Second Place – Open Category
Woman With Birds Of Paradise

By Susan Land

I kissed the air around my sister. Then she led me to her newest couch, which was sleek, modern, just the bones of a couch, yet surprisingly comfortable. Julia was sleek, too, all bangs and cheekbones and vaguely Oriental eyes. She explained that in an hour she'd have to pick up Charlotte from a social skills class. “She's still working on eye contact. How's Jake?”

“Looking for a summer job.” 

“He'll find a good one. An MIT boy.”

She thought my son was perfect. He adored her. Possibly my sister and I would have been closer if  I'd managed to get closer to Charlotte, who was 14 and some kind of autistic.

Possibly a lot of things. 

I said, “Leon's coming.”

“Damn.” She fiddled with the arrangement of the delicate ginger snaps. “Weren't you going to visit him?”

“We were. But… .” Work, terrorism, other plans.

 “You're all right, aren't you?”

“Knock wood.” I wished people would stop asking already. “He's coming next week. For a week. I'm sure he'll get in touch with you.”

 “He won't. A couple of years ago, Henry lent him some money. Now we never hear from him.” 

 “How much?”

“Sixty thousand. We wanted to know that he could hold onto his apartment.”

“An investment in keeping a problematic father-in-law on the other side of the globe.”

“Margaret, you're so cynical.”

In fairness, I said, “Your husband is a generous man.”

Julia poured the tea and said, “Leon's coming to see you, Margaret.”

I didn't want to be seen when I was with Julia. She made me feel fat and sloppy, though I was neither, at that moment, wearing a blouse I liked and gray slacks. Or trousers. Yes, suddenly I was wearing trousers. And she, Princess Diana thin, was wearing a light green linen frock.

But when I asked, “What am I going to do? I want him to have a good time. He hardly even knows his grandchildren. He can stay with us for a few days, but he must have done the math. Jake's room is going to be empty in September,” I sounded like a plaintive, frocked little girl. Julia laughed; a deep, dark, trousers-y laugh. And I remembered that I loved my sister.

Out of her dark laugh, an iron voice said, “We'll make an itinerary. He'll see Washington. And I'll give him a goodbye party. Yes, I will. A gorgeous, elegant send-off. He wouldn't dare not leave.”

Julia immediately cut to the details of the menu, the drinks, the table settings. And most important, the ambiance. Arriving at Julia's party would feel like entering into an Impressionistic painting.

In her stainless-steely kitchen, on a ballerina calendar, she wrote down the date.

“Isn't he an architect?” asked Jake, while we waited at the gate. Leon had flown from Haifa to JFK, then caught the Delta shuttle to Reagan National. “ I remember when he visited last time he was good at building with blocks.”

“Now he's in some kind of shady tourist business.”

Then Leon appeared, in a cape, a cape, and a fedora, and he was beaming, grinning, laughing with a well-dressed woman who was walking beside him. The greetings that followed included kisses from that woman. Her name was Bella Greenberg and she reminded me of a middle-aged Bess Myerson, the first Jewish Miss America. Smooth skin. Slim ankles. Thick hair, without much gray. Bella and Leon had met on the plane from Haifa to New York. He had the aisle, she had the window. “And no one between us,” she mused.

“Bella gave me her pretzels. Both packs.”

“An excellent ice breaker.”

“As if I could ever be ice sitting in a row with this wonderful woman. My father, still thin, still weathered, seemed not to have aged a day in eight years.”

Bella said, “He introduced me to music for clouds.”

Leon explained that he'd asked Bella to listen to a CD he'd burned especially for the transatlantic leg of the flight. “Mellow Coltrane. Smooth Ellington. Some Miles for the miles.”

“Such music. Never in my life.”

Jake took Bella's carry-on bag. 

 Leon explained how they'd convinced the ticket agent in New York to give them seats together to National. Bella reminisced, “They put us in first class.” 

Leon said, “Row 4, seats A and B.”

Jake led us to the baggage claim, where Leon had the only wheel-less piece of luggage on the turnstile. Bella's suitcase had a bright red scarf around the handle. 

I was dying to know how long she planned to be in Washington, where she was staying, with whom? I asked, “Can we drop you off anywhere?” 

“No need to trouble. I'll take the hotel shuttle.”

“No, no, no.”

“Yes, yes, yes. I don't want you to get in a traffic jam.”

Her suitor said, “Then let us go with you to the shuttle.”

She said, “Don't be silly.”

But we followed her anyway, as my father pointed out the Jeffersonian Domes in the enormous skylight above us. He explained how the domes were meant to suggest the Capitol building. As if he couldn't help himself, he asked, “Did you hear the one about the lady midget who used a contact lens for a diaphragm?—she wanted a womb with a view.” When Bella laughed, my father's face lit up like a skylight.

He helped her into the van, still smiling. Then, waving her off, he looked abandoned, widowed.

Jake asked him, “Hey, remember me?”

“You? In Israel, you'd be in the Army this summer, a boy your age, healthy and strong.”

At that, my son seemed a bit shaken, health and strength notwithstanding. When we got to the parking garage, he took the driver's seat and spiraled toward the exit without speaking. The parking attendant's flirtatiousness went right over him. On the Beltway, Jake said, “My father was never in the army.”

From the back seat, I said, “He had a lucky draft number.”

Leon said, “May Jake never be in the army.”

I said, “Amen.” It just came out, the way a normal American daughter might back up the prayer of a normal American father. 

Then Leon said, “Let's call Bella.”

The next morning Bella and my father took on the city, she in a flowered skirt and pastel jersey, he in jeans and a short-sleeved polo shirt. Bella carried herself like the 58 Smith College graduate she was. The widow from Salt Lake City seemed like quite the catch. Leon carried himself like the rugged, hardened sabra he wasn't. I was determined to play the third wheel, in case Bella suddenly saw through him; I had visions of my father following a freshly broken heart to a Lotto line.

But Bella had a delightful date. Dad opened doors for her. He kept his jokes clean. He pointed out architectural details; Bella paid rapt attention. She also noticed when he needed to slow down to study the city from another angle. They shared a contempt for bottled water and a love of hot pretzels. As she mapped out our path from the Washington Monument to the Roosevelt Memorial, he admired her sense of direction. In the gift shop of the Air and Space Museum, she admired his pocket watch, an antique. He said, “Margaret's sister sent it to me on my birthday.”

I said, “No present like the time.”

Bella smiled. “You are your father's daughter.”

He kissed her cheek. She blushed and went off to buy presents for her grandchildren. We watched her disappear into the corner with the posters of the cosmos. Then my father asked about my research. I worked in a lab that studied measurable memory. “The steps that get people through ordinary tasks: Brushing teeth. Tying shoes.”

“Your mother studied with a student of Martha Graham, a famous dancer…”

“I know. She'd say 'I'm going to my modern class. I can't be late. The teacher locks the door!'"

“You remember.”

“Some. Julia doesn't remember anything.” I was 12 when our mother died, and Julia was 6.

“But your sister is like a clone of her. When I get the Christmas card, every year, that photograph …”

I managed not to point out that Julia always picked a picture she looked fantastic in—no matter how the rest of her family looked.

“How did you grow up so well?” he asked. "How did you become this smart, strong, scientist with the wonderful little family?”

How indeed. His sister had wanted my sister, little Julia, a cuddly, motherless 6-year-old. Aunt Ellie believed that sisters belonged together. I believed I belonged with a series of dangerous boys, but I'd kept up my grades. I told my father, "I was saved by research."

My first internship. A sleep lab. The graveyard shift. The supervisor warned that I'd get hit on by subjects and I'd be lonely and tempted. "And I was hit on and lonely and tempted, but I got seduced by the numbers on my chart."

"By the measurable?"

“Absolutely. Seduced by the measurable.”  Scott and I used numbers, like the googol, one followed by one hundred zeros, to express our love. I love you a googol. 

At Roosevelt fountain, the new-old lovebirds sat on the edge of the reflecting pool, under the statue of FDR, who was also seated. Bella sighed and said, "We worshipped him so."

My father said, "It's wrong to depict him like a cripple. In granite. A granite cripple."

Bella's eyes welled up as she put her fingers in the water, which sparkled with coins. My father reached into the water for her hand. He told her a joke about a little guy from Brooklyn who decides to find out the meaning of life. It's a long story. Mr. Lev travels from rabbi to rabbi, from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side, to Chicago, to Jerusalem. Finally, he ends up in front of a guru on a mountaintop in Tibet.

“Life? That's a hard one,” says the guru, rocking back and forth, as Mr. Lev waits, shivering. The last leg of the trip has wiped out his savings. His coat's been stolen. The airline has lost his luggage. “Life is like a fountain, Mr. Levi.” 

“What? That's it? I've traveled so far, I've lost my family, my house, my livelihood, and all you can tell me is that life is like a fountain?” And the guru rocks some more from side to side. And the sun falls below the mountain. Finally the guru stops rocking and says, “You mean life isn't like a fountain?”

Bella nodded, knowingly. “I never expected to be so lonely in Israel, or so the opposite of lonely in Washington, D.C.”

He put his CD headphones on her ears, gently pushing back her hair. He kissed a curl. She closed her eyes to listen. Then he whispered to me, "Are you all right? Margaret? Your health?”

“Knock wood. Seven years out and counting. The numbers are with me.” The breast cancer numbers that hadn't been with my mother.

That night after dinner the phone rang. My father said, “I'm staying in the city. Bella thought you might worry.”

That was a Monday.

He called on Thursday morning. “Bella's getting her hair washed. She told me to see if you're free for coffee. But I can't afford the $6 for Starbucks.”

“So you're down to your last—”

“I already owe your sister's husband a fortune.”

“Dad, I have two postdocs from China who need my help, too.”

“I'm not even prepared to buy her a crab cake.”

“They depend on me for their visas. The rules keep changing, ever since—” He groaned, sounding ancient. I said, “Oh, screw it.”

“Bella believes I sat by the window in her airplane row because she and I were destined to meet.”

“But she can't afford to stay in the Hyatt forever, Dad.”

“So we'll be ships passing in a sea of memorials and nights. But what monuments.”

“Okay. That's enough information.”

A generous daughter would have told her father he was welcome to stay with her family, for as long as he needed, after the Bella-ship had passed. I offered to drop off $500 at the front desk of the Hyatt. And I said, “I hear your going-away party is going to be divine.”

And divine it was. Translucent clouds of helium balloons floated over the hors d'oeuvres buffet. The lawn and the boxwoods hummed green. I wore a summer dress covered with tiny purple flowers. At home, the dress flowed gracefully, but at my sister's house it seemed too bright and busy. The hostess wore a beige sheath, and almost managed to wear her daughter Charlotte like a subtle, carefully-chosen shawl. My blond niece had grown nice long legs and pert little breasts, but even in her own backyard, a field compared to most backyards, she stood too close to her mother. Whatever form of autistic Charlotte was or wasn't, she certainly did have her own sense of space. I attempted to give her a kiss, and tried to keep the movement slight, but she backed away and said, “Aunt Margaret, I am learning how to program Euler's Proof on my TI-87 calculator.”

Julia asked, “Do you know what Charlotte's talking about, Margaret?”

“I know enough to be impressed. You've done an impressive job with her education, Julia.”

That pleased my sister, who smiled with shy pride. After making sure I knew where the drinks were, she slipped away to greet the guests of honor. “Welcome, welcome, welcome!” she sang. 

My father seemed a bit stunned by all the fuss. Bella seemed delighted, a woman at home at such parties. She wore a long flowered skirt and carried enormous flowers. Julia kissed her and thanked her, again and again. Julia loved getting presents. Bella said, “They're called birds of paradise.”

Charlotte took a sniff of each one. She said, “There is no such thing as paradise. It is only in stories.”

“But Charlotte, I've brought a little present just for you." Bella presented my niece with a dozen butterfly hairclips—pastel, plastic, pretty. 

Charlotte made a fist around the butterflies. “Thank you, Bella.” Her voice was more robotic than usual.

“Do you like to decorate your hair?" 

“No. I hate clips and barrettes and hair bands and scrunchies. The hairdresser said I have hair to die for, which is just an expression.” Then Charlotte pressed her head against her poor mother.  Julia touched the hair to die for. “Let's get your calculator, okay?”

Mother and daughter hurried away, as Bella turned to me, murmuring, “I didn't know…”

I said, “Don't worry. Charlotte's never liked anything I've given her.” 

I squeezed her hand, the one my father wasn't holding. Then she turned away from both of us and reapplied her lipstick, practicing the larger-than-life smile in her compact. I wanted to ask how she felt about my father's going away. Would she miss him? Follow him? Figure they'd had a week of paradise and leave it at that?

“Leon,” she asked, re-brightened, “where is that wonderful grandson of yours?”

He spotted Jake at the cooler. Off they went. I loaded up on carrot sticks and cucumber spears, hungry for something unambiguous and crunchy. I found a bench, sat down, and watched my brother-in-love lumber in my direction. Henry, the pathologist, had none of my sister's grace. His features were gentle, neither handsome nor not-handsome, and he always seemed quietly happy to see me. He asked, "How's your health?" 

I never minded the question from Henry. I told him my health was fine, and knocked on the bench.

He sat beside me and shared some carrots. He asked, between crunches, “Have you noticed how the therapy people have started saying ‘needy’? That certain people are ‘needier’ than others?”

“They've been saying it for a while, Henry.” 

“Really? I guess I just noticed.”

Maybe Leon's visit had triggered Henry's new-found sensitivity to need. 

“You should see Charlotte's dance card: this therapy, that therapy. None of it proven.” Julia and Charlotte made their way along the perimeter of the yard, side by side. “But she's pretty, isn't she?”

“She looks like her mother, but with beautiful golden hair.” Julia gestured to her husband with a tilt of her head. I tried to remember if my mother had tilted her head that way, but I could only see her limbs, reaching and pointing, and thin, like Julia's. 

Henry tapped my ample thigh, stood up, said, “I'm in charge of opening the wine. Stay well, Margaret.”

Off he went. I stayed put, watching the giant goldfish swimming in my sister's artificial pond. Julia had researched foundations and sealants, hired diggers, picked out fancy tiles in Georgetown. Uncle Mel had helped her with the project, before he and Aunt Ellie moved to Florida. Julia must wish they were alive and at her party.

Jake found me. “Hey.” 

I said, “Hey, yourself.”

“Check out Aunt Julia and Charlotte. They're skipping, Mom.”

“They certainly are.”

“Why is she so weird?”

“I'm told she actually experiences gravity in an unusual way. Just to stand still or walk normally is a struggle for her; hence, the skipping.” 

He watched the goldfish intently, as if analyzing their groupings and regroupings. “Gravity is the most elemental physical force. Can you imagine how alienated she must feel?” I'd expected a wisecrack. Maybe I was terribly cynical, after all.

“Lunch is served!” Julia called, summoning her party to an oval table set with linens, china, silver. When we were seated, she gave a little speech to welcome us all, especially her most honored guests. The oldest couple at the table blushed as one, and slowly, deliberately, painted warm rolls with soft, pale butter. Scott watched them, smiling. He appeared somewhat goofy when he smiled. I loved the look, to the google.

Julia could cook. Flaky salmon. Potato curls. Most of us ate with hungry concentration. Charlotte played with her calculator. Julia and Bella discussed museums. They both loved the “not-so-serene Cassatts” at the Corcoran, and were mad for the Bonnards in the Phillips Collection. Julia held forth on the Japanese influence on his work. “Nineteenth-century French painters adopted the Floating World tradition.”

My father told Bella that Julia had a passion for art. 

Bella said, “She gets it from you. You hear music for clouds. Julia sees floating worlds.”

He smiled, proud, and my sister did nothing to dispute his displaced pride. In fact, Uncle Mel had taken her to museums every Saturday for years. Her talent for seeing had nothing to do with Leon.

My husband asked if Phillips of the Phillips Collection was an oil magnate. “As in Phillips Petroleum.”

Charlotte glanced up from her calculator and said, “There is no such thing as an oil magnet. Oil is not magnetic.”

Henry explained how vast amounts of money and power create another kind of magnetism.

Charlotte said, “Not real magnetism.”

Henry shrugged, bemused.

Jake said, “Aunt Julia, remember when I used to come over here after school and watch that full-length Bugs Bunny video?”

“Of course, I remember, Jake. You loved that rabbit.”

He explained to all: “I'd quit chess club and my parents didn't know.” He smiled, nostalgic for his illicit afternoons with his loving aunt, while his mom went through radiation.

My father stood up, hit a knife on his glass for silence and announced that he had important news. He took Bella's hand. She stood up beside him. He said, “I've been given the honor of moving to Utah to continue my courtship of this wonderful lady!”

Julia chimed, “This calls for champagne!” Jake stood up to be the first to hug “this wonderful lady.”  My husband watched the hug and smiled the beyond-goofy, almost-dopey smile he smiles in our wedding pictures. I should have been filled with warmth and hope, but my sister drew me aside and asked, “Did Leon love her the way he loves Bella?”

“Not now.” I'd waited for decades for my sister to ask me such a question. “Don't ask me now.”

Julia said, “Come on, Margaret. All I know is he was an optometrist and she needed glasses and he took her to the track.” 

I removed her hand from my arm and said, "Julia, she would have loved a party like this."

Julia smiled her Christmas card smile.

And I hissed, “Dad used to call her cynical when she refused to believe in his favorite horses. She'd scream that she wasn't cynical.” Louder: “Dad, tell Bella who you are. Tell her you gamble. Bella, he's gambled for years. He owes money to Henry. He owes money to me.”

All eyes on Leon. He stared at no one. “Mrs. Goldberg tells Mrs. Cohen: ‘My son got into law school.’ Mrs. Cohen asks: ‘NYU?’ Mrs. Goldberg replies, ‘And vie not me?’’’

Jake groaned. Bella's bride-to-be smile trembled. Julia wrapped her arms around her daughter. 

Henry said, “Leon owes me nothing. But Bella, if you decide to make it legal, get a pre-nup. You don't want to take on his debt to Margaret.”

Damn you, nice Henry.  I said slowly, “That's not the point. Listen: Bella…”

Bella ignored me. I'd crossed a line. I'd frozen myself out. Even Scott glared my way. Without the smile, Bella asked, “Leon, do you gamble often? Still?”

“Less. Lately.” He touched her hand. “Less on horses.”

“But you've lived in Jerusalem. Suicide bombers on buses. In markets.”

“A fountain? The meaning of life?”

“I have a life in Salt Lake, Leon. You could, too. You could be a Hebrew tutor.”

He studied her. She seemed to feel his eyes. Hating myself, I said, “Bella, you'll be lonelier than ever if he takes the bus to Las Vegas without you.”

Julia snapped, “Bella, please don't listen to Margaret. No one took her to social skills classes.”

Jake whispered, “Hey, Mom, you just got dissed.”

Scott said, “Shut up, Jake.” 

Julia chirped, “Let's have dessert, shall we?”

In the midst of the fuss over a sublime chocolate cake baked by a chef who'd worked in the White House, Charlotte walked up to me and stood like a sweet, normal little girl. She said, “I go to social skills classes, Aunt Margaret.” A champagne cork popped. I reached out for my niece, forgetting the years of rejections, and she reached up her arms, as if she'd forgotten, too. We hugged. My lonely righteousness crashed down around us. Among the rubble, my relationship to gravity seemed to shift. I was dizzy, unmoored. Over Charlotte's pointy shoulder, I saw my sister staring at us, coming nearer. 

Julia said, “I don't believe it. We've been working on hugging lessons for years.” Her voice cracked, and every sleek line of her face, her hair, seemed to soften, to give off a light, as if she were a mother in an Impressionist painting.

Charlotte squirmed—I let her go—and went to Julia. Scott smiled his wedding-picture smile. I turned from him to my father. “Dad, good luck in Salt Lake City. Just don't screw up.” 

“I wouldn't dare," he grinned. "Bella has two daughters, both lawyers. And she's already warned me, no lawyer jokes.”

 I nodded toward my sister. “Julia, good party. Good job.”

Still luminous, she took off, holding Charlotte's hand, mother and daughter skipping together, almost floating. I wanted to go after them, to join their modern dance, to breathe their pretty air. But down on earth, Bella, as grounded as a granite wheelchair, whispered, “So Margaret, what are the odds?”

Susan Land is an instructor at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda.