“You are not to lay a finger on Sukie’s book,” Manny Smilow says, moving threateningly into the center of the kitchen. “No way. Not one finger. Not even for one minute.”
As Mr. Smilow moves deliberately and theatrically toward Max, Happy begins rushing around in a circle, yapping at her own tail rather than confronting her conflicting loyalties.
“I wouldn’t trust you with the garbage,” Mr. Smilow snarls. “And I’m glad you deserted my Sukeleh. Glad. Glad you divorced her like some Muslim saying it three times. I’m glad: And do you know why?” he thunders, leaning forward on the tips of his shoes so he is inclined into Max’s face. “Because of the settlement. Yes, the divorce settlement. Because the settlement says half the house belonged to Sukie and the other half to my grandchildren and you’re out, mister.” Now he begins to waggle a finger in Max’s face. “You’re stone cold out of the picture. You won’t see a penny of the proceeds from this house. Directly it goes to the children, with me as the only executor.”
Max is not exactly cowering. Rather, he is contracting into himself, physically withdrawing, reducing the provocation of his body from Mr. Smilow’s sight.
“I thought,” Max begins rather bravely, “I thought maybe I should move back in here so that when the kids come home from school for summer vacations …”
“No way, Jose.” A sheer spray of sputum floats out of Mr. Smilow’s mouth. “Over my dead body, you’ll move in here.” He is panting as he speaks. “We will sell this house. We will realize the profits from this place. And from whom did you get the down payment in the first place, mister? Huh? Tell me that. Tell me where you got ten thousand dollars in ice-cold cash? Huh?”
“Well, they’ll just have to stay in my apartment,” Max warns. “And it’ll be crowded because it’s only a one-bedroom, Pa—I mean, Manny. A very small one-bedroom.”
“Then maybe your girlfriend will have to take a room somewhere else. Did you ever think of that?”
Now Mr. Smilow whips around, whirling on the heels of his shoes. But he glides too fast, swivels too hard, and completes the circle so that he is back facing Max once again.
“I only wish Sukeleh could see what a good property settlement we arranged for her. It’s a better deal than a will. And one more thing, mister,” Manny Smilow bellows into Max’s face. “That book of hers comes to me.” He begins to poke himself in his chest with a blunt forefinger. “Directly to me. Me. Do not pass Go. Directly to me. And then I will see how to handle that book, not you. Me. The father of the bride.”
At that, he begins to howl with great gasping sounds. By the time Rosetta reaches him, he is rocking on his feet. I can see his knees begin to buckle, but his sister grips him around the waist and, draping his arm around her neck, leads him out of the kitchen into the dining room.
Slowly, Max turns around and pastes his forehead against one of the cupboard doors.
The rest of us sit in silence, listening only to the tinny hum of the tired little window air conditioner.
At this moment I can feel Sukie’s presence more keenly than at any other time since my arrival. Her spirit seems to be tiptoeing around the kitchen, debating how to bring some accord into her family so she can be buried in peace.
I feel tears touching my cheeks and I lower my face so that no one will be able to read my eyes.
“Listen,” Joanne says in a choked voice. “I’m going to go find Jeff. I’m going to tell Mr. Smilow that I’ll take responsibility for getting that manuscript into his hands.”
Max whips around. “Jesus, Joanne. How can you give that old man a manuscript no one’s seen? Who knows what’s in there? Who knows what she wrote? She was pretty unbalanced there for a while. He might not be up to reading what she wrote. Why should he suffer any more? Why should he be subjected to Sukie’s craziness?”
“It won’t be him who will suffer,” Elaine predicts ominously.
Joanne walks out into the dining room without responding.
Seconds later, Rosetta returns to the kitchen. “I’m going to take my brother back to the hotel,” she says. “He hasn’t slept and I think he should have a nap. You’ve all been very nice.” She retrieves Mr. Smilow’s hat and jacket, as well as her own belongings. “He says I should say goodbye and he’ll be calling up over here later when”—she casts a long look at Max—“everything’s quieter.”
Then she leaves through the swinging door.
Several minutes pass in silence. Joanne returns.
“I’m going to drive them back to the hotel,” Max says suddenly.
“You think they’ll take a ride from you?” I ask.
“I’ll make them,” Max responds. Then he kicks open the door and disappears.
“God. That was pretty upsetting,” Elaine says flatly, after we observe a few moments of silence.
“Really,” Joanne agrees.
The scene between Mr. Smilow and Max had caused a general rise in my body temperature which is now triggering a run of hot flashes. Sustained agitation seems to activate and aggravate my condition.
“How did Sukie get along with her dad?” Norman asks in his professional psychiatric voice.
“I never heard her complain,” Elaine responds quickly. “And I roomed with her at Chicago. I think she sort of liked bouncing off him, if you know what I mean. He was her straight man. Whatever he liked, she didn’t. Except living on the edge. She learned that from him. That’s where he lived—with all his gambling and making book and promoting boxing matches and stuff. He was a real high roller and he spoiled Sukie like crazy. She had seventeen cashmere sweater sets when she moved into the dorm. I remember watching her unpack them. They were all those 1950s Day-Glo colors. But I know one thing. She always suspected her dad of having a long-term ‘thang’ with his secretary who was always hugging and kissing Sukie when she went to visit her dad’s office. Sukie said she used to get sick from the secretary’s perfume. I know it made her feel bad for her mother. She was crazy for her mother.”
Now Joanne, who seldom speaks about herself and even less frequently about her family, begins talking. Standing near the back door, she is looking out through the window into the past, just as Mr. Smilow had done.
“My dad really faded after the war ended,” Joanne says mournfully. “He had a bad leg so he didn’t get drafted; instead he got this really great job in a war plant outside Boston, and he made more money than he ever did before. Or ever did again. My mom worked in a plant too, so we really had loads of money. But as soon as the war was over, my dad lost that job and never found another decent one the rest of his life.”
Joanne sighs as if—forty years later—her original pain was still perfectly preserved.
“We had seven kids to support. And I can remember when everyone in the family was sitting around the kitchen table crying because Roosevelt died. I was so scared. I didn’t understand what was happening. I thought the Germans were coming. And every Sunday morning my mother made all of us go to mass with her to pray for a victory in Europe.” Joanne turns back toward us and laughs. “But I think when Japan surrendered she was a little bit sorry.”
When we were little girls, someone named FDR died and we saw people crying whom we had never seen cry before. I lived in Marshall, Minnesota, then and I remember my mother throwing herself across her bed and lying there all crooked and making funny noises. When her parents got home they sat next to each other on the sofa and cried. It seemed that after the Great Depression and the Second World War, they all needed a Big Daddy as much as I did. But my father was in Europe and I never believed he would come home. That’s why it scared me to see everyone else that scared.
Some of us lived in the country on family farms or in small towns with only one movie theater which, like shopping in Moscow, eliminated any decision-making. When my father came home after the war we moved to Minneapolis, where he taught at the university, and then I became a city girl. It wasn’t until I went to Radcliffe, though, that a window opened up in my life. To get ther
e I took the train from Minneapolis to Boston and wore a pair of white gloves the whole way. My mother also gave me a fresh pair in an envelope, which I was supposed to put on right as the train reached Boston. I did that.
And that was the last time I did what my mother told me to do. Once I got to Radcliffe, I met and hung out with students who had been red-diaper babies, gone to the Little Red Schoolhouse, run for student government at their high schools, and eventually gone on to take Ph.D.’s in history at the University of Wisconsin. Having grown up in the Midwest, I was very different from the Eastern girls. I had stayed home practicing togetherness right up until I took that train to Boston.
Sweetpea.
That’s what my daddy used to call me when he came home from the war.
What did you do in the war, Daddy?
He would throw me up high in the air, but I knew his big hands would catch me—would save me from a shrieking plunge into the abyss. Always. Forever. He would stop my free fall through life. He would never drop me. He would never let me down.
Once, when we lived near the campus in St. Paul, some professor friends of his came over to visit. I was playing across the street in my green, green park and when he came to fetch me, he sat down on a bench to comb my curls before taking me home to show me off to his friends. He held me between his knees and gripped my hair by the roots so I wouldn’t feel him untangle the ends. He pulled my hair much harder than my mother did.
When we were little girls, we wanted to be little boys.
There. It’s said. It’s not so strange. Who wouldn’t rather be a Have than a Have-Not?
When we were little girls, we wanted to be wanted.
Little daddy’s-girls-with-curls needed attention, affection and approval at all times. Little daddy’s girls listened to pop songs and played only zero-sum games. It’s all or nothing at all.…
When we were little girls we wanted to grow up to be mothers.
Some enchanted evening, you will see a stranger, you will see a stranger across a crowded room, and then you will know.…
It wasn’t wee-wees we wanted as much as the promise, potential and power our brothers and the other little boys on our block possessed. So we swallowed our stinky codliver oil and turned into tomboys—first on trikes and then on bikes. We spent our childhoods proving and improving ourselves. Once when I was going to play marbles in the park with the little boy triplets from across the street, I rubbed some dirt on my face first. That was my dark dirty little secret.
Together we all played war. We surrounded houses, invaded backyards, attacked alleys, conquered parks and climbed crab apple trees to raise our flag à la Iwo Jima. Together we all played doctor; I, of course, only planned to become a nurse. Together we all played marbles, baseball and kick-the-can. When we got tired we would stop and listen to hot news flashes about the war over the radio.
Suddenly I realize Norman is looking at me with quizzical eyes that suggest I have something to hide. For some reason I suddenly feel compelled to volunteer some story:
“Once when Leonard and I were here in Washington, it was in the early sixties, Max and Sukie took us out drinking with a novelist they knew named Billy Lee and his wife, who was very beautiful. Her name was Nadia. Actually, the Lees had been separated for quite a while, but Nadia had flown in from California ‘to stake her claim,’ as Billy said, because he had just sold one of his books to the movies.
“So we all went out to a beer garden called Harrigan’s, down in Southwest by the river, to celebrate. It was a really hot, humid night in August and we sat outside in the garden behind the bar where we could hear the boats on the river and the cars speeding past on Maine Avenue and we just kept drinking more and more beer and getting drunker and drunker and talking and laughing and having a great old time.
“And then all of a sudden Nadia kicked off her shoes and climbed up on top of our table. It was all slick and slippery from spilt foam, but she began twirling around and around. She was crying these big beer tears and twirling so that her skirt, it was a dirndl, flared up straight out around her thighs. She had these beautiful long legs that were all tan and this wonderful shiny brown hair that went swinging out like a velvet ribbon around her head when she twirled. And the whole time she was half-singing and half-crying, ‘I want a Big Daddy. Oh, I want a Big Daddy. That’s what I want. Oh, so bad. Just a Big, Big Daddy.’”
“Most women want a Big Daddy,” Norman appends pedantically. “It’s a universal phenomenon.”
None of us bothers to respond to him. None of us looks at him.
We are all staring off into space, seeing some larger truth.
CHAPTER 15
“Well, I certainly don’t want to go running around town looking for Jeff,” Elaine states flatly, when Max reappears.
“No one said you had to,” Joanne snaps back. “Diana and I can do it.”
“And me,” Max adds. “In case he gives you any trouble.”
“He’s not going to give us any trouble,” Joanne says sharply. “But you can come if you want to.”
“I’ll just hang around here, if you don’t mind,” Norman says to Elaine with studied nonchalance.
Elaine doesn’t reply, but she looks pleased.
Joanne and I go upstairs to change clothes. Once again I rifle through Sukie’s closet and this time pick a soft white cotton dress with small rosebuds on it. If Sukie could buy something with flowers on it, she always did. I put the dress on and feel it hug me as gently as a friend.
When I meet Joanne in the hallway, she looks at me with a mildly critical expression, and suddenly I wonder if my borrowing Sukie’s clothes troubles her. She is wearing a loose white cotton shirt and her skintight jeans, the crotch seam of which disappears into the seam of her crotch. I cast a glance toward her groin and then neither of us mentions each other’s outfit.
Max leads Joanne and me up the block to where he’s parked his car and very purposefully I climb into the back seat so Joanne won’t feel I expected to pair off with Max in the front. There’s little traffic today and we’re even able to park on the same block where Jeff lives. The door of the Peppermill is open and inside I can see a restless, late-Sunday-afternoon crowd huddled around the bar.
Max is still pounding aggressively on the steel door of 3203 when it suddenly swings open to reveal Jeff standing at the bottom of a narrow staircase. He is wearing a fresh white shirt with the same jeans and boots he wore yesterday. Although clearly startled to see us, he doesn’t seem alarmed.
He stares at Max for only a moment before extending his hand.
“Hey, you’re Max. I’m Jeff Conroy. This is rough.”
Max shrugs his agreement.
“Jeff, Sukie’s dad’s in town and he wants to see Sukie’s manuscript,” Joanne says a bit precipitously. “I came to get it for him.”
Jeff looks at Joanne and me, and then returns his gaze to Max again. Obviously troubled by the possibility that it may be Max rather than Sukie’s father who wants the manuscript, Jeff hesitates. It is clear he intends to protect Sukie’s book from any danger, especially that of a worried former husband. His only loyalty is to Sukie.
“Hey,” he says softly. “Come on up. Let’s have a glass of wine. Funny you came by right now. I just got back from the funeral home. I went to see Sukie.”
The three of us freeze.
Both Max and Elaine had gone to the funeral home and not viewed Sukie. Neither Joanne nor I had even considered it. So now it is Jeff, the Vietnam vet, who calmly announces he’s seen Sukie. Perhaps he’d seen enough dead bodies in Vietnam to be able to view death with impunity. Perhaps he felt closer to Sukie’s corpse than any of the rest of us because he had been the lover of her body. Whatever. His loyalty diminishes us.
Silently we file up the dirty, uncarpeted staircase with Jeff in the lead and Max at the rear.
Jeff’s apartment looks like a set for a movie about a war-weary, war-ruined Vietnam vet in search of his MIA self. It’s a studio apartment with
two undressed front windows offering a view of M Street, a row of kitchen appliances, a very large aquarium, and an open door to the toilet against the rear wall. And that’s it. The room is furnished with a variety of battered tables, sofas and chairs. There are books everywhere—stacked and piled, opened and closed, shelved and floored. Tall piles of newspapers erupt like islands on the woven-hemp South Seas rug.
The room is deadly hot. The air is motionless. There is no sign of an air conditioner. Indeed, the heat is so oppressive that it seems to isolate us from the city outside.
Jeff walks over to a table displaying an assortment of bottles and asks each of us our preference. By now Max and Joanne have selected chairs in which to sit, so I slump into a beat-up sofa and wait for Jeff to bring me a tumbler full of wine.
“How’s her dad doing?” he asks me.
“Just fair.”
“And what about David and Carol?” he asks Max.
Max flushes. I know he views Jeff’s question as impertinent and I can see him struggling to control his temper before he comes up with a nonresponsive, logistical answer.
“They’re probably in New York with my parents by now. Carol’s boyfriend will be driving them down here tomorrow. We couldn’t fly home together because there weren’t any flights with three seats available.”
I can see he despises the defensiveness that’s crept into his voice. He knows Sukie must have delivered extensive and damaging evidence against him, so now he must shadow-box with what he imagines Jeff knows or thinks about him. But Jeff senses Max’s discomfort and retreats since, on the issue of the kids, he has no grievance. It is only in terms of Sukie that he feels himself more legitimate than the husband who left her.
Meanwhile, Joanne has risen again to reconnoiter the room, inventorying the fish in the aquarium, Jeff’s various military souvenirs and the large Peace posters that are handsomely framed and nicely installed on his walls.
“How long were you in Vietnam, Jeff?” she asks.
“Two and a half years,” he answers in a terminal tone. “From ’69 to ’71.”
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