CHAPTER XXVI
She wakes to a sense of an illicit touch—a male touch—before waking further to find nothing the slightest amiss in this particular contact. Nobody can fault her: she has been sitting on a Woodward streetcar with her head leaned against her husband’s shoulder. She’s innocent.
“I seem to have drifted off,” she says.
“Me too,” Grant says. “Or nearly.”
“How long was I out?”
“Awhile. You were smiling.”
“Was I?” And an unsettled pause. What is she trying to recall? She says, “It’s been ages since I rode a streetcar. They seem so comfy.”
“They take you back, don’t they,” Grant says. “Not many left …”
What had placed them here was a queer series of coincidences—good luck masquerading as its opposite. Normally, they’d be driving. But as it happens, both cars are in the shop, Grant’s Studebaker with transmission problems and her Mercury with what may be a dead solenoid (whatever that is). Grant initially suggested postponing their little expedition—they’re off to lunch at Pierre’s. But it turns out to be much more fun, and romantic, not to drive. They’re celebrating their seventh wedding anniversary.
Bianca was the one to propose the streetcar. Wouldn’t that be swell? Yes, just like old times … And it was Bianca who proposed Pierre’s, a restaurant they’ve somehow never visited together. Once, it held a significant place in her life, and lately, for all sorts of reasons, she has been rethinking the old days, before she met Grant, back when the War was still raging, still dragging on.
It seems a shame to lose this disorienting drowse, which links her, as drowses sometimes do, to out-flung memories and perceptions … But Grant is cataloguing some frustrations at the office, and his conversational claims are legitimate claims—all the more so on their anniversary. Nonetheless, as Bianca listens she’s pursuing someone else or something else: there’s an immanence dissolved in the dusty sunlit air of this old streetcar, a someone or a something almost achingly precious and proximate. But who or what is it?
It’s the most familiar sensation in the world, and a little dispiriting even so, to disembark from the streetcar. Something—an ongoing process—closes up. All sorts of fluid, wordless feelings recede and Time itself shifts—shifted—the moment the two of them stepped down into the street. (On how many more occasions would she ride a streetcar? All across the city, the lines were being pulled up. Grant was right, of course: the streetcars were dinosaurs.)
They walked down Jefferson, holding hands in the August sunshine. The blue sky looked freshly washed. “I’m so glad you suggested the streetcar,” Grant said. “A brilliant idea,” Grant declared—something he often wound up declaring. His deference in such matters (which restaurant to dine in, which couch to buy, which color to paint the shutters) was flattering to the point of being faintly alarming. The joke in their house—which wasn’t completely a joke—was that Bianca had something more than feminine intuition, she had second sight. What mere male judgment could compete?
“Look! A gull!” Grant pointed upward at a bird flapping south, toward Canada. (This was the only place in the country where you headed south toward Canada.) “Now you’re happy,” he said.
She was touched, anyway, at how excited he became at having a gleaming white gull to point out to his wife. “I do love them,” Bianca said.
You often saw gulls in the neighborhoods near the river. They’d been a much more common sight in the skies over her old street, Inquiry, than over her new street, Middleway, seven miles north. She loved her new house, but the move had brought its share of unexpected losses. Gulls were one of many things whose loss she hadn’t known she would mourn until they became, abruptly, a symbol of her past.
To step once more into the interior of Pierre’s felt quite peculiar, actually. How many years since she was last here?
The man himself, Monsieur Pierre, still presided, though shorter and more peculiar looking—a bit lopsided in his features—than in Bianca’s recollection. He still sported the thinnest possible of all moustaches. His hair was darker than it used to be.
The dining rooms had been redecorated. Burgundy and gold had replaced salmon and yellow. In ways that Bianca couldn’t quite put her finger on, the place looked shabby.
The moment they were seated, she said, “Tell me the boys are fine. And for once we won’t talk about them.”
Grant laughed. “Of course they’re fine. They’re always fine.” The boys, the twins Chip and Matt, were home on Middleway with Grant’s mother, who could hardly refuse to babysit during an anniversary lunch. Mrs. Ives usually avoided being left alone with her only grandchildren. “Hey, we finally made it to Pierre’s. Aren’t you glad?”
“Very,” Bianca said. “But somehow it makes me feel odd. I haven’t been here since I came with Mrs. Olsson.”
“I hear she’s not doing too well.”
“What do you mean—not doing too well?”
Grant shrugged. “Not doing too well.”
“I saw her picture in the Free Press not long ago. She looked wonderful. Older, of course, but wonderful.”
“Maybe my source was no good. It was all very vague.”
“Yes …”
Generally, though, Grant’s sources were good. He worked for Cutting and Fuller, a big law firm in the Guardian Building, the most beautiful office building in the city. Grant wasn’t a gossip, but he kept his ears open, and he often brought home intimate news of the city’s elite.
“Back then, I think she had a drinking problem.” Bianca added, fair-mindedly, “Of course, that may no longer be true.”
“Speaking of which,” Grant said, “here comes a waiter.”
Would they like anything to drink?
“I’d love a glass of wine,” Bianca said. Grant looked at her questioningly. For some years now, he’d generally restricted himself to one daily drink—though often quite an ample drink—before dinner. “Do, of course,” she urged him. “Honey, it’s our anniversary lunch.”
Grant ordered two glasses of Bordeaux (“Very nice,” the waiter said, and went off mumbling, “Very nice, very nice”), and Bianca lit a cigarette and, leaning forward into the sudden confiding intimacy that a restaurant cigarette reliably created, she said, “You know what? Pierre dyes his hair.”
“No big surprise,” Grant said. “He’s an old fruit, honey.”
He was? Pierre? The notion had never occurred to her. Bianca tested it now and recognized, immediately, that Grant was correct, and all at once a number of things fell into place.
Actually, the topic of male homosexuality fascinated her—how could anyone interested in art not feel that way?—but she’d repeatedly learned it wasn’t for casual conversation. Even among sophisticated people. Grant’s fraternity brother Jerry Romeyn, though one of the city’s most successful lawyers, and though he stood six feet four and had long scandalized Grosse Pointe society with his womanizing, once stammered himself red-faced at a Christmas party when Bianca broached the subject.
Grant, by comparison, had initially seemed so sane and humane. The topic scarcely discomfited him, probably because it turned out he had an uncle, his father’s brother Hughie, who was “an old fruit.” Grant always spoke affectionately of Uncle Hughie, a bald, soft-spoken man who owned an antiques shop in Royal Oak specializing in grandfather clocks. It was a detail that Grant, who loved to tell stories, recounted with incredulous delight. Grandfather clocks? Grant himself was no more likely to cultivate such an interest than to take up Morris dancing or Japanese calligraphy.
Later, though, after they’d been married a while, Bianca had come to find Grant’s easy tolerance objectionable in its way. Her reservations had solidified on the evening when Grant finally met Ronny. For years, Grant had been hearing about Ronny Olsson—perhaps too much about Ronny Olsson—and, though not an overly jealous husband, Grant perhaps had grown to regard Ronny as a rival.
The two couples had met unexpectedly at t
he symphony. Ronny was with his then-wife, Elizabeth, the former Libby Hubbins. (By a weird coincidence, Bianca had known Libby forever; they’d gone to junior high school together, where Libby, who wore glasses even then, had been a very bright girl absolutely devoid of sparkle.) Whatever else one cared to say about Ronny Olsson, his manners were irreproachable. He could hardly have been more gracious, insisting on taking them out for a drink afterward and displaying a special interest in Grant—who, fifteen seconds after Ronny and wife had driven off, complacently remarked, “So that’s Ronny Olsson. Why, he’s an old fruit, honey.” The wife? Poor bespectacled Libby, who was getting a master’s degree in Classics at U. of M., who was actually learning to read ancient Greek? She counted for nothing. And never again would Grant take seriously any tale of long-ago romantic dates with Ronny Olsson.
Thoughts of Ronny Olsson led naturally back to his mother, and Bianca said, “I do hope Mrs. Olsson’s all right. You know, when I wasn’t scared to death of her, I was really fond of her. I think.”
“Quite the beautiful woman,” Grant observed. “In her time. Not that I ever spoke to her. But I saw her out and about, of course.”
“Imagine being an eighteen-year-old girl and Mrs. Olsson brings you to this place! I was so young. And so green and hopeless. I was this lanky colt, I suppose I mean filly, I mean this inexperienced horse of a creature, who wasn’t here ten minutes before she spilled her glass of wine.
“You can’t imagine how imposing this place seemed to an eighteen-year-old girl from inside the Boulevard. It was the most elegant place I’d ever seen. Now it looks almost a little run-down.”
“I hear they’re not doing very well.”
“Who’s not doing well?”
“Pierre.” Grant glanced around. Half the tables were empty. “I’d be surprised to see this place still here in six months …”
“Oh, no! Not this place, too!”
Her vehemence clearly surprised Grant; it surprised Bianca herself. Still more unaccountable was the sudden burn in her eyes.
“Honey, what’s the matter?”
“Well, I don’t know, Grant. It just strikes me as sad that maybe this is the last time I’ll ever have lunch at Pierre’s. Having arrived today in one of the city’s very last streetcars. Good grief, what’s happening to my city?”
“Hey, lots of new restaurants around. The city’s thriving!” Grant studied her face and saw that he hadn’t said the right thing, quite. Good-naturedly, he tried again. “Listen, this isn’t your last time. I promise to bring you back before they close.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“That’s a promise. A solemn vow.”
“And I thank you. It’s just”—Bianca waved her hand, encompassing with this gesture another room, with salmon-colored napkins and salmon-colored tablecloths—“well, where did it all go?”
“Where did what all go?”
The look he gave her was understandably befuddled—she wasn’t making much sense—and so very sweet: he was concerned. Grant was fearful that this long-awaited anniversary lunch had mysteriously turned wistful and morose.
Touched by that look, and knowing she was again being a little impossible, Bianca said, “Oh, please, darling, don’t pay any attention to me. It’s just, I’ve been feeling, I don’t know, very emotional lately.” Overemotional Bia: again, she felt on the threshold of tears. It was as though, in entering this place, she’d stepped into one of Uncle Dennis’s time machines and met that creature she’d mostly put behind her: the wide-eyed eighteen-year-old crybaby.
“Very emotional,” she repeated, and added, “I don’t know why that is”—though in fact she had a good sense of the why. But this was hardly the moment, or the manner, to broach anything so momentous.
“I’ll feel better with a little wine,” she said.
“And some food,” Grant said. “I’m starving.”
“Yes, some food,” Bianca said, and threw open the menu.
There it was: a lady’s steak. The words heartened her and, though she hadn’t planned on anything so filling, she announced jubilantly: “I know just what I’m having—I’m having the lady’s steak.”
Grant studied the menu for all of ten seconds. That he never lingered over menus was something of a point of pride with him. “Then I’ll have the porterhouse,” he announced. “It’s got two advantages. One, it’s the most expensive thing on the menu. Two, it’s probably the most filling.” He laughed. She laughed with him.
It was remarkable how much Grant ate, though you’d never guess it to look at him. He needed to lose, at most, ten pounds. He looked good. He was tall—six feet one—and a little extra weight sat comfortably on his athletic frame.
If Grant were to eat mere man-sized portions, instead of the giant-sized portions he regularly consumed, surely he’d be thin as a rail, for he was almost comically active. Grant was the sort of man who thought nothing of getting up at five on a summer morning in order to fit in three sets of competitive tennis before racing down to the office.
The wine arrived and Grant offered a toast. “Seven years,” he said. “My God,” he said, “and you’re more beautiful now than ever.”
“Thank you.”
“I really think so,” he said.
“I know,” she said, which didn’t come out sounding right. Bianca stubbed out her cigarette. “I’m very lucky, aren’t I?” She sipped her wine.
Was she more beautiful now? Not less so, she’d like to think. Grant certainly was unchanged, other than the thickening around his middle. With his short, direct nose and clear pale blue eyes he remained remarkably boyish. Neither of them had yet found a gray hair. “You do think the kids are all right?”
“They’re fine. So long as they’re not locked indoors, they’re fine.”
The boys, who shared Grant’s superhuman reserves of energy, were almost always outdoors. Actually, they shared more than his energy: they were identical twins who, to an almost uncanny degree, in both looks and movements, resembled their father—so much so that people sometimes joked about the “Ives triplets.”
But with one important difference. Grant was merely a “decent athlete,” as he regularly put it, having lettered in baseball his senior year at State by “out-hustling everybody.” The twins were—truly—superb little athletes. Inevitably, kids their own age looked badly assembled by comparison.
Only this past week, Bianca had seen another dumbfounding exhibition of her boys’ dexterity. Grant had installed in the backyard a “tightrope,” which was really a very long board on its side, half buried in the ground. If you fell off the “rope,” you’d fall only two or three inches. A large party of neighborhood boys had tried to walk the rope, but none quite managed it. Then Matt confidently got up and walked it. Chip did the same thing—only he did it backward. Matt then whipped off his T-shirt and draped it over his head—walking the rope blindfolded. Chip was pulling off his T-shirt—presumably planning to walk it backward and blindfolded—when Bianca lunged out the back door and called the game to a halt. The twins were almost worrisomely fearless.
Bianca took another sip of wine and felt herself, physically, settling into this place. Yes, she’d chosen well—they were going to have a lovely lunch. She asked Grant about the office and he, obligingly, rattled on.
Three years ago, Grant had gone through a rough period at Cutting and Fuller. He’d gotten into a sorry mess involving a deceased client’s estate and the purchase of three lakeside lots. Grant, who really seemed less a wrongdoer than a victim of bad advice from a senior partner, had purchased one of the lots on the cheap—or so the client’s outraged heirs had alleged. Suddenly, Grant had been terrified he’d be asked to leave the firm. Bill Hobbema, the senior partner, was asked to leave. But Grant’s lakeside lot was relinquished and he was retained in his job—and, these days, most of his office stories were harmless tales of others’ minor spats or occasional off-hours romantic intrigues.
Their steaks arrived and Grant issued a
happy grunt at the crowded-ness of his plate, which held a bulging steak, a thicket of green beans, a mountain of French fries. Finding herself less hungry than she’d hoped, Bianca gamely sliced into her steak. The meat was flavorful but tough—tough enough to leave a person wondering whether the eating was worth the effort.
“How’s it?”
“Good,” she said. “Wonderful. How’s yours?”
He crunched on a cluster of French fries. “Just what the doctor ordered.”
They ate in silence. Bianca continued struggling with her steak. Memory told her that Pierre’s French fries had been marvelous—hot and light and crisp—but these were clumped and greasy.
“Is everything all right?”
This time the question came from Pierre, standing beside their table, who did not look terribly interested in any reply.
“Great,” Grant said. “Truly great.”
“Excuse me,” Bianca said. “You probably don’t remember me, but I came here a few times some years ago. With Mrs. Charles Olsson.”
“Mrs. Olsson?” Pierre said.
“I bring it up only because I’m wondering whether she still comes in here. I haven’t seen her in years.”
For just a moment Pierre looked confused, or stricken—his eyes jumped—and then he declared firmly, “Oh yes. Mrs. Olsson is one of our regular customers.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Of course I remember you,” Pierre said, which sounded like a blatant falsehood but, given the penetrating look he fixed upon her, might well have been true. “You came with Mrs. Olsson.”
“That’s right.”
Pierre bustled off, but only a minute later their waiter returned, standing more erect than before. He set before each of them a fresh glass of wine. “Saint Emma Lion,” he announced. “Compliments of the house.”
“Well I’ll be darned,” Grant said. “Now isn’t that nice.”
Grant wouldn’t have felt free to order a second glass, but he fell upon it happily: this was a gift sanctioned by the gods. And the truth was, Bianca, too, was ready for another.
The Art Student's War Page 36