Amy Bloom - Love Invents Us

“Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome. You were very good to my mother and I know that having you around—”

The Stewardesses swarmed around Dr. Hill with plates of food she would have to eat and names of people she would have to thank warmly. They carried her across the room to Reverend Shales and put her in the chair next to him, staying close enough to make an exit impossible. Vivian Hill waved to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth took one last walk through Mrs. Hill’s bedroom. The hatboxes were gone.

* * *

Elizabeth’s father — who did not understand children, who had not understood his wife except to see clearly that he was not the man she should have married, who could not understand how his kindnesses were so often misinterpreted, who would not understand anything at all about love until his third wife’s dyed red hair, big Jewish behind, and wide white hands knocked him into the best part of himself — understood loss. He had grown up comfortably in Brownsville; they had no boarders, they had a small parlor and two bedrooms, and he was allowed to finish high school, during the daytime. He had had a much easier life than his closest friend, Myron Flaverman, whose father cut cloth.

His own father, as reliable as a clock, stopped to pick up the Forward one day at Saratoga and Sutter, as he always did, and a blue Franklin from New Jersey jumped the curb and drove right through the newsstand.

Sol wore his father’s clothes, sold fruit for Meyer Shimmelweiss, and slept on the couch for four years to make room for two Slovenian cousins, but he went to college. By subway, at night, dripping sweat into cheap, tight shoes, awash in his late father’s wool trousers. But he did go, graduating from City College three days after his mother’s death, one day before her tiny funeral.

Tucson, June 16, 1970

My dear Elizabeth ,

Your mother told me about your friend Mrs. Hill’s death. I wish I knew the right words, not to make you feel better, but to let you know that this — DEATH — is part of life. I recall that you felt very close to her. I remember you were always over there, when your mother and I were divorcing .

I hope she was a good friend to you, and a comfort. I’m sure you took good care of her. You will remember her and keep her alive within you, and I believe that she is also remembering you, something about which your mother and I disagree. As you know, she does not believe in an afterlife .

Your mother told me that you’re not planning to attend your high school graduation. I’ll come if you change your mind .

If you wish to visit me, I will send you a ticket. Please use this for flowers for Mrs. Hill or a donation to her favorite charity .

With love ,

Your father

Elizabeth put the check in her jewelry box until she could figure out what to do with it.

May God forgive me.

Max said this every morning, drinking a beer in the bathroom. Clearly, his life would get much better or much worse very soon. He’d been planning a strategy for weeks. He sent her a bouquet of pink and yellow calla lilies with a note of condolence. He sent a funny postcard of a woman scolding a cat, saying “And you call yourself a dog,” and signed it Max Stone. He called when he thought her mother might be gone and said, “I’d like a chance to say good-bye before you go off.”

She said she’d meet him for coffee. He wouldn’t talk about getting back together right away. He wouldn’t say “share.” It sounded too much like what he really wanted, a life forever together. Maybe he’d mention that if she was planning to be around for the summer he was thinking of renting a small place for himself, since Greta and the boys would be away. Maybe she’d like to stay there with him. Maybe he could get two places, across the hall from each other. Maybe he’d just beg her to spend the summer with him, give him two months before she went off to college and found her next romance, her next bareback-riding hero, her future husband. There was something to be said for frank and honest groveling.

Sitting with Elizabeth in a diner twenty miles from Great Neck, his hands circling her wrists, Max could not remember what he had planned to say. Her face was a little thinner. New contact lenses made her eyes brightly pink and round as little lightbulbs. She looked bored.

“I’d love to have you visit me this summer. I might take a little place in the city. Do you think that might be fun? Or maybe a cabin in the Berkshires?”

“I don’t know.” She made a nest of torn sugar packets around her coffee cup.

“Think it over. It’s the end of June now. If you could decide this week, I could start looking. We could start looking, if you felt like it.”

Max and Elizabeth shared, for twenty seconds, exactly the same mental picture: Max and Elizabeth trudging from walk-up to walk-up, meeting a dozen rental agents whose pleasant surprise at this nice father-daughter pair curdles before the plumbing’s been tested.

“No, I don’t know. Maybe. I’ll tell you next week.”

“I’ll take maybe, milacku . Maybe yes? Is that yes for a visit or yes for — for a long visit?”

Elizabeth was done. Between his fat shrimp fingers around her wrist and the last sugar packet. Done. Now everything out of her mouth would be a lie, and she smiled like he was her favorite person.

“Maybe yes. Maybe very likely yes, a long visit. I could stay for a month or six weeks if you want, but I don’t even want to talk about it for another week, okay? There’s been too much going on.”

“Okay, baby girl.” He kissed each of the ten fingers he’d been squeezing. “Of course that’s okay.”

“Don’t call me for a week,” she said.

“Whatever you say. You’re the boss.”

They kissed, and Elizabeth thought, This is it, this is the last time I’m doing this.

Max thought, Yes, Lord, help me turn this around, even now, and I will be your devoted servant. Help me. The boys aren’t babies, they can see this is killing us, it can’t be good for them, seeing us suffer. Greta will be better off without me, she’ll be more independent, she’ll be a better mother, God, she’ll probably recover, she’ll become a counselor for other agoraphobic ladies, write a book about it, she’ll make a lot of money. She’ll remarry some nice Jewish guy, not to be another father, but a nice guy, bald, a podiatrist. And Lizzie and I will be like other happy couples, whoever they are, except she is so beautifully young, and we will be beyond happy, sweet Jesus, and want only each other.

Everything that drove Elizabeth crazy about Rachel turned out to be exactly what was called for in their Great Getaway. Rachel persuaded her father to lend them the station wagon, drove all the way uptown to Columbia University to collect sleeping bags from her brother and his roommate, showed her interested parents and an utterly bored Margaret the AAA trip map, and pointed out all the educational side trips and that no day’s drive was more than a reasonable 250 miles. Rachel, who would become a fine doctor, would also have made an excellent president or a criminal genius. Elizabeth’s only job was to be pleasant to her mother for the remaining eight days and remember her camera and a heavy sweater for the cold nights in the Rockies. Rachel packed two of most items, assuming that Elizabeth would forget almost everything, which she did, knowing that Rachel would pack two. For nine weeks they drove across America, eating apple-butter-and-whole-wheat sandwiches, kissing boys who were handsome only by the firelight of various campgrounds, and becoming expert at putting on eyeliner using their Sierra Club cups as mirrors.

Huddie lies on the gritty floor. He smells the drops of sweat spattered on the shining wood, sees the frayed plastic tip of the ref’s shoelace; his face is near enough to the man’s left sneaker to lay his tongue on it. Water roars through both ears. He hears only a dense, cupping sound. Huddie concentrates on these things to keep from screaming. He has to cry. The ring of fire in his right knee flames dark red up his whole side, and his flesh must be falling off in seared chunks now. Kind faces he recognizes but can’t place hover over him, and he sinks into a grey minty ocean and sees Elizabeth arched back above him, white legs tight around him, their black hairs joined, green trees over them, his fists wrapped in her long hair, his face deep soft between her breasts. His mother’s hand, wide, gardenia-scented, slides up his face, into nothing.