The Apartment A Novel(32)

Estelle served me some coffee. She saw that I was a little unnerved by the animals. It’s what happens, she said. You collect, and one day you wake to realize you’ve turned your home into a mausoleum for your desire to have lived and died as a mother. She did not say that exactly. She may not have said anything at all. She offered me some food and I declined. I was starving, but I didn’t want to eat in front of her. The coffee was weak. I took a sip and pushed it to the side. I’m glad you contacted me, I said. I’m surprised you came, she said. Me too, actually, I said. When was the last time? she asked. Christ, I said, who knows – was I sixteen or seventeen? She smiled and shrugged. We realized simultaneously that we had no personal connection to re-establish, and it seemed, therefore, pointless to go on avoiding the subject of Josephina. It’s been a long time since I thought of Josephina, I said. I stood up and looked at those photographs. They were all the ordinary pictures of a child’s life. I said, It’s an incredible shame. She said, You and her were very close. Yes, ma’am, I said. I believe she was my only real friend here. She’s the only person I ever missed. Estelle looked out the window at her back yard, which was large, green, and reasonably clean, and had not changed since the last time I was there. She said the same thing about you, said Estelle. Do you mind if I ask you something personal? I asked. Not at all, she said. Are you sick? I asked. She turned from the garden to me, in half-astonishment, then realized what I was asking. No, no, I’ve been hunting you for years, she said. Ever since Josephina’s death. Really? I asked. She said, You wrote a very nice letter to her. You read it? I asked. Yes, she said. I don’t quite remember what I wrote, I said. I still have it, she said. I said, I’d rather not see it, to be perfectly honest. Did she say anything about it? Nothing, said Estelle, she just handed it to me and asked me to put it with everything else.

Estelle stood and placed both our coffee cups beside the sink. Did Josephina ever come to visit you, after you left? No, I said. Were you not boyfriend and girlfriend? We weren’t, I said. Estelle put her hands in her pockets and walked very close to the back door, still looking outward. Whatever she wanted to ask now, she was not prepared to ask it. She seemed a bit embarrassed, so I said: I think I still have her letter to me. Would you like it? Estelle took her hands out of her pockets and crossed her arms. After a while she said, What was that? The letter, I said. I could make a copy. Yes, she said, that’d be nice. Then she opened the back door and said, Follow me. We walked outside, into the warm sunlight, and she said, Remember this yard? I do, I said, and it’s strange to be back. I bet, she said. We walked to the detached garage. There was a little staircase that led up to the apartment’s front door. There was a padlock on it. Estelle took a small key out, opened the padlock, then took out another key and opened the deadbolt. She turned the knob and opened the door. The door opened inwardly, and she stepped inside, and I followed. I cleaned a bit this morning, she said. All the curtains were closed, so the room was black, except for the oblique rectangle of sunlight on the floor that the opened door had allowed. She turned a lamp on. She’d had to replace the bulbs earlier that day, as well. The apartment was a single large room – a converted attic over the garage, with a sink and a fridge and a bed and a desk and an old television set. Boxes were stacked three high against the walls. She was fascinated by the past, by her family’s past, said Estelle. Absolutely fascinated. If she had not been sick, I would have taken her to a therapist. I don’t know why she set herself a task she knew she could not finish, and that nobody else would take up. What kind of struggle is that? She sat on the chair beside the desk and shook her head.

My memory of this day is tumultuous and murky. I do not trust a word of it. But a life is not a recollection of facts, and in Josephina’s impossible task I saw something that was, if not heroic, then at least refreshing. Her mother found it absurd because she could not understand an obsession with facts. But nobody obsessed with the past is concerned with the facts. In her letter to me, Josephina had written: truth has a qualitative, not a quantitative, value, and it is the very people ranting about the unattainability of truth who are most likely to utilize lies to squeeze, subjugate, undermine, and mutilate justice. So she lived here? I asked. Until she got too sick, said Estelle. Can I open one of these? I asked. Go ahead, she said. I went to a box and got my keys out and cut the tape open. A stiff scent of must and old paper came out of it. I dug through it. Amazing, I said. Maybe when I’m gone, somebody will want all this. Maybe some museum. Yes, ma’am, I said. So you weren’t her boyfriend? asked Estelle. Well … I said. I only ask, she said, because she said you were her boyfriend. Estelle wasn’t looking at me as she spoke, because this was no longer small talk. We were young, I said. I don’t mind that, she said, not at all. Well, yes, then, we were boyfriend and girlfriend. Estelle smiled, still without looking at me, stood and clapped her hands softly. I realized I’d been pursued all these years to say the very thing I’d just said, which, of course, was not the truth, not in the way that she wanted it to be, but it was a lie I was happy to tell, if it brought Estelle some peace. She said, I wonder if you’d do something for me. Of course, I said. I wonder if you’d just spend a little while on your own here, while I sit in the house. I said, Ma’am? She was looking at her feet, which were tapping the dark-stained wooden floor. She could not speak, or would not. I closed the box. Sure, I said. I’ll stay for a little while. She walked to me and took my arm and thanked me, and suggested that we say our goodbyes there. Goodbye, I said. Goodbye, she said. She held my hand again with both her hands.