No, we met in the kitchen, that’s where we always, it was dark, always it was dark…the only light for memory this the dark of the kitchen where, and listen, that stain in the grout, guilt about my teeth, selfconscious the nick, the nook, the kitchen where Hanna she’s sitting and listen, it’s important, this is earlier, you understand, this was before, and she, how with her yogurtmouth, she’s pouring to me like another one, she said, with her dairymouth, she’d say, another one…like I don’t know whether I can go through with this with another, whether I can survive it, Wanda, him or her, whether I can you know or not handle it, manage, whether or not I can like deal.
But he wants a son, and maybe baby this one, this’ll be the One — really, like what, if any, am I supposed to offer her in return?
Israel, he really wants it, but I feel like…some sort of consolation, something Wanda’d thought, like maybe don’t worry, no, sh, not to fret — you’re no enabler, not a milkfactory, no churnerouter of babies…talking like she’s in this fancy schmancy mysticalized trance; the cheap pink curtains, minor defects in workmanship, a steal from the relative of a friend’s relative as always who knows not to ask, weeped around the opened window over the twocar garage and the driveway they swell out into stormclouds — and how I get myself to the cabinet first, she says she goes and opens it wide, that’s where they kept the liquor, high cabinet, you understand after Rubina she once, the highest left one of the two above the bedecked refrigerator, lists, magnets, photos, photomagnets, polarized lists all that dreck and, nevermind, just you listen…
If it’s liquor you want, a little l’chaim, alright so I’ll go down and kook what we have, Hava, but…
No, but I open the cabinet, and I don’t know why I don’t become a crazy person and just go shout my kopf off but no, how I don’t, I just open it, go to open it up and my hand how it’s on the handle thingie to the thing and his hand, God, this plumpery witheredly thing, icky with shvitz, and as quick as any random indignity — hear how it just swoops in, scoops up the little flask of schnapps, the only thing in there, the only thing left…
Schnapps, I don’t believe we have any schnapps, Hava.
Israel was never a shikker, you understand.
Israel? How’s your health, you’re feeling well or no, should I go get the doctor or rabbi?
Yes.
You want I should disturb them on a night like this?
No.
God, tell me what you want, Wanda-Hava Rosenkrantz, anything, anything within limits; it’s only a dream, only a dream, a dream only it’s…
And then how I let go the handle, she says she grabs onto the tiny bottle, surplus from a cousin’s barmitzvah, and how we struggle for it me and him, we pull back and forth me and him we push, which cousin I don’t know, never did, him tugging this thing, this flask of schnapps we’re wrestling for it with four hands now and he’s strong but he’s old and I’m strong and young then not anymore I pull it hard once and it comes loose from his hands, but I don’t have a hold on it lose my grip and it falls to the floor, shatters all over the place, the kitchenfloors, the tile little shards of glass stuck in a pool inground ocean of thickened red is it schnapps, everywhere just everywhere I stand there just staring at it, though I really should have been mopping it up I just, that’s what I did, my job what happened he just…
You just, Hava, I’m finished listening.
And then…
You know, some people have to work tomorrow.
You know, for a living.
I forget…it’s all over now, so long ago, how it’s ancient history getting older by the day that is night what with its stars three rolled hoch horch like eyes, falls into her pillow, her mother-inlaw’s, is soon sleeping so deeply she doesn’t even remember to snore, then next morning wakes up and her husband he regards her strangely but forgets by mincha home for linner and she herself, she has no memory whatsoever and yet come the coming of dusk that night she finds herself, why, preparing him a dunch the likes of which will destroy all hope for thought both rational and not.
The mensch leaves her there lamed, passedout on the floor, unconscious, unconscionable with her head knocked on the edge of an opened knifedrawer, mamash, believe it or not it’s the emes, rushes back up to B’s room, he’d just wanted a l’chaim, was expecting warmedgoodies, Ima’s milk, too, had been disappointed, decided then to keep his own self warm with blankets and covers, shuts the door, props the other chair up against it, Hanna’s, and B He’s awake now again, already sitting up in His bed He stares dumbly.
