Banana Rose

  As soon as I got home and took off my down jacket, I wanted to get out of the house. I felt like a desperate wild animal. Gauguin was moving away, and I couldn’t stop him. I was frightened. I sat down on the couch. Then I jumped up, went to the refrigerator, grabbed the handle, and yanked open the door. There was nothing in there I wanted to eat. I slammed it shut. I went into the bathroom and turned on the tub water.

  The phone rang. I hauled myself into the living room and lifted the receiver. It was Gauguin. “I’m heading out tomorrow early. I thought I’d pack up a few more things and come and say good-bye in about an hour,” he said.

  “Okay.” I hung up.

  In an hour I’d see Gauguin for the last time. I dropped my clothes on the bathroom floor and lowered myself into the white porcelain tub. Though the bath was hot, my teeth were chattering and I was trembling.

  “Please don’t go,” I sobbed. I reached for a towel and buried my face in it.

  My eyes were swollen by the time I was dressed again, sitting on the maroon couch, waiting for Gauguin to arrive.

  The doorbell finally rang and I got up to answer it. Gauguin stepped in from the cold and stood by the couch. This was my last chance. I’d beg him to stay or take me with him—anything. Instead I was frozen. We stood opposite each other, maybe half a living room apart. He wore his old green army jacket, and his face, that face I loved, those thick lips, hazel eyes, freckled cheekbones—I wanted to reach out and touch them. I would be alone in Minneapolis, a city where I would never have lived except for him.

  “Nell—” He started to cry. I glanced at his hand. That hand had touched my face, my breast, my ear. I would never find anything like his tenderness again. I began to sob.

  “Please.” I threw my arm across my face. “Please, please, don’t say anything.”

  He kept crying. “Nell...” Neither of us made a step closer to the other.

  “...I’m so sorry we hurt each other.” He finally got it out. A wide quiet space opened between us.

  Then I couldn’t bear it. Speechless, I motioned for him to leave. He opened the front door, stepped out, and closed it behind him.

  49

  “NELL, WE’RE WORRIED about you. Please come down. We’ll pay for the ticket,” my mother offered on the phone. “We’re here for another month. It will be good for you. Uncle Harold is here, right nearby, and Cousin Sarah. It will cheer you up. Just because you’re the only one in our family ever to be divorced, you shouldn’t be ashamed. We all love you.”

  “Okay, I’ll think about it. Easter vacation is coming up, so maybe I could make it.” We hung up.

  Three days later I made reservations to fly to Miami. I was lonesome and maybe my family could help.

  After I bought the ticket I panicked. An entire week with my parents? I must really be crazy!

  My father lunged at me as soon as I reached gate eight. “Nell, Nell, Nell,” he moaned, and gave me a big bear hug.

  My mother was there, too, along with two of their friends from the next condo who had come along for the ride.

  “This is Shirley, and this is Max.”

  We greeted each other. “They live in New Jersey,” my mother said. “Nell, wait until you see the place we rented. You’ll just love it. Very Floridian.”

  “Look at those palm trees. And you know Grandma is coming down the day after you leave. What a shame we couldn’t all be here together,” my father told me as we walked through the parking lot. “I love this semi-retirement, I was exhausted. Cousin Saul’s learned the business so well that I can leave for two months.”

  We piled into the car, men in front, women in back. I was scrunched between Shirley and my mother. She held my hand and rubbed it, giving me sympathetic glances while she and Shirley kept up a constant banter, comparing notes on the price of bagels, the new Marshall’s that opened nearby, and how much weight Selma in the next block had lost.

  They drove me through the entire condo complex. It was forty miles from the ocean but had a clubhouse with an outdoor pool, tennis courts, and a Jacuzzi.

  “Don’t you just love it?” Shirley asked.

  “My,” I said.

  It was late afternoon and a breeze cooled things off a bit. Almost on cue, people came out of their houses to walk or ride jumbo-size tricycles around the paved streets. It was good for the circulation, my mother told me.

  As soon as we got to their place, my father settled into a big lounge chair.

  “I don’t do those things, Nell. Why walk all around the block to come back to your own house?” He grinned. “I’d rather go watch horses go round and round at the racetrack.” He shifted his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other and pressed the remote control button to switch the television on. “Come, sit with me. Your mother has to call everyone to let them know you arrived safely.”

  I settled down on the couch and together we watched Howard Cosell. The blinds were drawn against the sun. We sat in the light of the television screen. The New York Knicks were slaughtering the Boston Celtics.

  Everything in the living room was white—the couch, the chairs, the rugs, the walls. A fat green schefflera plant occupied one corner and a ceiling fan whirled above our heads.

  I got up during a commercial, took a chicken leg from the refrigerator, and ate it, standing by the kitchen sink. “Don’t spoil your appetite, Nell. We’ll have dinner after our walk. You’ll come with me?” my mother asked, stepping out of the bedroom.

  “Of course.” I nodded.

  She ducked back into the bedroom to put on her special brown walking shoes. When she reemerged, we went out. As she walked, she swung her arms. The walking instructor had said it was good for the heart. She liked going on her walk later than everyone else.

  As we passed each house, she told me who lived there. “Oh, that’s the Katzes’. The husband was a physician before he retired. They have three daughters. All married very well. One is married to an Israeli, and they live in Scarsdale.

  “This is the Durantes’ house. They’re Italian, but very nice. They have two granddaughters who visited last week. The older one’s a little chubby, but she has nice skin.

  “Would you prefer brisket tonight? Or we could go out for dinner. Tomorrow your father and I start our diet. We read about it in the Miami Herald. We’re only allowed lean meat twice a day. In the morning when we wake up and for dinner. In between we can eat carrot sticks. That’s all.”

  “Mom, I don’t really care what we eat.”

  We walked past small condo units, each with a green lawn, a hibiscus bush, a willow tree, and a forsythia. Wandering Jew plants were draped around the front entrances.

  “Nell, isn’t this paradise? Aren’t these places cute? Look at that adorable flamingo statue on the front lawn.” She stopped swinging and held my arm.

  “My,” I said.

  We walked on in silence, my mother awed by the beauty.

  At the corner she suddenly halted and turned to me. “So what happened? He didn’t have a nice family?”

  “No, it wasn’t that. We were no longer compatible. I couldn’t stand him playing music all the time and not being home,” I said, hoping to satisfy her with an easy explanation.

  “Nell, I don’t understand. You knew he was a musician before you married him. That’s the way they live.” She was very logical. I was impressed.

  “I guess I changed. And my painting—”

  She interrupted. “He was a sweet boy. He just didn’t look like you. That’s all.”

  I knew she meant he wasn’t Jewish. Could it be that simple?

  When we came in the house, my father jumped up from his chair. “What took you so long? I’m starving. Let’s eat a lot tonight since we have to start dieting tomorrow. Nell, I never get to see you. You arrive, and your mother takes you off gallivanting.”

  “I didn’t take her gallivanting. We exercised. Something you should do.” She tapped him on the stomach to remind him of his weight. He beamed with delight. He liked an
y kind of attention from her.

  After dinner, my father and I settled into watching a late movie. My mother decided to go to bed early. She padded into the living room to say good night wearing a white cotton nightgown that ended above her knees. Her knees were brown and very round, like a young girl’s. She kissed me, kissed my father, then padded back to their bedroom where she fell asleep to the crackling of the radio.

  The movie was about a man in England who fell in love with a Russian spy. In the middle of the film, when the Englishman turned the corner on Trafalgar Square and barely missed a bullet aimed at his head, my father turned to me. “This movie is good, isn’t it?” he said.

  I nodded.

  After the spy and the man ran off together, “The End” flashed across the television screen.

  I got up to turn off the set. He raised his hand. “Don’t do that. I like the sound.” He shifted in his chair and fell asleep.

  I crossed the living room to the guest bedroom. I stood in the bedroom for a moment, then turned and walked out the front door. I continued past the tennis courts and the artificial lake used for paddle boats. A thin moon rippled in the water and hung steady in the Florida sky.

  I imagined that Gauguin and I were visiting here together. Gauguin would have sat for an hour in the hot tub and my father would have nagged me to tell him to get out. Lying on a chaise lounge, I would have said, “Leave him alone. His parents just died.” In the morning, my father would have squeezed us fresh orange juice and my mother would have cut up bagels to go with the lox and cream cheese. Then both my parents would have sat and watched us eat. Gauguin would have made them happy by eating two bagels.

  I headed toward the back of the condo village. I remembered something Gauguin had said about my parents when they visited Minneapolis. “They make you feel weird if you want to be alone, like it’s an abnormal state.”

  I reached the high-wire fence that surrounded the condos. On the other side was forest. Shirley had said in the car that soon bulldozers would be knocking down the Australian pines to make way for the construction of Seagull Motor Park. I climbed the fence. No one was around to stop me. Everyone was asleep.

  I dropped down into the soft dirt and pine needles on the other side. I walked far enough into the woods that the streetlights of the condo village were only a glow. I sat down, leaning against a pine tree. Even though there was a 7-Eleven a quarter of a mile away, it seemed like a wild forest, a place I could breathe. For the next fifteen minutes I tried to figure out what to do with my life.

  There was nothing to be done. I sunk my back into the tree and felt the weight of my legs on the pine needles. The air was warm. It was hard to believe that Minnesota was still so cold. There must be a way out, I thought. I can’t stay this unhappy forever. I wished it were ten years from the date of my divorce.

  I walked back to the fence, climbed over it, and returned to the white square condo that held my mother and father. The television was still on in the living room, my father snoring in front of it. I tiptoed over to turn it off.

  As soon as the television clicked off, my father stirred. “Nell, please, leave it on. I’m watching.” I sighed and turned it on again. I didn’t bother to argue that he had been asleep and at 1 A.M. there was nothing on but fuzz.

  I went to my room, put the quilt on the floor, and slept there. The bed in the guest room was too soft.

  My father shook me with his foot to wake me. He couldn’t bend down to the floor. I looked up. “Nell, why do you sleep this way? We have a perfectly good bed. Come. It’s morning. I squeezed you some orange juice.”

  “It’s early. Let me sleep.” I tried to remember my dream.

  “You don’t need to sleep. Your mother and I don’t see you enough. Get up.”

  My parents began their special diet that morning. By the time I came into the kitchen, they had already eaten their quotient of four ounces of lean meat.

  My father asked me, “Did you go out last night after I fell asleep? Nell, you shouldn’t do that. There are rednecks in Florida. If you want to go for a walk, I’ll come with you.” As he spoke, I noticed my mother slip M&M’s in her mouth from a dish on the cocktail table in the living room. I didn’t tell my father.

  That whole day they were grumpy and couldn’t wait to go for dinner. They both planned to get a steak. They mentioned it often. We went shopping in the late morning. They wanted to show me the citrus groves and the peacocks that were let loose to wander among the orange trees. My father sat down on a nearby bench. “God, am I hungry! We should go home and change to get ready for dinner. There are big crowds at this steak house. We have to be early.”

  “But, Dad, it’s only one o’clock. We have all afternoon. I want to go to the beach,” I said.

  He scowled. He couldn’t believe dinner was so far away.

  By 3:30, my father insisted we dress and drive out to the restaurant, which was only twenty minutes away. “We should be there when it opens at five. We can be the first in line.”

  I gave in. I went to my room and put on a sleeveless white dress and a pair of Mexican huaraches. When I stepped into the living room, my father was at the other end of it.

  “You can’t go to dinner like that!” he yelled.

  I looked down. “Why not?”

  “Those shoes—they look like you stepped out of the jungle. And you didn’t shave your armpits.”

  “It’s none of your business,” I yelled back. I’d put up with him all day, and all of a sudden something in me snapped. “Get off my back!” I screamed, turned around, and went into my room. I grabbed my suitcase, threw open the bureau drawer, and tossed my clothes helter-skelter into the gray nylon bag. I zipped it up, reached for my sun hat, flung my purse over my shoulder, and stormed out the front door.

  As I charged down the walk, my father shouted through the screen door, “Where are you going?”

  “I’m leaving,” I screeched back.

  “Good riddance,” he shouted again, and slammed the front door.

  I marched through the gate of condo city. Outside of it there was only a highway. I crossed to the divider island and walked along it, heading west. I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t even thinking. I was blind and walking fast toward the airport fifteen miles away.

  A white Buick pulled up. I turned my head toward the car as the man rolled down the window. It was my father. “Please, Nell, come home. Your mother is hysterical.”

  I continued to walk, my eyes straight ahead. “If she’s hysterical, why doesn’t she come get me?” I said.

  “She can’t. She’s too upset. She wanted me to come,” my father answered.

  “Well, what do you feel?” I asked, still walking hard, suitcase in hand. He drove along beside me at three miles an hour.

  “Me? About what?” he said.

  “About me leaving?” I asked. He drove so slow that the car stalled. He turned the key and started it again.

  “Nell, I’m hungry. Please, let’s go to dinner,” he pleaded.

  “I’m not going to dinner. If Mom wants to see me, let her come and get me,” I said.

  A police car pulled up behind the white Buick. “What’s goin’ on here?” the officer drawled. “Is he bothering you, miss?”

  “I’m her father!” my father shouted indignantly.

  “He’s not my father!” I yelled back at the officer.

  “Come on, mister. Now move along here. Leave the little lady alone,” the officer ordered.

  My father turned so that half his body was now twisted, hanging out his open window. His right arm was wrapped around the steering wheel, and his left fist was clenched and pointed toward the police car.

  “Nell, tell him who I am!” he shouted at me.

  “I won’t. If you don’t know what you feel, go get my mother.” I was beginning to break.

  “Okay, I’ll go get her. If you wait here!” he shouted.

  “I’ll wait here.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “Yes
.”

  I leaned against the guardrail and dropped my suitcase at my feet.

  The officer called to me as my father pulled away. “Are you okay, miss? Was that your father?”

  “Yes.” I nodded my head. “I’m okay.”

  He pulled away. I bent my head. I cracked open inside and began to weep.

  My parents pulled up. My mother jumped out of the car in a beige polyester pantsuit. She stood on the shoulder opposite me and screamed across the traffic, “Nell, what’s wrong?”

  My face was in my hands, but I had to say something. Right then, I felt raw and naked and knew I could only tell the truth. I couldn’t protect them anymore. I looked up, tears running down my cheeks. “Mom, I’m lost. I’m lost since Gauguin left.”

  My mother broke down, weeping. “Oh, Nell,” she cried.

  My father stood behind her with the car keys dangling in his hand. He was embarrassed. “Please, can we go eat now? I’m starving.”

  My mother turned to him. “Irving, who cares about eating? Our daughter is lost.”

  “We can talk about it at the restaurant. I’ve been dieting all day. Please...”

  A yellow Oldsmobile stopped. “Do you need help?”

  “Yeah, take me to a steak house.” My father made an attempt at humor. “No, we’re fine.”

  My mother crossed over to the divider and touched my hair. “Nell, let’s go home.”

  “Okay.” I was spent. They knew the truth now.

  We drove the one block back to their condo. I went in to wash my face. I didn’t even look in the mirror.

  At the restaurant my father drummed his fingers on the tabletop, waiting for our order. My parents were embarrassed around me now. I had exposed myself in front of them. They ate their steaks, and I picked at my chicken.

  The next day the three of us took a walk along the beach. We progressed slowly. My parents had suddenly grown old. Every few hundred yards, we stopped and sat on a cement bench. In the distance you could see palm trees and mansions along the shoreline.