Unfinished Portrait (a short story)
Cole, Diane
UNFINISHED PORTRAIT MANE COLE Withered beyond age. they stare blankly at the world, and the world turns away. They do not know that their daugter Rachel, my mother, died a little over a month...
...And now what...
...I am recording this from beyond the living room wall...
...their faces carried expression...
...Perhaps I should play the tapes now...
...As I watch my grandfather stare into the photograph, his thoughts wandering despite the effort of concentration, 1 think how hard it is to be a patriarch, to hear again and again the same sad tales whose endings are already known...
...Anna...
...I recognize this gesture as one my mother used, that I use...
...I choke on the unexpected gift, and my mother rushes to my side...
...Three generations, smiling, standing together, leaning one towards the other in a perfect triangular composition that might have pleased Raphael...
...Taste it...
...Rachel's away at school now...
...She is sure it is the full one she deserves...
...The congregation chants, responds, listens, prays...
...Did all this happen...
...I found this in her purse, crumpled between her credit cards...
...I had thought to touch the past in the way I might touch an object, to recover memories from people whose very lives have become artifacts...
...He was born in the Old Country, into a family of scholarly paupers, and from there he had journeyed to America, where he had risen from peddler to businessman...
...All my love always, Jake...
...But when she saw my father before her, waiting too calmly for a groom, she did not weep...
...I have been waiting to tell you that story...
...But what moment is that...
...My mother, too, belonged here, in this room where faith hangs heavy in the air...
...Of what she will serve me, her only daughter, on this, her last holiday...
...Yisgadal V'yiskadash...
...There is a motto written across this snapshot in my father's hand...
...My mother wanted to see to it that her parents stay here, in (his house filled with the indistinct odor of abandoned lives, forever...
...I'm Anna...
...But he's your father...
...she is silent, and I take her hand to comfort her...
...Who shall die...
...By famine...
...I can't...
...It will never be articulated...
...I'm Anna," I say...
...Anna...
...Poisoned, just as I thought...
...He had contributed more than tithes to charity, not to mention the sums he had loaned his less successful relations, but one child died in infancy, and Rachel, whom he had spoiled from birth, suffered a bad marriage, to a man who had given her no peace, only a daughter...
...I have never seen her smile so much...
...Who by fire...
...Then she tells me a bedtime story that soothes my fears of family life, and I sleep as last...
...The cantor sings, oblivious to his congregation...
...With a great final moan of ending the sound ceases...
...She is there to taunt me with her absence...
...I am 22...
...and yet she has come to watch this ceremony...
...I listen, but she says nothing...
...He stares, popcyed, into the camera...
...Poisoned...
...I prod her gently...
...Now he cuts off a bite of chicken and thrusts it into my half-open mouth...
...Nor do they recognize the young stranger before them...
...he commands...
...Yes, of course...
...waiting for the service to conclude, for this bad joke of a New Year holiday to end...
...I appeal to my grandfather...
...She calls the insurance broker to change the beneficiary on a policy...
...It is all a dream, isn't it...
...Here...
...We note the woman behind us, dressed in a chartreuse and pink print that clashes with her hair, newly tinted orange...
...She wears a royal blue cotton suit and a white cap with a narrow feather that reminds me of Robin Hood...
...In the old pictures, in the old days, people were serious, people were happy...
...Here she is again, this time with my father...
...She sports a grey bla/er and a lacy blouse, open at the collar...
...I sit once more...
...She shakes her head as though she is nodding off to sleep...
...But why did she not leave him...
...Look...
...As soon as he finishes, he throws the skullcap from his head like a creeping spider...
...We talk on and on...
...So soon it will be blown away...
...I am only Anna, Rachel's child who weeps for her...
...After a lifetime of concerned fretting, she has forgotten how to worry...
...I am thinking of this one in particular, taken two weeks before she died...
...Though she has grown stout over the years, her face has remained pretty, with its modest brown eyes and reticent smile...
...Both our hands are cold...
...He wears a brown plaid sports shirt, bermuda shorts that betray long spindly legs, leather sandals...
...His voice is harsh like the grinding of gears...
...She seems to enjoy the haze that age has given her...
...I've got to gel her away from Rachel all right, get m> child out from under that woman's grasp " Here the sound breaks down into the jumbled weeping of a little girl eavesdropping...
...They tell a story...
...Anna, age three, costumed in an ivory chiffon dress with ruffles and cap sleeves, stands wedged between Grandma and Grandpa, who gaze upon her like benign protectors...
...The silk train shone in the subdued light of the summer evening, and she could not hold back her tears...
...Her smile is ferocious with happiness...
...We go to shul today and sigh...
...Come closer...
...They are strolling down the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, on their honeymoon...
...I peer into the wizened faces of the rabbi and cantor, the same who performed the marriage...
...Perhaps she is remembering things she has forgotten to think of for years: the rough touch of her grandfathers kiss, the smell of her father's peddler's wagon, the fine mist of snow in which she walked to school one day and then walked home again, coughing proudly, triumphant with pneumonia...
...They were people my grandparents had known and loved and quarreled with, people who had receded into my grandparents' memories and had died there...
...He says to me, "Who was your mother'.' Who...
...An-na...
...For the first time that 1 can recall, my grandfather is thin...
...How is it that they are still here, still celebrating these rites and ceremonies...
...He had looked forward to retirement, when he could study Torah without distraction, but the time God has left him no longer gives him joy...
...My father thrusts his arm around her waist...
...Diane Cole lives in i\ett' )'ork and is currently narking on a novel...
...And this is my worry: that draft however many pages 1 will, I will never finish this story, this essay, this novel that I am writing, talking, constantly, about her...
...She fades into a whimper...
...the rabbi stutters with occasional forgetfulness...
...it always was, wasn't it...
...I can't leave...
...She is 57...
...She is in a wheelchair...
...We are crying, helpless in our knowledge that there is nothing else we can do...
...This time we are at our Shabbos dinner...
...That story cannot be destroyed, only forgotten...
...Then, as if nothing at all has happened, we begin to gossip...
...The rabbi looks drawn, wasted—is it his son's divorce that has aged him so...
...On this Sabbath morning I sit alone, off to the side...
...They do not know that their daugter Rachel, my mother, died a little over a month ago...
...Perhaps it is easier for him this way...
...I must turn from this picture quickly...
...My mother, lips extended, forever kissing me...
...He must be ninety...
...This memory is only a small fragment of the evidence...
...But who is listening...
...A skullcap sits askew on his bald head...
...The photograph, framed in gold leaf, is tarnished, scratched, musty, as is everything in this house...
...kisses me...
...Questions, endless in their refinement of the ways of death...
...She cannot see the other pictures before me...
...Here is my father after eight years of marriage...
...I will return to the photos later...
...She whee/es death, she can hardly sit...
...By water...
...I am no archaeologist of the mind...
...My mother places before him a platter of roast chicken...
...I feel her hand, pressing warmly against my back...
...Her eyes open wide with questions she cannot answer...
...The service continues...
...She smiles her reticent smile: she blinks the mist from her eyes...
...Her head drops back, her eyes close, her lips part...
...1 awaken to the sound of a glass crashing to its death in our kitchen sink...
...reaches, and reaches again...
...But I am a stranger here, a visitor from another town, and know this place only the way an observer, a historian, can...
...My grandmother, her arms hovering over me in a perpetual benediction of good wishes, cannot remember my name or place this face in which she once exalted...
...Their fragrance was so strong it made her snee/e...
...It is here on the page, between the lines, stuttering from my lips...
...Here is Rachel, age twenty-five...
...she awaits the future...
...She stares into the air, thick with prayer, as at a vision...
...1 know it, and we do not talk about it, or rather we talk without talking...
...It had been my hope to see you married there...
...She looks at me and then away...
...By sword...
...I will show you more...
...beside my mother...
...His words are staccato drum rolls...
...It is my mother venting her frustration in the only way she knows, a useless gesture against an inanimate object...
...To touch her body is to touch a feather...
...On Rosh Hashanah it is written, on the solemn fast of Yom Kippur it is sealed...
...I stand alone and recite the words...
...It is of my mother, my grandmother, and me, taken when I was five...
...Leaning towards her, I am overcome by the scent she wears, the sweet smell of candy emanating from her lipstick and make-up...
...And I am overcome with the desire to write about her, her and her absence...
...She reaches towards me...
...Anna...
...Another specimen of my father's voice...
...He reaches across the cranberry relish and spills red onto his white sleeve...
...It is like a flute playing against an orchestra...
...He has grudgingly recited kiddush...
...It is so soft you can barely hear it...
...The cantor sings, striving painfully to repave the broken gravel of his voice...
...I see my mother beside me in my memory...
...I turn, unable to recapture further this past of which I was not yet a part...
...Loyal like a dog...
...As I look about me, 1 begin to imagine the scene, so many years in the past, of my parents' wedding...
...Rachel'.' You wanted to see Rachel...
...He draws her near him until their cheeks, gritty with sand, collide...
...Of miracles unheard of...
...The sanctuary stands staid and proper with its Tudor wood panelling, its marble pulpit, its cool, high ceiling...
...the ram's horn...
...She clutches me...
...Tortoise-shell sunglasses hide her eyes...
...But I find that I have no taste for reconstruction...
...Arms folded calmly on the desk before her...
...But for my mother the verdict of modern medicine has already closed the great book of life...
...To my dearest, sweetest wife...
...Of life everlasting...
...We go to the bank to transfer jewels from her safe deposit box to mine...
...Then, like the dying moan of the shofar...
...To say a word would be to weep...
...When I tell them, they sigh and shake their heads...
...He gazes at me intently and says nothing...
...I rise at last for the mourner's kaddish...
...I'm his wife" She laughs, then sighs, then weeps...
...is here no longer...
...Instead of making her gaunt and worn, this new slimness adds character to her face: yet this new expression troubles me...
...She's dressed nattily in a hlue and white polka dot sundress, with a large, drooping sunhat to match...
...I am sitting in shul...
...I will show you one last picture...
...Suddenly my mother says, looking not at me, but towards, the Holy Ark once again...
...Taste it...
...Prayers, more prayers...
...my father shouts...
...Rosh Hashanah, her last New Year...
...The two of them share their house with a caretaker who remembers them when their minds were alive to the world...
...They are a community, bound to each other by this place in which we stand...
...Around me hover women, absorbed in gossip, wondering who I am...
...Instead of accepting this offering, he shoves the plate, a delicate Wedgewood flower design, before my nose...
...I go back in lime eleven months...
...His hair is thin and sparse, but it is his hair—he has not yet donned the first of his long line of ill-fitting toupees...
...These arc the photographs...
...The gracious hostess still, my grandmother throws her hand forward to cast aside all doubt...
...She blinks, starts, remembering the real moment in time...
...We donate small compliments one to the other and go about finishing the business of her life...
...Merc at last is my mother's voice...
...I kiss my grandparents farewell and make my way to the synagogue where my parents were married...
...In my memories we arc all so young...
...By the time the wedding began, the roses, the yellow and cream roses of her bouquet, had already bloomed and begun to wilt...
...Though the discovery has come late and after much sadness, it agrees with her...
...My mother sits, oblivious to his pleading...
...Then there is his silence, and then there is silence...
...I have just received my Master's degree, and I hover over her as she reaches toward my face to kiss me...
...Before she touches me...
...She is dying and knows it...
...And though these pages are a beginning, they will never end...
...There her train flowed behind her, there her shoes scraped the hardwood floor, there, perhaps, a splinter caught the lace of her hem...
...She says she is grateful, so very grateful, to be able to congratulate me...
...The picture is only one of many that clutter the antique Chippendale tables, the battered upright piano, the 1950s Magnavox television...
...In the tapes now, we cry together in separate rooms...
...The prayer is over...
...We listen to the blowing of the shofar...
...I have gathered it, hoarded it...
...She has begun to lose weight at last—a symptom of illness...
...she is gone...
...The rabbi recites, "Who shall live...
...Only death will remove them...
...Yes, there my mother walked in her ivory gown...
...Later...
...Her hair is a honeyed brown...
Vol. 5 • September 1980 • No. 8
