She put on her robe, used the bathroom, and drank more water while she fixed the coffee. Half the day was over and she was glad. This was not a day she wanted to wake to. Her niece was on drugs, her niece’s boyfriend was playing footsie with Krista, and as of today, they were all neighbors. Ideally, Eva would be happy that Maggie was living nearby. But she was a mess, one Eva felt responsible for. This had never been one of Eva’s strengths—taking care of troubled people. She had a heart for them, but not the capacity for the work it took to get them out of trouble. She had to get rid of Tom, but Eva knew very well how little could be done about that. If a woman loves a man, the more desperate things are, the more desperately she’ll cling to him. It appeared that Maggie loved him, from her letters, from the way she behaved when Eva first saw them, right off the plane. One hope that Eva held was that Maggie was young enough and wise enough to change. Also, Eva didn’t think her neighborhood was very safe or pretty. She herself wasn’t ashamed to live here. She was an East German, whatever that meant now. But everyone new who moved into the neighborhood was either a poor immigrant or a troubled youth. The skinheads. The pale girls dressed in black, coughing loudly and hollowly as they walked the nearly desolate streets.
Maggie was a woman now. One with troubles, like most people. What did Eva think she could do? She could talk to Maggie, but she feared making things worse. Confrontation almost never works, Eva felt certain. It had never worked for her or for anyone she knew. One had to come around to the truth oneself. She would call Elena. Elena should have called me, thought Eva, should have told me what was going on. And yet, Eva had known. Why should Elena call and tell her something they all knew but didn’t talk about? She was just trying to share some of the responsibility with Elena. Her own daughter, to help with the daughter of her sister.
And so, then there was Liezel. What should she say to Liezel? Anything? Would that be betraying Maggie? Or taking care of her?
She ran herself a very warm bath and, after pinning her hair back, slathered her face with cold cream.
She felt responsible for the world, and she resented that. Who took care of her? Even Krista, with her getting the mail, and helping out here and there, had become a burden. Oh, how her legs hurt! Hopefully, the bath would help. And resting. Yes, today, she would just rest.
She shut off the bath when it was full and walked over to her record player, her legs both weirdly numb and painful with each step. The little bit of brandy she put in her coffee was kicking in. She’d needed it this morning, to calm her nerves and to help with the pain. Later, maybe she’d find a bottle of codeine. That would really help. She tried not to take codeine often, though. If she took it too much, it stopped working well. There had been times when it stopped working, so she took more and more. It had scared her. She didn’t want to accidentally kill herself.
The Billie Holiday album was still on the record player. The water was very warm, and even though her legs went hot when they gave her trouble, she knew the warm water would feel good on them. Relax them, even cool them off a bit, as if the warmth from the bath pulled out the heat from her legs. She looked down at her naked body—her large hips, her round stomach. Self-consciously, she put her hands on her still shapely breasts and looked farther down herself. Her legs had red blotches running along them, and her ankles looked swollen. Her legs had always been nice—not too skinny, like Liezel’s, but not thick like trees. She hated to see them look like this. Perhaps it was time to see a doctor again. Even though she’d been a nurse, she hated seeing doctors. They so rarely had anything useful to say or do. Of course, her prescriptions were important to her, but she could hardly credit any doctor for that. She sank into the water and breathed deeply.
Billie Holiday sang in the other room, and Eva could hear her well. The fourth song on the record was her favorite. There were many good songs, “Solitude,” “The Man I Love,” “God Bless the Child.” The upbeat “All of Me.” But “Long Gone Blues” was the best. It was, in many ways, the only real blues song on the record, Billie Holiday singing how she’d been her man’s slave since she’d been his babe, but before she’d be his dog, she’d see him in his grave.
Yes, this was the blues. This was some sort of truth, perhaps the ugly truth. It wasn’t dressed up to be something else. And yet even on this song, Holiday sounded distant, even antiseptic. Eva thought maybe it was the recording, that the way it was recorded rendered the music too clean and distant. But Maggie was right, Holiday was good. Beneath the recording was a glimmer of heart, of pain.
Maggie. What was Eva to do? She’d write Liezel. And then, just try to stay in her life. Maybe, Eva thought guiltily, try to make herself more available. She’d been so looking forward to Maggie arriving, but now that she was here and here indefinitely, there was no real hurry to see her. There was always the next day and the day after that, and so on. When she was here just for that summer, it had been different. The distinct parameters of the visit had lent an urgency to her time here. Eva closed her eyes and sank deeper into the
