The Art Student's War (49 page)

Four years ago, at a Christmas party where everyone had drunk too much, and Grant had typically drunk more than most, Bianca had flicked on the light in an upstairs bathroom and found Maggie Waller, who was then Maggie Schrock—although she’d officially left Pete Schrock a couple of weeks before—passionately entwined with Grant. Yes, they were both fully dressed. But Bianca would never forget, when the light blazed on, the burning expressions mirrored on those ripped-apart faces. The next day, a Monday, after Grant had shuffled sheepishly off to work, Bianca left him a note on the kitchen table and, with one large suitcase and two small two-year-olds in tow, boarded a train to Cleveland.

“I have let it go,” Bianca said.

She knew—nobody in the world knew better—the risk of allowing nonexistent dangers to poison your life. Wasn’t that Mamma’s fate? Accusing Aunt Grace of stealing Papa’s affections? Nine years ago now, Mamma’s declaration of war, and nine years later, nothing like an armistice.

Yes, you did have to let things go, but you also had to think things through—and that sordid Christmas party had compelled Bianca to rethink a great many things about her friend. She’d felt so sorry for Maggie back in the old War days, married to George and living with her impossible mother-in-law. But wasn’t it true that under the Jailer’s watchful eye Maggie had remained faithful while George was stationed out in the Pacific? It was only when George returned home, at last moving
Maggie out from under his mother’s supervision, that Maggie had cheated on George, and George on Maggie, and the marriage rapidly disintegrated. In retrospect, there was another way to think about Ma’am Hamm: she’d taken her new daughter-in-law’s measure precisely, and responded accordingly … Maggie required watching.

Not that Bianca had lingering fears that Maggie represented any threat to her marriage. Grant wasn’t going anywhere—he’d more than learned his lesson—and Maggie had her hands full playing Walton J. Waller’s wife. Yes, Bianca was willing to put that Christmas party behind her—but did this mean she must henceforward ignore every one of Maggie’s snippy little digs, every one of Maggie’s crass little materialistic boasts?

The two of them chatted awhile about this and that—Maggie finally remembering to ask about the twins—and then Maggie said, with significant emphasis, “I really
must
be going.”

Again Bianca did not ask where. Presumably, Maggie was meeting some Fords or Hudsons, Chryslers or Buhls; Wally increasingly moved among the city’s wealthiest people.

Bianca watched her friend drive off with a feeling of relief—but not so much relief that she could resist the consolations of a second glass of wine. She’d downed half of this when she had another thought: Stevie and Rita. Stevie was rarely home—he worked such long hours—but today was Sunday and he just might be. She’d pay a surprise visit. It would make her feel better …

Grant and the boys shouldn’t be returning for another hour. Grant had told her not to worry about dinner—he and the boys loved nothing better than ballpark franks. Well, no doubt all three would arrive home stuffed with hot dogs, and no doubt (such were the ravenous males she lived with) they would gobble up the meat loaf and mashed potatoes she’d prepared for their return. If she hurried, she could pay a visit and be back before them.

“Hey, Bea,” Stevie said when he opened the front door. Though she rarely showed up unannounced, it was like him to display no surprise—just as it was like him to call her Bea. Most everyone else had long ago acceded to her wish and shifted over to Bianca. (With Edith, it was almost as though Bianca had fed a punch card into her brain; the request was made, it was processed, and Bea would be Bianca forever-more.) When she was young, she’d gone back and forth about her name, an issue that came to a head when she married Grant. Bea Ives? Beehives?
It sounded like a joke. Having been christened with almost intimidating grandeur—Bianca Paradiso—she seemed to be marrying into a screwball comedy. As an Ives, she would have to be Bianca henceforward.

“Hey, Stevie.”

“You just caught me,” Stevie said. “Gotta go see a friend’s car’s got trouble.”

“Well, you let your friend wait five minutes,” Bianca said. “Say hello to your sister, whom you so rarely see.”

“That’s what I say,” Rita said, stepping into the doorway behind Stevie. “Let Charley wait all day. Why is it Stevie’s always doing Charley favors and Charley’s never doing us return favors the other way? Why can’t Stevie for five minutes relax for once, that’s what I say. Hey, Bea.”

Following Stevie’s example, Rita also called her Bea, or something close to it. Her Tennessee accent tilted the sound into
Bay
, almost. Bianca was secretly fond of
Bay
, which felt like a nickname. Bianca liked nicknames. She could change her name a hundred times and still her father would call her nothing but Bia.

“For heaven’s sake, get out of the doorway, Stevie, let your sister in.” Rita laughed and her braces shone.

The three of them took a seat in the cramped living room. Truth be told, Stevie and Rita lived in a pretty miserable little house, but—and this was the amazing thing—it was
their
house. Stevie wasn’t going to pay rent to anyone. At the age of twenty-two, he was a homeowner, regularly meeting his monthly mortgage payment.

Stevie was wearing a black T-shirt that showed off his muscles. It sometimes occurred to Bianca that the world saw a far different Stevie than she did. She still viewed him as her little brother. But Stevie was nearly as tall as Grant, and he lifted weights a few times a week in a friend’s garage, and his body—far more than Grant’s, whose smooth athleticism softened the impression he made—exuded a knotty physical strength.

“Bay,” Rita said, “interest you in some ice tea?”

“I’d love some iced tea,” Bianca said, and Rita leapt up, in that bustling way she had, and disappeared into the kitchen, leaving brother and sister on opposite ends of the couch.

“So Stevie, how is every little thing?”

Stevie tilted his head and sunlight from the window swept the thick lenses of his glasses. For a moment, his eyes disappeared. “I got Rita a new toaster.”

“It’s the most wonderful toaster in the whole world!” Rita called from the kitchen.

“I’m sure it is.”

Bianca was sure it was. Stevie’s keenly mechanical mind subjected every purchase to an exacting scrutiny. This modest house was full of high-quality items: a new Frigidaire, a new washer and dryer, a new floor radio from Grinnell’s which—so Grant joked to Bianca—the two of
them
could hardly afford. Step by step, washer by toaster by radio, Stevie was elevating himself out of this somewhat dingy neighborhood.

“How are the boys?” Stevie asked.

“Fine, always the same—just fine. They’re off with Grant at the Tigers game.”

“That’s good,” Stevie said. “Real nice.”

Yes, it was, but it did raise the question why Grant had so much more time for such pursuits. Stevie was always working. If he wasn’t at Ford’s, where he welcomed all the overtime he could get, he was moonlighting at a friend’s auto shop, where he specialized in “headers”—whatever they were. And if he wasn’t at the plant, or at the shop, he was answering, as he was today, some friend’s call for assistance. Rita spent many hours at home alone. Still, she kept up a cheerful front, sharing Stevie’s conviction that progress was being made—as symbolized by her newly acquired braces. And Rita seemed totally devoted to Stevie, whom she called honeybunch. (Grant found this endlessly amusing.
Honeybunch
wasn’t a likely endearment for someone of Stevie’s hunched, bespectacled intensity.)

The three of them sat in the living room, drinking iced tea. Rita rattled on about their neighbors the Huckmans, who were really terrible people. Their boy, Rodger, was forever setting off fireworks inside trashcans. (“Sounds like you at that age,” Bianca said, but Stevie only looked blank. Did he no longer remember that he’d spent his childhood playing war games?) Bianca talked about Maggie’s visit, showing up in pearls and a cocktail dress. Stevie nodded politely. He was eager to be off.

“Hate to go but it’s Charley’s car.” He stood up.

“Before you go,” Bianca said, “a quick reminder. This time, I really do think Aunt Grace and Uncle Dennis are coming up.” Their visit—originally scheduled to correspond with Grace’s birthday in July—had been twice postponed, once because Grace had laryngitis and once because of some medical tests. “Stevie, I’m expecting you and Rita to be there.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Not this Sunday. The weekend after. And I won’t stand for any sorry-have-to-work business. Or any Charley-needed-my-help.”

“I’ll be there,” Stevie repeated.

“Isn’t that nice,” Rita said. She and Stevie adored Aunt Grace and Uncle Dennis. It was Uncle Dennis who had found Rita the dentist and the orthodontist who had transformed her mouth, her looks.

Rita followed Stevie to the door, calling sweetly, “Don’tcha be too long, honeybunch. I’m not holding dinner forever.”

But the sweetness in her tone, the smile on her face, vanished as she swung from the door. “I’m worried about Stevie,” she said.

“Worried about Stevie? He always seems the same.”

“Maybe that’s the problem, Bay.”

Rita dropped onto the couch in that abrupt style of hers and threw Bianca a piercing look. This was Rita’s way, especially when no men were present: very direct. “He’s got to get out of that plant,” she said.

“He will,” Bianca said.

“Bay, it’s like it’s eating him alive. It’s dark in there, it’s like he never sees the sun, jever look at those men he works with, the ones been there forever? They don’t
look
good, Bay. Pasty. They all look like convicks, you want my honest opinion.”

When Rita made remarks like this about “convicks,” you couldn’t be certain how much she was speaking in metaphors and how much from experience; they were a hard-bitten crowd, the folks she’d grown up with in Appalachia.

“If he’s really and truly looking for a new job, Papa would offer him one in a minute.”

“But you know he can’t do that, Bay.”

Yes, Bianca did know this, but still a question remained: why couldn’t he?

Oh, it was obvious why Stevie couldn’t have done so a few years ago—back when he’d worried the family sick. The minute he’d finished high school, Stevie had lit out, going cross-country, as he put it, with Hal Lepps and Jake Murfree, two good-for-nothings in anybody’s book. Stevie was no letter writer and there’d been only a broad scattering of postcards. He was in Sacramento, California. He was in Lincoln City, Oregon. He was away from home for eighteen months, with so little word to anyone, it was almost as if he’d died …

And when at last he returned, gaunt and sunburned, what did he do
but race out and get a seventeen-year-old girl in trouble, little Rita Comer recently up from Tennessee, whose family clearly were white trash (though no Paradiso wanted to apply the term to future in-laws). A shudder had gone around the table when Edith had asked Rita what brought her family to Detroit and Rita, giggling, replied, “Mamma always wanted a flush toilet.”

This
was a possible sister-in-law?

Yes, it was apparent why Stevie could not have accepted a job from Papa back then. Papa had been in no mood to extend a helping hand, and Stevie wasn’t about to take one anyway. Stevie had first had to prove himself as husband and father. He took a job bagging groceries at Wrigley’s, then a job at Hudson Motor, and then he secured the job at Ford’s, where he’d done very well, especially with all the overtime.

“I worry about him,” Rita said again. “When was the last time you saw him smile?”

“Well, Stevie’s not exactly a smiley sort of guy,” Bianca said, smiling herself.

Rita wasn’t about to be deflected: “Sometimes he just seems so desperate.”

Yes, Stevie had had to prove himself, but he’d been back three years now, he’d been at Ford’s for nearly two years, and how like Stevie it was that, having proved himself, he’d had to go on proving himself—having proved himself to everyone except, evidently, himself.

But what had Stevie done that Bianca herself hadn’t done?
This
was the question that haunted her. Yes, when you looked closely, what had Stevie done that she hadn’t done? There had been an interval, as she alone in the family knew, a terrifying stretch of about a week, when she’d feared she herself might be a pregnant teenager. She had given herself to Henry Vanden Akker on the night before Henry went back to the War … What would she have done if she’d wound up pregnant? It was hard to believe she would eventually have married Grant and found herself living in luxury in the University District—while Stevie was holed up in a bungalow in the shadow of that Ford plant which, according to Rita, was eating his life.

“And you know he has those nightmares,” Rita said.

“Nightmares?”

“Wakes up with such a jolt, it nearly knocks me outta bed.”

Bianca paused and then said, “What sort of nightmares?” Her sense of foreboding was all the more unnerving for being familiar. This was
common in her dealings with Stevie. She was always taking at face value his ready reassurances (“Going okay,” “No serious complaints,” “Moving along, moving along”), and suddenly she’d be caught up short, frightened and hopeless, on hearing what sounded very much like a cry from the heart. She had paid this visit hoping for cheer and consolation—Maggie’s remarks had disquieted her—but she’d be leaving feeling far more unsettled than when she arrived.

“I don’t know,” Rita said.

“Well, what does he say?”

“Drowning is in some of them. But he won’t talk about it. And sometimes he sweats when he sleeps.
And
grinds his teeth. Bay, I feel so bad for him.”

“Oh Stevie will be all right,” Bianca said, but wished she could sound more confident. Was Stevie desperate? It was the word Rita had used.
Desperate
.

“Like a little more ice tea?”

It was the Devil talking: “Rita, do you have any wine?”

“Wine? Well no. I do have some bourbon.” Rita looked very doubtful. “It’s from Tennessee.”