Jake Roseman faces Sylvia expectantly.
Does he sense, like Bibi, that something’s up between his wife and the woman in his office, whose name he can’t pronounce? It doesn’t seem likely. Perhaps if Sylvia and Inez were sitting in front of him. She looks directly at the man. “I’m afraid Inez hasn’t been herself lately at the symphony.”
“What do you mean?”
It strikes her that Jake Roseman knows exactly what she means, even if she’s shaded her meaning. “Since her splendid performance of the Goldmark, Inez has not been playing with her usual, how shall I put it, her usual brio. She seems out of sorts, distracted. Since she is one of the leaders of the first violin section, and since she is such a beloved member of the symphony family, there is some concern. The management has spoken to her about the possibility of taking a leave, but she hasn’t been particularly responsive. So they asked if I would come and speak to you, in confidence. It isn’t a pleasant task, as you can imagine, and I’m embarrassed to have barged in on you, without even having the presence of mind to set an appointment. Forgive me, Mr. Roseman.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m grateful to you, Miss . . .”
“Bucheron.”
Jake Roseman draws on his cigarette and puts a hand over his face. “I know she’s been acting a little strange lately. What would you suggest?”
It’s tempting to answer him, to lay it all out. Sylvia crosses her legs. “I’m not really in a position to say, but if it were my spouse I’d . . . I’d have them see someone. Soon.”
“You don’t suspect she’s thinking of harming herself?”
Sylvia shrugs. “I couldn’t say. Although, without meaning to alarm you, I would be concerned.”
“She doesn’t have any reason to harm herself.”
“Of course not.” Sylvia finds harm, the attorney’s euphemism for suicide, rather touching. He can’t bear to say the word out loud, or even to think it. He, like everybody else, equates the act with reason. Do people actually believe that a reasonable argument can persuade a suicide not to follow through? Or that suicides see their lives from the inside the same way we view them from without? Sylvia has never viewed the act as irrational. Her mother and Inez Roseman are the two most rational people that she’s known in her life.
Jake Roseman has already traded reason for emotion. “She’s so talented . . . it’s always seemed to me that she has everything a person could want, a good family, a fine career.”
The poor man doesn’t have a clue.
“She’s so important . . . to me . . . the kids.”
Sylvia doesn’t know how to offer the man comfort, but his concern is strangely comforting to her. Once the long ash of her unsmoked cigarette begins to curve, she tamps it out in the ashtray.
“You understand, Mr. Roseman, that this is only a supposition that the management has considered, perhaps nothing more than a misguided theory.”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’ve come to register my personal concern, as well as the management’s. I ask, on behalf of the management, that we keep this visit in confidence. On a personal note, if I may, I’d suggest that you find her some help. I’d let her know how much she means to you. It’s certainly clear to see. She’s mentioned your family. I’d let her know, as you say, how important she is to you all. She’s a wonderful woman, Mr. Roseman. I know that you will do what you can to help her.”
Sylvia stands and casts her eyes downward.
Jake Roseman comes around his desk toward her and takes her hand. “Thank you, Miss Bucheron. Thank you so much.”
olympian poise
THE time is getting close. There are signs everywhere. Yesterday, both Inez and Anna started their periods. She found her daughter’s bloodied underwear in the dirty clothes hamper and a used pad in the bathroom wastebasket. A couple of years ago, when Anna began menstruating, Inez realized that mother and daughter had quickly become synchronized in natural time. She’d noticed the same thing, living in a house with Bibi, as an adolescent. It strikes Inez that she and her daughter will lose this wild synchronicity before Anna even notices it, a poignant thought, which she immediately banishes.
Practically everything Inez has wanted to accomplish in these last days has been done. But tonight, when Jake comes home and tells her, with a sullen bluster, about a visit he had with a woman who came into his office, she senses that her well-laid plans are, at least temporarily, in trouble.
“The conversation was about you, Inez.”
“Me?” she says, genuinely surprised. It takes her a beat to realize who Jake’s visitor must have been.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Jake says.
Inez has no choice but to play dumb. “Tell you about what?”
“Do I need to spell it out?”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Jake.” Inez hands him a whiskey sour. She has a gimlet for herself. Nothing now but gimlets till the end. “So who was this woman?”
“She said she was a musician.”
“A musician? Did she have a name?”
“Yes, I wrote it down so I’d remember it.” He pulls out his pocket datebook and shuffles through until he finds the right page. “Here. It’s French. Buch . . . Bucheron. Natalie Bucheron.”
“Never heard of her.”
Jake lights a cigarette and forces a charge of smoke out of his nostrils.
An image of Sylvia with a wheel of stolen goat cheese seeps into Inez’s consciousness. She closes her eyes, remembering the last, blissful afternoon with Sylvia in her apartment. They ate Bucheron and quail, listened to Satie and Ravel, made love. The idea of Sylvia marching into Jake’s office in a bid to save Inez from herself is almost more than she can stand. Inez is close to crying, close to giving it all up. But the thought of inviting anyone else into her sorrow, of turning her situation into a circus of suspicion and denial, keeps her from breaking. Her Olympian poise, acquired during a lifetime dedicated to disassociation, kicks in. She opens her eyes and looks at Jake. “So what did this woman, whom neither you nor I have ever heard of, say about me?”
“She said she was sent by the symphony and that I wasn’t supposed to let you know about her visit.”
“A promise you weren’t about to keep.”
“She said that everybody was worried about you. That since the Goldmark you weren’t playing with any enthusiasm, or in her words, you weren’t playing with your usual brio.”
“My usual brio, that’s choice.”
“She said they can’t figure out what’s going on with you, and they’re worried.”
“Who is this woman, Jake?”
“I told you what I know. I had Grania call down to the symphony and the musicians’ union, but nobody’s ever heard of a Natalie Bucheron.”
“See.”
“I don’t know what’s going on, Inez, but I didn’t hallucinate the conversation. She was very compelling. What she said was highly disturbing.”
“What did she say?”
“She said they were worried you might harm yourself.”
“Harm myself. This is preposterous. This woman, whoever she is, must be delusional.”
“It sounded credible to me.”
Inez makes a point of losing her temper. “Does it sound credible to you now, Jake? For God’s sake, the woman is an impostor. Anyway, it’s not true; I’m in a good place, Jake.” Inez tells herself to stay calm now. Her quick flash of histrionics will serve its purpose, jump-starting Jake’s eagerness to deny the unpleasant.
“I’m concerned about you,” Jake says, shaking out a cigarette, too agitated to look at Inez.
“Please. There’s nothing to worry about, Jake. I’m fine, even chipper. I had a little slump after the Goldmark, that’s true. That was such a high, you know, it’s only natural that going back to regular symphony life was a bit disappointing at first.” If she can maintain her smiling posture and offer a reasonable inventory, she’ll be home free. It’s heartbreaking to see Ja
ke, nearly broken before the fact. But she has no choice. He, too, will be better off.
“You know,” she says, “you and I had that lovely time in Carmel. And, when all is said and done, I really feel pretty good about the Goldmark. I can be hard on myself, but I feel like I did an honorable job with the concerto. And the kids and I . . . we seem close. Sometimes it’s hard with Anna, but I think that will pass. The only real problem I see is with the old man.”
“I know.”
“But we’ll figure something out. Really, I haven’t felt this good in a long time.” Inez smiles at Jake, observes the relief in his eyes, and then makes her final play, a true test of her resolve, which she hopes will put the issue to rest. “You know, Jake, I think I know who this woman is.”
“You do?”
“Short, isn’t she? Dirty-blond hair she wears in bangs. A pointy nose. A bit homely.”
“I wouldn’t say homely.”
“No?”
“No, but that sounds like her.”
“She’s young, but well-spoken.”
“Right. So who is she?”
Inez is amazed at herself. How easily she can call up an image of beloved Sylvia and dispassionately destroy it. She realizes now that she is capable of anything. “I’ll tell you this, Jake, Bucheron is not her name. That’s a made-up name. That’s the name for a certain kind of French goat cheese.”
“Come on.”
“No, I used to pick up little hunks of it down at Simon Brothers. Bucheron. Her real name is, I don’t know, Mindy . . . Cindy. She’s not a musician, either; she’s some sort of executive assistant at the symphony association. Too ambitious for her own good. Jealous little urchin.”
“But why did she come down to see me?” Jake asks, still not quite satisfied.
“I don’t know. Maybe she overheard a couple of people at the symphony association talking about me. I’ll admit, I was sullen for a couple of weeks after the Goldmark. So the woman decided to do a little freelancing. You’re not going to like this, Jake, but I think this might have more to do with you than it does with me. Maybe she saw you on the news. Maybe she was just making a play for you, Jake.”
Jake lights another cigarette and scowls at her, but the screw’s been turned; he’s on the defensive now.
“Come on, Jake, you can’t deny that all sorts of women take a special interest in you. Who would have thought that I’d end up married to a Casanova?”
“I’m not a Casanova.”
“Though I’ve gotta tell you, Jake, this woman, if we’re truly thinking about the same one, she doesn’t strike me as your type.”
“Stop. Will you?”
Finally, she has him on the ropes.
bubbles
THE next afternoon, as soon as Anna’s home from school, Inez asks if she’d like to take a walk to Sutro Super. Although Inez’s appetite has gone spotty again, she has a sudden desire to prepare a nice meal with Anna. The two of them, Inez reasons, could use a bit of red meat. Anna isn’t sure if she wants to come.
“Why don’t you ask Joey?” she says. “He’s just watching TV. You promise him a pack or two of baseball cards, and he’ll go anywhere with you.”
“I don’t want to walk with Joey,” Inez says. “I want to walk with you.”
“Let me think about it.”
This is one of Anna’s teenage ploys—she is unwilling to say a quick yes to anything, but give her a little time and if she agrees, on her timetable, she appears to save face.
“Sure,” Inez says. “Let me know.”
Meanwhile, Inez takes a look through the half-dozen cookbooks she rarely uses, but settles again on “the dummy cookbook.” Inez flips past “Easy Meals” to “Meats” and spends an inordinate amount of time staring at the two color pages of “Beef Cuts and How to Cook Them.”
Inez studies each cut: boneless chuck, arm pot roast, blade pot roast, corned beef brisket, short ribs, shank cross cuts, standing rib roast, rolled rib roast, rib-eye roast, top loin, New York strip, tenderloin steak, rib-eye steak (or Delmonico, “as it is sometimes known”), T-bone steak, club steak, porterhouse steak, flank steak, sirloin steak, sirloin tip roast, bottom round, rump roast. Then she turns to the lamb. It’s amazing how long you can look at red meat and not think of mortality.
Anna consents to walk with her to Sutro Super if Inez will buy her a magazine at the pharmacy next door.
“That’s extortion.”
“It’s only thirty-five cents, Mom.”
“But it’s the idea,” Inez says, but wanting to confound her, adds, “but I so much want your company, I’ll buy you five magazines.”
“You don’t need to buy me five.”
“Well, you pick out what you want.”
I T is breezy walking along Geary toward the ocean. Inez wants to hold her daughter’s hand but knows that Anna won’t stand for that. Claiming her independence has become a primal event. Inez doesn’t take it personally.
A loud 2 Clement roars west on Geary. “Your father and I used to take the streetcar out to the ocean when we were young.”
“I know.”
“He was always fond of Sutro Baths. I don’t think we ever went swimming there, but we sat and watched the swimmers. Your father was particularly fond of the divers. We’d sit there munching crisp green apples. One time he said, ‘Someday, I’m going to be a great diver.’ ”
“He said that?”
“Yes, and I don’t think he’d ever dived in his life. He was big on doing things that his parents had never done. I don’t think they’d ever even been in swimming.”
“Yeah, can you imagine Grandpa swimming?”
“The funny thing is that, years later, your father did teach himself how to dive.”
“But he’s not very good.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Inez says. “I love that he taught himself.”
They walk in silence for a while. Inez thinks about Jake as a young man, how, during the late forties and early fifties, he would accompany her to Los Angeles for the short opera season. This was before the kids were born. They stayed at an old hotel called the Figueroa that had a beautiful pool, guarded by rows of palm trees. Jake was either sprawled out on a chaise lounge reading a fat novel or practicing his diving. How beautiful he looked, standing perfectly still at the end of the diving board. All the women adored Jake. Inez would get jealous seeing the general commotion he could cause. Still, she had sweet times at the Figueroa with her husband.
Anna takes a fat package of gum from her purse and offers her mother a piece.
“I didn’t know you liked bubble gum, Anna.”
“Yeah, some kid at school showed me how to blow bubbles. I’m getting pretty good at it. Just don’t tell Joey. He always wants my gum. Sometimes he even goes into my purse.”
Inez doesn’t care for gum and can’t remember the last time she chewed any, but she takes the rectangle of gum, unwraps it, and sticks it in her mouth. She resists her initial impulse to spit the gum back into its wrapper after the first burst of sugar syrup and walks beside her daughter, making a point of chewing loud.
Anna blows a small bubble and sucks it back into her mouth. “How long did it take before you first knew you loved Dad?”
“About ten minutes.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t believe in love at first sight, Anna?”
Anna blows a formidable bubble now and turns her head toward Inez so that she can appreciate it. Inez nods and watches the pink skin of the thing shine in the air a moment before it goes slack.
“Love at first sight is just something that happens in the movies,” Anna says, chewing.
“You’re a born cynic.”
“How long until you realized that it wasn’t going to be as good as you thought?”
“Huh?”
“You and Dad. I mean, how long before you figured out that that kind of love is transient?”
Inez is so surprised by the question that she needs to s
tall. The word Anna chose is a surprise in itself. Transient. What would Sylvia make of it? Love as somebody you’d find loitering in a bus station. She thinks to deflect the question, to ask Anna if she has a crush on someone, but that doesn’t seem fair. Where did Anna come up with an idea like that? Inez has always wondered if all the time Anna spends in her room reading is reason for concern. Inez spreads the leathery hunk of gum across her tongue and blows, accomplishing less a bubble than a weak flutter of pink.
Anna repeats the question: “How long before you knew, Mom?”
“I knew early.”
“You did? Weren’t you sad?”
Inez nods. “I was terribly sad. I was devastated. But that wild love that you say you don’t believe in, it can turn into something else, something calm and lasting.”
Anna blows a fresh bubble that swells to the tip of her nose. She quickly retracts it and looks as if she’s going to cry.
AS they get closer to Sutro Super, Anna asks if they can walk on to the ocean and shop on the way back.
“Only if you show me how to blow a decent bubble.”
“Are you serious?”
“Serious as a heart attack, ma’am,” Inez says, repeating a line she’d heard a month ago, when she and Sylvia hopped on a cable car outside of Sylvia’s apartment. They had just made love, and Inez told Sylvia that the only thing she was left craving in the world was a crab cocktail. Sylvia jumped up from the bed and started yanking on Inez’s arm. Let’s get a cable car down to the wharf. In a few minutes they were dressed. They hadn’t even washed. When they heard the clang of the car, they raced down the stairs to the street and leapt onto the running board, a couple of randy girls in love.
Beautiful Inez Page 33