“And you think I’m that Kathy? You really do?”
“Praise the Lord,” he answered me.
I PERSUADED Abram to stay with me in the suite. I did this by holding on to him and not letting him go.
“I know what you’re afraid of, Abram,” I whispered fiercely. “You’re afraid of me. You’re afraid you’ll be tempted to ‘know’ me in the biblical sense. That should have happened a long time ago between us, and you know it. But I agree to your sleeping here on the couch. Is that okay with you?”
“I came to be with you,” he pointed out. “We’re going to see this through together.”
“I’m washed up, Abram. The whole world hates me. It’s unbelievable the letters I get, the vituperous, raging hate that spills out. Yesterday they loved me. It doesn’t make sense—there’s no more bookings, Abram. I never thought there’d be a time in my life when I couldn’t sing.”
“They can’t stop you singing. All they can do is stop your bookings.”
“See what I mean, Abram? You think you’re talking to the old Kathy. This is the Kathy I am now. Prettier, because they straightened my teeth, taught me makeovers and clothes coordination. Wealthier, because I made money and Mac invested it. Wiser, because I came up the hard way. I’m a professional—just like a prostitute. I never give it away free.”
Abram winced. He didn’t like it when I talked like this. And I couldn’t help but bait him. He was incontestably Abram, thinking it all through, making up his mind. And by the time he did I had danced a mile ahead of him.
“Do you ever wonder what it would have been like if I’d stayed and never run off with Jack?”
I couldn’t get him to speculate. I think maybe he had, many times, to himself. He wasn’t eager, either, to talk about the present situation: where I stood legally and what was apt to happen. It was best, in his opinion, to let things unfold.
“When they do,” he said, “that is the time to deal with them.”
We sent out for Chinese, and ate at the kitchen table. He made an actual fire in the fireplace; no one had ever done that. And we stretched out in front of it on the floor, my head on his knees. We didn’t talk much; mostly we watched the flames.
“That blue at the bottom, that’s caused by an excess of carbon monoxide.”
“Hmm.”
A log burned through and tumbled to a new position.
“You’re not married, are you, Abram? You don’t have a dozen kids and lilacs twined above the kitchen door?”
“No kids. No lilacs. I was married. She died.”
“I’m sorry, Abram. It’s hard to lose people.”
“Ummm—” he said.
We watched embers flake off the log and settle in its heart. “How come it’s so comfortable with you? I mean, we can talk or not talk.”
“When it’s right for two people to be together, they don’t have to do much about it, just let it alone, let it be.”
“And you think that’s us?”
He didn’t answer but his hand stroked my hair. As the fire died into ashes I began to realize that one of the things I had run from was my feeling for Abram.
He was like a mountain, solid, intractable, and I loved him for it. But that was nothing new; I’d always known it.
I wasn’t the only one with Abram on their mind. Mac chafed at his presence. At our usual Thursday planning session, he confined his animosity to a few unpleasant remarks, such as “that Willems guy seems to have taken over,” or how he wished “that Willems character” wouldn’t keep shoving his nose in where it didn’t belong. All this because Abram had joined us for lunch.
Then he came out with it. “Kathy, I don’t like to intrude on anything personal, anything that isn’t my business, but this Willems seems to have a lot of influence with you. You say he’s an old friend, you grew up together. Is that the extent of it? I mean, he’s staying in the suite. I feel I have a right to know. Are you serious about the guy? There’s no danger you’ll up and marry him, is there?”
“Marry Abram? What an idea! I like him too much for that. Besides, he hasn’t asked me.”
“Then I’m right. You have given it some thought?”
“Of course I have. Since I was eight years old.”
“It would be the worst move you could possibly make. It never works out, marrying outside the business. The hours, the pressure…”
“I don’t think we have to worry about that.”
“Of course we do. This is a temporary slump. All the adverse publicity will die away and you’ll be back on top, bigger than ever. We can’t have some corn-fed hayseed muscling in.”
I laughed. “Is that a description of Abram? My wonderful Abram?” Then in an effort to propitiate Mac and get him off my back, I said, “Abram should be the least of your worries. He doesn’t want anything. He’s just here to help me through a bad time.”
A sarcastic expression crept into his face, and I realized to him that sounded like a con. He would, I believe, actually have been relieved if he could figure out what piece of the pie Abram was after.
I walked to the window and stood looking out. I wanted him to understand. “Do you know what the Mennonites are?”
“Aren’t they sort of like the Amish?”
“They’re quiet, calm, thoughtful people. Abram, whom I’ve loved since I was eight years old, is a refuge for me.”
“He’s a dream. You’ve climbed into a dream and pulled the covers over your head.”
“You may be right. But he means more to me than fans, or career, or music, or anything. I’ll let everything else go, but I won’t let go of him.”
I expected a big blowup. It didn’t happen. He took it rather well. He shook my hand and said, “I hope you can forgive me. I really do wish you well, and I’m sorry about Anabel.”
Anabel? She was the first defection. I hadn’t seen her all day, but I hadn’t realized she was gone for good. She was.
JACK used to say when your luck turns, everything goes against you. In the midst of this debacle, Mac, Mac the dependable, the steadfast, the guy I counted on, was the next to leave the sinking ship. He absconded, left with all the securities and cash he could lay his hands on.
The way I found out—a heliotrope and platinum card came in the mail inviting me to our usual New Year’s Eve party. When I phoned to talk it over, there was no answer. Not even the answering machine.
Half an hour later my lawyer, the one he had gotten for me, Wendel Morris, telephoned the news. I was stunned. The theft amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Maybe more. He was gone and it was gone. Morris ended the conversation by informing me that he was submitting his bill.
I hung up, dazed.
Abram was at my elbow.
“No one came this morning, did they?” First Trimble, then Mac. Freddy too, hadn’t shown up. I clutched Abram’s jacket. “They won’t come, Abram. They won’t come anymore.”
I told him what had happened. I realized it was a lot to throw at him.
He sat rather heavily. Reaching for my hand he drew me down beside him. “You know, Kathy, you never saw that money. The only thing it did was to bring you all those people, the ones who aren’t here this morning. I think you can do without them, don’t you?”
“But…” I stumbled over the words. “I don’t know what’s left. Maybe nothing. I worked damn hard for that money, getting up at all hours, rehearsals, run-throughs, I sang my heart out. It isn’t fair.”
Abram smiled. “That’s why it’s a crime,” he said.
“Don’t make jokes. I don’t know if there’s enough to pay the rent…Mac, of all people. But you know, he gave me fair warning. In a way, he told me what he was going to do and asked my pardon in advance. Mac wasn’t your ordinary bargain-basement embezzler. He had his code of ethics and lived up to it. From his point of view he was justified. He built Kathy Little Bird step by step, recording by recording, album by album, concert by concert, adding that long string of guest spots, finagling the TV show.
He had a big piece of me, which he was entitled to. Why did he want the whole enchilada? Why didn’t he talk to me? I didn’t know he felt like that. I hadn’t a clue. We could have reached some agreement.’‘
“I don’t think so, Kathy. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said he wanted the whole thing. You can’t negotiate that.”
“He was worried about you, Abram. That precipitated it.”
“Maybe so.”
“Oh Abram, all those years bumming around, scrounging. Mac, my old buddy, the guy who taught me the fine points of the business, the one I‘ve been through so much with. I feel sick to my stomach.”
Abram called downstairs and told them to run across the street and bring me a bottle of Tums. I grabbed the phone. “Not Tums. Make it a bottle of Mumm’s.”
I explained to Abram the theory I operated under, which had originally been Jack’s. “Always celebrate bad luck.”
He considered this carefully, as Abram did anything that was new to him. “I like it,” was his verdict.
I knew he didn’t drink, but when the champagne came he had a glass with me. It reminded me of the old days when we broke into the storeroom of the Eight Bells and swilled beer.
That evening there I was, this time on television. All major stations picked up on Mac. There were shots of us, at functions, at the Grammy awards, and another huddled together outside the courthouse, trying to make our way through the press. I turned it off.
“I hope they don’t find him,” I said.
“You don’t want him caught?”
“No. He’d do much better sunbathing in Cancun or Moorea.”
Abram kissed me. He hadn’t done that in sixteen years.
That kiss made me understand why he kept himself so strictly to the straight and narrow—when he left it, the world stood still, the sun too as it did for Joshua. We were hungry for each other. I bit his lip and slipped my hands inside his shirt.
He lifted me off my feet. I wound my legs around him. His need was my own. I wanted him now, this minute.
But he wrenched away, setting me firmly and deliberately on the floor.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“You’re a man, Abram, under all that psalm singing.” I tried to approach, but with one stiff arm he held me from him. I had to laugh. It was as though I were a tiger and with a chair he kept me at bay. I laughed until tears came to my eyes. “Oh, Abram, you are so funny.”
“I must move immediately from this apartment, Kathy. It is impossible for me to even be in the same room with you without…”
“Yes, yes, I know what you mean.”
“I’ll let you know where I’m staying.”
“Damn you, Abram. You haven’t improved since you were ten years old. You suspect I’m upset, but you have the wrong reason. You think it’s because you went too far. You idiot, it’s because you didn’t go all the way.”
“Oh.”
“Oh? Just oh? Is that what you have to say? Such scintillating dialogue sweeps me off my feet. But you’re right, you’d better go. Thanks for coming, and standing by me. I do thank you for that. I can face whatever they throw at me. I’m strong now, I really am.”
By way of stopping me, because words were gushing out and I couldn’t stop them, he took both my hands and held them.
“Marry me, Kathy.”
“Oh no, I’m not strong enough for that.”
“Marry me.”
“Why?”
“Because it says in the Bible, ‘created He them.’ We were created to be together. Adam was lonely and alone. And I am his true son. Have pity on me, Kathy. I’m distracted and out of control.”
“What if they deport me as an undesirable alien, or an enemy alien, or whatever it is they think I am?”
“Why think of it like that? Marry me and come home to Montreal. Would that be so terrible?”
I found it hard to focus on anything but now—right now. “Give it to me straight, Abram—you can’t, you absolutely can’t sleep with me? This minute, for instance?”
“Without marriage it’s fornication. Have patience, Little Bird—your perch is with me.”
“Is it?” I wanted him to convince me. But when they changed me from left-handedness I don’t think they changed me all the way. “Do you really think you could put up with me, Abram? I mean, have you thought about it?”
“I’ve prayed about it.”
“What if I told you I was still married to Jack?”
“I know you’re not. That’s the first thing I asked Mac. He told me the divorce was uncontested.”
“So you made sure of that, first thing?”
“I did.”
I looked around the room with its copy of a T’ang horse on a small pedestal and the Flemish tapestry and a Picasso lithograph—a hodgepodge, like my life.
“Is there anyone here,” I called into this doleful effort at an artistic setting, “that knows why this man and this woman may not be joined in holy matrimony?”
I raised my hand. I stood up. “I have a daughter,” I said to the T’ang horse. “She’s being brought up by Mr. and Mrs. Mason.” This I directed to the Flemish tapestry. “They live on Oakdale Street in St. Paul, Minnesota,” I informed a modern print.
Silence reverberated against the walls, shrieked in the fireplace.
“You have a daughter?” Abram repeated slowly.
“You hate me, I knew you would. Despise, that’s closer to what you feel. And that’s what I feel for myself. She’s a teenager now, and she’s grown up thinking I’m dead. I’ve never done anything about it. The time was never right, and then it was too late.”
“Hold on, Kathy, hold on. Let’s get a handle on this. You have a daughter? The Lord has blessed you with a daughter?”
I was totally impaled by this statement. “You think so?” I asked uncertainly.
“When is a child not a blessing?”
“When you can’t raise it. When you have to give it away. When she thinks you’re dead. When it’s been an agony in your heart for fifteen years.”
“I’m not speaking of what happened afterward. But the child itself is a miracle.”
I jumped to Mac’s bottom line. “Then you think it would be the right thing to do, to go get her? When this trial blows over, if it ever does?”
“No. No, not necessarily. No, I don’t. She’s grown up with these people, they’re her family. You shouldn’t disturb that relationship out of your need to feel better about her, but out of her need.”
“Her need? How could I possibly know if she needs me?”
“Have faith that the Lord will tell you.”
Abram seemed so calm and sure that looking at the love in his honest face, I did have faith. Only it was in him. “I’m sorry I interrupted you,” I said in an effort to bring him back to the proposal.
I could see the twinkling look in his eyes when he asked, “What were we talking about?”
“You had just asked me to marry you.”
“And what was your answer going to be?”
“My answer was going to be yes. Yes, yes, yes!”
I knew what he was going to say, and hollered out along with him, “Praise the Lord!”
IT was Tuesday evening and the Wednesday of the deportation hearing only hours away. In an effort to nudge a little luck my way, I made a resolution to be less self-absorbed. We were sitting on the couch, my head on Abram’s shoulder, when I deliberately put aside my and me and Kathy, and prepared to listen to him and learn more of his inner life as well as fill in the gaps in the external one.
Abram wasn’t used to talking about himself, and he did it awkwardly. I persisted and bit by bit drew him out. I began by asking about his wife, wondering if he had been very much in love—after all, not all Mennonite girls were dumpy with thick ankles.
He began his account of Laura with a shy recounting of her father, his good friend, John Wertheimer. “He is a brother in Christ, a wonderful man, Ka
thy. You’ll love him as I do. He has acted as guide and mentor to me. It’s his bookshop, and through his kindness he has made me a junior partner. Upon his retirement he has undertaken to leave the bookstore to me. It’s a rare opportunity, Kathy.”
I smiled into his face. I knew he undoubtedly did all the work and at something like janitorial wages, but he was happy. And on the instant I made another resolution…to defend Abram, in case they laughed at his outmoded clothes, or made fun of his considered, methodical speech, or despised him for being poor.
Who “they” were, who would do these things, I had no idea. But it might happen, and if it did, they’d have to walk over my dead body first.
I prompted Abram here and there with questions, while he filled in the missing years. He gave a candid, complete account. It took exactly three minutes. In all these years absolutely nothing had happened in his life.
I thought of my life, how crowded and crazy, going from one extreme to the other. All this time Abram had not gone to college, not gone to war, or pursued a career or made money or dropped out, or anything.
He’d left home, it’s true, but without quarreling with his parents or defying the church. In fact, he’d sought out another Mennonite congregation in Montreal and was a member in good standing. He quietly got a quiet job in a quiet little bookstore on a quiet out-of-the-way street.
In telling me about this, his voice became soft and mellow, and I realized this was where his life was centered. I probed a bit more and discovered that the bookshop didn’t do much business. A beneficent look crossed his face as he confided that most of the time he sat on a stool reading out-of-print volumes before they were remaindered.
And that was it. Oatmeal with raisins for breakfast, peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, stew for dinner, and a store full of books nobody wanted.
Abram tightened his arms around me and smiled into my face. “You can see what an exciting life it’s been, filled with discovery and once in a while true revelation.”
Kathy Little Bird Page 19