I can’t get used to the sound of someone walking on my ceiling. I live on the ground floor and the Roses live above me. They stride, they tiptoe, they dash across my ceiling day and night. I’m not used to having people around me; this garden apartment in Union, New Jersey was not my idea.
The Roses and I share the entrance to our building, and mornings I run into them on my way to church. I look at the ground when we pass. I see only the feet that bounce across my ceiling, feet that remind me of helpless puppies waiting to be trained. I can’t meet their eyes, not after listening to their bed pulsate above me.
“Lizabeth, you goddess!”
“Maxwell, you angel!”
Ignoring Maxwell’s hearty laugh and Lizabeth’s jasmine perfume, I concentrate on the dead yellow leaves along the sidewalk. It’s better that I avoid the Roses. I would tell her to get some insurance: hide money for the day when Maxwell breaks his wings and falls to earth. Get some friends. Find someone who knows how to do more than two-step across the bedroom.
I imagine the Roses are the same age my son would be now. I know Jonathan would never have been as careless with a woman as Maxwell is with Lizabeth. Maybe I’ll say a prayer for her. But when I get to church, I forget about Lizabeth and light a candle for my son.
***
Autumn was my son’s favorite time of year. As a child, Jonathan loved to dive into piles of orange and red leaves. On October nights he would lobby to build a fire instead of turning on the heat. I would watch as he sat in front of the hearth and read about the exploits of Captain Cook, his eyes glued to the book, his lips moving along the waves of sentences. Every so often he would stop and ask me to define a word he hadn’t yet experienced.
My daughter didn’t need me as much as her brother did. She possessed the independence I’d always avoided. While Jonathan and I enjoyed each other’s company in the warmth of the fire, she would be in her room, listening to Bon Jovi and planning a weekend with friends.
***
The Roses must be taking dance lessons. One week the hanging lamp in my dining room throbs to a mambo, the next it sways to a samba. I turn up the TV, keep my sewing machine humming and my bread machine purring, but I can’t block the sound of people dancing on top of me. I sit in my recliner, ears plugged with cotton, and try to concentrate on my crossword puzzle.
“Take an aerobics class,” my daughter said. Once a week she brings me cheese from Zabars and DVDs. “Meet people.”
“What will I say?”
“Join a bridge club.”
“What will I say?”
“Start painting again.”
“What will I say?”
“Oh, Mama.”
She slammed her cup of cappuccino on the kitchen counter sending a wave of tan foam to the floor. I grabbed a towel. “Do something besides baking and cleaning,”she said, pulling it from my hands and sponging her silk shirt. “Get a life.” She’s like her father, the two of them resilient as trampolines. She doesn’t understand that first I have to have someone to care for.
Autumn rain turns to ice. The voices above me slide down the wall in an avalanche of plans and promises. I know more about the Roses than I do my family.
“Lizabeth, you goddess!”
“Maxwell, you angel!”
Her vulnerability breaks my heart.
In December Maxwell takes Lizabeth to Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes. When they return, she tries to imitate the dance steps, high-kicking her way from the dining room to the bedroom. The crystal goblets in my china closet tinkle. Underneath their silliness I bake cookies for grandchildren who will not be here for Christmas. They are visiting their grandfather, my ex-husband, in Florida.
“Elena, my sweetness!” my husband said in our early days as he ran his fingertips across my naked stomach.
“Edward, my adored!” I whispered into his hair, damp from hours of lovemaking.
I could give the cookies to the people on my ceiling, but then I would have to talk to them. Why would they want to hear from a woman whose husband rarely danced a foxtrot with her but now does the Macarena on cruise ships with his trophy wife? I’ve found the pictures that my daughter places in a drawer before I visit, pictures of her father and his wife dancing. Pictures of my son in front of his office building in Manhattan.
Edward and I started our married life in Brooklyn, in a fifth floor efficiency with a double bed that nearly filled the living room. We made our daughter there. As tiny as it was, our apartment wasn’t claustrophobic; our happiness pushed out the walls.
When Edward was promoted, we moved to Long Island, to a house with a queen-sized bed where Jonathan, our son, was created.
“Edward, my adored!”
“Elena, my sweetness!”
Who knew that fate would not forgive us for devouring each other so intensely?
***
In the warm months it is worse. The Roses keep their windows open; their lives envelop me in surround sound. I’m forced to use my air-conditioning as a barrier against their energy, even on nights when honeysuckle sweetens the air and summer breezes whisper dreams of happier times. I can’t not listen when they talk on my ceiling.
“Maxwell, you angel!”
“Lizabeth, you goddess!”
The moth circling my reading lamp careens against the light bulb, angry at the intrusion. I slam the Saul Bellow novel on the side table. Static hisses from the radio. I’d call the super, but the last time I did that he told me to mind my business, as if I were the cause of the problem. I don’t want to make trouble. I live alone, an artist who no longer paints, my vision blurred by unpredictable anxiety attacks. Unfortunately, my hearing is still intact.
I put on an exercise video, but after doing the warm-up, I’m hyperventilating so I get a Diet Pepsi. I don’t know where to go in my apartment. I pace across the braided living room rug, rubbing my fingers over the TV and along the bookcase. Family pictures clutter the shelves: my daughter’s hair changing from curly blond to spiked purple to sleek highlighted bob; my son transforming from freckled child, to bearded student, to clean shaven architect. Jonathan at his promotion party. He is smiling, surrounded by colleagues at his office in the World Trade Center. Out of habit, I touch the glass protecting the photo.
“Maxwell, you angel, we’re out of wine.”
“Then go to a fucking bar,” I shout at the ceiling. They are silent, but only for a minute.
***
On Saturdays the Roses have their friends over for a cookout.
“Bring me a brew!”
“Where’s the guacamole?”
As I gather the week’s newspapers, the food section slips out. Another Cuban restaurant has opened two blocks from here. The menu lists ropa vieja and torta tres leches. For a minute, I’m tempted to make a reservation. I’d have to change clothes, style my hair and put on makeup. Thinking about it makes me tired. Maybe I’ll try it for lunch next week.
I used to enjoy going to restaurants alone. I would sit at a corner table sketching the frazzled mothers with their energetic children and shopping bags from Barneys.
“Lizabeth, you goddess, the burgers are burning.”
I should draw Lizabeth. With her dark eyes, milky skin and red lips, she’d make a terrific study.
Something hits my patio door. I pray it isn’t a bird. Against the rental rules, I’ve installed a feeder. I open the verticals; a soccer ball rests against my door. A boy with a Yankees t-shirt comes to retrieve it. He waves to me and mouths some words. Without thinking, I yank the blinds shut. My heart pounds. What kind of a person have I become? I hold onto a chair until the dizziness passes. Seconds later, when I open the door, an apology on my lips, the patio is empty.
Laughter and the odor of grilled hot dogs drift down from the Roses’ balcony. I flip the exhaust switch over my stove to high.
***
By the time Edward made senior partner, the children were grown and had their own lives. Still, we bought a king-sized summer home in the Hamptons where Edward cooked thick steaks on an outdoor grill larger than our first kitchen range.
On weekends we entertained his business associates, men dressed in Brooks Brothers’ khakis, and sultry women who wore short skirts and gossamer blouses, and looked brazenly around the house as if it would some day be theirs. I was lost in their world of deals and settlements. They showed no interest in my art.
Within that fortress, we imagined, we would spend holidays with our son and daughter, and the grandchildren we expected. This was where we sat, drinking our morning latte, the New York Times spread across the table, the Atlantic sparkling green beyond the garden, watching the morning news. On the small TV we watched the plane fly into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
***
On Sunday mornings, watering the African Violets on the windowsill, I watch the Roses carry a recycling container full of empty beer bottles. They walk barefoot on the wet grass and laugh as it squishes between their toes. From behind, with their denim shorts and cropped dark hair, they look identical. I wonder when they sleep.
After Jonathan’s death I couldn’t sleep; my restlessness kept Edward awake. I moved into Jonathan’s room, wore Jonathan’s clothes, cut my hair like Jonathan’s. I mourned my son by eating for two; I couldn’t stop growing outward.
“Elena, you elephant!”
My husband moved to a Manhattan brownstone that smelled of Lolita Lempicka perfume.
“Edward, you callous cheat!”
The divorce was no surprise; neither were my loss of the houses and my pittance of alimony. I was too tired to fight. I didn’t have insurance stowed away. My daughter brought me to this apartment complex, which is filled with young couples and families, a place where I have few reminders of my former life, just people who stomp on my ceiling.
***
Maxwell has been downsized. He is home all the time. Lizabeth works long hours; she is ambitious. Their plan to move to an apartment in the Palisades is on hold; they can’t afford it. She paces. He sighs. The bed is silent. I sit in my catbird seat beneath them and listen to the drone of discord.
“Maxwell, you lay about!”
“Lizabeth, you shrew!”
Something crashes to the floor. I imagine it’s the Waterford candleholder, the wedding present from her grandmother that Maxwell ridiculed but Lizabeth defended. The door slams, and his feet, weightier than hers, churn down the stairs and out.
I put aside my crossword puzzle. There is something about Lizabeth--maybe it’s her broken voice or her hapless predicament--that draws me to her. How can I help her? What, besides a worn shoulder to cry on, can I offer? I pull out the cookie mix.
Do something besides baking and cleaning.
I shape the cookies and heat water for tea. I’ll search through my crystal collection and find a candleholder to give her. We’ll shop for bargains on Saturdays at Loehmann’s and have lunch at Ruby Tuesday’s.
I’m removing the cookies from the oven when I hear the heavy feet spinning up the stairs.
“Maxwell, you angel!”
“Lizabeth, you goddess!”
I close the oven door and swallow my chagrin. I live in an apartment where people won’t stop dancing on my ceiling. I try not to weep. Sometime in the future the Roses will move out, and someone else will move in. But today the gravely sounds of Rod Stewart singing old standards that used to evoke emotional longings, float above me. His version, devoid of sentimentality, sounds hilarious, and before I know it I’m so convulsed with laughter I’m holding my sides. I can’t remember the last time I laughed this hard.
Outside the blue sky is washed clean of clouds; a brilliant red cardinal pecks at the feeder, children play soccer on the green grass. On a porcelain plate, I quickly arrange the cookies.
