The Art Student's War (10 page)

If Ronny were ever to meet her family, what would he make of them? Picturing Ronny Olsson in his beautiful camel’s hair coat, seated in her living room, Bea felt what she rarely felt: a sense of shame at her own family.

When glimpsed through Ronny’s projected gaze, Edith was revealed as a plump little old-maid-to-be, Stevie as a gun-crazy boy in oversized glasses, Papa a semiliterate laborer. Mamma—it was almost too painful to consider how an outsider of Ronny’s refinement might view the sallow woman who regularly served up burned, blackened dinners. And Uncle Dennis? He was the stereotypical loopy uncle of some Hollywood comedy, the bun-faced man who buttonholed strangers to discuss interstellar space flight.

Only Aunt Grace passed muster, for how could Ronny fail to value Grace’s grace—her fair-spoken voice, her authentic empathy and modesty, her long-fingered ivory hands?

In his intuitive way, Ronny sensed just where his deepest interests naturally must lie. Tales about Bea’s younger siblings bored him. (Perhaps because he was an only child?) On the other hand, anecdotes about the two sisters, Grace and Sylvia Schleiermacher, captivated Ronny—and this was fine with Bea. No other subject so needed investigation.

“In a way it just gets worse and worse. We saw the Poppletons every week, virtually every Saturday of our lives, and now we haven’t had a Saturday together in five weeks!”

Naturally, Ronny wanted to know what had triggered the family rupture. Naturally, Bea couldn’t divulge everything she knew, still less everything she suspected.

“I think Mamma’s always been jealous of Aunt Grace, and of course she’s always been moody—what we call her Dark Spells. Terribly moody sometimes, and in this case everything coincided. I
knew
something was wrong, the day before the last day we all got together. When I came home from school, I felt it in the air.”

Sometimes in Bea’s mind’s eye her mother appeared darker than in life: hair darker, and the circles under her eyes darker, and voice darker, and her coffee black and thick as tar. Meanwhile, as if in compensation, her candies were brighter than in life, almost brighter than colors in life could be: the green of the spearmint leaves, red of the cinnamon chews, orange and yellow and purple of the jelly beans—all crying to be painted, in the cruelest and most heartbreaking portrait anyone ever composed. (Not that Bea would ever paint
that…)

“But when did it start? What exactly happened?”

How could Bea possibly reveal how upset Mamma had become when her little sister, Grace, waist deep in water, stood forth on a public beach with her left breast bared? Or that Papa, with his bandaged hand, had reached forward as if to seize or shelter her?

Clearly, clearly she couldn’t tell Ronny about eavesdropping, from the landing, on a voice of abject desolation: “It’s
Grace
you’ve always loved!”

And there was a secret darker still—a secret Bea not only could never disclose but could scarcely bear to think about … A week after overhearing that pitiful lamentation, Bea had come home from school and found Mamma alone—in the kitchen, of course, pondering her bare existence.

“Your father and I had an argument last night,” Mamma began.

Another argument? Bea had slept through this one.

Mamma’s tone was unexpected: informative, dispassionate, remarkably clear-eyed and sane. “I thought I should explain something to you.”

“Yes, Mamma.”

Something awful was approaching.

“He called me by someone else’s name,” Mamma said. “By mistake. He called me Grace. There we were in bed, and we were … we were, well, in each other’s arms”—her whole body shuddered—“and he called me by the wrong name.”

“It must have been a mistake.”

“A mistake. Yes. I said that already. But you see, mistakes can expose the truth.
That
was his mistake.”

“Everybody makes mistakes.”

“You’re old enough to know the truth, Bea. It’s so. The truth. Your father’s in love with her. We were in each other’s arms—close—and he called me by my sister’s name.”

“Oh, Mamma—
Mamma!
Papa’s not in love with Grace! The whole thing is
ridiculous.”

“He called me by her name,” Mamma repeated.

“He was thinking about her! We’ve all been thinking about her! Good heavens, this is terrible, what’s happened between you two. You’re
sisters.”

“He called me by her name,” Mamma insisted, in the same restrained but immovable tone. “While we were—close. Your father’s in love with her. Actually, it’s something I’ve always known, though I pretended to myself I didn’t.”

It was clear—queerly clear—that Mamma was implying that at the very moment when Papa made his fatal utterance the two of them had been … but Bea had no words for such an activity, not where her parents were concerned. Maggie used to talk about hearing her parents, hearing all sorts of things, but never in her life had Bea had any evidence, other than the physical existence of herself and her siblings, that her parents shared physical relations, and it wasn’t a possibility she cared to contemplate. But that
was
Mamma’s implication …

And Mamma was suggesting something further, wasn’t she?—the final cessation of such relations? For what she next declared was: “Now, how could I ever again lie close in the arms of a man who wishes I was my own sister?”

Of course nothing of this could be revealed to Ronny, who for all his overflowing curiosity sounded understandably puzzled. “Your mother, is she mentally ill, then?”

“Oh I wouldn’t say
that.”
The term was deeply offensive.

Yet the nonjudgmental way Ronny spoke the term—as if it were a purely scientific designation—abruptly rendered the idea hideously plausible:
was
that the accurate phrase? Was Mamma
mentally ill?

“Well, she has her peculiarities,” Bea said, and added a little laugh, not altogether successfully.

“Most mentally ill people do.”

“And I don’t suppose you could call her happy.”

“Most mentally ill people aren’t.”

“Mamma is just Mamma. You’d have to see for yourself,” Bea volunteered,
but in truth she was in no hurry for Ronny to meet her. Discomfort at the prospect propelled Bea into another profession of concern:

“Well, we’ve
got
to get together with Aunt Grace and Uncle Dennis this Saturday. It’s Aunt Grace’s fortieth birthday. Oh, I do hope everything goes all right …”

CHAPTER V

Among the many changes at home, perhaps the most puzzling involved the telephone.

The telephone had always played a peculiar role in the house. Papa disliked or distrusted it, often deputizing Mamma or Bea to make his calls. Those calls he did make, he kept short and businesslike. Generally soft-spoken, he tended to yell into the mouthpiece—like some old codger, unaccustomed to this upstart device. Still, as a man who built houses for a living, he could scarcely resist outfitting his own home with “every convenience,” and he’d rigged up an easy way to move the phone from the kitchen into his bedroom.

Now Papa found a bedroom phone useful. He spoke behind the closed door, and not in his usual barking telephone voice. Who was he talking to? Of course Bea couldn’t ask. It took a couple days to verify who it was—Uncle Dennis—and what they were discussing: Aunt Grace’s upcoming birthday.

Tradition held that each sister play hostess for the other’s birthday. So Aunt Grace’s fortieth should have been celebrated on Inquiry Street. This year, though, the celebration would take place at a restaurant, Chuck’s Chop House, up on McNichols.

Who ever heard of a birthday at a restaurant?

Still, given the tight-lipped way Papa broke the news, the matter wasn’t open to discussion. Only Edith, as the youngest child, felt it proper to ask, “But
why
a restaurant?”

“It’s—Uncle Dennis. He—we wanted a change.” Papa followed this with a firm shake of the head.

“Will there be a cake?”

Papa stared blankly. The question of a birthday cake plainly hadn’t occurred to him.

“Yes,” he said. “There will be cake.”

When the Paradiso family arrived at Chuck’s Chop House on Saturday, a few minutes before five, Uncle Dennis and Aunt Grace were already there. What Bea had previously suspected now became unmistakable:
everything about this unprecedented party had been coordinated by Uncle Dennis. He had chosen well. Although they did not have a private room, the seven of them were settled in an alcove off the main dining room that they could make their own.

Uncle Dennis had determined the seating. Aunt Grace at one end. He himself at the other. Papa and Bea flanking Grace. Stevie beside Papa, Edith beside Bea. Mamma next to Edith, beside Uncle Dennis. Mamma and Aunt Grace sat at opposite ends of the table, then, without actually facing each other.

The tablecloth was red-and-white checkerboard and the glass ashtrays, jumbo-sized, said “Chuck’s Chop House—Dine Distinctively” on the bottom. The matchbooks in the ashtrays said the same thing, only with an exclamation point: “Dine Distinctively!”

Chuck’s Chop House turned out to be owned by a patient of Uncle Dennis’s, who came over and introduced himself, very informally: “Hello, hello, I’m Chuck!” he boomed jubilantly. He slung his arm over Uncle Dennis’s shoulder and declared, “Here’s the medico keeping me alive!”—which only made a person wish Chuck looked healthier. He was very fat and very red-faced, and Bea suspected he might be a lush. He shook hands with everyone, even Stevie and Edith, and said, “So it’s a birthday, huh?” and told a story, actually quite humorous, about picking up the wrong bag at Hudson’s and bringing home a Pretty Miss Perfect doll for his son’s tenth birthday. Then he said to Aunt Grace, “The birthday girl—you don’t watch out, you’ll turn
thirty!”
His laughter rang so boisterously, it echoed in the alcove after he’d gone.

But if there was something clownish about Chuck
(buffoonish
, Papa would have said, the Italian
buffone
obviously behind it—there were many such oddities in his English), his departure introduced a sense of letdown. The evening needed a clown, a distraction.

… Not that Aunt Grace could have looked more settled and sedate. She was wearing a new cream-colored dress with a pin Bea herself had made, many years ago. And her earrings? Did Mamma notice her earrings? They were the pearl earrings Mamma had given her on her birthday five years before, when Grace turned thirty-five.

Without comment or explanation, Mamma had refused to get dressed up. She was wearing—conspicuous plainness—a brown dress that was really a housedress. Her hair needed brushing. She hadn’t said a single word on the drive over.

Uncle Dennis had arranged everything, even what they would eat.
No need for menus. They were all brought bowls of ham and split-pea soup. Mamma tasted exactly two spoonfuls—Bea watched closely—before pushing her bowl aside. The others made a point of exclaiming over the soup, which truly was tasty; why shouldn’t a birthday dinner be held at a restaurant? A bread basket circulated. There was pop for the children—today Bea was included among them—and white wine for the grownups.

After the last of the soup had been mopped up with the bread, Uncle Dennis announced that the next course would be baked whitefish. It was slow to arrive. Papa eventually asked Uncle Dennis about the War. Uncle Dennis prided himself on seeing through what he called “the propaganda.” It was true of our government as well—you shouldn’t believe everything they told you. That was just the nature of war.

Now let’s see … Germany was facing four possible alternatives in Russia. A retreat, which probably made the most sense strategically but would be disastrous psychologically. Two, just dig in, but this, too, might be ruinous for them: nothing’s harder than to be an occupying army in only partially occupied territory. Three, they could swing south, toward better weather—but away from the targets they most needed to hit. Four, they could prepare an all-out further attack—though if this push failed, they would be helpless on their eastern front. Meanwhile, the generals in Washington were preparing—count on it, and before the year was out—to open a western front, almost certainly in Belgium. Wherever it was, many American boys would be lost—far greater casualties than anything heretofore.

Far greater casualties … far greater casualties … The table fell silent. And still the whitefish failed to arrive.

Uncle Dennis continued. We can expect big sacrifices in the Pacific, too. The Japs aren’t going down easily. All along, we’ve underestimated them. There will be no knockout blow. It was a matter of seizing islands one by one. The Japs were prepared to fight to the death.

“The Italians are different,” Papa said.

Yes, Uncle Dennis agreed, the Italians were different. Mussolini didn’t really command their loyalty (Papa nodded urgently at this), and Italy would be liberated by year’s end. There was a sigh of relief around the table. But still no whitefish.

Uncle Dennis’s summary was lengthier than usual, and when he finished, an extended and increasingly awkward silence entrenched itself.

Normally, Aunt Grace could have been counted on to stitch any tear
in the conversation, with words so apt and sincere they never seemed a mere stopgap. But tonight Grace, though beaming fixedly, seemed in no mood for such talk. The task fell squarely upon Bea, who sought to amuse the table with some eccentricities found at the Institute Midwest—Professor Manhardt in his wool vests on summer’s hottest days, and Mr. Cooper, the Polish refugee, declaring, “Art is my only home”—but unfortunately her story seemed to have no
point
. She turned to the reliable subject of Maggie—everybody delighted in Maggie, whose departure for the wastelands of the far West Side had left a big vacancy. “She calls her mother-in-law the Jailer,” Bea began. “Mrs. Hamm is this crazy lady who scarcely lets Maggie out of her sight.”

But, as the following silence made clear, this was no occasion for an account of a strange, suspicious woman who was a homebody to boot.