The Ruby Slippers (36 page)

For all the solemnity of the occasion, Michael is at odds with it. He doesn’t like the way he has felt in the past two weeks since Rosa died; he doesn’t like it that the principal emotion he feels towards his birth mother has been one of anger. The fact is she had kept the truth from him even to her death, and has in a sense cheated him of the satisfaction that could have come from a little honesty. At the same time he is discontented with himself for being so cramped and ungenerous in his thinking: the woman was afflicted, damaged by what she had been through; how could she ever have been expected to do the reasonable thing?

The service is led by a professional, a businesslike woman in a dark suit, who wears the badge of the Independent Order of Funeral Conductors. The chapel is plain but light and spacious. Ella Fitzgerald is singing ‘Blue Skies’, a song Michael had come across three times over on old vinyls among Rosa’s demented collection. There is a single posy on the coffin to match the lilies, exuding subtle scents to direct the mourners’ sensibilities heavenwards. Michael stares at the coffin, implausibly small and neat on the catafalque and containing within it the relics of so turbulent and complicated a life. The conductor starts in, glowing but reflective, as if she had lived next door to Old Rosa, saying how she was essentially good and decent, though troubled, and that she’d had so interesting a life. Michael has omitted to tell the woman about Rosa’s actual relationship to him, and, as the funeral speech goes on, it seems a rather glaring oversight. All the same, he is glad of it; it’s a raw thing for him right now, and he can’t handle putting it out there for people to make a song and dance over. So the high-point of the eulogy is Rosa’s time in Hollywood; how she rubbed shoulders with the great and the good and how she had once been the handmaiden of none other than Judy Garland. This is the perfect moment for another musical tribute and, of course, it’s Judy singing ‘Over the Rainbow’. And it is this, after all the shocks and surprises and trials that he has been through, that finally gets him, perhaps because it is so simple and true. Michael, who had feared feeling nothing, sheds tears, while Grace squeezes out one or two of her own to see her old man so affected.

The final moment comes as the coffin glides away, the low doors sliding open. The cue for this is provided by Gene Kelly breezily delivering ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ – another gem found in the filth – and as it turns out, a little misplaced in the circumstances. Everyone manages to keep this observation to themselves, only Maurice and June sharing a sly smirk.

Emerging onto the terrace outside the chapel feels surreal. A party of Orthodox Jews is sprawled across the area, which had been filled only by sunshine when they went in. A coffin is there, big and black on its cart, apparently ignored by the mourners, who stand around in groups, chatting away like nobody’s business; the males with side-locks and shawls and huge hats perched like water jugs, the women with their blatant wigs. Putting his arm across Suzy’s shoulder, Michael looks back though the windows of the chapel. A man is there, using a long pole to reach high up and hang high on the wall a huge Star of David in place of the cross that had been there earlier. Funerals to order, he thinks to himself, and a god for every purpose under heaven.

James sets out downtown, determined to walk every step of the way, his senses keen for every sight and sound. Along by the railings of the Park he goes, glimpsing the sky through a veil of leaves, joining his footsteps with the tourists and the out-of-towners.

Past the Gallery he cruises, where people really do come and go, talking of Michelangelo, and on he strides, further along, across from the zoo, where a road-gang tames the highway – the catch of hot tar in nose and throat, the rattle of jackhammers, the snarling and yelping of traffic captured and protesting, and, all but subliminal, the screeches of caged animals.

And in the concourse that opens out to mark the bounds of the Park, James sees the skateboarders, now huddling in a mass, now hurtling apart, a splitting star. Soon the city begins to narrow down and huddle up, taking his vision from wide expanse to looming tower. The people themselves are more workaday now and more about their business: shoppers laden with their prizes, workers hanging outside offices to draw on cigarettes. Turning into West 32
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, James encounters in a stone’s throw a grand old woman walking a cat on a leash; a man hunched, begging, on a step; a hot-dog seller stepping from one foot to the other in his winter habit, even though it is spring, and a platoon of students bent under packs but craning to see to the top of the Empire State.

Here is the magic, he thinks, here on this ordinary journey. Look at them: each one inside themselves and at the same time looking out; people containing every degree of joy and every shade of sorrow, and all chasing the magic, searching for something beyond them, when all the time the people themselves are the magic. Theirs for sure is the wonder that never could be captured in something so insubstantial as a pair of shoes.

He comes to Sixth and 32
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and stands in the entrance of a department store, where, on a high classical frieze, heroic figures look down fiercely, demanding those below be worthy of entering. Glass doors draw apart in silent judgement and James steps inside. Through Cosmetics he goes – the heady scents and goddess-girls – steps on the escalator and is carried up to new realms. At the top, the soaring stairs still at his feet, he follows signs to Beds and Bedding. He walks between the stands and comes to Quilts and Covers, all in racks, all in sets. He walks along, his eyes scanning the shelves, puts his hand to the soft cotton, imagines her curled up under it. A soft, sad smile is on his face. Powder-blue, orange and pink, these are the colours he will choose; seventy-five dollars the price to pay for the simplest of joys, to give to someone what it pleases them to receive. So fine a thing, to give this to them.

And see their eyes light up.

■ ♦ ■

It’s Wednesday, late afternoon – always the quietest time, when custom can be counted on the fingers of one hand. He says to Grace at the counter, ‘I gotta get some fresh air.’ She looks up as he takes off his apron and goes to the door; since when was he ever into that?

Michael walks in the city for no explicable reason, a thing he has not done in thirty years. He goes the length of 99
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and stands small beneath the buildings, looking towards the Park as the traffic swishes by, scattering his thoughts to other times and places. He crosses the road, arriving in a space that has gentler sensations, with sounds and shades merging into one. He skirts around the reservoir and down the flank of the museum, and walks to the centre of a vast island of grass. Standing straight and still at the hub, he hears the traffic whispering distantly now and somehow friendly. He could be in the middle of the widest ocean, or lost in an endless desert, and yet he is in the city, feeling the frontiers of his spirit expanding to its extremities. And he feels no other need except this: to stand still in this moment in this place.

On he goes, walks right across the Park, arriving with the dusk at Strawberry Fields, where he sees the memorial, a mosaic on the ground, with people in ones and twos, standing motionless and wondering. He has never been here before, although it’s been here all this time. ‘Imagine’ says the word in the middle of the mosaic. Yes, he likes it, come to think about it, and they were kind of right about the whole peace and love thing as well.

He sits down on a bench facing the lake, allowing ordinary thoughts to come back into his mind and connect him to the material world again. Only that morning the auction people rang to tell him that the sale could go ahead. Of course, it meant that soon he and Grace would come into a large sum of money, but when he tried to talk to her about it, she backed off; the whole performance at the sale room had made her afraid even to think about the damn shoes again. He will have to deal with it on his own. The power is back with him now, and the decision of what to do with the money is his alone to take. Should he ignore the family’s wishes and cut them out for their cheap, greedy behaviour? Or rise above it and be forgiving. Since he found out all about Rosa and him, that’s pretty much how he has started to feel about it – merciful, godlike even, above the petty scheming of others. The revelation has made him stronger. The news was shocking but the ending of mysteries has made him at peace. Now that he has got over the worst of their treachery, he can look on them and see them for what they are and still have room in him for kindness.

When he gets back, she is already wheeling in the stands. ‘I thought we could shut up a little early,’ she explains. ‘Then I can do a nice juicy steak with all the trimmings.’

‘What did I do to deserve that?’

‘Don’t even ask.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ says Michael, having no heart to protest over closing early. But before she can head back out, he stops her with the most solemn look and says, ‘Listen, Grace, listen. This is how it should go: four households – the girls, Jenny, June, Suzy, us – a four-way split, no questions asked.’

It takes a moment or two to get through to her, and for a smile to dawn on her harrowed face: ‘No? Are you kidding? What about the guys?’

‘They did wrong, but you can’t punish them over and over for the same thing. They’re just people after all, and they all have to carry on going in this crazy great damn city. No, we get our little ticket to happiness, they get theirs and nobody gets to argue with nobody. Whaddya say?’

‘What can I say?’ she says, when at last she properly understands what is being suggested. ‘Perfect, nothing but perfect!’

■ ♦ ■

Sky-blue, that was good, that was right for this visit, this returning. The jacket fits her trim and chic, the cream jersey beneath and her curls springing electric under the white beret. Upright but easy, she sits in her seat, eyes gleaming to see the insubstantial world flashing past. People are all around, they in their places, she in hers. Gone is the time of pretending, of camouflaging herself among others. Her mother stood on the platform to wave her out and her father will stand at the other end to welcome her in, and hold her and take her into his city.

And so at last the train cruises into Grand Central Station, the world slowing down to substantial again. As she steps off the train her eye alights on him, standing there with his hand raised, and they greet each other and walk together into the city, feeling the slow giddy turn of its ancient hub.

‘Wow!’ she says, when she sees how the room has changed, the drapes bright and floating and the walls brimming with light. And the city is there, too, in a different way – the same old view down to the fountain and gardens beyond, but alive now with May blossom, bringing the promise of summer into the room. ‘Oh look at that!’ she gasps, following his coy glance towards the table and seeing its bold chequered cloth painstakingly laid out with tableware that’s groovy and funny and grown-up at the same time. But it is the mantelpiece that holds her attention most and does away with words. Buddha is moved, she gathers in a glance, to a recess in the bookcase. Paolo is still there, but shifted to the far end. And right there is her own infant photograph, blown up and newly framed.

‘You must be just about ready to eat,’ he says, drawing her smile to him.

‘You bet,’ she answers.

‘Me, too. I’ll see what I can do.’ And with that he dives into the kitchen, knowing exactly what he can do, because he has bought it all in and planned it for days.

‘Can I help?’ she calls through.

‘Tell you what, while I get all this together, you think about places we can go later.’

And they do go to places and enjoy doing things together. And early Sunday evening, after she has slept two nights in her lovely bed in her lovely new room, and after they have done the Statue and done the zoo and done their lazy share of daytime TV, he walks her to the station and sees her onto the train, the last link to make the circle.

■ ♦ ■

As he is walking back from the station he gets a call: an out-of-state number he does not know. ‘Is this James McBride?’ enquires a hazy voice. ‘The Ruby Million guy?’

‘Well, yes,’ says James.

‘Good,’ drawls the voice, ‘because I have something you have to see.’

‘Really? And what would that be?’

The voice grows a little sharper: ‘I’m speaking to you all the way from Salt Lake City.’ As if this should explain things. ‘Can you get mail right now, where you are?’

‘Uh, not at the moment. Why?’

‘Like I say, you have to see this. How soon till you can get hooked up?’

‘Uh, a half-hour maybe.’

‘Good.’ The lazy drawl is back in place. ‘Soon as ya can. You are so gonna be into this . . .’ The voice slides away, the line gone. James looks at the screen, mildly bemused. Weird, but he doesn’t give the call much thought. There are 101 other niggling demands on his mind, paramount amongst them being what the hell to do with the ruby slippers. The saleroom people had called him only the previous day, the auctioneer himself confirming that the sale was safe. Of course he had been somewhat surprised to hear that the old man had died, but the fact remained: Mr McBride had bought the shoes. James had expressed surprise at this, wondering if the hammer had actually fallen before the sale had been stopped – he could not remember hearing it hit. The man had been absolutely adamant: they had CCTV and had played it over to check. No doubt about it, the hammer had fallen; wood had arrived on wood, as he was welcome to see for himself.

Back at home, he collects his papers together for the next day, writes down his tasks, packs his briefcase and tidies up now that Siobhan has gone, loading the dishwasher, thinking of food they have shared and memories they are making. He starts the washer, and soon everything is humming and swishing and whirring around him. He throws a meal in the microwave and goes over to his laptop. Among the spam and chatter, one email stands out:

F
ROM:
Kenny Chopra