Lawrence Eisenberg

Chapter 1

THE WEATHERED OLD door shivered shut, barely leaving behind the cold air that hung from the gray December sky. The place hadn't changed in its outlines, he thought. It still looked like a small fortress gone to seed, only it had gone much faster in the eight years since he'd seen it. The ancient doorman had disappeared, as had many of the lights that once made the small lobby look, if not luxurious, at least less gloomy. Even the fake coals in the fake fireplace were stilled. Norman knew this was the kind of house where once something was used up or burned out it was gone forever.

The stenciled walls were chipped and cracked on the two landings he passed. Even in its good days Norman had never liked this place, and he remembered in exact detail the day of his first visit. His six-year-old eyes had taken it all in and he'd said to his mother as they left, "Maybe a tornado will come and take this house away to the land of Oz." And he still remembered her laugh, twenty years later. Right here on this landing.

The number 12 was now facing him on the door directly at the top of the landing, and it seemed a little odd. He remembered the entrance as having been much farther to the right. But doors don't move, he thought as he twisted the old-fashioned bell that ground out a slight squeak.

In his head he heard the strains of the song his aunts used to sing to him when he was little:

How do you do, my partner?
How do you do today-ay?
We will dance in a circle,
I will show you the way.

Now he heard the sounds of many feet dancing and a baby's giggling and realized it wasn't his memory at all. Somebody in this building was obviously entertaining a child with that same song. Appropriate, he thought.

He twisted the bell again and tried to picture little Aunt Amy, making her way quickly through the foyers of the ten rooms she shared with Aunt Elizabeth.

"Norman?" called the always cheery voice, and the door was pulled open. She looked not very different from the last time he'd seen her-that other-world, faded beauty just a little more faded, like a precious, cracked vase. He bent down to kiss her, reminded how small and frail she really was.

In her pink peignoir, covered by a worn maroon cashmere sweater, his aunt stood out like a priceless antique in an absurd setting. And now he realized he'd been right about the door being in the wrong place. By mistake he'd knocked on the back entrance and was now in the kitchen. But it was like no kitchen he'd ever seen. More like the sub-basement of a storage warehouse. There was almost no space to walk. The once-airy room now featured eight chairs, no one matching another and all in various stages of disrepair; an old heavily paneled mahogany clothes closet on top of which was an eight-drawer scratched Hepplewhite dresser which just scaled the eleven-foot ceiling; a crystal china closet whose insides were covered with faded draperies; and an enormous spanking white refrigerator that seemed just about able to cope with the huge velvet armchair sitting on it. Filling out the rest of this strange enclosure was an old-fashioned gas stove with skinny legs, under which was a tremendous stack of framed paintings; two umbrella 'stands, one brass, the other Delft; an enameled Austrian decorative stove with a scarred enameled chimney; a mammoth carved cherry rocker on which two cats were engaged in battle, while a third played with the immense brass pendulum that hung freely from a French enamel clock, next to which was a grandfather clock. On the floor, two rumpled, shredded Aubusson rugs were obvious victims of the cats' claws.

"Aunt Amy, why is all this furniture piled up in here? Is the apartment being painted?"

It was as though he hadn't said anything.

"Norman, you got so big!" She hugged him. "I almost wouldn't recognize you."

"Aunt Amy, I'm twenty-six. I haven't grown since you saw me two years ago.

Why is this room so cluttered?"

"All of your little curls have straightened out. Remember, you used to refer to them as 'kowies'?"

No, he didn't remember, nor did he care.

"You had the most gorgeous hair of any five-year-old we ever knew. And those blue eyes!" She rubbed his cheek and smiled.

Why was she doing this? Why did she--why did both of his aunts--always dwell on those days when he was five?

She took the package from him and tore it open. "What beau-tiful flowers! Peonies--out of season. They're our favorite. Eliza-beth!" she sang, "wait till you see the flowers Norman brought us." She opened a dish closet above the sink, revealing an awesome display of crystal, china and glassware, all cracked or chipped. Lolling amidst this was a tortoise shell cat, too relaxed to bother with the army of roaches marching around him.

"Up there, Norman, see on the second shelf, that crystal basket with the handle? Can you reach it?"

With a silent prayer that he wouldn't start an avalanche of glass, Norman grabbed hold of the piece and realized the handle was broken off. He handed the remaining portion to her.

"This will be just fine," she said, closing the door. "We always keep peonies in this."

"Aunt Amy, how can that cat breathe in there?"

She hummed as she ran water into the basket, then moved some dishes aside on one of the tables, placed it in the center and painstakingly arranged the flowers.

Norman noticed droplets of water running through a large crack in the glass,

"Aunt Amy, it's leaking."

"They really are prizewinners! Norman, we could always depend upon you."

Why wasn't she answering anything he was saying?

He cleared his throat and faked a laugh. "I made a funny mistake," he said, "coming in the back door this way. I'm sorry."

"This is the front door now, Norman."

"What do you mean, the front door? And why won't you tell me why all this furniture is in here?"

Again she ignored him. "How is it we never hear from you, darling?" she said in her Princess Margaret Rose voice. And he remembered that Aunts Elizabeth and Amy always liked to think of themselves as comparable to England's two princesses-whom they had actually known. "The last time we saw you was when I was in hospital two years ago. You never ring us up."

"If you had a telephone I'd call you, Aunt Amy. I'll never understand why you had the phone taken out."

"You could ring us at our friend Pearlie's apartment. She would give us a message. You got our message last night. See how simple it was?"

Was there any point in telling her that until last night he never knew of the existence of their friend Pearlie?

"Why don't you just get a new phone and it'll be simpler?"

"We haven't had the chance, with all of our complex ailments."

"Aunt Amy, you've been without a phone for eight years."

"What an excellent memory, Norman! But what's the difference? Neither of us will last much longer." Tears began to flow. "Norman, do you know that your Aunt Amy was once beautiful?"

He hugged her. "You still are, Aunt Amy."

She clung to him for a while, then pointed to her right leg, which had been paralyzed by a stroke two years before. "Do you see how I walk? I'm a cripple. Look at my hand!"

"Aren't there exercises?"

She waved him away with her good hand. "Ah, they're no good." From her pocket she removed a small pink ball, which she held out to him. "I'm supposed to squeeze this. It's barely good for bouncing."

"Where's Aunt Elizabeth? In her room?"

She motioned with her head toward the next room. "Right inside."

"In the dining room? What's she doing in there?"

Pushing aside the worn lace curtain in the doorway and unleashing a cascade of roaches, he peered into the next room. If the clutter in the kitchen was absurd, in here it was stupefying. The room was unlit, the left half entirely filled with furniture, packages and boxes piled to the ceiling. He looked at the other side of the room and could barely make out a double bed, surrounded by more furniture. In the semidarkness he saw a figure lying half on and half off the bed.

"Aunt Elizabeth?"

"Aunt Elizabeth indeed," her voice said weakly.

"Why is your bed in the dining room?" He turned back toward the kitchen. "Aunt Amy, why is the furniture all stacked up?"

"Where else could we put it, love?" asked Elizabeth.

"In the rooms where it belongs," he said. "Why are you in here instead of your bedroom?"

"This is my bedroom," she said.

"What about the rest of the apartment?" he asked.

"This is it," she answered.

"What do you mean, Aunt Elizabeth? What happened to the rest of the apartment?" He pointed toward the door in the far wall, which, he remembered, had led from the dining room to a small study. He moved toward it.

"Keep away from that door!" Elizabeth shouted.

"Will one of you please tell me what happened to the rest of the apartment?"

"Don't shout, Norman. Look at how the child gets worked up," Elizabeth said soothingly. "It's all very simple, dear. The place was always too big for just the two of us--and became far too expensive---and so we turned the rest back to the landlord and he broke it into other apartments."

"But why didn't you get rid of some of the furniture? How can you live in this?" Again he pointed toward the closed door. "What's in there? You mean all you kept were the two rooms?"

"No, love," Elizabeth said. "We use that room as a storage room." That room, he remembered, had always been his favorite in the apartment, where he took naps and played as a child.

"This whole place is a storage room," he muttered.

"I think we can do without sarcasm!" Elizabeth said. "Now, let's all calm down."

He pushed the wall switch, lighting the one remaining bulb in the covered crystal chandelier. Against the hand-carved headboard, mostly hidden by old clothes lumped together to form pillows, he saw the face of his Aunt Elizabeth. It was turned upward and looked waxen. No, not that exactly. Rather like a photo negative tipped at a certain angle so it looks like an eerie print. The features were the same--the aquiline nose, the large hazel eyes, the pink unlined cheeks, the perfect teeth and the thick wavy head of long silver hair that came nearly to her waist. She could almost have been a double for Amy, but with a subtle difference. If Aunt Amy was porcelain, Aunt Elizabeth was marble. She was larger, taller, stronger. "Elizabeth is made of sterner stuff than the others," Grandpa Simon used to say. "Gentle Amy, Beautiful Maria and Magnificent Elizabeth" was how he'd characterized his three youngest daughters.

Magnificent Elizabeth, now faded and shrunken and limp. Elizabeth, about whom his mother had once said, "She was the least beautiful of the three of us, but she always acted as though she was the most. In fact, your Aunt Elizabeth has always acted as though she was the most everything." Aunt Elizabeth, who at the age of fifteen had piloted a plane solo, who in her prime led marches for women's rights before anybody thought of the word "lib," who once spent a night in prison for attacking the mayor at an election rally.

"How are you feeling, Aunt Elizabeth?"

"Ah, what's the use, love? This is the grand finale." The elegance of her voice almost belied what she was saying.

"Aunt Elizabeth," he said, "can I take you to a hospital?"

"No, I just came from hospital. They can't do anything for me. How they poked and pulled at me! I had frightful pains in my tummy, but now they're gone and I have the most incredible pains in my feet. I know what I have. They just wouldn't tell me. When I try to walk it's excruciating."

The worn silver-fox cape covering her stopped just short of her feet, which were encased in high-heeled black satin pumps.

"If your feet hurt you shouldn't be wearing shoes."

"Oh, Norman, I tried so hard to dress up and be presentable for you, but I just couldn't make it."

"Why are your legs hanging over the side of the bed?"

"Because there's no room for them on the bed."

No wonder, he thought. The bed was covered with old fur coats, brass-bound wooden boxes, torn leather-bound books and a high stack of movie magazines. "Let me move some of this stuff off for you."

"No! No! Just let me alone!" Then, softly, "Norman, dear, put out the light and then put out the light."

"'Othello'--act five, scene two!" Amy shouted eagerly.

"Another winner," Elizabeth called back faintly.

Norman walked up to Amy. "Aunt Amy, how long has Aunt Elizabeth been like this?"

"Why, all her life, darling. You know we've always been avid game players."

"No, I mean how long has she had this condition?"

"Since she returned from hospital--a week."

"And how long since you ... since you gave up the rest of the apartment?"

"Oh, just after your mother passed on."

"Why didn't you ever tell me?"

Amy shrugged, then her face brightened. "I'm so delighted you're here. You can open some cans of food for the cats. It isn't easy maneuvering with just one usable arm." She pushed aside some faded silk curtains covering a cabinet next to the sink to reveal a television set, on top of which were several dozen cans of assorted cat food.

"Why do you keep the television hidden?" he asked.

From the other room came Elizabeth's feeble voice. "It's broken."

"Why don't you have it fixed?"

"What is there of any value on that imbecile machine anyway?"

"Of course."

"Come back in here. Let me look at you," she called out, her voice much stronger.

"Didn't you look at me just before?" he asked, and both women began to laugh. "Come in here, you naughty boy."

Norman switched the light on again and Elizabeth raised her ghostly head. "You got so handsome. just like your father. And tall." Here they go again, he thought. "Do you still play baseball all the time?"

"In warm weather, yes."

"What's the news of your brother Charlie?"

"Nothing much."

"He married into new money, of course. But, then, money never mattered to Charlie, did it? Such an intellectual. You should do as well as he. You're by far the better-looking."

"Thanks." He fidgeted.

"And how are his children?"

"They're fine, I guess. I haven't talked to him in a long time."

"How is it you've lost touch, Norman? We haven't heard from you in a year. Don't you love your aunts any more?"

I was just explaining to Aunt Amy. If you had a telephone..."

"I heard, but you could write. A postcard, anything. You see how quickly we rang you the last time we got a letter from you."

"I guess I'm just not a letter writer, Aunt Elizabeth."

Norman walked back into the kitchen. He noticed the table was now all wet from the leaking crystal basket.

"Aunt Amy, that water is leaking out. Can't you get something else?"

Unmindful of the brazen roach strolling across her shoulder, she handed him the can-opener and removed four plates from the piles of china on the table; this was a signal for the dish closet to squeak open. Norman started. The tortoise shell cat leaped out to stand at his feet, joining the other three cats who were purring loudly. Before he managed to get the first can open, all four animals were on the table, staring hungrily at him.

Now, pay attention, Norman," Amy said, reminding him of a grade school teacher. She held out the first dish, a royal blue and white Wedgwood platter, cracked down the middle. "This is Roddy's He gets an extra-large helping." Roddy, an enormous tiger-striped cat, seemed to know this. Next she handed him a Canton dish whose corner was missing. "This is for Cyril. Give him some of the liver stuff. He's very particular." Particular Cyril was an all-gray tom of spectacular beauty. "Now Albert." Albert was the closet recluse and his dish was Majolica with a large hole in its side. "Last, but by no means least," Amy sang, "our little Victoria." Victoria was a pregnant calico, and in her multi-chipped Staffordshire bowl she received a mixture of the liver and the regular.

"Gee, Aunt Amy," Norman said, "can't you get them service for four in the same pattern?"

Amy laughed, then hobbled over to a bentwood hatrack, removed a feather duster and began to flit around the meager floor space, dusting away at the piles of furniture.

"Isn't it close in here for so many cats?" Norman asked, and then his attention was drawn to a scratching sound that seemed to come from behind a door next to the sink.

"What's that noise?" he asked.

"Oh, Signe is in there," said Amy, and just as she said it he noticed the word "Signe" pasted in the middle of the door, in different size letters, like a ransom note.

"Who?"

"Signe, a cat. We keep her locked up."

"Why? "

"Because she fights."

"Why don't you get rid of her?"

"Who would take her in?" Amy asked.

Sure, he thought, a logical reason for everything.

"What is that, a closet?" he asked.

"It's our pantry--was our pantry--but now it's Signe's home," Amy said. Norman opened the door and was faced with a full-length screen door on the other side. He peered into the pantry but couldn't see anything. "Shouldn't I give her some food?" he asked.

"I guess so, but be careful, she's vicious," Amy said, handing him a ruined Baccarat crystal bowl.

The screen door slammed behind him and he switched on the light. Curled up on a torn velvet cushion in the far corner of the large closet was a black cat. She mewed softly and he patted her on the head, noticing she wasn't quite all black. Tiny white worry lines furrowed her brow, and she looked at him with what seemed almost human intelligence. He shook his head. Poor caged-up animal. He picked her up and put her on the floor next to the food, which she devoured, tail wagging.

Leaving the door ajar behind him, he said to Amy, "She seems very gentle."

"Appearances are deceiving!" came the voice of Elizabeth.

"How can she breathe in there?" he asked.

"Oh, we usually leave the door open, so long as the screen door is bolted," Amy said.

"If I can find a home for Signe, do you want to give her away?" he asked.

"No, she stays here!" said Elizabeth very firmly.

"But she's a prisoner, Aunt Elizabeth."

"She's...We're not going to be responsible for any damage she does to anybody else," Elizabeth said. "Besides, she was a gift and it would be rude to give her away."

"And she's brought us good luck," trilled Amy.

"Good luck!" he shouted. "What do you consider bad luck?"

Elizabeth laughed. "Amy was just teasing, dear."

"Yes," said Amy, "just teasing. Norman, I wonder whether you might do us a splendid favor and get some groceries?"

"Sure, what do you need?"

"Milk, ginger ale and Twinkies."

"Where's the nearest grocery?"

"Just next door," Amy said.

From inside came Elizabeth's voice again. "When you're in the grocery, don't tell her who you are or whom you came for."

Why would I bother? he wondered. "Is there anything else?"

"Yes, come in here, darling," Elizabeth moaned.

He went inside. "Are you in pain?"

"Excruciating."

"Do you have painkillers?"

"No. Can you get me some aspirin? A small tin--the smallest they make. I'm dying. No sense wasting them. Wait, I'll give you some money."

I have money," he said.

"No, one thing we never accepted was charity. Amy, give him some."

Amy went to a drawer in the remains of a Chippendale desk and removed a heart-shaped enameled glass box from which she took some bills and said, "Here, little Norman," in that same voice, the voice she used to use when she handed him crisp dollar bills every time his mother took him to visit.

"Forget it," he said. He was about to go into the kitchen when he heard a noise from the locked room beyond the dining room.

"What's that?"

"Nothing, dear. Forget it," said Elizabeth.

"But I heard a noise. Maybe one of the cats is in there. Maybe I should..." He pushed on the door, but it wouldn't budge. It was almost as though some pressure were being applied from the other side, like a strong wind.

"Take your hands off that door!" Elizabeth shrieked in a voice she had never used to him in all his life. He stared at her. "I mean, Norman, dear, it would be dangerous for you to go in there, with all the furniture piled up so precariously. No cats are in there. It's probably a box that fell down. Ignore it."

"Aunt Elizabeth, I couldn't even get in there if I tried. The door is jammed." just before opening the outside door he noticed that more than half the water had leaked out of the crystal basket. But what was the point in mentioning it?

As the door was closing behind him he heard Elizabeth say, "Amy, make sure the sherry glasses are out in the drawing room for little Norman's party." No, he didn't really hear that. Yes, he did. But his memory was playing some kind of trick. He remembered in scrupulous detail the day of his fifth birthday party, given for him by Elizabeth and Amy in Grandpa Simon's mansion on upper Fifth Avenue. One of the reasons he remembered it so well was that it had been reviewed for him all through his life by his mother and her sisters. They'd used the occasion to fill the house with such an array of statesmen, Nobel Prize winners and anybody else "who mattered," that the New York Times had devoted a full page to it. In those days, of course, they were known as "those irrepressible Gould sisters, and one of the big amusements around "Grandpa Thimon'th cathle," as Norman used to call it, was to get little Norman to say that phrase. Well, they still were those irrepressible Gould sisters, as far as they were concerned, and what puzzled Norman most was their almost purposeful unawareness of their surroundings.

He had his foot on the first step when he heard Amy call, "We're out of lemonade."

"Oh, dear!" Elizabeth exclaimed. "Because I know little Norman shall be wanting some."

Sure, he thought, that's all that's on little Norman's mind-drinking lemonade with his aunties in a room filled with piled-up furniture and faded drapes.

END OF CHAPTER 1

Copyright Lawrence B. Eisenberg. 1974, 2000. All Rights Reserved
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