Muriel

Excerpts from Change At Jamaica

MURIEL

(from Chapter 5 - Lost In Brooklyn)

Muriel opened the door and there was Izzie, in the same light tan summer suit in which he’d left. She had on his favorite nightgown, and she spread her arms for him. She pressed him to her breasts and, as she felt his hands sliding down her back, reached behind him and softly shut the door. Their lips met and she opened her mouth and let her tongue touch Izzie’s tongue. Their kiss went on and on. It was the most passionate kiss either had ever experienced. She felt his hands on her thighs now, and he lifted her slightly off the floor. Then they seemed to be floating toward their bedroom. They were falling onto the bed together. “Wait, darling!” she whispered. As he lay on the bed looking up at her she took off her nightgown. She sat beside him and helped him take off his clothes. It took a long time, they hugged and kissed so often. Yes yes, Izzie! I’m yours again! Take me, darling! She lowered herself on top of him and lay there and felt his body under hers. She paused a moment, pulled the pins out of her hair, and let it fall over his face. How often she had done that! She knew he loved her long blond hair, loved to feel lost in it. She brushed it off his face now. But his face was not there. No one was there.

“Izzie!”

She sat up in bed. The room was dark. She breathed deeply, and she was sweating, though she could hear the air conditioner and the room was not hot. Had the girls heard her? She could still hear her voice shouting his name. But except for the air conditioner the apartment was silent. She switched on the bed lamp. The pale white numbers on the electric clock said “2:35.” She got up and went to Izzie’s bureau. Just as she had during the show, she got the framed photograph from the bottom drawer. This time she also took out the small cardboard box. She took the picture and the box to the bed and placed them on the sheet. She noticed it was a little damp, as was her nightgown. It was Izzie’s favorite nightgown. That wasn’t just in the dream. She picked up the picture and placed it on her pillow. She sat still looking at his young face a long time. She picked up the box and took the top off. She took out the colored ribbons with the medals attached and placed them under his picture. She shook her head and said out loud, “Now why did I do that? Why did I show this picture to all those people? I hadn’t meant to. I didn’t even know what I was getting when I came in here. I had come in and I had to get something to show them. Something about Izzie they ought to know. Yes, that was it. She wanted them to know that Izzie had been in the war, and that he had been a hero, but that he never talked about it. She remembered when he left, how tearful they both had gotten. She was his sweetheart, he’d said, and he'd come back to her. That was nineteen-sixty-seven. There were already demonstrations and protests against the war. She hadn’t wanted him to go. She was afraid he wouldn’t come back, or that he'd come back missing something. He had come back, and that was a wonderful moment to remember. She was in her parents’ home in Wanka Wasta, the house next to Izzie's house, where his parents also waited for him to come home. But he’d come to her house first. He hadn’t rung the bell. He’d just come in, her mother had pointed to the stairs, and he’d run up and burst into her room. She was still in bed, and he leaped on top of her in his uniform. She said the perfect words, just like in a movie: “My soldier!”

They were married a year later. She was twenty-three and he was twenty-five. They were going to have a wonderful life together. For both of them there had never been anyone else, not since his family had moved next door to hers. They truly were childhood sweethearts who had stuck together. And that was wonderful too. All those memories of the silly and awful and brave things they’d done together as children. The tree-houses they’d both fallen from. The time they’d almost drowned in Herrick’s Pond. Their parents hadn’t let them see each other for a long time after that. But her favorite memory was what they did early every summer with one other neighborhood kid: Izzie would get up at 5:00 o’clock, having set the alarm on his grandfather’s pocket watch, silently leave his house and come to her house. She had a thread tied to her toe. The thread stretched from where she lay asleep in bed, through the window, and down the wall. He would pull it two or three times and then receive an answering pull. A little later she would join him, and they would get the other boy, who also had a string tied to his toe. Then the three of them would go to some nearby office buildings and climb the fire-escape to the roof. They would go from roof to roof as the early morning sun began to rise. It was their time. The whole world belonged to the three of them. Poor Jake. He had not come back from the war. At the funeral his mother had told her they had known all the time about this summer escapade of the three children. All the parents had known and laughed about it. They thought it was harmless and sort of wonderful. Jake’s mother said she was glad Izzie had come back. “He was a second son to me, and now he’s an only son!” She had embraced Muriel and then Izzie, who stood in his lieutenant’s uniform. She remembered he didn’t wear his medals. He had refused to.

Now she put them back in their box. She looked at the picture a moment longer. It’s not wrong, she thought. She bent over and kissed his face. Then she put the picture and box away again.

She went to the white telephone by the bed and picked up the small card next to it. This, he had said, was card number two, which also had his home phone. Any time, he had said, and he seemed to mean it. You may need something, he had added as she took it. She looked over at the clock. It was 3:15. Well, he said he used words carefully. Any time meant any time. She picked up the receiver and pushed down the numbers and heard the tones. There were four rings, and then she heard his voice. She said clearly into the receiver, “This is Muriel Frankel. You said I could call you any time I needed you. It’s not . . . a professional matter. I’m feeling . . very alone. You seemed sympathetic the other afternoon. I guess I’d like some more sympathy. I’m sorry. I hear what I’m saying and it sounds as silly to me as it must to you. Forget I called . . . You will? But it’s so far. Oh, you’re in your apartment. Only ten minutes? Twenty by taxi?” She felt stupid repeating what he said. Or childish. A child repeating instructions. She hung up. Walter Bradley was there twenty-five minutes later.