by Ross, Fran
Oreo underground at Forty-second Street
A horizontal rectangle with black letters told her:
PORT AUTHORITY BUS TERMINAL
←8TH AVE SUBWAY←
A red sign said:
TRACK 3
SHUTTLE TO GRAND CENTRAL
↑BMT LINES STRAIGHT AHEAD
said another red sign. A fairer sign gave one line each to complementary green and red:
GREEN ← FOR BWAY 7TH AVE LINE
& MEZZANINE FOR BMT
UPTOWN & DOWNTOWN BMT & IRT →
offered another. Under this, a graffito made a cross-cultural admission:
OH, BOY, AM I FARBLONDJET!—DAEDALUS
Oreo finally found the right train. She sat down and wiggled her perfect toes in anticipation of the about-to-be-revealed secret of her birth. As she moved Toro’s carrying case a little to one side, she noticed the socks of the man opposite her. She started looking at sock patterns. Was there a pattern to the patterns on this car? Lisle of Manhattan offers so many diversions, she thought as she knitted her brow.
Oreo on her father’s street again
She switched the carrier from her left to her right hand and her walking stick from her right to her left. As she looked down the street, she saw two things: a black girl in a white dress carrying what looked like a large lunchbox. Her father was waving at the girl. He turned his head and saw Oreo. He started to wave again and stopped in mid-wave. Oreo flashed on what was about to happen. She started to run. The other girl started to run. Their two black headbands sailed on oceans of air as they rushed toward each other. Samuel’s double takes took up less and less lateral space as they got faster and faster. Oreo stopped short under his window, fearing that she would collide with the onrushing girl—who also stopped short. Oreo looked up in time to see Samuel falling toward her. His body brushed her right hand as he smashed onto the carrier, driving it to the ground. Oreo ran over to her father. She looked up open-mouthed at an openmouthed girl who looked just like her.
And then the mirror moved.
15 Pandion
Oreo’s reaction to her father’s death
She was more distressed over accident than essence—the flukiness, not the fact of Samuel’s death. The jive mirror of the new people moving into his building, his landing on the carrying case. The fall alone, from the second floor, would not have killed him. No bones had been broken, but his plummet had split the carrier and squashed poor Toro, whose rhinestone collar had left an intaglio coronet on Samuel’s brow. Unmarked except for his baron’s band, he was dead nevertheless and (dear, fatherless Jimmie C.) winnie-the-pooh. Oreo was sad but not too. She felt about as she would if someone told her that Walter Cronkite had said his last “Febewary” or that a fine old character actor she had thought for years was dead was dead.
When it happened, Oreo knew she had two unpleasant things to do: break the news (banner head) to Mildred Schwartz and, worse, break the news (sidebar) to Bovina Minotti. She left worse for last. After the ambulance took Samuel away and the ASPCA claimed what was left of Toro, Oreo waited for Mrs. Schwartz outside her apartment until she and the boys came back from their track meet in the park. Mrs. Schwartz said nothing when she heard the news. Slowly, as if in benediction, her torch arm declined until it was level with her shoulder. One of the fingers that had encircled the invisible torch peeled off from her thumb and pointed to the telephone, to which she went directly and began dialing Samuel’s mishpocheh. Marvin and Edgar cowered in a corner with their suitcases.
While Mrs. Schwartz was still talking to Samuel’s relatives, Oreo went outside to find a pay phone and call the Minottis. She was relieved when Adriana answered. Oreo told her what had happened.
“Oh, God, poor Mr. Schwartz—how am I going to tell Mother about Toro?”
“I don’t envy you.”
“Listen, do you have the collar?”
“The what?”
“Toro’s dog collar,” said Adriana. “Do you have it?”
“Yes, the ambulance driver put it in a paper bag and gave it to me.”
“Thank God. Call Dominic and give it to him.”
“I don’t have his number,” Oreo said.
“I thought you were with the agency.”
“What agency?”
“Dominic’s agency. The ad agency. You know—Lovin’ Cola.”
“I don’t know what the ham-fat you’re talking about.”
Adriana laughed. “Oh, wow, those people are really off the wall. They don’t even tell their own couriers what’s happening.” After a few more chuckles, she said, “Look in the dog collar.”
Odd choice of prepositions, Oreo thought. They talked a few more minutes, then Oreo called Dominic at the number Adriana had given her. A half hour later, he met her on the corner and took the paper bag. He did not look too happy as he rolled away. She did not know whether his gloom stemmed from Samuel’s death or from the fact that he faced the prospect of building a campaign around a new Voice of Lovin’ Cola.
Adriana had cleared up the mystery about Dominic, Toro, and the Minottis. Samuel had been mixed up not with gangsters (Oreo’s surmise) but with industrial spies—or, rather, fear of industrial spies. He was to be the Voice of Lovin’ Cola, a new soft drink its makers thought would flatten Dr. Pepper, Coke, and Pepsi. Keystone of the introduction of Lovin’ Cola was the jingle Adriana had written about the beverage—a jingle the ad agency hoped could be adapted and released as a pop tune that would have pop heads fizzing Lovin’ Cola’s message, sub- or supraliminally, until the national fever for carbonation defervesced—around the thirty-third of Juvember. The agency did not want to break wind until it knew which way the breeze was blowing. One of the other gas companies might pull the old switcherino on the music and lyrics and come out with a carbonated copy before the Lovin’ Cola people were ready to open the silo and push the button for their blitz spritz in the media.
Before Dominic trundled into view, Oreo snapped open the back of Toro’s dog collar and found Adriana’s demo tape and an onionskin with the typed lyrics of the jingle:
LOVIN’ COLA
by
Adriana Minotti
(Dom: For pop version, sub “oh-la” for “Cola”)
Lovin’ Cola, Lovin’, Lovin’ Cola,
Lovin’ Cola, Lovin’, Lovin’ Cola,
Get your fill, it’s a thrill,
Lovin’ Cola, Lovin’, Lovin’ Cola.
Oh, well, thought Oreo, the tune is probably unabashedly addictive:
Oreo at the door of 2-C
She had spent the night in the park. In the morning, she waited outside of Samuel’s apartment building until she saw Mildred Schwartz leave for the funeral. The sun glanced away from the dragon hood ornament as the limousine turned the corner. The children were not with her. Oreo assumed that someone had been assigned to prevent their escape from the apartment. She had to get inside to go through her father’s bookshelf. She was still a bit pissed off at Samuel for falling out of the fool window before he had told her the secret of her birth.
She heard gay laughter in 2-C. Her knock switched it off.
The door opened and before her stood a woman whose smooth facial planes gave her an expression so benign that she made Aunt Jemima look like a grouch. “Won’t expecting nobody,” the woman said. “Who you?” Her voice was soothing too. Marvin and Edgar had given up their death grip on their suitcases to garrote her skirts. After one lemur-look at Oreo, they hid behind the woman.
“I’m the . . . mother’s helper,” said Oreo.
“Madam didn’t tell me, but come on in, chile. These kids running me crazy.” The woman was wearing a starched white uniform and apron. She motioned Oreo to a seat. “Name’s Hap. I’ll be in the kitchen yet a while.”
“Mine’s Anna, Miss Hap,” Oreo said politely, eyeing the voles.
Hap tried to shoo the children toward Oreo, but they bobbed around that rich broth of a woman like dumplings.
Oreo’s eyes w
ent to the bookshelf her father had pointed out. Before she was half the distance to it, the phone rang. Hap stepped out of the kitchen to answer it. “Schwartz residence,” she said solemnly. Then she smiled sunnily and said, “How you, Nola?” She sat down in a straight chair just under the bookshelf. The spines of the volumes were just out of Oreo’s reading range.
“Yeah, it right sad,” said Hap into the phone. “Madam at the funeral now. . . . Naw, she just asked me to fix a little something, case anybody drop ’round after the burial. I’ll cook it, but ain’t nobody gon eat it. Don’t nobody never come here, chile. You should see this living room, the mess she got ’round here. No wonder the children ’fraid of her. . . . Yeah, chile, scared to death. . . . The Millers? Chile, them people much rich. The madam in Florida now, and mister in Chicago on business. The two girls in Europe with they husbands. . . . Oh, sure, they ain’t got nothing better to do than travel ’round.”
It was too early for Oreo to tell whether Hap was of the this-job-is-a-piece-of-cake school or the these-people-are-stone-slave-drivers faction, but she was already dropping the time-honored phrases of the my-people-are-richer-than-yours bloc.
“Who?” Hap challenged the caller in outraged tones. “Are you kidding! I don’t do no cleaning! I don’t get down on my knees for nobody. No, chile. I don’t even have no downstairs cleaning to do. They got a girl comes in to do that. Colored girl. She even clean my apartment for me every day. . . . No, Nola, I told you before, I only go out there the first two weeks in every month. I told the boss, ‘Mr. Miller,’ I say, ‘I can’t be staying out here all the time.’ I say, ‘Times have changed. You can have two weeks of my time, but the rest of my time have to be for other folks need me much as you do.’ . . . I most certainly did. . . . Well-sir, I thought I would die when I caught that laundress down in that basement just filling up a box with meats and veg’tables. . . . Naw, she Irish woman. You know she always hinting ’round to the madam that I order extry food so I can take it home to my fam’ly. . . . Who? She bet’ not say nothing to me ’bout it. Who they gon get to go way out there and stay even for two weeks the way I do? . . . Yeah, is that so? Is that so? That’s the trouble with day work. They work you to death for six fifty and carfare. I ain’t done no day work—no cleaning day work—for twenny years, chile. . . . No, I’m a cook, and I rule my kitchen. If they come in my kitchen, they tiptoe around. . . . What’s that? . . . Naw, you don’t mean it? Well, these people are cheap too, chile. Guess that’s why they got so much. My sister Bessie been working for the old man for how long now? You know as well as I do. . . . Naw, it’s longer than that. But whatever it is, it’s umpteen years. She been working for old man Schwartz since Hector was a puppy—and he an old dog now. Been dusting them plastic plants since before his wife died. And you know what he give her last Christmas? A pair of sixty-nine-cent stockings. He haven’t even noticed after all these years that she don’t even wear no stockings. What she need stockings for? Now, the Millers, they give me ten dollars extry and a fifth. The girls gave me perfume. One time they gave me a pocketbook. . . . What? And as long as you been with them! . . . Naw, chile, all they care ’bout is that work. . . . Retire? How can I retire? I got my bills to pay. But I tell you one thing: I ain’t gon die in no kitchen like poor Henrietta did. No, sir. They ain’t gon work me to death. . . . Oh, she’s a caution. She’s really something. You know she won’t let that man have more than one egg for breakfast? When she home, he eat like any bird. She won’t let him eat! Say she don’t want no fat slob for a husband! Can you beat that! But when she not around, I fix him a nice breakfast. He just gobble it up. That’s why he so nice to me. But her, she something. I think she a little off. Yessir. You know, she fell off a horse once. Yeah, fractured her skull. I think it made her a little bit screwy. . . . Yeah? . . . Well, when I’m gon see you, Nola? Why don’t you stop by the house next Thursday. . . . Yeah, after that, I be out to the Millers for two weeks, so come on over. I’ll have something good for you. . . . Naw, I’m not gon tell you. You guess. . . . Yeah, that’s right.” Hap laughed. “I’ll look for you Thursday, then, Nola. . . . Yeah, so long.”
When Hap got off the phone, Oreo knew that here was a mother lode of information that, properly worked, could grout together some of the odd bits of information she had about her father. Oreo sidled over to the kitchen. She glanced with just the right look of longing at the arrangement of canapés Hap was making.
Hap’s hearty laughter was surrender. Her generous breasts, transformed by her uniform into giant marshmallows, heaved, sweetening the air above her apron. “Take one, chile, ’fore you break my heart.” (She meant a canapé, not a breast.)
Oreo popped a caviar cracker into her mouth. She praised it overmuch for itself but just enough for her purposes. She went on to sample and laud the other hors d’oeuvres Hap was preparing. A Louise she wasn’t, but good enough for any Almanach de Gotha kitchen below the rank of marquis—viscount would be about right.
A few leading questions about the Schwartzes and Hap offered a verbal tidbit: “His first wife was a colored girl, chile.”
“Naw,” said Oreo.
“Um-hm,” confirmed Marvin and Edgar, who, Oreo found out within the next few minutes, gossiped like yentas.
On Hap’s return from her biweekly stints at the Howard Millers, her sister would fill her in on Jacob Schwartz’s every burp; the boys outdid Bessie in scope with detailed reports on Mildred, Samuel, and the rest of the second floor. In this pincers of prattle, the Schwartzes were squeezed dry.
Oreo had only one thing left to do. “I have to go to the bathroom. Is it okay if I take a book in with me, Miss Hap?”
“Sure, chile, go on. Be a while yet ’fore she be back.”
Oreo stood in front of the bookshelf. She took her time. She looked long and hard. Finally, keeping in mind her late father’s penchant for dumb clues, she narrowed the likely volumes down to two. “Eenie, meenie, miney, mo, catch a cracker by the toe . . .” She realized how unfair that was and revised the parochial rhyme. “Eenie, meenie, miney, mo, catch a honky by the toe . . .” She still could not decide. In a fit of impatience, she grabbed both books from the shelf and went into the bathroom. Left-right, left-right, left-right went her heart for the second time in two days.
Oreo in the bathroom
She made her first choice: The Queen of Spades and Other Stories. She riffled through Pushkin’s pages. Nothing. She went through the book more slowly, this time looking for printed clues. Did the Table of Contents form an anagram, the first lines of the stories a coherent paragraph meant for her alone? Still nothing. She sighed and picked up the other book. This time she decided to leaf through page by page. Between pages 99 and 100 (symbolism again?), she found the sheet of paper. On it were two numbers—a telephone number and a span of nine digits, the latter separated, like a social security number, by dashes after the third and fifth integers. Under the numbers was one word: “Aegeus.” She looked ruefully at the book title again. She had to face it. Samuel’s brains had been in his tuchis. He had just had no class. The book was The Egg and I.
Oreo came out of the bathroom. She put the books back on the shelf. “I wonder what the weather’s going to be like,” she said for Hap’s benefit as she dialed the phone number on the sheet of paper.
The voice on the other end of the line said, “GI. May we help you?”
Oreo hung up. She had read an article about GI in a newsmagazine. Which one?
“What they say?” asked Hap from the kitchen.
“Partly sunny,” Oreo said abstractedly.
“Heard chance of rain on my radio this morning. They don’t know no more about weather than my big toe. Less. At least my big toe know when it gon rain.”
Oreo was not really listening. “I have to go in a few minutes. I was only hired until”—she looked at the clock on the far wall—“eleven.” That gave her ten minutes to go through the family telephone book.
“Guess she figured that’d give me time to fi
x this here mess,” Hap said.
“Guess so.” Oreo found what she wanted on a page headed “Emergency Numbers.” She copied down the three names and numbers. Then she looked in the white pages for the nearest branch of the public library. It was only a few blocks away.
Oreo said good-bye to Hap and the boys. As she closed the door to 2-C, she could hear Marvin telling Hap, “You know what? Anna was here yesterday and . . .”
Oreo on a pay phone
After an hour’s research at St. Agnes, she had found what she wanted. It had taken almost that long to find a pay phone that wasn’t broken. She made the first two calls knowing that, as usual, neither would be the one she wanted. But she did not know which number would be the last, and right, one until she had called the other two. The first of the three doctors turned out to be a dentist. Just before she hung up on his receptionist, Oreo told her that everything was fine—her cavity was at that very moment filling itself, and she no longer needed an appointment. The next doctor was Mildred Schwartz’s voodoo consultant, Dr. Macumba. Oreo hung up after telling him that for three sundowns he must avoid spicy foods and women who did not shave their legs. She heard him choke on what sounded like a hot sausage or a hairy leg.
The third doctor was the right one, Dr. Resnick, the Schwartzes’ family physician. She told him that she worked for the Schwartzes and that she desperately needed a strong prescription for her menstrual cramps, which were about to descend on her (or whatever direction they came from) that very day. He said, chuckling knowledgeably, that menstrual cramps were all in her head. She marveled at his knowledge, saying that just went to show how smart doctors were, because she had lo these many years thought the cramps were in her uterus. She pleaded with him to humor her, and he condescended to allow her to come to his office for a prescription. The mitzvoth he must perform daily, she exclaimed, thanking him, and was in his office in fifteen minutes. Five minutes after she arrived, she had a prescription for a placebo. She threw the top half into the nearest wastebasket. She also had an envelope and a sheet of stationery that she had stolen from Dr. Resnick on which were embossed, in dignified medico black, his name, address, and telephone number. She had one more stop to make before she went to GI.