The Art Student's War

by Brad Leithauser

  “Not so far from Scarp, North Dakota, actually,” Ronny pointed out. “Mother’s hometown.”

  “I’ll have to go out there someday,” Bianca said.

  “Why on earth would you do that?” And Chris laughed at her, but quite amiably.

  “Did you know Mrs. Olsson?” Bianca asked him.

  Chris paused thoughtfully, as though this were a complicated question. “Yes-s-s,” he said. He added: “An amazingly beautiful woman.” Then added, nodding at Bianca: “But what could be more beautiful than a beautiful woman who is with child?”

  “Beware, Bianca. Beware of silver-tongued farm boys. As I say, this one’s in advertising.”

  Ronny offered this warning with a proprietary pride and it was only now, belatedly, that Bianca realized that Chris Abendorfer was Ronny’s special friend, or romantic partner, or lover, or whatever you wanted to call it. Never in a million years would Bianca have put the two of them together. When, now and then, she’d tried to envision Ronny with some man (not a direction where her imagination comfortably ventured), she’d pictured somebody much like Ronny himself: extraordinarily good-looking, of course, but also aristocratic, artistic, a little aloof.

  While Chris told a long story about a recent business meeting with a soda-pop manufacturer, Bianca gave him a much sharper inspection. The truth was he wasn’t really good-looking. The best you could say was he was pleasant-looking or agreeable-looking. Or wholesome-looking.

  Still, Chris had a way with him—those big brown eyes so guileless, while his talk rolled puckishly along. “My product’s got sass,” the soda-pop manufacturer had kept repeating. Chris was a skillful mimic. Holding out his arms to indicate a substantial paunch, ballooning his cheeks, he had the manufacturer’s gassy pomposity down pat. “My product’s got sass,” Chris boasted once more and all three of them laughed.

  Encouraged, Chris went through a gallery of clients. Bianca wasn’t used to seeing Ronny serve so willingly as audience, but he seemed not only amused but proudly enthralled. There was the Scottish tool-and-die manufacturer who had asked, in a low simple tone of childlike apprehension, “But what if ad-ver-tising fails to increase my revenues?” The Jewish maker of women’s undergarments who had worried that the slogan “There’s a better you in you” might be unacceptably racy. The car dealer whom Chris had had to drive home because his car wouldn’t start. Each had a different accent, a different repertoire of gestures. At dinner parties on Middleway, Grant could be quite amusing with his Irish brogue, but this was something else again …

  A pause opened and Bianca said, “Are you interested in art, Chris?”

  “I’m quite interested in not seeing art.”

  The remark was a little cryptic, though Chris seemed quite pleased with it.

  “I’m not sure I—”

  “Ronny takes me to a museum once. And he announces, Okay, Chris, here’s the most beautiful painting in the place. And what is it? It’s this cramped little affair, Adam and Eve and the Serpent, and all three are sort of long and twisted, with these weird, slanted, inhuman eyes. And I say, Okay, Ronny, but which one’s the snake? Huh? I mean, this was a painter who couldn’t get a job drawing Tootsie Rolls for the firm I work for … I don’t think Ronny wanted to take me to a museum after that.”

  Actually, Ronny looked delighted with the story, though he protested, “That’s not what happened! Not at all!”

  Chris replied, “What you’re saying is, Just because something’s implausible doesn’t mean it’s true.”

  “So that’s what I’m saying, is it?”

  “Or you’re saying, Just because something sounds logical doesn’t mean it’s incorrect.”

  “So that’s what I’m saying, is it?”

  The little exchange left Bianca feeling quite disoriented. Ronny was bantering—but not with her. And not in quite the same directing way he bantered with her.

  Ronny and an advertising man … The peculiar truth was that Ronny Olsson had always been fascinated by advertising. This had puzzled Bianca, long ago—the brilliant art student who found nearly all modern art too crass, who was most at home with Fragonard and Poussin and Vermeer and Dou, but who nonetheless pored over advertisements with an absorption that originated in condescension but did not end there. Ronny had constantly found in ads secret meanings that Bianca couldn’t see, deep veins of humor underlying the ostensible humor. In truth, he used to make her far more nervous—his spirit seemed more faraway—when chuckling over an ad for deodorant or mouthwash or trusses than when swooning over some refined French canvas that utterly failed to move her.

  So there was a kind of logic and rightness to this unorthodox triangle—the former boyfriend and girlfriend taking different sorts of pleasure in a young man who wrote ads for a living—as well as a tension which, though not jealousy exactly, was closer to jealousy than to any other emotion she could name. The tension openly declared itself when, abruptly, Ronny had to leave for his lawyer’s appointment. Outside Jason’s, Chris was headed one way, Bianca another—toward her car and home. The three of them stood in the doorway. Ronny was visibly torn.

  And then he said to Chris, “I’ll catch up with you later,” and Chris said, “Olsson, I look forward to it”—and Bianca felt a pang of resentment on discovering that Ronny had initiated Chris into this little joke of addressing each other by surnames. Mostly, though, she felt relieved at Ronny’s decision to accompany her. Gallantry of course demanded that he walk the pregnant woman to her car. And whatever other turns his circuitous life might take, gallant her gallant Ronny would always be.

  “I don’t know what to wear.”

  It was one of Grant’s jokes—an echoing of something his clotheshorse of a wife might say—but the truth was, neither of them knew what to expect. Stevie and Rita were taking them out to dinner. To a restaurant. And not just any restaurant, but the Tupelo Country House, way out on Telegraph. This was an evening without precedent.

  Stevie and Rita were taking them to the Tupelo Country House? Bianca, in her puzzlement, and her fretting over what the bill might come to, had tried to dissuade them, but Rita was adamant. She and Stevie were inviting them to celebrate, belatedly, Grant’s birthday. And “something else” as well.

  “She’s pregnant,” Grant declared, for what must be the fourth or fifth time, and for the fourth or fifth time Bianca replied, “No, she made it quite clear she isn’t.” But what else could something else be?

  The sitter, Mrs. Hornberger, arrived at 5:45, just when she was supposed to, and Stevie and Rita pulled up at six, just when they were supposed to. “Oh dear Lord, Stevie’s wearing a suit,” Bianca called from the downstairs hall, having glimpsed her brother through the front window. Grant was sitting in the den, reading the News. He was wearing khaki slacks and a seersucker sports coat. “Stevie never wears a suit. Grant, you’ve got to race up and change.”

  Always eager to show how fast he could move, Grant had sprung upstairs even before the doorbell rang. “Hey, don’t you look nice,” Bianca said to Rita. She was pleased to be able to mean it. Rita was wearing her new blue dress and her new yellow angora cardigan with pearl buttons, both of which Bianca had helped pick out at Hudson’s.

  “And isn’t my little brother quite the Beau Brummell?”

  Stevie, stiff and embarrassed, pointed at Rita. “Blame her.” He pushed past Bianca into the living room.

  “Doesn’t he look nice?” Rita said. “That’s exactly what I told him: Stevie, you look so nice.”

  Bianca and Rita followed Stevie into the living room, where he’d already sat down. After a few moments, Stevie called, “Hey, Grant.” Grant was descending the stairs in an impeccable charcoal suit complete with gray-and-yellow necktie and white handkerchief in the breast pocket. Grant really could change his clothes at astonishing speed.

  “Hey, Stevie.”

  It would have been more comfortable to go in the Studebaker, but Stevie wanted to drive—or Rita expected Stevie to drive. For as they headed we
st down Seven Mile, and Rita prattled on, sometimes talking sense (canned peaches weren’t worth the expense and it was best to wait for the real thing) and sometimes nonsense (a vote for Ike might not be all that different from a vote for Adlai), it became clear she was conscientiously playing hostess.

  For Rita’s sake, Bianca was glad they were given an excellent table. This was actually Grant’s doing, and all the more commendable for not looking like Grant’s doing; he had a warm, easy way with maître d’s and waitresses.

  Would they care for anything to drink?

  Rita asked for a mint julep and Bianca for a glass of milk and Stevie, who didn’t usually like to drink, ordered a Manhattan. Grant paused (unsure whether anyone would be drinking tonight, he’d already downed a big Scotch at home), then ordered a Manhattan. Bianca nodded and smiled.

  She noticed that Stevie’s suit, which was a couple of years old, was tight across the shoulders. He’d bulked up, lifting weights. Grant’s suit, which had a black plaid pattern subtly woven through its charcoal gray, fit perfectly. Bianca had selected it for him, at Hughes and Hatcher. She selected his entire wardrobe, with the exception of his athletic wear—admittedly, a large exception.

  She wondered how long Rita would wait to reveal the evening’s mystery. Not long, it turned out. Rita could hardly contain her news. The moment the drinks arrived, face glowing with excitement, she said, “First of all, we want to wish you a very, very happy birthday, Grant.”

  “Well, that’s so kind,” Grant said. “But no need, no need.”

  “No need,” Bianca echoed.

  “Second of all, we want to congratulate Stevie. He has a new job.”

  “You have a new job, Stevie!” Bianca cried, and reached across the table to lay her hand on his. He didn’t respond—like the rest of the Paradisos, he was no “toucher”—but he let it remain.

  “What sort of job? When do you start?” Grant said.

  Again, Stevie looked embarrassed. Like Papa, he never wanted to be “fussed over.” But he did not shrink away. He stared his sister straight in the eye and said, “Yes, I have a new job.” Then he turned to Grant and said, “I’ve already started.”

  “Stevie’s already been at it a week!” Rita cried. “I woulda said something, but Stevie kept telling me keep my trap shut. I kept telling him, I’d be keener to listen if you used nicer language.” Rita laughed brightly.

  “That’s right,” Bianca said. “Stevie talks like a thug half the time.”

  “See?” Rita tap-tap-tapped Stevie on the arm. “Your sister’s saying just what I say about what you say.”

  “But who are you working for?” Grant asked.

  “I’m working for a trucking company.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” Bianca said, even as her heart wobbled, as it always did when serious alterations came to Stevie’s life. Behind his bravado, he was so vulnerable.

  “What’s the name of the company?” Grant said.

  “Turk’s Trucks. The owner, he’s a Turk. From Turkey,” Stevie said.

  “Oh I’ve met him!” Bianca cried, instantly feeling much better.

  “You’ve met him?” Stevie seemed taken aback—crestfallen, somehow.

  “Just the one time,” Bianca said. “With Aunt Grace. We met by chance. At Sanders. He’s a friend of Uncle Dennis.”

  “That’s right.”

  Actually, Bianca had met him twice, both occasions distant but still vivid. The first encounter had been while lunching with Aunt Grace. Up had stepped the voluble little man with a gold tie and a big gold watch who called Uncle Dennis a great man and adduced as proof his plump daughter, whose name, whatever it was, meant angel in Turkish. The man insisted that Uncle Dennis had saved the girl’s life.

  And the two of them, father and daughter, had materialized on that teary day when Uncle Dennis and Aunt Grace’s earthly belongings had been carted away, bound for Cleveland, in a big truck emblazoned with the words “Turk’s Trucks.” Father and daughter had waved at it, mournfully.

  “What will you be doing?” Grant asked.

  “Quite a few things,” Stevie replied. “I can repair lots of what goes wrong on trucks. But also there’s seeing it’s loaded properly, and checking the schedules, and the routes. Lots of things. Making people get along. It’s more complicated than it looks,” Stevie went on proudly.

  “Stevie’ll be a sort of foreman,” Rita supplied.

  “Yeah, it looks like I’m going to be a sort of foreman. Eventually.”

  “And the pay’s so good.”

  “Better. Better than what I was making at Ford.”

  “That’s just so wonderful, Stevie,” Bianca said, and felt herself issuing a sort of prayer of thanksgiving, though channeled not toward God but toward that plump, pop-eyed man down in Cleveland who watched over them all.

  Yes, and wasn’t it ironic that she’d felt so guilty after her long walk with Uncle Dennis some weeks ago? He’d been so noble, delaying all mention of Grace’s cancer so as not to mar the family celebration. And on a night when he was already so burdened, what had Bianca done but drop upon his shoulders her fears about Stevie, who tonight was sitting in Tupelo’s Country House in a suit, looking handsome, playing host? It was all so evident what had happened … Uncle Dennis had listened that night, and asked her many questions, then changed the subject, as though nothing more were to be done. And the next day he’d driven off to pay a visit to the one man who just might hold the solution. Unexpectedly, quick as a blush, Bianca’s eyes welled with tears, and, though they did not spill, Rita spotted them anyway, and in surprise, in delight, she cried, “Bay!” and Bianca, abashed, murmured, “I’m just thrilled for you,” and Stevie, who didn’t often come up with quips, made everything all right: “We’re gonna cut you off at one glass of milk.” Gaiety swept the table.

  A waitress approached and Stevie, with an authority inspiring to behold, ordered drinks without consulting anyone. “Another mint julep for my wife,” he said. “And the boys will have another Manhattan.”

  Grant looked to Bianca, who nodded at him. “I’m just fine,” she told the waitress. Most of her milk was not yet drunk. The truth was, she didn’t much like drinking milk.

  “And how is Aunt Grace?” Rita asked.

  “Hard to say. I got a letter yesterday. She sounded cheerful. Under the circumstances.”

  Grace had started her radiation treatments.

  Bianca went on, “I keep thinking I must go see her. To help out? She was such a help to me once, when I was sick.”

  But there were huge obstacles to her going. Who would take care of the boys? And she was pregnant. And—in many ways the thorniest problem—Grant was unnerved by the proposal. He was stiffening now. Cleveland had been her destination on that merciless morning when she left a note on the kitchen table.

  As an alternative, he kept suggesting they all four drive down … But how restful would it be for Grace to have the boys underfoot? Furthermore, Grace truly didn’t seem to want visitors—not until she was feeling better. There was no solution, really, other than to feel guilty, and scared—which Bianca did, mostly at night. During the daytime, the whole question of Aunt Grace was surprisingly little on her mind.

  When the waitress returned with drinks, they were ready to order. Bianca asked for the baked whitefish and Rita the stuffed pork chop. Stevie ordered the T-bone and, though Bianca winced at the price, Grant did the same.

  Again, as soon grew apparent, Grant’s instincts were sound. This was Stevie’s night, and he was exulting in its lavishness. It pleased him that Grant had ordered the T-bone. When had Bianca last seen Stevie, when had she ever seen Stevie, talk so freely? He was effusive about trucking, not just Turk’s Trucks but, as he put it, the “whole future of the transportation industry.”

  Stevie discussed the new Interstate Highway System and everyone was cheered to see him so outgoing. He spoke, they nodded and nodded. Trains were outmoded. It’s like Nature, they can’t adapt fast enough. Did any of t
hem know how many pounds of cargo a good-sized semitrailer can carry? Sixty thousand, easy. And as the roads improve? And the engines improve? Eighty. A hundred thousand pounds …

  Of course Stevie might conceivably have felt the same way about cars, about his former employer, the Ford Motor Company. But he never had. His job at Ford had never engaged his imagination the way, after only a week, Turk’s Trucks had done. It was just lovely: he’d become a part, a real and living part, of something auspicious and vast and challenging.

  Bianca had a sudden feeling, disorienting but not unwelcome, that Stevie was evolving into somebody she didn’t intimately know. Who was this man in the brown suit who spouted opinions on any topic under the sun—Mayor Cobo, the proper way to teach shop classes, or the bright future of California, which he alone among them had visited? Tonight she was seeing the emergence of somebody who had long yearned to get out—somebody she hadn’t realized was there.

  Once the food arrived, which everyone agreed was delicious (though Stevie, establishing himself as unintimidated by such extravagant prices, noted that his steak was “a little tough”), the subject of Grant’s golfing arose.

  “You’ve never tried it, you might like it,” Grant said, and Stevie said, “I wouldn’t mind. Trying it out. At least once. You know, I wouldn’t mind.”

  And why couldn’t they all share a world in which Stevie golfed on weekends, and went regularly to Tigers games—did something other than work all the time? Why couldn’t a world emerge in which Stevie was recognized as precisely the sort of person Bianca knew he was at bottom: a competent, conscientious man whose virtues were suitably rewarded? Why couldn’t the world relent and begin to be fair to Stevie?

  It was a sign of his newfound confidence and openness that he introduced over dessert—they all ordered dessert—a subject rarely talked about.

  “The first time she”—Rita—“brings up the idea of celebrating Grant’s birthday at a restaurant, I say, Uh-uh. I say, No dice. I’m thinking, We don’t have such a good family history of restaurant birthdays. You remember, Bea.”