Steadied by this vision, she let herself look further. Her life would be lived in the world, not in this paper house. She foresaw that. She foresaw also that as she became strong her parents would dare to weaken. They too might tug at her clothing, not meaning to annoy.
Lily would never leave her. “She will always be different, darling,” her mother had said. At the time Sophie had thought that her mother meant we will always be different. Now she added a new gloss: I will always be different.
She felt her cheek tingle, as if it had been licked by the sad, dry tongue of a cat. At full growth Lily’s head would be almost level with Sophie’s shoulder. Lily would learn some things. Mostly she would learn Sophie. They would know each other forward and backward. They would run side by side like subway tracks, inbound and outbound. Coextensive.
She had to return to her family now; she had to complete the excursion. She shoved her free arm into the strap and settled the backpack on her shoulders. She walked past the man in earmuffs without saying good-bye.
KEN AND JOANNA bumped the stroller down the subway stairs. Ordinarily they would have joined the line at the token vendor’s booth to be admitted through his gate. Instead Joanna inserted a token and hurried through the turnstile. Ken handed her their little girl across the device. He pressed his own token into the slot and turned around and lifted the stroller above his head and burst through the stile buttocks first. They put Lily back into the stroller and rushed toward the ramps.
“Outbound?” said Ken.
“She knows better.”
On the ramp they had to arc around an old woman who had paused mid-journey with her trash bag on her left and her collapsible cart on her right. “That’s okay,” she called.
The inbound train had just left. The platform held five people who had missed it: three students, one bearded man, and a tall black woman — an islander, Joanna could tell; her regality proclaimed her origins, that magazine under her arm was probably in French.
SOPHIE WASN’T FAR BEHIND THEM. She had found the subway entrance as soon as she left the little house. While her father was bearing the empty stroller backward through the turnstile, she was beginning her descent from the street. While her mother was choosing inbound, Sophie was thinking about joining the line of token buyers, of promising to pay later. She decided not to risk conversation with the man in the booth. By the time her parents reached the inbound platform she was slipping underneath the turnstile. She started down the ramp.
She saw them before she reached the bottom. Her mother sat on a bench, holding Lily in her lap. Her father, standing, bent over them both. They looked like everyday people, but Sophie wasn’t fooled — her mother’s knees were knocked together under her coat and her feet were far apart, their ankles bent inward so wearily that the anklebones almost touched the floor. Without seeing her father’s face, she knew he was close to tears. An old woman with a cart leaned against the wall. As Sophie appeared the woman said, “Now your reunion,” in a conversational tone, though rather loud.
Ken turned and unbent: a basketball replay in slow motion.
Joanna took relief like an injection; pain was killed and feeling as well. She saw that the child had undergone some unsettling experience, but Joanna had no sympathy to offer now. Perhaps this once Sophie would be given the blessing of forgetfulness.
And indeed Sophie moved forward with a light tread, as if she had not just witnessed the future unrolling.
Lily attended slackly. But then she raised her mittened hand.
“Phie!”
DAY OF AWE
HE WAS THE LAST JEW in a cursed land.
A ruined country, a country of tricksters. Rich haciendas hid within the folds of mountains. Guns lay under crates of bananas. Even the green parrots practiced deception. They rested in trees, not making a sound; suddenly they rose as one, appearing and departing at the same time, leaving the observer abandoned.
The only Jew!
In truth, there was a second Jew: his son, Lex. They faced each other across the kitchen table. Lex seemed to pity the plight of his father: that on the eve of Yom Kippur there was no corner in the city where a Jew could pray for forgiveness with nine others.
“They all fled to Miami after the revolution,” Lex said. “Taking their money with them.”
Robert winced.
Lex said, “We’ll find you a minyan, Bob.” He looked at his father with compassion.
But was it really compassion? Or was it the practiced understanding of a professional social worker? Just as he had adjusted to his son’s use of his first name, Robert had reconciled himself to Lex’s womanish vocation. But he had not become accustomed to the nods, the murmured assents. He himself was an investment consultant.
“We’ve gone through the guidebooks,” Lex reviewed. “Shall we hunt down a Shapiro in the telephone book? A Katz?”
Father and son laughed. Their own name was Katz.
The little boy looked from one to the other.
He was a thin child despite a seemingly insatiable appetite. His name, Jaime, printed in Lex’s hand, adorned the crayoned scribbles taped to the refrigerator.
There they sat, in front of those unambitious efforts, in the scarred kitchen of a small house on a muddy street in the capital city of a Jewless country. Robert was still wearing his pajamas. Far away in Beverly Hills, the drawings of Robert’s granddaughter, Lex’s niece, also decorated a refrigerator. Maureen Mulloy, the signature read. Maureen Mulloy printed her washerwoman’s name herself. The Mulloys’ Mexican housekeeper hung up the artwork. Who else could do it? — Maureen’s parents practiced law twelve hours a day.
Jaime. It was pronounced “Hymie.” Robert speared a slice of papaya from the breakfast platter.
Lex was reading the telephone book. “No Shapiros, Bob. No Katzes, either. I’m not even listed — my phone belongs to the organization.”
Robert ate a slice of pineapple.
“I’m going to call the embassy,” Lex said.
“Ex,” said Jaime, slapping Lex’s arm. “Tengo hambre.”
“Qué quiero?” Robert attempted. “I mean, qué quieres …” Lex had already risen. He and Jaime stood side by side, composedly surveying the contents of the refrigerator, a slight young man and a very slight child. “Qué quieres,” Robert repeated, softly. His hesitant spoken Spanish was getting him nowhere with the boy. Why had he spent a month listening to those damned language tapes? Why had he come here, anyway?
Five days ago he had descended the aluminum steps of the airliner and stepped onto the tarmac, already blistering at two in the afternoon. He was used to hokey airports. He wasn’t used to the absence of jet lag, though — he seldom journeyed from north to south. The sun had stood still on his behalf. No need to nap, no need even to eat, though on the ride from the airport Jaime insisted on stopping for a tamale. “Ex, Ex!” he shouted, pointing to the stall. Lex pulled over. Robert smiled at Lex, indulgent parent communing with indulgent parent. But Lex ignored the smile. His attentiveness toward this soon-to-be-adopted son was meant to be approved, not joined.