< Apart From Love: Chapter 14 >

The Family We Are

The moment I come out of the bedroom—trying to forget what has just happened between Ben and me—that is the moment I see Lenny standing there, next to the entrance door. He takes a step forward to reach me, which alerts me at once to a threat, because I’ve seen him jealous before. 

I can tell how he must be feeling right now, because I’ve been there myself: From time to time, I would drive myself crazy thinking about Lenny and Natasha; about her coming back here, or him going away with her. Then I would fly at him, with fire in my heart, crying that I hate, hate, hate him, and that I couldn't take his secrets no more, and whatever! And no matter what Lenny would say, I would end up going into a jealous rage.

Rage, it can like, scorch everything around you, and make it all rise up in smoke, till you don’t know who your friends are and who—your enemies, so you can’t really trust no one. And most of all, you can’t trust the one you love.  

At such moments I find that I miss being with my ma, who threw me out of her place long ago. I miss her, because inside—where no one else can see—I’m still a child; and because with her, I’m at ease, and I don’t have to torture myself, and I don’t have doubts about nothing, because she makes things cut and dried; even if she has to slap me for it.

So even though we’re married now, I don’t really feel I belong here, in this place. An outcast: That’s me.

So I storm past him; but Lenny lays his hand on me. Grabbing me by the shoulder, he brings me to a standstill. “Stop, Anita,” he says. “We have to talk.”

“Whatever,” I say, “I’m done talking,” even though we both know that like, the only thing I’ve swapped with him since this morning was my silence for his.

And he goes, “Maybe you are—but I am not.”

And I don’t say nothing, because what’s the point? Between his son and me, I bet I know whose story he’s going to believe.

And so he presses on, “There is something, Anita, something I must tell you.”

“What,” I say. “You leaving me again, Lenny?”

“Going back to work,” he says, which takes the wind right out of me.

“You are?” I gape at him, and notice that his briefcase is right there on the floor, at his feet. “So soon? You sure you’re up to it? Like, with the limping and all?”

“Yes,” he says, and lets go of me. “It is time. I cannot afford staying home any longer.”

And, seeing that I stare at him as if to ask, Now, what does that mean, he goes on to say, “It means, jobs are hard to come by, Anita. Especially,” he adds, “at my age.”

“Fine, then,” I say, and lift his briefcase from the floor, to save him the trouble,  and hand the thing to him; but instead of taking it, he grips me again, this time by my waist, and turns me to the light, like, to read me.

“It is not Ben I want to talk to you about,” he says.

I wonder if he can tell what’s in the back of my mind, which is the place I keep words that are too long to make any sense, and other things I’m trying to forget.

“Really?” I say, hearing sudden relief in my voice. “It isn’t?”

And I press my head to his chin till I feel him wiggling his upper lip, because my hair is frizzy, and so it must be tickling his nose. And through the fabric, the thin cotton of this dress, I feel his hands on my body, his flesh against mine, and it’s coming forward, so I know he wants me, so hard.

“Take it off,” says Lenny.

So I slip the dress off, because it doesn’t belong to me, but to Natasha; wearing it must have been a mistake, because this thing brings her back to him, and for some reason, it brings out other feelings, which I’m not sure I understand. So I step out of it, and see it puddling there, on the floor, like a piece of blue ice, melting.

Then, on the whim of a moment, I rise to the tips of my toes and stretch for a kiss; which he denies me. And instead, Lenny looks straight into my eyes, saying, “In a word: I want you to know that maybe, I have lied to you.”

This, I tell myself, is just like him: lying to me; which he then doubts; which he wants me to know, so he’s protected from guilt. And before I can point it out, or ask him why anyone would say, In a word, only to follow it with a sentence—and a long one at that—Lenny goes on to say, “I have told you, just a minute ago, that I do not wish to talk about my son; but now that I think about it, maybe I have lied.”

I can see my image flashing across one lens, then the other, right there in his glasses; and it looks kinda small, and odd, too, because each one of these surfaces is like, a bit curved. There; now my image has met the frame; it’s gone, vanished into thin air.

I’m feeling, like, a tinge of shame—even though I didn’t do nothing wrong. So I’m waiting on edge, right there in front of him, now with my eyes lowered, holding my breath to hear him, because who knows what he thinks he’s seen.

To me, he’s the witness, and he’s the judge; a judge with a bias in favor of the other side. And here’s the accused, ready for the verdict. Here I am.

Lenny starts talking to me; and what he says isn’t nothing like what I’ve expected, and it takes my breath away.

“You may be looking at my son,” he says, “and at me. You may be watching us, thinking: These are strange people; this is not a family I would want to live next door to, let alone in the same home—but this, Anita, is the family we are.”

And in a whisper I repeat, “Yes, we are.”

And something makes me warm all over at the mere sound of what he’s just said, because like, if even he, Lenny, doesn’t know what’s strange and what’s not, then who does? Is there anyone normal, out there? What does it mean, normal?

And I don’t mind me being odd, when so are they; when so are all of us.

And I can see how, in the days to come, I will have to find my way, somehow, between these two men, because I get it: Lenny needs his son, and he can’t risk another split, another tear between the two of them. We must all try, as best we can, to forgive each other, and to accept us; accept the way we are.

I find myself so grateful to him, because at this moment I ain’t an outcast no more, because now he’s made me a part of something which—even if it’s damaged—still, all the same, it’s as close as you can get to being whole.

“We,” I echo, “are a family.”

“A family,” he admits, “with a load of secrets.”

Lenny raises his eyes to the ceiling as if to find the right words, which must be hard for him, because now he takes his briefcase from me and like, braces his hand on it, trying to hide, to take cover behind it. At last he lets out a sigh.

“What I have to say,” he tells me, “is about her.”

In return to which I let slip, “It always is.”

He backs away and so, turning tense again, I say, “Lenny—don’t you stop! I’m here, listening.”

And he says, “You may remember that time, five years ago, when Natasha came back, and you left, swearing it was all over between us.”

And I nod, “I do.”

And Lenny says, “I tried very hard to mend things with her. If we could start over, if life could go back to the way things used to play out, it would have meant so much! Not only for us—but for Ben, too.”

“Natasha,” he says, “had stopped giving piano lessons by then; and from time to time she would seem—how shall I describe it?—withdrawn. In spite of this, she acted as if all was fine; and so did I. For the most part, we were getting closer again, so who could ask for more? She and I managed, somehow, to settle into a daily routine—until one evening, just before going to bed. The phone rang. I picked it up on my side of the bed; she—on hers.”

His lips tighten, and for a long while he doesn’t say much; which forces me to ask, “So, who was it?”

And he says, “It was her doctor.”

And I ask, “What, was she sick?”

And Lenny says, “Yes,” which seems to take a lot out of him, because now he is turning pale. “She was,” he reveals. “And still is.”

And so I run to the kitchen and bring him a chair and have him sit there and try, and catch his breath. Then I bring him a glass of water, which at first he tries to refuse.

So I give him a look. “In a word,” I tell him, “drink!”

So, he does; after which I ask, with caution, “So—what did the doctor tell you?”

He’s raising his eyes again, but the right words can’t be found nowhere close to him—not on the ceiling, or on the wall, or the floor, in this corner, or that. So instead, Lenny shuts his eyes and, like, stumbles into saying, “The doctor, he said: Mr. Kaminsky, the tests came back.”

“At this point,” he recalls, “I took a hard swallow. The doctor paused briefly—perhaps taking another look at the test results—and then went on to say, I have some difficult news for you. Your wife, I believe, has a form of Alzheimer's.”

I take the briefcase away from him, because it’s just about to fall, anyway.

And so, Lenny can’t brace himself no more, because at this point, he doesn’t have nothing to hold on to, and nowhere to hide. Instead he just sits there, with the empty glass, saying, “Alzheimer's,” and then again, in a voice that is nearly gagged, “Alzheimer's.”

And after a long pause he adds, “At the sound of this word, Natasha was confused and I, I dropped to my knees. I remember, she could not get it, could not understand what was going on and told the doctor, Wait, hold on, I cannot talk to you now. Call back later; something is wrong here. No, not with me; with my husband.”

Lenny takes off his glasses and like, wipes something from the corner of his eye, and my heart goes out to him. And then, the strangest thing starts happening to me: For the first time in ten years I feel not only for him—but for her, too. I pity her, which really surprises me, and which allows me to watch the whole scene in my head, as if—by some magic—a curtain has risen, and I find myself right there to watch, or like, to snap a picture of the past, of that moment between them:

I see him crouched there, on the floor at the foot of the bed; and her plopping the phone in its cradle, to stop it already, stop that voice, that muffled voice that keeps coming back, saying, Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?

I see her coming over, wrapping her arms around his, and asking, like, What’s wrong, what’s wrong, Lenny; and him saying, No, dear, it’s nothing, I promise, nothing at all, really, and sobbing, sobbing with no tears and no sound.

I guess he knows that from that moment on, he would be alone, really alone, and that he must go on, and keep this thing under wraps, so that no one who’s known her before would ever think to put her name and that word—that horrific word—in the same sentence, or anywhere close to each other.

And before I can snap another picture of her, and place it there, in the back of my mind, I see her walking away. Her robe is like, flapping behind her, letting the light shine through, and then—poof! She’s gone, perhaps to turn off the bedside lamp. Still, I can’t get rid of the ghost of her image. It still kinda hangs there, like the end of a shadow, a long shadow left there, in the center of a picture, even after the body itself has crossed out of the frame, and has long vanished.

This, now, is the way I draw her in my head: Coming back, like, to touch him softly, to ask what’s the matter, what has happened here; at times clinging, at times hovering there, over his shoulders; a faint trace of a thing, turning fainter with time; one that can’t remind him no more of her, her whom he knew:

The mother, the wife she was. The girl she used to be.

So I take a step closer to Lenny, and this time I don’t allow myself to be stopped—not by him, not by that shadow, and not by nothing else I’ve seen in my head, just now. And I brush my lips over his hair, and spread my arms real wide, hugging her hugging him.

I can’t see his face, because it’s hanging down like, buried between his shoulders. “I must be going,” he mumbles from deep down. “I must be going. There’s talk of layoffs, Anita. I cannot be late for work.”

And standing here, by his side, I let him lean on me, so he can rise, somehow, to his feet. Lenny turns his back on me and a minute later, the sound of his footfalls can be heard, one thump after another, shaking the stairs. And after a while, it kinda blends away into the other noises, till you can’t tell it from the hum of traffic down there, in the street.

Now I close the door. At long last, this I know: I don’t need an answer no more for that question, the one that confused me so, the one I’ve been asking myself, with such pain, such agony, for the last ten years. And I won’t need to guess, not anymore, why he told me—that first time, when we danced—that I, I reminded him of a girl he used to know.