Then she hobbled back to her apartment. There it all was, her mess, waiting, turrets and towers of files and mail, its banners of Post-its and crumpled tissues. It was an eclectic collection. Everything had been or was to be filed, but the names on the files had little to do with their contents and few hints for what should be added. There were multiple files labeled, for example, Urgent!!, though some were labeled URGENT, all caps, and a few Urgent! with just the one exclamation point. There was a Pay Today file and a Pay Immediately file, a Miscellaneous file and a Miscellany file. There were Medical, Medicine, Health, Health Care, Health Insurance, Doctors, Doctor Bills, Medicare, and there were files by illness as well: Diabetes, Cancer/Joy, and Cancer/Aaron. Inside were flyers for Roundabout Theater and YIVO, Time Warner, DirecTV, AT&T, Verizon, and free shingles shots from CVS. There were unopened envelopes with requests for money from starving children, dogs, cats, and abandoned farm animals; newsletters from Israel and Trader Joe’s; literature from city council candidates, mayoral candidates, cemeteries, the Neptune Society, and juice fasts. Bills and tax returns, X-rays and lab reports showed up, too, here and there, as well as clippings of art reviews by Adam Gopnik from the 1980s.
She adjusted a stack of unopened envelopes, tilting her head at them, like a curious dog. She opened one envelope and carefully read the marketing materials for a service she would never need or want. She put the torn envelope on the table, placed the glossy marketing pamphlet beside it. She shuffled through the stack of unopened envelopes again. She spread them out like a deck of cards on the table. She touched them, moved them slightly, piled them up again. She sighed. She began to read yesterday’s paper, which was on the chair next to her. She reached for her scissors. She intently cut out an article and laid it on the table. A crumpled tissue fell from her sleeve. She carefully removed the cellophane from a lemon drop, which she then popped in her mouth, placing the sticky cellophane between the torn envelope and the tissue. She spread the pile of unopened envelopes out like a deck of cards on the table again.
She finally broke down and called Danny. “I think someone has to help me. But no one can help me. What should I do?”
“Close the door,” Danny told her. “And never go in again.”
When she called Molly, in tears, Molly said, “That’s all? God, you scared me.”
To them, it was a pile.
To Joy, it was the past and the future jumbled together.
Someday they would understand. They would feel sad the way she felt sad about her own mother, about all the ways she had not been able to understand until she, too, was old. If only everyone could be old together.
“Natalie!” She called her friend immediately. “I just had the most ghastly thought…”
*
Joy ran into Karl at the coffee shop regularly now. As soon as Marta saw her, she hauled herself up, said, “Errands,” and lumbered out of the restaurant. It was pleasant for Joy, having someone to sit with, to confide in, someone her own age. And, she admitted this to herself, it was pleasant to spend time with a man.
She ordered her soup and listened to Karl tell one of his stories. She occasionally had to hold her hand up. “Karl,” she would say, “my turn to speak.”
“He has so many stories,” she told Danny that night on the phone. “Very entertaining.”
“You knew him in college? How come I never heard anything about him?”
“Oh, we lost track when I got married. You know how it is.”
Molly called Daniel every Wednesday after his weekly dinner with their mother. She told Freddie she wanted to be supportive, but Freddie suggested she was just trying to cling to Daniel’s devoted-child shirttails.
“Did you have a good time with Mom tonight?” Molly asked her brother. “Did you have a nice dinner?”
“I didn’t go. She said she was too tired.”
“She told you not to come? That doesn’t sound good. Is she sick?”
“No. She said she had lunch with a friend and they walked in the park and she got tired.”
“Yeah? Natalie?”
“No.”
“Well, who, Daniel? You’re being weird and mysterious.”
“That guy. That Karl guy.”
36
Molly called her mother to tell her the plans she and Daniel had made for Passover. Their first Passover without their father.
“We’re all going to come. We’ll have a real family Passover.”
“At the apartment? Without Daddy?”
“It will give us a chance to be together and honor him,” Molly said. “As a family.”
Joy tried to picture the family gathered around the table without Aaron.
“No, no,” she said. “No. Not this year. Not yet.”
“Daniel and I worked it all out. We’ll take care of the food, of course. You won’t have anything to worry about.”
“It will be too sad,” Joy said. “I think it will be too sad. Everyone there but your father.”
“We’ll all be together, Mom.”
At the coffee shop that night, Joy saw Karl, as she had hoped she would.
“I don’t want this seder,” she told him. “It’s just too soon. Why can’t they wait till next year?”
“Who knows if we’ll be here next year,” Karl said.
“That’s cheerful.”
“Well.”
Joy tried to explain it to him. “Just picture it,” she said. “The whole family. Picture the whole family, picture Danny, Molly, the wives, the grandchildren, me. And no Aaron. It’s like one of those photographs from Russia where they scratch out Trotsky.”
“I guess you could invite more people,” he said. “Dilute it a little, like soup. Invite other people.”
“Other people,” Joy said. It was a brilliant plan. “Other people!”
*