The Ghost of Hannah Mendes (50 page)

She’d called him, but only a machine had picked up. She’d left him a message. From the corner of her eye she studied the little red light on her answering machine, willing it to flicker with the joyful notice of new messages.

It did not.

That was the thing about slamming doors in people’s faces. Sometimes they took it seriously, especially if they themselves were serious people.

She lay down and wept, her whole soul pouring out in an agony of longing and regret and most of all fright. She was more frightened than she had ever been in all her life; terrified of the idea that certain acts were irrevocable.

When she got up, the house was dark and someone was pressing the buzzer.

“A minute!” she said hoarsely, groping her way out of bed.

The moment she sat up, the nausea began again. Worse this time, she thought, feeling the underpinnings of a ravenous hunger she couldn’t have imagined, let alone remember experiencing. It was as if she had been brutally and deliberately starved for a week.

Food, she thought. Anything.

The buzz gave way to a bang, somehow less angry, but more insistent than ever.

“One second! Jeez!” she called out, desperate for something to eat. Who could it be, anyhow? The landlord? Jean? Watchtower people…? She suddenly couldn’t think of a single person she really wanted to talk to, or would be particularly happy to see.

“I’m going to look through the peephole, and if I don’t open the door it means I don’t want you, so get lost!” she shouted, remembering the old line that worked so well.

There was a carton of half-eaten cottage cheese, and an elderly orange. She peeled it greedily, pressing the soft, dry sections between her teeth, savoring the imperfect flavor. Then she opened the cottage cheese. Green mold stared back at her. Was it harmful? she wondered, pushing it aside with a spoon and searching for the white underneath. Antibiotics were all molds, weren’t they? She stopped, shaking her head in disbelief and tossing it into the trash.

Chinese, she thought. Succulent, spicy, with lots of stir-fried vegetables and those long, delicious noodles, piping hot. Three or four bowls, at least. Only after she’d finished imagining it down to the last detail did she realize that the knocking had finally stopped.

Good. She grabbed her purse and checked out her cash. Enough for one meal at least, she thought gratefully, opening up the front door. But at the threshold, something stopped her. She stepped out, searching in all directions, feeling a sense of palpable loss together with a strange, nameless kind of hope.

She leaned back against her door, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. The scent of musk and rosemary seemed to drift down over her.

Imagination, she told herself. Wishful thinking.

She locked the door and walked thoughtfully down the steps toward Mulberry Street, her head spinning and her heart pounding as if inside her some red arrow were moving up toward the exploding point.

She searched the crowds. Sometimes she thought she saw someone who looked like him, but as she neared, the hair turned the wrong shade of blond, or the height was not right.

Lost.

Get lost.

Groping her way to the stoop of an old brownstone, she sat and watched the crowds swirl around her, thickening. The Festival of San Gennaro, she realized, looking at the sidewalk vendors, the colorful floats full of sacred icons, and the people following behind, chanting prayers. All at once, she saw the years of her life swirl past, full of sound and color and movement, lacking in all meaning. Depthless. The chance, one in a million, to find her true soul mate, gone forever.

Lost…

“G-d of my fathers and mothers before me, who has sweetened my life and given me blessings beyond measure, hear my prayer,” she heard herself say. “Help me.”

“Food?” a vendor offered her. “Ham, and blood sausages.”

“I’m a vegetarian.” She shook her head.

“There’s this Buddhist-vegetarian restaurant around the corner. Why don’t you go there?” the woman said helpfully. “That is, if you’re hungry.”

“I’m starving,” she said.

“Well, what are you waiting for, then?”

What am I waiting for? she thought.

There it was. The pickle barrel. The fringes of the red lanterns, a bit more frayed now. She ordered large bowls of steaming food and ate slowly, tasting nothing, simply anxious to feel some relief from the craving for sustenance.

She left with the ache of hunger gone, but feeling emptier than ever. She wanted to crawl back into bed and cover her head with a pillow and weep for all the vanished riches of a life that had almost been hers; for the rough, dark clouds hovering above her that would never part. Reluctantly, she climbed the steps back to her apartment.

There he was, sitting with his back up against her door, his elbows on his knees, palms over ears, fingers pressing into his scalp in an attitude of utter desolation.

She dropped to her knees and sat back on her ankles, resting her hands softly on his shoulders. His arms were around her, filling the emptiness, overflowing with an abundance that made her want to laugh, to cry out that it was too much, too much. And when he looked up at her, she saw the clouds part and the shining beauty of the world come through again.

41

“Well, how does she look?” Francesca fluffed the stiff netting of the white veil over Suzanne’s shoulders and spread the long satin train in a perfect arc.

Janice, a little weepy, stood on one side of Suzanne, their father, Craig Abraham, on the other. “Beautiful!” they chorused.

Catherine da Costa sat up in her wheelchair. She looked at her blossoming granddaughter, touching her rosy cheek and drinking in the whiteness of her smile. “More than that! She looks…” Catherine caught her breath, watching Suzanne straighten her shoulders and lift her chin with the calm dignity of a young queen about to be crowned. “…like a true descendant of the House of Nasi.”

Suzanne knelt, putting her fragrant young arms around her grandmother’s frail, thin waist. “Gran, Gran. Thank you,” she whispered, her voice breaking. Catherine leaned into her granddaughter’s warm, full breasts. When they parted, both felt as if some great secret had passed between them.

“There is something we need to do. Carlotta!”

“Here, missus.” She put a tooled-leather case into Catherine’s hand.

“And here is the pen and ink. Come. Let’s begin.”

She opened the case and carefully removed the family Bible. With trembling fingers, she turned the pages until she reached the tree with its golden boughs. “Janice, your hand is steadier than mine. Write it in.”

Janice took the pen and dipped it into the peacock-blue ink. Beside her daughter’s name she wrote in carefully: “Gabriel Fonseca, m., 8.6.96.”

Catherine looked at it, her eyes brimming. “And when the baby comes, don’t forget to fill it in. And when Francesca marries…”

Suzanne put her hand gently on her grandmother’s shoulder. “You’ll be here to remind us,
Abuela
.”

Catherine patted her hand and smiled. No, she thought. I won’t.

From inside the synagogue came the faint strains of the band beginning to tune its instruments.

“You’d better go in,
Madre
,” Janice urged.

Carlotta pushed the wheelchair toward the front, positioning it in a spot right near the wedding canopy.

The great central chamber of the old Spanish and Portuguese synagogue in Manhattan was filled with lilacs, hyacinths, and roses of every hue. The polished wooden pews gleamed with a warm, homey light. The music began: Mozart and Beethoven, some Hebrew melodies, and finally, when the family began the long procession down the aisle toward the wedding canopy, traditional Ladino melodies.

Gabriel entered first. Tall, golden-haired, wearing a black tuxedo beneath which a gold embroidered Spanish vest flashed with little bursts of light as he walked. His face was light, filled with such utter and complete happiness that it could not be mistaken for anything else, anything less.

A group of Gabriel’s cousins came next, the little girls in apricot organza with lacy collars and wide puffed sleeves, their shining hair crowned with wildflowers.

Then came Francesca and Marius (who had arrived from London two hours before), the maid of honor and best man. In a tiny-waisted dark peach dress with a full skirt and puffed sleeves, her hair falling to her shoulders in a mass of lovely curls, she looked like an older version of the children. Or like the sweetest angel Botticelli ever conceived, Marius thought as he kept pace with her. He looked very distinguished in a formal black tuxedo and striped cravat, which every now and again he picked at as if it were choking him.

And then came Suzanne.

There was a hush in the room, like a collective inheld breath. Oh, the shine about her! Catherine exulted. A light like a golden sphere. It sparkled and blurred and finally divided, becoming a number of golden spheres that hovered on the ground and in the air.

Catherine closed her eyes, pressing her fingertips gently to the lids, hoping to clear her vision. But when she opened her eyes, the spheres had multiplied, filling the entire synagogue, thousands and thousands of them, hovering points of light containing in each the figure of a man, woman, or child.

The synagogue was packed now, she saw, as the rabbi read out the seven blessings. Relatives, friends, living and dead, some she remembered, and many more she had never met joined one another in the pews, up on the ceiling and over the doorways, bathing the young couple in a warm glow as they stood giving and receiving those ancient, sacred vows of fidelity and honest love that bring mankind its truest blessings.

There was her Grandmother Nasi, wearing her flowered synagogue dress; and her mother, Elizabeth, her kind, patient face full of thoughtful happiness. There was Carl’s young niece, and Carl’s parents. And there was Carl himself, waiting by the door, handsome in his favorite sweater, his pipe in his hand as he waved to her.

She let out a soft moan.

“Gran?” Francesca turned, looking at her in concern.

“I’m fine. Fine.” She patted her granddaughter’s smooth, young hand.

And now, another contingent of spheres blew in, their light glowing with a richer patina. They wore sandals and togas, pointed yellow hats and farthingales. In the middle were Gracia and Francisco Mendes.

They moved slowly down the aisle until they stood on either side of the bride and groom. Catherine saw all four climb up together to the
tevah
until they stood beneath the prayer shawl.

The rabbi began: “
Soon may you hear in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of joy and gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who makes the bridegroom to rejoice with the bride
.”

She watched Gracia and Francisco repeat the blessings and sip the wine as if they, too, were getting married again. And when the glass was broken, and the cries of
mazel tov
rose up like incense, Catherine found Gracia standing beside her.

“You’ve done well, Rivka. Everyone’s quite pleased. They’re all waiting to welcome you. Are you ready?”

Catherine looked at her granddaughter, resplendent in the regal white gown. And what of the baby, her great-grandchild? She wanted so much to hold it in her arms, to be at the celebration of its birth. To know if it was a boy or a girl. And then she looked at Francesca. The contours of her young face were sensitive and vulnerable as she looked at her young man sitting in the front pew waiting for her.

Marius and Francesca. She laughed to herself, shaking her head. But opposites often made the best partners, forming the strongest bonds of completion. They would have their chance, anyway, which was the most anyone can hope for. How she wanted to know if they would marry, to attend their wedding, to see their children.

How she wanted to live forever!

She gasped. The pain, both terrible and familiar, hit her full in the stomach with the punishing force of an instrument of torture. Her face turned white as she clutched herself against it, waiting for it to pass. When it did, she smiled wanly.

No, not forever. Not this way, she thought, tugging on the ugly tubes that stretched from her arms to the metal post. Not another minute, this way.

The spheres moved and floated and danced around her. She watched them, fascinated. They were corpuscles, she realized. Some remnant of each one of these men and women flowed through her veins, just as some part of her flowed through her granddaughters’. And each time a family celebration took place, something of her would be there, too, encased in her own golden sphere.

“I’m ready now,” she said out loud.

“
Madre?
” Janice bent down to her. “Did you say you were ready?”

She looked at Janice, startled. “Yes. I’m ready to leave. You and Craig go on to the party. Carlotta and that Fredericks nurse will take good care of me. I’ll see you all in the morning.”

Janice bent over her, her face puckered with concern. “Sure?”

Catherine reached up and touched her daughter’s face. Craig was also in the middle of a divorce. Maybe they’d get together again. Who knew? “
Mazel tov
. Now it’s your turn to become a grandmother.”

“Never!” Janice cringed.

“Wait. You’ll love it more than anything else in the whole world, Janice. You’ll see.”

“Gran, let me drop you off. I don’t mind,” Francesca urged.

“Francesca, I think there’s a young man waiting over there to talk to you. Go to him! I’ve always liked Marius.”

“He’ll wait,” Francesca said. “
El mundo pertenese a los pasensiozos
. Isn’t that what you always told us?”

She winked. “Who says I always know what I’m talking about! Now, go, go.” She smiled, blowing them all a kiss as the competent Mrs. Fredericks wheeled her toward the exit.

“When did you get in?”

“Just in time to make it to the ceremony. I’ve got so many frequent flyer miles, they don’t allow the plane to take off until I arrive…. Brings back memories, no?” he said, glancing around at the Spanish-inspired decor.