark spot that marked it, as if he were a blind child. He was seven then, and Dr. Meyers took him on his lap. How comfortably he fit there, on Dr. Meyers"s lean, dry lap, a lap of safety.
Not like his mother"s lap, which he had to share with her stomach. Holding Joseph on his lap and not afraid to kiss a little boy the way all of Joseph"s uncles were, Dr. Meyers showed him the pictures in the book of Cimabue and Simone Martini and explained to him the silence and the holiness, the grandeur and the secrecy. He used the pictures for his business now, his business in liturgical greeting cards, holy pictures, stationery. The business that had bought him this house and all these things. And Joseph understood why he had left his family (his family said he could never see them again) and all he had been born to. For the quiet sad-faced mothers and their dark commanding baby sons.
He understood it all; so did Maria. They had loved it all, the silence and the grandeur, since they had been small, before they went to school when Dr. Meyers took them with him to Daily Ma.s.s, the only children there, kneeling together, looking, very still as every other person rose and went up to Communion. They made up lives for all the people, and they talked about them even when they no longer went to Daily Ma.s.s; when they were older, in the parish school, they talked about those people. The woman who was always pregnant (they said "expecting," thinking it more polite) and the crippled woman, and the Irish man who wore a cap, and the old, the very old Italian lady dressed entirely in black who sat at the very back of the church and said the Rosary out loud, in Italian, during the whole Ma.s.s, even during the silence of the Consecration. But the person they thought of most and considered most theirs was the very small woman who was extremely clean. They imagined her in her small house alone (they were sure she lived alone), brushing her hat, her black felt hat with the feather band around it, brushing her purple coat with its velvet collar and b.u.t.tons of winking gla.s.s, polishing her old lady"s shoes till they looked beautiful. Then putting on her hat without looking in the mirror because if she did she would have to see the horror that was her face. For on the side of her nose grew a shiny hard-skinned fruit, larger than a walnut, but a purple color. Joseph and Maria talked about it, never once mentioning it to Dr. Meyers. They thought that the woman must be a saint, because, despite the terrible cross G.o.d had given her, her face was as sweet as an angel"s.
Joseph thought that Maria, too, must be a saint because she never lost her patience with his mother, although she lost patience with everything else. His mother was terrible to Maria; every day of her life she was terrible. If he didn"t know how good a woman his mother was, and how much she loved the Meyerses and how grateful she was to them, he would think she hated Maria. That was how she acted. It was mainly because Maria was sloppy, she really was, his mother was right, much as he loved her, much as he thought Maria was a saint, he knew his mother was right. She left the caps off of pens so that the pockets of her skirts turned black; she threw her clothes around the room, she dropped her towels on the floor, she scrunched up papers into a ball and threw them into the waste-basket, and missed, and didn"t bend to put them properly into the bin; she made her bed with lumps, sometimes the lumps were just the blankets or the sheets, sometimes they were her socks or underwear or books she"d fallen asleep reading. As if she didn"t understand you made a bed for the look of it, not just so that if someone (Joseph"s mother) asked if you had made your bed you would be free to answer yes.
He wondered what Maria thought about his mother. They never spoke about her. No, once they had spoken about her, and it would have been much better if they"d never had the conversation. Once his mother had said such awful things, called Maria a pig, a s.l.u.t, a hussy, a disgrace, and she"d just stood there, going white. Although she always had high coloring, this day she had gone dead white and made her body stiff and clenched her fists beside her body as if she wanted, really very badly wanted, to hit Joseph"s mother and all her life was put into her fists, keeping them clenched so they would not. She had excused herself and left the room, walking slowly as though she had to show them, Joseph and his mother, that she didn"t need to run. And Joseph for once had shouted at his mother, "Why are you so horrible to her?" And his mother had shouted, opened her lips, showed her strong yellow teeth; her tongue spat out the words, "How dare you take her part against me. The filthy, filthy pig. They"re all alike. Fine ladies, with someone like me to clean up their s.h.i.t. And you too, don"t forget it. You"re not one of them, you"re my flesh and blood, whether you like it or you don"t. They"ll leave you in the end, don"t you forget it. In the end I"ll be the only thing you have."
She couldn"t be right, the Meyerses would not leave him. So he left his mother sobbing in the kitchen and went upstairs to where he knew Maria would be sitting, still and white as if she had shed blood. He knocked on her door and then walked in. He saw her sitting as he knew she would be, and he sat down beside her on her bed.
"I"m sorry she"s so mean. You should do something. You should tell your father."
"No," she said. "If I say something, he might say something to her, and she might want to leave, or he might make her leave, and you"d leave too."
He should not have come into her room; he wished he hadn"t heard it. And wished later that he hadn"t heard, been made to hear, the conversation at the table, Dr. Meyers talking to them both, Maria and his mother, calmly, saying that he understood both sides and that they must be patient with each other. Our Lord had loved both sisters, Martha and her sister Mary, there was room for all beneath the sight of G.o.d.
What he said made nothing better. His mother said she just did it for the girl"s own good, these things were important in a woman"s life, she, Helen Kaszperkowski, knew that. And then Maria said she would try to be better at these things. And Dr. Meyers lifted up his knife and fork and said, "Good, good." And Joseph knew he had no home, there was no place that was his really, as Maria"s place was with her father. He was here or he was there, but it was possible, although he felt himself much happier beside the Meyers, that his mother had been right and it was beside her that he must find his place, must live.
But what was it, that happiness he felt beside the Meyers if it was not where he belonged? He thought about the things the three of them did together. The train into the city and the dressing up, the destination always one of those high, gray-stoned buildings with the ceiling beautiful enough to live on, carved or vaulted, and the always insufficient lights. The joy those buildings gave him, the dry impersonal air, the rich, hard-won minerals: the marble and the gold, where no wet breath- of doubt, of argument or of remorse- could settle or leave a trace. And how the voice of Dr. Meyers came into its own; the thick dental consonants, the vowels overlong and arched, belonged there. Everybody else"s speech offended in those rooms, seemed cut off, rushed, ungiving and unloved. But Dr. Meyers"s voice as he described a painting or a pillar wrapped around whatever he called beautiful and made it comfortable and no longer strange. It belonged then to Joseph and Maria; Dr. Meyers had surrounded it with their shared history and let its image float in slowly, like a large ship making its way to harbor, safely to its place inside their lives.
And then there were the treats, the lunches at the automat, the brown pots of baked beans or macaroni, the desserts at Rumpelmayer"s and the silly games, the game they played with cream puffs. "It is important," Dr. Meyers would say in Rumpelmayer"s, in the room that looked just like a doll"s house, pink and white and ribboned like a doll, "it is important," he would say, making his face look pretend-serious, "to know exactly how to eat a cream puff. When I was in Paris, very great ladies would say to me, "C"est de la plus grande importance savoir manger une cream puffcomme il faut" He would keep on his pretend-serious face and cut into one cream puff deliberately, carving up pieces with the right mix of pastry and cream, then popping them into his mouth like Charlie Chaplin. "But, my children," he would say, "it takes a lot of practice. You must eat many cream puffs before you can truly say you know how to eat them comme il faut."
Then he would order one cream puff for each of them and say, "That"s good, you"re getting the idea, but I don"t think it"s quite yet comme ilfaut." So, with a pretend-serious face he would order another for them, and then another, then when he could see them stuffed with richness and with pleasure at the joke he would say, "Ah, I think you"re getting there. You are learning the fine art of eating cream puffs comme ilfaut."
Then they would go to the afternoon movies, the Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, movie after funny movie, and Dr. Meyers laughed the hardest, laughed till he coughed and they hit him on the back, then laughed at how hard they were hitting him. And then they would walk outside. Outside, where, while they had pleased themselves in warmth and darkness, the sky had grown somber. And quickly, sharply, they left behind the silly men who fought and shouted just to make them laugh. They"d wend their way through the commuters to St. Patrick"s for the five thirty, the workers" Ma.s.s. And pray, amidst the people coming from their offices in suits, the women, some in hats, some taking kerchiefs from their handbags, all of them kneeling underneath the high dark ceiling where the birettas of dead cardinals hung rotting; always they chose a pew beside the statue of Pope Pius, waxy white, as if he were already dead. Then, blurred by the sacraments and silenced, they walked to Grand Central, boarded the train, too hot or too cold, always, and looked out the windows, pressed their cheeks against the gla.s.s and played "I Spy."
And at home Joseph"s mother waited, served them dinner when they arrived, served them in anger for she knew they had left her out. Once they invited her to come with them to the Metropolitan Museum. Dr. Meyers showed her the Ming vases and her only comment was "I"d hate to have to dust all those," and Dr. Meyers laughed and said it was extraordinary how one never thought of all the maintenance these treasures took, and then his mother smiled, as if she had said the right thing. But he could see Maria look away, pretending not to be there for his sake, and his heart burned up with shame, and he was glad that Dr. Meyers never asked his mother to come along again, and he knew it was one more thing he would have to make up to her when he was grown-up and a man.
What was Maria thinking when she pretended not to look and not to be there? Sometimes he couldn"t keep the thought away, the thought that those two hated each other. It must not be true. His mother said she was doing things for Maria"s own good, and Maria never said a thing about his mother. But could they both be lying to him? No, not lying, but the sin, as Father Riordan called it, of concealing truth. A venial sin, but did they live it? It was more likely that his mother lived in sin, in venial sin of course. G.o.d forbid that she would live in mortal sin. But was her unkindness venial sin? And the way she found wrong everything about Maria? Why did she hate Maria"s hair?
As far as he could see and understand there could be nothing in Maria"s thick black hair to hate. His mother acted as if Maria"s hair were there to balk, to anguish, to torment her. "n.o.body thinks of me," she would say after she had begun, "and that disgusting hair. n.o.body thinks of what it means for me, that hair all over the place. In the shower, in those brushes. Think of it, she never cleans them out. I tell her and I tell her, and she leaves it in there, that disgusting hair until I don"t know what use it is to her, a brush in that condition, and I clean it out myself. Because he likes things right, likes her to have things right, although he don"t mind if somebody else does it for her. To tell the truth, that"s the way he likes it best, some fat Polack cleaning up after the princess."
How could she stay with them, the Meyers, hating them so? She did it for him, so he could grow up here, in this house, with these "advantages." The large house with its high walls full of pictures. Scenes of European streets and buildings. Drawings by people hundreds of years dead. Velasquez. Goya. The house with its green lawn and dark enshadowed garden and its vivid shocks: the daylilies, orange-yellow; purple lupins; columbines with veins like blood. And the things that Dr. Meyers taught that she knew she could not teach her son: poetry and how to use a fork, the names of emperors and which tie went with which suit, and all the lessons. All the lessons that Maria got, Joseph got too: piano, French, and in the summer, tennis. "The teacher comes for one, he comes for two," said Dr. Meyers, shrugging. "Still he has to come." He said it as if it were a joke, the statement final and yet supplicating, and the lifted shoulders. Joseph knew, though no one had told him, that Dr. Meyers learned this kind of sentence, how to say it, from his grandfather the rabbi. Joseph heard the words like that, the tone of them, when he and Maria sneaked into the synagogue for Yom Kippur.
It was something Maria had wanted badly. She was not like him. When something rose up before her eyes as if it were a figure on a road she was approaching, she would run to it the way she always ran, headlong and holding nothing back, the way she ran in games, and in the garden on a summer night, just for the pleasure. How beautiful she looked then after running, her hair falling out of her barrette, the sweat that beaded in the cleft above her lip like seed pearls, her white cheeks flushed as if a wing had touched them, a wing dipped in roses. Or in blood. No one could beat her when she ran; it was one reason why the other children in the neighborhood didn"t want to play with her. She had to win, and she held nothing back. It didn"t bother Joseph; he was glad to let her win. He understood her rages when she lost; the things she said were horrible; sometimes she hit him hard, wanting to hurt. He knew just what she felt. She felt that it was meant for her to win, so when she lost it was as if some plan had been spoiled or some promise broken. And then she was so sorry afterward, she came to him with such important gifts, wonderful gifts, thought up in heaven. Sometimes they were too good; what she had done was not so bad that she should give them. Like the time she went into her savings to buy him a fountain pen just like her father"s, from the jewelry store in town. Because when he had beaten her in tennis she"d hit him on the back so hard he"d fallen over, and his teeth had bitten through his lip.
"It"s too much," he said, though she knew how he loved it: the black shiny bottom and the silver top. "Real silver," she said, "here, look at the mark." And then they both got scared. "Don"t use it where anyone can see it. Not your mother and not anyone at school. The nuns will ask you where you got it. Keep it someplace secret." And he had, for he was good at that, was best at keeping secrets. No one had ever found the pen. Or found the thing she had no right to give him: the gold necklace with the Jewish star that was her mother"s mother"s.
Maria"s mother had been Jewish too, but renounced it to marry Dr. Meyers. She"d died soon after Maria was born, puerperal fever, it was called; Joseph imagined she had turned completely purple. He and Maria often looked at her pictures. It was the only thing he envied that she had: pictures of the absent parent. He had no pictures of his father; his mother talked with happiness about the day she burnt them up. "I held a match to them and- pfft- goodbye." One day Maria said, "Maybe one of my mother"s sisters had a baby in Milwaukee on the day that you were born. Then the hospital had a mix-up, you know you hear of these things all the time. And that baby was you, and the baby that your mother had is living now with my aunt." She spat on the floor. "It serves them right." She"d never seen her aunt, her mother"s favorite sister, who had told Maria"s mother that she had no sister, her sister was dead.
Joseph had been frightened when she"d made that story up, frightened that she really believed it. Frightened too, because he wanted to believe it. And knew what that meant: he wished his mother not his mother. And he wanted to run downstairs, run down to his mother, ask was there something he could do to help her, sit beside her, tell her about school, remind her Dr. Meyers said he had the seeing eye, the clever hand, that Dr. Meyers said he was training him to take over the business one day, so the Lord would be honored with things of beauty. See, Mother, Joseph wanted to say, I have the seeing eye, the clever hand. You will never have to worry about money. I will take care of you, and everything you suffer now I will make up to you when I become a man.
But he did not do that; he sat instead beside Maria, looking at the photographs, thinking about the dark, sad-faced woman who had never held her child, who left her brothers and her sisters and her parents to marry Dr. Meyers. His people, too, had refused to speak to him, but he could bear it, Dr. Meyers could, you could see it in his eyes that could go cold. Maria"s, too, could do that. She didn"t have her mother"s eyes, light brown as if they had once been Maria"s blazing color, but she had wept so for her family that they had faded.
It was after Maria had given Joseph her grandmother"s necklace that she got the idea: they must go into the synagogue. He could imagine how she"d thought it up, alone, at night in bed, her eyes wide open in the dark, awake and lying on her back in the first cold of autumn. It must have been then she decided that she would ask Moe Brown. Moe Brown who owned the candy store and loved her. He always gave her an extra soda free, and he gave one to Joseph too. She"d told Moe both her parents had been born Jewish. "But they gave it up," she said, as if it was a car they had got tired of. It frightened Joseph to hear her say it like that, so lightly, when it was the most important thing Dr. Meyers had ever done, had won for himself the salvation of his soul, the fellowship of Christ, a place in heaven.
But she had been right to talk about it that light way. It made Moe feel that he could talk about it, it was not so terrible. "The way I figure, honey," Moe said, "is live and let live. But personally I don"t get it. Once a Jew always a Jew. Ask the late Mr. Hitler."
"Oh, if the Germans won the war, my father and I would have been sent to concentration camps. We would have died together," Maria said, her eyes getting tearful. Which was the kind of thing that made Moe love her. And made Joseph feel if that had happened, he would go with them, Maria and her father, and would die with them, suffer their same fate. But what would happen to his mother?
Moe had no idea that when Maria asked him all those things about the temple and the services she was planning to sneak in. Joseph had no idea himself, and when she told him, he was shocked. Didn"t she know that Catholics were forbidden to attend the services of other faiths? And they would be sure to be found out. Moe said that there were people in the back collecting tickets.
"Listen, dodo," she said, "we"ll wait till it"s started. Way started. Then we"ll sneak up to that balcony Moe said there was. With the people that have no tickets. Everyone"ll be paying attention to the service. It"s a very sad day. The day of atonement."
"But we won"t know what to wear or what to do. I don"t have one of those little hats."
"A yarmulke," she said, casually, as if she"d used the word every day of her life. "It"s a reform temple. You don"t need one."
"It"s a terrible idea," he said, stamping his foot and feeling close to tears, because he knew he couldn"t stop her.
"All right, don"t go. I"ll go myself. It"s not your heritage anyway."
He couldn"t let her go. To let her go meant he was not a part of her, her life, her past, her family. And then suppose she got in trouble. He could not leave her alone.
The plan worked perfectly. They waited ten minutes after the last person had gone into the temple. Carefully, they opened up the heavy door and saw the staircase to the balcony, just as Moe had described it. No one saw them climb the stairs or sit in the last seat in the back. How happy she seemed then, her face filmed with the lightest sweat, the down above her lips just moistened, her eyes shining with the look he knew so well: her look of triumph. They watched below. The man who sang, whom Moe had called the cantor, had the most beautiful voice Joseph had ever heard. The cantor"s voice made him forget Maria. He rode the music, let it carry him. The sadness and the loneliness, the darkness and the hope. The winding music, thick and secret. Like the secrets of his heart. The secrets he had had to keep from everyone, that he would have to keep forever. When he felt Maria pulling at his arm, he realized that for the first time in his life when he was with her he had forgotten she was there.
"Let"s go," she whispered silently.
"Why?" he mouthed at her. He didn"t want to go.
"I hate this. I"m leaving."
He knew he must leave with her. It was the reason he was here, to be with her, and to protect her if danger came. He couldn"t leave her now, and she had broken it, the ladder of the music. He had lost his footing; now he must drop down.
When they got outside, she ran away from him. He ran after, knowing he couldn"t catch her, waiting for her to be out of breath. When he caught up to her, he saw that she was crying.
"I hated it. It was so dark and ugly. It was disgusting. Let"s not talk about it ever again. Let"s just forget we ever did it."
"Okay," he said. He let her run home by herself.
But he did not forget it, the dark secret music, like the secrets of his heart. The music that traveled to a G.o.d who listened, distant and invisible, and heard the sins of men and their atonement in the darkness and in darkness would forgive or not forgive. But would give back to men the music they sent up, a thick braid of justice and kept promises and somber hope.
He knew she didn"t like it because it was nothing like the music that she loved, the nuns" high voices that had changed her life, that made her know that she would never marry but would join them, singing in the convent, lifting up to G.o.d those voices which except for these times were silent the whole day. That day in the convent she was far away from him, and knew it, and looked down at him from the lit mountain on whose top she stood, and kept him from the women"s voices, rising by themselves into the air, so weightless, neither hopeful nor unhopeful, neither sorrowing nor free from sorrow, only rising, rising without effort above everything that made up life. You never saw the faces of the women who made these sounds that rose up, hovered high above their heads and disappeared. You saw only the light that struck the floor, shot through the blue gla.s.s and the red gla.s.s of the windows, slowed down, thickened, landing finally as oblong jewels on the wooden floor. He saw Maria rise up on the breaths of the faceless nuns, rise up and leave him, leave the body that ran and knocked down, that lay on the gra.s.s. The body she loved that did always what she told it, that could dance and climb or run behind him and put cool hands over his eyes and say "Guess who?" as if it could be someone different. But in the chapel she rose up and wanted to leave the body life that she had loved. Leave him and all their life together. The men singing in the temple did not want to rise up and leave. And that was why he liked them better. And why she did not.
They heard the nuns" music the day Sister Lucy was professed. Sister Lucy who had been Louise La Marr and who had worked for Dr. Meyers. For five years she had been his secretary. "She was, of course, much more than a secretary. I deferred to her in so many questions of taste," Dr. Meyers had said. Neither Joseph nor Maria remembered her very well; they had been seven when she entered Carmel, and she"d not made much of an impression. "G.o.d, when I think she was right there, right in my father"s office, and I didn"t talk to her. I didn"t pay attention to her. But that"s the way it is with saints, from what I"ve read," Maria said.
Maria had begun reading all the books she could get about cloistered nuns. She would come to Joseph, holding in her hands the story of a Mexican woman who had seen the Virgin Mary, a French woman a hundred years dead, a Spanish woman whose father had been a count, and say, "Listen to this. Do you think it sounds like me?" Of course it would sound nothing like her, but he saw how much she wanted it and he"d say, "I think so. Yes. The part when she was young, our age, sounds like you."
Then she would slap the book against the outside of her thigh, the front, the back, twisting her wrist. Then she would lie down on his bed or on the floor and put her hands behind her head and look up dreamily toward the ceiling. "I know they"ll let me write to you in Carmel," she would say, "so don"t worry. We"ll always be best friends. Even though we"ll never see each other again. Except through the grille. The last time we"ll see each other without the grille will be the day of my profession." Then she would rise away from him, rise up into that world that was the breath of all those women, whose faces were never seen by men.
It was the end of everything, he understood now, her idea to join the convent. It was the first thing of hers he couldn"t be a part of, the first thing that she kept back. He"d always known that there were things she hadn"t told him before, things she thought about his mother, for example. But he had understood that. Always before, when they were together something pushed forward, pushed against him. She was always running toward him, running away from something else, something she didn"t like, or was afraid of, or was bored by, or despised. And then, whatever she ran from became theirs: they opened it, like a surprise lunch, devoured it, took it in. Nothing was wasted; nothing could not be used. With her the hurts, the slights, the mockery of boys who found his life ridiculous, his mother"s mistakes and tricks and hatreds, his sense that he was in the eyes of G.o.d unworthy, and in the eyes of man a million times inferior to the Meyers, all meant nothing when he was with Maria. Over all that she threw the rich cloak of her fantasy and all her body life.
Now she was taking back the cloak. Bit by bit she pulled it, leaving naked the poor flesh of all his doubts and failures and his fears. She began spending hours with Sister Berchmans, who had terrified them both. But now Maria said that Sister Berchmans was her spiritual adviser and a saint. Maria said that Sister had confided to her that she knew she frightened the children, but it was because she felt she must be distant to avoid establishing particular affections for her students, which would get in the way of her life with G.o.d. Maria said she wouldn"t be surprised if Sister Berchmans entered Carmel, although it was nothing the nun had said, it was an idea that Maria had picked up "from certain hints which I"m not free to tell you."
For the first time, he disliked Maria, when she made her lips small and her eyes downcast and spoke of Sister Berchmans and the letters Sister Lucy had sent her "which I don"t feel free to show." To punish her, he became friends with Ronald Smalley, who collected rocks and vied with Joseph for the eighth-grade mathematics prize. When he came home one day, holding a crystal of rose quartz, she mooned around him asking what he did at Ronald"s house. "Nothing," he said, to taunt her.
"You"re disgusting," she said, stamping her foot. "You don"t even care that I had a completely disgusting time here all alone on this rotten Sunday while you were off with your stupid friend and his disgusting rocks."
But to please her he gave up Ronald. And she was pleased, and he was pleased to know that he had pleased her. For she had no friends; she could not keep a friend. When she tried to make a friend, the friendship ended sharply, and with grief. For no one but he understood her, he felt, and for the gift of her was willing to put up with her tempers and her scenes. For he knew that to keep them together she kept silent about his mother, kept silent so he would not be sent away. So she was his. His and her father"s. And now Sister Berchmans"s, who must keep herself for G.o.d.
But he suspected it was Sister Berchmans at the back of everything. Her white face looking out at him from her white coif. What did she see when she looked at him? And what had she told Dr. Meyers? Or did she never dare to speak to Dr. Meyers; had she spoken only in confession to Father Cunningham, who did the nun"s bidding like a boy?
Joseph knew it was her fault. Because Maria told her things, and she had got things wrong. He knew the nun had spoken in confession, and then Father Cunningham had come to Dr. Meyers, and now everything was gone. He looked up at his mother, now, holding the Meyerses" laundry.
"Look, it"s not the end of the world. For me, it"s a good thing. Listen, Butch, for both of us. A house to call our own. With my name on the deed. No one else"s, only mine. And yours, someday, if you don"t leave your mother in the lurch."
They were sending him away, though they were keeping on his mother. Every day his mother could come back here to their home, the white house with the green shutters, the green-striped awning in the summer and the screened-in porch that in the winter turned into a house of gla.s.s. But how could he come back? He would have no part in the house now. What had been his room would become- what? What did they need a new room for, what could they do with his when they already had so many? The library and Dr. Meyers"s study, Maria"s room, the playroom (now their toys were gone and workmen years ago set up a Ping-Pong table there), his mother"s laundry room, her sitting room (though never once in all the years had she had a guest). Would the Meyerses move from the house themselves? Would they buy some place smaller, thinking to themselves, "Now Joseph and his mother are not here the house is wrong for us"? No, they would never leave the library with its bookshelves specially made, the deep shadowy garden with its daylilies and columbines, the willow that grew roots into the plumbing that Maria made her father promise never to cut down. No, they would never leave the house. It was their home.
But he had thought it was his home. What would he be allowed to take from this house with him? They had come, his mother often told him (he could not remember coming here), with nothing. And where had all the things he had lived with come from? The dresser and the beds, the Fra Angelico Madonna, the picture of the squirrel by Durer and the horse by Stubbs, the paperweight that dropped white snow on the standing boy? He asked his mother which of all these things were theirs.
"You"ve got a head on your shoulders, I"ll tell you that," she said. "It"s good stuff, the stuff in your room. I"ve got an eye for things like that, and I can tell you. Ask him to tell you, when he takes you on this little trip with the priest. Ask him if you can take the stuff in your room. But don"t tell him that I told you first."
Dr. Meyers had arranged for Joseph and himself to go on a weekend retreat with the Pa.s.sionists in Springfield, Ma.s.sachusetts. He had told Joseph"s mother he would tell Joseph about his decision, his decision that they would have to leave the house. But he had asked Joseph"s mother to keep quiet, to let him tell Joseph himself. But she had not kept quiet. She had told him: they are sending you away.
"I guess they want to get rid of you before the two of you get any bright ideas. Of course, she"d be the one to think it up, but you"d be the one to get the blame."
His mother was right: Maria was the one with bright ideas, ideas that rose up, silver in a dark sky, shimmered and then flew "It"s like he just noticed what you"ve got between your legs. Like he just figured out she don"t have the same thing between hers. Or maybe he needed the priest to tell him."
Put the clothes down, Mother, he wanted to say. You have no right to touch them. You are filthy, with your red hair that you dye one Sunday night a month, with your fat body and your ugly clothes, your red hands and your yellow teeth. And with your filthy heart. The thing he had between his legs, his shame, that did things he could not help, that left the evidence of all he wished he could not be, the body life that he, because he was her son, was doomed to. And his mother knew, she found the evidence, the sheets, showing the thing he could not help, there in the morning. It all happened while he slept, and not his fault, even the priest said not his fault. But still it happened, all because he was her son. And now they knew, and they were sending him away. Because they did not want him in the house now with Maria. But Maria had nothing to do with all that. She hovered above it, like a nun, a saint. He prayed that they would never tell her, she would never know the things they knew about him. Perhaps if he left and said nothing they would not tell.
"I guess you"re okay to be her playmate, but G.o.d forbid anything else. And for a husband, let"s face it, he"s got something better in mind than some dumb Polack whose mother washed his s.h.i.tty underwear for ten years straight."
Why wouldn"t she stop talking? He wanted something terrible to happen. She wouldn"t be quiet till he said something to make her.
"Maria doesn"t want to get married," he said, quietly so she would not know how he hated her and how he dreaded living with her by themselves in some house that belonged to her alone. "She"s going to be a nun."
Joseph"s mother snorted. Her lips lifted and she showed her yellow teeth. He thought of Maria"s mother in the photograph, her sad face frowning, looked at his mother, snorting, throwing laundry into the machine and wondered how it was that he could be her son.
"Wise up, buddy. There"s no convent in the world that would take that one."
He was almost as tall as his mother. She could say anything about him, terrible things, he wouldn"t answer back. But she could not say things about Maria.
"Sister Berchmans said they"d take her when she finished school."
"The nun tell you that?"
"No, but I know it"s true."
"Yeah, and you can buy the Brooklyn Bridge for fifteen bucks. Listen, n.o.body tells you this, or tells them it, because they"re too polite. But they don"t take Jews in the convent. And she"ll always be a Jew."
"You made that up. Who told you that?" he said. Now he was shouting at his mother. Now he clenched his fists. It was the first time in his life that he had clenched his fists at her. And it just made her laugh.
"Just look at them, those nuns. Just look at all their faces. Ever see a face like hers? Just think about it. She"ll find out and get her heart broken to boot, but it"ll be too late. All his money won"t be able to buy her way in. "Cause they don"t let them in."
She poked her finger at his chest. They. Don"t. Let. Them. In. Each word the blow she wanted it to be. Could she be right? They wouldn"t be so terrible. Was it the word of G.o.d? The G.o.d who sent unbaptized babies down to limbo? Who would separate a mother and a child because no water had been poured. He mustn"t think about it. It was the sacrament of baptism he thought of. The indelible, fixed sign.
Was there a sign on them because their blood was Jewish? No, it couldn"t be. He would find out from Dr. Meyers. He would ask him a clever way. This weekend at the monastery, when they were alone.
He packed his suitcase for himself. Pajamas, underwear, a shirt, his slippers. Then he packed an extra pair of pajamas. In case it happened. That thing in the night.
Maria was angry when they left. She dreaded being home for a whole weekend with Joseph"s mother. But where could she go? She had no friends. She couldn"t go to Sister Berchmans. For a moment Joseph was glad, then he hated the thought of her alone with his mother. He was glad when Dr. Meyers left her money for the movies and suggested she go to the library. She brightened at the thought of that. Then she would go to Moe"s, she said, "and get a double black-and-white and think of you two fasting."
Her father pretended to slap her, then kissed her on both cheeks.
"What will become of you? I ask myself. I suppose you will have to live with your father forever."
Maria smiled her pious smile and looked at Joseph, as if they two knew the truth. But Joseph looked away. Over Maria"s shoulder he could see his mother.
They drove four hours to the monastery, speaking easily of things, of school and politics, of Dr. Meyers"s days in Europe, of his promise one day to show Joseph Chartres.
"One day you may decide that you would like to go away to school. Remember, you have only to ask. I know what it"s like to be a young boy. You can always come to me, you know, with any problem."
No I cannot, he thought, you are sending me away. The home you call yours I called mine. And now I have no home.
"Thank you," he said, and looked out the window where the rain was turning the gray pavement black.
A lay brother named Brother Gerald showed them to their room. Two iron beds and on the green walls nothing but a crucifix.
"Well, no distractions. That can certainly be said. Better a bare room than an excrescent display of Hallmark piety," said Dr. Meyers, flipping the gold clips of his suitcase. He hung up his shirts and put his shaving kit out on the bed. "And now to supper, whatever that will be. Certainly not as good as what your mother cooks."
Why had his mother told him? Every second now, he had to wait for Dr. Meyers"s words. Each bite of food might bring those words closer, every step around the grounds. Each time Dr. Meyers laid a hand on Joseph"s shoulder, he was sure it was the time. But Sat.u.r.day went by, the early Ma.s.s, the Rosary, Confessions, Vespers, dinnertime. And when it was his turn to speak to the retreat master, Joseph sat dumbly, listening to Father Mulvahy talk about bad companions and the dangers of the flesh. He knew what dangers of the flesh were. They could make you lose your home. He thought about the garden, deep in shadow. He thought about Maria and his mother"s words. Perhaps he should ask Father Mulvahy if she"d told the truth. But he did not know how.
"Joseph, I have something difficult to tell you," Dr. Meyers said, Sunday after Ma.s.s, when Joseph thought the time was wrong. Fresh from Communion, polished by the glow of silence, of the Sacrament, they walked to the refectory alone.
"In some ways, Joseph, you are like my son. I"ve always loved you as a son. And because I love you as a son, I fear for the salvation of your soul. I pray for it, I pray for it every morning, as I do for my own daughter"s."
Dr. Meyers kept his hand on Joseph"s shoulder. Their feet made ugly sounds in the wet gra.s.s. He thought of Maria, of the gift of her ideas and words. He thought of the gold star, the secret gift n.o.body knew she gave him. Was his living in the house a danger to their souls? It could not be. Dr. Meyers must have got it wrong.
"Your nature, Joseph, is not pa.s.sionate, like my Maria"s. Nevertheless, you are a young man now. And to put difficulties in a young man"s path is a cruelty I hope I would not be guilty of."
You are guilty of the cruelty of sending me away. Of separating me from everything I love. Of sending me to live alone, in ugliness and hatred with the mother whom I cannot love.
Joseph nodded soberly when Dr. Meyers said, "I thought it best," and ended with the news of his gift to Joseph and his mother of the house.
"But you must never be a stranger, Joseph. You are like our family. Our home is yours."
But you have sent me from your home, my home. I have no home. There is no place for me.
"Thank you, sir," he said.
"You"re a good boy, Joseph," said Dr. Meyers, squeezing his shoulders. "For you I have no fears. But what will happen to Maria?"
He felt his spine light up, as if a match had been struck at the base. A hot wire went up into his skull, and then back down his spine.