everything i have is yours

8/14/2019 Everything I Have is Yours

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Linda Boroff

Everything I Have Is Yours

Youll never guess who called me this afternoon, I can recall my mother saying. It was

dinnertime, and she was at the stove spooning something lumpy from a frying pan into

Tupperware. We my father, my brother Lester, Bradley Willis and I were at the

opposite end of the kitchen around a pink and gray formica dinette.

Who? asked Bradley Willis, mouth full of steak.

Why Helen Leam, said my mother, looking at my father. You remember Helen

from Rebekah Lodge.

Jeez, said my father, setting down his fork and wiping his mouth with a towel.

Sure. Helen and Wally Leam.

They split up, you know, said my mother, two years ago. Helens still living out by

Forty-First, but Wallys moved to Hollister.

Well for Gods sake, said my father. My mother put down her spoon and turned

to face us, a hand at her throat.

It seems Helens had a bit of a tragedy. Her apartment was broken into and

burglarized night before last.

They catch the guy who did it? asked Bradley Willis.

No, said my mother, and snapped the Tupperware shut. Then she opened it

again and took one last teensy bite. Helen was off at the movies by herself and when she

got home the door had been jimmied and all her silver was gone and her mothers brooch

and some watches. Some other things too.


2/11

Like what?

Nothing, Bradley. Personal things. Anyway, Al, Ive invited her to come and stay

with us for a few days. She says shes taking Valium like M&Ms and hearing noises.

There was a pause.

Oh hell, said my father.

Well Al, it was the least I could do.

No, Mona. It was the most. I mean she hasnt picked up the phone in two years.

Why you?

But I didnt pick up the phone either.

Okay, okay. My father threw his towel across his plate and stood up.

I wonder if the guy crapped on the floor, whispered Bradley to my brother

Lester. I heard cat burglars always leave a calling card. The real pros, I mean.

Bradley, I said loftily, I dont wish you to feel yourself unwelcome in our

home

Just dont feel yourself in our home, mocked Lester. The boys guffawed.

but kindly clean up your language and/or leave.

Get off Bradleys ass, willya Brenduhhh? said Lester in the long-suffering

whine he always reserved for me. You in love with him or something?

No, I lied. I am not in love with your obnoxious friend. I happen to be in love

with Jimmy Page. Hoots.

And so, the next evening at dinnertime the doorbell rang, and it was Helen Leam,

with a suitcase in one hand and a bouquet in the other. When she saw my mother, she

burst into tears. She was a small woman in her late thirties with protruberant hazel eyes


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and pale hair already silvering at the temples. The hair was swept back into a twist of

almost penitential severity. Not a tendril escaped to charm the rigid white center part. The

back of her neck was naked of wisps. The bones of her face, which were good, even

bones, stood out so vividly from this harsh frame that it was difficult to look at her. She

was too exposed, too unprotected. I glimpsed a short upper lip and dark hollows beneath

her suffering eyes before lowering my own. She set down her suitcase and turned to

Lester and me, hands clasped to her bosom.

So these are the children, she said and sobbed anew.

Oh God, said my father under his breath, shes nuts. Hello Helen, he said

aloud. Um, how have you been?

We set her up quarters in the basement, in a chilly makeshift bedroom paneled in

knotty pine and redolent of concrete. Her clothes hung in a cedar closet that also

contained my fathers old Air Force uniforms. Moments before her arrival, Lester had

removed a large collection of tattered pornography from under the bed.

I hope this is okay, said my mother, beefy in red pedal pushers, her head

porcupined with pincurls. "And heres an old TV. Its ugly, but it works.

Thank you, wept Helen, hand to head. Youre too good.

I dont want to hear it, said my mother and hugged her.

And then we left and trooped back upstairs to compare notes. My father, listening

from behind the newspaper, snorted with derision at intervals. We were all waiting

impatiently for Helen to reappear and validate or contradict our speculations, but she did

not emerge at all during that evening, nor during any other evening. She huddled


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downstairs like a troglodyte for three weeks, and more than once we heard her crying

through the grate.

Many years have gone by now since the Helen Leam episode and oddly, as if

through an ever-focusing lens, I see this time in sharper detail with each passing year.

Recollected conversations assume new significance. Gestures and expressions return to

jolt me as I start the car or wash my hair. Heads turn, eyes meet, bodies move toward one

another then away with surreal clarity.

I was fourteen at the time and nearly six feet tall, gaunt with social anxiety,

ravaged by the assaults of ferocious hormones. Like a volcano, I burned, churned and

erupted. I was failing math. I couldnt dance. My nose, forsaking its childish

unobtrusiveness, loomed large and bony, stippled with blackheads. My hair grew

arbitrary and truculent, sticking out in all directions like a vaudeville comedian. I came to

live in the deepest circle of adolescence, despising myself with a perverse, demonic

energy.

My brother Lester, in contrast, seemed as serene and correct as a wolf. He combed

his hair with a towel and proudly slung his enormous jockstraps all over the bathroom,

while I timidly hung my cupless bra on my doorknob, where it dangled pathetically like

the skeleton of a small bird.

Lester and my father communicated with one another in a cryptic language of

yells, guffaws and profanity. They punched one another playfully on the deltoids and

feinted for wrestling holds. Helen Leam, a troubling enigma to me and my mother, was a

standing joke to them. That screwy broad, they called her.


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Every morning at seven, Helen would dress and leave for her job as secretary to

the overseer of a mushroom cannery. She would return at six, parking her old De Soto far

from our driveway, apologizing herself in the front door, through the kitchen and down

the stairs. Only after our noisy, bickering dinner was over would she emerge to fix herself

a tray of soup and toast and descend again, china clattering thinly.

. The poor thing, my mother would pronounce after each nightly exit. This has

been too much for her. And I understood. After all, a whole gamut of legal indignities

lay before her. Her self-confidence, laboriously established after a divorce form what my

mother labeled three hundred pounds of pickled tightwad had been dealt a mighty

blow.

Can I ask you a question? said Bradley Willis to me after Helen had been with

us for two weeks. How do you guys put up with her down there? Dont get mad.

Why would I get mad? I dont care what you think. And if we can put up with

you we can certainly put up with her.

I mean, what is she doing here?

Well shes scared. Wouldnt you be?

No. It seems to me, narrowing his eyes and concentrating on point beyond me,

the last place that burglar is likely to hit again is her place. I mean he cleaned her out,

supposedly. So why doesnt she go home? Shes going to have to sometime.

Maybe shes lonely.

Then why does she skulk around down there like some troglodyte instead of

Some what?


6/11

Never mind. I have to think about this some more. And he ambled off, lips

pursed in a silent whistle, receding absently into his future.

Gazing hopelessly after him, I see his cornsilk hair just touching the collar of his

madras shirt, and his hands in his pockets, elbows turned sharply out. I see the heels of

his sneakers and the backs of his ears.

His I.Q. was astronomical my mother had informed me when he first started

coming around. He had learned to read spontaneously at age three and later skipped a

grade. But now at sixteen, Bradley Willis, had become a daydreamer, a clown, and his

grades were poor, his ingenuity wasted on forging attendance excuses or concocting

exotic diseases to sicken of during homeroom.

I cannot say precisely when I first realized I was in love with Bradley Willis. I do

remember that early in the year, the sound of his voice began to both irk and attract me,

and I began to provoke him clumsily, burning with the humiliation of knowing myself an

ass.

I plucked my eyebrows completely out, stuffed my bras and painted my eyes. I

would appear one day in flounces and crinolines, the next in funereal black. I affected a

British accent. Come bedtime, I would turn on my portable radio and the umber boredom

of my room would vanish, to be replaced by the dazzling scenario of American

Bandstand. And I became the New Girl on the Show, and Bradley was my partner and my

steady. His arms held me tight. His ring thumped my bosom as we glided between rows

of admiring dancers, our eyes locked. Hour after hour in the dark, I danced with Bradley

Willis on the American Bandstand of my soul.


7/11

Not surprisingly then, my obsession with the show was a running family joke.

Thus I am still puzzled at my fathers failure to remember that on Fridays at four, while

my mother was certain to be at Red Cross Auxiliary and Lester at his basketball practice,

I was equally certain to be at home, glued to the television.

Which is where I was when I first heard the voices coming through the grate

above Helen Leams bedroom. At first, I paid no attention. Then I turned down the sound

and crouched by the grate on my hands and knees, pressing my ear against the cold metal

grid, breathing old burnt dust and seeing the pile of the carpet close and huge.

All right, Helen, my father was saying, and I thought I heard fear behind the

reasoned testiness. Weve been all through that before now, havent we? I am asking you

just how long youre going to keep this up.

Thats what Ive been asking you for the last three years, Al.

Oh no. I want a rational explanation, delivered in a reasonable manner. What in

the hell do you mean by moving in here, camping here on some thin pretext

I couldnt help it. I had to be near you, even like this. I couldnt stand it any

more. I trusted you and you broke your promise. You said you would tell her. Youve said

it a million times and every time I believed you. I want you to keep your word.

You blackmail me like this and youll end up with nothing. There was a sob.

So what do I have now?

Oh Jesus, said my father. How do I get myself into these messes? Helen, this

isnt worthy of our love.

I dont care anymore. Im desperate. I lie here at night and think about our

clothes in that closet. Our clothes can be together, Al. Why cant we?


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I dont believe youre doing this to me. Its like something out of a B movie.

Do you think I wanted to? I was losing my mind. My God, after I called the

police I actually thought about just driving my car over a cliff. I thought, if they find out

theyll put me away in the nuthouse for sure. There was a pause.

Wait a minute. If they find out what?

Well, that I did it myself.

Did what yourself?

All of it. Whats the matter? I thought youd have guessed.

You dont mean to tell me you burglarized your own house? You stole your own

girdles and bras?

Yes, in a little girl lisp.

You wrote those dirty words on the mirror? And the watches and silver? You did

all that yourself? There wasnt any man?

No. A giggle. Oh dont look at me like that. I told you I couldnt go on.

This is insane, Helen. A scuffle. Get up. Stop that. Stop acting like a nut, will

you? There began a shrill crying, almost an ululation, and then I heard my father cursing

first Helen then himself in the sibilant expletives of despair. At last, he began to murmur

words of comfort. The crying became muffled.

Take your hair down, my father commanded in a hoarse voice. Shake it

down. There was another brief scuffle, then the sound of tearing cloth and a deep sob,

this time from my father. Oh God, I love you so much. How you enslave me.

Oh Al, Al, everything I have is yours.


9/11

Choking with horror and a strange urge to laugh out loud, I stumbled to my

feet, joints stiff from kneeling I put my hand over my mouth and pinched my nose shut.

The blood beat red behind my eyes. Like a prisoner escaping, I made for the front door,

taking huge steps on legs suddenly rubbery and numb.

. Its no big deal, I told myself over and over. It happens all the time. Shaking, I let

myself out and headed down the street as fast as I could go. My laughter had turned to

dry sobs that racked my chest like coughs.

Far away next block, I could see Helens De Soto, and I toyed with the idea of

busting all her windows or putting sugar in her gas tank. But that would not make my

father love her less, nor would it undo their affair. With a deep sigh, I crept slowly back

toward my house to sit glumly on the curb in front until it grew dark, my feet in the

gutter.

The next day, Helen Leam packed up, left our house and went home. She and my

mother said goodbye at breakfast very affectionately, and Helen thanked us all and said

she had been so frightened, but now she was herself again and ready to forge onward.

Life was tragic sometimes, replied my mother, but these things passed, and Helen

said yes they did, with the help of God and good friends. I kept my eyes on my bowl of

Kix, and Lester whined where the hell was Bradley to give him a ride to school because

his generator was arcing and he bet Bradley had forgotten. My teeth suddenly started to

chatter, and I left the table.

I dont know to this day if my mother ever found out the truth about Helen Leam,

and I dont know what became of my fathers affair with her. Days passed, then weeks

and months, and no divorce ever materialized, no storm ever broke. The lie that was our


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family continued smooth and self-contained: Newspapers were read, food was consumed,

holidays observed, necessities purchased.

I came to exist in a permanent state of disbelief, cringing before a blow that never

fell. My apprehension bore down so on me that sometimes I could scarcely breathe. I

slept poorly and began to smoke, surly and furtive. At the sound of Bradley Williss

voice, I would flee to my bedroom and light up, holing out until he was gone.

In April, my hands broke out in eczema, and I watched American Bandstand all

month wearing polyethylene mittens full of white goo. All hope left me.

In June, Lester and Bradley Willis graduated, and Lester went off to USC in a new

Chevy with tuck and roll and four on the floor. Bradley made two listless starts at City

College, then dropped out and was eventually drafted.

He just shot it all to shit his own self, Lester pronounced. But maybe the

Armyll do him some good. And that was the last I heard of Bradley Willis until my

mother mentioned years later that he had been killed.

Do you remember that friend of Lesters with the blond hair? She said. The

kind of oddball who could never find himself?

Bradley Willis, I said, staring at the green and steel walls of my college dorm

room.

Well he was killed in Vietnam, said my mother. Isnt that a pity? Lester read it

in the paper. They had lost touch, you know.

I know, I said. Then I hung up the phone.

But there is another, better end to the Helen Leam episode, and sometimes I go

back in my mind to that afternoon I found out about my father.


11/11

Once again, I am stumbling from the front door, alone and in despair. But this

time Bradley Willis is there, and I fall into his arms. He understands at once what has

happened and doesnt need to ask me, and I dont need to tell. It will be all right, he says.

He is there for me because he loves me.

I cry onto his shoulder until I am empty of tears, light and purged and free. Then,

happier than we have ever been, we get into his car and drive up the coast to Half Moon

Bay. We park on a cliff overlooking the beach and watch the sunset, talking in murmurs,

saying everything that is in our hearts. At last, when it is dark, he takes me in his arms

and we make love. I see him above me, his face lit by moonlight. I can feel his body

trembling and hear the ocean below us.

And then, because I have never done this before, and because I cant think of

anything else to say at such a moment, "Oh Bradley," I whisper, "everything I have is

yours."

everything i have is yours

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