I later heard from Connie’s husband that he’d seen the two of them and the broom proceeding down our street, Daphna talking and the policeman listening; and that he, Connie’s husband, couldn’t tell whether his neighbor was under arrest or whether, at last, she was getting somebody’s full attention.
II.
The policeman’s name was Sam Flanagan.
He was tall and auburn-curled, snub-nosed and broad-grinned; and if I had ever brought him home my father would have thrown him out. Jews, Daddy could just tolerate; Irish, he despised. Sam had been born twenty-five years earlier on Magazine Street in the section of town we real estate people still call Whiskey Point. He was as thorough a Godolphinite as Daphna was a Jerusalemite, and he lived in his parents’ shabby house with eight of his nine brothers and sisters. The oldest, married to a man from Bhutan, had moved out.
“Can you imagine the chaos there?” Daphna said to me. “Siblings and their friends, assorted uncles and aunts, everyone drinking and watching television and utterly making a racket. They might as well be Arabs. What an atmosphere for a scholar.”
Well, Sam was a scholar, of sorts. He had graduated from the police academy and achieved a bachelor of science as well, and now he was studying law part-time. Our town pays for that sort of thing for its public employees, but of course it doesn’t provide a study house or even a carrel. “Within our family a person is able to reflect, to contemplate; and the girls have hundreds of those yellow highlighters.”
And so Sam on his red Vespa came to that dreadful house (“prewar spaciousness; new furnace”) almost every weekday, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes in the evening. “Sometimes in the morning,” Lucienne reported, her cheeks as pink as that day’s scarf.
“Policemen have shifting shifts,” I told her.
“He takes one of the girls for a ride before school.”
I knew that. When Sam rounded the widower’s corner with a daughter riding pillion, I was reminded of my splendid horse, Patrick. He was a Hanoverian, seventeen hands. I had stabled him at Prides Crossing. During my teens I rode him three afternoons a week, taking the trolley from South Godolphin to North Station, then the train to Patrick. And so I was reminded too of my parents, bravely maintaining that South Godolphin mansion (“Italianate villa on two acres; swimming pool and carriage house”) — reminded of Daddy’s bankruptcy and the taking over of his company by two well-dressed Italians. “Goddamn foreigners.” And reminded of my misguided marriage, entered into in the wake of Daddy’s ill fortune. All those memories, occasioned by a young man and a girl on a motor scooter. Lucienne in her soft chiffon and tippling Sylvia and Connie the determined empath probably had youthful things to be reminded of too. I don’t know what those things were because around here we don’t discuss regrets or triumphs. And I certainly don’t know what Avner thought on a particular morning when he descended his front steps just as Sam rode up, Daphna behind him, her arms around his leather jacket, hair streaming. I know only that he waved at them.
Daphna was now often seen at the supermarket, accompanied by the youngest daughter, who examined each item and calculated its price per ounce and chose the cheapest, and at the same time kept a running total in her head — I knew she did that; Connie’s remarkable intuition saw tumblers spinning behind the girl’s forehead. Daphna began to cook almost every night — I knew that too; Lucienne provided her with many of the recipes. Sam and the family could probably fit themselves around the kitchen table, especially if the debris were removed. But Sabbath dinner had always been served in the dining room, heavy with the dark furniture that came with the dark house. On Fridays, driving by, slowing up, I could see six people around the table, could see Sam’s curls brazen in the candlelight.
Wednesdays became safe. Every day was safe. Daphna had retreated into her expanded family. I wished them all good listening.
III.
It was on a Wednesday that the package came — Wednesday morning, a few days after New Year’s Eve. The postman held it out to me at arm’s length. The package was oblong and bore Israeli stamps and was addressed to Daphna in English. “Nobody’s home there, not even Flanagan.” (Postmen know everything.) “Would you sign for it?” As a proper Godolphin citizen, I complied.
I forgot about it for a day. But on Thursday when I got home from the Marigold Café I noticed it on my Stephen Badlam chest, the one item of furniture I’d salvaged from Daddy’s house. I picked it up and hurried down the street, still wearing my otter coat, twelve years old now but once stunning, still wearing my high-heeled boots. The evening was misty, and warm enough for me to unbutton the coat as I walked. Rand had proposed that afternoon. I was thinking it over. I liked sailing with him off Wings Neck. I’d like being moneyed again. I could sell the business. And though I would never forget Patrick, I could buy another horse…
I walked up the seven moist steps. No one answered my ring. I walked down and made my way along the driveway, past the red Vespa. I rang the back doorbell.
Who opened it? The youngest girl, I think, scrambling up from the floor where she and the middle one were sitting, each with a bowl of stew — one of Lucienne’s recipes, probably. One girl was eating with a spoon, the other was not. The stew proper was in a large enameled pan on the stove, and its fragrance almost banished the odor of cranberries burning in another pot. Other things cooked on other burners. Something sweet baked unseen in the oven. The fan, never fixed, did not dissipate these aromas. The room was steamy and it was illuminated only here and there, like a Rembrandt tavern. Some light came from a tipsy lamp on the table; some from a butterscotch disk, circa 1930, embedded in the ceiling; some from a bulb on a pole with a shredding shade; some from a weak fluorescent bar imperfectly attached to the stove. Daphna was standing at the stove, stirring and tasting, then raising her wooden spoon like a scepter. She and the girls wore golden hoops in their ears — the daughters had apparently prevailed in the matter of lobes. Their long hair was loose and lustrous. The oldest was sitting on a high stool, reading. Avner and Sam, at the table, argued in a peaceable way, each gesturing with a wineglass. The table was littered as usual, but a few plates had been laid.
I approached Daphna. “This is yours.” Garlic and rosemary threatened to overwhelm me. The two men belatedly stood up. Sam overturned his wineglass. I handed the package to Daphna.
“From Abba!” she cried. She tore away the stiff mailing paper and unwrapped corrugated cardboard from three books. I saw that one was French and another German. The cover of the third was embossed with beautiful, curly letters. She pressed all three to her breast. I motioned to Avner to sit, and he did, and so did Sam, and they resumed their amiable dispute, which had something to do with the Bill of Rights. They spoke English, of course. The two younger daughters were speaking Hebrew. The oldest daughter, her paperback in her left hand held open by her thumb, slid off the stool and retrieved the wrapping paper and the cardboard from the floor (Daphna was already reading one of the new books) and stuffed it into an overflowing trash basket and picked up Sam’s fallen wineglass and refilled it and handed it to him, raising her eyes briefly from the page. I imagined her in the shower, one arm extending beyond the plastic curtains to keep the book dry.