Lena's Garden

Who by Fire: Chapter 22: Audio and prose

Note: You can start reading here or anywhere, then go back. See Table of Contents. Come in the middle? Robert is the narrator who discovers after his wife Lena has died that she had a lover, Isaac. Evan is Isaac’s wife. Robert is on a search for how he lost Lena: He’s creating the story through memory, invention and a search for the truth and his role in what happened—and by stalking Isaac.

Lena’s Garden

I now know she rented the room in the house on 21^st Street on one of the days I’d sat in the Phillips, on the day I knew that the sea was the answer.

She knew that Isaac was not the answer and she knew that she would need a place to die.

In her office Lena stood before the old wooden drafting desk built into her west wall where the graphic artists’ representations for the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit lay. She placed them first in a pile one on top of the other and then spread them out in the order in which they would appear, considered where the psalm might go if it were included, tried not to think about Isaac making love to Evan, decided firmly that she would not go with Isaac on the trip to Chicago. In Chicago she was to meet with John Winthrop, the person responsible for the moving exhibit and a man who would help her with the additions the Smithsonian planned to make—the addition of the psalm, a minor example. She had suggested it in a memo and had received one back from the on-site curator suggesting that advice from Winthrop was in order. She didn’t expect to get it included but had liked the chance to exchange letters with Winthrop.

She flipped through background materials: books, an outdated cd-rom disk, the brochures and other papers that Winthrop had sent her along with his response to her letter, asking about including the psalm.

***

When the exhibit opened, Lena lay in bed in the room at Gershon’s house, Gershon, the man who lives next door to me. I went to the opening, briefly, and then to her office. I sat at her desk. I was collecting evidence. I was recollecting.

A letter from Winthrop sat in the middle of her desk next to the psalm. And yellow lined paper and J.A. Sanders’ book The Dead Sea Psalms Scrolls open to the psalm—and there were the lines she kept quoting. All struck me like a farewell note and stick with me and drive me and our story.¹

***

Winthrop’s letter first. He wrote, “My view is that you should be focusing more on ‘The Rules of Community,’ for something new in the Smithsonian’s exhibit rather than an obscure psalm. For example, we’ve not done much here in Chicago with the rites of passage into the sect, the necessity for ritual purification, the two-year waiting period, essentially an initiation process—a key to understanding who they were as well as who they were not. These are aspects of the sect that visitors would relate to (initiation), but more important, they define not only the separateness of this group, but also the use of rituals that still exist in some way today in Judaism. I’ll not go on as you know as much of the history as I, but these are my recommendations.” Clearly, he was dismissing the idea.

Under his letter lay a photograph of the archaeological remains of the Mikveh, the many ritual baths discovered at the ancient ruins along the Dead Sea where the Scrolls were found in caves.

Did she think, Go now? A place to cleanse myself, a place to get away as these people had decided to separate themselves from their world.

Winthrop’s letter continued, “You realize, of course, that this psalm, rather, to be more specific, the translation you’re considering using is a somewhat, how should I say it? An ‘iffy’ choice because of the seeming erotic nature that comes through the way the professor translates it. Although his translation is now widely accepted, we’ve not included it in the exhibit for that reason.”

I read the psalm and got stuck on one of the lines: “I bestirred my desire for her and on her heights I do not waver.” And another phrase: “I cleansed my hands… .”

The postmark on the letter: June second.

That day she and I met by accident—or was that moment meant to be? When I could hear the rain on the skylight in the Phillips, when I’d sat in the Rothko room.

Phillips Museum

She didn’t have a window but she would have heard the rain on the skylight in the hallway of the office wing attached to the Sackler Gallery.

Winter rains filled the cisterns near the Qumran caves. This saved water would be used in the arid summers, would flow through the extensive water system, be cleansed of silt, would fill the cisterns and the ritual baths.

Qumran cistern

She didn’t think Winthrop was right about the psalm but he put an end to any hope that she’d get it added to the exhibit. He’d efficiently put her down. The on-site curator had been smart to have her write Winthrop or perhaps at best cowardly in that he didn’t say what he probably knew Winthrop would say. Or he hadn’t wanted to chance Winthrop’s disapproval if in fact her suggestion was worthy—and then the curator’s refusal of a good idea could have gotten back to Winthrop.

Her world was looking sullied with the usual deceptions, with ordinary cowardice, her own included.

But there was rain. She could walk in the summer rain. She wore a black slicker, no hat, carried her umbrella but didn’t open it. The rain fell lightly and steadily, unusual for the Washington summer that tended to end its days with thunderstorms that broke from the heated day and flooded the paths and gutters, storms that could be counted on for torrents of wind, downed power lines, and trees struck down by lightning. Today it was a rare, light and continuous shower, soft and cool, and she was alone on the streets. People were inside or in cabs, avoiding the walk she took that ended at P and 21^st streets, near Dupont Circle, far from her office—at the place where she believed Isaac had picked up the sheet-rock screw, the screw that he would drive into the copper roof of her imagined gazebo, the screw that she kept in the zippered pocket inside her lightweight flowered cotton purse that resembled a wineskin in shape, or so the catalogue had described it, and that fit under the curve of her arm, laid against her breast and was easy to carry—exactly the right place for her to save the keepsake from Isaac.

She’d been walking for nearly an hour, knew she should get back, was tired and wet and though not lost, clearly without direction.

She looked down P street but the restaurants and hotels where she might have gotten respite or a cab back felt wrong. What had she been thinking? That she’d feel better at this spot where they’d lunched, where she’d begun to realize the never-to-be of what they were?

She should go back to the office. She turned up 21^st to catch a cab at Massachusetts Avenue. Then the sight of greenery, trees caught her. She crossed busy, car-buzzing Massachusetts Avenue, continued up 21^st into a tree-lined neighborhood of townhouses. In the solitary rain with so few people out and about, the street quieted like the sudden hush of an empty room in a gallery—and before she knew it she was in front of the Phillips, considered going in when I appeared on the street.

I had taken to spending my lunch hour or longer in the Rothko room at the Phillips.

It became my ‘go to’ home away from the metaphorical home, my love, my Lena that I knew was disappearing.

I’d pulled out The New York Times, found the crossword puzzle. Forty-two down: “October bloom.” I didn’t know this one. She would know. I knew what I had to do. Take her to the sea.

I left the museum. I was walking slowly, sauntering, not with my usual purpose. I didn’t have an umbrella, and there she was.

I must have seemed like an apparition—out of place. She was walking towards me. We were a block apart. She waited, and I walked the block to where she stood.

“It appears we’re both playing hooky,” I said.

“I didn’t think you did that.”

It continued to rain and I worried a bit about my thinning blond hair, how it must have disappeared on my head. She would have seen my scalp, the pale skin. I remember a scene in a movie. Clint Eastwood standing in the rain. His sculptured face, his hair thick and wet but thinned to his scalp from the downpour. Still, the jaw and face, vulnerable and strong. That’s not how I looked.

“I like walking here,” I said. “The houses are so different from ours, so close together, but I like them. I like the copper facing on the bay windows. I like the quiet in the city.”

“Yes.” She liked these same things. “Will you be going to work now?”

“I’d better.”

She waited, as if I might ask her what she was doing here. But I simply looked at her and then stepped towards her, took my handkerchief out of the inside pocket of my jacket. I wiped the rain from her face and pressed the handkerchief into her palm. I turned and walked away towards my office on K Street.

I know this was the day she rented the room where she knew she would die. I know because I have the check she wrote.

The brownstones on 21^st Street are single residences and apartments identified by the multiple mailboxes. Instead of going into the gallery or continuing to Massachusetts to catch a cab, she must have walked again the path she’d taken back towards P, this time looking more closely at the houses.

In the 1400 block, she stood in front of The Jarvis, the name in gold script on the arched glass beneath the cornice, the brass doorknob, the brass kick-plate, clearly recently polished. Two houses down, another narrow house, all the houses connected like the row house she’d grown up in, but these were tall, old, all of them built in the early 1900s.

In front of 1406 on the stoop was a pot of striking ochre horn-shaped blossoms on deep brown-green stems. She would have wondered what it was. The potted soft green leafed plants below with pale green blossoms were the Lenten Rose—this one she knew because she’d planted it at home.

The deep green leaves with delicate bowed blossoms frame the stoop like soft, colored clouds that cast small shadows on the red brick.

She must have been quieted by the plants, by the copper bay window gone to verdigris, by the house next door with its Victorian turret and stained glass windows—all of it on this street in the middle of the bustling city.

Fools die for want of heart.

She rang the bell at 1406. A white-haired man in loose, draw-string pants and dark-green gardening clogs, the man I’ve come to know, answered.

“Are there apartments available?” she asked.

“This is my house, no apartments, and stuff rarely goes on the market around here. All word of mouth, pretty much. I’m retired now, like to garden in the small plot in the back and here in front. Might sell one day though.”

“What’s this yellow flower? It’s glorious.”

“Can’t remember. My daughter, a professor, philosopher, believe it or not, sent it to me. She probably put the name in her letter. I guess I could go in, find out, but in this neighborhood anybody could be out to rob you.”

“Of course. I should go.” But the quiet and so close to the Phillips and in the city. “Your flower makes me think of the Abraham Darby rose and a giant pencil tulip all in one.”

“Oh, she said something about a rose, but it’s no rose, and I have to take it inside soon as the weather gets cool. That’s why it’s in a big pot. Can’t put it in the garden. I’m not sure it’s going to make it.”

He was soon pouring her Lipton tea in his antiquated kitchen that looked out on a small deck with two levels, built-in wood flower boxes all around, bags of dirt nearby, and a few plants in the gardens that had managed to poke through the piles of leaves from fall that he’d not cleared away. And it was June.

“You’ve got that ring on your finger,” he said. “That mean two of you are looking for something?”

“No, I’m alone.” Did she think of me on the street?

“You planning to live alone or have dates?”

None of this was his business. I’ve learned he doesn’t much care what’s his business and what’s not.

The tea, the fresh dirt under his thumbnail that hadn’t rinsed away when he’d made the tea, something about the earth in his hands and his old porcelain sink near the Caloric gas stove must have seemed familiar like a forgotten memory that comes to mind: her mother flushed from the heat of her oven, the lemon cookies lying on a cookie sheet, cooling on the porcelain drain board of the sink. She said, “I need to be by myself.”

“Nobody coming after you, now, is there?”

“It’s not like that.” She stood up. “I should go.”

“I’ve been thinking that if I rented a room, that’d help out with my income. It’s general practice to rent out rooms here in this neighborhood. I haven’t done it because I like to be pretty much by myself, don’t want the intrusion. But the gardening—”

“I could help,” Lena said. She saw herself planting his garden boxes on the deck. “It’s a small area. I mean, if you wouldn’t mind, I could. And I work.”

“I sure hope so. How else you going to pay rent?”

“Well, I wasn’t thinking of moving in, exactly. I was thinking I could help you with the gardens.”

“You asked about apartments. You don’t want one, I don’t need charity.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that. I was thinking about a room.” A place apart. “I’d be away most of the day. And not here every night.”

“Well then, when would you be helping?”

So he did want the help. “I’d get up early, and in the evenings. It would be no trouble if you wouldn’t mind the intrusion, that is. And if I could afford the rent though I’m not saying I’m lacking in funds, but, oh, really, I’m silly to even suggest it. You’ve been kind to let me in out of the rain. I’d better go.”

“How about two-fifty a month and you help me out with the gardens?”

“Yes.”

“You haven’t seen the room. Wouldn’t you like to take a look? Might not like it.”

He led the way to a small bedroom with a double bed, yellow and white gingham spread with embroidered red strawberries—someone had done this by hand. A matching pillow sham with eyelet lace, a striped red and gray upholstered small armchair, and an adjoining small bath. “My daughter’s room. She’s long gone. Lives in Chicago, professor in the Divinity School. I guess I told you that. Real brainy kid, talks over my head, doesn’t visit much. If she does though, it’s got to be her room again for her stay. You’d have to go somewhere for a few days. Not the best deal.”

The room was worth more than he was charging. Lena said, “Three hundred a month.” It was worth much more because of its location than what she offered.

“You’re some negotiator.”

She wrote him the check.

He read the names on the check out loud, “Lena and Robert Berenson,” but he didn’t touch it, left it there next to her flowered teacup, the brown tea, now gone lukewarm. “One more question, Mrs. Berenson.”

“Lena, please.”

“Why you wandering around in this neighborhood, kind of far from home isn’t it?” Our address was on the check.

She didn’t answer. Perhaps she recalled my words. I like the copper on the facing of the houses. I like the quiet in the city.

“My name’s Gershon Tabachnick. Come back in a week, after your check’s cleared, see if you still want the room.”

“Okay,” she said, collected her purse and umbrella, looked out the window at the gardens.▵

Table of Contents

Coming next: Still in My Suit, chapter 23

Love,

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1. See prologue for the psalm