The Art Student's War (21 page)

The menu was held together by a tasseled gold string. At the bottom of the first page was a quotation from Louis Pasteur: “Wine is the most healthful and most hygienic of all beverages.” Mrs. Olsson finished her clinking drink, dabbed her salmon-colored napkin on her lips, and all at once, as if with a screwing-into-place, fixed her eyes on Bea’s face: “And what about you? Do you know what you want, my dear? In your heart of hearts,
what is it you want, Bianca?”

Bea’s response was in a sense perfect—a perfect disaster. Her left hand, reaching for her water glass, recoiled at the question, upsetting her not quite empty wineglass, which instantly, to Bea’s horror, sent racing toward her on the beautiful salmon-colored tablecloth a shameful blooded irremediable stain.
“Oh!
Oh I’m so hopeless …”

Mrs. Olsson handled the whole matter expertly (which perhaps wasn’t surprising, since it seemed she was a woman in whose presence people were forever spilling things). She righted the now-empty glass, said calmly, “Don’t give it a thought, dear, don’t give it a thought,” signaled to a waiter, and suggested to Bea, “Perhaps you want to freshen up?” And by the time Bea returned from the ladies’, everything was tranquilly arranged as if no mishap had occurred: a new tablecloth, a refilled wineglass before Bea’s chair. Mrs. Olsson had a fresh glass in hand.

Even so, Bea felt as though she’d merely substituted one discomfort for another, for she brought a new problem to the table. In the ladies’ room, wearing a pink dress much too tight for her, a big Negro woman had been sitting in a chair beside the row of sinks. After Bea washed her hands, the woman extended a linen towel … Was Bea supposed to hand her some coin in return? A nickel? A dime? Of course Bea had met ladies’ room attendants before, but never in a fancy restaurant—never
under circumstances quite like these. In any case, she had no money; in her dazed fluster, she’d actually fled the table without her purse. “Thank you
very
much,” Bea had said, but the woman only grunted in reply.

Resettled in her seat, sipping from her new glass of wine, Bea said, “There was a woman in the ladies’ who handed me a towel and I would have tipped her but I had no coin and now I’m wondering if I should perhaps go back—”

“Oh for heaven’s sake. Sit still, sweetie.” Sweetie? “I’ll handle it when I next pay a visit.”

“Well,” Bea said. “I mean, thank you.” And added: “For everything.”

And Bea felt oddly at ease … Her sense of small excruciating problems all ably surmounted left this afternoon’s conversation free to blaze a warmer path. They were having an intimate conversation, Bea and Mrs. Charles Olsson. “You have brothers and sisters,” Mrs. Olsson said. “Tell me about them”—which she had requested before. And while Mrs. Olsson didn’t appear quite attentive as Bea obediently rattled on about Stevie’s worrying that the War wouldn’t last until his enlistment and Edith’s weird talking in her sleep, she nodded politely throughout. And perceiving how the menu intimidated Bea (the dishes sounded so strange, and they were so expensive!), Mrs. Olsson asked, “May I order for you, dear?”

At once Pierre materialized at Mrs. Olsson’s shoulder. She said to him, “Didn’t the menu used to have a lady’s steak?”

Pierre’s wire moustache quivered unhappily. “It’s the War,” he said. “The supplies aren’t what they used to be …” Yes, the War was going on, as ever, while Bea reposed with Mrs. Olsson in a restaurant decorated in colors Bea had never seen in a restaurant before—going on in that world where Papa had his own shoes resoled and resoled so that his elder daughter might be given the rationing coupon for a new pair … Mrs. Olsson did not actually say a word. She didn’t need to. She merely nodded, and smiled at Pierre, who swallowed and said cheerfully,
“Mais oui
. Perfect.”

The succeeding talk was light and easy, though Mrs. Olsson did confess at one point, “You know, Charley’s not happy about Ronny’s studying art.” (Somewhere in the course of lunch Mrs. Olsson had stopped referring to her husband as Mr. Olsson.) “Not happy at
all.”

“What would Mr. Olsson prefer that Ronny study?”

“Accounting? Mortuary science?” Mrs. Olsson then added, light-heartedly and quite shockingly, “What’s it matter just so long as it’s grim as hell?”

But more shocking still was the line of conversation after their lady’s steaks arrived, when Bea—returning the favor—again inquired whether Mrs. Olsson had any brothers or sisters.

“I guess I do,” Mrs. Olsson replied. “I suppose you could say … yes, I have a sister.”

“Is she older? Younger? Your sister.”

“She stayed in Scarp. Betty Marie. Good-looking girl. Stayed in Scarp to marry a thug. I don’t object to Ed’s having mud for brains, but his being a ham-fisted thug’s something I do find objectionable. I send her money sometimes. Should I not tell you that? Charley gets the heebie-jeebies whenever I mention money. He’s afraid of it—now isn’t that peculiar? I suppose that’s why he’s made so much of it. Myself, I’m not afraid of money. Are you, Bianca?”

“I—well, I don’t know.”

Again, those vast beautiful brown-nearly-black eyes were full on Bea’s face. The expression was vaguely menacing—or simply playful? In any event, the pools of Mrs. Olsson’s eyes were deep enough for an eighteen-year-old girl to drown in.

“I wasn’t afraid to spell it out to my sister. I said, ‘Betty Marie, think of me as offering a bounty to a bounty hunter. Paying a dollar a coyote pelt. Or let’s say twenty grand the day you put a slug in Eddie’s skull.’” And Mrs. Olsson, looking radiant and cheerful, rose from the table. She was off to the ladies’ room. She leaned forward, confidingly, within a low cloud of opulent perfume: “Actually, what I said was, ‘It’s twenty thousand to you the day you toss that ape out on his ear.’ But would she? No …”

When Mrs. Olsson returned, she said, pleasantly—as if she hadn’t just now been joking about her brother-in-law’s murder—“D’you have time for coffee, dear?”

And when, after coffee, Bea herself returned to the ladies’ room, it seemed Mrs. Olsson indeed had “handled things” with the formidable Negro woman in the overstuffed pink dress. After Bea washed her hands, the woman offered Bea a fresh towel and said, “Bless you, miss. God bless
you.”

CHAPTER XI

Bea sat once more at the foot of Private Donnelly’s bed, sketch pad in hand. So much had unfolded during this past week, it was hard to believe she’d first walked up the steps of Ferry Hospital only last Tuesday. She had prayed for Private Donnelly in the interim and he was indeed much improved. His face was less swollen and discolored. The big fresh bandage on the right side of his face was a somewhat reduced bandage. More of his face greeted the light of day.

In the past week, Bea had gone with Ronny on that memorable walk in Palmer Park; she had attended class; she had met Aunt Grace again for lunch, at Hudson’s; she had lunched with Mrs. Olsson at Pierre’s; she had sat through a scary Sunday afternoon in which Nonno had suffered another emphysema attack and he and Nonna left before dinner was even served; she had briefly met Maggie, who had coined a new nickname, Ma’am Hamm, for her mother-in-law; and she had accompanied Mamma and Stevie on a shopping expedition to buy Stevie new school clothes. (When she’d suggested knickers—he’d always looked so cute in knickers!—Stevie replied, “I haven’t worn knickers for
ages.”)
Meanwhile, as Bea was racing about, Private Donnelly had presumably done nothing but lie in this narrow bed, awaiting her return.

“You’re looking more like yourself,” Bea told him. While this was something she might have said anyway, it heartened her to mean it. The curly-headed Irish boy of the high school graduation portrait was being resurrected. Since last seeing him, maybe her memory had exaggerated how worn he’d become? A week ago, she had detected the middle-aged man inside this boy; today, she beheld the boy again, blessedly restored.

It was a little strange, but on the whole quite comforting, just how at home she felt in Private Donnelly’s frenzied presence—how familiar seemed his voice, his gestures, all the tireless flirtations nowise impeded by having nearly half his face under wraps. Truly, she might have known him for years.

Today, as a bandage-free face materialized on the paper before her, Bea felt less like a fabricator than she had last week—less like a liar, you
might say. She’d done enough pencil sketching: now she started in on charcoal. She was going to move confidently. In freeing his features from the disfiguring sting of flying metal, she was doing the right thing. Her racing left hand told her so.

His face had changed for the better but his tone was precisely the same: appreciative, impudent, indefatigable, funny. When Nurse O’Donnell stepped in at one point, he called out, “Auntie! Auntie, I dreamed of you last night. I dreamed you brought me a big tin of brownies.” “Oh you
hush.”
“With
pecans
in them, Auntie. Now how on earth did you know I dote on pecans?” “You’ve been smoking again. I swear it as a solemn vow: I’m going to steal your cigarettes.” “And I didn’t know you smoked, Auntie. Looky here, you wanna bum a butt off me some time, just say the—” “Oh you
hush.”
And the moment Nurse O’Donnell left the room, he stage-whispered, “Why is every nurse I meet built
exactly
like a fire hydrant?”—which made Bea laugh aloud.

Just the same, too, was his way of rapidly saying absolutely nothing, without ever running out of words. “Bea Paradiso, Bea Paradiso,” he chanted. “Gee, I’m so glad your name isn’t Bea Paradowsky, because Jake Paradowsky was the biggest meatball at Battle Creek Central. Old Central had
lots
of meatballs, but everyone knew old Jake was the biggest, and …” And Private Donnelly embarked on a lengthy anecdote, not exactly proper—but quite amusingly recounted—about how four boys ambushed Jake on the way to school, three of them holding him down while the fourth scrawled meatball on his belly in red lipstick. And when Bea protested that Jake Paradowsky certainly hadn’t deserved anything so cruel, Private Donnelly rattled off a catalogue of Meatball Paradowsky’s offenses and stupidities. Old Jake had got off
easy …

Meanwhile, Bea’s left hand flew—so much more confidently this time around. Private Donnelly’s right eye, the one she’d never seen, emerged almost as persuasively as the other. She
stared
into his bandage—she was far less squeamish this week—as if, by pure intensity of sight, she might uncover the hidden pupil and iris.

Of course that was the issue—the question so loaded with hazards she couldn’t risk directly asking: was the right eye going to recover? Had the whizzing shrapnel left the eyeball itself intact? Or was she memorializing something gone for good?

Bea had prayed for that eye of Private Donnelly’s. She’d meant to do so every night, but—such a busy week—she’d forgotten a couple of
times. Now she wished she hadn’t. By neglecting her prayers, she enhanced the queerness she felt (all her old jittery superstitiousness coming to the fore) as the tip of her charcoal teased out that hidden eye. To draw him like this—was she asking for trouble? Tempting fate? To draw him might somehow make her personally responsible for Private Donnelly’s medical state, muddling his recovery by introducing the blood of her own perplexities and shortcomings—blending her fate with his. And yet—yet her hand held steady, she would see it through to full-bloomed creation: the pale ring of the iris, the sparkling pupil. She was moving forward. And she would posit here, brightly, something which that eye just might accommodate once more: a sharp appetite for approval, and a glowing hint of young, good-hearted tomfoolery.

Yes, he looked so much better! When he smoked, which he did repeatedly, the skin around his eyes betrayed no trace of the haggard old man glimpsed last week. Private Donnelly was nearly a boy again—a boy who admittedly had taken a terrible blow, but a boy even yet.

He talked about Battle Creek Central, and his uncle’s cherry orchards way up near Traverse Bay, and his Southern grandmother’s sweet-potato pie, and the Halloween night when somebody hoisted a pig (“not a piglet, this was a hefty son-of-a-gun”) onto the roof of the fire station—pretty much anything except the War that had landed him in this bed, in a room where the late-morning sun, angling through the green floral curtains, highlighted the animation of his bandaged features.

And then, almost in passing, as one more in a series of trifling jokes, Private Donnelly disclosed the revelation Bea had been praying to hear: “So when the doc this morning announces I’d be able to read with both eyes again, I tell him, Hey that’s funny, Doc, I never knew how to read before …”

Bea’s glance leaped up from her drawing. “Your eye’s going to be all right, then?”

“What they tell me. I am seeing better out of it. Though it still
looks
like something the cat dragged in.”

“I’m so …” What Bea longed to do was to take his hand in hers—no, to cradle against her throat Private Michael Donnelly’s discolored and oh-so-very-likable face. Oh, the news elated her! It was as if all her silent hoping, all her superstitious half-formed praying had transported the boy across the seas to safety … Things would come right for Private Donnelly, just as the black-and-white sketched face had intimated. Everything would come right.

“You must be overjoyed.”

“Well, as the old saying goes, it’s better than a sharp stick in the eye,” Private Donnelly said. “That’s a saying says more to me than it used to, let me tell you.”

“Are you eager to go back, then?”

“Go back?”

“Well I … Well, if your eye’s healing, if your face is going to be all right, I’m assuming you’ll eventually …” Bea’s voice trailed off. “Won’t they expect you—”

“To go back?”

Something was
quite
wrong inside this room. Private Donnelly pulled hard on his cigarette, exhaling an expansive plume of smoke toward the green-gold curtains. Then he fixed his single eye glitteringly upon his visitor.

“I mean back to your—your unit,” Bea said, and now it was unmistakable, in that eye of his, that she’d committed some grave, overreaching error. “You must have friends,” Bea continued, vainly scrambling to extricate herself. “Other soldiers. I’ll bet you miss them.”