35, Behind Them

 

Someone gives the respectful yet truncated stare one directs toward, but not quite at, someone she vaguely recognizes. And she’s not sure she wants to find out. Barbara Fabriaferro, nee Moskowitz, the lady who lived two doors down from us. I used to spend afternoons, evenings and sometimes weekends at her house when my mother was out fulfilling obligations I wouldn’t understand until much later.

Mrs. Fabriaferro had a husband—Did he father her sons?!—who went “around the corner for a pack of cigarettes” and was never heard from again. Willie, the oldest boy, was my age and would never talk about him. Gerald and Tomy, the younger ones, never talked at all—not to me, anyway. Willie spent most of his time in school and away from it starting fights with other kids. Except for me. So we had no reason to acknowledge each other.—actually, he had even less use for me than I had for him. If Willie wouldn’t fight you, no other kid in the neighborhood would. I wasn’t worth hitting, especially not for him. Even under his school uniform—which, even though I saw him every day for years, I still cannot picture him in it—he seemed wired together, ready to pounce at any moment. I would never’ve tried to fight him back: My pituitary gland had done its work early, leaving soft flesh on the parts of my body where sinews twined with muscle on his. In those days, I wasn’t much of a runner, either, so there wouldn’t’ve been any thrill for him in a chase or capture.

In other words, Willie, though he seemed born to fight, was not the school or neighborhood bully. Although he won every fight—that I heard about, anyway—he only fought kids who could fight him. No question, he fought to win. But he always seemed to know whose reflexes matched his, and who could land a punch as quickly as, or faster than, he could.

I, on the other hand wanted to—could—fight only in self-defense. It wasn’t a matter of pacifism or pussilamnity: The fight itself and the opponent’s combat-readiness never interested me. If I were ever to throw punches, only death would stop me—or my enemy.

And the one time I had any reason to strike back at anybody, nothing in my mind or reflexes would’ve been enough: I didn’t get the chance to hit first, hit hard or hit at all. Not even to kick or throw something: from behind, he clasped his hand around my mouth and dragged me. But Willie never knew about this, at least as far as I know. Nor did his mother, or anybody else. He could just as well’ve been there, photographed it, remembered it. Then again, if any of the boys in the neighborhood could’ve seen it, it could just as well’ve been him. Then again, if he had, he might’ve fought that man. And, well, who knows…

Anyway, his mother, Barbara, came to the funeral. Was she remembering those afternoons, those Saturdays, when Willie sat taut and motionless on the edge of the couch while war movies rattled the television and I slumped at the other end of the sofa, reading or just staring? Or does she realize that up to this day, the eve of my surgery, I’ve had hardly even a scar, or even a scrape, mainly because of Willie. Had she known, would she have extorted an expression of gratitude from me—for her son’s contempt, even disrespect of me?

He wasn’t there. Nor were her other two sons. After I left this block, I never heard about them again. Or for that matter about Mrs. Littington, who said something—troppo malo-I didn’t know she spoke Italian—to a woman in a black nun’s veil.

And what of Mr. Littington, who met her during the war in Toulon. Came back, never looked back, he said. She followed. When he didn’t understand her, which was most of the time, he’d promise, “N’aura pas de faim.” Apparently, he learned just enough to know that they say “Je t’aime” only in movies and first-term French classes. When Phil first brushed his epaulets against Francoise’s black dress, she said something about how he’s an American who thinks life is “just like een ze moo-vees.”

Glancing at me, she arched, then lowered her high fine brows—some things don’t change—then turned toward the casket and clasped her hands. I thought I heard her whisper, “Sacre Dieu, ce ne’est pas important” or something like that. Then again, I might’ve been remembering something—that was her response to anything he couldn’t answer with “N’aura pas de faim.”

Once, after she’d moved away—something to do with Mr. Littington’s work—she wrote to Mrs. Rolfe, whose earliest memories followed her to and from the camp where she and her family were imprisoned with other Japanese-Americans. Mrs. Littington wrote about the place to which she’d moved: some town with mediocre, expensive coffee shops and a theatre that showed Dirty Harry and Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Mrs. Rolfe described the letter to my mother. “She asks about you. And she says ‘but it is not so important.” My mother never spoke about her again. But I remember Mrs. Rolfe mentioning her to another woman the rest of the neighborhood saw only when she picked up her mail from the curbside box or planted or pulled from the patches of rock and dirt between her house and lawn.

That lady came to the funeral too—the only time I’ve ever seen her away from her house or wearing anything besides pastel-colored smocks. Her black dress, also a smock, hung in loose folds from her shoulders to her calves, where even her support stockings couldn’t smooth away the wrinkles.

Even she—until and after that day I didn’t know her name—glanced with furtive recognition. I didn’t know why she’d remember me, except for the fact that I lived on the block. In fact, I don’t know whether she knew anybody else besides my mother, Mrs. Rolfe and perhaps Mrs. Littington: I never saw anyone go to or come from her house. Years later, at the funeral, I recognize her the way I can recognize just about any woman: by her voice. Especially hers, which I’d heard only once before the day of the funeral. One of those sounds that’d never change, ever: rather low, but not throaty; rather like my mother’s—and mine. Even though they don’t echo, I hear them again and again, because somehow I return to them when I’m not thinking about them.

Now I realize that she and my mother probably hadn’t been talking about me, or anybody on that block. In fact, the one time I can recall hearing her speak to my mother, she said something like, “They will not come back.” At least that’s what it sounded like: She spoke in a way I hadn’t heard before or haven’t heard since. It wasn’t her accent because she came as anybody I’ve heard to speaking without one. And, although the phrase came out seamlessly, it was too taut, too terse to seem smooth or polished: It had none of the effected restraint one hears in the uninflected speech of actors and academicians.

I only heard her that once. Any other time I walked by when she and my mother conversed, my mother’s stare would glance off her, in my direction, then just as quickly back to her. I’d immediately head for our house, school—any place but there. Of course I wanted all the more to hear them, but no matter how quietly, how softly I walked, my mother’s face’d dart in my direction as soon as I’d gotten close enough to see what either of them was wearing.

Talking to that lady whose name I never knew, my mother’d lose or leave something, some force, that kept the corners of her eyes and mouth horizontal and parallel to lines I didn’t see but seemed to radiate from her jawline into the air around her. Whether she listened to or interjected in that lady’s talk, her cheekbones arched and furled broken swirls underneath her eyes and around her lips, which would seem softer. She didn’t seem older or younger—indeed, at those moments, my mother and that lady seemed to be unbound by time and undefined by age. Perhaps this was the same look that Mrs. Littington said when she declared that my mother was “pretty” and “sympathique.” I don’t think the man who fathered me, or any other man, saw her that way.

I think the one other time I heard the lady whose name I never knew speak, she told my mother, “You look very pretty today,” even though that day she hadn’t brushed her hair and she wore beige stretch pants and a T-shirt that didn’t conceal the weight she’d been gaining. Perhaps my mother looked less like an anonymous housewife than other mothers, but I don’t think that’s what that lady liked about her. Maybe it was something in the sound of her voice, or more precisely, the expression in her speech.

She gestured, in my direction, by the foot of my mother’s casket. I jerked my head away and turned toward the door of the airless, climateless funeral parlor. Out the door, to the left, a few steps down the corridor to the bathroom. Wrong move: She followed.

Relief! It’s a single stall, and I got to it first. Why do they always assume that in a room full of people, especially women, only one will have to go at a time? And doesn’t anybody ever clean these things? You can go to nice restaurants, libraries, opera houses—all those places where people are supposed to be, or at least appear, civilized, and they all smell like they’ve been power washed with piss, and the seats and bowls are always stained, streaked and marked. I mean, women are better about picking up after themselves and cleaning themselves up, but how is it that our bathrooms are dirtier and smellier than the ones for men?

But at least the door closed on this one—before that woman got to it!

Not that I didn’t trust her. Or more exactly, I couldn’t think of anything she could use against me. I didn’t expect to see her or anyone else in that room, ever again, and of course there was nothing she could tell my mother. My mother’d’ve probably reacted differently to anything that woman could’ve said if I could say it too.

But for some reason I became curious. How would that pale gray lady see me? What would she find in my eyes, in my face, that she couldn’t find five, ten, twenty years ago? She hadn’t changed much, except that she seemed a little heavier even though, as far as I could see, she hadn’t gained any weight. And she still had those austerely, nakedly feminine jawline and eyesockets I remembered. Hadn’t heard her voice, though. What could she say to me?

After combing my hair, brushing my face and smoothing over my clothes (One good thing about black: It doesn’t show wrinkles too much1), I opened the door to the narrow, colorless alcove where she stood. Didn’t look like she’d turned her head, or even flinched, while she waited. Her gaze, then as in my childhood, always seemed turned in my direction. Whether she noticed me or not seemed to depend on what she’d been thinking about. However, if she wasn’t looking at or noticing me, no movement or gestures could bring me to her attention.

She stared, her nearly black eyes not meeting mine but sweeping a tide of chilly crystalline light under my skin. “It’s good that you made it,” she intoned. I nodded, thinking of all I could’ve said, none of which would’ve mattered: Wish we didn’t have to be here. Should’ve come to see her sooner. I know, it does seem odd that I could talk to mother every week but still manage not to visit her. Other people I could write off if they didn’t come to see me. And I did, even though I made it next to impossible for them to find me.

“I’m sure she would’ve appreciated you herE”…her tone fit the moment too well for her to have been relieved. “Perhaps you can sign the book.” She gestured toward black leather covers opened to one of a dozen pages.