'But you're notdivorced,' Tiffany says. 'You still love her, right?'
On paying the man, I sense that she would be much more comfortable were he the guest instead of me. 'Would you like to come in and use the bathroom?' she asks him. 'Do you have any local calls you need to make?' He politely declines the invitation, and her shoulders slump as he pulls away from the curb. He was a nice-enough guy, but more than his friendship she'd wanted a buffer, someone to stand between herself and what she sees as my inevitable judgment. We climb the few steps to her porch and she hesitates before pulling the keys from her pocket. 'I haven't had a chance to clean,' she says, but the lie feels uncomfortable, and so she corrects herself. 'What I meant to say is that I don't give a fuck what you think of my apartment. I didn't really want you here in the first place.'
I'm supposed to feel good that Tiffany has gotten this off her chest, but first I need to make it stop hurting. Were I to ask, my sister would tell me exactly how much she has been dreading my visit, and so I don't ask and comment instead on the cat brushing its big rusty head against the porch rails. 'Oh,' she says. 'That's Daddy.' Then she slips off her shoes and opens the door.
The apartment I imagine during our phone calls is not the apartment that Tiffany actually inhabits. It's the same physical area, but I prefer to envision it as it was years ago, back when she held an actual job. It was never extravagant, never self-consciously decorated, but it was clean and comfortable and seemed like a nice place to come home to. There were curtains on the windows, and a second bedroom made up for guests. Then she got the rickshaw, and as her house became a revolving junk shop, she shed all traces of sentimentality. Things come in, and as rent time nears, they go out, the found kitchen table sold alongside the serving bowl once belonging to our great-aunt or the Christmas present you'd given her the year before. For a time certain objects were replaced, but then she hit a rough patch and learned to do without such things as chairs and lampshades. It is this absence I try to ignore on entering her apartment, and I do pretty well until we hit the kitchen.
The last time I visited, Tiffany was pulling up the linoleum. I'd assumed that this was part of a process, phase one to be followed by phase two. It hadn't occurred to me that this was a one-step procedure, the final product a tar-paper floor. Combine it with bare feet and you're privy to the pedicurist's worst nightmare. My sister has appendages connected to her ankles. They feature toes and arches, but I cannot call them feet. In color they resemble the leathery paws of great apes, but in texture they are closer to hooves. In order to maintain her balance, she'll periodically clear the bottoms of debris — a bottle cap, bits of broken glass, a chicken bone — but within moments she'll have stepped on something else and begun the process all over again. It's what happens when you sell both your broom and your vacuum cleaner.
I see the dirty rag covering the lower half of the kitchen window, the crusted broken-handled pans scattered across the greasy stovetop. My sister is living in a Dorothea Lange photograph, and the homosexual in me wants to get down on my knees and scrub until my fingers bleed. I'd done it on all my previous visits, hoping each time that it might make some kind of a lasting impression. Gleaming appliances, a bathroom reeking of bleach: 'Doesn't this smell great!' I'd say. The last time I was here, after scraping, cleaning, and waxing her living-room floor, I watched as she overturned a wineglass onto what amounted to six hours' worth of work. It wasn't an accident, but a deliberate statement: I do not want what you have to offer. She later phoned my brother, referring to me as Fairy Poppins, which wouldn't bother me if it weren't so apt. I am determined not to get involved this time, but without the cleaning, I have no purpose and don't know what to do with myself.
'We couldtalk,' Tiffany says. 'That's something we've never tried.'
Haven't we?I think. If I talk to Tiffany less than to my other sisters, it's because she never comes home. We spent months persuading her to attend my brother's wedding, and even when she agreed, we didn't really expect her to show up. She and Paul get along very well, but as a group the family makes her nervous. We're the ones who idly sat by while she was having golf balls putted into her mouth, and the less time she spends with us, the happier she is. 'Don't you get it?' she says. 'I don'tlike you people.'You people. As if we're a collection agency.
Tiffany stomps her lit cigarette onto the tar-paper floor, and as she sits on the countertop I notice the smoldering butt still clinging to the bottom of her right hoof. 'I've been doing a lot of tile work,' she tells me, and I follow her finger in the direction of the refrigerator, where a mosaic panel leans against the wall. She started making them a few years ago, using the bits of broken crockery she finds in the trash. Her latest project is the size of a bath mat and features the remains of a Hummel figurine, the once cherubic face now reeling in a vortex of shattered coffee mugs. Like the elaborate gingerbread houses she made during her baking days, Tiffany's mosaics reflect the loopy energy of someone who will simply die if she doesn't express herself. It's a rare quality, and because it requires an absolute lack of self-consciousness, she is unable to see it.
'A woman offered to buy it,' she tells me, genuinely surprised that someone might take an interest. 'We set a price, but then, I don't know, I feel wrong accepting that kind of money.'
I can understand thinking that you're not good enough, but no one needs cash more than Tiffany. 'You could sell it and buy a vacuum cleaner,' I say. 'Lay some new linoleum on the floor, wouldn't that be nice?'
'What is it with you and my kitchen floor?' she asks. 'Who cares about the goddam linoleum?'
In the corner of the room Daddy approaches my sports coat, kneading it with his paws before lying down and curling into a ball. 'I don't know why I even bother with you,' Tiffany says. She'd wanted to show me her artwork — something that truly interests her, something she's good at — and instead, like my father, I'm suggesting she become an entirely different person. Looking at her face, that combination of fatigue and defiance, I am reminded of a conversation I annually hold with my friend Ken Shorr.
ME: Did you get your tree yet?
KEN: I'm a Jew, I don't decorate Christmas trees.
ME: So you're going to go with a wreath instead?
KEN: I just told you, I'm a Jew.
ME: Oh, I get it. You're looking for a cheap wreath.
KEN: I'm not looking for a wreath at all. Leave me alone, will you.
ME: You're probably just tense because you haven't finished your Christmas shopping.
KEN: I don't Christmas shop.
ME: What are you telling me? That youmake all of your presents?
KEN: I don't give Christmas presentsperiod. Goddamit, I told you, I'm aJew.
ME: Well, don't you at least need to buy something for your parents?
KEN: They're Jews, too, idiot. That's what makesme one. It's hereditary. Do you understand?
ME: Sure.
KEN: Say the words 'I understand.'
ME: I understand. So where are you going to hang your stocking?
I can't seem to fathom that the things important to me are not important to other people as well, and so I come off sounding like a missionary, someone whose job it is to convert rather than listen. 'Yes, your Tiki god is very handsome,but we 're here to talk about Jesus.' It's no wonder Tiffany dreads my visits. Even when silent, I seem to broadcast my prissy disapproval, comparing the woman she is with the woman she will never be, a sanitized version who struggles with real jars and leaves other people's teeth and frozen turkeys where she finds them. It's not that I don't like her — far from it — I just worry that, without a regular job and the proper linoleum, she'll fall through a crack and disappear to a place where we can't find her.
The phone rings in the living room and I'm not surprised when Tiffany answers it. She does not tell her caller that she has company, but rather, much to my relief, she launches into what promises to be a long conversation. I watch my sister pace the living room, her great hooves kicking up clouds of dust, and when I am certain she's no longer looking, I shoo Daddy off my sports coat. Then I fill the sink with hot, soapy water, roll up my shirtsleeves, and start saving her life.
A Can of Worms
HUGH WANTED HAMBURGERS, so he, his friend Anne, and I went to a place called the Apple Pan. This was
