by Scott Simon
“She wan’ to see, that's all!” Carlos Ponce shouted. “She said she just wan’ to see! She gave me twenties! So I open’ the top, an’ she whistled! She look it over, maybe fi’ seconds. I didn’ see nothin’ else! I didn’ see!”
But before his last screech could die, Carlos Ponce threw himself on one of the upturned chair legs. After a pause and a splat, the sharp tip, soaking and dripping with what looked like bubbling, dark red wine, rose up like some nightmare blossom through the back of Carlos’ neck, and a real scream—this time, not Cindi's—crashed and clanged against the foul brown walls.
The Krivas Museum of Lithuanian Civilization on south Pulaski had set out white-clothed tables in a large ground floor room, guarded by old suits of armor and unflinching male mannequins cradling crossbows. The wood-paneled walls were festooned with front pages from old Middle Europe newspapers, braying thick black headlines about Lithuania's occupations, humiliations, and massacres in bristling dark forests. The smells and sounds of bacon sputtering, onions frizzling, and butter burning grew in the room as staff brought out great, blistered blocks of kugelis, the Lithuanian dish of grated potatoes and beaten eggs. Men and women tucked paper napkins over their ties and necklaces.
Linas and Rosemary Slavinskas stood near the entrance; they each laced an arm around Sunny's shoulders.
“Lordship!”
“Mr. Acting Mayor,” said Rosie, her lips brushing his ear. She wore a chestnut cashmere sweater over sensationally slim black pants, and a string of beautifully burnished old Lithuanian amber around her coltish neck. Sunny held on to Linas at his elbows and leaned into his ear.
“We haven't had a chance to chat since your ‘I Have a Dream’ speech this morning,” he told him. “Very moving.”
“I once was lost, lordship, but now am found,” said Linas. “Was blind, but now I see—Sgt. Gallaher.”
Rosemary stepped forward to extend her hand first, and Sgt. Gallaher reached back with her own. Ten long fingers clasped, and Rosemary Slavinskas's curvaceous coral fingertips entwined with Maureen Galla-her's blunt, clear sergeant's nails that were kept short by departmental regulation.
“Sergeant, I've heard a lot about you. I'm Rosie.”
Sunny recalled that shaking hands was against operational procedure for a security officer. But Sunny supposed that all such rules were also subject to operational discretion.
“An honor.”
“And all of our children want to meet you, too,”
Sunny realized once more why Rosemary Slavinskas still beguiled her husband. Linas swiftly opened another route of conversation.
“The sausage over there is naturally gray. Made by a guy over on Archer Avenue,” he told them. “No artificial gray food coloring in the Twelfth Ward!”
Rosemary Slavinskas steered Sgt. Gallaher and Sunny through a thicket of seats toward a table in the front. Sunny found himself nodding at the headless suits of armor.
“The mayor came here for a dinner once,” Sunny told Sgt. Gallaher as he walked behind her. “After they'd reached an agreement on a southwest side expressway. Alderman Slavinskas told him the suits of armor were re-creations of the great Lithuanian knights of fourteen-ten who defeated the Teutonic Empire. The mayor said, ‘When I saw no heads, I assumed they were aldermen.’”
As he moved through clumps of folding seats and upraised faces, Sunny saw J. P. Mulroy from the 10th lift a wedge of kugelis into his ham slice of a face, Brock Lucchesi of the 13th tell his table the joke about why young Guiseppe always polished his Guccis before he went to dances, Collie Kerrigan of the 14th slip two twenties to a young waitress with braided blond hair and a tight-fitting red folk vest to bring their table a bottle of Asti Spumante, Tommy Mitrovic of the 21st hold somebody else's baby boy over his shoulders like a small, squiggling sack of fava beans, to feed the child the tip of his finger, and Jesus Flores Suarez of the 22nd tamp a layer of sour cream, like cake frosting, into place over the top of his kugelis.
“The girls can't make it?” asked Rosie.
“They're with friends,” Sunny explained.
“Boys?” she guessed.
“One. Apparently they share him.”
“Or they have a second they're not telling you about. And a third and fourth. The one you've met may just be to distract you from all the ones they don't want you to meet.”
“Is every member of the Slavinskas family such a strategic thinker?” asked Sunny.
“It was months before I told my mother about Linas.”
“Me too,” said Sunny.
They swallowed their laughter as young Henry Krivas III, whose father started the auto dealership in the building that now housed their museum, got behind a lone microphone and tapped his knuckles.
“Test-test. Test-test. Can you—is this—can you—”
“Yes!” several voices called out from the back tables.
“We're so glad that everyone could join us on such a beautiful spring day,” Henry Krivas said finally, as folding chairs tweeted and squealed as people squirmed around to see snow glazing over the large display windows.
A troupe of youngsters walked into the small, clear place just in front of the microphone: four girls and three boys, all in cinched red vests and tight green shorts. A recording of some small, brassy, cowbell band began to hiss from an audio player on a folding chair. The youngsters spun in place, reached down to the floor with their hands, and then pulled back their arms as if drawing back on a bow. “The flax harvest dance,” Rosie whispered behind her hand to Sunny. The city boys piled imaginary sheaves of flax into the encircling, oval arms of girls balancing figment baskets on their hips. After several choruses of pulling and piling, they all raised their hands over their heads and began to slide them down to their knees, and then back up, as on a loom. The wheat-haired boy dancing, stacking, and weaving in the middle had to stand on his toes and reach up to match the others. The audience chuckled sweetly, but the boy's face smoldered like an electric coil.
Henry Krivas returned to the front and had just begun to explain the meaning of each layer of the Tree Cake set off to the side when two men backed into the room, spilling snow from their shoes and elbows and casting bright lights across the doorway.
Vera Barrow, a bright orange scarf drawn with artful carelessness across her throat, a loden coat draping her shoulders, stood in the center of the ivory cloud of light. She smiled shyly, like a child entering her parent's bedroom.
“The sign outside says ‘All Welcome,’ doesn't it?” she asked. Linas, his hands folded at his belt, stood just outside the circlet of light. Sunny heard Rosie's chair creak behind him, and then a soft scurry of steps.
“I tried to buy a ticket,” Vera said in the sudden silence. “But my friend here said that he and Rosie wouldn't hear of it. Thank you for welcoming me. Thank you for welcoming our friends with the bright lights, too.”
Handclapping broke out as Vera took Linas's elbow and Rosie Slavinskas's hand and began to walk through the audience. The backsides of television cameramen grazed upraised chins and knocked over butter plates. When they reached the front of the room, Linas leaned over to whisper something to Vera in her ear that was on the other side of the microphone and then raised his hands to call for quiet.
“I've asked Alderman Barrow to say a few words. I've certainly had my say today,” and when Rosemary Slavinskas laughed, the room joined in; a few people clanged spoons against their saucers.
“So it's an honor to have the alderman say a few words to us,” said Linas. “She's a great friend—a great speaker—and we'd be honored to hear from her, on this day on which we remember the late mayor and look forward to the future. Alderman Barrow,” Linas said simply, and stepped back until he could feel a window ledge against his hip. Sunny could hear people unwrap cough drops, shake out small mints, and clear their throats to listen.
Vera had shaken her coat from her shoulders and handed it to Henry Krivas.
“I'll be brief,” she began softly. “
I know we'd all like to have some kugelis before the Bears game begins,” and as the audience chuckled, Vera turned up her brightest smile and slid her plain gold bangles back down her forearms, where they wouldn't clack.
(Sunny had never known Vera to express an interest in sports. Every time they had joined the mayor at a White Sox game, the mayor had made her fold her copy of the Wall Street Journal behind her scorecard, to look as if she were assiduously scouring pitching statistics. Sunny made admiring note of her punctiliousness.)
“I hope you will give me a few minutes to talk about why the mayor was so important to so many,” she said. “I know he didn't get quite so many votes on this side of Western Avenue. But I know that my friend Alderman Slavinskas respected him, as he said so beautifully today.”
The bone-dry electric light made Vera's copper face shine softly, and she pulled back her dark chiffon hair, as if drawing soft puffy ruffles around her face. Sunny heard voices all around him mutter, “Pretty. She's so pretty.”
“This city has become so beautiful,” said Vera. “Glittering, really. What a great and noble profile, all the tall buildings reaching skywards. Those grand, green parks. All the excitement.
“But sometimes,” she went on in a sharper voice, “in some neighborhoods, you feel that the skyline belongs to some other city. Right next to the lake—and it might as well be across the ocean. In some of our neighborhoods, people turn to each other and ask, ‘Do you know anyone who lives there? Do you ever go there?’ You can take your kids down there for Christmas. See Santa, get some popcorn and a hot chocolate. Maybe a couple times in the summer, too, they can splash around in the park, and hear some music. But for a lot of people in this city, that stunning skyline might as well be Tokyo or Rome. The moon. It's as real as a postcard. A lot of people in this city have to live in crumbling buildings. They have to try to keep the kids out of parks that have been taken over by gangs. We've got some people in this city who complain that the city council banned foie gras. Do you know it?”
Sunny heard murmurs of familiarity move around the room.
“A French delicacy. I swear—of all the things. They stuff a goose with grain until his little liver bursts. Some delicacy.”
The room rippled with laughter. Vera held out a hand, as if to call people back.
“Listen, we all eat some crazy things,” she said. “You don't have to be in Chinatown or France. I've had kindzius,”—a pungent Lithuanian sausage—“and I like them. Well, once anyway. But I did ask myself, ‘Why are you eating a pig's stomach?’”
Vera stepped back slightly from the microphone as laughter cascaded around her, and she deftly took the knot of her orange scarf and brought it over to the side of her neck.
“I had foie gras once. Visit France, and you have to try it. It's delicious. But I can live without it. You've got some people in this city who complain because they can't buy goose liver, and a lot of people who can't afford to buy bread and peanut butter. We can all be proud of the big, powerful, glamorous place this city has become. But we should also be embarrassed that we've got some people living in skyscrapers, and some others barely living in boxes.”
Vera turned slightly, so that her profile seemed to be a kind of prow that cut ahead of her words.
“We've got some people,” she began, “and I admire them, who get off a truck after hitchhiking here from Champerico. Or flying here from Guangzhou. Five years later, they're the foremen, and they've got two kids on the honor roll. Ten years later, they have their own company, and their kids are at Northwestern. I'm glad to have them. They make this city great. But we've also got people here whose families came up through slavery, bigotry, and poverty, and they haven't had a chance. They work hard. They struggle. But they haven't had a chance. Well to them—to us, if I may—our mayor stood tall in that skyline.”
Sunny could see glistening in some eyes around him, and others who had to look down at the table to hide their eyes. Vera's voice grew so soft, Sunny heard snow pinging softly against the room's long gray windows.
“The mayor made us feel that all those shiny big skyscrapers turned around and bowed to us. He made us feel that his shoulders were big enough to protect us, too.”
Vera stepped back and bowed her head slightly. Sunny heard people crinkling tissues and clearing coughs, and people pushing their chairs back slightly from the table, as if making room for another.
“Are there any questions?” Vera asked suddenly. Sunny looked for Linas, who was standing in grave respect over in a corner, and just as suddenly lifted his head in surprise. He had won points for withstanding questions from the press in the morning. But what could any reporter ask—about politics, his tax returns, some investigation or his personal life—for which Linas hadn't rehearsed an answer? It was risky to invite questions from the general public. They might ask a politician about space alien abductions, whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, or if O. J. Simpson was really guilty. They could make a politician look foolish for not knowing the price of a gallon of milk, or that Ohio is a one-way street eastbound. A politician couldn't rely on the prospect of mutually assured embarrassment when taking questions from regular people. An ordinary citizen could humiliate a politician without consequence.
For several seconds, there was mumbling, whispering, and jangling, nervous laughter. Finally, a woman's voice called out, “Do you know Oprah?”
Sunny could imagine Vera, in another mood and circumstance, training a steely smile on the woman to demand, “Do you think that all black people live in one big shoe on the south side?”
Instead Vera smiled lightly and easily.
“A little. We've had lunch. She's as lovely in person as she is on TV.”
“You ever get to go on one of those great Christmas shopping trips she takes her staff?” another voice asked. “New York, Milan …”
“No,” said Vera. “But I can't imagine better shopping than what we have right here on State Street.”
An elderly man, hunched as he stood, waved an old brown hat for recognition and Vera smiled down at him.
“I've got a question about—what are they?—TEZs. Have you ever heard them called Tax Exempt Zebras?”
Vera rewarded the room with a three-stop chuckle.
“Tax Enhancement Zones, and honestly, I've never heard that nickname,” she said.
“If you see just one, you see a zebra,” the man explained. “But put a bunch together, they're disguised. Half the empty lots they call TEZs belong to friends of the mayor, and friends of friends, and they just hide them in all the others.” The man clopped his inverted hat over imaginary plots of land, one, two, three, as he spoke. “Some guy starts to build something, and it doesn't work out—or was never meant to work out. Soon it's empty again. Worse—an empty lot with bricks and boards, just catching snow, and a bunch of crack addicts sleeping below. You let a guy stop paying taxes on a property, and he has no incentive to develop it. My name is Vincas, by the way, and I can say this at my age: You're a great dame.”
As laughs flickered through the seats and tables, Vera Barrow clasped her hands at her waist and pursed her lips thoughtfully.
“I've seen a few places like that, Mr. Vincas,” she said slowly. “But I've also seen a TEZ over in Shirley Watson's ward, on the site of an old abandoned building on Sixty-third. Now there's a preschool, a wedding dress shop, and”—she paused to smile—“an off-track betting parlor.”
“Two out of three,” someone shouted, and Vera pointed out toward the sound with a graceful index finger.
“Brings in more foot traffic than the wedding shop,” she laughed. “And over in Tommy Mitrovic's ward, there was an old abandoned garage on Seventy-ninth. We put through a bill to create a TEZ. Now some hospital has a walk-in health clinic on that spot, giving shots and lollipops to children, bandaging shins, and examining expectant mothers. It doesn't always work out. But you have to take a chance on neighborhoods.”
“Should race count in hiring?” a woman's voice
asked.
Vera expelled an audible breath into the microphone.
“Let me put it this way,” she began. “No. But. Sometimes I wish we could do what they do in symphony orchestras—audition people behind a screen, so you never know. Here's the but. We can't put our society behind a screen. We have people from all over the world here. You should be able to see that in the police, fire, bus drivers, teachers, and sanitation crews. I simply don't believe that if you hire the best people, you won't get a pretty good sprinkling of all kinds. But sometimes you have to make an effort.”
“Why have you never married?”
Mr. Vincas again. In the laughter and clatter of coffee cups getting topped and stirred, Sunny could hear new murmuration of pretty and charming move around the room.
“I was,” said Vera. There was an abrupt, startled quiet, before she added, “A long time ago. A nice man. But we were young. I don't talk about him, usually. He's married, children, happy. Been married a couple of times, actually,” she said, which seemed to unplug bottled nervous laughter in the room. “He and his family are entitled to privacy.”
An auburn-haired woman in her mid-thirties got to her feet. She had dressed for the day: gray sweater over a black top, stretchy gray pants and black rubber boots that squished and squealed slightly against the floor as she moved her chair with her feet to be able to face Vera.
“Miss Barrow, you went to Harvard, right?” As Vera nodded, the woman went on. “And I'm sure—anyone can tell—that you earned it.”
“My mother was a nurse's aide,” said Vera. “She's the one who earned it. I didn't really know my father,” she added.
“If you had a son or a daughter,” the woman began, then checked herself, “well, I'm sure they'd be as smart as you. But you're a LaSalle Street lawyer. You travel in the best circles. You wear fancy French scarves,” and as Vera clutched the orange knot at her neck and gave a comic grimace, the people at tables pushed back and laughed.