The Art Student's War

by Brad Leithauser

  So challengingly sharp was Mrs. Olsson’s scrutiny, she obviously expected Bea’s glance to curtsy and drop away in shame. Bea flinched—she wavered—but she held steady. She fully met that gaze. It was Henry who steadied her. She was not going to deny Henry.

  “You gave yourself?”

  “I did.”

  “To this soldier boy?”

  “That’s right. The very last night I saw him. Somehow I knew he wasn’t coming back.”

  “And not also to Ronny?”

  “To Ronny?” Bea said. “Heavens no.” What must Mrs. Olsson be thinking of her?

  “Heavens no?” And yet, Mrs. Olsson seemed faintly offended, rather than what you might expect—relieved.

  “Well—no.”

  “And Ronny knows what you did?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  A long silence fell. “Well, if he does,” Mrs. Olsson said, dropping her own eyes to the maize-colored candle beside the ivory-colored ashtray, “it doesn’t seem to trouble him. And if he doesn’t? I can tell you from experience, it wouldn’t be the first time a man mistook his wife.”

  Apparently, there was nothing on God’s green earth that could not be divulged at this corner table in Pierre’s. Bea said, “You make it sound like ours to decide—as if Ronny had no say …”

  “Of course he does. My boy is no milquetoast. Only, I do think you can bring him round. I think you’re a young woman of extraordinary powers, my dear. Haven’t I made that clear? That I believe in you?”

  “I’m so flattered,” Bea said. “Nothing could mean more to me than—”

  “And”—Mrs. Olsson added, finishing her drink—“I’m so tired. I’m so deathly tired of seeing my boy unhappy.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Bea said.

  “Yes, you go on,” Mrs. Olsson replied, nodding confirmingly, as if she herself had proposed this trip to the ladies’. “You think it over. What I’m saying. You think it over.”

  But Bea was not in need of anything so high-minded as space to think. She needed a toilet—her tummy suddenly felt very shaky. It had been quite a while since she’d eaten so much, so fast.

  What had she been thinking? She could no longer eat the way normal people might eat.

  One other aspect of Pierre’s was unchanged: the same doleful Negro woman served as the ladies’ room attendant. Worse yet, she was still wearing the same strained-looking, too-tight pink dress.

  Bea recalled how, the last time she was here, some word or coin from Mrs. Olsson had elicited this woman’s blessing. Bea announced, rather nonsensically, “I’m here with the lady who was just in here.”

  The woman did not look impressed. No, the truth was she looked poised and canny. And amused. Bea felt herself in the wrong somehow. And, flustered by the woman’s look, and by Mrs. Olsson’s astounding revelations, and by the wine, and flustered, most of all, by her distressed stomach’s imminent collapse, Bea had to check herself from additionally blurting out, “And you know what she did? She just proposed to me—on behalf of her son.”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  At home, Edith had a problem—the sort of problem no child on earth except Edith would have.

  Months and months ago, she had been given the name of a soldier to write to. Each student in Edith’s homeroom had been randomly assigned a soldier, but it seemed safe to say no classmate had a letter in the mail sooner than Edith did—an extremely long and no doubt extremely informative letter. Her soldier’s name was Ira Styne.

  And surely no classmate would have kept on writing even when no reply materialized. She must have written half a dozen letters in all. Now, miraculously, a letter addressed to Edith Paradiso appeared and, more miraculous still, it enclosed a five-dollar bill.

  Bea studied the letter minutely. Everyone in the family studied it minutely. A total stranger had just sent little Edith a five-dollar bill! The soldier’s penmanship seemed childish or shy—the letters were very small—but the tone and vocabulary were wry and sophisticated.

  Private Styne apologized for being so tardy. “All sorts of things came up. To tell you the truth, I had a bit of a time for a while. Anyway, I won’t bore you with the details, except to say I’m very sorry.

  “I was interested to hear that you like mathematics,” he went on. “It’s very strict, isn’t it? I think I like math less than I used to.

  “Speaking of math, I enclose five hundred pennies in convenient paper form. Rereading your letters, I was distressed to see that I missed your birthday a few weeks ago. You have become a teenager! This is a very special birthday: thirteen. The gift comes with one strict condition attached: you must spend it on something that makes you very happy.”

  Edith’s problem—or at least her larger problem—did not involve the gift itself. She knew precisely what to do with the money. She would buy four dollars’ worth of war stamps—she would support our boys—and she would reserve the remaining dollar for treats for herself. No, the problem was what to do with the letter. Specifically, could she legitimately place it in her scrapbook entitled “My Testimonials”?

  When Bea eventually realized how much Henry would have enjoyed this story, tears came to her eyes … Henry would have understood Edith’s quandary. He would have taken it seriously. Edith couldn’t place it in her scrapbook if it wasn’t an authentic testimonial.

  The letter had arrived from a stranger, like a testimonial, but in response to mail from Edith, like a regular letter. Would it make sense to compile a new scrapbook, of notable correspondence—or was it a testimonial?

  Henry would never have the opportunity to savor this story; Henry would never extend any helpful advice.

  Haunted as she was, it was the most haunting thought Bea knew: the sentence that began, Henry will never … When she stepped off the bus, it was, Henry will never see Woodward Avenue again. When she stood in front of the white stucco house, each and every window decoration on the left precisely balancing a twin decoration on the right, it was, Henry will never see his home again. Bea was paying another visit to the Vanden Akkers.

  Tragedy was the great human reality—Bea grasped this at last—and yet tragedy turned everything else unreal, and to walk up that house’s walk was like entering a dream, or a fairy tale, and nothing in Bea’s known world could possibly match the queerness of the vision when the front door swung open. It was the same horrible enactment all over again, only worse—far worse. Again Bea knew it must be Mrs. Vanden Akker in the doorway. And again there was a split-second refusal to believe it. In this fairy tale, stolid Mrs. Vanden Akker had been transformed by some curse into a wizened little wraith.

  How much weight had she lost? Thirty pounds, forty? Whatever the figure, mere loss of weight could scarcely account for how much shorter she seemed—and how altered in every movement.

  To be fair (but why, under these circumstances, be fair?), everything in the spectral Vanden Akker home was being filtered through a haze. Bea had awakened this morning to the realization that she was coming down with something. Or was it all in her mind? She was feeling a little dizzy, and quite achy. And for days now, dreading this visit, she’d been walking around with a knotted stomach.

  Bea hadn’t expected to hear again from Mrs. Vanden Akker, whose telephone call had stirred up various accusatory resentments. What did the woman want? This request for another visit seemed wholly unreasonable … Why had Bea been summoned again to this ghostly living room, where Mr. Vanden Akker, more woolly-haired than ever, stood waiting to shake her hand? Was it possible to convey a vein of madness in a handshake? If so, this was what Mr. Vanden Akker’s trembling hand conveyed.

  After a good deal of clumsy fussing, Bea was seated upon the couch. And after a good deal more fussing, coffee was served.

  Again Mrs. Vanden Akker asked conscientiously after each Paradiso, in order of age. Her constant nodding at Bea’s observations suggested a tremor. Truly, both Vanden Akker parents had aged ten years, twenty years, in just a few weeks …

  Under
these excruciating circumstances, Bea felt it would hardly be suitable to complain of feeling unwell. Was she about to fuss about a little sickness to two people who had lost their only child? Still, she was having trouble answering even simple questions. Her head had floated away.

  Mr. Vanden Akker was letting his hair grow—a wild white thicket of curls, somewhat thin on top. Bea didn’t understand some of the references at first, but eventually it dawned on her that he’d left his job. Mr. Vanden Akker was unemployed, or he had retired. “I am pursuing my true interest—moral issues in theology,” he announced, and Mrs. Vanden Akker, who formerly had treated her husband’s abstruse pursuits with undisguised impatience, nodded respectfully—respectfully and, yes, tremulously.

  Bea was also served hard little biscuits—they might well have been the same tooth-cracking biscuits she had met when last here, a few weeks ago. She drank deeply from her cup, hoping the coffee would clear her head. In recent days, it had sometimes been very difficult to tell whether she wasn’t feeling well or merely thought she ought to be feeling unwell. So there was some reassurance in declaring categorically: I’m coming down with something.

  After a time, Mrs. Vanden Akker said, “I have consulted with Mr. Vanden Akker, and he informs me that when you last visited I may have committed a significant omission.”

  Bea drew her spine erect and tried to focus. This must be it: the true, intensely-brooded-upon motive behind this invitation.

  “Yes?” Surely they were not going to offer her another portrait of Henry. No, since there were no other portraits of Henry …

  “Mr. Vanden Akker has examined the issue from all angles, in the light of his scholarship, and he has concluded that I misled you. Not deliberately. I do not lie,” Mrs. Vanden Akker declared forthrightly, her projecting chin a poignant throwback to her old forcefulness.

  “No of course not,” Bea whispered in reply.

  “But Mr. Vanden Akker, he made me see that I may have misled you by an act of omission. It is possible to mislead through omission, you see.”

  “No less possible,” Mr. Vanden Akker interjected, and added, “though it’s often trickier to analyze.”

  “Of course,” Bea murmured, since some such reply was evidently expected, but what was she agreeing to? Where in the name of heaven was this conversation headed?

  “We received a letter from Henry before he passed away.”

  “Various letters,” Mr. Vanden Akker qualified.

  “But one in particular.”

  “One in particular,” Mr. Vanden Akker said.

  “Henry spoke of you.”

  “Me?” The word emerged from Bea’s throat in a cracked whisper. She found herself blinking rapidly. She couldn’t quite bring either Mr. Vanden Akker or Mrs. Vanden Akker wholly into focus.

  “Actually, in his letters Henry spoke of you various times,” Mr. Vanden Akker said.

  “One letter in particular,” Mrs. Vanden Akker pointed out.

  “One letter in particular,” Mr. Vanden Akker concurred.

  “Henry said”—and Mrs. Vanden Akker’s stalwart manner abandoned her. With fluttery hands she hoisted her coffee cup. Her eyelids didn’t blink so much as flap; Bea was aware of the effort involved in brushing back tears.

  It was Mr. Vanden Akker who restarted the conversation: “Our son wrote and told us that he was in love with you and that he wished to make you his wife.”

  “He did? He wrote that to you?”

  “It is not such an easy thing for someone in our church to marry someone outside it,” Mr. Vanden Akker said. “Though of course it can be done.”

  “You would need to convert,” Mrs. Vanden Akker injected fiercely.

  “There is no shame in conversion,” Mr. Vanden Akker pointed out. “At bottom, and here I’m taking the historical perspective, we are all converts. I explain that to my wife: we are all converts.”

  “We are all converts,” Mrs. Vanden Akker echoed, her head wagging up and down.

  “Our Henry wished you to be his wife,” Mr. Vanden Akker said. “And we didn’t tell you that.”

  “I had no idea. I’m sure you didn’t mean—”

  “Our duties are not restricted to our actions,” Mrs. Vanden Akker intoned.

  “Morally, they are only half the field,” Mr. Vanden Akker said, and added, with characteristic, crazy exactitude, “or let’s say forty percent.”

  “Mr. Vanden Akker determined that you ought to have your own copy of the letter. So he has written out a copy for you.”

  In her rapid new little-womanish way, Mrs. Vanden Akker hastened to the mantel to retrieve an envelope, which she handed to Bea, who said, “I’m so touched,” though what she actually experienced was a heavy, body-encompassing dread. She snapped the letter into her purse.

  “I’m keeping the original,” Mrs. Vanden Akker said.

  “That’s only right.”

  “I omitted to mention this letter when you last visited. That was misleading.”

  “There’s more,” Mr. Vanden Akker said.

  The pause that expanded hinted at a store of resistance—as though Mrs. Vanden Akker were about to contradict her husband. When she spoke, however, they were in complete accord: “There’s more,” she said.

  “In one of his letters,” Mr. Vanden Akker went on, “Henry said something highly significant. He said you were the only person, other than his parents, other than us, who truly understood him.”

  “I omitted to mention that,” Mrs. Vanden Akker said.

  Deep in the warm swirling mists of Bea’s head, deep in a kind of fogged tropical jungle, this last remark from Henry located her. He spoke and she heard. (The sea was whispering in the distance, speaking unimaginable volumes, and she heard that, too.) It was a message even more telling, in its way, than his indirect proposal of marriage. No other girl had understood him—but she had. You could see it in the portrait she did. She had known him, soul to soul. She’d known Henry. And here where everything was meant to balance, in this neat, white, mathematically symmetrical house in Pleasant Ridge, Michigan, the three survivors sat—over coffee, over tumultuous revelations: the three people on earth privileged to understand the soul of a brilliant eccentric boy who did not take teasing well and who, back from the War, somberly marched off to the zoo in a laughable hat … “He understood me, too,” Bea whispered plaintively, and wasn’t that all she’d ever asked of life? The living room was overheated—or seemed so because, as she must have been aware for some time now, Bea had a pounding fever coming on.

  “There’s more,” Mr. Vanden Akker prompted, and this time his wife did not hesitate: “There’s more,” she parroted.

  “More,” Bea said. In her dizziness and achiness, Bea likewise placed herself in Mr. Vanden Akker’s hands. For it was as if, in all his woolly-headedness, the man had achieved true clarity at last: this afternoon, all the sins of conversational omission would be painstakingly, precisely rectified. Together the three of them would say the unsaid.

  “My son also reported that he had wronged you greatly. He obviously felt a great deal of remorse and torment over this.”

  But what was Mr. Vanden Akker saying? How far had he glimpsed into the naked and slippery truth?

  Henry had wronged her? The words blazed up in Bea’s fuzzy, fiery head, illuminating an image of a tall thin girl standing palely in Mitchell’s bathroom, without a stitch of clothing on her body, languorously giving herself a sponge bath at the sink while Henry wept on the other side of the door. Elsewhere, on another day, she had walked up to Mack in order to sprinkle paper fragments into two trash containers.

  When from the depths of her fever Bea looked Mr. Vanden Akker right in the eye and declared, “Henry did not wrong me,” it would have been impossible to say whether she was defending Henry, or herself. But the utterance bolstered her. Just as firmly (just as misleadingly, perhaps—or just as mercifully, perhaps) she glanced into Henry’s mother’s pale eyes and said, “No, not at all. He was always a complete g
entleman. Henry.”

  It was time to leave and every movement and moment hummed with novel feelings of power. She wasn’t the least intimidated by these people. Bea had something she had been longing to announce and would now announce: one remark that would not become an omission. Looking fixedly at Mrs. Vanden Akker, Bea said, “Henry wrote and told you that he loved me.” The offensive term, startling as any profanity, caused the little old woman to flinch. But Bea was not to be deterred or deflected. “I just want you to know how things stood between us. Because you see, I loved him. I loved your son.”

  It was time to go. Bea felt vindicated—she had been not so misleading after all. Mrs. Vanden Akker urged more coffee, Mr. Vanden Akker volunteered to drive her home, one of them remarked that she was looking tired, one of them told her she would be welcome at their church … Politely, unstoppably, Bea disentangled herself and escorted her packed, feverish head down the street toward Woodward Avenue.

  … And later, having in a sense arrived home once more (having seated herself in a streetcar), Bea recalls that she is carrying a letter from Henry. Although she had torn up an earlier letter, it’s as if the fragments have miraculously rewoven themselves, all in order to lie within her hands, intact, a second time.

  “Dear Mother and Father,” the letter begins. It’s in Henry’s handwriting, which is perplexing.

  Actually, it’s only nearly Henry’s handwriting, which is more perplexing still … until Bea realizes that son and father—fierce, focused Henry and mild, woolly-headed Mr. Vanden Akker—have nearly identical penmanship:

  I hope and trust the two of you are well. I am quite remarkably recovered. I still get occasional twinges in my back, but I can hardly complain, especially when I look around at what some of the others have endured. The easing of pain has been a great mercy, largely because it has allowed me to think more lucidly …