Becoming the Butlers Page 4

  “I’m afraid she’s not here, Mrs. Silvers.”

  “What?”

  “I said she’s not here.”

  “Then where the hell is she?”

  “I don’t exactly know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know? Aren’t you her husband? Is this some kind of prank? My daughter’s getting married February fourteenth.”

  “I’m sure she is, and my congratulations. But Elizabeth is gone. Everything is gone.”

  “You mean she left? She left you?”

  “I… I suppose so,” my father stuttered.

  “Didn’t she leave a note?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t found one yet.”

  “Well you just better find your wife, Mister. She’s got a two-hundred-dollar deposit from my husband and if I don’t see those goddamn invitations I’m gonna…”

  My father gently placed the receiver back in its cradle. The room was so quiet that he could hear the hum of the air conditioner in the next apartment. Someone began to scratch at the door. James shouted, “Come in, Elizabeth, where have you been?” but the scratching continued, square nails dragging across the wooden frame. When he opened the door Luisa Vasquez nearly fell into the room. George’s middle daughter, six years old, was sucking a thumb wrapped in three peeling Band-Aids. That day Luisa wore mismatched sneakers and one yellow and one green sock, a plaid skirt too big in the waist and pinned together with pink diaper safety pins, and an inside-out sweatshirt with ragged seams. The tenants left their childrens’ old clothes in a box in the basement for George, and my father recognized Luisa’s skirt as part of my old school uniform.

  “Yes, Luisa, what is it?” my father asked.

  The little girl replied by grabbing my father’s right trouser leg and leading him to the back hall, which was littered with empty bottles and smelled like rotting lettuce. My father wondered how George could have neglected to pick up the garbage that day, or why the back elevator wasn’t working. He climbed down five flights of stairs and found himself in the dark and humid basement. Mrs. Rosen, our next-door neighbor, was hanging her sheets to dry in the laundry room.

  “Hello, Professor Harris,” she cried out. “The television set is very nice, thank you. Would you help please to fold my sheets?”

  “Of course, Mrs. Rosen. How are you feeling?”

  “Not so bad. Except for the hip. That is very bad. But what can I do? At my age, if it’s not the hip, then it’s the shoulder, and if not the shoulder, the feet.” She cursed under her breath, and then spat something silvery from between her teeth. “But my eyes are good. Maybe too good. By the way, can you tell me how I can change the orange to the pink?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Mrs. Rosen repeated her question, and when my father shook his head in confusion, she lit a cigarette and placed it between her pursed lips.

  “The color is all wrong,” she complained. “Skin should not look like a piece of fruit. It’s too orange. And the hair isn’t right either. When do such men have such pink hair? Perhaps there is a button I can change?”

  “I’m afraid I still don’t understand,” my father said wearily.

  “Your television set,” Mrs. Rosen said, drawing out each syllable. “Your Toshiba television. It’s nineteen inches. And channel five doesn’t work either. Elizabeth gave it to me before she left.”

  “She left?”

  “That’s right. She had four suitcases. George was very nice and helped carry her trunk. Don’t you know where she is?” Mrs. Rosen asked, flicking the cigarette ashes over my father’s shoes.

  “Come, come,” Luisa wailed from the doorway. My father had forgotten about her, and followed the little girl to her family’s apartment behind the basement boiler. Luisa kicked at the door with her sneaker, and then pushed my father inside. He found himself in the cramped and hot kitchen, where the sharp scent of boiling onions brought tears to his eyes. He had never been inside the super’s apartment, and was astounded by the smallness of it. The living room had three mattresses on the floor and there was a crib in the bedroom. In the corner was a legless bathtub draped with wet socks. A series of plastic crucifixes the color of bubble gum, arranged in ascending sizes, decorated the walls. George Jr., crouched in a corner, his knees to his chest, watched a black-and-white TV no bigger than his hand. Someone was shouting soccer scores. Baby Gloria stood in her crib and sucked on a shiny Miss Piggy rattle. Luisa went up to her mother, who clutched a quilted potholder to her swollen red eyes.

  “No, no, no…,” Mrs. Vasquez cried, shaking her head so that her dangling earrings slapped against her neck.

  Pilar Vasquez, who was almost fifteen, sat cross-legged beneath the orange plastic kitchen table. An algebra book was on her lap, her mouth filled with two pencils. Long, stringy black hair covered most of her face, and her glasses, which were too big and made her eyes look amphibian, kept sliding down her nose.

  “Oh hi, Mr. Harris,” Pilar began slowly, chewing on her pencil as if my father’s name was part of the algebra equation. “I told Luisa to find you. I hope that was okay.”

  “Is anything wrong?” my father asked.

  “Yes,” she began resolutely. “Definitely yes.”

  “Well, if I can help, please let me know,” James answered. He felt as if he was slowly suffocating in that tiny windowless kitchen. Sweat ran down his back, and he wished someone would offer him a glass of water. The baby began howling, her face twisted up like a fist. George Jr. yelled at her to shut up, and kicked at something white which jumped up with a yelp and ran between my father’s legs. On the stove, a pot of lima beans sizzled.

  “Mr. Harris,” Pilar began, twisting her legs from under her until she was lying supine on the floor. As she spoke her eyes flickered back and forth, following a crack across the ceiling.

  “Mr. Harris,” she repeated, “I’m the only one who can tell you this since my mother doesn’t speak English and my brother and sister are too young to understand. See, my father, your wife…”

  Her voice faltered, and she bit her thumbnail. “They have left. Together,” Pilar said rapidly. “This morning. That’s all I know. My mother tried to cut her wrists with the butter knife. Then a razor. I stopped her. But she’s already dead.”

  “I don’t understand,” my father began.

  “Neither do I. Please go, Mr. Harris. If I don’t finish my Bio paper the Nuns are going to kill me.”

  “Wait one minute, young lady,” my father said sternly, as if he were addressing one of his pupils. “Do you mean to tell me that my wife has run off with your father—George—the super?”

  “He wrote a note. Here,” she said, digging out a creased piece of paper from her pants pocket. “It’s in Spanish, but I’ll translate: ‘My dear family. I am in love with Elizabeth Harris. She’s in love with me. We left last night for Madrid, where I’ll be a great painter. God bless all of you.’”

  My father said he thanked Pilar and then ran out the door, suddenly nauseous from the smell of all those boiling onions. What happened next is still hazy. My father doesn’t remember if he went to a bar, or just drank a bottle of vodka by himself in the apartment. Somewhere along the way he picked up a woman’s black beaded purse and a Miles Davis album. He lost his Swiss Army knife, ripped his tie, and somehow smeared his shirt collar with mustard. At seven P.M., as the Vasquez family sat down to dinner, he stumbled into the basement and knocked on their door.

  “Let me in, goddamnit,” he shouted.

  Pilar opened the door and James tumbled in.

  “It was incredible, Rachel,” James told me, his voice filled with wonder. “Since George took Elizabeth, I had to take something from George. I went into the bathroom and not only did I brush my teeth with George’s blue toothbrush, I also washed my face with George’s soap, shaved with George’s razor and George’s shaving cream, then dried my face with George’s towel. Then I went into the bedroom, found George’s closet and began trying on his clothes. I had to hold my breath in or
der to fit George’s belt around my waist, and I couldn’t quite jam my heels into his shoes. His sweaters were the only things that fit me. Then I opened another door and saw this crazy man who looked like a scarecrow. It took about a minute before I realized I was staring into a mirror.”

  My father then quickly changed back into his shirt and pants, splashed water on his face, and rejoined the Vasquezes. The family stared at him in silence. Even the baby stood as stiffly as a prisoner behind the bars of her crib. Mrs. Vasquez began to sob. My father knelt before her, and took a creased tissue from his back pocket.

  “Here, you don’t have to use that nice potholder,” he said as Mrs. Vasquez wiped her eyes. “We’ll get them back. I promise you I’ll find them. I’ll even go to Spain.”

  “She can’t understand you,” Pilar interrupted.

  “Can you please translate?”

  Pilar spoke to her mother in rapid Spanish. Mrs. Vasquez nodded her head and stood up.

  “What is she saying?” my father asked Pilar after Mrs. Vasquez whispered something into her daughter’s ear.

  “She wants you to join us for dinner.”

  “Join you for dinner?”

  James, astounded at Mrs. Vasquez’s generosity, was for once speechless. He sat down, placed his napkin on his lap, and watched George’s abandoned wife fill his plate with chicken and beans. Then, after the meal, he went upstairs, and for the first time in his married life, fell asleep in the middle of his bed.

  I knew my father was lying about the last part. I had come home late because of a class outing. I shouted hello to my mother but no one answered. As I passed my parents’ bedroom, I saw through the half-closed door my father lying facedown on their bed, quietly sobbing. I was amazed; I couldn’t imagine why. The blades of his shoulders pulsed like the broken wings of a bird, and something about the hopeless sound his throat made warned me to stay away. Maybe things would have been different if I had been brave enough to go into his room and comfort him. But I stayed away, and later, when my father had recovered and told me the news, I remained dry-eyed in fear that he would not console me either.

  “Rachel, are you still awake?” my father called out from his bedroom.

  “Yup, and I heard every word.”

  “Thanks for listening. I always wanted to tell you that, but never found the right moment. I’m glad you came, Melody,” my father said, turning off his light.

  Did I have any choice? I wanted to ask. I only saw disaster looming ahead. My father and George slugging it out, spectators applauding each bloody blow. Or maybe an old-fashioned duel, each man defending my mother’s honor with a sword or a pistol. Or worse, my mother laughing at us, her face flushed with mirth. “Come back? But why?” she’d exclaim. But what frightened me the most was the thought that here in Spain my mother had completely forgotten us. That when we finally tracked her down, she’d squint at my father and me as if we were just a trick of light and walk away, never once glancing back.

  I soon fell into such a deep dreamless sleep that when I awoke I thought I was still back in New York. Someone was singing in Spanish outside my window and for a moment I thought the Puerto Rican Parade was marching down Riverside Drive.

  “Rachel!” I heard my father cry. “Rachel, wake up!”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, slowly sitting up. Chips of dull gray paint had fallen from the ceiling onto my blanket and face.

  “I’m dying!” James moaned.

  I threw on my bathrobe, jumped out of bed, and ran into his room. A wet washcloth covered his eyes, and his feet were propped up high on the sofa cushions. He didn’t look like he was expiring, only a little green.

  “I knew I should have laid off the vino,” he moaned. “This is a real Rioja hangover. That’s why I drink vodka. You never feel bad in the morning.”

  “You get hangovers from vodka too.”

  “But it’s different. Vodka gently reprimands you, like a kind mother whispering, Naughty boy. This is a real sledgehammer, screaming at the top of its lungs: You stupid S.O.B.!” My father sat up, and then with a gasp, dropped his head back onto the pillow. “Please don’t argue with me, Rachel. Each word is like a nail, pounding into my skull.” His hands, like a blind man’s, groped around his blanket. “Christ, I’ve run out of cigarettes too. What do they smoke here in Madrid anyway? Compost? Take my wallet, and go find a pharmacy for your poor dad. Ask if they have Alka-Seltzer and Tylenol.”

  “Do they have things like that in Spain?”

  “If not, ask for substitutes. Better yet, just explain about my hangover. Now, how do you say that in Spanish? Suspender means to hang, sobre means over, but that doesn’t sound right, Suspender sobre…Rachel, do you see my phrase book on the bureau?”

  “Yes,” I told him, picking up the paperback, Spanish In A Wink. On the cover a dark-eyed Spanish beauty batted her lashes; I wondered if she ever had a hangover.

  “Look up any words you don’t know. Don’t forget the cigarettes either. Look for a brand which doesn’t carry a skull and crossbones. And buy yourself a souvenir. I saw some very nice flamenco dolls in the tourist shop across the street.”

  Didn’t James know I was too old for dolls? I took out several bills from my father’s wallet and said good-bye. In the lobby I stopped at the tourist shop and bought two packs of cigarettes along with a postcard and stamp. Even though I knew my father was suffering I had the immediate urge to tell someone about our trip. The problem was I had no one to write to. My ex-school-friends would be insulted that I had left without telling them, and then wonder why I was in Spain. I could write to Nicole Rudomov, my closest friend, whose mother had also run away. But her mother left her father for a very famous French actress and the story was written up everywhere. Nicole now had celebrity status: there would never be a photograph of George and my mother in Vanity Fair. Nicole was a little flaky and I wasn’t too sure she’d keep her mouth shut. Pilar Vasquez was really the only person I could trust. She had said good-bye to me the morning before our departure, standing shyly in the doorway. Her mother had sent her with a note we were supposed to read to George once we found him. Pilar had translated the letter and read it to me in a quavering high voice:

  George—

  Stop this foolishness now! Come home or the baby will grow up without remembering her father. A temporary man who cannot fix anything comes twice a week, but never picks up the garbage. Mr. Oakes in 9C is still waiting for you to install his air conditioner. It’s been nearly a year. The priest is willing to hear your confession.

  Your grieving wife

  I didn’t think George, hundreds of miles away, would give a fig about Mr. Oakes’s air conditioner. Pilar had given me the letter and let her hand brush meaningfully against my own.

  “You’re very brave, Rachel,” she told me in a quaking voice. “My mother prays everyday that your trip will be a success.”

  “Oh, well…,” I began, backing away. Pilar scared me with her shiny eyes burning behind her thick glasses. Her long, oily hair dangled before her eyes, and she kept yanking the stringy strands behind her ears. Pilar was six inches taller than me, and looked thirty years old. Her large hands were always chapped and smelled like dishwashing detergent. I was nervous then that someone would see us together and wished she would leave. Although we were the same age, Pilar had never been my friend; Pilar was the super’s daughter, and even liberal Upper West Siders abided by faint but still distinct class lines. The other kids in the building always taunted Pilar and George Jr. on their way to school, calling them “Rag Dolls,” because they always wore our old, cast-off clothes. The only reason the Vasquezes lived in our Riverside Drive building was that George knew how to fix toilets.

  The card I bought depicted a little girl in a flamenco dress holding a bouquet of yellow and purple flowers. I borrowed a pen from the reception desk and wrote this short message:

  Dear Pilar,

  We just got here and not much has happened. Your great uncle thought my father was a fa
mous writer and acted pretty funny. He didn’t know anything about your dad and my mom, but keep the faith, we’ll find them.

  Yours truly,

  Rachel Harris

  Keep the faith—I was beginning to sound like my father. But I had a feeling Pilar would find the slogan hopeful. Before we left, Mrs. Vasquez was worried that their family would be evicted. Maybe they were already gone, and my postcard would be lost, “Address Unknown.” If my mother and George ever married, Pilar would be my sister.

  The drugstore was easy to find (Farmacia, with a little red cross) but I couldn’t find any of the words I wanted in my phrase book. The only ailments listed in the “At the Pharmacy” section were indigestion, diarrhea, nausea, and constipation. I was not looking forward to Spanish cuisine. A young girl in a pharmacist’s uniform saw me poring over my book, and stepped away from her counter.

  “Do you speak English?” I asked her.

  “Yes,” she answered in a slightly annoyed tone.

  “I need something for my father.”

  “Does he have a stomachache? Bowel problems?”

  “No, it’s in his head. Actually, his whole body. He has a hangover. Too much wine.”

  “Ah yes.” The clerk gave me a knowing smile. She disappeared from behind the counter, and returned with a glass bottle of white pills.

  “He must take two every hour. And not drink anything but water for twenty-four hours.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I said hesitatingly.

  “He must. Otherwise he won’t get well.”

  But my father was already into his second martini by the time I got back. A note on my pillow told me to find him in the Ritz bar. The bartender looked up when I walked in and then stared hard at my father, who was sitting at a back booth. He was the only one there at that early morning hour, and so absorbed in reading his guidebook that he didn’t even notice me sliding in the seat across from him. James had showered and his wet hair was parted neatly on the left side. For once he didn’t stink of cigarettes but smelled like soap and cologne and toothpaste. The bar was lit with a soft red light that seemed to make everything look innocent. My father’s martini looked like a raspberry soda, the crumpled cigarette wrappings pink like petals.