In the late afternoons, Mrs. Simon got busy. She stirred pots on the stove. She set the table in the dining room. She folded the evening paper several times, this way and that, and finally laid it on the arm of Mr. Simon’s chair. Again she adjusted the antimacassars and arranged the candies.
Darkness came at 4:30. From the window of our spare bedroom, reading by flashlight, I kept track of the cars returning to the six garages. A floodlight illuminated the area. When Mr. Simon’s car appeared, I would close my book, switch off my flashlight, and raise my binoculars.
Mr. Simon, a tall man, would unfold from his automobile. He’d pass a hand over his gray hair, raise the door of the garage, get back into the car, and drive it into the garage. He usually sat there for a while, giving me a chance to inspect his license plate, which had three numbers and two letters. I have forgotten them all. My eyes caressed the curve of his car trunk. I noticed the branch caught on the fender. Where had he been driving, to collect such a trophy? Was he a salesman? What did he do while Mrs. Simon and I were watching the clock for him?
In the midst of my musings, Mr. Simon would reappear, briefcase in hand, and roll down his garage door. That handkerchief, hanging from his overcoat pocket — might it slip out? Would the drop of the handkerchief be marked only by me, whose presence was as undetectable as God’s? And if I alone saw cloth meet asphalt, could the handkerchief really be said to have fallen, or would it be like the tree I’d learned about in class, the tree that cracks unheard in the forest and thus provides a philosophical question for the ages? Surely Mrs. Simon, who sorted her laundry with as much finickiness as a forty-niner panning for gold, would notice a missing item. But the handkerchief clung to his pocket as Mr. Simon walked slowly across the backyard and toward the rear door of the apartment building.
I glided into my parents’ dark bedroom. My mother was duplicating Mrs. Simon’s activities in our kitchen downstairs, my father was saving people’s vision in his office. I turned my magic glasses onto the Simons’ bright living room, only a few yards away.
How I yearned to witness Mr. Simon’s return. Alas, it always took place in that inner hall. It must be like my father’s homecoming: the woman hurrying to the door; the man bringing in a gust of weather and excitement; the hug, affectionate and sometimes annoyingly long; and finally the separation, so that two little girls rushing downstairs could be caught in those overcoated arms. But at the Simons’ there were no children. Perhaps the pair exchanged a dignified kiss.
Our dinner coincided with theirs. And then I had to help my mother with the dishes. It wasn’t until evening that I saw the Simons again.
This was my favorite scene. The couple by the fireplace and the invisible guest. I could see how motionless Mr. Simon’s long face was as he read the paper, page by slow page, and how stiffly he held his shoulders under the jacket he never took off. I could almost hear the tick of the mantelpiece clock.
I shifted my attention to Mrs. Simon. Cross and cross again went the needles. And up and down, up and down went the active lips, the unstoppable mouth, the mouth that never produced a word for me but spoke so easily and swiftly and continually when the beloved was home. Talking. Laughing. Talking again.
AFTER VACATION I visited the Simons less often. By the end of January I was dropping in only occasionally — for a moment at the end of an afternoon, say, to make sure that something was cooking on the stove.
Then, during breakfast one February morning, two policemen appeared at our back door. “Doctor, can you …?” My father did not pause even to put on his suit jacket; he just followed the sturdy officers into the yard, looking like their servant in his silk-backed waistcoat and his white shirtsleeves. They walked across the crusted snow and into the backyard of the apartment building next door. My mother stood at the kitchen window, her hand on her heart.
My father returned before we left for school. “It’s Al Simon,” he said to my mother. “He died during the night.”
My sister continued to buckle her boots.
“Was he murdered?” I said.
“No,” my father said. “What makes you ask?”
“The policemen.”
My father sighed. Then, after a thoughtful pause, “Mr. Simon committed suicide,” he told me. “In his car.”
“Did he drive it off a cliff?”
My parents exchanged frowns and shrugs. Such a child, their looks said, all curiosity and no sympathy — and this the teachers call gifted? Then, still in a patient voice, my father explained that Mr. Simon had driven into his garage, closed the door from inside, stuffed the cracks with newspapers, reentered his car, and turned on the motor.
The next day in the obituary section I could find no hint of suicide, unless suddenly was the code word. But the final sentence was a shocker. “Mr. Simon, a bachelor, is survived by his mother.”
I raced to my own mother. “I thought she was his wife!”
“So did she,” my mother said, admitting me abruptly into the complicated world of adults, making me understand what I had until then only seen.
NEW STORIES
GRANSKI
“TWO FACES, ONE NOSE,” Toby said. “A physiognomic curiosity. Which ancestor did we get it from?”
“Isaac Abravanel,” Angelica replied, though the family’s connection to that prominent Portuguese merchant had never been firmly established.
The nose, whatever its origin, was a long thin wavy proboscis, rather comely. Except for this similar feature, the cousins looked nothing alike. Angelica had topaz eyes. Various dark colors shifted in her hair. Toby’s narrow eyes were gray, his hair a steady brown.
They were sixteen. During the school year, at home — she in Paris, he in Connecticut — each kept au courant with songs, the proper placement of studs, movies; of course they carried cell phones and knew where to buy weed. But here in Maine they could be their true selves. Their true selves were variously described by the family. Snooty agoutis, according to their younger siblings and cousins. Good sports, according to Gramp, a good sport himself. Too damned clever, said their mothers, who were sisters. The third sister, aunt to Toby and Angelica, complained that they breathed air rarefied even for this family, and we are already the most hyper-indulged characters on the face of the … Her statement dwindled as always. As for Gran — tall, crop-haired, pale-eyed Gran — whatever she thought of these particular grandchildren she didn’t bother to say.
They were enjoying exceptional educations, Angelica in her école, Toby in his boarding school. His French was almost as good as her English. Here in Maine they played tennis, hiked, swam. Gramp taught them to drive, then told them not to use the car. “Self-restraint is strength,” he explained. “Also you can be arrested for driving without a license.”
“Self-restraint is fear,” Toby said one afternoon as they walked to the little boathouse. “We are a terrified clan. Since Antwerp.”