Beautiful Inez

by Bart Schneider

  “Maybe she spent too long pretending that she was a reporter.”

  “Ha, ha,” Sylvia says.

  She turns to watch an older couple, dressed in clothes that look left over from the Depression. The man wears a brown suit that has gone shiny. A soiled gray homburg rests on his knee. His trousers are too short for him, exposing his hairless white legs. He sits with his head bowed. Thin strands of his white hair gleam with hair oil. His wife, a woman in thick spectacles, wears a homely, putty-colored suit that looks like she sewed it herself, sometime after her eyes began to fail. Atop her small, animated face is a queer black hat overwrapped mummy style with a length of pink lace. The hat is adorned with a bunch of wooden cherries. It looks like a proper place for birds to nest. The old couple are huddled around a small table with a middle-aged man. The prodigal son. The man, decked out in a resident’s blue smock, is surprisingly handsome. He seems to be staring at the foot of air above his mother’s hat. Maybe he’s watching sparrows fly in and out. His mother is talking at him non-stop, as if her banter might awaken his attention.

  “You know how Audie is. She can’t ever make up her mind about anything. Should she go back to work? Should she go back to school? Should they trade in their car? I told her that with a husband like that somebody’s got to make up their mind. Somebody needs to set a policy. You should see that house, Jack. The floors are sticky. I can’t stand sticky floors. I think it’s fruit cocktail or soda pop from the kids. The thing is, Audie never seems to notice.”

  Her husband lifts his head and, without looking toward either his wife or his son, says: “Enough about Audie.”

  “He never likes to talk about Audie,” says the woman in the hat, indicating her husband. “I don’t know what it is about him and Audie.”

  The son doesn’t seem to know either. He appears content to stare at the sparrows Sylvia’s imagined for him, flying in and out of his mother’s hat.

  Elsewhere in the room, another couple, perhaps in their mid-thirties—the man neat in a crisp white shirt, knit tie, and blazer, the woman in the telltale inmate’s smock—sit holding hands and whispering. Sylvia notices a trim little bald-headed man sitting at a small table with a deck of cards. He has the look of a plumber, a man who, because of his size, specializes in getting into tight spaces underneath the sink. In his present residence, he’s had to trade his pipe wrench for a deck of cards. He shuffles and then cuts them repeatedly, making Sylvia think of a man washing and drying his hands ad infinitum at the kitchen sink. She wonders if the lapsed plumber ever has a playing partner, if he ever deals the cards. In another world, Sylvia would sit down at the table across from him and say, How about a hand of rummy? Are we playing five-card stud, or aren’t we? I’m in the mood for a little spit-in-the-ocean.Just as she thinks this, the man quits his shuffling and looks up at her, smiling, as if to say, What’s your fancy?

  BIBI’S hair has turned gray since she last saw her. Inez wonders if that’s why she has it cut so short. She is forty-five now, so you can’t exactly call her prematurely gray. Bibi smiles when she first glimpses her baby sister. It’s hard to say whether it’s Inez or her violin case that’s got Bibi smiling. A large, muscular nurse—Mrs. Carlentini—brings her into the visitor’s room. Inez, conscious of Sylvia sitting beside her, stands up quickly without making a reference to her friend.

  Despite the gray hair, Bibi looks girlish. It may be the way she’s biting her lower lip, or perhaps it is just how slight she seems next to Mrs. Carlentini. As a young woman, Bibi hadn’t been attractive. Her face was pocked during adolescence, her eyes gray and beady, and, despite having a small face, she’d inherited their father’s hawk nose. But now, at middle age, after salting away the last decade in an institution, she looks cute, even buoyant.

  “You brought it. I never thought you’d bring it,” Bibi says, nodding toward the violin in its case.

  “Sounded from your letter like you felt like hearing some music.”

  She smiles. “You got my letter, Nez.”

  “I did.”

  Inez hurries over to greet her sister, but Bibi makes no motion to come forward.

  “How are you, Bibi?”

  “Me?”

  Inez can see that her sister’s attention has shifted to Sylvia.

  “This is my friend, Sylvia Bran.”

  Sylvia stands and smiles.

  “At first . . . at first I thought you were one of us. But then I didn’t recognize the shoes and you’re not wearing . . .”

  “How do you do, Bibi?”

  Her sister doesn’t respond at first. Mrs. Carlentini has backed away, allowing Bibi to be the guest of honor. Bibi, still five feet away, looks alert, her head held high, her hands folded proudly in front of her like an athlete poised to receive a medal. She begins to nod her head in a quick, rhythmic way, as if she were counting out a piece of music in an eccentric time signature. Once she settles into her tempo, the nodding becomes less pronounced and she entertains Sylvia’s greeting. “I’m fine, thank you. I’m very excited to see Inez with her violin.”

  Inez puts her arms around Bibi.

  “You’re like mother,” Bibi says, immediately freeing herself from Inez’s embrace. “She was a big hugger. At least that’s what Daddy always said. ‘She was a traitor to her race,’ he said. ‘Svedes are not supposed to hug people.’”

  Bibi laughs at that. A fat bouquet of a laugh that Inez fears will go out of control, but Bibi quickly cuts it off. She assumes their father’s voice again. “ ‘A Svede wants to be quiet, gloomy, and resigned to his fate, which is quiet and gloomy.’ ”

  Inez has forgotten how good a mimic Bibi is. She can hear their father’s voice in the room.

  “That’s why they named you Inez.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They wanted you to be a hugger, so they came up with an exotic name. You were supposed to be a Mediterranean hugger.”

  “You made that up, didn’t you, Bibi?”

  Bibi shakes her head. “Me?” But Bibi can’t keep herself from grinning. She has a better sense of humor than Inez does. That’s something else Inez has forgotten.

  “Well, I don’t think the name worked. I’m a real Swede.”

  “But you just hugged me.”

  “And I didn’t want to let you go.”

  That is true. The very smell of Bibi brings back her childhood. Inez holds her again and pokes her nose against her neck. Bibi tolerates her for a moment and then stands up a little stiffer. Inez lets go reluctantly. How has she allowed Bibi to stay so many years in this place?

  BIBI takes a deep breath, as if to cleanse herself of the physical contact. Then, like a proper hostess, she turns toward Sylvia, who is still standing.

  “Thank you for coming to visit me at dear old Napa State.”

  “I’m very happy to meet you,” Sylvia says.

  “Napa State is what people call it here, as if the hospital were their alma mater, but most of us will never leave.”

  Sylvia walks over and shakes Bibi’s hand.

  “Thank you.” Bibi takes a hard look at Inez, shifts her eyes to Sylvia, and then back to Inez. “Do you still have your husband?”

  “Of course.” Sylvia is right, her sister has figured them out in a minute.

  “Is he still funny?”

  “I guess you could say he’s funny.”

  “She doesn’t think he’s funny,” Bibi says, nodding. “Maybe they stop being funny when you’re married to them. I wouldn’t know. But I always thought he was very funny. He was part clown, a good clown.”

  Sylvia looks from Bibi to Inez—Bibi may not have her sister’s beauty, but she does have a twinkle in the eye.

  “One time,” Bibi says, her face brightening with a memory, “Jake walked across the kitchen floor with a raw egg balanced on the bridge of his nose.”

  “And then he dropped it,” Inez says.

  “But he made it nearly across the room.”

  “Really?” Sylvia says, catc
hing Bibi’s excitement.

  “Yes!” Bibi exclaims.

  Inez wonders if she should have been satisfied that Jake nearly made it across the kitchen floor before the egg fell to the linoleum and shattered.

  “I always wanted to try that,” says Bibi.

  “What?” Inez says, losing herself in the absurdity of the conversation.

  “Walking across the room with an egg balanced on the bridge of my nose. I think I have the nose for it.” Bibi giggles for a moment, then smiles demurely.

  “You better practice with a hard-boiled egg,” says Inez.

  “Where’s the fun in that?” Sylvia asks.

  Bibi smiles at Sylvia. “That’s just what Jake told me not to do when I said I wanted to try it. He said, ‘Live a little, Bibi. Get yourself a dozen eggs you’re willing to sacrifice and, for God’s sake, practice without a net.’”

  It’s been years since they’ve seen each other, but here they are, standing together in the halls of Napa State Hospital, talking about Jake and his famous raw egg trick. She begins to hum the Schubert lied to herself —everything in this life is precious—but forces herself to look into Bibi’s open face.

  Mrs. Carlentini steps toward them. “If you’d like to go into the music room, that might be a nice place to visit.”

  “Do you think we could have some tea, Rose?” Bibi asks.

  “Yes, that can certainly be arranged.”

  benediction

  AFTER Bibi introduces her guests to Rose Carlentini, they all go down the hallway to a room with an upright piano, a scarred black beast of an instrument. A stack of folding chairs leans against one of the walls, which are checkered with old travel posters from great music cities in Europe.

  “So let’s have some music!” Mrs. Carlentini says.

  “I’d be happy to play,” Inez says.

  “She’s very good,” Bibi says, beaming.

  “I’m sure she is, Bibi.” Mrs. Carlentini turns toward Inez. “How would you feel about some of the others coming in to listen?”

  Inez looks at Bibi.

  “It’s okay with me,” Bibi says. “Some might get up and start walking around. Some may hum along with you.”

  “That’s fine, as long as no one insists on playing my instrument.”

  Rose Carlentini nods. “Of course not; we’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  “My friend Sylvia plays the piano,” says Inez.

  “Not on that instrument,” Bibi says, beginning her manic nod again.

  “Is it that bad?” Sylvia strolls up to the black monstrosity and, crouching in front of it, picks out the melody, complete with a few dead tones, to “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly.”

  Inez thinks of the opening lyric: “All I want is a room somewhere.”

  MRS. CARLENTINI sets up some folding chairs as a little flock wanders into the music room. Inez counts sixteen people in the audience as she tunes up.

  During the war, Inez occasionally played at the veterans’ hospital in the Presidio. It was a far more troubling experience than this. She was in her early twenties then and wasn’t prepared for so graphic a view of the atrocities of war. Men with craters in the middle of their faces, or with heads that seemed strangely shrunken, men who limped or stumbled on crutches or even strolled into the social room in government-issued terry cloth robes smoking cigarettes, as debonair as walking ghosts. Once in a while, a man would sing out with a wolf whistle while she took out her violin. They probably would have been happier if she’d stripped for them. As she played, a steady stream of cripples were wheeled in and out. A good half of them were only shells of themselves, on respirators, with tubes jutting out of everywhere. Inez did her best to play to a single man in the room—there was always at least one whose eyes would brighten to the music and let it take him to a better place.

  It isn’t difficult to find her ideal listener in the music room at Napa State—Bibi sits by herself in the middle of the first row. Witnessing Bibi with her eyes already closed and her lips pushed out, in anticipation of musical rapture, Inez remembers her sister’s girl face, open, rosy with good cheer, always eager to listen to Inez’s latest recital piece. She remembers, as early as ten, being contemptuous of her big sister. Giving a Mozart recital at a mansion in Pacific Heights, she noticed Bibi beside her father in the front row, her hands clutched in her lap, her head swaying side to side. Was her sister simpleminded? Had she inherited their father’s capacity for holding one, and only one, idea or pleasure in her head at once? Was there truly nothing in the world that made her happier than listening to her little sister play the violin?

  SYLVIA has found a seat angled off to the side. It’s the perfect spot for a voyant—she not only has a good view of the performer but can see into the faces of most of the audience as well.

  As Inez tunes her instrument, Bibi smiles up at her. Somebody in the room is humming along with Inez as she tunes. Sylvia decides it’s the middle-aged son of the ancient people. He has his head down, and his bespectacled mother, the one with the kooky hat dangling wooden cherries, is bent over him, whispering. The man has a decent ear. Sylvia can hear him accurately run the fifths with Inez. The high E flutters in his throat long after Inez is finished with it. The lapsed plumber, without his deck of cards now, is sitting a couple of rows ahead of her. Again, he meets her eye. He has something to tell her, but it will have to wait.

  Inez stands, with the violin at her side, smiling at her little audience. “Hello, my name is Inez Roseman. Some of you may know that I’m Bibi’s sister, her baby sister.” This brings some general laughter to the room. Sylvia notices the worried husband clutching the hand of his smock-clad wife.

  “I was thinking of playing a little Fritz Kreisler for you today and then a little bit of Mendelssohn and Bach. Usually, you think of Kreisler as dessert music meant for the end of a program, but today I’m going to play the Kreisler first. Let’s have our dessert before the meal and if we want more afterward, we can do that too.”

  Inez’s small audience purrs with pleasure as she speaks to them.

  “When I was studying violin, my teacher used to tell me stories about Fritz Kreisler. Kreisler was even more famous as a violinist than as a composer. He had theories about practice that my teacher liked to tell me. I had a problem with practicing: I practiced too much. Bibi can testify to that. I stood on a spot in my room and practiced six, seven, eight hours a day. I wore a hole in the rug practicing. I wanted to be perfect. I’m sorry to report, I didn’t make it.”

  The humor of Inez’s remark, it seems to Sylvia, is lost on her audience, but that doesn’t seem to faze her.

  “ ‘Practice,’ according to Fritz Kreisler, ‘is a bad habit. Too much practice and you’ll lose the bloom of your musical imagination.’”

  Why, Sylvia wonders, has Inez grown loquacious? What is she afraid of?

  Sylvia turns to see a trail of latecomers, residents who aren’t sure whether they want to be in the room, let alone sit in an audience, lurk nosily by the door. As Inez drops her violin to her side to wait for a measure of calm, Mrs. Carlentini rises to sort them out.

  Inez stands still on her spot. Sylvia tries to imagine Inez when she was young. Did the girl who wanted to be perfect wear her wheat-blond hair in a long braided ponytail? Did she ever sneak a stick of gum into her mouth when she practiced, or entertain ignoble thoughts while her fingers whizzed up and down the fingerboard? Was there ever a time when little Inez was just a girl, not a prodigy yet, but a girl, with a girl’s sometimes lavish or stunted imagination? Was she ever foolish or sad or penurious? Did she ever sit on her father’s lap and play with the things inside his shirt pocket? Did she have a baby doll or a dollhouse or a pouch of lucky jacks or a secret collection of books? Did she ever steal things from her sister? Did she ever pick her nose or leave a snotty handkerchief in her sister’s underwear drawer? Did she think of going to China as a missionary? Did she enjoy dangling her legs on the toilet? Did she ever get so angry that she walked out
into the garden on damp mornings in search of snails to crush under her Mary Janes? Did she ever fart in a room and secretly enjoy the smell?

  As Inez glances toward her now, Sylvia feels her lips pucker into a single word: courage, from the Old French corage, which reminds her of another word that you’d think was a cousin of the first: corsage, a bright posy, an orchid, the bloom of her imagination. She would love to pin a corsage to the front of Inez’s dress. Instead, she mouths the first word three times.

  INEZ has yet to play a note of music, but the little audience is already restless. Can you blame them? Rose Carlentini, with the help of a Negro aide, has seated a few stragglers and is wrestling a combative patient named Esther out of the room. “Esther, it’s going be fine, Esther,” purrs Rose Carlentini gently, leading her out. A wiry-haired man in the third row has begun to whimper.

  Under her straw hat, Sylvia is blowing kisses. Either that or she’s saying something that Inez doesn’t understand. Dear Sylvia, offering comfort. Always offering comfort. The last time she and Sylvia were alone wasn’t long after the old man had peeped at her. Inez hadn’t dared tell Jake, but she told Sylvia in detail about the horror of meeting Isaac Roseman’s eyes as she climaxed. “I was thinking about your tongue, Sylvia. It was so awful to see the old man when I opened my eyes.”

  Sylvia had prepared a fabulous lunch for that day. First she’d served a pungent round of white cheese, with slices of pippin apple dipped in lime juice.

  “What is this?” Inez had asked, savoring the cheese. “It’s the most glorious thing I’ve ever tasted.”

  “It’s Bucheron, a French goat cheese. I stole it from Simon Brothers.”

  “You stole it?”

  “Yes, force of habit.”

  “So you’re a thief as well as a charlatan?”