Ronny was not even in Michigan, but Bea received a phone call anyway from Arden Park. It was Mrs. Olsson, feeling under the weather. She’d begged off an engagement, and now, with nobody to dine with, she was feeling “orphaned.” Would Bea come over?
On arrival at the Olssons’, Bea was shown upstairs for the first time. Here was the parents’ bedroom. Mrs. Olsson was lying on a gigantic four-poster canopy bed, propped upon a mountain of pillows.
It soon grew apparent that this was no terribly sick woman, though her voice bore a faint rasp. Of course it was typical of Mrs. Olsson, in her splendid theatrical way, to exhibit her illness in this fashion. She was apparently wearing no makeup and her hair was piled any which way on her head. She was no longer larger than life, and when she rose from bed, after a few minutes’ conversation, Bea glimpsed a Mrs. Olsson never seen before: simply another woman in a robe (even if the robe was an exquisite jade-green silk). Though remarkably beautiful, Mrs. Olsson looked a little puffy-faced, and it seemed her body was beginning to show a small potbelly.
“Where shall we sit? Where shall we sit?” Mrs. Olsson chanted, as Bea followed her down the central staircase. “Don’t you think it’s a remarkably uncomfortable house?”
Uncomfortable? It wasn’t a criterion Bea would have thought to apply to any house that boasted a carriage house in back, where Scottish husband and Irish wife, the driver and the cook, resided. In truth, however, Bea had never felt at ease here, though her discomfort probably wasn’t with the house so much as its occupants. Who could feel wholly relaxed in a home where lynx-faced Mr. Olsson padded the dark hallways and Mrs. Olsson was forever issuing explosive declarations?
“Let’s try the kitchen. I swear it’s the only livable room in this whole monstrosity.”
So Bea was guided into another largely unfamiliar portion of the house. The cook, whom Bea could not make herself call Agnes, though everybody else did, was sitting at the table reading a copy of Look.
“You can call it a day, Agnes,” Mrs. Olsson said.
“You haven’t had any dinner, ma’am.”
“You know I’m not feeling well.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
And so it was that Bea wound up sitting companionably at the little kitchen table with a Mrs. Olsson whose hair was still haphazardly piled. “I want to hear more about your family,” Mrs. Olsson said. “Italy was once the center of the world, wasn’t it. The origin of all culture? You talk and I’ll make tea.”
“I’ll make the tea. You’re not feeling well.”
“No, I want to. Please, just sit …”
So Bea sat and, though naturally uneasy about being waited upon by Mrs. Olsson, offered a few family anecdotes, many of which Mrs. Olsson had heard before. Mrs. Olsson greeted every detail as something new, however. Under her solicitous gaze, Bea rapidly turned to the subject of Uncle Dennis and Aunt Grace and their upcoming move. Bea chatted away, though uncertain whether Mrs. Olsson was listening out of genuine interest or merely showing the polite fatigue of somebody feeling not quite like herself.
“And so last week they put their house up for sale and do you know what? Why, they’ve already sold it!”
“I’m not surprised. Given the housing shortage. The whole city’s gone barking mad.” Mrs. Olsson set two cups of tea and a plate of biscuits on the table. “Mr. Olsson suggested we take in a boarder. As a patriotic duty. I said, Fine, he can have my place, Charley, because the day he moves in I’m moving out. As if we’re not doing enough, putting every cent into war bonds and Charley running every wartime committee in the city.”
The next thing Mrs. Olsson did was quite surprising. Although she hardly sought to conceal her drinking, she usually carried it out with an air of refinement. Now, though, she opened a cupboard and removed a brown pint bottle of whiskey, which she placed squarely on the kitchen table. “I have to nurse my throat,” she said.
“Yes,” Bea said.
Mrs. Olsson poured whiskey into her tea—not a lot, but not such a little, either. “Honey, would you like a little splash?” she said.
“No thank you,” Bea said.
“It seems you love your aunt and uncle a lot, Bianca,” Mrs. Olsson said.
“Well of course I do. I mean they’re both so wonderful. Uncle Dennis is so brilliant and kind, and also eccentric—he’s obsessed with science-fiction stories. He truly believes we’re all going to fly to the moon someday. Honestly.”
“Everybody’s got a nutty uncle, Bea.”
Bea flinched. Though having described her uncle as eccentric, Bea recoiled at nutty. She went on: “And Aunt Grace is so kind, too, and gracious just like her name, and so beautiful, though of course, I mean not…”
Bea couldn’t quite propel herself to say not so beautiful as you. She knew no suitable way to compliment the only woman she’d ever personally known who might reasonably be cast in a movie alongside Gary Cooper or Tyrone Power … Nonetheless, if it were possible to utter such words, it surely ought to be possible on a night when Mrs. Charles Olsson sat sipping whiskey tea in a dark kitchen, looking disheveled and puffy-eyed.
Mrs. Olsson heard the unspoken compliment. Graciously praising somebody whose graciousness had just been praised, she said, “I can certainly believe she’s beautiful. Perhaps you look a little like her?”
“Oh not really.”
“You know what? I sometimes think you look a little like me. Tall. Dark hair, dark eyes. Maybe that’s why you’re Ronny’s type.”
“Oh well … I hardly … I mean you—” All the blood in Bea’s body was clamoring to her face. “Well, that’s very kind.”
“Kind? Listen to you! You’re making me sound conceited.”
“I didn’t mean …”
Bea felt thoroughly outmaneuvered. There were occasional moments when Mrs. Olsson seemed not merely a bold and outrageous but also quite a crafty woman. For somebody who, by her own cheerful admission, had never finished high school, and who apparently thought reticent was the same as reluctant, and representative the same as representational, Mrs. Olsson sometimes seemed a not implausible mother for her scholarly, epigram-coining, fine-distinction-loving son.
“Speaking of family,” Mrs. Olsson said, “you know I’m worried about Charley. Does that seem incredible to you—that I’d be worrying about Charley?”
“Of course not.”
“Well I do worry. And last week I found blood in his handkerchief. That sounds like consumption, but it’s not. It’s his ulcer. He drives himself to it.”
“Well, he’s very driven.” Bea reached out and took two biscuits. Suddenly, she was feeling almost shaky with hunger. Hadn’t she been invited for dinner?
“That’s one of the qualities that drew me to him: his exceptional drive. But now I sometimes have to ask: is that such a good idea? Why was I so drawn to that?”
“Isn’t it only natural for a woman to be?”
“Bianca, would you say Ronny is driven?”
“Of course,” Bea replied. “I mean”—all at once, Mrs. Olsson was watching her very closely—“not to a worrisome degree. But yes. Driven as an artist I mean.”
“And you do think he’s a talented artist?”
“Without question. Oh, he was the best in our class! I mean, he was the best at capturing a thing’s likeness. I do wish he’d take more classes …”
“I’ve always thought he was talented,” Mrs. Olsson declared. “But Charley says, You want a likeness, a camera’s far more lifelike. He’s not at all sure art like that has a future.”
“Oh but it does!” Bea cried, feeling that here at least she could provide Mrs. Olsson with the reassurances the woman seemed to crave tonight. “He’s got quite a future. And art does, too,” she added.
In the pause that followed, she couldn’t resist: she reached out and filched another biscuit.
“Why, you haven’t had dinner!” Mrs. Olsson cried. “Agnes just now—she was trying to tell me something, wasn’t she? That I ought to see my guest is properly fed! Bianca
my dear, you’ll have to excuse me: truly I’m not feeling well.”
“Oh I’m perfectly—”
“I’ll make you some eggs. Would you permit me to make you some eggs?”
“Good grief, there’s no need to—”
“Eggs. I’ll make us both some eggs. And you must promise to sit right there …”
You might well suppose Mrs. Olsson would be the sort of woman who wouldn’t know how to boil water, but as she slid to and fro in her jade-colored robe, it quickly became apparent she was adept in a kitchen. She diced, beat, stirred, and in just a few minutes a tasteful plate was set before Bea: a mound of cottage cheese, toast (sliced on the diagonal), some apple wedges, and half an omelet.
The golden omelet, which enfolded cheddar cheese and finely cut ham and browned onions, turned out to be quite wonderful.
“I can’t believe I’m letting a sick woman wait on me. What must you think?”
“Oh but it was good of you to drop everything and race over … You rescued me when I felt orphaned. You know where I was supposed to be tonight? Another charity ‘do.’ I swear it’s every night. You do understand, there’s no man in the whole city sitting on more of these war committees than Charley.”
“His name is often in the paper.”
“He’s running one of the biggest drugstore chains in the Midwest, and he’s also running half the war committees in Detroit, and where does that leave Ronny?”
The question came out on a high-pitched note—almost as though Bea were being accused of something. “It’s damn difficult, isn’t it,” Mrs. Olsson went on. “Of course, Charley could put him on any number of committees, but Ronny doesn’t want that. You know Ronny is a block captain.”
“Yes.”
“And he does far more than he lets on.”
“Yes?”
“But it never stops, does it. Tonight’s ‘do’? They’re raising funds for displaced Belgians—or maybe Spaniards? Do I sound cruel?” And though cruel wasn’t a word Bea would employ, there was a hard unreachable glint to Mrs. Olsson’s gaze. “Oh I believe in charity. Did you know I have money in my own name? It’s one of the conditions I insisted upon when I married Charley, and I recommend you do the same. He signed over certain properties. And now I drive him crazy by giving away ten percent of the income. To charities. To orphanages. Charley says my philanthropy is disorganized, and I say, Christ, Charley, do you think Christ was an organized philanthropist? Do you suppose he kept records of what he gave—ten bucks to the leper, five bucks to the blind woman? I wouldn’t help an able-bodied man out of a ditch, my dear, but I’ll contribute to the Negro Children’s Betterment Fund.” And while it was easy to overlook, since it didn’t emerge all that frequently, there was this facet, too, to Mrs. Olsson’s riddling personality: she could be a woman of moralizing fervor.
“No, it’s not the charity I mind, it’s that whole damned world where Charley feels you always have to be climbing another rung. I don’t think I’m criticizing myself when I say, Maybe Charley married the wrong woman.”
It was too painful a remark to let stand. Bea protested, “Oh but honestly, how could Mr. Olsson have done better?”
“And aren’t you the sweetest girl!”
Mrs. Olsson then added—sadly?—“Sometimes maybe almost too sweet?”
“Too sweet for what?”
This was a train of conversation Bea longed to pursue, but Mrs. Olsson had her own ideas. She went on: “And I’m worried about Ronny. Do you think he can ever be happy in this line—this art business?”
“Well I think so. I mean happy sometimes. What I mean is, I don’t think he could possibly be happy doing anything else. Do you?”
“Does Ronny seem happy to you?”
“Well he’d be the first to admit it, he can be moody.”
“Moody—yes. My son has always been moody. Show me a truly intelligent person who isn’t. But overall—do you think you can make him happy?”
“Me? I don’t claim—”
“But you’re happy with him?”
“I’m not sure when you say with him what you’re—”
Again, Mrs. Olsson didn’t allow her to complete a sentence. “I’m not going to ask whether you’re in love with my son, Bianca. I’m not sure that asking you would be appropriate. But surely a mother might justifiably ask whether you understand what all’s going on inside his mind right now, studying art while so many boys are in the Army, and living with a father who races off to work and then, after coughing blood into a handkerchief, races off to a meeting attended by Max Fisher and Mayor Jeffries and Henry Ford himself. Surely a mother can ask how much you think you understand.”
Bea took her time in answering: “Well, I do think I understand some of the pressures Ronny’s feeling. It’s a strange time for anybody to be an art student, frankly, but it’s especially so for a boy, and yet maybe there’s such a thing as artist’s hunger, regardless of everything else, including whether you’re a boy or a girl? It’s as if your hand is hungry—and your hand has never heard of the War. It just wants to draw, to create things. And that—well I do think I understand that about Ronny.”
Mrs. Olsson’s attention had begun visibly wandering the instant Bea opened up the topic of art. “No doubt about it,” she said vacantly. Then her look and her voice changed. She brought her palms together, in a slow clapping motion, and on this night when she’d introduced so many sides to herself, she came up with an affecting show of glowing maternal gratitude: “Bea, I think you understand my boy!”
Mrs. Olsson carried Bea’s plate, on which everything had been eaten, and her own, where the food had been mostly shifted about, over to the sink. “Of course a lot of people can’t understand him, can they? Can’t understand a boy whose heart is hungry in that way you so vividly describe? What about a boy whose heart wants to draw?”
“Hand, actually. What I said—”
“They want Ronny to be his father and he’s not his father.”
“That’s right.”
Mrs. Olsson returned to the kitchen table. “And people leap to conclusions, don’t they? In their ignorance. It’s the one kind of ignorance I can’t abide. You see what I’m saying. Being smart is knowing you’re smart. And being dumb is knowing you’re smart when you’re actually dumb. It’s different. That’s why I left Scarp, though you find it everywhere. You know what they said at Groton? Where they ought to know better? When we sent him off to a fancy boarding school? They didn’t understand Ronny at all, did they? Well: they insinuated that my boy is cur.”
Cur? For a moment, two moments, Bea hadn’t the faintest idea what Mrs. Olsson might be intimating. But this interval was succeeded by different, elongated moments, during which Bea’s insides turned all fluttery and queasy.
It was remarkable how many things happened instantaneously inside her. First, a wild, ghastly thought materialized: the strange term, cur, was meant to stand for a similar sound, all but unmentionable. Oh, Bea was used to having such thoughts—particularly at night, when crazed, unsupervised notions snuck into her brain and wouldn’t, just wouldn’t, depart. But not here, not in a place like the Olssons’ kitchen …
Then it grew apparent to Bea—and this was the strangest, strangest thing yet—that she wasn’t misinterpreting Mrs. Olsson at all. No, Mrs. Olsson’s thoughts were in the very same place as hers: their minds were meeting in the queerest spot imaginable. Mrs. Olsson said, “Obviously, the whole idea’s ridiculous. I mean, a mother knows.”
While remaining seated at the kitchen table, she drew her spine erect, and her eyes flashed, and for the first time tonight she was absolutely Mrs. Charles Olsson, that legendary figure whose beauty set the Detroit News society pages ashimmer. Mrs. Olsson’s hand fluttered at her ample bosom—a reflexive gesture at once magnificently self-possessed and coyly vulnerable. “My boy isn’t cur. A mother knows such things. And how does she know? How do I know my boy isn’t cur? Why, I can see it in the way he looks at me.”
CHA
PTER XVIII
Perhaps the very worst aspect of the Poppletons’ painfully abrupt departure was its effect on Mamma. She watched without visible emotion as a huge moving van, the words “Turk’s Trucks” emblazoned in red letters on its side, carted the Poppletons’ lives away. (The moving van belonged to that strange, voluble man, Yusuf Caglayangil, whom Bea and Aunt Grace had met at Sanders—the one who claimed Uncle Dennis had saved his daughter’s life. Mr. Caglayangil and his daughter Melek—looking healthier, and broader, than ever—personally oversaw the truck’s departure, and the two of them, peripheral figures though they were, appeared far more bereft than Mamma.) Three days later, when a postcard from Aunt Grace arrived, Mamma was rosiness itself: “She says their house has two guest rooms—there’s room for all of us. And guess what … there’s an actual greenhouse in back!”
There was no ignoring Mamma’s conviction that the Poppletons’ departure had corroborated every one of her craziest accusations. And no ignoring how she saw herself: a good, gracious winner.
It was as though everything in Bea’s life were conspiring to leave her with a blasted sensation of abandonment. Uncle Dennis and Aunt Grace had moved away to Cleveland, Ohio, which might as well have been Buenos Aires or Melbourne to a niece who had never left Michigan (except for jaunts across the river to Windsor, Canada, which scarcely counted, since Windsor was less like a foreign country than an amusement park). And Ronny was no longer a student at the Institute Midwest, and Maggie was effectively imprisoned at the outskirts of the city. And Henry—Henry had been medically examined and judged fit for combat. He was off again to the Pacific, and soon.
There were times, particularly when Ronny swept her into his arms, when Bea could put behind her that very bizarre night in the kitchen with Mrs. Olsson. Ronny was as attractive as ever, he was more attractive than ever, since Bea felt more vulnerable or needy than ever. And yet he’d grown distant—as though he’d drifted off, becoming a soul afloat. Surely, quitting the Institute had been a terrible idea. By dropping out, Ronny had lost that pride-sustaining ability to explain easily, to any stranger, who he was and what he was doing.
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