by Jill Zeller
“I had this lieutenant. I was just a corporal, you know? Little better than snot. This lieutenant, he had seen a lot of action. Battle of the Bulge and all that. I was a driver, you know? I wasn’t that good at gunnery, but I knew how to fix cars and I could talk my way into anything, or out of anything.”
Hank had no doubt this was possible.
“So we’re in Italy, right? Where there are old castles, and churches, still intact. Not much bombing there, and the resistance to the Krauts was strong, you know? Women walking into barracks with grenades under their skirts. Stuff like that. We’d heard about a rogue group of Germans, still fighting, underground-like, very unlike Germans—no marching or rules, but sneaking in and blowing up allied ammo dumps and booby-trapping train tracks. This lieutenant, he wanted to go up there, even though his squad was supposed to be going home. But he wasn’t done, this guy, I guess, and his squad would walk barefoot over burning coals for him, so he commandeers my jeep and off we go with two of his buddies, to see if we can get these Krauts.”
A nervous itch started someone under Hank’s breast. Joseph was talking easily, telling a war tale, but Hank worried there would be a real punch-line somewhere. Maybe it would be the Thing, the Thing that had tipped Joseph over the edge of sanity. Hank didn’t know what behaviors had gotten Joseph hospitalized in the crazy ward, then discharged with a Section Eight into his sister’s care, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
But he did want to know. His head was starting to ache again, and he tried to ignore it.
Joseph smiled at him in a lopsided way. “Only little bits at a time, Fonda. Not to tire you out. Installment 2 tomorrow night. You look like you need to sleep for a year. Later.” Backing up, he expertly whirled the chair around and slid through the door without knocking into anything. Hank leaned back on the pillows, eyes burning with weariness. He drowsed, heard the phone ring. A moment later, Susan was there.
“You up for a visitor? Your mom wants to see you.”
Hank shook his head. “Tell her I’m too tired. I need more rest. Tell her I’m getting better, but I can’t, Susan. Not yet.”
Susan nodded, left the room. Hank heard her talking softly in the hall. She didn’t come back.
Twelve
Ten more years had been added to mom’s face, Hank thought, as she rushed into the room with a breath of cool air and tobacco and perfume, the constant mix of his mother’s curious scent. He had known she would come, even though he told Susan he didn’t want to see her. At least she waited until the next morning. He wondered, as he felt her dry kiss, if the real reason he didn’t want her to come was that he didn’t want to have to explain, make up a story about how he knew Susan.
All he had to do was say, if he was asked, that he was a friend of Joseph’s, and Susan was the sister who was helping to take care of him.
Leaning back in the chair beside his bed, Mom closed her eyes. Her lids were like transparent shells, her lashes long and combed. She wore a tan suit, the perpetual corsage; the impeccable hair.
“You have no idea what you put me through. When Miss Chagall called me, I was certain you were dead.”
“Just a little touch of meningitis.”
“That poor driver died, did you hear that? Ten other people are sick. I don’t understand where you were that you got infected with it. It was all studio people.”
Shrugging, Hank wondered about that, too, but he didn’t feel like speculating about it. Leaning forward, Mom shook her head, opened her purse, took out a pack of cigarettes, put it back as if realizing this was a sick room.
“This is a nice little house. These people seem to be artistic. You know the brother? Mr. Chagall?” Again, Hank noticed hesitation in her voice, and a curious lateral movement in her jaw that he had seen before.
Hank nodded, deciding not to elaborate unless he had to.
Mom looked down at her hands. “I miss you at home, Hank. Now that you’re better, you can’t impose on these people any longer. I’ve got a taxi outside to take you home and recover there.”
A cold fear sliced through him at the thought of leaving. He knew Mom was right—this wasn’t his home, but he wanted it to be, to stay here with Susan forever. He could even put up with Joseph. The guy was growing on him. He wanted to hear the end of Joseph’s war story.
“But I’ve barely been out of bed. I’m not sure I can walk even to a taxi.”
Mom straightened her gloves. “I’ve spoken with the doctor. He is a very good man. He says you’re out of danger, but you need a long rest.”
Hank knew he lost the argument. Mom had made up her mind. He watched the set of her jaw, recognized that she was fighting with herself over her decision. He knew where he was concerned she tended to indulge, but this time, she was firm.
They waited for the doctor, who would confirm that Hank was able to travel home. Mom sat quietly in the chair, but she fussed with her clothes, swallowed a lot, a nervous shivering seemed to course through her. This was more, Hank thought, than fear for her son’s life. She still hadn’t told him the thing she was going to tell him, but maybe it had blown over, whatever it was.
Susan brought her a cup of coffee. Hank’s heart skipped a beat when she came into the room carrying the cup. She introduced herself, saving Hank the unpleasant task; Mom thanked Susan again and again for caring for Hank, wanted to help in some way, and Hank prayed she wouldn’t offer Susan money. Luckily, she didn’t. Standing beside the door, Susan said she was happy to help a friend of her brother’s.
“But what happened, exactly?” Mom wanted to know. “How did he end up here?”
Hank stiffened again, glad the question was asked of Susan, with him present, so they could get their story straight.
“He came over to cheer up my brother. Joseph gets so bored, having to stay at home and play Scrabble with the nurse all day. He sort of collapsed. We called the doctor Saturday night.”
Mom nodded, accepting this. “You looked fine Saturday,” she said to Hank, sipping from her cup. “Was that your big date, coming here to play scrabble?”
Hank remembered wanting the car, the money—he was going to wine and dine Susan. He smiled in what he hoped was an embarrassed way.
“Well, that wasn’t all.” Susan gave Mom a smile, crooked, knowing. “You saw how pretty the nurse is. I think he had an idea to ask her on a date.”
Mom tried to hide her dislike of the idea behind her coffee cup, but Hank saw that wary look again, the same look as when he asked her about the Girl.
There was the problem of the car—and Carl having gone to pick it up. Hank hoped he wouldn’t have to try to match his story to Carl’s without finding out what it was. But he was saved from further explanation by the arrival of the doctor, who, unfortunately, agreed that Hank could be moved.
There was little to pack, Hank’s clothes that he had worn to the hotel, items brought from the hospital by the nurse; Hank could borrow one of Joseph’s seemingly multiple robes to wear to the taxi. And, to top off the humiliation, he would ride to the car in Joseph’s wheelchair.
Finally it was time to go. Hank sat on the edge of the bed, feeling weak and flustered, and wishing Susan would insist he stay, not let him go. But she expertly helped to pack his things while his mother directed her actions, which she obeyed without a word.
“It’s best you are home, Hank, with your family. Nothing is the same around there without you,” Mom was saying, shaping and wiping her hat. “Your dad really misses you, isn’t that odd? But Ken is a softie through and through. Not a strong man at all.”
Mom touched the edges of her hat in Susan’s mirror. “Well, let’s get going. Hank, we’ll get you into the chair.”
“I think we should wait for the nurse, Mrs. Cleveland.” Susan stood near the foot of the bed, one hand rubbing the other. To Hank she looked as if she were quivering.
“Oh, but she’s probably busy. And, we can’t impose on you any longer.”
“No, we should wait.” Susan’s
voice was darkly edged. “I’ll let her know we’re ready.”
One of Mom’s eyebrows rose up. A cat-prick of wariness caught Hank but it felt good hearing someone talk to Mom like that, as he watched Susan leave to find the nurse. Personally he hoped Susan would help him but he knew that would look weird to his mother, and so did Susan.
Susan returned minutes later, alone. “I can’t seem to find her. Joseph doesn’t know where she is either.” Her eyebrows closed down over her eyes, and she looked more annoyed than Hank liked to see.
“That doesn’t seem too professional.” Mom turned around, faced Susan. “She is here for your brother, as you said. Well, we don’t need her. I can help Hank.”
Joseph's voice floated from the living room. “Check your garage, Suze. She likes to go out there and look at your stuff.”
Her lips thinning with irritation, Susan turned and left the room. Mom sighed sharply. “She’s a bit edgy, isn’t she?”
Hank shrugged. Sitting so long made his head ache. “She’s an artist. They’re fussy that way.”
“Don’t I know how fussy, as you call it, artists can be.”
No doubt, Hank thought, she was thinking of the twins.
Hank leaned back on the bed, weary and weak, closed his eyes. A moment later there was the sound of someone coming into the room.
Mom’s voice, “Thank you for helping. It’s just that Miss Cleveland is afraid I’ll drop him.”
A hand touched Hank’s shoulder, colors cycled across his eyes, and he saw for a moment, glinting wheels, the wheels of a bicycle catching the sun and sparkles of the sea. He opened his eyes, expecting Susan to be kneeling beside him, her pale hand drawing up his neck and into his hair.
But it was the nurse beside him, sheer cap on her head, uniform white against skin the color of chocolate milk. With her touch, she seemed to raise him, gripping his legs, expertly sitting him up.
Hank was dreaming, he was in delirium again, he had fallen back into the arms of sickness. He looked, astonished, at the nurse who now stood, turned to move the wheelchair beside the bed and faced him.
This was the Girl.
Thirteen
He remembered saying good-by to Joseph waving from the couch with his white legs gleaming, two stumpy casts on pillows. He remembered going down the ramp he had helped build for Joseph, in Joseph’s chair, behind him the sure, strong step of the Girl in her heavy nursing shoes.
Later, at home, as Hank lay in his bed surrounded by the scents of his own room, leather oil and shaving cream, broken bits of memory floated in and out of his mind. He faced the setting sun, the colors under his eyelids blood red and pink.
She remained compact and strong, even three years later. He could see that her figure matured, filled out; even under the starch of her uniform he could see her breasts as she tucked a blanket over his legs, leaned down to unlock the chair, and he looked over the line of her hips.
The Girl called him Mr. Cleveland. She gave no indication that she recognized him. She recognized him, all right, she had to have recognized him when Susan had brought him home. She had been taking care of him, giving him shots, wiping his butt. His cheeks flamed again as he thought of this. He knew her better than anyone else for that moment when they glanced at each other.
Lying here now, Hank wondered if this was enough to ignite a memory in Mom’s mind about the Girl who came to visit Hank that day, the Girl he had once known so well, but had someone, irrationally, forgotten. And he still, as much as he sweatily, head-achy tried, could not remember the Girl’s name.
Also, he couldn’t remember saying good-by to Susan. He couldn’t remember even seeing her on the porch, waving good-by. No one stood on the porch as the taxi pulled away and Mom tucked up the collar of his robe and fussed at his blankets. The Girl was gone, Susan was gone; pale blue bungalow stood lonely in the golden sun, only a handful of starlings on the lawn picking at the Bermuda grass.
Mom had set up Hank’s room. There was no question in her mind that Hank was coming home today. There was even a commode. Basin, liquids, magazines. A bell to ring if he needed anything.
Whispering, Don’t bother him now, he needs to rest. You can see him later when he wakes up. They would all want to see him of course, but he didn’t want to see them. Pretend to be asleep, and think of the Girl.
Nursing students couldn’t be married, he thought, although maybe that changed because of the war and so many nurses were needed. The Girl was too beautiful not to be taken. But then there was Susan. Susan was beautiful too, in her pale, red-gold way. She was not taken either.
And the Girl was delicious, chocolate brown eyes and huge lashes, and smarter than any of the other girls in her class, but not in the same ways. Maybe that was because her teachers, underneath their stern politeness, despised her for what she was, a Mexican upstart student in a rich kids’ school.
He couldn’t believe he had seen her again. Memories broke open, one by one, in tantalizing scraps. Sighing massively, Hank opened his eyes, forgetting about his audience.
Connie stampeded to his bed. Circling it like a wary mustang, she came around to the side he faced, yanked his desk chair forward, and sat between him and the window.
Leaning forward, she examined his face, reached for his hand, counted his fingers. “All there,” she announced. “Nothing missing. Except maybe half your capacious brain. Meningitis!! Of all things.”
“Gadzukes!” This from Carl, imitating Dad. Carl sat himself on the foot of the bed. “You are a long way from the healthy boy you once were.”
Hank rolled his eyes to let them know he was not amused. He sat up, his arms like two saplings, and Connie bustled the pillows, patting and shaping. He slapped her hand away.
“OK, Nurse Cleveland. I am well situated.”
Connie leaned forward again. She wore a tight white sweater and a tight tweed skirt. She said softly, “So I hear you were at your girlfriend’s” She cast a glance at Carl, who nodded.
What could they know about Susan? Would they care if they knew? Would they tell Mom, whom they used to, at any rate, tell everything?
He sent both of them a glance, saying it was none of their business.
“Dear Hank, always the Sphinx, saying nothing, knowing everything.” Carl’s glance shifted to Connie, back to Hank. Connie ignored it, but Hank saw the thing he had wondered about. Between the twins there was secret information. Even though they were fraternal twins, they had always been close.
Hank looked down at his hands, remembering the time he had walked into Carl’s room, when he was ten and learned how to knock.
The atmosphere grew serious. Talk faltered, as if each remembered something unpleasant. Then Connie said, “She’s very pretty, your girlfriend.”
Hank stiffened, narrowed his eyes, cocked his head. Was she bluffing? Would she just have assumed any girl Hank was with was pretty? He wondered if Connie and Carl remembered the Girl. They were so busy then, school and lessons and auditions.
Straitening his legs, Carl leaned back on his elbow, striking a pose. Everything he did created a photographic opportunity, and he did it, even unconscious of it, as if he were training his entire life to be in front of a camera.
“OK, I told Connie about your big date. But I was too late. Seems she already knew what you were up to. And as usual, knew before I did and a lot more, besides.”
Now Hank was tired. Really tired. He didn’t want to hear about it. He closed his eyes.
“You’re boring him, Connie.”
“He closed his eyes while you were speaking.”
“And you started this mindless conversation.”
“It’s not a conversation, it’s a monolog as usual. You and me doing all the talking and Hank just being Hank.”
When he woke up again, Joaquin was bringing him a tray. Chili-flavored chicken broth and hand-made tortillas. Night lay a hand outside, the clear expanse of Hollywood flowed out in colored bands beyond the palms. Hank actually felt hungry as he sat up
, and Joaquin placed the tray in front of him.
“Dinner in bed. Like a king.” Joaquin unfolded the napkin with a flourish and began to tuck it into Hank’s collar.
“Whoa there, Joaquin. I can feed myself.”
Joaquin’s heavy eyebrows went up and down. “Good you are home, young man,” he said and marched out of the room. “Someone has to repair the cracks.
Hank wondered about that as he finished his soup and the tortillas. He managed to make it to the commode and back, sitting down like a girl to pee, praying no one would barge in on him. But the trip wearied him, breaking sweat on his skin, muscles quivering as he got back into bed. He lay there, exhausted, thinking of the Girl, and Susan. Connie, and Carl. Mom, Dad, and oddly, the ugly urn of Grandfather Joel.
Hank was trapped in the house for an entire week. Outside the sun gleamed, the days were breezy and fine. Hints of spring blew through the open window. Mom spent a great deal of time with him, helping him bathe, washing his hair, reading the papers to him; even shaving him. When she read to him, that halting jolt to her voice he’d noticed lately seemed to go away.
He wondered what the twins thought of Mom spending so much time with him, and not with them. But they too visited him daily, never seeming to grow bored with the sickroom. And only spoke of trivial things, funny stories from the studio, Carl’s latest conquest, Connie’s photo shoot: As if instructed not to ask about Susan, what he was doing there, how he knew Joseph. Don’t upset him, don’t get him excited. He nearly died, you know.
And he noticed, as his strength returned and he could sit in a big chair brought up from the living room and situated near the French doors, that Mom’s running, wire-hot tension cooled; she would come into his room, kick off her shoes, undo the top buttons of her blouse, turn away phone calls.
Dad was the less frequent visitor. It was as if after the death of his father, he spent more time at the studios. Recording, taping—his velvet, deep tones were in more demand than ever. Dad had come into Hank’s room while he was sleeping, Hank was told by his mother. And a couple times while he was awake, only to stand awkwardly in the doorway, or at the foot of his bed. A man with the voice of God in the movies was incapable of making small talk to the sick.