Beautiful Inez

by Bart Schneider

  Bibi was still sitting with her hands over her eyes. Jake stood up and paced around the waiting room. He lit a cigarette and looked to Inez for help.

  “Bibi’s saying the blessing over the shabbos candles.”

  Bibi, her eyes still covered, murmured her assent.

  “How will you light the candles?” Jake asked.

  “What do you mean?” Bibi asked.

  “With your hands sewn together.”

  That seemed to stump her. She thought about it a minute. “I guess I won’t be able to be a Jewish wife.”

  THE need to urinate forces Inez out of her stupor and into the bathroom. She brings the Princess phone with the long cord from the bedroom, thinking to call Sylvia. She needs to secure her bond with Sylvia before everything turns dark. As the phone rings, she imagines Sylvia’s apartment as she left it: dishes piled up on the kitchen counter, sheets scattered across the small bed, the floor of the bedroom strewn with half of Sylvia’s wardrobe. Inez had finally left in a hurry, panicked that if she didn’t leave Sylvia’s apartment she might find it hard to leave at all.

  Sylvia answers in a groggy voice.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “Yes. Is something wrong?”

  “No, no, I’m sorry. I missed you.”

  “You missed me?”

  “I shouldn’t have let it ring so long.”

  “What if I told you that I was dreaming of you, Inez?”

  “I wouldn’t believe you.”

  “You’re so skeptical.”

  “You’ve given me reason.”

  “Everybody asleep in your house?”

  “Except Jake; he’s out seeing someone tonight.”

  “What’s good for the goose.”

  “He brought home his father, set him up in the spare room, then took off for his ‘labor meeting.’ ”

  Inez stares at herself in the mirror, phone at her ear. She looks sad.

  “Inez? Are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here.” She sits back down on the toilet cover.

  “I thought I’d lost you.”

  “You haven’t lost me, but you should know that I’m sitting on the toilet seat.”

  “That puts things in perspective.”

  “I’m not going to the bathroom. I wouldn’t talk to you while I was going to the bathroom.”

  “So, the bathroom? Do you just happen to like the atmosphere?”

  “Privacy.”

  “Ah. You have your father-in-law there now.”

  “And the children. I once slit my wrists in here.”

  “You . . . what?”

  “I slit my wrists.” Inez listens to the gasp on the other end of the line and realizes that she’s said something that she shouldn’t have. “It was years ago. I was going through a hard time.”

  “Why are you telling me this now?”

  “We were talking about the bathroom. I remembered the incident, that’s all. There was no point to my telling you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “It never occurred to me.”

  “Inez, is this why you’re calling so late? If you’re thinking about harming yourself, I can come right over. I can catch a cab like that.”

  “No, no. It’s nothing like that. You have the wrong idea. Anyway, when I did that I was just fooling around.”

  “People don’t fool around with that.”

  “I was fooling around. There was hardly any blood. The cuts were superficial. I cleaned it up myself and didn’t even end up with any scars.” Inez remembers the running water as much as the blood. The two faucets, the hot and the cold—no updated plumbing in this house— each running its own pinkish swirl through the blood.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Years ago.”

  “When?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “Tell me.”

  She thinks of telling Sylvia a little about it. Isn’t this the type of thing you share with somebody you’re intimate with? Isn’t this a form of intimacy? Wouldn’t it be good to share, especially now that it’s over? She likes to think it’s over, even if it’s only in remission. How to begin? She thinks of herself as a child at the doctor—open your mouth, please, and say “ahhhh.”

  “I had trouble after Joey was born. I didn’t bounce back so well. The fact is, I couldn’t stand to hear him crying. There were other things, but I couldn’t stand the crying. The crying felt like little tack nails being pierced into my head. The same nails over and over again. First the mallet hammered them in and then the claw yanked them out. Over and over. The trouble is I already had Anna—she was six then. I didn’t need another baby. I wanted to cry all the time, but I didn’t. The baby was crying. I had no appetite. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t want anybody near me. No one. I didn’t want to play the violin. My husband was cheating on me. The baby was crying. The baby was always crying. I lay in bed and imagined myself in a box, lined with yards and yards of cotton. Beautiful white cotton. You can’t believe how much the baby cried.”

  And there, she’s said it, or said something; she’s certainly said too much. There’s a silence now on the other end of the line.

  “Oh, Inez, I’m so sorry.”

  Now to pretend that it hadn’t happened in earnest. “It wasn’t so bad.”

  “How can you say that?”

  Inez doesn’t answer. She’s already said enough.

  “How long did it last?”

  “Not long,” she lies, wondering if it has ever truly ended. Parts did. The need to cry.

  “Inez, this sounds serious. Did you ever see a professional about this? Did you talk to anybody about this?”

  Inez can feel Sylvia’s intensity on the end of the line. She hadn’t wanted this part of her life cracked open. You can’t share what’s most private. There are things you can’t share with anyone.

  “Is that why you called?” Sylvia says.

  “No, you just got me thinking of memorable times I’ve spent in the bathroom.” Inez forces a laugh.

  “This isn’t funny, Inez. When you think about suicide, what sort of ways do you imagine doing it?”

  “I don’t think about suicide.” The impostor is trying trick questions on her. When, sir, did you start beating your wife?

  “But you told me you slit your wrists, so you must have thought about it a lot of times before you tried that.”

  Perhaps Sylvia should have been an attorney.

  “Let’s say I have a tendency. But most people who have tendencies never act on them.”

  “Does Jake know about this?”

  “What’s to know?”

  “Maybe you should tell him.”

  “I’m telling you.”

  “Do you want me to tell him?”

  “No.”

  “I think he should know.”

  Inez shifts to a more assertive tone. “Look, this is something I’ve told you in confidence, Sylvia. I’m not going to tell people that you go around impersonating journalists and who knows what else.”

  “This is different.”

  “Trust me, I’m not going to do anything.”

  “I think Jake should know about this.”

  “Quit being an ass. Should I tell Jake what I do when I’m at your apartment?”

  “That’s up to you. I’m worried about you, Inez.”

  “You have no reason.” Inez stands again in front of the mirror.

  “Should I come over? I could grab a cab.”

  “You have nothing to worry about.”

  “Really?” Sylvia says, beginning to sob on the other end of the line.

  “No, nothing to worry about.” Inez could look at herself for five minutes without blinking. “Sylvia, let’s forget about this conversation.”

  “I can’t do that, Inez; I love you,” Sylvia says brokenly.

  “Listen, there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Not a thing. It’s old new
s.”

  “I told you that I went through this with my mother.”

  “I know.”

  “I couldn’t stand to go through it again.”

  “You won’t have to.”

  Inez is beginning to feel weary. Sylvia’s sobs have started to become a breathless event, a heaving oceanic business that seems like it could go on forever. Inez holds the phone away from her ears. Enough already. She puts the phone up to her mouth. “You’ll just have to trust me,” Inez says, holding her own eyes captive in the mirror. “Now, go to sleep, sweet one. Go to sleep, now.”

  Sylvia is still weeping. For crying out loud, Inez wants to say, enough.

  the mind lasso

  To Sylvia’s surprise, Hy is back at work on Saturday morning, decked out like an aging mannequin in a fancy men’s shop. She welcomes the normalcy of his being there, his unusual clothes notwithstanding, as her life grows dense with complications. She’s cried for days after her conversation with Inez, flooded with images of her mother. The halfhearted suicide attempts, almost always in the summer when Angela Bran, the good school nurse, found herself adrift with too much time on her hands. The wrists slit, then bandaged, then covered in long-sleeved shirts, unnatural in the hot Sacramento summer. For a few years after Sylvia moved out, her mother stopped cutting herself. Sylvia believed the worst was behind them, but then her mother’s experiments with pharmaceuticals began, and one Sunday morning in July, when they were supposed to meet for brunch, Sylvia found her mother dead. Angela Bran was in her bed, propped up against half a dozen pillows, a broad swath of ruby-red lipstick caked on her lips. Her mother, who despised makeup, had applied a thick foundation and a hideous blue-black eyeshadow. Beside the pills, her mother’s note:

  Dear Sylvia, the only hope for me is to become eternally somnolent, from the Old English, the Latin and French. Ah, the somnus of sleep. Forgive me.

  This morning, worn out, her eyes still red and bleary, Sylvia has finally managed to put her mother out of her head. It’s not so easy with Inez. How does she stop thinking about Inez offering her beautiful white wrists to a razor? The violinist’s casual confession was no accident. Suicide, it seems to Sylvia, is a form of attack, and before it’s launched comes the probe. Sylvia hasn’t decided on a response but thinks the first step is to back away, retreat to her comfort zone, be the voyant again.

  She sits at a Baldwin piano, one of her favorites. At least Hy has no desire to die at his own hand. As disease overtakes him and he grows steadily more breathless, he’ll probably wish he could live longer.

  It isn’t the typical Hy holding forth this morning, though. Despite the fact that he can barely breathe and that he should be in the hospital, a special edition of the man has shown up today. He’s draped in tailored clothes she’s never seen: a camel-hair sport coat atop a starched broadcloth shirt, the hue a fancy men’s shop might dub “coral.” Hy’s silver cuff links feature a pair of linked eighth notes that nicely match the freshly buffed silver treble clef medallion at the throat of his string tie. He’s wearing a pair of moss-green flannel slacks and well-shined loafers.

  “Look at you,” she says. “What a sight for sore eyes.” As she says this, she laughs to herself and wishes she had a pair of sunglasses to hide her eyes. Fortunately, Hy doesn’t notice her condition. It’s taken all his concentration to dress like a dandy and remain standing.

  “So you like the ensemble?” he asks.

  “Handsome.”

  Hy nods his head and winks at her—the cool cat. Clearly, he doesn’t want to be reminded of his physical collapse last week. Thus the fancy dress and the touching bit of bravado.

  Still, Sylvia can’t help asking, “What’s the occasion?”

  Hy inhales slowly through his nose, seeming to repeat the question to himself. “I intend to sell . . . a record number of pianos, so I thought it would behoove . . . behoove me to dress nicely for my public.” He steadies himself against the piano. “You hear about the . . . about the Cuban missile business going kaput?”

  “I did.”

  “If it was ever anything . . . in the first place. Anyway, all that bullshit, pardon . . . pardon the expression, is done. Everybody’s breathing a sigh . . . of relief. People are so goddamn happy to be . . . alive, they’re going to come out and buy . . . themselves a piano.”

  Shy Miller Beem, whom Hy has described as the worst salesman in the Western world, comes up to admire his boss. Miller, dressed in his usual gray suit, starts to say something, then just shakes his head.

  “You can’t believe how beaut . . . how beautiful I am, Miller?” Hy says.

  “No, I can’t.”

  “You’re not supposed to be sur . . . surprised.”

  “Miller’s always surprised,” Sylvia says. She opens a book of music and chords the intro to “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story.

  “Listen to her. . . . We’re going to sell a shit . . . a shitload of pianos today, Miller.”

  Miller backs away, blushing, and resumes his position across the showroom. Although not really a salesman, Miller looks good standing there in the suit, which fits him surprisingly well. One Saturday morning, before Hy came in, Sylvia heard Miller playing a Chopin sonata. She was surprised by the timorous fellow’s facility. He played the Chopin with more personality than she’d have imagined Miller could project, but as soon as he looked up from the keys and saw her standing there, he quit playing and slunk off the piano bench.

  Hy turns toward her now. “Why did I ever hire a shy faggot?”

  “Because you’re a kind man.” Sylvia turns a couple of pages, then segues into “Tonight.”

  Hy shrugs. He’s having a harder time breathing. He inhales slowly through his nose. It looks like he’s trying to invent a new way of smoking without smoke. “So, how’s that . . . that girl of yours, Sylvia?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “You going to keep her?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m not sure I can.”

  “She giving you . . . trouble? She doesn’t realize how . . . wonderful you are? She doesn’t deserve . . . you.”

  Sylvia lifts her hands from the piano and folds them in her lap.

  Hy puts a hand on her shoulder and for a moment she lays her cheek against it.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you,” she says and feels herself getting weepy again. “Let’s not get maudlin now, Hy.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  She can sense him watching her as she closes her eyes, the tears streaming.

  “Maud . . . maudlin isn’t good for sales. Listen, you are my pride . . . my pride and joy, Sylvia.”

  She opens her eyes and faces him.

  “So tell me . . . tell me what you really think . . . about my ensemble.”

  “It’s beautiful, Hy.”

  “Truth is, I was looking for a shirt . . . that was a redder red. Like . . . a boiled crayfish red. But I ended up settling for . . . what would you call this red?”

  Sylvia wipes her eyes. “Coral.”

  “Not . . . coral. That’s a girl’s color. Coral. Trouble with you . . . you don’t know anything about men’s clothes.”

  “You’re wrong about that. I bet you bought that shirt at Toole-James.”

  “How did you know?”

  “And the slacks, I’d say the slacks . . .” But Sylvia can see that Hy is distracted. A terrible weariness has come into his face. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” he says and digs for another breath. “Just going to sit for a minute . . . til somebody comes. You should start playing. You start playing, Sylvia, and sud . . . suddenly . . . customers. That’s your power.”

  Sylvia watches Hy slump onto the nearby bench of an ugly blond spinet.

  “What do you want to hear?” she asks.

  “My Fair Lady? You always . . . do a fine job with that.”

  Sylvia quickly launches into “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly.”

  Hy offers a wan smile from his piano bench.

&nbs
p; “Wouldn’t you feel better if you were home?” she asks.

  “I’ll be fine. I’m just going to . . . lie here a minute. Keep playing. Tell me one thing . . . How’d you know I got that shirt at Toole-James?”

  “I used to frequent Toole-James.”

  “Come on.”

  Sylvia segues into “With a Little Bit of Luck” and tells Hy about her infatuation with downtown. “I discovered Toole-James when I first moved to the city. The place is a little intimidating. But after I’d been there a couple of times, I dared myself to steal a souvenir—something extravagant.”

  “Stories.”

  The supine Hyman is dying in front of her eyes. She has two choices: to break down crying again or entertain him. Keeping her eyes on Hy, she segues into “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.”

  “Lovely,” Hy says and kindly prompts her. “So you’re a thief?”

  “Upon occasion.”

  Hy grins. “So what did you steal?”

  “Well, I was thinking of a hand-painted silk tie, or a pair of opal cuff links. You know how they leave the jewelry around on the countertops, just ripe for the picking.” She dives into “The Rain in Spain,” adding a rapid rhumba beat. “The men in Toole-James weren’t my type and I wasn’t theirs. Even the salesmen seemed impervious to me.”

  “Must have been blind.”

  “No, they took one look at me and decided that I’d more likely pull out a feather duster than buy the silk shirt that I was fingering. I ended up stealing a fake red turtleneck, a silk dickey. I stuffed it into a coat pocket.”

  Hyman laughs until he’s forced to sit up on the ugly blond piano bench and cough into his handkerchief. Getting ahold of himself, he says, “For a shiksa, you’re quite . . . quite the storyteller.”