The Art Student's War (14 page)

It was a sign of how very peculiar life at home had become that Bea hadn’t yet mentioned this. She’d referred a few times to the Ronny Olsson in her class who drew so well and was so handsome, but she had hoarded to herself the most remarkable fact about him. Usually, she kept her parents abreast of her news. But these past few weeks, given all the upheaval, she’d found comfort in carrying her independent little secret …

It was deeply cheering, anyhow, to watch Papa fall into the very same misconception she’d initially stumbled over. Neither of them was used to thinking on so grand a financial scale. “Which one?” he said.

“All of them. Forty-seven stores in three states. Ronny’s grandfather started the company. We went out for coffee after class,” Bea said—which suggested, misleadingly, but not with outright dishonesty, a single meeting. “I think he’s fond of me.”

Papa drew pensively on his cigarette. “But what is he doing, this studying art? The son of Olsson’s is studying art?”

“He draws beautifully.”

“He has older brothers?” Papa was asking whether there was an heir to run the company.

Papa had been thirteen when he came to Detroit from Nervi, Italy—young enough that you might suppose no trace of an accent would linger. But it did, and perhaps more striking still, he spoke English warily. Never in her life had Bea seen him in what might be called a voluble state.

“He’s an only child,” she told him.

“All of them?” Meaning: Ronny’s father owns all of them?

“Every one. Forty-seven stores in three states,” she recited again. “His grandfather started the company. I think he intends to ask me out on a date. Ronny.”

“The son.”

“Yes, the boy in my class. You would admire the way he draws.”

True enough. Papa was a craftsman who did beautiful things in wood, and he was the son of a man who had been famous up and down the coast of Liguria. It was one of the few topics where Papa
did
grow almost voluble: how celebrated his father had been as Liguria’s master of trompe l’oeil.

“And you think this Olsson boy will call?”

“I think so. Maybe.”

Through an exhaled cloud of cigarette smoke, in the light of a street lamp, Papa threw her a glance. Its import was unexpected—and quite sharply hurtful.

He didn’t believe her.

He didn’t believe her story.

Papa’s look wasn’t disapproving. No, it was amused and gently pitying. He didn’t suspect her of lying but of being misled, of garbling the facts, of letting her imagination run away once more. Yet again, this girl who had read too many books as a child had lost sight of reality. Papa was prepared ultimately to learn that that boy in her class, the one she’d mentioned, wasn’t the
son
of the owner of Olsson’s Drugs but, say, a nephew …

Papa didn’t linger in Olsson’s. He bought a pack of Old Golds and the two of them turned around. Papa used to smoke Camels. But eventually he’d deferred to Uncle Dennis, who considered Old Golds less
harmful. These days, Uncle Dennis was trying to convert Papa to pipe smoking. But Papa would never bend that far.

Bea walked beside her father in silence for a while, and then he opened a new line of conversation: “What she said? It isn’t so.”

No need to specify who the
she
was. Or what the
what
was, for that matter.

“I know, Papa.”

“Never—I never give her reason to talk like that.”

“I know.”

“It’s very bad what she said about me. But worse, what else she said.” Meaning: the remarks about Grace. “That’s true.”

“Your uncle Dennis, he says it’s a problem in her head. What it’s like? Like a house with lousy wiring. After a while, you blow the fuse. You turn on a few lights, you plug in the toaster, you blow a fuse.” Papa helped himself to another cigarette. Most people halted when they lit a cigarette, but Papa merely slowed.

“Saying that Grace wanted to take me away. Your aunt Grace!”

“I know.”

“Would you believe it? Saying such a thing? In front of everybody.”

“I know.”

“It’s not even decent.”

“I know.”

“And how do I prove it isn’t so? That’s what I ask her, time and again. Sylvia, Sylvia, how do I prove that I am not—in love with Grace?”

In the light of a street lamp, nearing the corner of Inquiry and Kercheval, her father’s handsome features were open and pleading, hopeless and put upon. Yet with just a trembling hint, perhaps, of something shamefaced.

CHAPTER VII

Ronny was forever taking her hands in his. Holding other boys’ hands had been nothing like this: the patient, exploratory fingertips sliding over her knuckles and tendons and the almost invisible little hairs, testing one by one the cuticles and the finger pads. Sometimes he stroked so lightly it tickled and she nearly laughed aloud. Sometimes his hands moved deeply, exploring the root workings of her bones, and his touch would ramify up her arms and, in tingling filaments, suffuse her chest.

Those remarkable artist’s hands of his that rendered so faithfully a rabbit’s-fur glove, a pinecone, a half-dry sponge, seemed to find
her
hands remarkable: Ronny pounced on them eagerly, as if always about to uncover something fresh. While advancing less than other boys had advanced (he hadn’t even kissed her yet), Ronny had effectively ventured into further territory. For when he seized her hands and began his explorations, the response was almost unnervingly immediate: Bea’s heart pumped harder and her veins coursed with pleasure, as she realized (with a guilty internal lurch, though it seemed ridiculous and unfair to withdraw her hands for this reason) that this must be what, on a grander scale, the sexual act would be—a melting, toppling sensation that extended both inward and outward.

When he took her hands, Ronny often began tentatively. His fingers probed and retreated, probed and retreated, before forging ahead in a kind of verified confidence. And Bea would feel herself reliably succumbing. Sometimes something within her might resist temporarily, but in the end resistance must give way—and she could not regret the giving way.

At home, Bea always tried to be first to answer the phone, which would have been easy if not for Mamma. Papa, Stevie, Edith—they had little interest in what any phone call might bring. But Mamma demonstrated surpassing swiftness—springing out of the bathroom, bounding bonily up the basement stairs—in claiming the receiver. Ronny didn’t call often, or unexpectedly, but it was only a matter of time before Mamma got there first.

“Who is Ronny Olsson?” she asked, after letting Bea take a brief call in which a plan was made to meet at Herk’s Snack Shack. Apparently, Ronny had introduced himself.

“He’s a boy in my art class. I’ve mentioned him before.”

Then Mamma said something unexpected: “He has excellent manners.”

This emboldened Bea to say, “His father owns Olsson’s Drugs. His grandfather started the company.”

This time, Bea was prepared for skepticism—or, worse, for hostility, since Mamma often resented the well-to-do, though perhaps not with the same animus reserved for those, the far-from-well-to-do, who sought to “get above themselves.”

Yet Mamma responded cheerfully, if a little absently: “Well, I’ll be.”

And wasn’t this a little unnerving—that Mamma would take her daughter at her word? (That’s how strange things had become at home: it seemed
troubling
that Mamma would choose to believe her own daughter.)

From any outsider’s point of view, Mamma had flourished since the terrifying explosion at Grace’s party. No more kitchen-table brooding. (More likely, you saw her racing round the house with a dust cloth.) No more burned dinners—and no more pushing her own plate aside in favor of candy and coffee. Mamma had begun eating solid, square meals.

This woman who had seldom been heard to attempt a musical note now hummed continually. It turned out she was as rich with melodies as any jukebox, though often switching keys midsong. As she bustled around the house—transporting laundry, mopping floors—one tune melted into another. And on the rare occasions when Aunt Grace’s name came up, Mamma’s face clouded only slightly, for a moment, before she smiled benignly and resumed her humming.

Yes, to an outsider’s eye (in this case, the eye of Ronny Olsson), Mamma might look fine—she did look fine. Though spared the most damning details, Ronny had heard a great deal about Mamma’s recent turmoil, and he was naturally surprised when he finally met the mistress of the house. He complimented her china, arranged on the sideboard, and the sideboard as well. Mamma asked whether he’d had any trouble finding the house and complimented him on his camel’s hair coat. He praised her Danish crystal vase; she praised his eye for detail. Anyone might suppose she had “beautiful manners” too. The two of them chatted
like old friends. And here was an important detail Bea tended to overlook: when she wanted to, this woman who often behaved so peculiarly—hiding little bags of candy all over the house—could be an exemplary hostess.

It was actually Papa, not Mamma, who presented an obstacle for Ronny. Difficult to draw out at the best of times, Papa was rendered all but mute by the arrival of Ronny Olsson. Even if Ronny hadn’t pulled up in a convertible, his lovely cream-colored Lincoln Cabriolet, and emerged with the camel’s hair coat slung over his arm, the extraordinarily good-looking young man seated on the davenport, wearing tweedy brown slacks—cuffed slacks—and a tan-and-azure tie, could hardly be anyone less than the son and scion of the owner of Olsson’s Drugs. Papa was having to absorb the possibility of having wholly misplaced his skepticism: it was accurate, everything his daughter had told him.

Papa grew more comfortable, but not completely comfortable, over coffee and cake, served in the living room. Olsson’s Drugs was
not
mentioned. Nor, after the initial introductions, was the name Olsson. Although there were bigger names in Detroit (Bea might have brought home a Ford, a Fisher, a Whitney, a Buhl—one of those families whose daughters’ engagement notices she studied so closely in the
News)
, none of these names would have resonated so powerfully at 2753 Inquiry Street. Olsson’s? Olsson’s was the provider of Bayer aspirin for any Paradiso whose head hurt, Alka-Seltzer for victims of heartburn, Pepto-Bismol for their upset stomachs and Ben-Gay for their sore muscles, Pepsodent for the teeth, Brylcreem for the hair, Hill’s drops for the nose, Noxzema for the face, Pertussin for the throat … and Olsson’s was the provider, as well, of products aimed at less mentionable parts. In short, Olsson’s Drugs oversaw every aspect of the Paradiso family’s health and grooming and hygiene, including their digestive and reproductive tracts, and there was something not quite believable in seeing the drugstore chain’s dashing heir perched on their own living-room davenport, commending Mamma on the quality of her coffee. Bea had lured into their home something like an apparition.

But all stiffness vanished when Ronny, with his honed artist’s eye, spied the wooden rooster. Other guests might sit on the davenport for months and not notice the solitary bird on its roost above the bookcase; Ronny hadn’t been a visitor for fifteen minutes when he cried, “Now what is
that?”

For just a moment it seemed Stevie might explain. But as someone
whose chief business was eliminating Germans in the alley, the boy was abashed by this evidence of having once been the sort of flighty-headed youngster who enjoyed dragging a wooden chicken across the floor. It fell to Papa to take down the bird—according it the same delicacy of touch he showed any well-made thing, whether of his own or someone else’s devising.

“Something I built for Steven. For my son’s fourth birthday,” Papa said. And this head of the family—this man who had overseen the construction of three-story houses in Rosedale Park—carefully deposited the wooden rooster on the living-room floor and gently tugged its string.

The spoked wheels turned, the bird’s head bobbed, its beak opened and shut as though cackling a barnyard message.

“But that’s wonderful!” Ronny cried, and was down on the floor in a flash. With hands as respectful as Papa’s own, he lifted the wooden fowl into his arms. “There must be four different kinds of wood here!”

“Five.”

“Five,” Ronny marveled. “This is cherry, isn’t it?”

Papa nodded happily. “That’s right.”

“And this is walnut.”

“That’s right.”

“Also mahogany—mahogany for the spokes.” And it appeared that Ronny, who knew so much about so much, could make his way confidently around a lumberyard.

“And for the beak too,” Papa pointed out.

“Yes and the beak too. And pine for these outer feathers here.” Ronny’s index and middle fingers darted about. His handling of the bird’s wing? Across the room, Bea recognized—less with her eyes than with her awakened body—his feathery, exploratory touch. As Ronny stroked the bird with his artist’s hands, her ever-vulnerable stomach went soft.

“And ebony,” Papa said. “For the legs.”

“Ebony,” Ronny repeated. “And no metal anywhere? Nails? Hidden screws holding it together?”

Papa tucked in his chin and lowered his eyebrows—fixing on Ronny an aggrieved, even a censorious look. “No screws in this one, never,” he replied. “Wooden pins.”

And Ronny nodded vigorously, matching him look for look.

Their gazes burned in agreement—oh, they understood one another! Ronny ceremoniously held out the wooden fowl. Papa took it
in his hands and—as if it were a genuine live bird, some prize specimen of his own raising—he ruffled and smoothed the imaginary down on the creature’s chest.

A threshold had been happily crossed and talk flowed companionably on all sides; everyone in the family, it turned out, possessed something for this unprecedented visitor to inspect and pass judgment on. Edith fetched her most recent pile of knitted socks. Stevie produced a shapeless little lump of metal which, so he’d been reliably informed, had been extracted from the corpse of a German soldier in the First World War. Bea produced her first “portrait”: a stick-figure representation of Papa, completed when she was only four.