Timescape

up and removed plates with a clatter. The pressing silence between them grew. “C’mon, Mom. Best to go.”

“Dishes.” She began gathering cutlery.

“Penny’ll.”

“Oh, then.”

She rose, brushed her shiny black dress free of invisible crumbs, fetched her bag. She went down the outside steps with a hastening step, clump clump, more rapid at the bottom, as though fleeing an undecided battle. They took an alleyway shortcut he knew, their footsteps echoing. Waves muttered at the shoreline a block away. Fog fingers drifted and curled under street lamps.

“Well, she is different, isn’t she?” Mrs. Bernstein said.

“How?”

“Well.”

“No, really.” Though he knew.

“You’re—” she made a sign, not trusting the words: crooking her longest finger over the index to make am entwined pair—“like that, yes?”

“Is that different?”

“Where we live it is.”

“I’m older now.”

“You could’ve said. Warned your mother.”

“Rather you met her first.”

“You, a scholar.”

She sighed. Her bag swung in long arcs as she waddled along, the slant of street lamps stretching her shadow. He decided she was resigned to it.

But no: “You don’t know any Jewish girls in California?”

“Come on, Mom.”

“I’m not talking about you taking rumba classes or something.” She stopped dead. “This is your whole life.”

He shrugged. “First time. I’ll learn.”

“Learn what? To be a something-else?”

“Isn’t it a little obvious to be so hostile to my girl friends? Not much analysis needed to understand that.”

“Your Uncle Herb would say—”

“Screw Uncle Herb. Hustler philosophy.”

“Such language. If I should tell him what you said—”

“Tell him I have money in the bank. He’ll understand.”

“Your sister, at least your sister’s close to home.”

“Only geographically.”

“You don’t know.”

“She’s slapping oil on canvas to cure her psychosis. Yeah. Psycho Sis.”

“Don’t.”

“It’s true.”

“You’re living with her, yes?”

“Sure. I need the practice.”

“Since your father died…”

“Don’t start with that.” A cutting-off chop with his hand. “Listen, you’ve seen how it is. That’s the way it’ll stay.”

“For your father’s sake, God rest his soul…”

“You can’t—” He was going to finish push me around with a ghost and that was the way he felt, but he said, “know what I’m like now.”

“A mother doesn’t know?”

“Right, sometimes not.”

“I tell you, I ask you, don’t break your mother’s heart.”

“I’ll do as I like. She’s fine for me.”

“She is… a girl who would do this, live with you without marriage—”

“I’m not sure what I want yet.”

“And she wants what?”

“Look, we’re finding out. Be reasonable, Mom.”

“You throw up to me reasonable? That I should lie down and die and say nothing? I can’t stay here and watch you two love birds cooing to each other.”

“So don’t watch. You have to learn who I am, Mom.”

“Tour father would—” but she didn’t finish. In the cool wan light she jerked erect. “Leave her.” Her face was rigid.

“No”

“Then walk me to my bed.”

•  •  •

When he returned to their bungalow Penny was reading; Time and eating cashews. “How’d it go?” She tugged her mouth to one side wryly wearily.

“You’re not going to win the Susie Semite contest.”

“I didn’t think I would. Jesus, I’ve seen stereotypes before but…”

“Yeah. That dumb stuff of hers about Roth.”

“That wasn’t what it was about.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he agreed.

The next morning his mother phoned him from her motel. She was planning on spending the day walking around town, seeing the sights. She said she did not want to take up his time at the University, so she would do it on her own. Gordon agreed that was probably best, since he had a busy day ahead; a lecture, a seminar, taking the seminar speaker to lunch, two committee meetings in the afternoon, and a conference with Cooper.

He returned to the apartment later than usual that evening. He called her motel, but there was no answer. Penny came home and they made supper together. She was having some problems with her course work and needed to get in some reading. By nine o’clock they finished cleaning up and Gordon spread some of his lecture materials out on the dining room table to do some overdue grading. Around eleven he finished, entered the grades in his book, and only then remembered his mother. He called the motel. They said she had a “do not disturb” sign out and wanted no calls put through. Gordon thought of walking over and knocking on her door. He was tired, though, and resolved to see her first thing in the morning.

He woke late. He had a bowl of shredded wheat while he looked over his lecture notes in Classical Mechanics, reviewing the steps in some of the sample problems he would work for the class. He was putting the papers away in his briefcase when he thought of calling the motel. Again, she was out.

By mid-afternoon his conscience was nagging him. He came home early and walked over to the motel first thing. There was no answer to his knock. He went around to ask at the desk and the clerk looked in the little mail slot under her room number. The man fished out a white envelope and handed it to Gordon. “Dr. Bernstein? Yes. She left this for you, sir. She’s checked out.”

Gordon tore it open, feeling numb. Inside was a long letter, repeating the themes of the alleyway in more detail. She could not understand how a son, once so devoted, could hurt his mother this way. She was mortified. It was morally wrong, what he was doing. Getting involved with a girl so different, living like that—a terrible mistake. And to do that for such a girl, such a shtunk of a girl! His mother was weeping, his mother was filled with worry for him. But his mother knew what sort of a boy he was. He would not change his mind easily. So she was going to leave him alone. She was going to let him come to his senses on his own. She would be all right. She was going up to Los Angeles to see her cousin Hazel, Hazel who had three fine children and who she hadn’t seen in seven years. From Los Angeles she would fly back to New York. Maybe in a few months she could come and visit again. Better, he should come home for a time. See his friends at Columbia. Come visit people in the neighborhood; they would be overjoyed to see him, the big success of the block.