That Said Read online

  squashed into an aluminum foil ball

  she’s crumpled hard as a chunk of pyrite.

  She unzips the baggie and out falls

  “The Farm,” eight pages long, more pamphlet

  than book. Not much happens in the plot.

  A farm, a barn, a boy, a cow that moos a lot.

  The words are hard, but Emma sounds them out

  one at a time, the O’s both long and short—

  Cheerios bobbing in a lake of milk

  in which her spoon trails like a drunken oar.

  This morning her father, coaching her,

  clears his throat, knocking his cup against what?

  —I hear it clatter but can’t make it out.

  “Hurry up,” he shouts, “or you’ll miss the bus!”

  I hear his imperative clearly enough,

  but in the raised volume of her reply

  the words are lost, garbled, caught in the throat

  of the register’s winding ducts and vents.

  In an hour or so, when sunlight moves on,

  a film will glaze the soured milk, like frost,

  where the sodden O’s float, life preservers.

  Now, over muffled clinks of silverware,

  clattered plates, running water, morning din,

  the sound of sense resumes its little dance.

  I hear my daughter turn the title page,

  then silence, then a spurt of words, false start,

  hesitation, a spondee of some sort,

  then an iamb, then an anapest, then

  a pause, another iamb—that’s The End.

  Then the scrape of wood on tile as Emma

  pushes her chair away and clomps upstairs

  to change from her pajamas into clothes.

  Holocaust Museum

  As we filed through the exhibits,

  Charlotte and I took turns

  reading captions to Andy.

  Herded into a freight elevator,

  we rode to the top floor,

  to the beginning of the War,

  descending floor by floor,

  year by year, into history

  growing darker, ceilings

  lowering, aisles narrowing

  to tunnels like the progress

  of Andy’s blindness.

  In Warsaw, his parents owned

  the Maximilian Fur Salon,

  like a little Bergdorf Goodman—

  doorman, and French elevator,

  furs draped on Persian carpets

  and blue velvet Empire chairs.

  Andy was one of the lucky ones—

  playing cards in the back seat

  of the family Packard as they

  threaded through peasant villages,

  trading mink coats for gasoline—

  escaping Poland the day before

  the border closed. Unless Topper,

  his German shepherd guide dog,

  is at his side, it’s hard to tell

  that Andy is blind. His blue eyes

  look directly at you when you speak.

  Today, his gray-bearded face, grave,

  as Charlotte and I described

  photographs and artifacts, or read

  quickly, in monotones, as if reciting

  selections from a menu.

  Something had to break me down—

  the cattle car, crematorium door,

  the confiscated valises of Jews

  piled high, dramatically lit

  like a department store display.

  It was a small snapshot of a girl—

  shot dead, lying beside her parents

  on the cobbled street, her hair

  as long as my eight-year-old’s,

  her coat, about my daughter’s size.

  People detoured around our little

  traffic jam slowing down

  the line, as Topper strained

  against his leash and metal

  harness. They smiled when he

  flopped down, sighing, nodding off

  at Andy’s feet. A man

  asked permission to pet him.

  After all those photographs

  of snarling, muzzled, killer dogs,

  what a relief to see an ordinary one.

  He struck up a conversation with Andy.

  “I see you’re blind,” he said politely.

  “Do you understand this

  any better than I do?” And Andy

  shook his head and told him no.

  The Lazy Susan

  After dinner, while the coffee perked

  and my mother cleared the dishes,

  my father would take from the shelf

  the Scrabble box and the dictionary,

  its black leatherette jacket as battered

  as some other family’s heirloom Bible,

  its red ribbon bookmark frayed to arterial threads.

  I’d sprawl on the floor a few feet away

  and start my homework.

  My father unfolded the game board

  onto the lazy Susan’s wooden turntable,

  and shuffled the wood Scrabble tiles

  face-down in the box.

  They’d be seated in their usual places

  at the dining table—husband opposite wife.

  Aunt Flossie would select seven tiles from the box,

  her hand skimming them like a clairvoyant’s.

  Then Uncle Al, to her left, would draw.

  He was used to arguing cases in court,

  and always winning, like Perry Mason.

  Waiting his turn,

  he’d bully my father about his tie,

  insult my mother’s coffee,

  comment about my beatnik-long hair.

  Then, he’d start an argument with my aunt,

  adjusting his black pirate-patch

  over his missing right eye, a dead ringer

  for the Hathaway Shirt Man in Life.

  I’d get up and circle the table.

  Standing behind my mother’s back,

  I studied the letters on her rack,

  her ever-changing cache of luck—

  syllables, stutters, false starts,

  the game’s only Z or X, or Q—useless without a U

  unless you were spelling IRAQ, and then

  no foreign words or proper nouns allowed.

  She added an S to the board, going across,

  and ROSE grew into a bouquet.

  Under the S, she put T-A-R,

  and it spawned a STAR, going down.

  My mother held in reserve her secret weapon,

  a blank tile, that could substitute

  for any letter in the alphabet.

  They groused as she announced her score

  and rotated the lazy Susan a quarter turn.

  A ten-minute limit—that was their rule—

  ten minutes to come up with a word.

  Ten minutes. Ten minutes. Ten minutes.

  Another half hour passed.

  Ashtrays filled up, were emptied,

  ashes drifting over the vinyl tablecloth

  as, week after month after year,

  the lazy Susan turned under the chandelier.

  They’d play until ten or eleven, or until Al blew up

  and Flossie tried to smooth things over,

  my mother muttering “some things will never change.”

  But once, before I went off to college,

  I saw them actually finish a game.

  Uncle Al stared at his letters.

  Aunt Flossie lit a cigarette,

  and asked, “What’s with Milton Marx?”

  My mother said, “I saw him in the grocery.

  Two days out of the hospital, he looks terrible.”

  My father said, “He stopped by the store.

  To me, he looked okay.”

  My uncle said, “Milton called me on the phone.

  He could barely even talk, he was so hoarse.”

  My aunt glanced
at her rack of letters.

  “Thank you thank you!” Aunt Flossie said,

  and quickly put HOARSE down on the board.

  With the flat of his hand,

  my father swept the letters back into the box

  and folded the board.

  Uncle Al tallied the final scores,

  the fingernails on his elegant hands

  buffed and polished from his weekly manicure.

  He was ambidextrous—

  a talent he was proud of,

  a word that would make a killing.

  The Combination

  I carried it in my wallet,

  the way teenage boys used to carry

  a single condom—just in case.

  On my visits home, after dessert,

  my father would nod to my mother,

  my sister, my aunts, my uncle,

  and, catching my eye, he’d give me the signal—a wink.

  He’d stand up, excusing the two of us

  from the coffee drinkers at the table.

  We’d go downstairs,

  unlock the store, deactivate the alarm,

  and lock the door behind us.

  I’d follow him past the dress racks

  into the last fitting room in the back.

  He’d draw the curtain,

  unlatch the door disguised by a mirror,

  and then he’d point to the family safe

  hidden under a green drape,

  always prefacing his apology

  with, “It’s only just in case,

  in case something should happen.

  I’m no spring chicken, let’s face it.”

  And then he’d shrug.

  I’d kneel before the squat steel box.

  While he shone the flashlight on my hands,

  nervous, I practiced the routine

  I’d rehearsed for the last twenty years,

  ever since he’d had his heart attack.

  Every time the heavy door swung open,

  I’d close my eyes, not wanting to look inside.

  When my aunt called,

  I drove north all day, checking my wallet,

  checking the numbers he’d jotted down,

  still legible on the torn pink slip.

  Behind the faded GOING OUT OF BUSINESS sign

  he placed in the window

  a month before my mother died,

  the empty store was a tomb,

  the upstairs apartment was a tomb,

  the safe had been moved to his closet.

  Underneath the chorus line of laundered shirts,

  the green drape shrouded the safe.

  I got down on my knees.

  I started with the dial turned to 0.

  I turned the dial to the left two whole turns

  and stopped at 79.

  I turned the dial to the right one whole turn

  and stopped at 35.

  I turned the dial to the left

  and stopped at 10.

  I heard a click, turned the handle,

  and pulled the heavy door.

  Sliding metal drawers and shelves,

  sets of keys and stacked envelopes

  stuffed with green, with gold

  cuff links, his gold wedding ring

  and gold Jewish star, his dog tags,

  expired membership cards—

  musicians’ union, driver’s license,

  smeary photocopies of birth certificates,

  and the key to the safe-deposit box

  (the duplicate key was locked in mine),

  everything on the up-and-up,

  no mistresses, no skeletons, a life

  apparently as orderly

  as the inside of this safe.

  All those years of spinning the numbers,

  rehearsing the combination—

  father, mother, daughter, daughter—

  until I got it right.

  Happy Family

  All of them are gone

  Except for me; and for me nothing is gone.

  —Randall Jarrell, “Thinking of the Lost World”

  For Howard and Emma

  and Florence Abramowitz

  Happy Family

  In Chinatown, we order Happy Family,

  the Specialty of the House.

  The table set; red paper placemats

  inscribed with the Chinese zodiac.

  My husband’s an ox; my daughter’s

  a dragon, hungry and cranky; I’m a pig.

  The stars will tell us whether

  we at this table are compatible.

  The waiter vanishes into the kitchen.

  Tea steeps in the metal teapot.

  My husband plays with his napkin.

  In the booth behind him sits a couple

  necking, apparently in love.

  Every Saturday night after work,

  my mother ordered takeout from the Hong Kong,

  the only Chinese restaurant in town.

  She filled the teakettle.

  By the time it boiled,

  the table was set, minus knives and forks,

  and my father had fetched the big brown paper bag

  leaking grease: five shiny white

  food cartons stacked inside.

  My little sister and I unpacked the food,

  unsheathed the wooden chopsticks—

  Siamese twins joined at the shoulders—

  which we snapped apart.

  Thirteen years old, moody, brooding,

  daydreaming about boys,

  I sat and ate safe chop suey,

  bland Cantonese shrimp,

  moo goo gai pan, and egg foo yung.

  My mother somber, my father drained,

  too exhausted from work to talk;

  clicking chopsticks

  instead of words in their mouths.

  My mother put hers aside

  and picked at her shrimp with a fork.

  She dunked a Lipton tea bag into her cup

  until the hot water turned rusty,

  refusing the Hong Kong’s complimentary tea,

  no brand she’d ever seen before.

  I cleared the table,

  put empty cartons back in the bag.