An almost perfect moment, p.16
An Almost Perfect Moment, page 16
Dr. Stern, who was a woman, gave Valentine a paper cup and told her to pee in it. Then she was to put on a green hospital gown, open in the front. This was Valentine’s first visit to a gynecologist, and while she’d heard tell of the ordeal, you really do have to experience the stirrups firsthand to appreciate the wretchedness, and the cold speculum forcing you open is not unlike the torture of the Iron Maiden. “I know.” Dr. Stern patted Valentine, to comfort her. “It’s a little uncomfortable.”
“A little uncomfortable?” Valentine spoke rhetorically. “You’re kidding me, right?”
Moments later, the doctor snapped off her surgical gloves. “All done,” she said, and she dropped the gloves in the trash. “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“A regular day at the beach,” Valentine said, and then Dr. Stern was at her breasts. Feeling her up!
“Are your breasts tender?” Dr. Stern asked, while fondling them still. “Do they hurt at all?”
“Yes, they hurt,” Valentine said. “Of course they hurt when you’re pinching at them like that.”
“Sorry.” The doctor apologized, which didn’t stop her from pinching the other one before saying, “Okay. When you finish dressing, meet me in my office. It’s the second door on the left. We’ll talk then.” Dr. Stern shut the door on her way out, leaving Valentine alone, about as alone as a teenage girl could be.
Sometimes the very worst pain is that with no discernible fault. John Wosileski sat catercorner from his mother at her kitchen table, covered with a pinkish oilcloth, knowing that although there was once a point of origin for this anguish he was suffering, its whereabouts were lost because the anguish had spread like a cancer.
“John.” His mother reached out for his hand, but he pulled it away, as if what held him together was of such a delicate balance that the slightest breath of contact would cause him to collapse like a game of pickup sticks. “John,” she said again, softly, so that her husband in the next room drinking a beer from the can and looking at the Daily News wouldn’t hear. “John,” she asked, “are you happy?”
Under the pretense of rubbing his eyes as if he were tired, John covered half his face with his hands and said, “Sure, Ma. I’m happy.” As Miriam Kessler could’ve told him, Truth can walk around naked; lies must be clothed.
It struck John as extremely peculiar that his mother should ask such a question. Never before had she made any such inquiry. He wondered if maybe she was dying. While each of the Wosileskis had experienced their rare moments of happiness, John thought that they might have been better off had they not; that the moments of happiness served only to accentuate the despair. Had John never skied Whiteface and Mount Snow, had he never known those excruciatingly beautiful seconds with Valentine Kessler, had Mrs. Wosileski, twenty-four years ago, not walked down the aisle as a grateful bride and hopeful mother-to-be, had Mr. Wosileski not, those same twenty-four years ago minus a few months, known a surge of pride and love, yes, love, at the sight of his newborn son, had he not twice—twice!—bowled a perfect game, then the Wosileskis might not have understood that they were unhappy now. With nothing to compare it to, a dreary life would’ve been a flatline, which is something like a contented one. But they did know rapture and so the loss of it, the fleetingness of it, rendered the sadness that much more acute.
Mrs. Wosileski reached into the pocket of her housecoat—a cotton smock which seemed to John to be new, the print of oranges and cherries was vivid, almost shockingly so—and she pulled out what John first thought was a bankbook or a passport; it was a little booklet of some sort and she kept it hidden beneath her hand. Beckoning her son to come in closer, she revealed to him what she had. Plaid Stamps. Trading stamps given out by the A&P, the number of them determined by how much you spent on groceries. Pasted into these booklets, they were redeemed for valuable merchandise. Six and a half books of Plaid Stamps got you a steam iron, or a whopping eighty-seven books got you a set of luggage, or you could exchange two books for a punch bowl. A mere one and one quarter books was the price to pay for a kitchen clock mounted on a hen silhouetted in gold tone.
There was a report of a miracle not entirely unrelated to the redemption and joy of Plaid Stamps, yours for the taking at the A&P. At a supermarket in a suburb in California, the Virgin Mary appeared in a ball of light and, in a voice gentle and melodious, instructed a young housewife to erect a seventy-five-foot-tall cross in the parking lot. Had she known she was going to meet the Blessed Mother, this housewife, Nicole Dempsy, would have worn something other than cutoffs and a halter top, but she thought she was just going to pick up a half gallon of milk and a quart of orange juice. The Virgin appeared to Nicole Dempsy on thirty-two more occasions, each time with further specifications regarding the cross. It was to be made of redwood. It was to be edged with small white lights. It was to be based in the parking lot, in row D, spot fourteen. Although the supermarket manager consistently refused to so much as consider the Blessed Virgin’s request, he did devote two rows of supermarket shelves in aisle four to the sale of religious items, such as framed photographs of Jesus, books of illustrated Bible stories for children, and snow domes featuring the Nativity scene because row D, spot fourteen had become a shrine and thousands flocked to the parking spot of miracles, where, it was claimed, silver rosary beads turned gold, rosebushes bloomed from concrete, the deaf could hear the angels singing, a ninety-six-year-old man got an erection for the first time in fifteen years to the day, and another young housewife heard her name called over a loudspeaker, announcing that she was the winner of the Supermarket Sweepstakes—all the groceries she could load in a cart in a mad ten-minute scramble for bounty.
“I’ve got hundreds of them, of these books, all filled.” Mrs. Wosileski trembled with the thrill of it. “He doesn’t know about them.” She cocked her head in the direction of the living room, indicating he as her husband. Hardly for the first time, Mrs. Wosileski wished a stroke on her husband, a stroke that would leave him paralyzed and without the power of speech, but this wish was between her and God, never ever uttered aloud.
John asked his mother where the stamps came from because, as far as he knew, she’d never shopped at an A&P. His father forbade it, demanding she shop the old-world way at the local markets where there was kielbasa and pierogi and fresh bread and none of that packaged garbage. “When the old lady upstairs died. Mrs. Sygietynska. You remember her? With the humpback? Father Palachuk asked me to clean out her apartment. She had no family. And I found these. Two shoeboxes full. I brought them to the father, and he said I could keep them. Two boxes full of them, John.” She spoke as if the shoeboxes were filled with real gold. “We can get some nice things. Me and you. To make us happy.”
Mrs. Wosileski, John’s mother, contrary to all experience, believed in miracles, and she had already picked out a Dacron polyester kitchen curtain with matching valance (two books) and a framed picture of the head of Christ (one book) and an electric organ (twenty-two and a half books). John tried to smile back at his mother, but he couldn’t because forget curtains and punch bowls, it would take more than that to make them happy. If John did believe that God might have answered his prayers, he would have, at that moment, surely put in a request, but he didn’t bother. John Wosileski had somehow gotten the idea that those who are not supremely blessed, people such as himself, get an allotment of one miracle, and John had used his up already. Oh Valentine, which he likened to Jesus healing the lame guy only to have the former cripple walk off a cliff.
“How is that possible?” Miss Marks asked Dr. Stern. “I just can’t believe it.”
Dr. Stern sat at her desk across from Miss Marks. “It’s a first for me, you can be sure. I mean, I’ve read of it, and I knew it was theoretically possible, but it’s also theoretically possible to walk on water, and I don’t imagine I’m going see anyone do that anytime soon. Frankly, I rarely even see a hymen these days. Usually it’s long gone just from riding a bicycle or gymnastics or something like that.”
Just then, Valentine Kessler, who neither rode a bicycle nor was capable of mastering the parallel bars, having gotten dressed, opened the office door. She was backlit by a shaft of sunlight, and Dr. Stern had to shield her eyes to make out who it was standing at the threshold. “Valentine,” Dr. Stern said. “Come in. Sit down. We need to talk.”
Fifteen
Valentine took the chair beside Miss Marks, and Dr. Stern asked her, “Valentine, do you have a steady boyfriend?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t have a boyfriend. Not steady or otherwise.” Valentine was not making Dr. Stern’s job any easier here.
Dr. Stern took a deep breath to fortify herself against the hysteria that dollars-to-donuts would ensue upon breaking the news to a sixteen-year-old virgin that, against all odds, she was nearly four months pregnant. It was at times like this that Dr. Stern wished she’d listened to her mother and gone to law school. “Medicine will eat you alive or it will turn your heart into a pebble,” her mother had said. “It’s no job for a woman.” Not yet pebble-hearted, Dr. Stern concluded that it was kindest in the end to be swift. “Valentine,” she said, “you’re pregnant,” and she moved the box of Kleenex so that tissues were handy to the girl.
Miss Marks put her arm around Valentine, but Valentine took the news better than the teacher and the doctor had anticipated. Whatever her distress, it was absent blood and thunder. She reached for a tissue and blew her nose, which honked, and then she smiled; a smile that was positively serene, as if her world were now bathed in white light, illuminating all of which, heretofore, had bewildered her. As if there were shape to what had been formless, order to the chaos, rhyme to the reason, God’s plan revealed. Arrrre Vey Maaaaa-reeee-er.
Or the other possibility: She was in a kind of shock, denial, unable to face the fact, she simply refused to comprehend what was said. Perhaps Valentine had retreated behind some bubble that only looked like bliss.
Well, whatever it was, Valentine was going to have to snap out of it, because decisions had to be made and they had to be made fast because already Valentine had entered her second trimester. Having been a powerful advocate for legal and therefore safe abortion, Dr. Stern said a quick and silent prayer of thanks to the Supreme Court for its wisdom in regard to Roe v. Wade and then said to Valentine, “We’re going to have to schedule the abortion for as soon as possible.”
“Abortion?” Valentine shook her pretty head. “No. I can’t do that.”
Miss Marks and Dr. Stern both tried to reason with the girl, Think of your future. You’re throwing your life away. You’re so young. What about college? This is going to kill your mother, to no avail.
The doctor and the teacher, two women who had marched and demonstrated and signed petitions to help girls like Valentine, they were getting nowhere with her.
Miss Marks tried another route. “And what about the boy, the father of this baby? Is he ready for this?”—to which Valentine responded, “There is no boy.”
“There is no boy? There has be a boy, Valentine,” Dr. Stern said.
Valentine shook her head. “There is no boy,” she repeated. It was certainly possible that she was telling the truth as she knew it. It was possible that all memory of the seedy encounter had been eradicated, that a reclamation of innocence had taken root. It was possible because anything is possible.
“Come on, Valentine.” Miss Marks stood up. “I’ll drive you home.”
Home from her game, Miriam was three dollars poorer—Edith Zuckerman had cleaned up—but none the wiser when she called up the stairs for Valentine. “Valentine,” she called, but got no response. “Valentine?” she called again, louder. “Are you here? Valentine?”
Miriam looked at the watch on her wrist. Just after five on a glorious Friday afternoon in springtime, where could she be? Out? Out with friends perhaps for the first time since her sixteenth birthday, and whatever happened that night, Miriam had a hunch it wasn’t what Valentine had wished for. Not when she came home early and went straight to bed. What had happened that Valentine should suddenly become a loner? This was a question that Miriam still refused to address, and now, it seemed, she wouldn’t have to. Not when she was convinced that Valentine was out, with friends.
Mothers have an limitless capacity to delude themselves where their children are concerned.
Maybe for dinner a nice chicken cutlet, dipped in flour and egg, then fried in butter, that sounded good to Miriam, with a salad and rice. She got out the necessary ingredients and was whisking the eggs in the bowl when Valentine came home and into the kitchen, kissing her mother on the cheek. Then she, Valentine, took Miriam by the arm and led her to the table. “Sit down, Ma. I’ve got to tell you something.”
It was then that Miriam saw Valentine’s face, flushed, her cheeks pink as carnations, and she wasn’t wearing a drop of makeup. And her eyes, there was something about Valentine’s eyes, as if her eyes had taken on the properties of cut glass, like blue topaz, as if they gave off beams of radiance sweeping like searchlights across the darkness.
“Ma,” Valentine said, “I’m going to have a baby,” and before Valentine could say another word, Miriam let go with a piercing lament, a howling, an ululation, the sound of the inconsolable.
Years later, when this story had become something of an urban legend, it was said that Miriam’s cry echoed throughout Canarsie, from one house to the next, like the call to prayer. This, of course, was hyperbolic, to say the least. No one but Valentine heard Miriam’s wail; God’s ears must have been plugged up with wax.
John Wosileski did not want to break the news to his mother, but better she should hear it from him than from a stranger. “Ma, listen to me, okay. These are worthless.” He slapped the book of Plaid Stamps against the edge of the table.
His mother reached over and snatched the book back, holding it to her bosom, such as she had one, all skin and bone, she was. “No, you’re wrong,” she said. “You can trade them in for beautiful things, John.”
“Not anymore, Ma. They stopped that a couple of years ago. It was in all the newspapers. They gave it up.” The A&P no longer issued Plaid Stamps. The redemption centers had closed up shop. There would be no beautiful things for Mrs. Wosileski, and now she understood this. What a simpleton she was to imagine otherwise, and having pushed herself up from the table, she turned her back on her son and asked, “You’ll stay for fish?”
Despite Vatican II and the concessions made to the modern age by the Second Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church, the Wosileskis continued to have fish for Friday dinner. Partly this was out of habit and partly because Mrs. Wosileski couldn’t quite believe that all of a sudden out of nowhere God had changed His mind. No matter that the pope said it was now okay to have meat on Fridays, the Wosileskis had fish. No. God never changed His mind. Mrs. Wosileski knew that because she was the living proof.
Once before, Valentine had witnessed her mother in such a state, but because she was only a year old, she couldn’t have remembered how Miriam had collapsed when Ronald left her. But even if Valentine had remembered, that was a long time ago. Miriam was a younger woman then and a good sixty-seven pounds lighter. Now she was heaving and gasping and snorting for breath and it looked as if Miriam were going to give out and expire like a punctured beach ball.
Having no experience with emergencies, Valentine did the sensible thing. She ran from her house to the Sabatinis’ house, where she beat her fists against their door.
One look at Valentine Kessler and Angela Sabatini didn’t so much as take the time to ask what was wrong. She raced across the lawn, Valentine at her heels, and in the Kesslers’ kitchen she found Miriam on the floor, seemingly passed out in a dead faint or well and truly dead itself. Angela Sabatini—bless her—kept cool, as if she were a professional in crisis management. After checking for a pulse and—thank you, God—finding one, she called for an ambulance and then made a cold compress with ice and a dish towel, which she held to Miriam’s forehead while Valentine went outside and stood on the front step like a beacon.
The wail of the ambulance siren was a call to the neighbors to evacuate their houses. Up from their dinner tables, away from the evening news, homework abandoned, every man, woman, and child on the block swarmed onto the street, where they congregated in front of the Kesslers’ house. What happened? What happened? They asked one another over and over what happened? but no one had any answers. Having left a corned beef simmering on the stove, Judy Weinstein broke through the crowd and rushed up the walkway to Valentine, grabbing the girl by her shoulders. “Your mother? Is your mother okay?” Then, not waiting for an answer, Judy entered the Kessler house to find the two medics crouched on either side of Miriam, supporting her as she sat on the floor with her head lowered between her legs. Angela Sabatini was making a pot of coffee. “What happened?” Judy asked, and one of medics said, “A distress reduced the blood flow to the brain causing aggravated syncope.”
“She fainted,” his partner clarified.
“A distress?” Judy asked. “What distress? Is she going to be okay?”
The first medic, the officious one, who clearly fancied himself some kind of Dr. Kildare, said, “Impact can cause contusions of the brain.”
Judy looked to the second medic, the one who wasn’t a schmuck. He shifted Miriam’s weight nearer to his shoulder to relieve an ache in his arm and said, “The only danger with fainting is if you hit your head in the fall, but this one, she went down like a pillow. She’s fine.”
“I’m fine.” Miriam spoke in a clear voice, as if nothing had happened. “Let me up. I’m fine,” and the two men helped Miriam to her feet, and then into a chair at the kitchen table. Angela Sabatini poured everyone, except for Miriam, a cup of coffee. For Miriam she poured a little sherry from a bottle she found in the cabinet, which smelled like medicine and not anything good like grappa.
