They were driven to a place called Pierre’s, off Jefferson, not far from the Windsor Tunnel. They were welcomed by Monsieur Pierre himself, who greeted Mrs. Olsson with all but uncontainable warmth. He had a pencil-line-thin moustache, which looked eccentric but which perhaps was to be expected of a restaurateur named Pierre. (Although both men had named establishments for themselves, Pierre and Chuck of Chuck’s Chop House probably wouldn’t have much to say to each other.) “This is Bianca Paradiso,” Mrs. Olsson announced.
Bianca was used to clipping her name—a name that commonly inspired silly jokes or cumbersome gallantries. “Bea Pardiso” was how she often introduced herself, condensing the whole business into four syllables. But Mrs. Olsson strung it out in all its Italianate amplitude: Bi-an-ca Pa-ra-di-so. She might have been introducing a contessa.
Monsieur Pierre lifted Bea’s wrist as delicately as though it were a nosegay, and if he did not actually kiss her hand, he brought it near enough to his moustached face to deposit his breath on her flesh. “Enchanted,” he sighed, a translation for enchanté, which Bea long ago had learned in French class was a standard form of greeting, though until now she’d never quite believed anything so preposterous.
All the tables had beautiful salmon-colored tablecloths.
“Have you been here before?” was the first thing Mrs. Olsson asked Bea once Pierre had seated them.
Now this was a funny question. Only on rare and very special occasions did Bea’s family go to a fancy restaurant, and never to a place that looked and felt like Pierre’s, where the curtains, too, were a beautiful salmon color. But there was something about this afternoon far stranger and more rarefied still: never in her life had Bea visited a truly fancy restaurant with another woman. (Aunt Grace usually took her to Sanders.)
“I think it’s my first time,” Bea said.
Pierre and Mrs. Olsson conducted an earnest and somewhat befuddling conversation, in which nothing seemed resolved, and yet within moments a waiter placed a glass before Bea, a different sort of glass before Mrs. Olsson. “I ordered you a glass of wine,” Mrs. Olsson said. “You needn’t drink it. I don’t know whether you drink wine.”
“Oh yes. Well, sometimes.” Bea had already had occasion to clarify this issue for Mrs. Olsson. Indeed, she had drunk a number of glasses of wine in her presence. But Mrs. Olsson didn’t always recall what she’d been told.
“I mean at lunch.”
“Oh. Oh yes. Well, Sundays. It’s—” She paused briefly. “We always have an Italian Sunday dinner.”
“How elegant!”
“I suppose.”
“I-ta-ly,” Mrs. Olsson intoned, and drank deeply from her glass, which held some clear liquid—vodka? It also held ice cubes, which clinked. The pensive look departed her face and her beautiful dark-brown eyes snapped sharply onto Bea’s face. “Should you tell me all about you? Or me tell you all about me? We can talk about whatever we wish.”
It was another of those veering conversational gambits from Mrs. Olsson, which, though ostensibly meant to open conversation, inhibited it; they had a way—such remarks—of intimidating Bea to near-paralysis. “Tell me about you,” Bea murmured. And added, “Please.”
“You ever hear of Scarp, North Dakota?”
“No. Well, yes. I mean I hadn’t. Until recently. When Ronny mentioned it. And you—you’ve mentioned it also.” Bea took a deep swallow of her wine. It was quite a dark red, and of a thicker flavor than anything ever tasted at home.
“D’you know what its population was?”
“No, I don’t,” Bea answered truthfully.
“Five hundred and four living souls. You could argue with that, I suppose. Whether they were actually living.”
“It was small.”
“And stupid. You’ve heard of ‘dirt poor.’ That’s not so bad. But folks in Scarp were dirt dumb. And dumb enough to be content to be dirt dumb, which is really dumb. I’m no more than six years old, already I know I must leave Scarp, North Dakota. You see, I knew what I wanted. Let me tell you a story. When I first met Charley—Mr. Olsson—I said to myself, I’m going to get that man to beg me to marry him, and you know what? I did. He beseeched me. Implored, down on his knees. And when his parents threatened to cut him off without a red cent if we went ahead? I said to myself, I’ll get them to come round. And you know what? I did, they came round, after Ronny was born … I had three things working for me. Now can you guess what they were?”
“I—” Bea hesitated, sipped her wine. “Please,” she said urgently, a word that covered a lot of ground. It meant, Please tell me. It meant, Please don’t put me on the spot like this.
“One: I was very pretty. Am I not supposed to say that? Let me tell you something, Bianca, something that may just save you heaps of trouble. In this cold world of ours, being pretty counts a great deal, and a girl isn’t pretty, she’s lost half the battle before it begins, but you know what counts far more? It’s knowing you’re pretty. Not in any vain, silly-headed way. Take the men in this place. Talking their little deals?” Bea had dimly observed that, although it was a Saturday, Pierre’s seemed full of businessmen. Except for a pair of elderly ladies, tucked into a corner, there were no other women here. “Not one of these men hasn’t noticed our presence at the best table in this place. Not one isn’t yearning to know who we are. Because you’re a very pretty one, too, Bianca. You understand, don’t you—that you are?”
But there was no meeting such a question. Even if aware of being pretty, how could she possibly admit as much to the most beautiful woman she’d ever actually spoken to? Truly it was remarkable, beauty like this: Mrs. Olsson’s ivory skin, the intricate masses of auburn hair, the imposing cheekbones, the flawless nose with its faint but daring uptilt. And those big brown-black eyes in which, at this very moment, whole candlesticks were dancing … In addition, Mrs. Olsson possessed a certain nameless intangible something that Bea associated with a few Hollywood actresses: Paulette Goddard, say, or Gene Tierney, or the tragic war victim Carole Lombard—the sort of larger-than-life beauty that could fill a forty-foot screen. This was the sort of woman for whom, in the movies, men slipped into the boxing ring to challenge the champion, or, falsely accused, shuffled innocently but amenably down to the electric chair. Bea sipped her wine, whose taste she was getting used to. “I don’t—” she said. “I hope I’m not—”
Mrs. Olsson cut her off. “Two: I don’t give a damn what people think of me. Does my language offend you? Surprise you, Bianca? I’d better warn you: I can do much worse. Because I don’t give a damn. Just that simple. Charley—Mr. Olsson—my talk drives him crazy. He cares what everybody thinks and he’s got the bleeding ulcer to prove it.
“Three: when I know what I want, I go after it. Not ruthlessly. Never underhandedly. I’m not at all what some people say I am. But I am direct. I’m an honest person.” Mrs. Olsson had offered her displays of vanity before—you might even say that her entire carriage and demeanor were an ongoing exhibition of vanity. But this was something else: a plea for understanding. For she really did want Bea to comprehend this, anyway: Gretchen Olsson was an honest woman.
The menu was held together by a tasseled gold string. At the bottom of the first page was a quotation from Louis Pasteur: “Wine is the most healthful and most hygienic of all beverages.” Mrs. Olsson finished her clinking drink, dabbed her salmon-colored napkin on her lips, and all at once, as if with a screwing-into-place, fixed her eyes on Bea’s face: “And what about you? Do you know what you want, my dear? In your heart of hearts, what is it you want, Bianca?”
Bea’s response was in a sense perfect—a perfect disaster. Her left hand, reaching for her water glass, recoiled at the question, upsetting her not quite empty wineglass, which instantly, to Bea’s horror, sent racing toward her on the beautiful salmon-colored tablecloth a shameful blooded irremediable stain. “Oh! Oh I’m so hopeless …”
Mrs. Olsson handled the whole matter expertly (which perhaps wasn’t surprising, since it se
emed she was a woman in whose presence people were forever spilling things). She righted the now-empty glass, said calmly, “Don’t give it a thought, dear, don’t give it a thought,” signaled to a waiter, and suggested to Bea, “Perhaps you want to freshen up?” And by the time Bea returned from the ladies’, everything was tranquilly arranged as if no mishap had occurred: a new tablecloth, a refilled wineglass before Bea’s chair. Mrs. Olsson had a fresh glass in hand.
Even so, Bea felt as though she’d merely substituted one discomfort for another, for she brought a new problem to the table. In the ladies’ room, wearing a pink dress much too tight for her, a big Negro woman had been sitting in a chair beside the row of sinks. After Bea washed her hands, the woman extended a linen towel … Was Bea supposed to hand her some coin in return? A nickel? A dime? Of course Bea had met ladies’ room attendants before, but never in a fancy restaurant—never under circumstances quite like these. In any case, she had no money; in her dazed fluster, she’d actually fled the table without her purse. “Thank you very much,” Bea had said, but the woman only grunted in reply.
Resettled in her seat, sipping from her new glass of wine, Bea said, “There was a woman in the ladies’ who handed me a towel and I would have tipped her but I had no coin and now I’m wondering if I should perhaps go back—”
“Oh for heaven’s sake. Sit still, sweetie.” Sweetie? “I’ll handle it when I next pay a visit.”
“Well,” Bea said. “I mean, thank you.” And added: “For everything.”
And Bea felt oddly at ease … Her sense of small excruciating problems all ably surmounted left this afternoon’s conversation free to blaze a warmer path. They were having an intimate conversation, Bea and Mrs. Charles Olsson. “You have brothers and sisters,” Mrs. Olsson said. “Tell me about them”—which she had requested before. And while Mrs. Olsson didn’t appear quite attentive as Bea obediently rattled on about Stevie’s worrying that the War wouldn’t last until his enlistment and Edith’s weird talking in her sleep, she nodded politely throughout. And perceiving how the menu intimidated Bea (the dishes sounded so strange, and they were so expensive!), Mrs. Olsson asked, “May I order for you, dear?”
At once Pierre materialized at Mrs. Olsson’s shoulder. She said to him, “Didn’t the menu used to have a lady’s steak?”
Pierre’s wire moustache quivered unhappily. “It’s the War,” he said. “The supplies aren’t what they used to be …” Yes, the War was going on, as ever, while Bea reposed with Mrs. Olsson in a restaurant decorated in colors Bea had never seen in a restaurant before—going on in that world where Papa had his own shoes resoled and resoled so that his elder daughter might be given the rationing coupon for a new pair … Mrs. Olsson did not actually say a word. She didn’t need to. She merely nodded, and smiled at Pierre, who swallowed and said cheerfully, “Mais oui. Perfect.”
The succeeding talk was light and easy, though Mrs. Olsson did confess at one point, “You know, Charley’s not happy about Ronny’s studying art.” (Somewhere in the course of lunch Mrs. Olsson had stopped referring to her husband as Mr. Olsson.) “Not happy at all.”
“What would Mr. Olsson prefer that Ronny study?”
“Accounting? Mortuary science?” Mrs. Olsson then added, light-heartedly and quite shockingly, “What’s it matter just so long as it’s grim as hell?”
But more shocking still was the line of conversation after their lady’s steaks arrived, when Bea—returning the favor—again inquired whether Mrs. Olsson had any brothers or sisters.
“I guess I do,” Mrs. Olsson replied. “I suppose you could say … yes, I have a sister.”
“Is she older? Younger? Your sister.”
“She stayed in Scarp. Betty Marie. Good-looking girl. Stayed in Scarp to marry a thug. I don’t object to Ed’s having mud for brains, but his being a ham-fisted thug’s something I do find objectionable. I send her money sometimes. Should I not tell you that? Charley gets the heebie-jeebies whenever I mention money. He’s afraid of it—now isn’t that peculiar? I suppose that’s why he’s made so much of it. Myself, I’m not afraid of money. Are you, Bianca?”
“I—well, I don’t know.”
Again, those vast beautiful brown-nearly-black eyes were full on Bea’s face. The expression was vaguely menacing—or simply playful? In any event, the pools of Mrs. Olsson’s eyes were deep enough for an eighteen-year-old girl to drown in.
“I wasn’t afraid to spell it out to my sister. I said, ‘Betty Marie, think of me as offering a bounty to a bounty hunter. Paying a dollar a coyote pelt. Or let’s say twenty grand the day you put a slug in Eddie’s skull.’” And Mrs. Olsson, looking radiant and cheerful, rose from the table. She was off to the ladies’ room. She leaned forward, confidingly, within a low cloud of opulent perfume: “Actually, what I said was, ‘It’s twenty thousand to you the day you toss that ape out on his ear.’ But would she? No …”
When Mrs. Olsson returned, she said, pleasantly—as if she hadn’t just now been joking about her brother-in-law’s murder—“D’you have time for coffee, dear?”
And when, after coffee, Bea herself returned to the ladies’ room, it seemed Mrs. Olsson indeed had “handled things” with the formidable Negro woman in the overstuffed pink dress. After Bea washed her hands, the woman offered Bea a fresh towel and said, “Bless you, miss. God bless you.”
CHAPTER XI
Bea sat once more at the foot of Private Donnelly’s bed, sketch pad in hand. So much had unfolded during this past week, it was hard to believe she’d first walked up the steps of Ferry Hospital only last Tuesday. She had prayed for Private Donnelly in the interim and he was indeed much improved. His face was less swollen and discolored. The big fresh bandage on the right side of his face was a somewhat reduced bandage. More of his face greeted the light of day.
In the past week, Bea had gone with Ronny on that memorable walk in Palmer Park; she had attended class; she had met Aunt Grace again for lunch, at Hudson’s; she had lunched with Mrs. Olsson at Pierre’s; she had sat through a scary Sunday afternoon in which Nonno had suffered another emphysema attack and he and Nonna left before dinner was even served; she had briefly met Maggie, who had coined a new nickname, Ma’am Hamm, for her mother-in-law; and she had accompanied Mamma and Stevie on a shopping expedition to buy Stevie new school clothes. (When she’d suggested knickers—he’d always looked so cute in knickers!—Stevie replied, “I haven’t worn knickers for ages.”) Meanwhile, as Bea was racing about, Private Donnelly had presumably done nothing but lie in this narrow bed, awaiting her return.
“You’re looking more like yourself,” Bea told him. While this was something she might have said anyway, it heartened her to mean it. The curly-headed Irish boy of the high school graduation portrait was being resurrected. Since last seeing him, maybe her memory had exaggerated how worn he’d become? A week ago, she had detected the middle-aged man inside this boy; today, she beheld the boy again, blessedly restored.
It was a little strange, but on the whole quite comforting, just how at home she felt in Private Donnelly’s frenzied presence—how familiar seemed his voice, his gestures, all the tireless flirtations nowise impeded by having nearly half his face under wraps. Truly, she might have known him for years.
Today, as a bandage-free face materialized on the paper before her, Bea felt less like a fabricator than she had last week—less like a liar, you might say. She’d done enough pencil sketching: now she started in on charcoal. She was going to move confidently. In freeing his features from the disfiguring sting of flying metal, she was doing the right thing. Her racing left hand told her so.
His face had changed for the better but his tone was precisely the same: appreciative, impudent, indefatigable, funny. When Nurse O’Donnell stepped in at one point, he called out, “Auntie! Auntie, I dreamed of you last night. I dreamed you brought me a big tin of brownies.” “Oh you hush.” “With pecans in them, Auntie. Now how on earth did you know I dote on pecans?” “You’ve been smoking ag
ain. I swear it as a solemn vow: I’m going to steal your cigarettes.” “And I didn’t know you smoked, Auntie. Looky here, you wanna bum a butt off me some time, just say the—” “Oh you hush.” And the moment Nurse O’Donnell left the room, he stage-whispered, “Why is every nurse I meet built exactly like a fire hydrant?”—which made Bea laugh aloud.
Just the same, too, was his way of rapidly saying absolutely nothing, without ever running out of words. “Bea Paradiso, Bea Paradiso,” he chanted. “Gee, I’m so glad your name isn’t Bea Paradowsky, because Jake Paradowsky was the biggest meatball at Battle Creek Central. Old Central had lots of meatballs, but everyone knew old Jake was the biggest, and …” And Private Donnelly embarked on a lengthy anecdote, not exactly proper—but quite amusingly recounted—about how four boys ambushed Jake on the way to school, three of them holding him down while the fourth scrawled meatball on his belly in red lipstick. And when Bea protested that Jake Paradowsky certainly hadn’t deserved anything so cruel, Private Donnelly rattled off a catalogue of Meatball Paradowsky’s offenses and stupidities. Old Jake had got off easy …
Meanwhile, Bea’s left hand flew—so much more confidently this time around. Private Donnelly’s right eye, the one she’d never seen, emerged almost as persuasively as the other. She stared into his bandage—she was far less squeamish this week—as if, by pure intensity of sight, she might uncover the hidden pupil and iris.
Of course that was the issue—the question so loaded with hazards she couldn’t risk directly asking: was the right eye going to recover? Had the whizzing shrapnel left the eyeball itself intact? Or was she memorializing something gone for good?
Bea had prayed for that eye of Private Donnelly’s. She’d meant to do so every night, but—such a busy week—she’d forgotten a couple of times. Now she wished she hadn’t. By neglecting her prayers, she enhanced the queerness she felt (all her old jittery superstitiousness coming to the fore) as the tip of her charcoal teased out that hidden eye. To draw him like this—was she asking for trouble? Tempting fate? To draw him might somehow make her personally responsible for Private Donnelly’s medical state, muddling his recovery by introducing the blood of her own perplexities and shortcomings—blending her fate with his. And yet—yet her hand held steady, she would see it through to full-bloomed creation: the pale ring of the iris, the sparkling pupil. She was moving forward. And she would posit here, brightly, something which that eye just might accommodate once more: a sharp appetite for approval, and a glowing hint of young, good-hearted tomfoolery.
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