< Apart From Love: Chapter 12 >

A Place Called Sunrise

This is no nightmare—but it sure feels like one. I am gritting my teeth, determined to find my mother among the inhabitants of this place. If not for having a purpose here, I would surely pinch myself, even tough I know: Here, there is no waking up.

I am so astonished, coming in, by the attention my arrival seems to stir in these listless figures—some sitting, some standing here and there, scattered around the large dining hall—all of whom look more dead than alive.

One of them, a figure with lean, spindly hands drags herself towards me, knuckling down on the handles of her walking frame. With each shuffle, each jerk forward, her veined, confused eyes keep widening, as if by some hope, some wishful recognition. And then she thrusts her hands to grab me, and in a hollow voice, “Mine kind!” she shrieks, “mine kind!” which as I recall, is Yiddish for my child.

The words reverberate around the space, and they seem to agitate everyone. Moaning there in the background, a bent figure stands up and then, like a bat out of hell, echoes that earlier shriek, “Mine! Mine kind...”

Another one, a seated figure hunching her shoulders over her empty hands, which are nestled in her lap, lifts her head for a moment to gape at me, and her mouth is black and utterly toothless. So now I begin to make sense of that which I thought I heard, even before the door opened: The trembling of her thin, strained voice.

It takes me a bit to take in the speech sounds, which are changed, because of the lack of teeth, and disjointed, because of an occasional catch, deep down in her throat. I am listening carefully—until at last I figure out that this, incredibly, is an old lullaby.

“Twinkle... Twinkle... Little star,” her black mouth breathes slowly into the air, into the gathering of these bent, misshapen shadows, in whom life seems to be no more than a dim residue. “How... I wonder... What you are...”

What is this, I ask myself, what sort of a home have I entered? What is this place?

Meanwhile, standing there near the vase, by the long dining table, her busy hands covered with disposable plastic gloves, is a young staff member, dressed in a neat, light-blue nurse uniform. I should really say a Care Giver, which is what they prefer to be called around here, at Sunrise Assisted Living.

With swift, efficient moments, she is stretching open the mouth of a large garbage bag, replacing the flowers in the vase, wiping some spills off the Formica surface, and picking up spongy leftovers of white bread. I watch her for a while and finally make up my mind to approach her, and I ask—in a voice choked, suddenly, with excitement—about Mrs. Kaminsky.

“Who?” she says.

“Mrs. Kaminsky,” I repeat. “Natasha? Natasha Kaminsky?”

“Oh,” she says, and in place of an answer lifts her gloved hand and points over there, to a narrow window in the far corner of the room; where, slumped passively in a chair next to the bent figure, is my mother.

For a moment I cannot move, cannot even raise a hand to my heart, where it starts racing wildly, because I have to keep my grip, and clutch the photo album, which is quite heavy. It was Anita, my father’s new wife, who suggested I bring it along, just in case we may stumble, my mother and I, into a moment of embarrassment, or run out of things to talk about. That woman, how can she offer advice when she knows nothing, really.

I dash towards mom, wondering how I failed to notice her just a minute ago, because clearly, she looks younger, I mean, younger than the rest of them, by two or three decades, at least. Mom is in her early fifties and so, she seems out of place here. Perhaps I should take her back home.

She must have been hidden from view, perhaps by that bent figure, whose skeletal arms hang there, shivering over her shoulders. So going around him I come closer to my mother, and now I can see her profile, which is lined so delicately with light, the late morning light streaming in through the glass.

Her eyelashes, which used to have a red tinge, are nearly transparent now. Except for an occasional blink, she sits there motionless, letting those cold, crinkly hands part her curls and comb them, as if she were someone’s broken doll.

Her lids fall shut over the hazel mist of her eyes, every time those fingers drift forward, brushing the hair, and casting a shadow over her head, which makes me uneasy: What is it with her?

Does she feel the quiver, the cold touch of these hands? Is it possible for her to ignore it? Has she grown used to it—or has she trained herself, somehow, to shut herself out, as if she were asleep, so she can no longer sense these figures around her, and this horrible place, which to me, seems like hell on earth?

And if so, how can I wake her up? Can I reach her at all? And how am I supposed to start over, I mean, to renew the conversation with my mother—in the presence of strangers?  

Just looking at her stuns me; not only the pale light crowning her hair, which casts silver twists into that which used to be such a brilliant, fiery rust; nor the uneven gloss of her lips, which conveys a few touches, here and there, of discoloration; or the dry texture of her skin, which is gathered, in fine stitches, around the corner of her eye.

These things I have imagined a thousand times before. I have braced myself for any surprises, painting mom in my mind with one aspect of aging after another, because I knew—and said it repeatedly to myself, so as to fix it in my mind, and not to forget—that ten years, ten years have elapsed since the last time I saw her.   

No. It is her distant, absentminded stare which astounds me most of all; and not because it is new to me—but somehow, just the opposite: Her expression—or more precisely, lack of one—seems so incredible to me exactly because in a flash, I recall that which I have hidden so well and so long from myself: The fact that I saw my mother that way, at least one time back then, in the past. In spite of the marks of time, and the change of place, she seems to have gone back, and frozen, somehow, in that moment.

I remember: I had just come back from school, and pulled my bike up the stairs, and flicked the kickstand, which made the chain rattle; and my algebra book landed, suddenly, with a smack on the floor, but I left it there, because I was eager to tell mom about scoring an A—and in biology, no less—and to ask her about her upcoming performance, because it was to be Beethoven’s fifth, which to this day, I find deeply moving.

I found her sitting in her usual place, the bench down there, in the living room—but this time, she was turned with her back to the bust of Beethoven, and to the white piano.  

My father who, for some reason, must have come early from work, and was watching her from some distance away, on the balcony, turned to me and—before I could utter a single word—made a subtle signal, putting his finger to his lips, indicating silence.

And without a sound, his lips formed the words, Careful, Ben, slow down; you can see she is tired, very tired today.

So I started backing away, and very quietly, picked up my book from the floor; and after a while my mother, still looking outside as if in thought, said in a flat voice, “Did you finish your thing, your homework? Did you practice already? Don’t cut it short, or your playing will suffer. Mark my words—or for sure, you will come to regret it.”  

I remember: Then—as now—she might as well have been staring at a brick wall, rather than out of a pane of glass.

So now I force myself to forget the bent figure hanging over her, and I kneel down before my mother and breathe deeply and say, “Mom?”

And I wait there on my knees for a long while, and change my position to a squat, hoping that eventually, she will come up with something to say, because she did so that last time. And I wish that in her heart, she is as exhilarated as I am at this moment, because that can easily explain why she is sitting there, speechless.  

“Mom?” I whisper. “This is me, Ben.”

I never prayed before, so now—while trying to balance the combined weight of my body and of the album—I am looking for words, the right words to call on Luck, or Fate, whatever: Please, give me a sign. If my mother can catch sight of me, if only she can laugh, I think all will be well.

“Here I am, mom,” I press on.

What was I thinking, I ask myself. Of course it will take some time before she turns to look at me, before she smiles, even, and takes me into her arms, to make me feel warm again. Years, years have passed since mom heard my voice. To her this moment feels, perhaps, like another lifetime. Still, I must trust that she will, somehow, find a way to forgive me, forgive my long absence; which is not an easy thing to do, for a woman as proud as she is—I mean, as she used to be.

“I am back,” I tell her. “Mom, look at me.”

The young staff member cuts in, calling me from across the room. “You better sit,” she says. “You better get comfortable.”

“Thank you, I will,” I say, and adjust the album, which is right here, covered by my waterproof jacket, and held in place by both arms

“And” she adds, “if you need anything, my name is Martha.” Then her eyes turn away as if to say, Whatever it is, I have seen it all.

I watch her picking up some wet tissues from the floor, and stuffing them into the bulging garbage bag. Only now does it hit me: The smell, the pungent smell of chlorine bleach from the nearby toilet, and of stale water from the vase, and of withered flowers from the belly of the bag, and most of all, of soiled diapers.

“Here,” says Martha, dragging a chair towards me, “grab this one.”

So I make an effort, an uneasy effort to get comfortable, by flopping myself into the seat, and unzipping my jacket, and taking out the photo album, and then putting it in my lap, closed.

I bend over to my mother, saying, “Look here; I brought you something.”

There is no way to tell if she has heard me. Her gaze is fixed, as steadily as before, on the same small pane of glass, through which the sun is blazing; which makes it hard to figure out what she sees out there. I push forward, aiming to view it, somehow, from her angle, which at first, is too hard to imagine:

In my mind I try, I see a map, the entire map of her travels around the world. A whole history. It has been folded over and again, collapsed like a thin tissue, into a square; which is suspended there—right in front of her—like a tiny, obscure dot on that window.

And inside that dot, the path of her journey crisscrosses itself in intricate patterns, stacked in so many papery layers. And the names of the places, in which she performed back then, in the past—London, Paris, Jerusalem, San Petersburg, New York, Tokyo—have become scrambled, illegible even, because by now, she can no longer look past that thing, that dot. She cannot see out of herself. She is, I suppose, confined.

I take my eyes off the flash in the glass and then, pointing at the photo album, I beg my mother, “Look, can you remember—”

Which is when, in the blink of an eye, I notice that those fingers, above her head—the bony fingers that keep playing with her curls—have halted for a second, midway through the hair.

And there, leaning towards me over mom’s shoulder is a lifeless male face, in which the cheeks are sunken, the eyes are ringed by shadows, and the spirit—starved, desperately starved; perhaps for some regard, some human exchange, some token of attention—even if it is intended for somebody else.

“Mine kind,” he pleads, with bewildered passion, seemingly convinced that he knows me, because—wherever he is—this soul, I guess, is already lost. Sad to say, but he is no longer hampered by a sense of reality, nor by memory; both of which must have dimmed in him, a long time ago.

I have no idea how best to react, because how can you push someone back who is barely standing on his feet, and how can you tell him to go away, when he is far from being altogether there.

“Give me,” the jaws open in his skull-like face, and the arms come for me; and I hesitate, unsure if he wants to give me a hug, or to get the thing out of my hold.

To my relief, Martha rushes over and—gently but firmly—wraps an arm around the old man’s waist, where the edge of the diaper peeks out from the loose pants; and she leads him away, leaving me in the corner to face my mother, alone.

Then, to the sound of the thin, painful voice in the distance, breathing the words, “Though I know not... What you are...Twinkle, twinkle... Little star,” I glance at my mother.

I wonder if what I am going to say about this or that photograph will make any difference, because now I am starting to lose heart. I doubt we can ever find a way—be it a way back, or a way forward—to connect to each other. The time I remember is no more than a wrinkle for her.

And so, vacillating madly between hope and despair, I sit there for a bit, utterly still. Then I clench my hand over the cover, the antiqued leather cover of the album. I feel the intricate detailing, the raised spine, the spot of rust right here, on the metal clasp holding it all together. I unlock it, and lift the cover. And when I look down I realize that it has fallen open to the last page.

This, now, is where I have to begin.