Garbo Laughs (4 page)

“I saw Lew on the ladder this morning. A man who washes windows.” Dinah looks up. “Do you know how lucky you are?”

“He smiles too much.”

“Smiles
too much?”

“He’s too damn sunny. I feel like Mr. Darcy married to Mr. Bingley.”

Dinah leans back and hoots, then leans forward and says, “Can I have him?”

At twelve years old, Dinah Bloom knew she would never marry. Sitting beside the lilac bush in her backyard, basking in the hot May sun, she knew she would never marry, she would never have children, and she would never be what she really wanted to be, a nightclub singer like Peggy Lee; she would be a reporter instead, like Brenda Starr in the comic strip. She saw herself living as she lives now, in a house with a small but beautiful garden, a cigarette between her fingers, and tanned bare legs; frequent love affairs of short duration, as in the movies. What she hadn’t pictured was being fired, or falling in love with someone she couldn’t have.

Five months ago, on a warm July evening, when the street was full of loud children and patient parents, she came around the side of her house to the flower beds out front and stopped to watch them for a moment: six parents wanting-to-be-admired
hovering over ten children demanding-everything-under-the-sun. She remembered when it was the kids who were supposed to be good. A soft orange soccer ball went gently from foot to foot, and a new boy was hunkered on the curb, watching. He had a newspaper stuck in his back pocket and a pencil behind his ear, and he was leaning forward with his face in his hands, elbows on his knees, pale, tall, wiry-haired – and nobody was asking him to play.

Dinah knelt on a slab of foam to protect her knees. Her hands stirred up the smell of mint. This was a friendly neighbourhood, but only up to a point, and she had never understood the point. How much did it take to invite a new kid to play? When she was just a few feet away from the boy, she said in a conversational way, “I always hated soccer.”

He looked at her and said easily, “I love soccer.”

“Want me to introduce you?” She nodded towards the game.

“Oh, I don’t like playing,” he said. “I like watching. I’m going to be a sportswriter.”

“Are you?” She leaned back on her heels. “Then you’ll have to learn how to drink booze and play cards.”

“I know how to play cards.”

“Crazy eights? Hearts?”

“Rummy,” said Kenny. “Gin rummy. Want to play?”

They laid out the cards on her front porch and sat on the top step. She said, “Gin rummy’s what Fred Astaire used to play. But I don’t suppose you’ve heard of him.”

“I’ve heard of Fred Astaire.”

“Have you heard of Gene Kelly?”

“I’ve heard of Gene Kelly.” Then, darting her a look, he asked her who she thought was better. Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire.

“Gene Kelly,” she answered promptly. “I know Fred’s a great dancer, but Gene was a lovely man to look at.”

“What about Frank Sinatra?”

Dinah had to smile. “How old are you?”

He told her.

He was tall for ten. Not that she had a lot of experience in these matters. “And you like Frank?”

“Do
you
like him?”

“I’m crazy about him,” she said. “Frank and I are
very
close.”

Kenny’s eyes shone. He grinned.

Dinah said, “Remind me of the rules for gin rummy.”

“When you’ve got seven points or less you can knock. Or you can wait and gin.”

“Well, if Fred Astaire could do it, so can I.”

“Did he win?” “That I don’t know.”

“What kind of useless fact is that?” Kenny demanded. “Fred Astaire played gin rummy but you don’t know if he won?”

“What did Frank Sinatra play?”

“He played crap!”

Dinah leaned back against the porch post. She couldn’t believe her luck, meeting a kid like this. “How do you happen to know Frank Sinatra?”

“We watch his movies. We listen to his music.”

“I’ll have to meet your folks,” she said, and later in the week she did. She dropped over to say hello and found all four of them – mother, father, big sister, Kenny – on the back porch, reading. The porch was wide and airy with a high sloped roof against the sun and rain. In the middle of the porch was a square table covered in a floral plastic cloth. Around the table were
several folding chairs. A hammock hung suspended between one of the porch posts and a hook buried in the brick wall. A workbench covered in sawdust took up another corner. A wide shelf below a window held dishes and utensils, and next to it, on a narrow wooden table, were a dishpan and dish rack, and above the dishpan was an outdoor faucet.

“You could live out here,” she said, turning around in one spot, and Lew said, “We do. We’re out here from morning till night.”

“That’s what it looks like.” And it was quite evident from her tone and the look on her face how much she admired their world of light housekeeping and easy company.

Harriet and Lew were wearing shirts and shorts faded from countless summers; the books in their laps were library books. They didn’t look like Frank Sinatra types, thought Dinah, they looked like professors who would never get tenure. And she liked them immediately and without reservation.

To Lew she said, “You’re the man who sings the song from
High Noon.”

About a month ago, when she was peeling a late-night peach on the back steps and it was too dark and leafy to make out the source, she’d heard a voice in the alley on the other side of the big oak, just past Bill Bender’s garage, a man speaking to a dog in a tone so natural and easy that she’d known everything about him she needed to know. Then he began to sing softly, “‘Do Not Forsake Me,’” and that was it: her heart said uncle.

Now here he was. The man with the tender voice.

Harriet said, “Lew knows the words to a million songs,” a compliment so heartfelt it produced a smile, since wifely admiration was hard to come by. Lew reached for his wife’s hand, but she batted him away. The kids were used to this: their dad
reaching for their mom’s hand, and their mom batting him away.

Despite the heat, Kenny was wearing his gangster jacket. In the inner pockets he carried a thick wad of paper money, an old lighter, an expired credit card, a flat silver case that contained one of his dad’s business cards –
Lew Gold, Heritage Architect—
and a two-dollar toy pistol.

“Who are you?” Dinah asked him.

He smiled sheepishly but not uncomfortably. “Nathan Detroit,” he said.

“So, tell me why you like Frankie.” Settling deeper into one of the padded folding chairs at the table.

Lew and Harriet observed their son’s conquest, and so did Jane. She listened closely but didn’t speak, this twelve-year-old girl with the Bette Davis eyes who put herself to sleep every night planning what she would wear to the Oscars.

“Because he’s a great singer. A good dancer, not a great dancer, and a great actor. And he hates Marlon Brando.”

“What’s the matter with poor Marlon?”

“He’s a bum. He can’t sing, he can’t dance, he can’t act, and Frank Sinatra hates him.”

Dinah laughed her smoky, raspy laugh, and Harriet, bringing out cold drinks and an ashtray, stopped in her tracks to listen.
Sandpaper calling to its mate
, she thought, having read the description of Louis Armstrong’s voice in a Pauline Kael movie review. “You have the best laugh,” she said, looking down at Dinah and her son, and she quoted the review and gave credit where credit was due.

Lew said, “Hattie writes to Pauline Kael.”

“You know Pauline Kael?”

“No,” Harriet admitted sadly.

“But you write to her. Does she write back?”

“Oh, I don’t mail the letters.”

“Why not?”

“They’re stupid. The first letter I wrote to her was about Cary Grant. It was an incredibly stupid letter. Actually, it was a story. It was an incredibly stupid story.” And she meant what she said about the story, but if she’d been pressed she would have defended the letters. She was a writer who wasn’t really writing
except
for the letters, except for this ongoing, one-sided intimacy that she didn’t have to justify to anyone. It relaxed her and kept her company.

“Well,” said Dinah, stubbing out her Craven A, “that’s one way to save on postage.” And she laughed until she nearly choked. One manicured hand slapped the table, the other flew to her face, which for all its years of hard living was still extremely pretty. “Excuse
me,”
she sputtered, pushing back her silver hair. It was early evening and still light, but they were the only ones outside.

“No,” shaking her head at the beer, “just a glass of water if you don’t mind.” And she lit up again and stifled a cough.

And then they got down to business.

“Now listen.” His mother’s face took on the ardent, competitive look that Kenny liked best. “Kenny tells me you don’t like Fred Astaire.”

Dinah, amused and imperturbable, winked at Kenny and Jane. “Give me Gene Kelly any time.”

Their mother leaned closer. “I’m going to have to educate you.” And Dinah replied, “You don’t like Gene Kelly?” and their mother said, “Nobody loves Gene Kelly more than I do, but
Fred was in a league of his own,” and Dinah came back, “Gene was sexy, something you could never say about Fred,” and their mother said, “But Fred was inventive. He was far more inventive than Gene Kelly could ever be, for all he tried,” and Dinah said, “But Gene had a body and Fred was a dry old stick,” and their mother said, “Cyd Charisse said it was like dancing with glass dancing with Fred,” but raucous, irreverent Dinah wasn’t buying it. “What does that
mean?”

“The point is,” their mother said, “Gene was always trying to be artistic, that was his big mistake.”

At this Dinah turned to Kenny. “Tell your mother that Fred Astaire doesn’t compare to Gene Kelly or Frank Sinatra for excitement. Tell her the difference between Fred Astaire and Frankie.”

Kenny answered thoughtfully. “Fred Astaire is a little bit distant. Frank comes on and blabs and blabs and blabs and you get close to him. Fred Astaire is distant. I like him though.” Looking at his mom.

Her eyes twinkled back. It was obvious that his mother liked Dinah as much as he did, and he felt beside himself with pleasure.

Immeasurable, the relief a child feels to see his parents make friends. Here they were in a huge world, after all. Night was coming on. The porch, outfitted for outdoor living, was Huckleberry’s raft on the Mississippi. “I took the bucket and gourd; took a dipper and a tin cup, and my old saw and two blankets, and the skillet and the coffee-pot.” They were floating high above the mosquitoes in the grass and far away from the mosquitoes in the cedar hedge, but even so, as night fell, a few found them out. Lew tugged open the little glass door of the Mexican lantern in the middle of the table, lit the candle inside, then went
into the kitchen and from the fridge got his box of Cuban cigars. Soon clouds of smoke filled the air, and that, for the time being, was the end of the enemy.

“Browning,” mused Dinah. They were talking about names now, having their conversation about Garbo and eyelashes.

Jane hadn’t spoken, but not because she wasn’t listening. “Who’s Greta Garbo?” she asked.

“You know Frank Sinatra but you don’t know Greta Garbo? I’m going to have to educate you,” said Dinah, and Harriet smiled. “She was the most beautiful woman in the world,” said Dinah.

They continued to sit on outside. Lew opened another beer, Jane played with Dinah’s cigarette butts and felt herself turn into Dinah (a feeling that persisted when she went to bed and remained when she woke up, so that she came downstairs for breakfast feeling silvery-haired and husky-voiced and desperate for coffee), and Dinah played cards with Kenny. She asked him what his favourite Frank Sinatra movie was.

He moved the cards around in his hand, sucked in his lower lip, chewed it, raised his eyes and looked at her. “The one he acted in best was that one about Chinese spies.”

“The Manchurian Candidate.”

“And the army movie where he dies?”

“From Here to Eternity.”

“Yeah. He acted best in those two. But I have to say I liked him a lot in
On the Town.”

“More than
High Society?”

“High Society’s
next.”

Dinah said, “I have a copy of that one. You can watch it with me any time.”

“Okay.”

“What about Friday night? I’d be glad to have your company. Jane, will you come too?”

“I’d love to,” Jane said eagerly.

“Then it’s a date. Shall we invite your folks? We can start a movie club.”

Harriet said, “Lew talks through movies. People who talk through movies should be taken out and shot.”

“Rule number one: No talking, except by us.”

Which is how the Friday-night movie club began.

Lew didn’t mind. It was a small price to pay, sharing his Friday nights with movie stars, if it brought in Dinah’s good sense and marvellous laugh. Usually, after the movie started, he headed upstairs and played his mandolin. He was learning the song “Tom Dooley.”

H
arriet was one of Ottawa’s tall women. It was among the first things Lew noticed about the city. The tall women, the huge full moons, the many rainbows.

She would remove her glasses, lay them on the table, and punish her eyes with the flattened ends of her fingertips. Don’t,
he would say. She would chew the skin around her fingernails until it was red and worked and sometimes bleeding. He would take her hand away from her mouth and hold it. Every tea towel had a scorch hole from having caught fire when she lifted things in and out of the oven. Hence the baking soda at the ready beside the stove.

In the morning he would ask her if she’d been able to sleep.

“I barely slept at all,” she would say. “I feel terrible.” Or, “I woke early, but I don’t feel too bad. No doubt I’ll feel terrible later.”

To Dinah, Harriet said, “He’s too good. Do you know what it’s like to be married to a good man? Awful.”

They were in Dinah’s kitchen this time, Harriet having discovered that Dinah never locked her back door and never seemed to mind a visitor.