CROSSROADS -- PART  2

All rights reserved  * * *

November 13, 2014

3.

So finally Helen was gone and I was still dithering about my plans for the next few days when Naomi grew chatty at the breakfast table.

It was more of a soliloquy than a dialogue. I was the only one in the auditorium counting her sighs and hand movements getting the impression of a creature hovering over a cusp and in a dilemma that she was unable to shake off.

“All this is so meaningless,” she said quite out of the blue with a sour expression. The next moment in a trance-like state she stared at a blank spot on the wall for a while looking glum. Whether the affliction of depression or paranoia was self-inflicted or not -- was something that I couldn't gauge at that moment.

“What do you mean? Why meaningless?” I asked gingerly.

“You know, all this paraphernalia about celebrating togetherness of the family – doesn’t make sense to me at all,” Naomi said somberly. “When families are breaking up and there is truly no love shared by all, what’s the need for ceremonies and functions pretending to be happy?” She turned to me with a half mournful, half cynical look.

 “Just because it’s a special day in the calendar, doesn't mean a thing to me.” Suddenly she sounded quite furious. I saw flickers of insanity creeping into her grey-blue eyes and I shrank.

“But to some, perhaps, it has some meaning, “I mumbled, “to those who care for one another and to those who share a bonding.” I meant to give her hope but I was afraid to look at her face in case I saw something ominous again. I started to turn the coffee mug and admire the impression on it and take gulps from it to finish it as quickly as possible.

There was a momentary pause.

Somehow, accidentally I looked up and that’s when I noticed that there was a tinge of melancholy lurking in her eyes this time. She exhaled audibly and said rather softly, “Perhaps you’re right. It’s just that some of us like me don’t get to see that at all.” Her face contorted with anguish. I thought I suddenly got a glimpse of a wrung-out, tormented soul that I didn't know anything about. Naomi grew more and more enigmatic to me.

For a while she pondered and looked pensive. I realized that in her mind memories were surfacing from the depth of an abyss hitherto untapped. She talked of a myriad random moments when she was a child that sometimes left her numb with pain. She grew to dislike everybody around her and especially herself. I sat motionless and listened.

* * *
4.

Benjamin Goldberg was apparently a legal hot shot in New York. But when Naomi was almost eleven, he inflicted some unexpected and irreparable damages on the family’s legal firm with unjust monetary deals with a rival group. Needless to say, he was banished from the legal field altogether.

 “Nobody would touch him. He managed to escape being behind bars -- thanks to the strong connections with the right people Grandpa had,” Naomi lamented. “But all the same, Grandpa distanced himself from his son and vowed never to see him again. No one could pollute the name of the Goldberg family.” Ben was discarded as a piece of rag. They moved to a middle order neighborhood giving up on a fancy lifestyle.

 “Our family plunged into hard days.”

Arguments at home between her parents graduated to violence when Ben started coming home inebriated on a regular basis. Naomi felt that her mom was enraged not only with the loss of face, but also the pampering, the luxuries and the bright social life that her dad had given her earlier, but took away so grossly.

“I didn't blame Mom. Her favorite pastime was nothing but shopping at upscale exclusive stores and socializing with her wealthy friends.” Naomi curled up her lips in disgust.” I was never an option. She didn't have much time for me anyway.”

But she was ‘Dad’s little princess’ and was completely terrified as situations changed rapidly between her parents. Ben had no time for anything now. Not even for her. He was too busy remaking his life on shreds of goodwill. She felt uncared for, dismissed and abandoned. It was Loretta, the woman who came to cook and do the work around the house, who fed her and looked after her.

” I often locked myself up in my room when Dad returned at night and arguments catapulted to violence. I’d go to bed without dinner and stay awake staring at the ceiling, waiting for daybreak so I could escape to school.”

Her mother eventually declared that she wanted to put an end to ‘mental and physical torture’ and asked for a divorce. By then it was out in the open that she was going to ‘shack up’ with her gay partner, Amy, and offered no custody claims. Naomi grimaced. 

“Of course, this was to punish Dad to be saddled with my responsibility at a time like that. Soon Mom left for Florida with her partner and never looked back. The divorce came through without a battle.” Naomi sneered.” I only heard from her on my birthday and during Hanukkah! Soon I stopped taking her calls.”

But strangely enough God looked up.

* * *

5.

Finally with his marriage breaking down, Ben Goldberg accepted defeat and grew calmer and tender with his ‘little princess’ once again. She was the only thing he had in the whole world and soon Naomi could twirl him around her little finger with tantrums if she willed. In return she looked after him and kept the house in order. She thought she had somewhat got her old life back!

Ben was a suave and charming man with a gift of the gab. He had mastered the art of wheeling and dealing to perfection and money started pouring in again. From where, Naomi didn't know or care.

She admitted through chuckles, ”Sometimes I even managed to steal money from his coat pockets. He didn't even miss it.  It was better than asking him for some.” She laughed. I raised my eyebrows but said nothing. I knew better. It is dangerous to contradict a person who was mixed up inside.

On the flip side, there was a steady flow of women who Ben could still manage to cast a spell on. Some were attractive, some plain and some downright aggressive and pathetic. However, none of the women lasted for more than a week or so, but finally when Ben brought home Becky Schwartz as his wife, a legal assistant, half his age, Naomi didn't know whether she was relieved or more distraught.

“I felt cheated and cast aside one more time. Nobody actually cared for me!” she scowled. I saw anger flickering in her large blue-grey eyes. “I wanted to destroy everything.  Everything.” She banged hard on the table.

She dropped out of her school circle. Kevin, her regular boyfriend, was duly dismissed and she began missing her classes with a vengeance.

“I was important or special to nobody.  It was as though, I never existed!” She hissed and got up.

 “I spent time alone sitting in parks talking to pigeons all day. I took nothing to eat, not even an apple.” She wiped her eyes with the heels of her palms. “I gave a damn for school or my assignments.”  Needless to say her grades nosedived.

For a moment I thought she had lost all sense of time and space.

Naomi was now pacing the little dining area, her eyes moving in an erratic manner, seeing nothing. I grew apprehensive as she mumbled on.

Her inability to deal with her lot adequately and occasional outbursts of convoluted passion and ire, led to a series of counseling, both at school and outside, apparently causing Ben immeasurable humiliation and pain, or so he said. Naomi was dragged to a psychiatrist periodically to level with her own soul and, of course, money was flowing out making Ben irate and Becky miserable.

” What’s wrong with you? You are humiliating us.” Ben shouted at her one night.

“Don’t you like going to school? Making friends? Why don’t you get a new boyfriend?” Ben screamed. ”Aren't you normal?” Ben had thrown his hands up in the air. “I can’t even send you to your Mom and now I know why she abandoned you! Ah, the bitch knew what she was doing!” Filth came pouring out of his mouth like water from a bottle.

He called her mother names and addressed Naomi thereafter as an ‘airhead’ and a ‘bimbette’, while Becky looked away.

“She abandoned you too for what you did, remember?” Naomi had shot back. “Any guesses what that was for?” She screamed. “And ‘humiliation’? You talk about humiliation? Do you have any idea how you have turned my whole world upside down with what you did?” Tears trickled down her face. ”I am ashamed of you, Dad, ashamed of you.”

Ben stood stunned and mute. By then Naomi was banging on dad’s study desk, smashing the glass top.

* * *

6.

With increasing skirmishes at home, Naomi was drained of all self-confidence. She swung between emotions like a pendulum and grew mentally unstable. Ben took her for counseling with little improvement. She liked nothing -- and no one enjoyed her company either. She shunned people as she felt that the world had turned against her. But one thing she knew, if she hated school and had no passion for books and assignments, she loved music and - every note of it.

She plunged into the world of melody that ranged from hard rock, country, and jazz to even classical symphony. At last, she said, she tried to keep afloat in the beat and ring of the notes that lifted her spirits from the hostile grounds she was given to tread.

Finally, with fear in her belly and hope in her heart when she graduated from High School, Naomi took a break for a year.

“Basically, I wanted to find myself. I needed to breathe easy.” she said. “Then I realized I needed to make some money to be on my own.”

She worked, first, as a library assistant hauling up books from tables and carting them back to the shelves. She found it immensely boring and ‘un-lifting’. Later, when she got a job to be a floor assistant in a music shop, she was thrilled. She understood music well enough to guide people to what they were looking for but couldn't spell out. She educated them on various kinds of music from around the world, both vocal and instrumental. Soon she got two promotions and became one of the assistant managers at the store.

When she thought that she had arrived and had saved up enough money, Naomi applied to various Colleges across the country to educate herself with a view to majoring in Music. Her chief aim was to get as far away from home as possible. With regular visits to her ‘shrink’, she started applying to colleges in the West Coast and down south as well, to be far from New York City. When she heard from Pomona College in S. California which not only agreed to take her in but even offered her a part time job on campus, she was ecstatic. The Music Department there offered concerts throughout the academic year by student ensembles, faculty performers and guest artists. She needed to get a break and dreamt of being a solo performer some day or even write scores for TV or movies.

* * *

7.

To move from the East Coast to the West was a big decision not considering the miles that stretched in between.

Naomi begged her dad to help her out with admission. California was a rich state and it was not cheap living in S. California. She couldn't afford it with the money she had saved up.

To her surprise Ben relented with one condition that she took her medication seriously and sent him reports from her shrink every month. He also agreed to pay her college fees and medical bills only if she could meet him halfway by paying for her living expenses. Naomi was more than willing to do so.

“He waned to get rid of me just as much as I wanted to get away -- as far as I could from him and Becky. I could tell they really didn’t want me around.” Naomi whispered. She was happy to say ‘Goodbye’ to her family and didn’t even bother to write a note to her mother giving her the good news. She was already lost to her. “So here I am,” she chirped with a big smile on her sad face.

So to make the story short, Naomi visited her shrink, Dr Marianne Atwood regularly on Foothill Boulevard and was on prescribed drugs to keep her from getting any unsavory outbursts of emotions. Helen refused to take her back in, if she failed to pay Dr Atwood her regular visits.

She was told to keep her spirits high doing what she did best, which was music. She visited all the concerts in town and made friends with music lovers. She fell in and out of love with a few music buffs periodically and when they moved on she bellowed, agonizing over solitary confinement for the rest of her life. Going through such transitions, her intake of special medicines increased -- of course, with the help of Dr Atwood.

* *  *

8.

Tim was, however, unaware of all this drama as he was barely in.

In his early twenties, he was a handsome young man but a bit frail for an Anglo Saxon male. By her own admission, he was Naomi’s first ‘true love’, when she got to know him better. Her eyes lit up even when she found him doing a mundane job like cleaning the washroom which we three took turns to keep clean.

So when we were having breakfast at Helen’s table one Sunday and Tim walked into the kitchen for a drink of water, he gave her a big smile and I knew that another Act in Naomi’s life had just begun.

Tim could be charming, if he wanted to be, and was quite flattered by Naomi’s singular attention so it didn't take them long to be friends. We saw more of him now and Naomi was an angel with him around. She loved fixing him a snack when he felt a bit ‘grubby’. Often the two would attend the Friday concerts at the Memorial Park in Claremont, go orange picking at the Agriculture and Citrus Park in La Verne or drive off to Upland and Cucamonga in search of coyotes. They teased and laughed with Helen and even she started to look less intimidating. For a short spell there was laughter in the air in that house.

One of Helen’s several conditions was that no visitors be allowed to spend the night with the boarders. So when Tim and Naomi tiptoed in to their nests at midnight, instead of violin recitals, I could hear giggles seeping through the hollow walls that separated our rooms. I would stop reading in bed and cover my ears with pillows.

I realized that in this chapter of her life, Naomi felt wanted and seemed happy!  

We breathed a sigh of relief. 

However, at the end of the semester, when Tim graduated and broke the news that he was going back to Boulder, Colorado, where he came from, Naomi was livid. She scratched and clawed him, called him names and then banged the door on his face. But Tim didn't stay back to reconsider their budding relationship and take it up to the next level. He opted for the exit immediately but not without some ugly scars on his face and limbs.

Naomi’s abnormal behavior catapulted to new heights soon after Tim finally left for Boulder.

For days Naomi didn't talk to any one of us and made no eye contact. There was a cloud of gloom hovering over her at all times. If she spoke, she spat venom. Not just that, Helen grew worried as she was found in the kitchen uttering soliloquies of her own, cursing and banging things in sight. She urged her to visit Dr Atwood at once and threatened to call up her dad to take her away.

Over time Naomi appeared more aloof and grew  unimaginably irritable. It was getting difficult keeping pace with her plan of action even though she never grew that violent to attack anybody. She rather chose to stay withdrawn and live in isolation. Nevertheless, she grew steadily restless and unstable. From a childlike glee on her face one moment she would rapidly descend to a state of haunting despair at the next. 

 When she couldn’t contain her rage for some odd reason, she would charge out in her beat-up car leaving a trail of black smoke behind. It was her signature exit to take on and destroy the world. Later at night, she would come back home with a collection of citations - for violating traffic norms.

But all this didn't bother her, nor did she care when people around gasped in horror finding her behavior strange. Kids called her ‘loony’ and mimicked her walk behind her back.

 “I don’t give a damn for your big money, sweetheart,” Helen said one day. “I can’t handle all this. Be your dad’s pet -- and leave me in peace.”  She said quite emphatically. Her face bore an expression of strained anxiety.

With a jolt Naomi fell suddenly silent. Her enormous eyes seemed dilated with fear. It dawned on her that there was no place to go back to. She lifted her vacant eyes with a look where every emotion was wiped out and all sense of time and space had been removed. The only person she could turn to now was actually Dr. Atwood.

It took Naomi a few days to get back to her normal subdued self.

Her medication was finally right, we agreed.

She smiled more often and played the violin a lot. However, Helen started getting suspicious of this new image she was projecting. But Naomi glowed and was her angelic self again. The men in her life like Gustavo, a grad student from Venezuela, Rusty, a local musician, Houshang from Iran and Martin from England hung around and were mostly campus recruits from concert ensembles. They talked, wrote and made music. But unfortunately the euphoria didn't last. Soon Naomi grew tired of them and the guys flaked out. One day she ceremoniously announced that she had vowed celibacy for the rest of her life!

 “You know no one is important to me anymore,” she confessed.” These guys have no soul.” To me she looked utterly bewildered indeed.

* * *
to continue......
by: Dola Dutta Roy, Calcutta, India
November 13, 2014