Efrem
“We’re on a mission,” Isaac tells me.
“Yes?”
“We have to find Christine Johnson.”
“The woman from the letters?”
“Yes,” Isaac says. “And actually, I’ve found her. So what I really mean is I need you to come with me.”
“Where does she live?”
“In Grasshouse. She didn’t go far. I hate to ask you, but would you go with me?”
“Of course!”
“I’ve got to know the truth,” Isaac is telling me. “I’ve got to know what’s really going on. Or went on. I asked my dad. And you know how calm he usually is? Well, he wouldn’t tell me and then suddenly old Aaron just swung out and hit me in the face.”
“What?”
Isaac waved it off, “He cried about it later on. He feels bad. But he still won’t talk about Christine so…” Isaac shrugs.
“I guess we’ll see,” I say.
“Yes,” Isaac says. “I guess we will.”
It is two days before Christmas. I don’t know what we’ll find at this woman’s house, but I can’t imagine it would be the sort of Christmas, or Chanukah or Devali or whatever the hell you celebrate present that anyone would want.
Isaac drives. I can tell he’s nervous because he keeps drumming on the steering wheel and humming loudly. He hasn’t told Jinny about this trip. We go east on Route 6 until we’ve passed the snowy entrance to Saint Clare. The red brick buildings just closed for winter break a few days ago. We drive west down Route 6 for about ten minutes until it has become a little less congested with burger joints and banks, and there are one of two Dairy Queens, a video store, a realty office.
“Have we passed Magnum Street yet?” Isaac asks me.
I tell him I don’t think so because I haven’t seen it. But I wasn’t looking for it. In the end we haven’t passed it. We turn left and go straight for three or four blocks. The route to this woman’s house is too straightforward.
“Nice neighborhood,” I say.
Isaac nods. “Little bungalows. Cute.”
All the trees are black and naked. Plastic crèches and crappy reindeer are out. Some old woman across the street still has her pumpkins out, probably frozen, certainly rotten by now.
“783 Magnum is the house,” Isaac tells me.
It’s a brick bungalow with a simple red concrete porch. This is ugly to me, and the red paint is chipping.
Isaac turns to me putting on an excited face.
“I’m nervous,” he says.
“You shouldn’t be,” I tell him, but I don’t mean it. I’m hoping this woman will not be at home. I’m hoping that if she is home, then she has something good to say.
Isaac knocks on the door, bolder than he feels, and when a woman answers it he asks, “Are you Christine Johnson?”
“I already have a religion.”
“What?” Isaac starts, then, “No… I’m not a Jehovah’s Witness. Or a Mormon. I’m… Are you her? Are you Christine Johnson?”
“I am?” she looks from him to me, nervous.
“Ma’am, my name is Isaac Weaver,” he begins, and she nods and then a look comes over her face.
“Weaver?” she says.
“Yes, ma’am,”
“Isaac,” she says.
He nods.
“And this is my friend, Efrem. I came because you knew my mother. She wrote all these letters to you. Which I have. So, I never thought about it till now, but you must have sent them back and--”
“Ma’am,” I interrupt, “could you let us in? It’s cold.”
I don’t mean to be rune, but she’s being rude.
She lets us in. It smells like old, salty chicken soup. It smells like bouillon cubes. Christine says, “What is it that you want?”
“To understand,. To know who you were to my mother. Why she did what she did.”
I had not looked at her yet. She looked very tired, as if she’d just come out of a long sickness, and her face was lined, her pores large. Her blond hair was stringy and dark at the roots. She wasn’t in work clothes, but jogging pants and a sweatshirt, so I imagined she was off on holiday.
Christine cocked her head and then said to Isaac, “How old are you now?”
“Twenty-three, ma’am.”
“Quit calling me ma’am,” she said, only half serious. There was a far off look in her eyes. “I guess it would have been that long ago now. Years fly. Watch out for that when you get old,” she looked at us. “Years fly.”
She sighed and said, “Do you boys drink tea?”
We didn’t, but we said yes, and she said, “I’ll make us tea and tell you the truth. As much of it as I know. I’ll do my best. I’ve never told it before. You all are good friends, aren’t you?” she looked from me to Isaac.
“Yes,” Isaac insisted, shooting me one of those glances that embarrassed me with its affection.
“Good,” Christine said grimly, sitting us in her living room, “because what I’m about to tell you, you’d only want a best friend to know.”
We sat with our mugs of tea, hot and sweet before us, and Christine said, “Have you boys been friends for long?”
Christine said to Isaac, “I met your mother when I was a little girl. We went to Catholic school together.”
Isaac looked up in shock.
“Saint Hyacinth’s.”
“Mom was Jewish,” Isaac said. “I’m Jewish.”
“Well, yes and no,” Christine said. “I think it depends on what school you belong to. I think Orthodox say you’re only a Jew if your mom’s Jewish, and so I guess it matters what Elizabeth thought she was. Anyway, hermom was an Irish Catholic. Her dad’s last name was Teidelbaum. Did you know your grandmother made your mother get all of her sacraments?”
“No,” Isaac said. “I get the feeling there’s a lot I didn’t know about my mother.”
Christine sighed.
“You’re right,” she told him. “She was my best friend. We decided we’d live together forever. Be old maids together. We got to high school. Public. Your grandfather was insistent that she get out of Catholic school. He hated Catholics. Go figure why he married one. He didn’t want his daughter being a nun. We had boyfriends and dated and everything. She liked little dark haired guys. I teased her and said she liked Jews. But, of course, there’re a lot of Irish Catholics who are dark haired with glasses. Anyway,. she gravitated toward Jews later on because that was the part of her life she hadn’t been raised with. Your grandfather, much as he didn’t like Catholics, didn’t practice Judaism, and he was a long way away from the rest of his family.
“But Elizabeth’s prime love was for me,” Elizabeth said, “and in college, when she was studying in New York and I was down in Dayton, I made it known that I was a lesbian. Within a year we were lovers. No one was more shocked than us.”
I looked at Isaac and could tell by the pallor of his skin and his complete stillness that really no one was more shocked than him.
“We were... happy,” Christine said. “It was right. Sometimes she wanted to date guys. Look, but don’t touch. Neither of us were virgins. We realized a man couldn’t give us what we needed. Unless what we needed was to feel normal. When we moved back here, I guess Elizabeth needed to feel normal. She needed her parents to see her with a guy. And this is when Aaron came into the picture.”
Catherine looked up at Isaac.
“Your grandfather liked Aaron Weaver. I liked him too. I thought he was just a friend. It wasn’t until the end—it wasn’t until we split up, Elizabeth and me, when I moved back home, that I understood what was going on.
“All of a sudden she was getting married to Aaron because, you see, she was pregnant.”
Isaac nodded, his jaw hard.
“I didn’t believe it. I could not believe it. I cried myself to sleep for months. I did not come to the wedding. Aaron wondered about that for a long time and that was when I knew he didn’t know about us, your mother and I, anymore than I had known about them.
“It wasn’t until after you were born that he found out, and he was so angry. He was ballistic. Aaron gets like that. He is the sweetest little man, and when rage grabs him, it takes control and so he was wild with it. I think he beat Elizabeth. I think I was happy. He called me and he just screamed the most horrible things, and then he told me to never contact her again.”
Christine paused. She took in a very deep breath, and lifted the coffee mug to her lips. After that she said, “That’s when the letters began. I take it things were never happy for her again. That’s when she began to fall apart. And pity was something I didn’t have then. I was so hurt. I made sure to return every letter she ever sent. And then the day I read in the paper that... she was dead…
“Dead,” she repeated. “All I could think was... I was right here, across town, a town away. If things were that bad you could have come.”
The house was so quiet and for a long time no one made a sound and then I said, “Thank you so much, Ma’am, would you like us to clean up a little?”
“No,” she waved it away. She had forgotten we were there.
We put on our coats and left. I think Isaac mumbled thank you. We drove back onto Route 6, heading back to Rhodes. We didn’t say anything until Isaac pulled over to the side of the road and suddenly he shut off the car, began sucking in breaths and balling up his fist until they turned white.
I could see his eyes starting to tear up and so I looked away, and then he turned his back and started to bawl into the car door. It was the worst sound I had ever heard. It sounded like he was ripping his lungs up, and he just kept on gasping and I don’t know how long it lasted.
When he had quieted down, his voice was winded, like he’d done a lot of running, but he was dignified and he said, “Efrem, I would greatly appreciate you reaching into that glove compartment and handing me the old handkerchief. Not the blue one. That’s a snot rag. The white one is clean.”
I handed it to him, he began wiping his red and white face and blowing his nose.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I told him.
He started to laugh and cry at the same time, and he said, “Oh, Goddamnit, Ef. Goddamnit!” and kept laughing, and then crying. At last he stopped.
“I don’t want to go back to Rhodes,” Isaac said.
“Let’s keep driving,” I said.
And so we did. We stayed on Route 6 until we were well out of Grasshouse, and we kept driving until we were lost, and then when it seemed like we knew where we were, I directed Isaac to drive until we were lost again. We drove till we were tired of driving, and found an old Holliday Inn.
“Wonder if it’s got a pool in it.”
“If it’s got a burger joint nearby and good beds, does it matter?”
I agreed with Isaac.
“I’m paying,” he said.
I did not object.
The little desk lamp was the only light. I will always remember the smell of his cigarettes and my coffee and the goldenness of the light and us sitting together and the love between us almost as thick as blood.
“I was twelve when we moved to Rhodes. My father was never happy. Every time he had a job he was mean and miserable because he had to work, and when he was unemployed he was drunk and miserable because there was no work. He was just an unhappy man, and he was always telling my mother that if we moved somewhere else then he’d be happy. I remember one night, when I was ten, we up and left Missouri for Topeka Kansas. In the middle of the night. That’s where we got Cecile.
“You know Gene? Well, his dad and mine went to school together, and so Gene’s dad got mine a job as a manager over at the glass plant in Sandusky. Hence, how we ended up here. And then, at my twelfth birthday party, with Gene and a bunch of kids I don’t know... No, I take that back, Ryan Laujinesse was there because we had to invite everyone we went to school with—my father had the most original plan. Always one to make a bang--the man was never dull--C.J. Walker came out dressed as a clown, pulled out a handgun and blew his goddamned head off.”
I could tell that Isaac was shocked by my lack of shock.
“You saw it?”
I nodded.
“You actually saw your dad fucking blow his head off?”
“But you knew that.”
“I knew it happened,” Isaac allowed. “But not, that… You…”
“Oh, yes. I saw it.. There’s really nothing like it,” I told him.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Isaac said, taking in a breath, and then taking a long drag on his cigarette and sending jets of smoke out of his nostrils.
“You never told me what your mom was like,” Efrem said. “But you know what my dad was like. I don’t think you’ll ever understand how I feel now until you know how I felt then. What went through my mind when he died. The whole week of it, what shook my system for a long time after they put him in the ground.
“C.J. was nuts. My whole life was a prison, at his whim. There was nothing permanent, there was no happiness, and I was nothing more than baggage. I really was. I hadn’t a friend in the world Every time I made one they vanished. Or, I vanished. When he died, that was the moment I knew that I was free. Those old Gospel hymns about finding freedom in the blood of Jesus? Sometimes I can see the moment CJ did that. When I see it I see a clown suit, a bunch of white kids in my backyard and blood. Lots and lots of blood. And my freedom.”
Isaac sat across from me. Suddenly, looking very business like he crushed his cigarette out in the little glass ashtray we’d stolen from Wallace’s
“This shit sucks,” he declared
He took the back of his hand across his face.
”The only thing is for a long time I couldn’t cry I was so angry. And now I’m not angry anymore. I’m just sad, just real, real sad.”
He sat there, still, and tears ran down his still face, and I buried my face in my hands and I didn’t cry, but I felt exhausted and tired, like I’d just cried, and we were both like that for a while, and then Isaac wiped his face and said, “I never tell you what my mom was like because I can’t remember. I keep thinking that maybe that’s cause I didn’t really care about her. I didn’t really pay attention and that maybe if I had then---”
“Isaac.”
“I should have paid attention,” he banged his fist into his palm. “I didn’t pay attention to my own mom.”
“Well who gives a fuck?” I snapped.
“What?”
His eyes flew open. He scowled at me.
“Who gives a fuck?” I asked again.
“You’re right, Isaac. You probably didn’t pay her attention. You probably did take her for granted, but shit, you were nine. How else were you supposed to be? You can’t blame yourself for some crazy bitch taking her life.”
Isaac started to talk, and then I put up a hand. “You can’t. And you can’t let her rule your life. Now that’s she’s dead. Don’t give her that. What the fuck did she give you?”
“She gave me life.”
“Fuck her. I give you life. I’m giving you life. We’re all giving you life. Jinny, me, Cecile, Aaron. Think about that, Isaac.”
He was breathing evenly now. We both were. He looked a little like a hawk in Malcolm X glasses.
Strong again?
Strong enough for now.
