While Simon grew more expansive about Elza’s ridiculous opinions, I’d be dreamily analyzing his features, how chameleon-like they were. His face would change – from Hawaiian to Aztecan, Persian to Sioux, Bengali to Balinese.
‘What kind of name is Bishop?’ I asked one day.
‘On my father’s side, missionary eccentrics. I’m descended from the Bishops – you know? – the family of Oahu Island fame. They went to Hawaii in the eighteen hundreds to convert lepers and heathens, then ended up marrying royalty and owning half the island.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Unfortunately, I’m also from the side of the family that didn’t inherit any of the wealth, not a single pineapple orchard or golf course. On my mother’s side, we’re Hawaiian-Chinese, with a couple of royal princesses swimming in the gene pool. But again, no direct access to beachfront property.’ And then he laughed. ‘Elza once said I inherited from the missionary side of my family the laziness of blind faith, and from my royal Hawaiian side a tendency to use others to take care of my needs rather than working to fulfill them myself.’
‘I don’t think that’s true, that stuff about inherited nature, as if we’re destined to develop into a certain kind of person without choice. I mean, hasn’t Elza ever heard of determinism?’
Simon looked stumped. ‘Hmmm,’ he said, thinking. For a moment, I felt the satisfaction of having vanquished a competitor with a subtle and deft move.
But then he remarked: ‘Doesn’t the doctrine of determinism say that all events and even human choices follow natural laws, meaning it kind of goes along with what Elza was saying?’
‘What I mean is,’ and I began to stammer as I tried to recall what I’d skimmed over in philosophy class, ‘I mean, how do we define natural? Who’s to say what’s natural and what’s not?’ I was flailing, trying to keep my pathetic self above water. ‘Besides, what’s her background?’
‘Her folks are Mormon, but they adopted her when she was a year old and named her Elsie, Elsie Marie Vandervort. She doesn’t know who her biological parents were. But ever since she was six, before she knew how to read music, she could hear a song just once, then play it exactly, note for note. And she especially loved music by Chopin, Paderewski, Mendelssohn, Gershwin, Copland – I forget the others. Later she discovered every single one of them was either Polish or Jewish. Isn’t that weird? So that made her think she was probably a Polish Jew. She started calling herself Elza instead of Elsie.’
‘I like Bach, Beethoven, and Schumann,’ I said smartly, ‘but that doesn’t make me a German.’
‘It wasn’t just that. When she was ten, something happened which will sound really bizarre, but I swear it’s true, because I saw part of it. She was in the school library, flipping through an encyclopedia, and she saw a photo of some crying kid and his family being rounded up by soldiers. The caption said they were Jews being taken to Auschwitz. She didn’t know where Auschwitz was or even that it was a concentration camp. But she literally smelled something horrible that made her shake and gag. And then she fell to her knees and started chanting: “Osh-vee-en-shim, osh-vee-en-shim,” something like that. The librarian shook her, but Elza wouldn’t stop – she couldn’t. So the librarian dragged her to the school nurse, Mrs. Schneebaum. And Mrs. Schneebaum, who was Polish, heard Elza chanting “Osh-vee-en-shim” and freaked. She thought Elza was saying this to make fun of her. Well, get this: It turned out “Oświeçim” is the way you say “Auschwitz” in Polish. After Elza came out of her trance, she knew her parents were Polish Jews who had survived Auschwitz.’
‘What do you mean, she knew?’
‘She just knew – like the way hawks know to hover on a stream of air, the way rabbits freeze with fear. It’s knowledge that can’t be taught. She said her mother’s memories passed from heart to womb, and they’re now indelibly printed on the walls of her brain.’
‘Come on!’ I said dismissively. ‘She sounds like my sister Kwan.’
‘How so?’
‘Oh, she just makes up any old theory to suit whatever she believes. Anyway, biological instinct and emotional memories aren’t the same thing. Maybe Elza read or heard about Auschwitz before and didn’t remember. You know how people see old photos or movies and later think they were personal memories. Or they have a déjà vu experience – and it’s just a bad synapse feeding immediate sensory perception into longterm memory. I mean, does she even look Polish or Jewish?’ And right after I said that I had a dangerous thought. ‘You have a picture of her?’ I asked as casually as possible.
While Simon dug out his wallet, I could feel my heart revving like a race car, about to confront my competition. I feared she would look devastatingly beautiful – a cross between Ingrid Bergman illuminated by airport runway lights and Lauren Bacall sulking in a smoke-filled bar.
The photo showed an outdoorsy girl, backlit by a dusk-hour glow, frizzy hair haloing a sullen face. Her nose was long, her chin childishly small, her lower lip curled out in mid-utterance, so that she looked like a bulldog. She was standing next to a camping tent, arms akimbo, hands perched on chunky hips. Her cutoff jeans were too tight, sharply creased at the crotch. There was also her ridiculous T-shirt, with its ‘Question Authority’ in lumpy letters stretched over the mounds of her fatty breasts.
I thought to myself, Why, she isn’t gorgeous. She isn’t even button-nose cute. She’s as plain as a Polish dog without mustard. I was trying to restrain a smile, but I could have danced the polka I was so happy. I knew that comparing myself with her that way was superficial and irrelevant. But I couldn’t help feeling happily superior, believing I was prettier, taller, slimmer, more stylish. You didn’t have to like Chopin or Paderewski to recognize that Elza was descended from Slavic peasant stock. The more I looked, the more I rejoiced. To finally see the demons of my insecurity, and they were no more threatening than her cherub-faced kneecaps.
What the hell did Simon see in her? I tried to be objective, look at her from a male point of view. She was athletic, there was that. And she certainly gave the impression of being smart, but in an intimidating, obnoxious way. Her breasts were far bigger than mine; they might be in her favor – if Simon was stupid enough to like fleshy globules that would someday sag to her navel. You might say that her eyes were interesting, slanted and catlike. Although on second glance, they were disturbing, smudged with dark hollows. She stared straight into the camera and her look was both penetrating and vacant. Her expression suggested that she knew the secrets of the past and future and they were all sad.
I concluded Simon had confused loyalty with love. After all, he had known Elza since childhood. In a way, you had to admire him for that. I handed the picture back to him, trying not to appear smug. ‘She seems awfully serious. Is that something you inherit being a Polish Jew?’
Simon studied the photo. ‘She can be funny when she wants. She can do impersonations of anyone – gestures, speech patterns, foreign accents. She’s hilarious. She can be. Sometimes. But.’ He paused, struggling. ‘But you’re right. She broods a lot about how things can be better, why they should be, until she goes into a funk. She’s always been that way, moody, serious, I guess you might even say depressed. I don’t know where that comes from. Sometimes she can be so, you know, unreasonable,’ and he trailed off, seemingly troubled, as if he were now viewing her from a new light and her features were glaringly unattractive.
I hoarded these observational tidbits as weapons to use in the future. Unlike Elza, I would become a true optimist. I would take action. In contrast to her lugubriousness, I would be buoyant. Instead of being a critical mirror, I would admire Simon’s insights. I too would take active political stands. But I’d laugh often and show Simon that life with a spiritual soul mate didn’t