“I must look like hell,” she said, and blew her nose into the bubbly paper towel.
“N-no,” he mustered.
“She’s in heaven now,” she said through phlegm.
“Do we have a heaven?” he said. He saw a celestial elevator physically hoisting the deceased.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Do I have—” She pointed at her eyes.
“No, it’s fine,” he said. She was an expert dabber.
“Hey, you still speak-a Italiano?” she said.
The words, long unused, floated up like a dog. “Dove la fermata dell’ autobus?” he said. She started to laugh, but it made her cry again. “I went there last year,” she said when she recovered. “On vacation.”
“To Ladispoli?” he asked. He had come to think of it as a place that had ceased to exist after the Gelmans departed.
“No. Firenze, Venezia. It was pretty. Personally, though? You could fly to Vegas for, like, half the money and half the time.”
“Vegas?” he said.
“The Bellagio?” she said. “The Venetian? I mean, it’s like a guy in one of those boats, and he’s pushing you, and he can sing if you pay him. Exactly like in Venice. In Italian or English, whichever language you prefer. Why do you need Venice? It stinks there, by the way.”
“I see,” he said.
“I get a little crazy when I go to Vegas,” she said, dabbing again at the corners of her eyes. “Hella fun. You go?”
Recently, Slava had fished out of the Las Vegas Sun an item for “The Hoot,” the humor column that was his official responsibility at Century, but he didn’t think he could explain all that to Vera. He shook his head.
“You got to go,” she summed up. “I have to go clean up, I can’t stand in front of you like this. But listen: You have to come over.”
He blinked. “Why?”
“This fight they’re having?” She pointed at the living room. “It’s crazy. How many years now?”
“So how come you came tonight?” Slava said.
“Because my grandpa said he’s going, he don’t give a bleep what my mom says. So she said I have to go with him, because it looks bad if he goes alone, like nobody loves him. But she said not to talk to anyone. Be, like, quiet and pissed off. It’s nice to see you, though, Slava.”
“It’s nice to see you, too,” he said.
“The children have to fix it, like always. You come over for dinner, and little by little. You know?”
“I don’t know,” he said carefully. “It’s their business.” He didn’t want to get involved with their argument. But with Vera?
She shrugged. “There’s not many of us here. We have to stick together.”
She stepped forward and placed her lips, full and soft, on his cheek. He felt the rasp of his cheeks prick whatever she had applied to her own. When she pulled back, the beige powder scattered finely between them. Then she walked out of the kitchen.
When he heard the bathroom door close, he wandered into the hallway separating it from the kitchen and stood there, not eavesdropping. She was humming. Then she flushed and the water slithered down the pipes. He sprang back just before the door opened. Her face had returned to its prior immobility. She winked at him and walked past.
The bathroom swam with the subtle sugar of Vera’s perfume. Berta had lined the wall with guest towels, hers and Grandfather’s concealed from foreign hands. Slava looked at the mirror. How many times had Grandmother’s withered face appeared in the exact spot where he now held his own? Slava knew that mirrors were covered after a Jewish death to prevent vanity. But what kind of mourning was it if you had to trick yourself into it? And was it so wrong to leave the mirror uncovered if it made Slava think of her? Wasn’t that the point? He lifted a towel from one of the hooks and slipped it over the mirror, fastening its edges with two containers of Berta’s face cream. He waited for this to have some effect, but he didn’t feel anything. He flushed the toilet in case someone was waiting. Despite himself, he hoped to find Vera standing outside the bathroom.
Instead, he found Grandfather, looking lost. “Slavchik,” Grandfather said drowsily. His hands hung at his sides like a soldier’s, only that his shoulders sagged.
“People are leaving?” Slava said.
“No, no,” Grandfather said.
“You got lucky with Berta,” Slava said.
“She’s good,” Grandfather said agnostically. “I read in the newspaper about a home nurse from Ukraine who lived with this old couple for five years. Our people, from Riga. They were like family with her — they took her on their vacations. When it was time for her to go back to Ukraine, she said to them: ‘I hope you kikes rot in hell.’ So you never know.”
Slava made himself embrace Grandfather.
“Something I need you to look at,” Grandfather said, pointing to the bedroom.
“We’re both tired. Let’s do it another day,” Slava said, wanting to return to the living room.
“Another day with you?” Grandfather said. “Another day with you is a year from now. The deadline is soon. It’ll take only a moment.”
Grandfather strode toward the bedroom but stopped at the threshold. Slava followed his gaze to the bed, the largest thing in the room. The biggest and softest, Grandfather had insisted to Marat on Avenue Z, and here it was. You could look nowhere else. Now that one had to sleep in it alone, it was grotesque.
“Her slippers are right there, but she’s not,” Grandfather said. “What sense does that make?”
Slava put his arm around Grandfather’s shoulder and brought the silk of the old man’s head to his chest.
“This day has no end,” Grandfather said. “They’re talking out there, but I can’t understand a word they’re saying.”
Slava rubbed his nose in Grandfather’s hair, soft and straight as goose down, the hair of someone a third his age. The old man nodded helplessly, a fat, lazy tear at his eye. Finally, he stepped into the bedroom and hooked a papery finger into the handle of a bureau, removing a straw pouch where he stuffed mail until Slava’s mother came to translate. She came all the time. The item he wanted was out front, backed by circulars and forms. He sat down in the chair next to the bed, eyeing its satin slipcover like an untouchable object. “Look, please,” he said, extending the envelope.
Slava pulled out the roughly folded papers and inspected the lettering. He snagged on the Hebrew, blocky but lissome. Then he saw the English and whistled slightly. He had heard people in the office talking about it. “‘Dear you,’” he translated. “‘The Conference on Material Claims Against Germany’…”
“I know what it says,” Grandfather said. “Mama translated. If you were a Holocaust victim, tell the story and you get funds. They’re saying — depending on what you went through — a bigger piece once or a smaller piece every month for the rest of your life. I did it on the calculator: If you make it ten months, you come out ahead.”
“Who’s saying?”
“People at the Jewish Center. On Kings Highway.”
“Why do you listen to them?” Slava said. “It’s a gossip mill.”
“Who else for me to listen to?”
The last page in the packet was blank except for a heading: “NARRATIVE. Please describe, in as much detail as you can, where the Subject was during the years 1939 to 1945.”
“How do they know who to send it to?” Slava asked, looking at Grandmother’s name in the address bar.
“Grandmother’s registered in that museum in Israel. Vashi Yashi.”
“Yad Vashem,” Slava said. “Say it correctly.”