Lucky Us, page 19
Gus said when he saw Francisco, he hated him. He said that he couldn’t imagine why I had married a man like that, but he saw me hug Francisco and it looked like I loved him and he thought that there was no reason to get in touch, after all. I put on my dungarees and Danny and I played while Francisco put the groceries away and started dinner. Gus watched us, hidden by our hedge, batting the hell out of our tetherball. When Danny wrapped the ball around the top of the pole, I cheered, and we went back into the house for Danny’s math and my med school applications. I looked back, at nothing, at the sound of a car starting, and Danny tugged on my sweater.
THAT NIGHT, IT WAS raining like the Flood. Trees bent toward the ground, the sky cracked white every few minutes, and black, oily water ran in the black streets. Thunder woke Danny up twice and I sang to him. On the third verse of “Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball,” he fell back asleep. I tucked him in with his old holster, just in case. Francisco was reviewing the transcript we’d devised before typing it on our state-approved and watermarked paper. I was taking a break from organic chemistry, skimming my Little Blue Book on modern mathematics. Francisco had already aged the parchment for my high school and college diplomas and done the calligraphy. A man he used to shave had a brother-in-law who had the state seals for New Mexico, New York, and New Jersey, and now, so did we. Francisco had amortized all our medical school expenses over the some thirty-five years I could expect to practice and he said I was a good investment. He kept a ledger book of what I owed him. Sometimes he wrote in things like Teaching Danny Spanish: $10,000.00, Eva’s Eyebrows: $2,000.00. We graduated me magna cum laude from the University of New Mexico. (Not summa. Do not overreach, my father had said.) I applied to medical schools in New York and I hoped that they felt about New Mexico the way I did, that it was American, and legitimate, but wide open and a little unknowable. My UNM transcript showed that I had aced everything, including classical music and botany (well rounded), and had spent three years as a lab assistant for the recently deceased Dr. Andrew Azores. His reference letter emphasized that he had never recommended a woman before; nevertheless, he believed that without in any way compromising my femininity, I would contribute to the field of medicine. Dr. Azores approved of what he felt was my natural interest in pediatrics. He emphasized my devotion to medicine, my skills, and my modesty. There was a suggestion that I would never marry. Francisco and I both thought Dr. Azores was a pompous ass but he was, entirely, our pompous ass. We didn’t give me Phi Beta Kappa, on the off chance that someone on some admissions committee would give a damn, and thinking to help or hurt my cause, call the Phi Beta Kappa office.
29
How High the Moon
Letter from Iris
Queensberry Place
South Kensington, London
September 3, 1948
Dearest Eva,
I understand why you never wrote. I’m sorry that I stopped writing. It was too hard. It was like etching my awfulness on every mirror. I have tried to be a better person. I even look in the mirror less often.
The clinic is becoming a reality. I continue to be the Singing Guinea Pig, and now I am on the board, which means I beg rich people for money, every single week, on behalf of Dr. McIndoe and the boys, and, in my own mind, on behalf of Reenie. I am usually partnered up with a very handsome, badly maimed RAF major. I don’t know that most people see his handsomeness. I imagine they see the ruined remains. That’s what we count on—because just as the rich person begins to wince (usually as Teddy is knocking a tray of crab puffs to the floor with his stump, or misjudging the distance from the glass to his twisted mouth), I cut in with my pretty ways and waltz them into another room, so they can write us a check in comfort. We have perfected this. I love Teddy and he loves me. If I was going to sleep with a man, it would be a short Scotsman with one arm and half a face and a taste for morphine.
I’ve been a guest star on Café Continental six times now and it looks like our West End revue will run forever. I am enclosing a check, which I hope will be helpful to you all. I’ll send you a check every month that I’m working, from now until I die.
Oh, Eva, please forgive me for every shitty, unspeakable, unforgivable thing I did to you. I know that as lists go, this is one with real depth and real breadth. I have no business staying away—except that I think you are better off without me and at least here, I make myself useful. If you write me and tell me to return, I will.
If you can, forgive me. If you can, let me make amends.
Your sister,
Iris
GUS HEITMANN STOOD AT MY KITCHEN DOOR, WATER DRIPPING off his hat. He looked worn out and he was soaking wet.
“Gus,” I said. “My God.” I kept my voice down, because of Danny.
He smiled at me, uncertainly.
“Look at you. You’re all grown up,” he said. “Married, with a little boy.”
Francisco snorted.
Gus and Francisco said hello. Francisco was not going to say, I’m not her husband, you moron, so I said so, politely. Francisco settled back in at the kitchen table and picked up his magnifying glass. I wish I’d thrown my arms around Gus’s neck and kicked up my back foot or squealed his name or any of the things that a normal woman would do, seeing a man she was fond of, who she thought was dead. I let Gus in and I put his wet hat on top of the refrigerator.
WE SAT IN THE living room and Francisco stayed in the kitchen, listening in. Gus told me that he had been living in Great Neck for a few months, and he started teaching at the high school in a month. He was kind of a loner, he said, and everyone knew him now as Gersh Hoffman, that he’d changed his name while he was in Germany. It made no sense to me, changing one German name to another. He talked about his hard times in Germany and looking me up and not calling and then seeing me in the bakery, and I could hardly listen. I was just waiting for him to ask me about Reenie.
“Let me get you a drink,” I said. “I guess you’re trying to find Reenie.”
He said that he had looked for her and he had looked for me, but he’d lost his nerve.
I had to tell him what had happened. I told him the short version, without the details, which, even so, was awful to tell. He put his hands in front of his eyes.
He said, “Oh, Christ. Oh, poor Reenie. I am so sorry.” He put his head in his hands, and I apologized too. I said that Reenie was dead by the time they got her to the hospital, and I started to explain that we didn’t have a hospital close to us but that would be changing soon, and Gus lifted his head to look at me. I thought it might be now that he asked me what had been going on with Iris and Reenie.
He said, “How’d the fire start?”
I said I didn’t know, that no one knew.
“Spontaneous combustion,” he said. “How ’bout that. Where’s your sister now?”
I told him that she had gone to England for surgery and we weren’t in touch.
He said, “Too bad. You didn’t have much family.”
I said the same was true for him. Gus asked me about my father and I told him that Edgar had been sick for a while and died and he said he was sorry about that too. He asked about my husband and my son and I heard Francisco muttering in the kitchen. I said that I really did not have a husband and that Danny was my adopted son. Gus looked furious, and I thought that the details of Danny’s life could wait until another time. Or never. Gus asked me if I had gotten his letters. I said no and he sank down in the couch.
“That’s too bad,” he said. “If you’d gotten my letters …”
Francisco said, “I’m making coffee. Who wants some?”
Gus stood up. “Good to see you,” he said. “We should have that drink next time. Maybe we’ll play cards,” he said.
I said that I’d be glad to do that. I told him that I worked near Stricoff’s bakery and that I was usually home by five o’clock. I asked him if he had a day in mind to get together and he said no. He asked me what I did for work and I said that I was a psychic, that I did tarot card readings. I wasn’t happy to say this.
“She’s worked with the FBI,” Francisco said. I knew that he thought I should tell Gus that I was applying to medical school, that I was not planning on spending the rest of my life as Madame Fruitcake, peddling bullshit to decent, unhappy people, as Gus might see it.
“You don’t say. You’ll have to tell me my future sometime.” He walked into the kitchen and got his hat. He shook Francisco’s hand on his way out the door.
I sat at the kitchen table and Francisco moved the valuable, watermarked papers that would be my transcript and closed his typewriter case.
“He thought you were my husband,” I said.
Francisco smoothed his hair and he arched an eyebrow. “Naturally.”
“What was that about?” I asked.
Francisco poured us beers.
“The lightning stopped,” he said. “Danny can get a good night’s sleep.”
“What was he in such a goddamn state about?” I said. “I mean, I understand. About Reenie.”
“It was very sad about Reenie. On top of that, the man was disappointed. He thought that when he finally pulled himself together and came to find you, there’d be magic and he would be transformed by your loveliness, which he has, probably, exaggerated over the years, and then the two of you would melt into each other, in an incandescent moment of mutual and perfect understanding. As one. Forever. I think, in his mind, Reenie was already out of the picture. Not that he wished her dead. And here you are, not waiting for him, with the little boy and the fat old man and no incandescence anywhere.”
“Christ Almighty,” I said.
“I’m going to bed,” Francisco said. “Tomorrow, we send in your magnificent transcripts. I gave you an A-minus in organic. Say goodnight, kiddo.”
“Good night, kiddo,” I said. I sat at the table until I fell asleep. At dawn, I dragged myself to bed. I had gotten used to the idea that people lived and you loved them, or didn’t, and then they died and you were bound to miss them, often even if you didn’t love them. I was used to Gus being dead and now he was not only alive, but stupid and angry, and he’d trailed all my dead and gone people into my house, right along with that sad, wet hat and his lined, hard face.
I DROVE TO GREAT Neck High School and read The Fundamentals of Physics in the parking lot until the three o’clock bell. It was Firenze Gardens all over again. I watched Gus make sure a bunch of boys got on the bus without killing each other or falling under the tires, and when he lit his cigarette and the last bus pulled out, I walked over. I apologized for the other night. I wasn’t the one with the problem, but I was certainly sorry. I was surprised when I should have been gracious, and I had given him nothing but very bad news. I was sorry about that and I said so.
Gus pushed his hat back on his head until he looked like a farmer. I’m glad I heard it from you, he said. Maybe we could have dinner. I was a knucklehead, he said. We could start again. I said that I thought that was a good idea and he said, How about my place? I can cook. I thought he needed to be careful with a buck, like I did, and I said yes. I told Francisco where I was going and he told me to wear slacks and my blue sweater and my navy-blue loafers. He said a little lipstick wouldn’t kill me. Are we acting like this is a date, Francisco asked. We are not, I said.
Gus’s place was neat and clean and close to empty. The couch was a mustard-yellow brocade with one brown pillow on it and there were no pictures on the walls. There was a rocking chair with no cushion, an old rag rug in the living room, and another small rug in front of his kitchen sink. I was seized with love for my house at Old Tree Lane and Danny’s trucks and racing cars and his grimy socks and Francisco’s three pairs of reading glasses and the path my stockings took every Friday night, from the tub, to the stairs, to my room, each of us helping my stockings get back to where they belonged.
The place smelled like spaghetti sauce, and not the kind that Francisco made. Gus asked me what I liked to drink and I said a whiskey sour. I don’t have that, he said. I said whatever you have is fine, and he poured me a glass of red wine that tasted like a saddle. I sat down on the couch and thought how much I should never have come. Gus sat down next to me, dropping an arm over my shoulder.
“Oh, my,” I said. “Like kids at the movies?”
“I’ve missed you. I thought about you a lot. If you’d gotten my letters …”
“I didn’t,” I said. “I thought you were dead, somewhere. Or not dead, but not coming back. I didn’t think you were a German spy. None of us did.”
“Good. Thanks. So, you don’t have a husband.” He narrowed his eyes. Like, I maybe didn’t have a husband, but I had a lover. Like, I may have said I didn’t have a husband but probably I was an inveterate liar. I asked how the dinner was coming along and he went back to the kitchen. We ate the spaghetti and the burned meatballs and our two salads and Gus poured us the whole awful bottle. We found ourselves back on the ugly couch, drinking brandy.
“I really wish you’d gotten my letters,” Gus said.
I AM NOT AN expert in normal sexual behavior. I’ve had my crushes, flaring and fading in a week, and most nights I dreamed about sex with everyone from Ozzie Patterson to General MacArthur. Despite that business with Dr. Snyder, things had stayed pretty quiet for me in that department. I had Danny and a man who loved me and shared the cooking and I was surrounded by married people. I wanted something slow and romantic and even a little frightening. I wanted us to hold hands and find ourselves unable to let go. I wanted Gus to kiss me on the neck up to and around my ear (which I always thought I’d like) and back down to the nape of my neck, under my ponytail, and then a string of warm kisses along the top of my shoulder, where he pushed my sweater aside. My head would fall back against the yellow brocade and slowly, slowly, like opening a present, Gus would undo the buttons of my cardigan. He would carry me to his bed, never mind his bad leg, and unzip my pants and I would slip out, naked and smooth as the day I was born. He would kiss every part of me, my breasts and between my legs, and at last my sensible body would surprise me. It would do new, wild things that were as different from cooking and comforting and managing as can be. Waterfall of desire, is what I was hoping for.
In the event, Gus was drunk, following his own uneven tune. He kicked over the brandy bottle and we righted it and mopped it up and the whole room smelled like a French accident. Gus pulled my sweater over my head and it caught on my earring. I sat upright with my hands in my lap, like a woman on a bus in a bad neighborhood, except that I was just in my bra. He kissed me frantically, not always connecting with my actual skin. He had trouble with my bra and I thought he would tear it, so I unhooked it myself and let it drop to the couch. He tossed it on the floor, onto the brandy stain, and he kissed my breasts. He rubbed his face over them. I said, Ouch, a couple of times and he stopped. He looked at me, his eyes still unfocused, and I put my hands over my breasts. You scratched me, I said. He saw my face and my bare breasts and I think he did see me. He put his hands over his face and then he stood up. He handed me my sweater.
“You should go now,” he said. “I’m sorry. You should go.”
I pulled my sweater over my head and stuffed my damp bra into my purse. Gus was crying.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I was sorry.
He opened his front door.
“I won’t bother you again,” he said.
FRANCISCO WAS SITTING UP when I came in.
“Awful,” I said.
“You or him?”
I DID BETTER THAN average on my med school exams. I sent in my impressive transcripts and my stellar letters of recommendation and, waiting to become, I busted out as a psychic. I picked up M. Croiset’s habit of saying things out loud, naming the creatures of the world, just because I liked the sound, and my clients leapt up, like trout, to agree with me, and see their happy futures unfolding. I was doing five readings a day, putting money in the bank, and I rented a saxophone for Danny so he could join the sixth grade jazz band. He wore a red vest every Wednesday evening for band practice. A friend of Ruthie’s told Ruthie that Danny was cute. Wednesday nights, Francisco went to Society for Human Rights meetings, which were, as he said, lousy with old Reds and old Scotch and some new Judy Garland records and on Wednesdays, I couldn’t settle down until they were both back home.
IT WAS WARMER THAN usual. The snow had left a few narrow white strips on the slick bright-green grass, as if spring were right around the corner. I had put away Danny’s things and lain down to read the newspaper and fallen asleep. I dreamed that my father, younger and healthy, was in white tie (which would have suited him), carrying bottles of Champagne down a flight of glossy marble steps. They were slippery, so smooth light bounced off their rounded edges, but he walked confidently, with his shoulders back. He didn’t look down. He tossed the bottles into two big ice buckets and looked in my direction and winked. I came toward him and the white flotsam of wherever we were brushed past me like tumbleweed.
“One’s Champagne,” he said. “One’s egg cream. And I brought sandwiches.” And floating near the ice buckets were dear Mrs. Gruber’s fried-egg-and-cheese sandwiches, each in a soft white nest.
“Everything you need, as the chorus girl said to the vicar.” He tapped his show-biz silver-topped cane a couple of times.
IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT and I was in my pajamas and Gus was at the door.
I made us tea and we sat in the kitchen, saying nothing, watching it steep. I put out a plate of cookies, not that I wanted to.
“Are you mad at me?” Gus said, in the tone of a man who is sure he has every reason to be angry and the other person has none.
I was. I was as angry at him as if he’d been standing me up, night after night, in some fancy restaurant on Northern Boulevard.
“I don’t know what you want,” I said. “I don’t even know you.”
