Aunt Ban nods at the table where his leather binder lies. “How’s the Proust going?”
“What?”
“Didn’t you tell me you were going to read Proust in the original this summer?”
His voice is mild as when he is most angry. I suddenly understand that is what his mother does. “I admit it sounds like the sort of thing I’m apt to say.” He gets up. “I’ll put a record on.”
“It’s late, Michael,” his mother says. “Sounds carry with the windows open. Perhaps you’ve lost perspective, you’ve been keeping such late hours.”
He paces around the porch once, twice, then stoops to pull a violin from under the settee.
“Michael, did you take that out here again? The damp air will warp it.”
“I was practicing.” Tucking it under his chin, he runs the bow over the squawking strings. “This was my father’s but I began learning on it when I was five. I caught on quickly and they thought I’d be a prodigy. But I petered out.”
“Michael!” His mother shakes her head. “No one wanted you to be a prodigy, of all things. You hated to practice. Your father never intended for you to be anything but a doctor.”
The bow chafes in agony against the strings. His eyes glow dark. “I remember differently.”
“Prodigy!” She clicks her tongue, smiling with real amusement. “Then play if you like. If it wouldn’t bore your friend.”
“It’s too damned hot.” Picking up the case roughly he takes the violin into the house. A moment later, a drawer slams. The gazes of the two women meet in amused tolerance, and at that moment I quite hate them.
July 10, 1954
Dear Stu,
Somehow I haven’t had the energy to answer. The less I do, the less I can do. Like oversleeping and waking up exhausted. I write Lennie every night. We keep in touch that way if you can call it touch—but oh the frustration!
I found a cruddy job as receptionist in a dental building. I swear I’ll never waste a summer this way again. How dependent we are on a few lousy dollars—all the difference between freedom and compulsion!
I’ve been reading Colette (in translation but don’t tell Julie if you see her) and C. Wright Mills. I realized I had decided to be an art historian because of Lennie. My own interests lie more in the direction of sociology, as you’ve said yourself indirectly. I feel very class conscious, fascinated by interactions of people and groups. I think I may major in soc. What think you?
You don’t know how lucky you are to be with Mike, able to act your love instead of trying to ship it through the mails. I’d give anything to be with dear Lennie for just two hours in the old apartment, or even a fast twenty minutes! I’m minding my own business, hear, and patronizing the local library. One of the dentists isn’t bad looking in a Gregory Peckish way, but who needs someone used to saying, Open a little wider, please, this won’t hurt … much. Growing claws to fight with parents. Growing hoarse with no one to talk to. I miss you like crazy & our room & dearest sweetest Lennie & even those necking machines on the corridor with their plastic hymens and cashmere brains! Write soon. Tell me some good things to read.
Love, Donna
He lies along the seat with his knees raised and his heavy head in my lap. Through my cotton dress I can feel his breath. The slice of waning moon is up to roof level between the houses, ripe cantaloupe. It rained all day before clearing, leaving the city washed. Trees purl and riffle with the sound of a stream rushing over us. The houses of his neighborhood are drowned in darkness. His lids droop, his mouth relaxes. Suppose we lay in that house in a room on the second floor with the casements flung open level with the elm leaves? He would turn in his sleep murmuring and I’d lean on my arm to watch over him as he settled again…. My head lurches forward. Must not sleep! “What time is it?”
“Ummmmm.” He stirs, noses into my waist.
I reach for his wrist but he hides the watch under him. “Mike, it’s late.”
He yawns with a voluptuous heave of his shoulders. “Always damned late.”
“Mother spoke to me again about staying out so long.”
“Likewise and then some.” He scrubs his knuckles across his eyes. “After I drop you off I feel raw. I hardly ever get to sleep before it’s light.”
“I wish we could just once sleep and wake in the same bed.”
“When I was a kid I caught the flu. They piled the bed with quilts so I’d sweat it out. When I leave you, I have to burn you out of my system before I can sleep.” His eyes are wide open, black. “Listen, I love you.”
“I love you.” Words are too feeble to relieve the pressure in my chest. I can only run my hands over his heavy-boned face and say it again and again. Quarrels rub me raw and weary. My parents find me an irritant. Every day I hate my job more. At home I feel as if I have been forced back into early adolescence with no community, no friends, no support group. I am losing my sense of myself. Only with him is there any tenderness and communication.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WHAT THE TEA LEAVES SAID
SATURDAY I GET up to find Mother at the kitchen table—cleared except for the teapot, a cup and an ashtray—smoking her semiannual cigarette. On her vanity she keeps a wooden chest of gold-tipped Russian cigarettes Uncle Murray the small-time comedian gave her when I was a toddler. Although she is not a smoker, he guessed their exotic appearance would take them out of the category of what she calls “that filthy habit.” A year goes by while she never takes a cigarette out. Then one evening after supper on a day that feels no more unusual than any other, she appears with a slender brown cylinder cupped elegantly between her fingers, acting in her own movie. Then I see in her the young beauty from the slums, studying seductive graces in darkened theaters. All she had to save herself was encompassed in being female.
“It’s late for breakfast,” she says. “There’s tuna fish salad for lunch.”
“You could have got me up.”
“You were out so late, I was sure you must be tired.”
“It’s the weekend,” I say in automatic defensiveness. While I eat, wisps of smoke from the scant tobacco curl from the cylinder as if blown through a straw. She is so silent I look at her with surprise, but she seems absorbed in her ritual. Not till she has tapped out the gilt mouthpiece does she rouse herself, then to pour me tea.
Leaves float thickly in the cup. “You forgot the strainer.”
“So I did. I’ll read the leaves for you.”
I shrug, embarrassed. She read my palm when they brought me home from the hospital but never since. When I was little and jealous of the women in the kitchen, I used to beg her to read the leaves for me. “Jill’s going to like to go to school this year and she’s going to be a good girl and help her mother cheerfully.” “Am I going to get a bike?” “That isn’t clear yet,” she would say sadly, meaning the money was iffy.
She takes the cup to brood over it. I lean my cheek on my hand, a yawn stretching my jaws. Maybe I’ll sunbathe in the yard and read Sons and Lovers if she doesn’t make me help clean the house. I’m pallid next to Mike. Then she shoves the cup toward me, a wave of tea sloshing out. She stares and I stare back until I say, “So, what’s up? You see the sign of the hangman in the cup?”
“No. The sign of the beast.”
Oh, we’re in for some nasty weather. “Come on, Mother. Maybe I can have a cup of coffee instead.”
“I cannot be mistaken.” She stabs her finger at the cup. “You’re sleeping with him—with that boy.”
The room settles into new shapes. “What?” I cannot help following her finger to the bottom of the cup.
Her lip curls. “You heard me.”
I force a sticky smile. “I don’t believe I heard correctly.” I consider saying she damn well knows I sleep here, but playing with language strikes me as inadvisable, given her expression.
“You’re sleeping with that boy!”
“Mike, I suppose? God, Mother, you used to think Howie and I—”
??
?Do you have the nerve to call on Him? We raise our children to have them lie to our faces. Carrying on like a bitch in the alley!”
I jump from my chair. “Stop it! I’m going outside.”
She brings her fist down, rattling the cups. “Sit down! Do you want the neighbors to hear?”
I sit, my stomach hardening. I do in fact hear the whir of an electric mixer. Mrs. McAllen next door must be baking a cake.
“Not that they don’t guess already with you coming in at two every morning.” She swells with rage. “You’ve given yourself to him not once but many times. You’ve been playing me for a fool, carrying on behind my back. Traitor to your mother!”
Fascinated I stare. Then I snap to. “What do you want?”
“Don’t try to brazen it out! You think I’m blind, I can’t see it in the leaves?”
“You see what you want.”
“How can you sit and eat my food, knowing what you’ve done? Have you no pride? My daughter, my only daughter, a slut.”
“I have lots of pride.” I clamp shut. Only by lying can I protect. “You’ve been accusing me since I was twelve. Lay off it. I’ve been working hard all week and I don’t need a lousy weekend.”
“Can you deny it? Look me in the eyes.”
I meet her angry gaze. “Sure.”
“Now I know you’re lost.” She pulls a folded paper from her apron and throws it down.
Gingerly I lift it. Donna’s handwriting.
July 10, 1954
Dear Stu,
Somehow I haven’t had the energy to answer. The less I do, the less I can do. Like oversleeping and waking up exhausted. I write Lennie every night….
Relief courses through me like cool water. “This is just Donna’s last letter.”
She jabs the page. “Can you deny what it says right there?”
“How’d you get hold of this? It’s mine.”
“You think you’re clever, but let me tell you, there’s no one stupid enough they don’t know to look in an underwear drawer.”
“It’s personal. It was addressed to me.”
“I wouldn’t boast.” She jabs at it. “Read this.”
I follow her finger.
You don’t know how lucky you are to be with Mike, able to act your love instead of trying to ship it through the mails….
“What’s wrong with that?” I ask.
“To be able to act your love?” Her voice lilts with sarcasm. “To be with dear Lennie for just two hours in the old apartment, or even a fast twenty minutes? You think I don’t know what that means?”
“She misses Lennie. She’s in love. It’s nice.”
“What do you know about love, slut? Dirt, that’s what you know.”
“Quit it.” I push my chair back and rise.
“Keep your voice down.” She rises too, leaning so close her breath burns my cheek. “You told me you didn’t care for him but he’ll do, won’t he?”
“What I feel is none of your business. I’m going out.” I start to slip past but she flings out her arm.
“Sit down, or I’ll show the detective’s report to your father.” She smiles tightly at my cry. “I had the two of you followed by a detective these past ten days.”
My skin burns with nakedness. “I don’t believe you.”
“You’ve been acting so strange since you came home—”
“No, you never spent money for that. It’s too absurd!”
“Twenty-five dollars a night it cost me out of my own money from Matt. Burke’s Detective Agency, you can look them up in the phone book.”
“I don’t believe you!” I repeated louder. “What a tall story!”
She marches past me to grab her white beaded purse, fumbling in it. “Here. That’s the man. You saw him last week when you and Michael were leaving just as he was arriving.”
It is a business card.
Thomas E. Burke Detective Agency
Confidential Investigation
Civil—Criminal—Domestic
2525 Woodward Avenue, Suite 14A
KL 5-8500
licensed bonded
24 hour service surveillance
over 25 years experience
Scrawled on the card is a name in ballpoint, Roy Nastasian. I am numb. My nerves ring but I feel nothing. I feel deaf. She really did.
“In that boy’s car,” Mother cries. “In parks and fields and alleys and ditches!”
“What does a place matter? How could you spy on me?”
“Have you no pride at all? Are you a bitch, to receive any male who comes sniffing?”
“That is the worst thing you’ve ever done.”
“Are you through lying?”
“I’m not ashamed. You made it shameful.”
“I always held myself too high!” She thrusts out her hands. “Did he tell you he loved you? Hot air is cheap. Men pay a prostitute but what did he give you?”
“What I gave him. I love him.”
“Love!” She spits it through her teeth. “That’s a joke.”
“I’m proud of him and he makes me proud of myself.”
“If a man loves you, if he cares for you, he respects you too much. He’ll marry to have you.”
“I don’t want to be had. Respect that doesn’t touch? How do I know if I want to marry him?”
“Marriages aren’t made in bed, you poor fool.”
“I don’t share your values. I have to live my life by my own sense of right and wrong—”
She rises. “Call him.”
“What for?”
“I want to talk to him tonight. I won’t be surprised if he runs out, but if he cares for you—at all—he’ll come.”
I follow her into the living room. “You don’t believe he loves me.” I reach for the phone, stop. “Are you going to listen?”
“Surely you don’t expect me to trust you now.”
I replace the receiver. “Then I won’t call.”
“Then I will.”
I huddle toward the phone, dialing. The phone rings, rings. Let him be out.
“Hello?” Groggily. Voice thick as when I used to wake him at school.
“Mike, listen—”
“You woke me.” He yawns. “What time is it?”
“One. My mother just talked to me. She knows about us.”
“Knows what?”
“About us. Yes, she’s right here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She knows. She’s standing here now. She accused me.”
“What the hell?” I can see him shaking his head trying to wake up. “About us having sex?”
“Yes.”
“You denied it, of course.”
“For a long while.”
“You didn’t admit anything! Are you out of your mind?”
“She had us followed by a detective.”
“Merde!” A long silence.
“Mike.”
“You should still have denied it. What a mess!”
She leans against the jamb with a cold flickering smile. “Tell him to come over this evening.”
“Mike, she wants you to come over tonight.”
“Does she think I’m feebleminded?”
“Mike! She wants to talk to you. You have to come.”
“Walk into that house. And ‘talk’ to her?”
“She said you won’t because you don’t care for me.”
“What’s wrong with you? Do I have to prove it to your mother?” He groans. “Why did you admit it?”
Mother stirs restlessly. “Is he coming or not?”
“Just a minute, “ I say to her, cupping the receiver. Then to him, “Are you coming, Mike? Please!”
“All right, I’ll try to get there by eight. Merde alors, you sure got us in the soup. Don’t say anything else. We’ll see whether I can’t repair the damage.”
Hanging up I face her. “He’s coming at eight.” The harsh glaring anger has returned to her eyes but I pull free. ‘I’m going up
stairs.”
“Just so you get out of my sight!” She swirls past and slams the door of her bedroom. The springs of her bed wince sharply.
Dad’s face is ruddy and beaming. His hair looks whiter by contrast with the burn from a day’s fishing. “Ever see a prettier string of blue-gills? How come you made pork chops, then?”
Mother says, “I’ll cook them tomorrow.”
I push the food around my plate, waiting till I can leave the table.
“Your mother wouldn’t let me get you up, or I’d have taken you along.” He grins. “We took a dip afterwards to cool off. Water was fine. Poor old Gene didn’t catch but one sunfish, and that was undersize.” He helps himself to more potatoes. “Best to eat them fresh caught.”
Mother sits low in her chair, her cheeks puffy. “I didn’t have the strength to clean them.”
He frowns at her. “Feeling under the weather, Pearl?”
She shakes her head.
His deep voice trembles with awkward gentleness, like his hands at some delicate work. “Sure you aren’t sick? The heat’s got you down.”
“I’ll explain after supper.” She shakes her head, her face screwing up as if she will cry.
She cannot mean to tell him! She must have planned some story to get him out of the way. But as I start to clear the table, she says, “Better go upstairs. He’ll take this hard. I don’t know what he’ll do to you.”
Through the doorway he squats in front of the television. “What are you going to tell him?”
“What?” The lines in her face pull down. “What you told me.”
“Mother, you can’t.”
“I have to. I don’t look forward to it.”
“Don’t do it, then. Why? It’s none of his business.”
“Because if he figures it out, he’ll blame me.” She wipes the hair from her forehead. “He’ll think I connived.”
I turn and run upstairs, to hurl myself on the glider. Though I strain to hear, I catch only the murmur of voices mixed with the television. Then the television stops but the voices go on. She is a woman and sensual. Her mother had too many babies and she helped them into bloody birth. At ten she looked fifteen. Her hungry reading exposes her to some ideas, some breadth of living. But he has never indicated to me that sex exists. Love is not a word he uses. His judgment is the fall of a headman’s ax.