She laughed.
At least Ava Prett had a sense of humor.
“Shoes go by the door, you can be barefoot, it will be safer, and belongings in the closet.” But he noticed she had brought nothing with her. “Put the kettle on the stove, you’ll find teabags and cups in the cupboard, and we’ll have tea in the living room and a little chat.”
He situated himself at the head of the table so he could see her as soon as she came through the door, and while he listened to preparations he asked himself what he was going to do. This was a girl, not a woman. A girl was not fair, prepared as he was to face another Maxi Bruder, armed with decrees and opinions, right ways and wrong ways, and most annoying, the belief that he was helpless. But this was a human person totally unformed. How could he turn her away? What if she could sing? Yes, what if she could sing?
She was not beautiful. Thank God for that. But as she brought the tray in, good, he’d forgotten to mention the tray, she looked at him. She smiled. What a smile! “You’re strong,” he said out loud, but only for himself. But she heard it and replied, setting a cup in front of him, a teapot, another cup for her, “Not really. Some girls at my school did weights, but I didn’t.”
“Even so, you are a strong person. You are full of beginnings.”
She stirred sugar into her tea. For a moment, it looked like she might say something, but then she didn’t. And then she said, “It’s my first job.”
“Your first job ever or for this agency?”
“Ever. I graduated high school two days ago.”
“Do you play an instrument?”
“No, I wanted to, but in the end I didn’t.”
“Which instrument?”
“Clarinet.”
No hesitation, he noticed. “I’ll play you some Benny Goodman. Ever hear of him?”
“No, but thank you.”
“The greatest clarinet player ever lived. Are you Jewish by any chance?”
“No, or at least my mother never told me.”
“That’s okay, doesn’t matter. Benny Goodman was Jewish, that’s why I asked. Ever do any singing?”
She giggled. “Star Spangled Banner? Not really, no.”
He started it. “Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light. What so proudly we hail . . .”
She didn’t join in. Leave it alone, his better, less greedy self instructed. Don’t make her nervous. “That’s okay. It’s a terrible song. We’ll get to the singing part of things later.”
“I thought I was supposed to do dishes, serve food, stuff like that.”
“Sure, sure. All of that. That would be good. I was just wondering, on the off chance, you know. Mining for talent. That’s what I do. What I did, rather, and it’s hard to stop a thing when you’ve been doing it for so many years. It was how I met my wife. Alice Long, ever hear of her? Probably not, you’re too young. She’s been gone fifteen years now, but once she came through that door just like you did. Another apartment of course. And I was just starting out then. And really, I was only a couple of years older than her. Why, when I first met Alice Long I hardly had a list at all. A kid, wet behind the ears. But that’s what she was too. So I said, ‘Sing me something.’”
What shall I sing? she asked. That clear, bell-like voice.
Anything, I don’t care.
“You see, I was pretending it didn’t much matter because I wanted to see what she would choose. Well, she sang ‘Evenin’, the greatest blues song in the world. That was first of all what impressed me. But second was the authority of her voice. The wisdom. She delivered that song as though she had lived in it and her tone, it was syrup. Thick, sticky, endlessly sweet. Oh God, what a woman. Though a girl then, not much older than you.”
“Did she fall on the floor too?”
He laughed. “Very good.” Well, it was clear that Ava had timing, maybe even some humor. Yes, something was there. “Look at me.”
She looked up. White oval face, a long nose. It was a strong, prominent nose, brown eyes, very short bangs and dark hair absolutely straight. Like an Egyptian. There was some kind of authority about her too, because she held his gaze, didn’t blink, didn’t even look like she wanted to turn away. “I see you,” he said.
And she said, very simply, “I see you too.”
“So listen: Let me tell you something. What I need help with, there’s not much. We’ll make it up as we go along. Can you cook?”
“Yes,” she said.
But he spied uncertainty. She was only being brave. “You can’t cook worth beans.”
“I can learn. I’m sure I can do it.”
“Okay, until we discover your musical talent, that’s what we’ll focus on. You’ll shop for food, you’ll use the cookbooks in the kitchen, and you’ll make wonderful meals and lots of desserts. Fabulous desserts. That’s how you’ll spend your four hours here.”
“Mr. Abram, can I ask a question?”
“Ask away.”
“What will I be required to do with your toileting?”
“I toilet myself. Not that helpless, not yet. Don’t worry. No diapers either.”
4.
The apartment Ava lived in with her mother was on the first floor in the rear of the building. Most of the windows were on the air shaft so the light that came in was a wintry light thickened by dryer exhaust. When she first moved in, Cleopatra had commissioned a friend to make drapes. They were elaborately layered, as full as petticoats, gathered and drawn back with loopy bows. They so disguised the notion of an actual outside that it ceased even to be a concept, and in the once-elegant room, with the glass table and gold painted chairs at one end, the convertible sofa, BarcaLounger, TV, and coffee table at the other, the two overly dressed windows were like lidded eyes, pretending sleep, but spying on everything that took place.
Now that Ava had Mr. Abram’s to go to, his clean, sun-lit rooms soothed the rage of the home apartment. She could walk past and not even see the open door of the hall closet that was too stuffed with Cleopatra’s belongings to shut, the smoky air in the living room, or the clutter on tables that were never cleared.
Her mother returned from her job first, and by the time Ava got back, she had changed out of her bus-driver uniform into a slip and robe and settled herself in front of the TV for a night of movies. That was the routine. Her mother didn’t care for news, game shows, or documentaries. She craved the neat, two-hour resolution of simple dramas and could watch two or three in an evening.
“What’s that you got?”
Ava was toting groceries. “Dinner. I’m going to learn how to make vegetable soup.”
“Just buy a can. It’s always better. Plus it’s more practical.”
“I have to learn how to do it from scratch. With celery and carrots and tomatoes and stuff.”
“Trust me, vegetables are a waste of money. You use a bit and the rest rots in the drawer.”
“Well, not everyone agrees with that.” She set the food on the counter, turned on the fluorescent and opened Mr. Abram’s cookbook. Then she began washing and peeling.
“What, you’re going to lug a pot of soup to his house?”
“No, this is practice. It’s for you and me.”
“No, baby. Homemade soup’s gonna give me the runs. I need preservatives. They firm me up, keep me young.”
“Mom, that’s ridiculous.”
“My ass! Who’s the one hasn’t had a cold in twenty years? Huh? Who’s never taken a sick day? Huh, miss snivel-nose? How’s the old man’s hiney?”
“I wouldn’t know. He takes care of toileting himself.”
“Come in here so’s you don’t have to shout.”
Ava stayed where she was, dribbled oil into a pan.
The lounger snapped forward and Cleopatra, holding a gold painted chair, appeared in the doorway. She set her wine glass on the shelf that held their pots and pans and sat down. “I bet it’s all soft and saggy, just like what he’s got in his front.”
“I told you. He takes car
e of toileting himself.”
“Listen to you, toileting. Where’d you get a word like that?”
“That’s what they call it. Aides help with toileting, but he doesn’t need it.”
“Not yet,” Cleopatra said, reaching for her glass. “But you wait. Everything changes. Like you. Gone all day, out somewheres I don’t even know. With a new name. Grown up and everything and me back here by myself. Know what I want? Let’s do Pictures.”
“I can’t, I’ve got to make this soup.”
“After. When my movie’s finished. Okay?”
The silence felt strange after the swell of romantic music signaling the movie’s end. Ava carried their bowls to the table, set out bread and butter. Her mother sat down in a careful fashion, as though she were a guest at someone else’s house. But the formality of having a proper meal, of facing each other across a table disappeared soon enough.
“There’s not enough salt in here. And it needs way more pepper. But it’s tasty. I think it’s tasty.”
“Is it okay? Is it thick enough?”
“I’m not the person to ask. Seems like canned is thicker. But thin soup’s not terrible, it’s good. Old people can’t discriminate anyway.”
“I want it to be really good. I think I should have added more spice.”
“Spice is complicated. Watch out. Pass the saltines?” Cleopatra crumbled a stack of crackers into her bowl. “Now that’s the ticket, that makes it like gumbo.”
When they were done, Ava filled the sink with detergent. Cleo called, “Come back, baby. Dishes can wait; sit on the couch, here, next to your mama.”
So Ava came in and collapsed against the pillowed mass of the familiar body. It was always a relief to give in. She could revert, deny all she’ d been attempting, as though the process of becoming a different person were simply a game for the outside world. At their first apartment they had shared a double bed, but when she was eleven, they moved to this apartment because there was a separate bedroom for Ava. That’s when Pictures had started. It was a carry-over of the old closeness, a way to snuggle together and be one body again though with Pictures the body they considered was a fiction. They sat side by side with the album on their laps and looked at Cleo as she used to be.
“There I was in the bumble bee costume. Look at my shape, will you?”
The script was always the same: “You must have weighed, what? A hundred pounds?”
“Hundred and fifteen,” Cleo said proudly, “but look, I had boobs. That’s why I was so spectacular. A little thing but knockers the size of grapefruit.”
Their only photo album chronicled a single year in the life of Cleopatra Prett before Ava, née Marilyn, was even a blink in the universe. “Look at that! Will you look at that? What a keister! You see, I had these swivel hips and if they were playing something slow, something bluesy? You should have seen me. I could hypnotize them with my slow, sexy hips. Look at that ass. I loved this striped one. Leaves nothing to the imagination. Of all those dancers, and there we are lined up, I got the most applause. They knew quality. Those old drunks, they knew quality.”
They were black and whites, all from 1959, the year she had worked at a club in midtown. She would have worked there longer, but violations had shut it down. Drug trafficking, prostitution? Or was it something neutral like not enough fire exits? Cleopatra had never said. Violations was as specific as she got. When they arrived at the last photograph, which was of a beaming young woman doing a split in the center of a tiny stage, she would expel a sound of regret and touch the photo. “I was making good money, all under the table. Not like now when half goes to the government. Plus tips. Oh, did I make tips! But the very next day, the day after that photo, the Feds busted the joint and my career was over. I went to Miami and tried to get started there, but Florida, it was hard if you weren’t Cuban. And now, look at me. Dressed like a man every day of my waking life.”
“But you like driving,” Ava reminded her.
“I do. I like sitting up in that seat and having all the power. But that was a glamour life. Your old mother, she had a glamour life.”
What Ava wanted to ask was off the script. “Could you tell me? Please, Mom, now that I’m graduated and have a job?”
Cleo sighed, lit a cigarette. “I know you want to know. It hurts not knowing, I know it does, and I wish I could tell you. There’s nothing I wish for more.”
“You know who your boyfriend was. So that’s my dad, isn’t it?”
“Look. I wish it was different. I wish I had the answer. I wish I could just say a name. But there’s lots of women, this problem is not unique. How you going to know which person’s genes the one that made your child? They just pretend. I don’t pretend. I’ve always lived by the truth and I ain’t about to stop doing it now. They were multiples, you understand? Multiples. Now that you’re graduated, that’s what I can tell you. It wasn’t just one at a time. So ease off.” She set her cigarette in the closest of the living room’s many ashtrays and stood up, easing her swollen feet into her slippers. “Because it’s starting to feel like criticism. The changing name thing, the who is my father thing, the gone all day at work thing, so when I come home there’s no one here and the place feels like death. It does. It does. It feels like death until you get back.”
These were the moments she loved her. The mixture of guilt, remorse, and fear was a syrup that loosened her resolve, tempting her to deny everything that she was trying to become, making it easy to slide back to being her mother’s child, only her mother’s child. But she steeled herself to resist it. Wrapping her arms around the warmth and plush she said, “I’m sorry, Mom, but I have to grow up.”
And yet, the body young Cleo had flaunted in booze-soaked clubs scared the daughter. It also embarrassed her and made her shy.
Though very occasionally, when she was alone, the fear would slide away. She’d lift her chest, let her hips drop down, and with her breath, she’d pull up from the hard ground she was walking on, a feeling of rhythm. She couldn’t let it break out if it was summertime, but if it were winter and a jacket covered her hips, she gave herself permission. Then her joints would loosen and the ordinary act of being a pedestrian turned so audacious she would worry that a man might give her trouble. In jacket weather, when she was captured by the rhythm, she would walk instead of taking the subway just to feel it. The undulation, the outrageous switch and sway.
5.
It was back! The flicker of possibility! Back again after so many years. But now it stayed north, making him as light and giddy as a divine being. In the old days, when everything shot south, he had to fight the distraction of lust. Because possibility was fickle. That sudden vision of what a person was capable of, that fragile, shimmering belief, that tiny ping had to be treated with the greatest respect, nurtured and fed till it could stand on its own and be heard. So even in the old days desire stayed separate. He was as superstitious as an old witch doctor. The shimmering had to be strong, the talent fact before he could relax. Then he was good.
Of course, the possibilities of Ava Prett were a perfect zero. Couldn’t sing, couldn’t cook, couldn’t hold much of a conversation, knew nothing about music. And yet there was eagerness. Where did that come from?
Every day now, knowing she would arrive, he woke up more easily. Of course, by the time she left, he was ready to be by himself again, but the next morning, there he was, anxious for her to appear again.
Jennifer was concerned about her inexperience. Wondered if they should ask the agency to send someone older, someone who knew how to cook so he lied and said, “She’s a great cook. Pot pies, meatballs, roasts. I’m eating like a gourmet. Pretty soon I won’t be able to fit into my clothes.”
“Tell her please, use real butter. You need the fat, you’re too thin.”
“I guarantee she went through a pound of butter last week. Shortbread cookies: that’s her specialty.”
“And she’s how old?”
The skepticism was clear so he answ
ered, “Eighteen,” and then embroidered a tale. “She went to one of those high schools that train for careers, you know, they’re very popular here, and she was in culinary arts.”
“Really? That’s lucky. See, what did I tell you? And she’s honest? You like her?”
She would call Maxi Bruder to get confirmation. And that wily old bitch would read Ava Prett like a page of print. She’d see her lack of skill right away, sniff out her inexperience. And Bruder would have no trouble recognizing deceit. He could ask her to lie to Jennifer, but nothing would be more appealing to a dishonest woman than the chance to be a double agent. So the only solution was in Ava herself.
They began each day with tea in the living room. He was waiting at the table, watching her through the doorway, pretending to read the Times, but really he was adrift in the sounds of another person. They were so beautiful he wondered if now, those sounds were the only sounds he needed, if ordinary busyness were the only music old age required. But a young person’s busyness. Maxi’s once-a-week bustling was not a pleasure at all. A young person, unformed.
When she came in with the tray, he thought there was no more pleasing shape than a teapot. A teapot with two cups beside it, heaven. (You doddy old man, you’re absolutely pathetic.)
“It’s going to clear up later and get nice,” she told him, setting a plate of toast on the mat in front of him, each slice buttered, and a little dollop of marmalade in a pretty cup. “Do you ever go outside?”
“Only for doctor’s appointments.”
“Don’t you miss it?”
“I did, earlier, but now I don’t think about it at all. With my windows, I get the sky.”
“But you need more than that. Don’t you? Wouldn’t you like to see trees? How hard would it be?”
“You’d have to push me.”
“I’m pretty strong. We could go to the park.”
“It’s a bit of a slog coming back. You’re not that strong.” He saw her disappointment and relented. “Okay, we’ll try it. But today there’s a more pressing matter.” He looked at her, assessing his chances. “I have to prepare you for a little performance. What do you think of that?” Her forehead was clear. No lines of worry, no consternation. Was it simply her age, or was she more naïve than most?
The Exit Coach Page 12