Everything Is Important
In which Lewyn Oppenheimer needs to sit down
Later, each of us would say that it was the scar we noticed first, that jolt of pink incongruity at her clavicle, and then the other features, so familiar from the Wikipedia page we’d stared at, only a couple of weeks earlier: those gray dreadlocks, that small person radiating importance, though whether in the world or merely to ourselves, we couldn’t have said. I was in front of Lewyn as we entered the room, so I never saw his face as he looked at her, and he never saw mine. I reached back for him, but it was Ephraim who took my arm.
“Oh,” somebody said, and I thought for a moment it might have come from me, but it wasn’t me. It was Stella Western, standing in the doorway of her own kitchen, watching the three of us walk into her home: three of Salo Oppenheimer’s five children, in the same place, at the same time, for the first time. “Oh boy,” she said, a moment later. “Well.”
“Are you her?” Lewyn said, which did sound stupid, but I knew exactly what he meant, and I supposed she did, too.
“I’m Stella,” said Stella. “And I think you’re Lewyn.”
“You live here?” my brother said. “This is your son?” He turned to Ephraim. He was trying to remember Ephraim’s name, I knew. I didn’t blame him. It seemed to be hitting him in pieces.
“Honey.” Stella came across to us. “Phoebe? Is that right?”
“Yes,” I nodded. Then I hugged her. I had no idea why. I just wanted to.
“Lewyn. Can I hug you, too?” Already, her eyes were streaming.
Lewyn let her, but his face was full of dismay.
“Now I know all of you,” Stella said. “I met Sally once. I didn’t know it was her, but I liked her. I met your brother. Harrison. That wasn’t so nice, but he was taking care of his mama. Your mama,” said Stella. “And I respected that. Do you want to sit down?” she asked Lewyn. “I think maybe you should.”
I dragged my eyes away from her and looked at Lewyn. He really did not look all right.
“Lewyn, sit down,” I said, and he did, on a sofa. And I understood that he knew only what I had known a few weeks ago, before Harrison, before Sally. Which was nothing. So I took his hand.
“Lewyn,” I said carefully, “this is our brother. Ephraim is our brother.”
“Well,” said Ephraim, nodding, “half, anyway. Half brother.”
Lewyn stared.
We were in a dark living room, lined with horizontal boards painted blue, two leather sofas facing each other in front of a fireplace. There was a framed poster on the wall above the mantelpiece, from Stella’s documentary about the Klansman-turned-Jew, and another next to the kitchen door, “Oakland 3-Gen,” the bottom of the poster lined with laurel-wreath award logos. I wanted to look at everything, but mainly at Stella. Then at Ephraim. Then at Stella again. I was overwhelmed.
“I didn’t even know you existed till a couple of weeks ago,” I finally said to Ephraim. “I mean, I knew that you existed, just not that our father had a child. I mean, another child. I mean, former child,” I amended. “I’m sorry.” I said this to Lewyn, who was still gaping at both of them. Then I turned back to Stella. “My sister told me about you and … our father. Harrison told me you’d had a son.” I put my hand on Lewyn’s shoulder. “I was getting around to it, I promise. It’s a lot, you know.”
Lewyn said nothing.
“Lewyn,” Stella said, “you need a drink?”
To my surprise, he nodded.
“Okay. Hold tight.” She disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of wine. “You probably shouldn’t,” she said to me. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“Oh, fuck that,” I said. I was feeling distinctly light. I looked again at Ephraim, and then at Lewyn, and I knew I wasn’t imagining it. The shape of their jaws. The cheekbones. The wide shoulders. The long legs. They were like a positive and negative photograph of the same person. My heart was pounding. I held out my hand to Stella, and Stella put a glass of white wine in it. “To the Oppenheimers,” I said, with a not altogether unpleasant surge of mania. “God bless us, every one.”
Lewyn nodded. But then he set his glass down on a table. He turned to Ephraim. “When were you … how old are you?”
“Born in ’97. I’m twenty. And a half.”
He was doing the math, we all saw. “Jesus,” he said. He said: “I’m an idiot.”
“You’re certainly not,” Stella said. “Great pains were taken to hide this from you. I signed an agreement saying I would never try to contact you or interact with you in any way, which was pretty challenging when you started coming out here to work in the warehouse, Lewyn, but I did my best. Then Ephraim comes home last summer and tells me Phoebe Oppenheimer is working with him as a camp counselor.”
“You knew who I was?” I asked him. “Last summer?”
“I’ve always known,” Ephraim nodded. “She told me everything, as soon as I could take it all in. I knew all your names. Sally I read about on the website for her business. I’ve seen Harrison on television, and I read his book. One of his books.” He made a face. “Not a fan of that book.” He turned to Lewyn. “I did like your book, though. About the Oppenheimer Collection.”
“Oh, so you bought that copy,” Lewyn said. He was trying for sarcasm, but failing.
“I wanted him to know his father,” Stella said. “I prefer not to lie, as a rule, but especially not to the most important person in my life. Harrison was involved in our negotiations, but I didn’t know about you, Lewyn. What you knew. If you knew anything.”
Lewyn was shaking his head. “Nothing,” he said. “We were told nothing.”
I went and sat beside my brother on the couch. I took his hand.
“Sally knew,” I said. “She saw them together, at some art show.” I looked at Stella. “Did you know that? That she saw you?”
After a moment she nodded. “It was many years ago, in the bathroom at the folk art museum. She said something that made me wonder if she could be Salo’s daughter. But she didn’t tell me her name, and it just seemed so unlikely. What would she be doing there? I didn’t tell him about it. I didn’t see the point in worrying him.” She looked at me, and then at Lewyn. “I want you to know, I have always cared about you. All of you. Even Harrison, though I can’t say it’s the same. Because you’re Salo’s children. You’re the parts of him that are still here. I don’t think Ephraim remembers him, which makes me very sad.”
Ephraim shrugged. It was clear that he was sad about it, too.
“I don’t remember him, either,” I heard myself say.
“No. I’m sorry.” She sighed. “I suppose I’ll be getting a letter from Burke Goldman Finn and Emerson now. Reading me the riot act, because we’ve met.”
“You won’t,” Lewyn said. “Because we won’t be telling her.”
“Besides,” I said, “you might even call it fate.”
“Fate might have moved things along a little bit faster,” Lewyn said. “You’re sharing a street here, with my … our … our father’s art collection.”
Stella nodded. “At one point your father owned most of the street, the buildings on both sides of the warehouse. They were sold off, after his death. Except for this one. I had to fight for this one. But I didn’t see any other way. Too many changes, too quickly. Of course, I was terribly worried about money. And I knew it wasn’t what Salo would have wanted for us. Mostly I couldn’t face moving Ephraim on top of everything. He spent his whole life here, till he left for college.”
Lewyn was shaking his head. “I just … this is incredible. And I am furious.”
“You don’t look furious,” I observed.