Her Mother's Daughter (82 page)

So I was the more surprised when, one afternoon in July, as the kids and I clattered into the house laden with beach chair, blanket, cooler, umbrella, thermoses, and heavy sandy wet towels, after a day at Jones Beach (we could not go to Zach's Bay, where I had gone as a child—it was too polluted. I had to sit on the beach, a nervous wreck, watching my kids disappear and reappear in the rough and dangerous surf, trying not to transfer my fearfulness to them), that Pani swung open her door—she must have been waiting for us, watching from the window—her face radiant.

“Anastasia!
Kochanie!
Guess who is here! My grandson, my Antoni from Ohio! He come to see me, his
bubuska,
to visit!”

Her hands were clasped as if she were praying. She was in a state of beatitude.

“I not see him since he is twelve years old, now he comes!”

I crowed, I hugged her, I acknowledged her triumph—her grandson had not forgotten her, which meant maybe her son had not either.

“Just two hour ago he come! I not know he coming, I could might be at market, at coffee with Pani D'Antonio! But he!” she giggled wildly, “he say I am out, he sit on front step all day until I come!” She laughed in unshadowed delight, and I saw that for today my sin against her had been forgiven because of this grace that had descended upon her. It was easier for her to forgive me just as it was easier for me to see her as a saint than to question her goodness. We had to live together, literally in the same house.

“And he come, and he go—swoosh!—to A&P! I want to go, I say I go, but he say I not carry home heavy Coca-Colas. He American, Coca-Cola!” she laughed. Since Pani believed most American food was nothing short of poison, especially its soft drinks, it was clear that she had had to make another mental shift. Grandson was inside the charmed circle, therefore so were his drinks.

“He college man,
kochanie!
Educated!” she cried out, turning in a circle, a kind of dance, then put her hand on my arm. “You come for coffee and cake after dinner,
kochanie,
yes? Bring the little ones.” She noticed them then, standing smiling at her joy. (I gazed at them intensely as she hugged them: You see what children mean to us, kids? You see how much Pani loves her grandson that she hardly knows? How could it be that your father does not love you?)

“You come, hah?”

We all agreed, nodding, smiling, and trooped upstairs, Billy wondering if the big boy would fix the rusted basketball hoop on the front of the garage, or throw a few balls with him, and Arden wondering how Pani could recognize him as her grandson if she hadn't seen him in a long time. “How old is he, Mommy?”

“I don't know. He must be eighteen or nineteen if he's in college.” I had no desire whatever to sit for a couple of hours making conversation with some midwestern college boy, but I was grateful that she was allowing us to make peace.

We went down about seven-thirty; Pani ate early. She was wearing her very best dress, a rayon floral print with a white lace collar and her Sunday shoes, the shinier of her two pairs of tie-up black midheel oxfords. Pani's living room—she called it the parlor—normally looked a bit dusty. There were hundreds of photographs on every old-fashioned surface, sitting in places of honor on lace scarves and doilies, and these rarely felt a dust-cloth. But tonight the room smelled fresh, and there was a vase of roses on the table by the wall. She saw me notice them, and smiled radiantly and spread out her arm.

“My Antoni! So good he is!”

Antoni appeared in the dining room, carrying a heavy tray with a rum babka on a footed glass plate, plates and silverware, and Pani's good linen napkins.

“Oh,
NO
!” Pani cried, running toward him. “You not do. Not man, woman do!”

She tried to grab the tray away from him, but he smiled and said, “No, Gramma, it's okay,” and set it down on the table, and turned to us and smiled.

He just smiled.

I just stood there.

I still can't think about Toni without awe at his beauty, and I still remember him as he looked at that moment. He had a broad Polish face with high cheekbones and his skin was smooth and golden. It was the color of golden caramel, and shiny, but the light wasn't on him, it was in him, coming from his skin, his eyes, his smile…. Oh, that smile!

He came forward to shake hands, and I could see that his eyes, large, but with a little slant to them, were a deep blue. His mouth was shaped just like a Cupid's bow, the kind of mouth movie stars of the twenties used to paint on themselves, and it looked like a child's mouth, so sweet it was.

“Hi. Gram's told me a lot about you. She says you're a photographer for
World.
That's really great!”

I know I said something or other.

He couldn't be eighteen.

Pani introduced him to the children, and he said we should call him Toni, and as we walked toward the table, Billy was asking him if he played basketball, and he laughed and said he'd noticed the rusty hoop, and that he'd put up a new one if he could find a ladder, and then Pani was insisting he must not exert himself, but he said didn't she have a ladder and she said
Zbyszek
—her husband's nickname—had kept one in the cellar and maybe it was still there but it must be old, perhaps rotten, he must be careful, he must not fall. And Arden asked him how old he was and he said twenty-two, and my breath started to come again in light quick drafts, and she asked Pani how she recognized him, and out came the photographs, and in short, there was no trouble whatever in making conversation over coffee and cake that evening, for hours and hours. But whatever was said, even if I said it, washed past me like water in a gutter when you're walking along the sidewalk. From my exalted perspective four inches above the road, all I was conscious of was the way Toni kept looking at me—and the way I knew I must be looking at him.

When there was a light rap on my apartment door the next morning before nine, my heart did a peculiar stop-start routine, but I didn't even have time to run into the bathroom to comb my hair because Arden opened the door to the only person who could have been standing there. There was the smile again, and the blinding brilliance of light that came from his face. I was wearing my usual morning attire—a discarded shirt of my father's that hung down just far enough to conceal my underpants, and bare feet. He noticed.

“I hope I didn't come up too early.” There was a suspicious pink tinge at the edges of his cheeks.

“Not at all, I've been up for minutes,” I laughed. “Come in. Want some coffee?”

He had some trouble getting his eyes to detach themselves from whatever they were fixed on, to look at my face. The pink grew deeper. “Oh, no, thanks, I've had breakfast.” Billy came wandering into the hall from the bathroom, his hair tousled, with sleep in his eyes. He brightened when he saw Toni.

“I just came up to ask if it would be okay if I took Billy with me to the sports store to pick up a new basketball hoop.” He turned to Billy. “If you want to, that is.”

After the clamor waned—considerable clamor, since I insisted Billy go to summer school as usual, and could go with Toni only afterward (I wasn't having any college kid here on a two-week visit wreck my entire summer schedule)—and the argument that followed my insistence on paying for the hoop (after all a boy right out of college probably didn't have much money)—there was more small talk, and the door closed, and my heart gradually returned to its normal rhythms.

Then I let the broad grin that had been itching my mouth emerge, walking toward my room so the kids wouldn't see me. I knew what I wanted to know.

I spent special care on my self-presentation that day. I wore clean navy shorts that made me look as if I had hips, and a V-necked white cotton jersey over the only bra I owned that made my breasts look as if they belonged to someone over twelve. I brushed a smidgeon of brilliantine into my hair and carefully applied the new makeup I'd bought but rarely used—a light eyebrow pencil, and a pale pink lipstick.

I had to go marketing that day, and set off soon after the kids left for summer school. I was not shocked when, as I struggled with three heavy sacks and the front door key, the door was thrown open and there was a smiling face attached to a body I hadn't dared to examine. Ready for him this time, I was sure my smile was as radiant as his, and I managed to convey the proper degree of surprise and delight at the suggestion that I might want help carrying the bundles.

I didn't ask him to stay, that time, offer him iced tea or coffee. Once a day was enough. He was young and I didn't want to push him. Still, he lingered in the kitchen after he'd put the sacks down, reminding me of his arrangements with Billy. When the kids came in a couple of hours later, I was still humming.

I watched from the window as Billy held the old rickety ladder steady and Tony climbed up and worked at removing the old hoop. The screws were rusty and stuck, and the job took some time, but he did not seem to lose patience. Then, since the new screws were a different size, he had to drill new holes in the clapboard garage pediment for the new hoop. This all took more time, but when it was finished, he was not too bored to throw baskets with Billy for almost an hour. I hadn't known I had such an account book in my head, and became aware of it only because he was earning such high marks in it.

In the next week—we were leaving for the Cape at the beginning of August—he became a hero to both my kids, since he was willing to sit and talk to Arden at length about serious matters like the habits of dogs, cats, horses, and dinosaurs; and to play three-way catch with them out in the street that still in those days had little automobile traffic. He and I did not spend any time alone together. It would have been difficult, because Pani would certainly not approve of any hanky-panky between her innocent grandson and the divorced, world-traveled sophisticate I seemed by comparison. At least, that's how I felt, and as I found out later, so did he.

He helped us load the car the day we left for the Cape, and he and Pani stood on the sidewalk waving good-bye. I was irritable, as both kids pointed out indignantly. But they were too excited about the impending holiday—they'd never gone anywhere far away before—and too generally happy to let my bad mood disturb them. The chatted and argued about spelling in the back seat, the Scrabble board set up between them. I turned on the radio, low. Of course I chose WPAT and let my mind drift.

Billy's voice intruded. “Mom, Toni says he'll take us rowing at Belmont Park when we get back. Can we go?”

“Oh, I don't think he'll still be there when we get back, honey.” I wondered if they could detect the real sadness in my voice.

“Yes, he will,” Arden said knowingly. “He's going to stay and help Pani for a while, he told us. We told him we'd be gone a month, but he said the lake will be wonderful in September. So can we go?”

My mood improved enormously. I began to hum with the radio.

T
ONI HAD BEEN GRADUATED
from Ohio State that June, an English major with plans to be a writer. I said nothing when he told me this, having unhappy memories of people who wanted artistic careers, and I never asked to see his work—and was relieved when he never offered to show it to me. He was a beautiful boy, and sweet, but I had a feeling that he might not yet—or ever—be a writer. I don't know why. I guess I think people who are really artists are so intense as to seem a little mad, or strange, and Toni was entirely too healthy and happy to fit my image.

He had come to New York with thoughts of going into publishing, and during the month we were away, he did trudge into the city every day, looking for a job. But his degree was not only not from Harvard or Yale, it was from a school not highly regarded in New York; he knew no one; and I guessed that his self-presentation was not polished or arrogant enough to impress publishers.

He perked up instantly when we returned, Pani commented, attributing it to his affection, so swiftly developed, for her two little
kochanych.
Still, he remained anxious—his money had almost run out, he couldn't live off his grandmother, who had little enough as it was, and he didn't want to go back to Ohio. But he finally found a job as manuscript reader for a small house that specialized in Western and adventure novels, Cimarron Press, which Billy always called Cinnamon Press. After Toni started working, we did not see much of him. He left early in the morning and came back around seven at night; Pani ate at five, and put a plate in the oven for him. Weekend mornings we could hear his old Royal typewriter clatter sporadically in the downstairs back bedroom.

Occasionally on a weekend afternoon, he'd emerge from what I thought of as his lair, and look for the kids and me—for a walk, a drive to the park, a game of catch. When his eyes actually raised themselves to mine—which was rarely—he looked pale and faint. He reminded me of the helpless heroine of a Victorian novel, yearning for the hero to save her, but unable to ask. I knew he hated his job, although he never said so, only shrugged when I asked him how it was going. I knew it paid little, but his expenses were low. Pani was outraged when he offered to pay for his room, and accepted only ten dollars a week for his food. He did not own a car, and when he took the kids over to the merry-go-round, or to Belmont, or took Pani to the market, he borrowed mine. Whatever charge there had been between us was neutralized by his misery—or his inhibitions. I forgot him—well, I sort of forgot him, I let him rest in a puzzled and slightly hurt back pocket of my mind—and got on with my life.

In September I had two short assignments, both in the States—one in New Hampshire, photographing a town meeting, and one in Cincinnati, photographing the University of Cincinnati basketball team and their star player, Oscar Robertson. At the town meeting, I focused on the most unusual and impressive faces I could find, faces with strong lines of personality or character. I used the close-up/distance technique, capturing people in action, as they protested or yelled or argued or pounded the backs of the chairs in front of them, or cried out with laughter, or applauded, or, afterward, gossiped and smiled with their neighbors over coffee and cake; then gradually moved away to catch the whole, the communal participation of a bunch of eccentrics at a meeting or a village social. There were no motels near this town at that time, so I stayed in a private house. It was a fine old New England farmhouse owned by an outspoken, not to say opinionated widow of sixty who amazed me by the depth of her understanding of the political issues in the town, and her cynicism. I made her the center of my piece, and she so charmed Russ and the others that they called the article “Gingham Curtain Politics.” Not my choice of title, but it got the attention they desired.