Inez speaks to her sister. “I’m sorry I didn’t play any Bach for you, Bibi.”
“I can still hear it in my head, Nez.”
“What’s your favorite Bach, Bibi?” Sylvia asks.
“Hmmm,” Bibi says. She cocks her head to the side as if she’s considering her answer. “I think it must be ‘The Art of the Fugue.’”
“Funny, Inez and I were talking about ‘The Art of the Fugue’ not so long ago.”
“Yes, you would be thinking about that,” Bibi says.
Sylvia stops herself from asking why.
“You realize,” Bibi says, “that Bach didn’t call it ‘The Art of the Fugue.’ Someone else named it that.”
“That’s right,” Inez chimes in. “Bach called the pieces ‘Contrapunctus,’ but he died before they were published and the engraving was done.”
It appears the two sisters are beginning a little fugue. Sylvia would just as soon keep her voice out of it and let the sisters wander.
The problem is, Bibi wants her attention. Bibi leans forward and fixes her large brown eyes on Sylvia. “There are a lot of people in this hospital who have tried to hurt themselves. Some people still try. I hurt myself once. Maybe Inez told you.” Bibi briefly holds up her scarred hand. “But my intention was not to hurt myself. Nobody believes that.” Bibi’s head begins a rhythmic nod. “In the years I’ve been here I’ve never tried to hurt myself, but there are others . . .”
Sylvia watches Inez turn her body slightly to the side. This curious recital must be difficult for her lover to witness. Sylvia can’t decide which is stranger: the way Bibi’s eyes recede into her head as she speaks, or the fact that Bibi seems to know what Sylvia is thinking.
“There are others here who try to hurt themselves. It used to upset me. Well, it still upsets me. I’ve spoken to a doctor about it. He said that there really isn’t much . . . much you can do about it . . . if . . . well . . . if a person wants to harm herself.”
That said, Bibi’s rhythmic nodding ceases. Of the three of them in the small room, Sylvia wonders whose harm is most at issue. She glances across at Inez, who’s been slowly eating all the anise cookies.
Bibi fixes an eye on Sylvia, then on Inez. “So when did you two become such good friends?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Inez says, warily.
“You can’t remember, or you don’t want to tell me? Does it get in the way of your marriage?”
“You’re very curious about this, aren’t you, Bibi?”
Bibi looks down at her hands. “Do you love each other?”
Inez picks the final anise cookie from the plate and nibbles on it. “I can’t speak for Sylvia, but I certainly love her.”
Bibi looks up and smiles at this odd declaration. Sylvia is elated. She opens her mouth and sighs. Inez appears too sheepish to show her face to Sylvia.
“Sylvia, do you love, Inez?”
Sylvia holds her head high. “I do.”
“This is why you came to visit me,” Bibi says and inhales a long breath through her nose. “May I offer you both my blessing?”
“Please,” Inez says, and finally allows herself to smile fully at Sylvia. Sylvia watches Bibi stand, her small body rising into a formal posture, her arms forming an arch in front of her.
“Would you stand, please, both of you.”
Sylvia takes the command to heart and can see that Inez has done the same.
“Take each other’s hands, please.”
They both rise to the spread wings of Bibi’s benediction.
“May you be kind to each other in the world,” Bibi says, rocking forward. “May you have happiness forever.”
bigamy
BY the time they walk out of Building Two, it is three in the afternoon. Although the air has turned chilly, it feels good. A stiff breeze blows a swirl of leaves and debris around the parking lot. The sun’s still high in the sky, but it has begun its slow descent toward the west. Sylvia is tempted to take her jacket off, to experience the chill more intensely. She wants to feel something of the moment on her skin.
“So this is what it feels like to be married.”
“I thought you’d been married, Sylvia.”
“My final lie to you.”
“Hmmm.”
“I’m no longer going to keep anything from you, Inez. Nothing.”
“That might not be a good idea.” Inez unlocks the Studebaker and they climb in. She sits with the car keys in her lap, suddenly exhausted. “I’m not ready to go yet. I need to sit here a minute.”
“Fine.”
Sylvia flips down the windshield visor and studies herself in its mirror.
“Do you look different to yourself?” says Inez, leaning back and closing her eyes.
“Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps a certain maturity has settled into my face.”
“Just like that, huh?”
Sylvia senses Inez’s retreat. She’s not going to let it affect her. She doesn’t want to be hurt by Inez now. Sylvia rolls down the window and sticks her head out into the cool air for a moment. She wishes it were colder still. She pulls her head in and touches Inez’s arm lightly. “I was glad to meet Bibi,” Sylvia says, as Inez’s eyes open.
“Were you?”
“Yes. I think I won our bet,” says Sylvia, turning sideways in her seat to face Inez. “Your sister doesn’t miss a lot.”
“It’s hard to see her,” says Inez, her hands encircling the steering wheel.
“I would think it’d be harder not to.”
“You don’t have to bother with the guilt, Sylvia.”
“Oh, I probably would have done the same as you did.”
“Left her in there? No, you wouldn’t. Not if it were your sister.”
“You’re wrong about that. I’m just as selfish as you are, Inez. We’re a good match.”
Sylvia turns back to the mirror, takes a comb out of her purse, and runs it through her hair and then daintily through her eyebrows. She can see her mother’s face in her own. Not as much in the features as the mannerisms, even its posture. Doesn’t a face have a posture, a way of holding itself, an attitude? Despite leaving more and more of her mother behind each day—she really doesn’t share her mother’s distaste for life—Sylvia carries a bit of Angela Bran’s defiance.
“Do you always comb your eyebrows?” Inez asks.
“Every day. That’s something else you should know, now that we’re married.”
“I suppose this makes me a bigamist.”
“I’m not big on technicalities.”
“Your eyebrows are quite seductive.”
“They’re thick. A proper person would pluck them, but I do everything I can to avoid pain.”
“Is that right?” Inez turns on the engine and gasses it a couple of times in neutral. “I’m hungry,” Inez says. “I want to eat. Don’t you think that’s a good sign? A hearty appetite?”
“It’s a wonderful sign.”
“Hand me a sandwich, willya? I’ll eat like a truck driver, while I’m driving.”
Sylvia turns and kneels to reach into the backseat for the picnic basket while Inez smiles at her fetching behind.
“Stop that,” says Sylvia.
“Stop what?”
“I know what you’re thinking.” Sylvia pulls the basket into the front seat, then flips open a lid at one end and pulls out a sandwich, lifting apart the wax paper. “What is this?”
“Chopped olive and capers on Roman Meal. Help yourself.”
“Not exactly trucker fare,” says Sylvia, handing the sandwich to Inez.
“There’s shoestring potatoes in there,” Inez says, taking a big bite, “and a container of strawberries. Mmmm. Nothing like chopped olive on Roman Meal.”
THEY drive in silence along Highway 29, through the Napa Valley. Sylvia is content to look out the window as they drive through miles of vineyards. She doesn’t need to know where they’re going. She rolls her window down all the way. Most of the grapes are harvested by now, b
ut the sweet dark smell of the crushings is everywhere. Some of the leaves along the rows of vines have turned an autumn red. Chilled, and with her hair blowing back, Sylvia feels happy, despite a sense of foreboding.
Sylvia reads the signs as they drive north: Yountville, Oakville, Rutherford—some looking less like towns, at least from the highway, than winemaking hubs with clusters of large outbuildings. Numerous signs, with arrows pointing down side roads, advertise wine tastings. Occasionally, Gothic wineries of prodigious scale loom by the roadside.
“I think I need a taste of wine,” says Sylvia, smacking her lips together.
“Good idea,” Inez says, looking back and forth across the road.
The highway spills through the town of St. Helena, and, just north of it, Inez spots a winery sign and a road to turn off on. They follow the twisting blacktop north along a hillside of grapes and come to a small storefront. The winery is called Venezia. An OPEN sign hangs over the door. A little bell tinkles when they open the door, and a man who appears to have been napping sits up on his stool behind the oak burl bar. He is a stout fellow in a green Pendleton shirt. Sylvia notices his large fists opening on the varnished bar.
“Afternoon, ladies.”
“Good afternoon.”
“Care for a taste of Prosecco?”
Inez and Sylvia nod and step up to the bar as the man pulls down a couple of champage flutes.
“This is all we’re pouring today. It’s all we ever pour. It’s all we make.”
The man reaches into an icebox below him, pulls out a bottle, and stands it on the bar for a moment.
Sylvia looks at the label—an elegant black affair with an embossed “V” logo. The gold script lettering reads:
Venezia
PROSECCO
1961
St . Helena
Napa Valley
“Are you familiar with Prosecco?”
“No,” says Inez.
Sylvia shakes her head and watches the man deftly uncork the bottle. She looks at the man’s fat fingers. He wears a gold wedding band. Why is there a comfort in that? Would she care to wear a wedding ring?
“The Prosecco grape grows in the hills north of Venice. It can be made into a light Spumante or Frizzante. Our style is closer to a Spumante Cartizze,” he says, squinting for emphasis. “It’s geared for the more sophisticated palate.”
The wine man slowly fills each flute to the top with bubbly.
Inez and Sylvia turn to each other, forgetting their host, and clink glasses. Sylvia cups her lips and brings them close to Inez’s ear, whispering, “To beautiful Inez, a long and happy life.”
The Prosecco is sweet, perhaps too sweet, Sylvia thinks, as she drinks it down. Inez has gotten a bit up her nose and turns away giggling.
“May we buy a bottle?” Inez asks.
“By all means,” the man says, standing for the first time since they came in.
As they step out into the cool sunlight, Inez asks if they should drive on to Calistoga.
“Why not?” says Sylvia, light-headed. “We’re having an actual adventure.”
EVERYTHING appears a little run-down along the main street of Calistoga. It is not yet five, but a number of the stores are closed, some, it appears, for good. An old couple, walking a tired-looking spaniel, straggle up the sidewalk.
“At one time this was quite the spa town,” Inez says. “Nothing really fancy. Hot springs. Mud baths. Stout European women here for the cure. I used to wonder what exactly was being cured. You’d see them walking up the streets, in the late afternoon, with big strands of Baltic amber drooping from their necks.”
“Seems like a ghost town now.”
“Not quite. I’m sure there are quite a few spas that still operate.”
“Can we take a walk here?” Sylvia asks.
“We can do anything you like.”
“I like the sound of that.”
ONCE on the sidewalk, Sylvia slips an arm through Inez’s—to test the limit of her permissiveness—and they stroll, arm in arm, up the main street, like a pair of European women, sans the Baltic amber, until they reach a bakery that serves coffee.
They sit at a table by the window, sipping burnt coffee out of plastic cups and eating doughnuts.
“I always wanted to eat jelly doughnuts on my honeymoon. That is, after I had a glass of Napa Valley Prosecco,” Sylvia says.
“Did you always expect to get married?”
Sylvia makes a grand sweeping gesture with her arm and tosses her head back like a diva. “Yes, I did,” she says. “But not as suddenly as this.”
“No, but seriously.”
“I am serious. I don’t think you want to know how serious I am, Inez. I expected to get married and I expected to have babies. The baby part may be a problem, but here I am, eating jelly doughnuts on my honeymoon. The only difficulty I’m having is trying to figure out if I’m the bride or the bridegroom.”
“Which do you want to be?”
“I want to be both.”
“You can’t be both,” says Inez, shaking her head with playful disapproval.
“Can’t we switch off? I really like the idea of being a bride,” Sylvia says, offering Inez a rapturous smile. “But I look dashing in a man’s suit. You’ll want to divorce your other husband as soon as you see me.”
Inez shakes her head. “You’re a true wonder, Sylvia.”
Nibbling her doughnut, Sylvia looks out the window. Across the street is a small resort called Anderson’s Healing Cabins. Sylvia tries to imagine herself and Inez, taking the cure.
“How about we get healed on our honeymoon?” Sylvia points to Anderson’s neon sign across the street. “Let’s spend the night there. I could call in sick at The Little Sweden.”
Inez lifts her chin and, balancing it in her hands, appears to be considering the query.
Sylvia keeps her eye on the red bruise under her lover’s chin, the living scar the violin has left.
“I suppose I could make a phone call home,” Inez says.
“Are you kidding?” Sylvia asks.
“No, I’m not kidding. I don’t think you want to know how serious I am, Sylvia.”
the sharper, the kinder
THEIR room at Anderson’s Healing Cabins has twin beds. They are fated, it seems, to sleep together in small beds. After they make love, they lie for a long while in each other’s arms. Inez wishes it were dark. She wishes all the light in the sky still peeking through the curtains would disappear. They take naps and Inez dreams that Sylvia has become a rabbit cleaved to her side. It is not an unpleasant sensation. It grows dark. Sylvia is still sleeping. Little one, Inez thinks. Little one.
How cruel can she be, setting up Sylvia like this? The sharper the knife, the kinder the killing. A phrase Isaac Roseman employed whenever her violin playing grew tentative. Mr. Roseman could sense when she was worried about a particular passage. You are thinking. Who told you to do that? Where’s your authority? Sharper, kinder! he’d shout, reducing the phrase to its essence. You know where that expression comes from, Inez? The kosher butchers in the old country. It is written that the butcher with the dull knife causes the animal the most pain. The rabbis will not bless his killing; this butcher’s meat will not be kosher. So when you play the Mendelssohn, especially the Mendelssohn, you bring your sharpest knife, Inez, and you remember that music, just like the cows and the lambs and the chickens, just like human beings, is made of blood. Sharper, kinder. Sharper, kinder. Sharper, kinder.
Inez moves quietly to the other bed and calls home. She whispers into the phone, telling Jake she needs to spend an evening by herself.
“Why are you whispering?” he asks.
“I don’t wish to speak loud.”
“Who are you with?” Jake is whispering now.
“Not a soul.”
“You’re acting strange, Inez.”
“Am I?”
She watches Sylvia sit up in bed and rub sleep from her eyes, watches her push her lips forwa
rd in a pout. Her little imp. Jake’s insistent whisper produces a hiss of words that she can’t make out. “What was that?”
“You’re not acting like much of a mother.”
“I’m doing my best.”
“You’re just a little out of sorts, Inez. We can find some help for you.”
“Please, tell the kids good night,” Inez says and hangs up the phone.
DESPITE her efforts, Sylvia cannot persuade Inez to take a mud bath. Just out of the shower, and wrapped in a towel that says Anderson Healing, Sylvia tries once more. “I thought you were looking for a little adventure.”
Inez is sitting in her underwear, applying lotion to her feet. “I’m not interested in that kind of adventure.”
Something has changed in Inez’s mood. Rather than questioning her directly, Sylvia becomes the voyant again. Quiet, but fiercely observant. Will you quit looking at me like that, her mother used to say when Sylvia watched her closely. Will you quit looking at me?
Inez is willing to try a dip in the hot mineral pool. They’ve come, of course, without swimsuits, but a small selection of inexpensive suits and bathing caps are available in the front office. Sylvia comes out of the dressing room first. She tiptoes into the tiled pool area feeling pleasantly vulnerable in a mint-colored two-piece with a padded halter.
Inez surprises her, a couple of moments later, hopping out of the dressing room in a tan bathing suit—a garish print with tropical animals and jungle vines. “I feel like a mama kangaroo,” Inez says, the tops of her breasts shiny in the mineral air beside the pool.
Sylvia takes a long look at her lover. Now, with her hair tucked into the white bathing cap, Inez’s features have become stark and iconic. Her face is as mutable as her mood.
“I thought you’d be in by now,” Inez says.
“I was waiting for you.”
“You’re sweet.”
Sylvia watches Inez step directly into the pool.
Inez peels off her bathing cap and tosses it toward a lounge chair. “I don’t need this.”
Sylvia watches the heaps of scalloped blond hair tumble down and frame Inez’s cheeks. In a moment, Inez has slipped fully into the pool and the beautiful face is shrouded in swirling steam.
Beautiful Inez Page 28