My Last Innocent Year(24)

After Barbara left, I asked Abe if we could visit them. “We’ll see,” he said. Over the next few weeks, our apartment became intolerable, especially compared to Lauren’s house, which I pictured as something out of a sitcom with a patch of green lawn, an upstairs and downstairs, and, of course, that tire swing. I watched my parents sitting silently at dinner, both of them smoking, my mother’s fingernails caked with paint as she turned the pages of her magazine. Later, Abe would wash the dishes, then soak his feet in a basin while watching the Yankees game, and my mother would fall asleep on the sofa in her bathrobe. What would my life be like if Abe had married Barbara instead? Would I live in Great Neck in a house with wall-to-wall carpeting? Would I have baby brothers and a tire swing, a long yellow Slip ’N Slide stretched across the grass?

“Daddy?” It was a few weeks after Barbara’s visit. My mother was asleep but Abe was still awake, his face illuminated by the game on TV. “Where would we live if you married Barbara? Here or in Great Neck?”

“Bubeleh,” Abe said, smoke from his cigarette swirling under the reading lamp. “If I’d married Barbara, you wouldn’t exist!” And he laughed and walked me back to bed. But I didn’t think it was funny, how quickly I’d been erased. I never asked about Barbara or Lauren again.



* * *



I WAS SEWING the tear in the lining of my coat when the phone rang.

“Isabel?” My father always sounded confused on the phone, as though he were unfamiliar with this new technology.

“Hi, Dad. How are you? How’s your toe?”

“Nothing a little aspirin can’t help. How are things up there?”

“Still in business. You?”

“Still in business.” Unlike Kelsey who told her mother everything, I rarely got into specifics with Abe about how I spent my time. “Still in business” was shorthand for everything was okay, I was managing. It was the same thing he said when people asked how the store was doing. Still in business was as good as it got.

I brought the phone over to the sofa and flipped through a magazine—“Everything You Wanted to Know about Ally McBeal!”—while Abe talked about the weather, where he’d parked the car, and the latest news about President Clinton and his supposed affair. “The Republicans have been trying to get this guy for years,” he said. “Looks like they finally did.”

“Looks like it.”

“Some say he’ll resign by the end of the week. The guy’s his own worst enemy, I’ll say that much.”

A car stopped short outside. I looked out the window and saw a guy and a girl walking quickly down the path in front of our dorm. At first glance, it looked like she was running away from him.

“Did I tell you about Lenny Hurwitz’s daughter?” Abe asked. “What was her name?”

“Casey?”

“Casey, right. Lenny told me she got into a graduate program at Johns Hopkins where they train you to be in the CIA.”

“Wow.” I tried to picture Casey Hurwitz in the CIA. The last time I’d seen her, she was standing in front of the Mercury Lounge in a bikini top, a live snake coiled around her neck.

“You always said she wasn’t that smart,” Abe said.

“Maybe being smart doesn’t matter.”

“Oh Isabel, of course it matters.”

Outside, the guy said something to the girl that made her spin around on her heel. It was clear they were arguing about something. The girl’s hands were fluttering around her face and even with the window closed, I could hear the rise and fall of their voices. I squinted but couldn’t make out who they were. He had on a heavy green parka with the hood cinched over his face. She had a hat pulled over her long hair.

“Did you, Isabel?” Abe asked.

“Sorry. Did I what?”

“Did you make an appointment at Career Services?”

“No, not yet.”

“You said you would do that as soon as you got back. It’s important. That’s why you’re there, so you can get a good job when you’re done.”

“Oh, is that why I’m here,” I mumbled.

Abe sighed, and I felt bad about being snarky. I heard him take a sip of something. Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray Tonic. He usually called around this time, late afternoon, when he was getting ready to close for the day. I wondered if the store had been busy or if it had been another slow Sunday. I wondered what he was having for dinner, if he would eat it alone at the table or in front of the TV. I wondered if he had anybody to talk to.

“I’ll call tomorrow. I promise.”

After we hung up, I turned my attention back to the couple outside. I opened the window a crack to try to hear what they were saying, got up on my knees to see better. I noticed the car stopped on the street behind them. It was still running, the passenger door hanging open as if one of them had run out to grab something. There was someone inside. As I watched, whoever it was crawled from the back seat into the front.

The sun was almost gone. With the window open, the room was freezing. I was about to close it when I heard the guy yell “Goddamnit, Joanna!” loud enough for me to hear it four flights up, loud enough for the words to ricochet against the buildings and fly off into the dome of night. I gasped as I saw Tom Fisher grab Joanna Maxwell by the arm and pull her back to the car, her heels dragging through the snow. Then he pushed her inside and slammed the door. Before he peeled away, I saw Igraine’s small face through the window contorted with sobs.