80
Friday, May 18, 1984
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
FICTION
MYSTERIOUS
OBSESSION
The accident seemed to change Mom. She
began scrubbing the house, opening
windows, using heavy perfume
BY LEV RAPHAEL
Special to The Jewish News
S
ometimes, watching Mom at
dinner, I pictured the
wheelchair in the hospital
in which she'd sat shrunken by fear,
and I felt afraid myself.
Dad yelled at her, of course, as
soon as we knew there was no concus-
sion, no internal bleeding, no visible,
medical change or problem.
"How could you drive through a
red light? Twenty years driving and a
red light you forget!"
Mom shook her head, all the
energy of Dad's words dissipated by
her awful doubting voice. "I'm going
crazy," she murmured, dark eyes sor-
rowful, hands useless in her lap, like
a defeated little girl. The accident
had not aged her but torn away the
years of work and stability. Mom
taught Hebrew and Jewish history in
our Queens congregation's Sunday
school and she had always looked so
firm and settled, buttoning the last
button of her suit jacket on the way to
classes — as if the neat little woman
she was, curly red hair cut close at
the sides, freckled face patient, seri-
ous, had never known another life,
had never walked down any street
uglier or more dangerous than
Queens Boulevard.
ous heavy hands and mouth, his
jerky eyes.
"You're not crazy!"
"I am. I must be."
"What's wrong with you?"
Her helpless painful shrug dis-
gusted him and he shook his head at
me as if to say "See? See what I put up
with?"
I didn't see, I never had. Dad's
criticism of Mom was persistent, his-
torical, like the character of a people
or the climate of a land. Whatever
she did or said in her quiet efficient
way irked him and they always
seemed to be wrangling somewhere
in our cool dark apartment that faced
the back of another almost identical
six-story building of red brick. Mom.
would sometimes explode and practi-
cally bark at him, her thin voice high •
and stretched, but mostly she ignored
his pounding questions or filtered the
words from the anger.
They had met in Paris, after the
liberation of the concentration
Continued on Page 25
She was at those and other times
like a wonderful cut-out doll with its
cardboard stand, outlined in black.
But the accident, which happened
near home, had come like an invisi-
ble hand to mangle that doll.
"What's the matter with you!"
Dad blustered. "You're not crazy!"
If I'd expected the accident to
change him I was wrong. Dad was
one of those short stock men, broad
shoulders and neck tensed forward,
who seem to push themselves
through life as if it were an unruly
crowd. His words and looks could fall
like hammer blows, pounding at your
smiles or opposition. He was not a
kind man — or better, he didn't know
how to be kind, it was not one of his
languages. And though he hung over
her at the hospital like stifling dusty
drapes, and tried to care for her at
home, the anger lurked in his omin-
Art by Lisa Syuerson .