They May Not Mean To, But They Do(65)

“Well, I don’t drink,” Karl said. “Not excessively.”

“Or,” Marta added pointedly, “husband old. Get sick.”

Joy repeated the conversation to Danny, laughing, but he seemed quite serious and said, “Well, she’s right. Terrible to get stuck with an old invalid. At least Marta gets paid for all she does to take care of him.”

“Well, of course she’s right, in a way, but it never stops anyone, does it? You should hear what goes on in Florida.”

“I think I’d rather not.”

*

“I think it’s nice she has a friend,” Coco said. “Someone she can talk to.”

“She can talk to me.”

Coco suggested he might be jealous.

“She doesn’t understand,” Molly said when he told her. “She doesn’t understand us,” she said to Freddie.

Freddie understood. The clan was pulling together just as they had when Daniel was in the hospital, when Aaron went bankrupt. The Bergmans against the world. There was no room for an outsider. The emptiness left by Aaron’s death was not a space to be filled; it was a bond to be protected.





44

Ruby’s bat mitzvah was months away, but Joy began going through her clothes, looking for something suitable to wear. It was a tiring business, trying on clothes. She made sure to do it in the morning before her afternoon fatigue set in. The discarded dresses and trousers and jackets and blouses were strewn around her bedroom, colorful, fluttering like flags when she passed.

“What in god’s name happened?” Daniel said when he saw her bedroom.

“I’m looking for an outfit.”

He pushed some clothes aside and sat on the edge of the bed. “Where do you sleep?”

“On the couch. In the living room.”

The dining-room table was again covered in papers. And now that Walter and Wanda were no longer coming and Elvira was back to once every two weeks, the kitchen was a mess. Daniel washed the dishes in the sink, then opened the refrigerator. It was filled with demitasse saucers, some covered with plastic wrap, some with aluminum foil, some with paper towels, some uncovered. How many demitasse saucers could one person own? There had to be thirty diminutive saucers, and beside them was a jumble of plastic containers used for condiments at coffee shops.

“Hungry?” his mother asked. “I have half a hard-boiled egg somewhere, and a little bit of applesauce. There’s a bit of chicken soup … Oh no, don’t touch that dish, that’s food for Gatto…”

Daniel said he was not hungry. He sat at the kitchen table, his head in his hands.

“Are you all right, sweetheart?” his mother said. “Tired? You work too hard. You need a vacation. You’re the one who should have gone to California, Danny, not me.” She came over and rubbed his head. He still had all his hair. Just like his father. “Poor dear.”

Daniel stared at the floor, at his own big feet, at his mother’s feet in scuffed slippers.

“Mom,” he said softly. He did not want to alarm her. “Mom, a mouse just ran across your foot.”

His mother laughed. “Oh, him again.”

Daniel telephoned Molly from the subway platform. “Do you realize how much an attendant will cost?”

“She doesn’t need an attendant.”

“Oh, but she will. And soon, believe me.”

“How do you know?”

“Molly, a mouse was standing on her foot.”

That was an alarming development, Molly had to admit. “But I don’t see how an attendant would help with mice,” she said. “Did you call the super?”

“Of course I called the super. The exterminator is coming tomorrow. But that is not the point and you know it. She has to have some help. Which means she has to spend money. Which means she has to get some money. She won’t take it from us, and we don’t have enough to cover it, anyway, which means she has to sell the house.”

*

“How would Daniel and Coco like it if I told them to sell their loft,” she said to Freddie. “How would they like it, the loft they bought so many years ago when no one wanted to live in their disgusting neighborhood, the loft they so lovingly restored bit by bit until now it’s worth millions of dollars, how would they feel about that?”

“But the point is to keep your mother in her apartment,” Freddie said gently, “to keep her independent and, and … mouse-free.”

“Yes, but—”

“Daniel’s just trying to figure things out, honey.”

Molly grunted a thank-you, but no one understood about the house. Freddie thought it was a dump, anyway. It wasn’t a dump. It was rustic. If by rustic you mean uncomfortable, Daniel once said. No one understood.





45

Joy thought of asking Karl to dinner. Boeuf bourguignon, a baguette, a salad—she could see the meal, it looked lovely, civilized, and Joy would have given a lot to feel civilized. Instead, she felt lurching and matted, like a wild dog. She hadn’t made boeuf bourguignon in twenty years. She’d barely eaten boeuf in twenty years. The thought of it, the fat as it browned in the pan, was sickening. And she was no chef these days, scuffing around the kitchen tugging weakly at the recalcitrant refrigerator door, burning toast.