Heaven Is to Your Left

by Vanda Writer

  “Yeah? What is it?” he asked, impatient, still not looking up.

  “I’m, well, worried.”

  “So am I.”

  “Not too much, I hope. You’re the one I’m counting on. You know. To take care of—”

  “Have you seen—?”

  “The play isn’t going well in Philadelphia. What happens if it flops out of town and never makes it to New York? What happens to Jule? You are working on a plan to get her out of that?”

  “I can’t think about that now.” He ran a hand roughly through his almost-all-gray hair. “Have you seen this?”

  “But you have to think about it now. If that play nosedives . . .”

  “Have you seen these goddamn numbers, Al?” He shouted, banging a fist onto the papers. “Have you been watching them like you’re supposed to?”

  “I’ve been in Paris for four months!” I shouted back. “I’ve been back barely a month.”

  “A month is enough time for you to see we’re in trouble. Our audiences at the Haven have been steadily dwindling. Why haven’t you told me?”

  “I’m taking care of it.”

  “How? By watching us lose money every week? We can’t sustain this.”

  “I’ll fix it. I’ve been busy trying to figure out who betrayed me and how to keep Schuyler away and—”

  “Too busy to do your job?”

  “I always do my job!”

  “I’ve got to get to the Mt. Olympus.” He got up, pulling his suit jacket over his wrinkled shirt. “Call Shirl and tell her to meet me there.”

  “Oh, you mean like I’m your secretary?”

  “If you act like a secretary, you’ll be treated like one. If you want something better, start by forgetting that nonsense with Schuyler—”

  “Nonsense?”

  “Or you and I both’ll end up on the goddamn bread line.” He gathered his papers and threw them into the open briefcase. “And would you please talk to Virginia. I don’t know what’s wrong with her, but she’s chosen the absolute worst time in my life to go crazy. Do something. I must be paying you for some reason.” He pulled his overcoat onto his right shoulder and charged out of his office.

  Chapter Four

  She slammed the door.

  Oh, God, what a day. “Virginia, open this please.”

  “No!” she yelled back through the bronze letter slot. “Go away.”

  “I can’t.”

  I had no time for this. And yet there I stood on Virginia’s porch, next to her flowerpot with the dead flowers flopping over the side. The Virginia I knew would never have allowed her flowers to die that way. I thought of the African violets she had moved into Max’s MacDougal Street apartment when she took it over during the war. Back then, she told me that African violets must always be watered from the bottom, never the top. Flowers were important to Virginia. She had filled Max’s apartment with cut flowers that she’d had delivered every other day by the florist down the block. Her mother had not permitted flowers in their home because she said they were a waste of money. Virginia used to hide her African violets in her bedroom when she still lived in the uptown mansion, but now her mother was gone. So why were those flowers dead?

  I’d never been to Virginia’s East 64th Street townhouse near Second Avenue, and it hadn’t been such an easy job getting there. The snowbanks made the roads hard for the bus to get around, and the construction along Park Avenue and Fifty-Seventh had slowed the traffic to a crawl. I had so much to do back at the club I could barely sit still in my seat. I wanted to go out and show that cop how to direct traffic. Lately, the city was always tearing something down, putting something up. Now they were taking down the Park Avenue apartments and putting up huge office buildings. One of them was gonna be fifty stories tall! Max had helped Virginia sell her mansion a few years back when the city was tearing those down and putting up modern apartment buildings or turning them into fancy museums. It was damn annoying, all these changes. But Virginia got a nice price and was able to give some money to her old English butler, Ainsworth, who left the US to retire in England, and her old Irish maid, Nola, who’d been waiting on Virginia since Virginia was a little girl. I didn’t know who was attending to Virginia’s needs now, but I couldn’t picture her living alone with no help.

  “Virginia!” I called to her through the mail slot again. “Max’s worried about you.”

  “No, he’s not,” came her response back from the mail slot.

  “He is and so am I.”

  “Hah!”

  I’d telephoned Virginia before I came, but she hung up.

  “Virginia, come on! It’s freezing out here.” I kicked up some leftover snow that lay in a clump on the porch near the wrought iron railing. I should’ve worn galoshes instead of these stupid heels. “Virginia!”

  “You don’t like me anymore,” came through the letter slot. “You think I’m a bad woman.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Did I? Of course not. Then why hadn’t I seen her since Christmas, three years ago, when Scott was in the hospital and his grandma, Mattie, was staying with Max and me. I saw her with Max a few times after that, but we never had a lot to say to each other anymore. Something had changed between us after that awful thing Moose did to her. I didn’t seem able to look at her; it was like she was the one who’d done something wrong, instead of Moose. But I knew it was him, not her. It was Moose who had made her. . . put his thing in her mouth. I mean what could she do? He had a gun at her head. If Jimmy the Crusher hadn’t come in and chopped Moose’s hand off . . . Oh gosh, I hated thinking about that. Blood everywhere. My stomach felt sick with the memory. Blood, semen, and later toothpaste all over Virginia’s face . . . I couldn’t keep those pictures out of my head, and whenever I got near her, that’s all I saw. She didn’t seem to like being with me anymore either. She always looked down at the ground or far off in the distance, like she wasn’t in the same room with me. I could hardly remember how she and I used to be before. I had vague memories of having lunch with her at Schrafft’s. And those cloudy memories made a good feeling come over me and, for a little while, I remembered our friendship. Why couldn’t we just forget those few minutes in that room in the club and go back to being how we used to be? We’d known each other for years, since before the war. What were a few moments compared to that? Why should those memories take over everything?

  I slammed my hand against the doorbell. It made a pleasant chiming sound, and I was in no mood for a pleasant sound. “Virginia, dammit! Just let me in for a minute to warm up. Then I’ll go.”

  I waited, my hands stuffed deep in the pockets of my full-length chinchilla coat. As I paced, the cold air made my face hurt. And I was getting a headache. I had to get back to the office and work on our slow ticket sales problem and find a way to keep Juliana calm and build her confidence.

  What’s wrong with Max? I wondered as I shoved my hands into my armpits, trying to warm them. I’d dashed out of my office so fast I forgot my gloves. Damn, Max was the one with contacts. The kind that make people pay attention. Why wasn’t he doing anything? He could get Schuyler and Harry a good crew, one that would make Juliana safe. He could get Schuyler to stop threatening her. So why wasn’t he? If he didn’t do something and soon, I would . . . What? What could I do? The secret investor! Yes! That’s it! Appeal to the secret investor. I stomped my feet to get feeling back. I had to find him first. He was, after all, secret, but there must be some . . . Shirl! Of course. She was in the money part of the business. Maybe she knew him. And if the guy was in love with Juliana, he wouldn’t want her to be hurt, so that meant . . . He was straight. My heart sunk down to my stomach. I couldn’t tell him about this.

  “Virginia! Open this door, dammit! I can’t stay on this porch freezing my rear end off all day. If you don’t open this door, I’m going to . . . You used to be such a kind person.”

  The door inched opened a sliver. I could see one of Virginia’s eyes squinting at me. “You used to be kind too,”
she said.

  Before she could shut the door again, I pushed both hands against it with all my weight, which admittedly wasn’t much. If my quick calculations were correct, my thirty-two-year-old strength should easily hold out against her forty-nine-year-old muscles. I continued to push with everything I had, but the damn door wouldn’t budge. My gosh, this woman sure must be eating her Wheaties.

  “Go away. You don’t care about me,” she yelled, and didn’t even appear to be winded. I took in a deep breath and pushed as hard as I could; the door and Virginia moved back slightly. But it was enough for me to squeeze my slight body through. Inside, I gulped at the air, trying to catch my breath. Then I saw why it’d been so hard for me. Virginia had wedged a heavy wooden chair against the door.

  She ran into the next room, screaming, “Don’t come in! Don’t come in!”

  I ran after her and found her in the middle of a large room, standing ankle deep in crumpled newspapers, half-eaten spaghetti on unwashed china plates, orange peels, uneaten, rotting TV dinners, open books in ragged, cascading piles, china cups, some broken, some filled with brown gunk that might have been coffee at one time, a few broken wine bottles, a jelly jar with the jelly smeared around the floor, smashed tomatoes, and other unrecognizable eatables and uneatables.

  Ants and roaches crawled in and out of the boxes and through the wine bottles, the jelly jar, and a rotten cucumber. There wasn’t one surface where some crawly thing didn’t crawl. It made me itchy. Virginia’s hair was a knotted, uncombed mess and it looked like she hadn’t washed it in some time. Her cotton flower-print dress was torn and dirty. It hung on her like an old rag; she’d lost a lot of weight. “So now you know!” she shouted. “Go! Go! Go!” She slowly sunk to her knees in tears into the center of the refuse pile.

  I stood stuck to my spot, so ashamed. “Virginia, I’m—I’m sorry,” I said. “So sorry I haven’t been here to help you. I want to help you now. We’re going to get this place cleaned up and you cleaned up and get you some type of help. Oh gosh, Virginia, I’m so sorry.”

  I walked back into the foyer, stepping around roaches scurrying past my feet, hoping not to run into a rat. I found the phone on the floor and dialed. “Lucille, is Max there?”

  “No!” Virginia screamed, running to me. She yanked the phone out of my hand and hung it up. “Please, you can’t. I beg you.” She started to fold onto her knees.

  “Oh geez, Virginia, don’t do that.” I held her up by the elbows, preventing her from collapsing at my feet. “Think. Think,” I said out loud to myself, then turned to Virginia. “Okay. Look, here’s what we’re gonna do. I’ll help you get washed and I’ll get you a good meal. We’ll get your hair done. Then, we’ll call Max and—”

  “No!”

  “Virginia, Max knows something’s up. I don’t know what he knows because he didn’t tell me, but he sent me to see you. He’s worried. Have you been in touch with him?”

  She held her hands near her mouth as if ashamed of what she said to Max. “I call him. Sometimes.” She whimpered like a frightened child. “I only want to hear his voice on the phone. I don’t want to bother him. I don’t want him to come here. Heavens, no. I just call him, but he has all those men . . .”

  “All those men? Not anymore. He only has one. Scott.”

  “Oh!” She backed away from me. “I wasn’t supposed to tell. Don’t tell him I told. Please don’t tell him.”

  “Look, Virginia—” I said slowly, trying to think and having trouble.

  “No. Don’t tell him.”

  “I can’t handle all of this at once. The first thing—the first thing we have to do is, uh, uh, make you well. That’s what we have to do. But first we—we have to get you cleaned up. Then—then—then we have to, to, uh, uh . . .”

  “Don’t leave me alone. Please, Al.”

  “No. We never should’ve left you alone in the first place.”

  “You think I’m a bad woman, don’t you?”

  “No. Of course, not.” Oh, how I wanted that to be true. “Come here.” I reached out for her and pulled her into my arms, despite the smell. I flicked off the roach that was crawling up her back.

  I managed to clean up Virginia in her upstairs bathroom. Amazingly, the whole upper floor was fine; a little dusty, but no garbage. Her bed was made and looked as if it had never been slept in. Even the bathroom seemed fine. She must’ve been living mostly in that one room.

  While she was drying herself off, I scurried down the stairs to the foyer to call Max. I didn’t like leaving her alone up there, but I needed to get Max involved. All during the bath she chatted with me like it was old times, like we were having lunch at Schrafft’s.

  Max didn’t answer his two office phones or his home phone. I just stood there in the foyer, shaking. I think, I can’t do all this alone. The club’s in trouble, Virginia’s in trouble, Juliana’s in trouble: the club, Virginia, Jule. My breathing sped up with the chaotic rhythm of my thoughts. I was on the verge of panic. No, Al! You can’t do that. You don’t have time for that. Slow down. Calm. Breathe like Juliana on opening night. I took a deep breath in and let it float out of me. It’s all gonna be okay. Easy. Take it easy. Yes, easy.

  I ran back upstairs to Virginia. She stood in front of the bathroom mirror tying the big bow to her silk blouse. The skirt she chose was a swirl of colors. I thought that must be a good sign. She almost looked like her old self, except her brown hair, damp from being washed, clung to her neck and shoulders. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her with her hair down. Hmm, letting her hair down. That wasn’t something that had ever been very easy for Virginia; now she’d been forced into it. I wondered if she’d worn it like that as a girl. Of course, not wet, but close to her head and neck. She’d probably been a sweet little girl—polite, eager to please.

  “My face is old, isn’t it, Al?” she said to her reflection in the mirror. Her face looked pale without make-up, but she looked like a woman in her forties, not old. “Time is passing me by. I’m going to die alone. An old spinster.”

  I didn’t know what to say to comfort her. I couldn’t tell her she reminded me of a little girl, innocent—but oh, what the world had done to her. “With your hair up you’ll be back to looking like your old self again.”

  “Yes. My old self?” She turned to me. “Do you think I can ever really be like I once was?”

  She was waiting for me to answer and I wanted to say yes, I really did, but it wouldn’t come out. “I think you should come and stay with me for a little while,” I said, guiding her down the stairs. “Rest. We’ll get a, a . . . a maid? Or someone to clean . . .” My eyes roamed around the room, wondering who in the world I could ever get to take this job.

  “But won’t Max be there? I don’t want to see him.”

  “I live on the top floor. I hardly ever see him. I have to call him on the phone to meet him in our living room.”

  “Al, he’s going to notice I’m there. I don’t want him knowing about what I’ve done and—”

  “We won’t tell him about, well, you know, everything.” Was I lying? Would I tell him behind her back? I never told him what Moose did to her. How do you find words to talk about something like that? Especially to a man. But had she? “We’ll just say we’re two girlfriends who need to catch up, so we decided to have a pajama party like girls do. He won’t question that. You know how men hate hearing about girl stuff. You can’t stay here.”

  She giggled. “We’ll be like girlfriends?”

  “That’s right. Like girlfriends.”

  “First, I must get my hair done. I can’t go around town looking like this. What if I run into someone I know? I wonder if Mr. Pierre’s Petite Salon could fit me in today. Oh. They don’t take last minute appointments over there,” she said, sad. “Mr. Pierre throws things when anyone wants to break one of his rules. If I call and ask him, he might get mad at me and ban me for months.”

  “What? No! No, no, he won’t do that,” I said. “Because he will make an except
ion for you.” He’d better, I thought, after all the money Virginia probably spent in that guy’s place. “If he doesn’t give you an appointment right away, I’ll go over there myself and bop ‘Mr. Pierre’ on his new nose.”

  She giggled. “You’re good for me, Al.”

  Virginia tiptoed through the door to my apartment behind me, her fingers gripping a hunk of my coat. She was terrified she’d find Max sitting on the sofa in the living room, reading his paper. She was relieved to find he wasn’t home, and so was I.

  She looked good with her hair done up the way she always wore it. She looked like the Virginia I’d always known. I’d called Mr. Pierre from Virginia’s house when she was upstairs packing an overnight bag. I warned him about his new nose and what would happen to it if he didn’t give Virginia an appointment within the next hour. He was extremely cooperative.

  We tiptoed up the kelly-green carpeted stairs to my apartment, even though tiptoeing wasn’t necessary. I led the way through the locked door into my living room and then . . . I just stood there. I’d never had any guests to my apartment before. Well, Marty had come over a few times, but he wasn’t a real guest. He was just my buddy. Max had come up when I first moved in to give me a few decorating tips, but after that he didn’t come up much. I always met Max and Scott downstairs if we were going to get together. And besides, Virginia—she came from wealth. I remembered the first day I visited her in her mansion.

  Ainsworth greeted me at the door. I mean, she actually had a real live English butler who called me madam. And inside? Oh, my! Two marble staircases swooped down into the center of the foyer. A huge chandelier hung from the high ceiling and the floor was as shiny as the one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When Virginia walked down the stairs from her room to get me, I remember thinking how strange it seemed that even when she was home and no one could see her, she dressed in her finest with her hair piled up on top of her head.