Okay, well, it was our American and Canadian troops that took that town. Eddie and I found our unit. The war went on. Eddie pretended that nothing had happened between us, Yolanda. Every day, he performed the most complete indifference and innocence. After the Liberation of Paris, he was found dead with his throat slit in a back alley in the eighteenth arrondissement. The official investigation said that he’d raped a French Moroccan girl and that her brothers had caught Eddie and killed him. I have no reason to doubt that it happened that way. And the war kept going, for me, all the way to the Ardennes. I became a very fierce soldier. If you don’t mind me saying, Yolanda, I deserved a medal.
Yoli has heard Bert indignantly bellowing: We’ve got fellows at the University Club who got medals who didn’t see a tenth of the action that Herb did. You don’t think it was Herb being a thirty-four-year-old Jew with the rank of private from one end of the war to the other that kept him from getting a medal for valor?
Oh Herb, I’m so sorry, she says, such a terrible story. What else can Mamita say? She has tears in her eyes, and that’s good, the only possible reaction that won’t offend him.
Do people really fall in love twice, Yolanda? The way Herb asks this, it doesn’t sound like a question.
All the mothers of children I know, Herb, say yes, you can, she answers. They say that when you have your first baby, you think you cannot possibly ever love any person more than this baby son. You are even scared to have another child because you might not love her as much. But when that daughter comes, you grow another heart full of love, and you love your daughter as much as the son, and if you have a third child, you grow a third heart. That’s what mothers have told me. I think it’s that way in romance love, too, Herb, except then maybe one heart dies and another one grows. Sometimes it takes a while.
That’s very well said, Yolanda, says Herb politely. Thank you. Is that what you want, a son and a daughter?
Yes. I only had my brother, and we were very close, and he always made me feel loved and protected.
I hope you’re right about that, about growing another heart. I’ve been waiting a long time.
Mamita has never before been called upon to find words appropriate to a moment like this. She says, Herb if you make that painting, it will be in a museum. You’ll be famous. So many people will want to know you, and you’ll meet somebody, you’ll see.
You’re right, Yolanda. Someday you’ll take your son to see it here in the Museum of Fine Arts, and you’ll tell him all about it. I’m a late bloomer, just like my old friend Bert. He’s an inspiration to me too. Look at him, at his age, fifty not that far over the horizon, starting a family with a woman like you.
Mamita, I’m so sorry, I say. And so that you’ll feel the truth of what I’m saying, I make myself stare into the seemingly transparent depth of your oil paint eyes, where nothing happens. I won’t ever do that again, love with a heart that’s deaf in one ear, that’s a lazy, cowardly, gets-you-nowhere way to love. Still, I think I heard Gisela in stereo loud, soft, and clear, but that wasn’t enough. I’ve never thought this before, but maybe it was her heart that was deaf in one ear. I’m sorry I haven’t given you a grandchild, Ma, but I guess you can say I’m trying. Do any of those children who live in Lexi’s house ever come to visit you? There’s a ten-year-old girl, Monica. I think you’d enjoy her.
What am I doing, talking to this painting? I can do it again tomorrow if I want to, at Lexi’s. Why don’t I just go back to Green Meadows and try to talk to Mamita some more?
I think this copy of the painting is better than the one we had in our house growing up. Herb kept the better one for himself. I’m concentrating on the corner of Mamita’s lips, trying to see that visibly invisible, if only I could think of something funny to say right now, see if I can provoke a quiver of a smile. I’ve always been good at getting my mother to laugh. But no words come but these: Mamita, I’m sorry I didn’t save you from Bert. I’m sorry you didn’t save me from Bert. I’m sorry neither of us saved Lexi from Bert, but I think you finally did, starting when she was in her late teens anyway. Ay Mamá, your Herb-painted eyes look through me in a way that makes me feel not here.
I turn and look at Beth and say, I’m keeping you up, aren’t I? I’m sorry. She’s sitting slumped back on an old dark-red sofa, its silken upholstery slightly shredded here and there, her knees wide apart, her long frail hands clasped over her abdomen. Besides the couch, the only other furniture is an upholstered sea-green old armchair, the wood of the arms chipped, and a couple of hard chairs pulled up to a small, round wooden table with a red-and-white checkered tablecloth on it, an empty green bottle of wine on top, and a plastic ashtray. It’s like we’re in an old-fashioned pizza restaurant with only one table and nothing on the walls but a portrait of Yolanda Montejo de Goldberg. An unplugged standing brass lamp in the corner, the shade missing. Grace Paley’s The Collected Stories on the floor next to the sofa. Beth’s dress fits her like a sack, hiding her very slight frame, which you can sort of make out when she’s standing by the way the dress falls around her, her collarbones with their pearl-sized knobs under the taut ivory
