Eva
Rudi and I were colleagues stuck at a small elite college in the middle of nowhere Ohio. We didn’t quite make it at a high-powered university. He taught physics and I was an associate prof in the chemistry department. Were we friends? I guess so but not close. Not close enough to have him reveal his extended history with his first girlfriend Eva. It is really a story about the secrets parents keep from their children, even when they are mature adults. Why don’t we want to have our kids know who we really are? Then again stories we tell about others is often about ourselves.
Rudi asked to meet with me. “Need to ask for your advice on something personal. I wondered what would that be about. Is he going to tell me that he is gay, or that he is a drug addict….who knows but I agreed to meet with him and hear what he had to say.
We met over coffee in the student union. Before we could even sit down he blurted out his question, I should say questions, concerns and most of all his history with his first girlfriend Eva a history that he considered sharing with Eva’s grown son and daughter. He had written several stories, or maybe more accurately a log, notes about Eva. He asked me to read some of what he wrote and then meet again to ask “Would it be appropriate to share these notes with Eva’s grown son and daughter.
Before we left that afternoon, we bitched about our teaching load. Ridiculous. Three courses each semester. No time to do research just teaching to lecture halls filled with bored students, coeds trying to get their attention, students pleading to have their grades changed.
I read his stories which turned out to be an emotional dump in the form of notes. They were hard to read and left me wondering….What should I tell Rudi? The Rudi notes are attached as an appendix.
We met 4 days later, same time same station. I told him that his Eva stories, his notes, his emotional venting were moving, larger than life, sad, poignant and so much more.
I didn’t get a chance to give him my thoughts about whether he should share his notes with Eva’s adult kids What Rudi started to tell me seemed innocent enough. “Jim, if you were me would you tell your son and daughter of your first love at 17? Would you tell them some of the details of their mother’s history the scary parts. Would you tell them what she couldn’t reveal because it was too painful and wanted spare them the horror story of her life as a little girl. Would you tell them I was her first love and that she was devasted when we didn’t make it to the alter.
He asked, “Would you go into details about life with your first love, like how much their mother meant to you. They certainly wouldn’t want you to talk about your sex life. Obviously, the world is filled with grown children who knew that their parents had an active life of romance before they were born including some well-chosen details of the lives of their parents when they were young and frisky. Would grown kids want to learn more about who their mother really was. Would you withhold secrets that were withheld from them the kind that would be frightening and upsetting. I just listened as he went on but then he said,
“Would you tell your kids that when her husband, their father lay dying he told her that he wanted her to marry me and .…”interrupted. “Yes, that is a bit unusual but it does happen.
Finally, I stopped Rudi’s monologue. “Look Rudi what you wrote were not really stories but your emotions in thinking about Eva throughout your lives together…..I mean apart which is the reality of what you describing. It is hard to read, raw, repetitive and as a story not well written but as your life experience with Eva powerful. She meant so much to you that I guess it was hard for you to think straight about your relationship with her. But to get to the point you can’t give what you wrote to Eva’s adult son and daughter. It is not appropriate and ….and your emotional notes are not about Eva, it is about you. You are the centerpiece of your Eva notes and those are notes that are for you to think about. Have you thought about who you were through all those years of loving Eva. Why not read your own notes as if you were someone else like me.
Appendix
Story 1
I can never forget Eva. Impossible. We were in each other’s life right up to the time of her death a few months ago. Her son called me that she had just died. Should I tell them the whole story about his mother Eva and I?
I started writing Eva stories when she had talked to me about her dying husband. I wrote:
Last night Eva broke my heart, for her, not for me, no for both of us. How could I help not melting down? Why would I want to not feel overwhelmed? How could I be in her place and not feel totally alone. But for a few minutes, late, on the phone, we talked, mostly it was her voice, and then I couldn’t get back to sleep after she hung up.
The phone call was a bit of surprise but the upbeat voice was the same as it has been for the last 50 years. Had not heard from Eva in months. Had not called her either. Our usual was a call, a check in note to each other a few times a year.
Jack, her husband, was sick beyond imagining and Eva was there to be with him. She knew how to do that and as she said to me at the beginning of her call, “Only she could provide what he needed. The rehab place might be ok for some things but Jack needed her, what she knew would work for him.” That was Eva’s take control style. Her family was everything that mattered in life. Nothing held back. For her, that was the ‘of course’ of what love was about, but also that is what she knew was the basis of survival of the spirit.
Now we are in place far away from the Bronx New York as 17-year olds. We were in love wrote poems to each other, and held hands, and the way she would look at me made me melt and I was young and dumb and she was young and knew so much more than me. That was a movie of a long time ago.
When I saw her three years ago I was surprised that she didn’t look the same as she did way back when, like in the photo, the one in an old album I have in my bookcase, the two of us sitting together, with that, her, expression on her face, staring at me, and I always figured she looked like Ingrid Bergman and my friend looked at that photo and said “Oh yes, she does look like that. And then added “ a classic Czech beauty “ and he should know because he came from the same small city that Eva came from, and that really doesn’t matter except that they both grew up scared to the core.
I told her then, a long time ago, that I couldn’t, really couldn’t think of having us marry to be her partner father, then, when, then, but how could I, me a kid, but not her, Eva had come from a different place, then, and it was then that we went our separate ways, and it broke my heart and I knew it had to be, then, and then continued in my head all these years, and I suspect, for Eva too, we didn’t forget what it was like to be young, young together.
I remember loads of scenes, most of them, vivid films and photo clips, with no yellowing, like Eva, standing in her living room. Her parents weren’t home. We were kids, playing at discovery and she lifted her skirt, stood there in front of me, smiling, and she was so enticing, smiling at me, whispering, “Doesn’t this look just totally sexy. Isn’t this wonderful. Eva cast in her lingerie, her stocking tops framing her thighs, the delicious, yes that is just the right word, oh and how delicious, the curve of her breast just barely covered by a bra that she figured could make us both twitch and it was what all of us, you and I, all of us, knew, then, when, when we would be carried away, by a touch, words, scribbled on a note, and later we would run towards each other, and I would pick Eva up in my arms and lift her high up in the air squeezing as hard as I could, catching her breath in my mouth, as we moved our tongues around, whispering, gasping, our hands moving without pause, mine inside of her panties, touching pubic hairs, gasping, and I couldn’t hold her up because we were barely able to stand, stand it, breathing was such a chore, moving my hands, fingers, inside her, and she was all wet and we could not stand any longer and so we fell with her hand tight around my penis, and what were we to do, and where were we to go, and it was so long ago when we were 17, when we were both university freshman, and what a wonderful mix of our poetry, math, Darwin, the nature of man, and music and how to look at art, but always, with our tongues moving, breathing each other scent, and as we read to each other, with the words spilled out, sucking on the fingers where we had touched each other, and perhaps her parents would not come in and find us, but later on, much later, when we were grown, we knew they must of have known, because they too had been in the place that we were but for them, for Eva, their history had placed them in a different place, one that shook Eva and her parents to the core, the kind of trembling that lasts as a lifetime memory.
Eva as a little girl hid in an attic in Prague looking down through cracks in a boarded window and troops, parading, hunting, digging at cracks at crevices, finding and unearthing Jews, just like her, just like her mother and father (who looked like an Airedale, and was totally generous of spirit). What does one remember about hiding through many seasons, of being still, of hoping that there would be enough food that boots would not sound on steps outside their door and stop right there? I knew just a bit about the flavor of Eva’s childhood sauce, having been a small child and refugee from Germany at the edge of the war. I grew up around relatives, friends, neighbors that knew about fear the kind that would never really hit bottom, and a palate where hope had no skylight.
And so, Eva, at 17, wanted, to be about being alive, and she needed to have babies, then (as if it were now then) and I didn’t even know how to drive, and it was Eva who told me about what an underarm deodorant could do for me, and how I could learn to do everything and we could get married, and I could be a father? But how when I did not know so many things.
She did. However, she never escaped those years hiding in the attic. Ever vigilant. I know that feeling very well. We knew how important it was to always be in control. We also shared the need to stay hidden…always alert. Too bad for both of us, but so it goes like it or not.
We introduced each other to the worlds we knew best. I learned about sex from Eva, who would teach my awkward hands to turn into erotic ones. We were so innocent as we discovered our sexuality. Eva taught me many other things, like how to drive a car and the value of underarm deodorants. I taught Eva less important stuff, such as the world of esoteric literature, off-center art, experimental theatre. We adored, no, loved each other. Eva wanted to get married and have babies, a common experience of young women surviving the holocaust. On the other hand, I had not as yet learned to tie my shoes. So, we didn’t get married but remained connected to one another throughout our lives.
It was a long time ago that the child that was me could not marry, not now, then, Eva, and Eva married Jack and I felt the sting of knowing that they were together in my bed and they would stay that way, and be together to this very moment, and beyond, and I had to care about both of them, not just Eva, and Eva told me last night that she can hardly stay afloat and she would tell me that I would be alright after my wife Liz died and now her Jack is sick, sick to death sick, barely bobbing, hanging on some clothes line, lifted up in Eva’s arms, with his amputated leg, and the smell left by a second kidney having been rejected and only a machine left to squeeze pee out of blood, and all of his parts were failing together, each rushing their own race to the death finishing line, and Eva was alone on the phone with me, and maybe asking by her call whether I was alone, and Eva told me about her dreams as a child, the ones about learning to ice skate. “When we were hiding in that attic in Prague I could look down on some tennis courts that would be covered with winter ice. Children would skate and I would imagine that I was skating with them, twirling free, floating. But then I knew we had to be very quiet and not stand by the window. One false move, a curtain moves, a sound and the Nazis would end the dreams of skating forever”.
And so Eva told me how hard it all was, now, now with Jack, with his special shower bars, and his stump leg, and his hollow eyes, and so she thought about what one day, what it might be like one day, when she could put on her skates and dance across the ice, with her arms stretched up, and her legs bare, and her lips bursting just like when we stood there gasping for breath before her parents would put the key in the front door.
Oh Eva, what has happened to us? Eva, no escape, not really. Are we still just able to watch from a window high above a courtyard, and do we dare only to speak in whispers? Tell me, what do you think?
Story 2
Happy Birthday Eva. Remember, you will always be young and beautiful and full of spirit ……Love Rudi
Sent Eva a birthday card (see above) a few days ago, on September 11, her birthday. When I didn’t get a call back from her I knew something was wrong. I called Eva two days later on her cell phone. I heard a voice that didn’t sound like Eva. I could hardly hear her. I could make out, “Oh Rudi. Can’t talk. Am very sick. Am in GW hospital in Washington. Can’t talk.” The call creaked to a close with ‘can’t talk, can’t. Take care of yourself”.
September 15: Gut punch. I waited one day and then called the hospital and asked about Eva…how she was doing. Despite the garbled message, “She is doing ok.” which meant nothing to me, except, most important, I didn’t get a voice telling me she was dead. I asked whether I could visit her. To my surprise the woman on the phone said yes. You could come here tomorrow at 10 am.
September 16: I arrived at the hospital early and had to wait to be allowed to go to her room, 527. There she was, but it wasn’t Eva even though it was. I was shocked. Hardly recognized Eva as Eva. Her face was bloated (likely steroids), tubes were everywhere. She smiled when she saw me, but that quickly disappeared. She could hardly talk. I had brought her a fun painting. She managed to say, “love it. Put it where I can see it from here.” Eva was then quiet again, labored breathing. “Rudi, I don’t want to live, not like this. Can’t sleep, eat, always in pain.” She closed her, face pained. I sat next to her bed and held her hand. We were both speechless. Eva opened her eyes stared at me. I told her, “You are going to get better. My Eva will always manage to beat anything. You are going to get better and take control of your life again.” Eva smiled and closed her eyes. I sat with her and then got up, kissed her on the forehead, and left.
September 18: Called the hospital to find out how she was doing. I thought, will I be told that she is dead? I asked whether I could visit her today and was connected to a nurse on her hospital unit. The nurse said she was doing OK, which meant nothing to me except that she was alive. “Can I visit her?” The nurse said yes, but only one visitor per day. She connected me to the phone in her room. Eva answered sort of. She was having trouble breathing and talking. “Eva. It’s Rudi”. She seemed to be barely able to answer, “Please, please, don’t come. Please. I can’t do it anymore.”
What now. My Eva has never given up, but now this is not Eva anymore.
Wants to stop writing so that in that way she will still be alive. Maybe I can keep her alive by changing the storyline. I can use my imagination to make things look different. Maybe I did that from the start, using my imagination to invent an Eva that wasn’t real. Did she ever forgive me for not marrying her twice and the second time a year after her husband died. I bet there is something to that because when I told her about Laurie, she broke into tears and said something like, “not again’. My imagination keeps me dense and stupid, but I don’t want to have her die or say goodbye or anything like that. Writing a story will not change what is happening.