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Comfort Zone(continued) By Marta Palos "No money, that's what. Oh well...why bring up the damn past?"
She picked up the slip of paper from the bench. "Take this before
the breeze blows it away. And now go back to your article. Me, I'll
take a walk." David caught the old man watching her with hungry eyes as she walked
across the lawn. Her ample breasts bouncing, she carried herself tall
and lily-like, moving on her high heels with graceful ease.
"My wife is second generation," Hoffman said, "but she
speaks the language fairly well. And if Judy can't help, her parents
are just a phone call away." David turned his attention to the bypass article. The pro and con camps
were fighting over money and vying for local prestige, and the tangled
local politics surrounding the plan made the writing slow. On Tuesday morning Hoffman brought a note from his wife. The note said
that the correct spelling of the name was Fehéregyházy.
Judy pointed out that accent marks in the Hungarian language were important,
and proceeded to explain the meaning of the name: "Fehér"
was white, "egyház" either "one house" or
"church," and "egyházy" with the "y"
attached to the end meant someone from a certain house or a church.
In a PS she offered to call her parents, to ask if "egyház"
in the name meant "one house," or "church." David's head reeled. First he thought of tossing the note into the
waste-basket, then decided to show Lily he cared. He called her after
work. "I told you the name was correct," she said, "except
I didn't remember the accents. They won't show in the phone books, though." "Phone books? You want me to read all the phone books in the United
States?" "Just look at the Spanish names there. Lots of them have accents,
but can you ever see them in print?" Lily knew some Spanish, courtesy of the Mexican waiter she had an affair
with during a month-long vacation she once spent with her husband in
Mazatlán. "Never mind the accents, Lily. What you need to know is the state
and the city if you want to find an address or a phone number."
"I know that, I'm not that stupid. Thing is, I was hoping the
name sounded familiar to Hoffman's wife. I thought she might even know
Andor." "Out of the hundreds of thousands of Hungarians that might be
living in this country? I think this is the end of the line, Lily."
"That's what you say. I'll figure out something. If nothing else,
I want to know if Andor is still alive. How can you be so indifferent?
How can you be so--" "I'm going to hang up now, all right? I'm busy." He was about to compose the concluding paragraph on the bypass when
the phone rang. His sister knew he was home, there was no way to avoid
her. "Don't do this to me, Lily," he said into the receiver. "I'm
about to finish the bypass." "David, it's me, Hoffman. I thought you would be interested in
this. Judy's mother once knew a family by the name in question. And
they had a son Andor." "Really. And where is he?" "That my mother-in-law didn't know. The last time she heard, Andor's
parents lived somewhere in California. But that was years ago. Would
you care to tell me why you're interested in this?" The moment he hung up, Lily called. He was expecting another fight,
but she surprised him. "Frank hasn't seen you for ages," was
all she said. "Can you come over for dinner on Saturday?"He
couldn't refuse. Lily was an excellent cook.
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