by Jill Zeller
After a week of tentative walks around his room, up and down the hall, Hank was able to go downstairs. At first astonished at how his body failed him, now he could feel it resuming itself. He had a goal, however, and worked to achieve it.
He wanted to get downstairs to the telephone.
Fourteen
It was a perfect opportunity, more perfect than he could ever hope. Everyone, even Mom, was out, Connie and Carl at rehearsals, Dad at a recording, Mom at the hair-dressers. She had been focusing all her attention on Hank, occasionally leaving to deal with a crisis about wardrobe or copyright, but always returning early to be with Hank. But she had finally lost her courage about letting her hair go, so she had left, promising to come right home. Hank felt a mountain of relief. Only Joaquin remained behind the closed door of his room on the first floor near the kitchen, ready to respond if Hank ran the bell, which he never did; the luncheon buffet cleared away, dishes done, an hour or so before starting dinner.
The house was blessedly quiet. No voices, radio, footsteps or crinkling of papers, tap dancing or humming. Eerily quiet, as Hank came softly down the stairs in his slippers and robe, holding onto the bannister, not quite sure of his balance.
The trip down the steps did not tire him. He did not anticipate the return trip would be an easy one, but at least he could sit in the hallway chair beside the phone table. This was the main phone—they had extensions in the kitchen, living room, and Mom and Dad’s room upstairs. This phone was generally used by Connie, while Carl preferred the living room phone.
Hank dialed Susan’s number, his hand sweaty. He felt like a kid again, torturing himself about dialing up a girl to ask her for a date, a girl he barely knew or had just met.
He didn’t know who he wanted to answer the phone as it rang. Any of them, or none of them. Joseph? And then have to ask him to speak to Susan? He hoped Susan would answer—but what if it’s the Girl—his last thought as he heard her voice in his ear.
For a moment he couldn’t speak, wondering what to say—he fought not to hang up, it was a fierce urge. But he managed to say it, to calm himself.
“Hi. It’s Hank Cleveland.”
A momentary hesitation. “Hello, Mr. Cleveland. How are you feeling?”
Hank almost felt like laughing, if he wasn’t so irritated. “I am fine, Nurse. How are you?”
“You sound well. Are you out of bed? Walking around? Getting your strength back?”
Sighing, Hank gripped the phone, pressed it to his ear, as if he could feel her ear through the hand piece.
“I’m fine. I’m so bored.” I can’t believe it’s you. What is your name? How can I ask that? I should know.
“Mr. Cleveland,” she interrupted him, her voice rushed, unsure. “Perhaps I should let you talk to Miss Chagall. She would like to know how you are.”
“Wait a minute, don’t go.” But he knew it was too late, and he knew Susan heard him as she spoke seconds later, as if she had been standing right there beside the Girl.
“Hank, how are you? You feeling OK?” Her voice was conversational. He imagined Joseph in the living room, maybe the Girl was still there too; Hank could hear the radio, Joseph’s laughter.
“Susan, I miss you.” He had never said that to her before. It was out before he knew it.
“That’s good to hear,” she replied, and he wondered furiously what she meant by it, if anything at all. “Hank, you looked terrible. We honestly thought you were going to die,”
Snorting, Hank couldn’t believe this. “If I don’t see you soon I will die.”
He didn’t care about preserving her reserve for her. He loved her. He wanted to be with her. He wanted to come to her house now, this instant, get on his bicycle and ride over there. But he knew he probably couldn’t even lift the Raleigh, much less ride it.
“Well, that’s too bad. You know, you will get better. It just takes time, is all.”
He knew she said that because of Joseph nearby, but it made Hank want to slam the phone down. Shake it, shake her, grab her around the waist and mash his body into hers. In response to this, he felt a meager stirring in his groin; maybe he was getting better.
“Hold the phone, I think Joseph wants to talk to you.”
“No, wait, don’t go—” but she was gone, just as the Girl was gone. Why was he even more desperate for Susan than ever before? Leaning his head against the wall, he sighed fiercely again. Hang up, hang up before Joseph gets on the line.
“Hey, Hank, how are ya? You getting out on your bicycle yet?”
Resigned, Hank told him about his progress. Joseph sounded appropriately impressed.
“All the way down the stairs to the phone, huh? Magnificent! So, I won’t run up the phone bill, but you need to get well and come visit. I want to tell you the end of my story.” Joseph lowered his voice—static bloomed around it, making it, in Hank’s mind, sparkle into tiny little shards of sound.
“It’s better told face to face, I think. Especially since I never told anyone before.”
Hank could barely believe it, but Joseph sounded, to his surprise, as if he was awed and puzzled by wanting to tell Hank his story.
Joseph said, “When I jumped off that streetcar, because I really did see that old lady go under the wheels, when I did that, I knew that something was changing for me, something I couldn’t stop.
“And I feel bad about it, you know? Messing up Susan’s life this way. She was happy. She had you for a lover. Yeah, I know what’s been going on. I could tell she was really enjoying herself with you. I could tell. Even though I never met you, I could feel you around, you know what I mean?”
Hank’s hand began to quiver. His ear grew sweaty. Joseph sounded a little too wound-up for his taste. And gratefully Hank heard the Girl’s voice in the background, urging Joseph to get ready to go outside, it was time for his walk, and yes, not to run up the phone bill.
“Yeah, OK. Bye Hank. Call again soon, will ya?”
And he rang off before Hank could ask to talk to Susan again. Hank could have, he thought, as he listened to the empty hiss of the line in his ear, and he also could have asked to talk to Nurse Girl again, pretend to have a medical question to ask her. But it was too late. And now he had to get upstairs again.
To postpone that unpleasant task, Hank went into the living room to look at the urn, as if to make sure it was still there. It stood next to the marquess, who had turned away again, probably moved by Carl who had taken an interest in the figurine, probably wondering how much he could get for it. Perhaps she was worth half as much now; having lost her partner, her worth plummeted. She was angry about that, Hank thought. And now she had to stand next to the one who had caused the destruction of the marquis.
Hank chided himself. Here he stood believing that Grandfather Joel’s death caused the marquis to fall from the mantle.
Maybe the illness had changed his brain somehow, like Connie joked, so that now he could see and feel things that others could not. He did notice that he was more sensitive to noise; thump of a shoe dropped to the floor, phone ringing in his parents’ bedroom, Connie practicing a step in her room—shoes tapping like nails driven into his brain.
Looking at his grandfather’s image etched in the urn, encircled by an ornate gilt oval, Hank thought of Susan’s work and how different it was. He could see the vase was sloppily produced; the edges of the different glazes met imprecisely. They were not as vibrant, pulsing, alive as Susan’s were.
Next he turned to the marquess. Boldly he picked her up, upended her, and looked for the mark Susan said should be there.
Tearing off a corner of a magazine lying on the coffee table and picking up a pen his father had left behind, Hank wrote it down, not trusting to memory. The marquess felt solid in his hand, details precise and intricate, carefully placed, each layer of glaze perfectly set, chin lifted haughtily, wig roped with rosettes. Carefully he replaced her, back to the urn, knowing she didn’t want to look at it.
Knees quivering, Hank k
new he should lie down. He hadn’t been out of bed, standing, walking, for this long a period of time since he had fallen ill. The torn paper in his robe pocket, he crossed the living room to the door, looked back at the marquess one more time, as if he half-expected her to rotate back so she was facing the urn again. But she remained stonily turned away.
Fifteen
Another week passed before Hank felt well enough to go out to Susan’s again. He had enough money for a cab ride, scrounging what he could find and borrow from his brother and sister who seemed happy to oblige him. Connie in particular showed interested in Hank’s plans, but she had little time to bother him about it. The film was behind schedule; hours of rehearsals and filming stretched late into the day and into the weekends, keeping her, to his pleasure, out of his hair. It was as if no one was around much at all anymore. He had the house to himself more often than not, and he loved the quiet roaming.
But one thing had changed; his mother was home more often. Now that he was well again, she had retreated to her bedroom. He could hear her speaking on the phone; she was on the phone a lot, he thought.
But this morning as he dressed and went downstairs, venturing out to the garage to look over his bikes, he realized she couldn’t be on the phone that long. And, times when he thought she was on the phone, a call would come in and Joaquin would answer.
He spoke with friends and relatives inquiring after his health; they sent letters and cards and boxes of chocolates, but the only time he spoke with Susan was when he called her, and more often than not, especially lately, Susan, not the Girl, answered the phone. Disappointed because the calls that did come in were never from Susan who had not once called him to see how he was, it took him two weeks to puzzle out that something odd was going on with Mom.
Squeezing one of the Raleigh’s tires, Hank remembered Dad’s concern about Mom, wanting Hank to keep an eye on her. Hank, wrapped up in his own difficulties, had sort of forgotten that demand. So, he made up his mind that today, the day before he planned to go to Susan’s blue bungalow, he would knock on Mom’s bedroom door.
He could hear her talking, but at the sound of his voice, she stopped. Then, instead of shouting “come in”, she opened the door.
Seeing it was him, she turned away, leaving the door open so he could trail in after her.
Mom's and Dad’s room was huge, larger than Susan’s living and dining rooms combined. Their private bath was also large and the door, draped with robes, stood open to show towels hanging off the sink and tub. The room stretched to the back of the house with the same view Hank had, looking down on Hollywood through a larger set of French doors opening out to their own private balcony. Papers, manuscripts, books littered the bed and Mom’s dressing table in the corner between the bathroom and the windows. Closet doors stood open, gowns and suits and ties flung over the doors and on hooks, open boxes of shoes scattered the floor of the closet and out onto the plush pale rug. The room smelled of floral perfume, well-worn shoes, and oranges.
And cigarettes. Walking back to her dressing table that doubled as a desk, Mom stubbed out the one she was smoking. The doctor had forbidden smoking in Hanks’ sick room. Mom picked up her little pink pig lighter and another smoke, but seemed to catch herself and put them down. In a white cotton blouse and slacks, her blond hair coifed and rolled, she looked as casual as she ever looked except when getting out of bed in the morning.
Moving a stack of documents out of the way, Hank sat on the foot of the bed. Mom turned, looked at him, reading glasses pushed back on her head, a pencil stuck in her hair over her right ear. She looked well enough, but he thought he saw new lines, fine, like crazing in old porcelain, around her mouth.
“You look so much better,” she told him, leaning back against her dressing table, even smiling a little. “God I was so worried about you.”
She had told him this many times, so he made no response except to shrug. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the telephone on the bed, had not heard her hang it up when he knocked or the necessary end-the-call words to the other party.
“Quite a mess, isn’t it.” Pulling the pencil from her hair, she twirled it in her fingers. “I’ve been working at home more. No point in me hanging around getting in the twins’ way. They can always call me if they need something.”
This was a real change. Hank wondered what she was doing, exactly. “I heard you talking when I came in. Sorry if I interrupted a phone call.”
Mom touched her glasses, put the pencil back into her hair. Walking to the French doors, open to bring in the hint of spring, she stood still for a long moment, statue-like. Turning, she walked to the bed, sat down beside Hank. To his astonishment, he saw that she was barefoot, her toenails painted pale pink.
“I wasn’t on the phone, Hank.”
He had known this, but there could be any explanation.
“And no,” she continued, her jaw working sideways in the strange tic he had noticed lately. “I’m not going back to the courtroom, nor practicing for a case, and I’m not auditioning as a sudden urge to become an actress.”
She smiled at this, although it was not a happy smile, nor a sardonic one. It was an angry smile, Hank thought, Mom’s eyes narrow and dark.
“I’m just trying to get it all said, to get the words out before—” She stopped abruptly, and Hank waited. But her face was stony, grieving, bereft.
“Before what?”
“Before I can’t anymore.” Turning toward him, Mom took his hand, looked it over, touched his knuckles one by one. “You are the quiet one. You are my sweet, quiet son.”
A wary stiffness settled into Hank’s muscles. He saw in his mother’s face a rigor of sorrow he had never seen before.
“What’s the matter?” This fear was new. His confident, strong, guiding mother, the tornado force that kept the family together, was melting away before his eyes.
Swallowing, Mom laid Hank’s hand onto his knee and patted it. “He says it might be a tumor, but probably isn’t, but a rare nerve disorder.” She looked at Hank, her eyes wide, sighing, anxious. “It affects the nerves that work my mouth and jaw and larynx; it’s degenerative. There is nothing to be done, at least, maybe a few things, a new drug, but eventually, he says, I will lose my power of speech.”
“No, that doctor’s crazy,” Hank heard himself say, standing up.
Mom looked at him, shook her head in a resigned way.
“The tests, they’re not perfect he says, but my symptoms—” She folded her hands. “My doctor sent me to a specialist in this sort of thing, a neurologist. They specialize in nerves and the brain. He says my symptoms indicate this disease. He suggested tumor, but he doesn’t really think that is what it is. They did x-rays, but that didn’t reveal any clues.”
Frozen, Hank looked out the windows where a meadow lark called into the brightness of the day. A spear of grief went through him, followed by a heavy dose of guilt. Turning back to her, she looked old, stricken, her hair out of place, her hands mottled as they pressed against one another.
Hank said, “Is that why you read to me so much, while I was sick?”
Nodding, she turned her head away, brought a hand to her face. As she sobbed noiselessly, Hank stood, uncertain, frail. Should he touch her, should he leave her alone to cry?
Her voice was ragged. The hesitation in her voice that had never been there before, garbling of words.
“Don’t tell anyone, Hank. You hear me?”
Talking, talking, talking. Jaw and lips and teeth and tongue making words, failing to make words. His towering mother shrunken into a fragile figurine of herself.
Uncertain, Hank stood, slightly turned away. She had trusted him with this knowledge, him alone, but then she always leaned on him, told him things he wished he didn’t know.
Keeper of the family skeletons. But this was different. He saw now, how alone she was.
He should leave her alone. Maybe she didn’t want him here anymore.
But instead, he sat next t
o her on the bed and put his arm around her. He hadn’t voluntarily touched his mother in three years.
Scrabbling for a handkerchief in the pocket of her slacks, Mom smelled like peaches. She gave a short laugh, blew her nose.
“He says I should quit smoking. Fat chance. Maybe you could hide all my cigarettes, lighters, and take away all my cash, Hank.”
“You could try,” he said, knowing how hard it was.
“And pigs can fly.” She looked at him, her eyes bright and red-rimmed. “We won’t talk about that any more, but there’s one other thing.”
Wariness went through him again as he wondered what she was going to ask of him. He still didn’t know what was bothering Connie. And he wondered what he would say to Dad when he asked Hank about what might be wrong with Mom.
Silent for a while, Mom crushed her fingers together, and Hank grew more nervous. She got up, went to her dresser, picked up her cigarette case, put it down again, and turned to face him. The old Mom was back, the sick one tucked away as she folded her arms and leaned on the dresser. The only clue that the veneer was cracking were two splotches of wet on her blouse.
Hank remained on the foot of the bed, although every fiber in his body was telling him to get out of here. Make the phone ring, Connie come home early, another figurine to crash to the floor.
Mom sighed, her glance darting toward the open doors and then back to him. “When I came to pick you up at the Chagall’s, I could see that Miss Chagall had taken very good care of you.”
Stay neutral. It’s all nothing. Whatever she says doesn’t matter. Hank stared back at Mom, who wore her best courtroom face, decisive, stern. I’m innocent, he thought. An innocent guy pulled in for a crime I didn’t commit.
But in good lawyerly fashion, Mom redirected, made a right turn from the thing he thought she knew.