Amy Bloom - Lucky Us

Your sister,

Iris

GUS HEITMANN STOOD AT MY KITCHEN DOOR, WATER DRIPPING off his hat. He looked worn out and he was soaking wet.

“Gus,” I said. “My God.” I kept my voice down, because of Danny.

He smiled at me, uncertainly.

“Look at you. You’re all grown up,” he said. “Married, with a little boy.”

Francisco snorted.

Gus and Francisco said hello. Francisco was not going to say, I’m not her husband, you moron, so I said so, politely. Francisco settled back in at the kitchen table and picked up his magnifying glass. I wish I’d thrown my arms around Gus’s neck and kicked up my back foot or squealed his name or any of the things that a normal woman would do, seeing a man she was fond of, who she thought was dead. I let Gus in and I put his wet hat on top of the refrigerator.

WE SAT IN THE living room and Francisco stayed in the kitchen, listening in. Gus told me that he had been living in Great Neck for a few months, and he started teaching at the high school in a month. He was kind of a loner, he said, and everyone knew him now as Gersh Hoffman, that he’d changed his name while he was in Germany. It made no sense to me, changing one German name to another. He talked about his hard times in Germany and looking me up and not calling and then seeing me in the bakery, and I could hardly listen. I was just waiting for him to ask me about Reenie.

“Let me get you a drink,” I said. “I guess you’re trying to find Reenie.”

He said that he had looked for her and he had looked for me, but he’d lost his nerve.

I had to tell him what had happened. I told him the short version, without the details, which, even so, was awful to tell. He put his hands in front of his eyes.

He said, “Oh, Christ. Oh, poor Reenie. I am so sorry.” He put his head in his hands, and I apologized too. I said that Reenie was dead by the time they got her to the hospital, and I started to explain that we didn’t have a hospital close to us but that would be changing soon, and Gus lifted his head to look at me. I thought it might be now that he asked me what had been going on with Iris and Reenie.

He said, “How’d the fire start?”

I said I didn’t know, that no one knew.

“Spontaneous combustion,” he said. “How ’bout that. Where’s your sister now?”

I told him that she had gone to England for surgery and we weren’t in touch.

He said, “Too bad. You didn’t have much family.”

I said the same was true for him. Gus asked me about my father and I told him that Edgar had been sick for a while and died and he said he was sorry about that too. He asked about my husband and my son and I heard Francisco muttering in the kitchen. I said that I really did not have a husband and that Danny was my adopted son. Gus looked furious, and I thought that the details of Danny’s life could wait until another time. Or never. Gus asked me if I had gotten his letters. I said no and he sank down in the couch.

“That’s too bad,” he said. “If you’d gotten my letters …”

Francisco said, “I’m making coffee. Who wants some?”

Gus stood up. “Good to see you,” he said. “We should have that drink next time. Maybe we’ll play cards,” he said.

I said that I’d be glad to do that. I told him that I worked near Stricoff’s bakery and that I was usually home by five o’clock. I asked him if he had a day in mind to get together and he said no. He asked me what I did for work and I said that I was a psychic, that I did tarot card readings. I wasn’t happy to say this.

“She’s worked with the FBI,” Francisco said. I knew that he thought I should tell Gus that I was applying to medical school, that I was not planning on spending the rest of my life as Madame Fruitcake, peddling bullshit to decent, unhappy people, as Gus might see it.

“You don’t say. You’ll have to tell me my future sometime.” He walked into the kitchen and got his hat. He shook Francisco’s hand on his way out the door.

I sat at the kitchen table and Francisco moved the valuable, watermarked papers that would be my transcript and closed his typewriter case.

“He thought you were my husband,” I said.

Francisco smoothed his hair and he arched an eyebrow. “Naturally.”

“What was that about?” I asked.

Francisco poured us beers.

“The lightning stopped,” he said. “Danny can get a good night’s sleep.”

“What was he in such a goddamn state about?” I said. “I mean, I understand. About Reenie.”

“It was very sad about Reenie. On top of that, the man was disappointed. He thought that when he finally pulled himself together and came to find you, there’d be magic and he would be transformed by your loveliness, which he has, probably, exaggerated over the years, and then the two of you would melt into each other, in an incandescent moment of mutual and perfect understanding. As one. Forever. I think, in his mind, Reenie was already out of the picture. Not that he wished her dead. And here you are, not waiting for him, with the little boy and the fat old man and no incandescence anywhere.”

“Christ Almighty,” I said.

“I’m going to bed,” Francisco said. “Tomorrow, we send in your magnificent transcripts. I gave you an A-minus in organic. Say goodnight, kiddo.”

“Good night, kiddo,” I said. I sat at the table until I fell asleep. At dawn, I dragged myself to bed. I had gotten used to the idea that people lived and you loved them, or didn’t, and then they died and you were bound to miss them, often even if you didn’t love them. I was used to Gus being dead and now he was not only alive, but stupid and angry, and he’d trailed all my dead and gone people into my house, right along with that sad, wet hat and his lined, hard face.

I DROVE TO GREAT Neck High School and read The Fundamentals of Physics in the parking lot until the three o’clock bell. It was Firenze Gardens all over again. I watched Gus make sure a bunch of boys got on the bus without killing each other or falling under the tires, and when he lit his cigarette and the last bus pulled out, I walked over. I apologized for the other night. I wasn’t the one with the problem, but I was certainly sorry. I was surprised when I should have been gracious, and I had given him nothing but very bad news. I was sorry about that and I said so.

Gus pushed his hat back on his head until he looked like a farmer. I’m glad I heard it from you, he said. Maybe we could have dinner. I was a knucklehead, he said. We could start again. I said that I thought that was a good idea and he said, How about my place? I can cook. I thought he needed to be careful with a buck, like I did, and I said yes. I told Francisco where I was going and he told me to wear slacks and my blue sweater and my navy-blue loafers. He said a little lipstick wouldn’t kill me. Are we acting like this is a date, Francisco asked. We are not, I said.

Gus’s place was neat and clean and close to empty. The couch was a mustard-yellow brocade with one brown pillow on it and there were no pictures on the walls. There was a rocking chair with no cushion, an old rag rug in the living room, and another small rug in front of his kitchen sink. I was seized with love for my house at Old Tree Lane and Danny’s trucks and racing cars and his grimy socks and Francisco’s three pairs of reading glasses and the path my stockings took every Friday night, from the tub, to the stairs, to my room, each of us helping my stockings get back to where they belonged.

The place smelled like spaghetti sauce, and not the kind that Francisco made. Gus asked me what I liked to drink and I said a whiskey sour. I don’t have that, he said. I said whatever you have is fine, and he poured me a glass of red wine that tasted like a saddle. I sat down on the couch and thought how much I should never have come. Gus sat down next to me, dropping an arm over my shoulder.