The Art Student's War (35 page)

These she did not place in the family salvage. They must be expelled from the house. Bea proceeded very meticulously. First she deposited all the little scraps into her purse and then she put on her coat and a pair of gloves. Then she walked up Inquiry all the way to Mack and down
Mack until she felt she’d traveled a safe and sufficient distance. She dropped some scraps into a trash container on the corner of Bellevue and Mack, walked another couple blocks, to Mount Elliott, and deposited the rest of them. It was like scattering ashes …

And later that night, three days early, as if her body yearned to register its own ultimate rejection of Henry, her period arrived, in a flow far heavier than usual and maybe darker than usual too.

For months now, she’d been aware, in the careful arranging of pad and sanitary belt, of a powerful and uncomfortable irony—for these were products purchased at Olsson’s Drugs. Though never mentioning it to anyone, she’d come to recognize that there might be something a little peculiar, psychologically, and maybe just a little unseemly, in her reliance on Olsson’s for such intimate needs. What mental game was she playing? Was she playing a game?

If so, for God’s sake no more … Bea suddenly knew with bracing certitude that she was finished with all such games, rituals, symbolic enactments. She wanted nothing to do with Ronny either, who was always talking about psychological “games,” who was always so keen to interpret her dreams. No, she wanted nothing more to do with men—especially demanding men. Let Maggie serve as the cautionary tale: before you know it, you wind up married and miserable, with a jailer as a mother-in-taw and a whining brat as a brother-in-law, waiting for a man without any teeth to come home and claim you. No, Bea was finished with all that. And—as this newest discharge of muddy blood made clear—she had come through her difficult time safely. And all but pure.

CHAPTER XIX

She’d put it solidly behind her, that evening at Mitchell’s house, and yet it continued to spin off various consequences, a few of them actually welcome. In some way the whole extended business—particularly the revelation of Henry’s treachery—had freed her. After class one day she discovered a notebook left behind. It belonged to Donald Doobly, the Negro boy who dressed so neatly and drew so neatly too. Normally, Bea would have held on to it until the next class. Now, she decided to telephone him.

Predictably, his full name (Donald Gerald Doobly, Jr.) and address were neatly inscribed on the inside cover. Donald lived on Hastings Street, in a neighborhood most people called Black Bottom but Uncle Dennis and Aunt Grace called Paradise Valley. It surprised Bea a little when the phone directory revealed a Doobly family on Hastings Street—though she felt a flicker of embarrassment at her own surprise. Why shouldn’t a Negro family be listed in the phone book? But the discovery scared her a little too, as she realized she truly
was
going to telephone.

Of course she’d never telephoned a Negro’s house. Over time, Papa had journeyed quite a distance in his attitudes toward colored people. It was many years since he’d used the word
niggers
in front of Uncle Dennis, who had rebuked him so sternly
(“You
don’t talk that way, Vico”) that Bea honestly had worried Papa would strike his brother-in-law in retaliation. It wasn’t merely that Bea had never again heard Papa use the word. These days, he made a proud point of saying it wasn’t allowed
on his watch
. Did Papa recall Uncle Dennis’s rebuke? Maybe not. Even so, Bea knew, without anything’s being said, that Papa would never approve of her telephoning a Negro boy. He didn’t approve of her calling boys at all.

Yet Bea was determined. She’d reached this point partly because she genuinely liked Donald, partly because, after last summer’s riot, she felt a heightened sympathy for Negroes. And partly because—the most important part—whether she was still a virgin or not, something had
altered inside her and certain conservative, half-nonsensical codes of decorum no longer commanded blind respect.

Still, she wasn’t about to call Donald from home, even on some rare occasion when nobody else was there (Mamma left the house less and less these days). Just after dinner, while it was still light outside, she told her parents she needed to buy some deodorant and walked up to the phone booth outside Olsson’s. In the orange glow of its neon sign (half her life, it seemed, was unfolding in the light of Olsson’s Drugs) she telephoned Donald’s number.

A phone rang. Somewhere in Paradise Valley a phone was ringing because she’d dialed it.

“Hello.”

She was all but certain it was Donald. Nonetheless, Bea stuck to her plan: “May I please speak with Donald Doobly?”

On the other end, a stunned silence opened. Bea could feel it: just how wholly taken aback Donald was. And then, in a voice thinned almost to a whisper by incredulity and excitement, Donald uttered an astounding question: “Is that you, Tatiana?”

Now it was Bea’s turn to halt, dumbstruck. How in the world? Clearly—clearly Donald had recognized her voice as a white girl’s voice, but how could he possibly mistake her for Tatiana Bogoljubov? Tatiana spoke with a Russian accent …

“No, it’s Bea, Bea Paradiso. I just wanted to let you know I found your notebook. You left it. In class. I found it. Your notebook.”

“You found it,” Donald said, in a still more dwindled voice.

“I thought you might need it.”

“I’m glad you found it,” Donald said. His voice was fading away altogether.

“I thought you might be worried. That’s why I called.”

“It’s exceedingly kind of you,” Donald said, at something like normal volume. “Now I needn’t worry.”

No matter what, this conversation was probably destined to be stilted. But Donald’s initial, bizarre misapprehension couldn’t be surmounted, and everything that followed must be excruciating. After some elaborate, ritualistic repetitions, the two of them finally determined that Bea would bring the notebook to Friday’s class. “You are most kind,” Donald said in closing.

It was on the walk back down Inquiry (Bea was in front of the Slopsemas’—nearly home) when the truth belatedly dawned. Such an
obvious thing—she should have seen it right away. And yet a revelation so devastating, Bea immediately turned around and began walking back toward Olsson’s. Oh, here was something to ponder.

She could hear Donald’s voice so clearly, he might still be speaking into her ear.
Is that you, Tatiana?

And Donald’s tone of voice? It was the yearning sound of somebody on the threshold of a miraculous consummation.

In a couple of seconds, in a mere phrase, Donald had unwittingly disclosed his innermost heart. Oh, Donald was smitten—hopelessly smitten—with the exotic Russian girl, Tatiana Bogoljubov. Ronny and Bea might laugh themselves silly at Tatiana’s absurd get-up, her candy-colored yellow hair and sweet little doll’s face under its portentous mat of makeup, her devil-may-care scarves and asphyxiating blouses. Ronny might even declare that he was
so tired
of Miss Bogoljubov’s breasts. But in another corner of the classroom, where quiet Donald Doobly sat, watching the world through his Negro’s vantage, Tatiana embodied everything that was tantalizing and exquisite and unattainably remote.

Poor Donald! As Bea walked back and forth under Inquiry’s familiar constellation of just-lit streetlights, this revelation seemed less amusing or touching than purely
sad
. Talk about your hopeless passions … Even if they all took classes together until the end of time, Tatiana Bogoljubov would never notice Donald Doobly.

Sad, oh how it was
sad
, and this was lately becoming a much-too-familiar process—this sliding away of facades, revealing life’s true, blighting verities. It’s what Bea felt more and more at the family dinner table, where dolor turned everything to ash in her mouth. And Ferry Hospital broke her heart whenever she stepped inside …

She met a new boy, who was a Jew. He wasn’t a soldier, although they met at Ferry Hospital. At the age of only twenty, he was a first-year medical student. His name was Norman Kapp.

They went a couple of times to a luncheonette and twice to afternoon movies. Like Ronny, like Henry, Norman was a great talker, though not so entertaining as either of them. Still, he had a self-disparaging sense of humor Bea found appealing. He also had the heaviest beard of any boy she’d ever dated; by late afternoon, his cheeks looked nearly black. Something inside her recoiled at this, even as the portraitist marveled at skin that in certain lights looked less like flesh than stone—like a sort of wall. This was appropriate, since Bea sensed a sort of wall between them. Norman, too, made her sad.

Norman lived on the West Side, out near Dexter, where many Jewish people lived. He seemed in no hurry to introduce her to his parents, which was quite hurtful—or would have been if Bea hadn’t been similarly reluctant to bring a Jewish boy home. She
would
have, though, if she’d really liked him.

One thing had to be said for Norman: he couldn’t have been more appreciative. It wasn’t merely the incessant compliments; it was his air of being unable to
stop
complimenting her.
You’re quite beautiful
he declared more than once, the incredulity in his voice perhaps a comment on his own appearance: by any conventional standards, Norman was no looker. (Maggie would have quickly set him down as one of her LLs—Luckless Losers.) But there was an appealing vivacity to his features, and besides, he was so grateful.

It was this gratitude that induced Bea to allow him to hold her hand, even to kiss her. His touch lit nothing inside her—why couldn’t Norman see that? Yet almost as though her languor enhanced her appeal, Norman’s hands would grow slick with sweat, his talk accelerate, his eyes pop in his head.

Still, it was easier being with Norman than with Ronny. She’d run out of patience, completely, with Ronny’s moods—with the whole delicate and involuted business of trying to discover what, this time, was troubling him, and how best to placate him. And Ronny, doubtless sensing her withdrawal, increasingly adopted a tone of bittersweet retrospection. He even used the phrase “threw me over”: she’d thrown him over for a soldier mathematician.

Henry Vanden Akker? Bea had put
him
out of her head, mostly, though it vexed her when a couple of weeks passed without some further word. Perhaps the letter she’d torn up, mostly unread, had been a sort of goodbye? Perhaps it had explained something she now longed to know? But one day she received
three
letters from Henry, two of them thick, and though she didn’t tear these up, she didn’t read them either. She stored them, unopened, in her bureau’s bottom drawer. It felt
good
not to read Henry’s letters.

Yes, in many ways she was doing well, despite everything. Her thinking had swung into focus. She had entered a new state of mind, more intimately fused to the city than ever before, and what did it matter if Detroit was the only true metropolis she knew? No other city in the world was so alive. No, nowhere on earth, never before … She didn’t need the newspapers, or the newsreels, to confirm what the air declared: the whole of Detroit was a single machine. One of the newspapers
got it exactly: This was the town where the
Iliad
met Henry Ford. The assembly lines were running twenty-four hours a day, the overburdened railroads were clanking in and out of the city, and she, Bianca Paradiso, portfolio under her arm, was a piece of it all: riding the streetcars to Ferry Hospital, to class, to the USO, observing
everything
. She was sketching more hours per week than ever before.

This new state of mind imposed its own demands and Bea couldn’t eat as she used to. Mamma’s meals felt too heavy, all those recipes out of
The Modern Housewife’s Book of Creative Cookery
weighing Bea down just when her thinking was beginning to lift. She hungered for clarity, for levitation. She rebelled at dishes with names like Shipwreck or Sammy’s Sloppy Joes or City Chicken Sticks or Drowned Tuna Loaf. Of course it wouldn’t do to malnourish herself and she was careful, when she could get them, to put cream and lots of sugar into her coffee. She ate apples and cucumbers and a great many carrots. This wasn’t lack of appetite but an enhancement of appetite, hence it mattered all the more that she eat the right things.

It was Papa, seated at dinner one night, who first remarked on her altered eating habits, in that abrupt way of his. The words came blurting out after a long mulling over. He accused her: “You don’t eat.”

“Oh I do.” She felt herself instantly blush.

And it was Mamma who—surprisingly—came to the rescue. “She eats fine. Tonight isn’t so good. I think the meat’s off.” The meat was calf’s liver, which Bea had hardly touched. “That new butcher at Abajay’s, I think he’s a crook.”

Papa said, “That’s what you said about the folks at Wrigley’s. And A&P. Everyone’s a thief.”

“Leave the poor girl alone, Vico.”

It was an odd reversal of roles. Usually Mamma was the one offering criticism, Papa the one urging leniency. Mamma’s support ought to have been comforting, and it would have been—only, there was something disconcerting in having your eating habits defended by somebody who subsisted on candy and black coffee. Mamma’s glumness could be unnerving, but even more upsetting were those moments when, as now, gloating triumph suffused her face. Sudden, unexpected mirth creased her features, heightening your awareness of the skull under the skin. It was a skeletal apparition who grinned across the table, encouragingly, at Bea.

• • •

The sadness underneath everything, deep down at the wordless root of things, began darkening even Sundays—the family’s Italian Day, when Nonno and Nonna came for dinner.

For all the years Bea had known him, Nonno had been sickly. He’d arrived in America as a shadow of a man, his robust wife beside him—a wife who wouldn’t survive transplantation. (She was dead within the year.) To look at him, you’d never suppose he’d once been famous as Liguria’s master of trompe l’oeil.