by Jill Zeller
He said, “I love it.”
Dinner was quiet. The men ringed the big table, the women were late. Hank was halfway through his plate when Mom appeared, Connie trailing her. Her face sweet, relaxed, Connie had taken a shower and wore a soft sweater and skirt; her white hair flowed to her shoulders. Mom had not changed out of her suit, but she had put on slippers.
Mom looked mismatched, as if pieces of herself had been separated and put back together not quite right, like the shattered marquis would look like if someone glued him. Hank saw something broken there, but he didn’t know what it was. More than just a business decision, harsh though it was, to break up the Clevelands. But how deep the fracture went, he couldn’t tell.
Four
Joseph’s injury changed the course of Hank’s life in a wonderful way, at least for the following week. Arriving at Susan’s bungalow in the afternoon, two days after the accident, convinced that she wouldn’t be there, that she would have gone straight from the factory to the hospital, Hank was astonished when Susan opened the back door for him and pressed herself into him.
More than ready for her, instead of waiting until she gave a sign, Hank pushed her back, propelling her through the kitchen and down the hall to her bedroom. Without a word they wrestled to a climax—Hank understood that an urgent energy traveled through Susan, muscles quivering to the point of giving off a burning heat, like making love to the sun. Not for the first time did Hank think this wasn’t Susan at all, but the Susan in the hairnet and the colored nails was a shell for something wild and hazardous.
After, she sat up and leaned against the head board, pushed her hair from her eyes, watched him as he lay beside her. Her breasts lay heavily on her chest, nipples pale pink. Hank watched her watching him. There was a glow about her, a contentment and joyousness he had never seen before in her moist chocolate eyes.
Getting up on one elbow, Hank waited for her to speak. They didn’t speak much after lovemaking, usually. Sometimes she would talk about her work, the new glazes she was trying, how bored she was with the current line of figurines. Hank didn’t know which line she was working on, only that they had something to do with Disney.
Hank thought of the broken marquis, thought he could ask her about it, who might have made it and when, when she folded her hands like a little girl about to recite.
“You haven’t asked me why I am home today.”
Hank couldn’t help feeling wary. Her mood was new to him; he had never known her to say hopeful things or glorify the weather. Their three-month-long affair had been addictive and grief-laden without words of justification.
He agreed to play along, ran his finger along her forearm, pale red hairs tickling.
“Ok. Why are you home today?”
Raising her arms, she ran her fingers along the headboard, tracing the rosettes and ivy carved into it.
“They let me have a week off. I can work at home—so I can spend more time with Joseph.”
This mention of Joseph turned slowly in Hank’s stomach. He waited, wondering what it would mean for him.
Susan looked at him, his eyes, his mouth, his hair. She rumpled his head, a thing that she had never done before. “I’ll miss the money he made at the cemetery—I doubt they’ll hire him back after six weeks. But at least I don’t have to drag myself back and forth to work or the hospital, silly. I can set up a studio in the garage—you can help me.”
Sitting up, Susan seized a rope of hair, tossed it over her shoulder. Now she studied her fingers, spread them wide, wiggled them in a spidery wave.
“You can come every day, if you like.”
Numbness followed by a bit of shock roamed Hank’s stomach. “Wow,” was all he could think to say. It would not sink in, these moments he would have with Susan—he could come over anytime he liked. He could, if she let him, and she had to let him, spend the night.
The rest of the afternoon and into the evening Hank helped Susan clean out the garage, hauling tires and oil cans and brooms and a child’s bicycle out into the yard to put in a pile. A merciless and tireless overseer, Susan assigned Hank a series of tasks; wash the walls and floor, repair a broken window and the lock on the side door, oil the garage door hinges. She wanted to paint, but didn’t have any.
Finished, they rested in the back yard, Susan in a rusting chair and Hank on a rickety wooden stool. Night closed in bringing faint cold and stars, everything faint, as if all the heavenly bodies felt tentative about the laws of physics.
Hank wanted to have her right here and now, on the damp Bermuda grass, stars observing and neighbors hearing and not quite believing. But he stayed on his stool while she brooded. He thought he knew what was coming.
And when it did, he didn’t mind as much as he thought he would.
She must, of course, go to the hospital. Joseph was in a lot of pain, and she had to make certain the nurses brought his hypo every three hours, as prescribed by the doctor. Not for the first time did Hank wonder what she did for money, how she paid the utilities and food and hospital bills on her salary. He knew about Joseph’s gruesome job digging graves in the Santa Monica Cemetery but that couldn’t bring in much.
“Come back tomorrow, early. I’ll make you breakfast, and then take you out to the factory to get my tools.”
He nodded, a little stung. “I could wait here for you until you got back. Have dinner together or something?”
Getting up, Susan stood before him. Dirt smudged her nose and she smelled vaguely of gasoline.
“Dear Hank. Don’t push it.” Leaning in she kissed him; her hair brushed his neck and he wanted to pull her down on top of him, roll off the stool together.
But something stopped him; Susan stopped him without saying a word because she had set the rules when it came to Joseph. Straightening, she walked into the house. He was dismissed.
On his bike ride home Hank nearly got creamed by a Red Car trolley on Sepulveda, cracked his elbow on the curb, falling and rolling onto the sidewalk to land at the feet of two girls strolling arm and arm along the boulevard. Maybe it was the same Red Car Joseph leapt from, sent by Susan’s brother to get Hank out of the way. The girls looked at him and giggled as he lay there cradling his elbow and cursing.
One of them reached down to help him up. They both looked at him shyly, quizzically, out-of-town girls wondering if he were a movie star.
“You OK, mister? You OK?”
Ignoring their whispers and laughter, Hank lifted his bicycle from the gutter and checked it over. It was still useable; the Raleigh was a workhorse, as unbreakable as a mule.
“You want to buy us a soda?”
Forward girls, fast girls. Hank had to smile, shook his head. What if he did go with them, follow an impulse for once, sneak them into Eddie’s, where he knew Eddie would serve them cokes spiked with rum? For once he would stop being reliable Mr. Hank, the Cleveland family dog's body.
No one was home. Rehearsals went late. Dad recording, Mom could be anywhere, with the twins, with Dad, at the library where she spent vast amounts of time doing who knew what.
Joaquin served him stoically, saying nothing about Hank’s being gone all day. Joaquin said often enough that Hank should get a job. If he wasn’t going to go to college he should get a job and help support his family.
Hank had a job, but Joaquin wouldn’t understand. Hank’s job was to be the glue that held the family together.
The next morning Hank left early on his bike. It was another bright breezy day, cool in the early hours, promising to be sunglasses-and-short-sleeved shirt warm. His elbow ached mercilessly, swelled and bruised in the night. He iced it and dug around in Connie’s room for the strong stuff the studio gave her but could only find aspirin.
Coasting into Susan’s driveway, he almost lost his balance. Maybe it was his hinky elbow, or maybe it was the vision spooling through his mind; that her car would be gone, she would be at the factory, having left him behind, and all the spinning glee of yesterday was his day dream.
/> But her car was there. Leaning the bike next to the back porch, he walked right into the kitchen, not waiting to knock as before.
Susan was cooking, wearing her chenille robe. Seeing him, she wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, smiled, kissed him, and motioned him to sit, all in one movement far more graceful than Connie’s dancing.
Hank sat before toast and eggs and coffee, but it was as if he was at a banquet of stuffed squab and mint jelly, paper-thin slices of baguette and pate. He had arrived hungry for breakfast, but now he was hungry for her.
When he touched her buttocks Susan was fiddling with the toaster; she allowed him to run his hands up her flank and onto her breasts, free, to his joyful lust, of any brassiere. He held them, heavy, growing hard. Feeling him, she twisted and thrust her hips into him.
She pushed herself onto the counter. He buried his nose and mouth in her, inhaling the soft musk amid curly red hairs and staying hard as she came over and over, biting her hand to keep from screaming. Then she pushed him back, jumped down, forced him into a chair, straddled him, and he struggled not to come, but it took only a minute as he watched her breasts move up and down and she watched him, smiling, waiting for the inevitable.
After, he was famished, and swiped up the cold eggs with the cold toast while Susan sipped coffee. As soon as he was done they left for the factory. Susan took Sepulveda south past the airport, through sandy expanses where derricks drank up rich pools of oil, dipping their dinosaur heads to the ground.
Hank ran his hand along the fabric of the car. His silence with Susan was another companion, sitting between them. He wanted to ask the question but he didn’t know how. He wondered how Joseph was doing, and why Susan’s mood was in the sky above the clouds. She drove quickly, a heavy copper bracelet on her wrist sliding up and down as she turned the wheel.
Manhattan Beach shouldered itself between El Segundo and Hermosa Beach. Once a shabby little beach town, Manhattan Beach was filling with post-war families, and Metlox Potteries dominated several city blocks near the railroad. Susan parked on the street in front of a long, low stucco building sitting in the shadows of massive wooden sheds. A salty breeze came off the sea, and gulls swirled overhead. Hank obediently followed her along the sidewalk to an entrance set back from the street, his role about to change from lover to beast of burden.
Inside was a long hallway flanked by offices cluttered with drafting boards, shelf upon shelf of pottery in various experimental shapes and colors, drawings and drafts and pots of glazes. One of these was Susan’s.
This studio, drafting table and shelves and bits of clay and glaze like the others, was the smallest, situated in the part of the building with no view of the street, no window at all, in fact. But as soon as Hank was in there, following Susan, a strange feeling came over him, one he couldn’t quite describe, having never felt it before, an underlying watchfulness as if he had walked onto a stage in a crowded theater.
Ringing the shelves were dozens of figurines, and taped to the edges of the shelves and the walls were drawings of the same; animals and people in various poses and dress. The room smelled of solvents and mud.
He found himself standing, unable to move. The clutter unnerved him, being of a tidy nature himself. But it was more than that. Something moved here, alive, observant.
Susan got him busy, though, ordering him to place pencils, brushes, little bottles of color, boxes of crushed colors, oils, mixtures of talc, blocks of clay in the cartons. Heavy paper tablets. Molds of various shapes and unrecognizable figures. Then he was to take apart and fold her drafting table.
As he worked, someone came into the room. Looking up, he saw two men in white shirts, no ties, one with a pencil behind his ear. The nearer one was older, silver hair ringing a bald spot, the other younger and handsome, brown hair slicked back, head on the broad neck of an athlete.
“Susan, our dear Susan returned to the fold,” said the older one. His voice jarred Hank, cross and hoarse. Crouched on the floor, he looked up. The older one scanned him with small, brown eyes above rimless reading glasses.
Susan, holding a large portfolio, turned to look at him. “You, Frank, are just in time to help us carry this stuff to my car.”
Silver-haired Frank lifted his hands. “Oh no. I can’t be torn away from my creative flow. New line, you know, dinner dishes, vines and all that. Practical stuff, not little Indian statues and fish vases.”
Tilting her head, Susan smirked at him in an almost flirty way, a look that Hank had seen before and he wasn’t sure he liked.
“Maybe Sam will be my assistant.”
The younger man pushed past the older one and saluted. Another returned veteran, this one, seemingly, unmarred by the war.
“Give me an order, ma’am.”
Susan thrust the portfolio at him. The older man remained in the doorway. “Who is your other assistant, Miss Chagall. Introductions?”
Rolling her eyes, Susan indicated Hank where he crouched on the floor, screw-driver in hand.
“Hank, my trusty friend, meet Frank and Sam, designer and apprentice.”
The two men nodded at him, and Hank returned the nod. He didn’t like the way the older man was looking at him, or the way the younger one was looking at Susan. In fact, the tiny windowless room, crowded with four people and the odors of glazes and aftershave and paints, brought a sickening rush to his stomach; his elbow throbbed from using the screwdriver and he inhaled and sat on the floor, pretending to wait or even be sociable, when all he wanted was to rush out and breathe in the heavy mists of the sea.
Susan, however, was in a hurry. Ignoring Frank in the doorway, as he leaned and watched, she directed Sam about which boxes to carry out to her car. The rush of activity distracted Hank long enough for him to get to his feet, remove the table from its stand, shift it all together in a bundle.
“How is the brother, dear Susan,” Frank asked as she stretched to capture bottles of caked color from a top shelf. Hank moved to help her.
“Coming along, thank you.” Susan turned to roll up sheets of drawings.
“You see him every day, I hear. Sherman gave you the week off, and permission to work at home.”
Susan glanced at him, and Hank saw a mask of worry come over her face. “I do see him every day. It comforts him to see me. This way, I can see him during visiting hours and work at night, not get behind on my designs.”
Frank nodded, taking his pencil from his ear and tapping his chin. “Oh, yes. Very good.”
Relieved to be out of the office, Hank had to force Frank to stand aside as he carried the drafting table to the car, leaving Frank to hover over Susan alone. His elbow stabbed with pain, but he made it to the car without dropping anything, meeting Sam on the way back for more. Sam’s eyes crinkled in the bright misty light.
“I’ve seen you somewhere before. You work in Hollywood?”
You work in Hollywood was a way of asking if someone where an actor. Hank shook his head, picked up a drafting table leg.
“No, sorry. But I know you. I help out in the studio for extra money, working in the prop shop.” Sam folded his arms; his smile was friendly enough.
Hank didn’t want to say anything about his family. He used to show up at the studio to hang out and watch the twins’ rehearsals, but since Susan he hadn’t bothered.
“People always tell me I remind them of someone. I got that kind of face, I guess.”
Nodding, Sam saluted again, turned away. Hank knew Sam didn’t believe him; any time now he would place Hank waiting in the wings of the stage, but Hank didn’t care. Busying himself stuffing the table into the trunk, he delayed going back inside the factory building and the stifling studio. He would never see this Sam guy again.
Susan’s mood was changed as she drove back through the sunny morning. A frown pulled at the corners of her mouth, and she kept yanking at her hair. Hank leaned back, massaged his elbow, watched towns slide past and a big plane arrow overhead as they returned to Venice, pots of
glazes and glassy-eyed figurines in the back seat like nervous passengers.
Five
If anyone, Dad or Mom or the twins even noticed that he was gone all day, every day, they said nothing to him about it. They had flown out of his life, and if occasionally he remembered Mom wanting to tell him something important, or Grandfather Joel’s death, it was because he was for a moment bored with Susan.
But these moments were fleeting. This past week he was only reminded he had a family when he rode his bike through Hollywood and a flashy billboard message about the new musical, introducing the remarkable Cleveland twins, caught his eye. Susan was his world now, and a world of new smells and colors he had barely imagined.
Susan’s garage-cum-studio transformed itself. He was astonished by her ability to bring something of her imagination skillfully to the page and into three dimensions.
And there was the sex, of course, less often now, but longer at each coupling, sweeter and infused with touching and tasting. Hank lost weight, even though he was always hungry and consumed portions of the good food Joaquin provided, and more than portions, because more often than not this week, he ate alone, or maybe with Dad for company, and that wasn’t much company. Dad would stare forlornly at a script and whisper the words, gesturing. He didn’t even notice when Hank left the table.
Joaquin gave Hank a quizzical look every time Hank crossed the kitchen to get on his bike to see Susan.
“Training for a big race, chico, with all this going back and forth?”
“Tijuana, camarada. Can’t get enough of that town.”
Joaquin’s nostrils flared. “Basurero.” He squinted down at his paper through a pair of rimless glasses. “You talk to your mama yet?”
How did Joaquin know these things? Restarting that conversation with his mother hung heavily from Hank’s ribs; he knew he should ask her about it, but the look of her lately unsettled him, and in fact, he knew he was avoiding her. Helping Susan build her home studio was an addictive distraction.
Hank leaned against the kitchen doorway, feeling the lint in his trouser pockets, while Joaquin ran his hands across the paper, a Mexican tabloid his wife sent him from Mexico City.