Bev Thinks of Houses
BY JEFFREY WOLF
after Delmore Schwartz
Tired and unhappy, Bev thinks of houses. At the window in a loose sweater, her hair short and uneven. It’s March and sleeting. The wet dinks the glass and leaves long dewy streaks. In the next room, Barry’s screaming in his crib. She’d finally gotten him down, and then the neighbors put on a swing record. The walls are paper. Sudden flurry of horns and snare drum, and, right on cue, his sharp inhale giving breath to the first shriek. Each cry shudders through her. Flustered, sleepless, eyes made of plaster. It’s like waves continuing to batter a shipwreck: unrelenting, indifferent. He can’t be crying all day, Fred says. Ten hours straight? It’s not possible. Stay home and see for yourself, she wants to say but doesn’t. Couldn’t risk him actually doing it. Someone has to work. Two stories below, a bus slushes past on Kimball.
Barry is sick. Twice a week she cabs to Mount Sinai for more tests. They barely have money for the cab. The doctors prick her son with needles and tubes, then send her home again to wait. No one can tell them exactly what’s wrong. Something about his bones not developing. Her son is too squishy, she thinks. Squishy head, squishy joints. How can an infant so big be so fragile? Eleven pounds at delivery. You wanna talk impossible? And the crying drones on. It’s gotten to the point where, God forgive her, she doesn’t want to care anymore. Maybe she’s not cut out for this motherhood thing. Some women aren’t.
She thinks of houses, yards, more than one bedroom. The crib’s in their room, across from the bed. As far away as they can put it and still open the door. Which is a joke, really. She wakes in darkness with Barry in her left ear. Somehow Fred stays asleep. He could sleep through the bomb. Or he’s just faking. They’ll never have a house.
She knew Fred was poor, but she never understood how poor until they had a baby and the simplest expense became an ordeal. They have two diapers; she’s always washing one. Barry’s squirmy little butt chapped and red. No wonder he’s unhappy. There’s poor, and then there’s Vorner poor. Someone said that once, a girlfriend who knew Fred in high school. When he proposed, he said: I don’t have much, but I promise to give you all I can. They were young and stupid. They spent on a honeymoon because, God willing, you only get married once. Five days in sunny Palm Beach. They watched a man wrestle an alligator. She couldn’t tell who won. Man’s still alive at the end, that seems like winning to me, Fred said. They came home to a wall of bills. Told themselves they’d manage. They waited years to start a family—waited for him to put a little in the bank. Then his car broke down. His aunt fell and needed nursing care. Choose between a house and a child? No, Fred, you have the house because of the child.
Three sharp thuds against the wall. The neighbors. She never talks to them—separate entrances—but she’s seen them. Another young couple. She waifish and blonde, he with a scar above his lip. This is your fault! she wants to scream. Can’t you see I’m trying? They must know about Barry’s condition. The sound goes both ways. If she can hear them fight about her brother in South Shore, surely they hear her calls with Dr. Messelberg.
Her mother tells her not to worry. Every synagogue on the West Side is praying for little Barry, she says. Things will be okay. Mother, we have nothing, Bev thinks. Prayer doesn’t buy two-bedroom, two-bath with a garage. It doesn’t upgrade TV dinners from ground chuck to whole chicken. She’s so sick of frozen peas. Too tired to cook. Too empty to fuck. Fred tries holding her at night, but she won’t be touched. She feels hideous. The eleven-pound baby is out of her, yet she doesn’t lose an ounce. Honeymoon photos tucked in a drawer because she can’t look at them. That skinny girl in a polka-dot one-piece, surrounded by palm fronds. Gone forever. She wants a yard, an upstairs, more than cardboard between her and the neighbors. She wants twelve feet and a fence. Even a line of bushes would do. She wants silence. The world is pressing in around her, and she’s bloated out to meet it. Her mind shriveled to a peanut. She had dreams once. What were they? She can’t even remember tying her shoes.
Now banging from below. Bev pictures the old Latvian woman downstairs standing on a dinner chair and jabbing a broom. She needs to get out. The doctor said something about the dangers of outdoors—cold air parching the lungs? Damp air spreading polio? She wraps up little Barry, still screaming. Booties, hat, swaddling blanket. Screams in her ear so close they blunt themselves. With her free hand, she grabs the buggy parked near the coat rackcoatrack and carries them both sideways down the front stairs. Her hip thwacks the bannister. The stairwell smells like a stale freezer, its green tile slick with puddles. Ever since they brought Barry home, she’d seize up at the thought of dropping him. This still twists in her, but exhaustion pushes back.
Outside, the whole world is slush. The wet mess splashes her nose and cheeks. She tucks Barry deep under the canopy and pushes him up the street. His cries make little white puffs that float and sit until the rain slashes them to nothing. For a moment, she’s amazed at how small they are. The bare trees offer no shelter. Sidewalk empty. An occasional car splatters past.
Another assurance from her mother: Your grandmother birthed eleven children in the Old Country, and every one of them lived. Brickmans don’t lose babies. And somehow this was never what worried her. All the hand-wringing, the tubes, the prayer lists at shul. It was her lot to be barefoot and poor, she knew, but not a grieving mother on top of it. Meanwhile, the cards and phone calls kept coming. Wishing her strength, affirming their prayers. She prays too, out of habit—and knowing that she can’t not pray. Soonest way to invite disaster. She has to be at least a little afraid.
Then she notices the silence. A peek into the buggy: Barry sitting up, lips pursed, eyes big, watching the sleet fall past. His arms work like manic little levers. His infant world endless and new. He will learn hope and disappointment, Bev thinks. In time, he’ll learn. Every day, something new falls from the sky.
