Della spent the weekend sleeping and wandering dazedly through the baking streets. On Monday morning, Margie carried in a large shopping bag packed with mounds of tissue paper. “I brought one of my pieces to show you. But we have to be very careful with it. It’s fragile.” She and Paolo unwrapped it on the washing machine. It was a construction of wood and Masonite about a foot and a half high, finished in gradations of white and gray and suggesting an architect’s miniature model. Yet not quite a building; rather, a mélange of possible parts of buildings, a structure of fable. Looking closely, Della saw that Margie had painted a range of shadows here and there, making it tricky to tell which grays were painted and which were a response to the light. Studying the piece was almost like a game, a brainteaser.
“How wonderful. So complex.” Indeed, it was more subtle than she had expected, its profusion of planes and angles and crannies, all neatly trimmed and lucid, giving the illusion of a simplicity just out of reach.
“Let me take it over to the light,” Paolo said. “You can’t really appreciate it here.” He brought it into the bedroom, where the morning sun beamed in. Standing at the window, he held it high and revolved it in his hands. As light struck the piece, its patterns shifted; flashes of rainbow appeared, shadows disappeared. “Ay, Dios mio, those babies! They’ll fall out! Where is their mother?”
“Hey, don’t drop it!” Margie took the piece from him and set it down in a corner.
“Oh, not again,” moaned Della. “Every other day I think they’re about to die.”
“One day they will. Oyé, chiquillos!” he called loudly.
“No, no!” Della grabbed his arm. “Don’t shout! They could lose their balance. Just do nothing. Don’t look.”
“I can’t not look. Let’s call the police.”
The woman appeared from the invisible spaces of the apartment and pulled the children off the windowsill. She left the window open.
“Señora, por favor!” Paolo shouted something in Spanish.
“But they’re Chinese. Or Korean,” said Della. “She wouldn’t understand Spanish.”
Paolo called again, but the woman had vanished. “They looked like Latinos to me.”
Della’s shoulders sagged in exhaustion. She saw Margie, pale and still, sitting on the floor next to her sculpture. In the shadowy corner it had lost its verve; its interest had become purely geometrical and barren. Again Della praised it, but the moment was spoiled. Margie said she would go wrap it up so no one tripped over it.
“Oh, Della, I forgot to mention on Friday ...” Paolo said. “I pulled up a piece of that ridiculous wavy linoleum—behind the stove, don’t worry—and there’s a good surface underneath. I could put down tiles if you like—the kitchen would look a lot better. A domestic metamorphosis.”
“Ha! I’m not sure I want to go that far. Is the linoleum so bad?”
He gave a loud laugh. “Well, it’s not that I’m dying to rip up a floor in this heat.”
“Let me think about it.” Climbing up the ladder in the bathtub to paint the ceiling, Della began figuring rapidly. The plastering was all done. The spare room was finished, the living room and bedroom close to it. It might be only a few days till ... The telephone rang rooms away, its first ring since Frank’s call from Costa Rica. “Paolo, Margie, would someone get it, please?”
Paolo, who had been painting the bedroom window frame, handed her the receiver with a comic flourish, whispering, “Un hombre.”
“Della? Hello, Della?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s me—Ezra. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Didn’t you recognize my voice?”
“What do you want?”
“I had to get your number from Information.”
“Well?”
“Who was that answering the phone?”
“The painter.”
“He didn’t sound like a painter.”
“How should a painter sound?”
“I meant he sounded too educated to be a painter. All the painters we’ve ever had didn’t speak much English.”
“Well, this one speaks excellent English.” She turned towards Paolo and grinned. He grinned back.
“Okay, it’s not my business, I realize. I was calling about Frank. This girl he says he wants to marry, Della, may be a very nice girl, but he’s far too young for such a big commitment. I don’t think it’s something we ought to encourage. He may come to regret it.”
“You mean marry in haste, repent at leisure?” Della had been pregnant when she and Ezra married. They had also been in love.
“You could put it that way. Then, of course, Costa Rica. It’s quite a different culture.”
“Are you familiar with Costa Rica? Costa Rica may be the only nation in the Americas without a standing army. One of the few, certainly. And yet now our government—”
“I don’t see what that ... Della, is everything all right? Are you managing?”
“Fine. I have to go now, the painter needs me.”
“That’s not very funny. I’m writing to Frank to try to explain things. Would you write too?”
“This place is so upside down at the moment, I don’t even think I could find a piece of paper.” Della hung up.
“The husband?” Paolo asked.
She nodded.
“He has a voice like a radio announcer.”
“That’s because he is one.”
“Maybe he is one because he has that voice.”
“You have a point there.”
“He’s getting lonely, eh? Wants to reconsider?”
“Nope, nothing like that. By the way, you might as well rip up that kitchen floor.”
“Are you sure? Do you want to price some tiles first?”
“No, that’s okay. Also, about the bookshelves—if I got the wood this week could you help me sand and stain it?”
Paolo gave his usual neutral shrug. “All right, why not?”
She drifted into the living room, where the ceiling and two walls already gleamed white against the old forest green color. Margie’s roller was attached to a long stick. As she saw Della she smiled and jiggled it in time to the music, doing a bouncy little dance. Della envisioned the entire room white and glistening, its accumulated gloom sealed into oblivion, with sunlight filtering in through pale wooden slatted shades. “That looks great, Margie. Do you think, if I bought some window shades for the whole place—you know, the Japanese kind—you might put them up?”
“No problem. I’ll check out the window frames and see what kind of brackets you’ll need.”
Late in the afternoon Paolo went out for Chinese food and beer. When all the containers were empty, Margie reached across the living room floor for her huge shopping bag and pulled out a game, Trivial Pursuit, which she announced would distract Della from her troubles and prove that her memory was basically intact. Oh no, Della said, she had lost the competitive instinct. Paolo resisted too, groaning with disdain. But in the end they gave in.
The game turned out to be like Go to the Head of the Class, which Della had played as a girl and also played with Frank when he was small. She was soon winning, for many of the questions were about people and events in the news before Paolo’s and Margie’s era: FDR, Neville Chamberlain, Billie Holiday, the Lindbergh kidnapping, Jesse Owens, the abdication of Edward VIII. They were before her own era as well, she realized, yet she knew about them. Paolo and Margie could answer questions about Greek and Roman mythology, about the Medici popes, and about the French Revolution, but didn’t seem to know much that had happened in the twentieth century before 1960. On the other hand, Margie was very good with questions about art and music and, unexpectedly, baseball. Paolo was better than either of them at geography—he was spectacular at geography, Della noted—but his downfall was questions about American popular culture, particularly that segment of it promulgated on television: he did not know the name of Fred Flintstone’s wife, or what Bonanza was, or how man
y children were in the Brady bunch, he was reduced to muttering curses in Spanish, or possibly Italian, when asked the name of Perry Mason’s secretary and loyal sidekick.
Della laughed. “I could never forget that—Della Street. My parents were apparently great Perry Mason fans.” She had to explain the curious mass appeal of Perry Mason; they had neither read the books nor seen the television series. “I always wondered why. There was nothing memorable about her. She just filled a necessary role. Maybe they liked the sound of it.”
“Why didn’t you ask them?” said Paolo.
“Well ... they were drowned in a sailing accident when I was four.”
Margie gasped. “You never told us!”
“It never came up. I’ve only known you less than two weeks.”
“Still. So who took care of you? Did you grow up in an orphanage?”
“No. I stayed with an aunt and uncle. I was lucky. To have them, I mean.”
“But do you still remember your parents? Can you see them in your mind?” Margie seemed intrigued by the news.
“Oh yes. My father more than my mother, strangely enough. He was a very big man, with very big gestures. He didn’t know his own strength, my aunt used to say. I think she blamed him for the accident. I remember this game we used to play. He would sit in a certain chair with his arms outstretched and I would run to him. He caught me and locked me in with his legs—I was his prisoner—then he pushed me away and I ran backwards, then back to him again, over and over, and laughing all the way through. One time he pushed me away so hard I toppled backwards right into the French windows and cut my arm on the broken glass.” Della paused. She felt a bit lightheaded. “I can still feel the thrill of that game, being captured and enfolded, all warm and safe, and then pushed away. It was only pretend, the pushing away part. It never really felt dangerous. I still have the scar.” The memory was pulsing in her brain like a blip on a radar screen. She held out her arm to show them the small white circle near her wrist.
“My father never went in much for games. He has Alzheimer’s now,” Margie said. “Last time I saw him, when my mother died, I had to keep introducing myself. He couldn’t keep it in his head from one minute to the next.” She poured a long swig of beer down her throat. “I almost think I’d rather be an orphan like you two.”
“Orphan! I think at a certain age, my age anyway, it no longer applies. Though maybe it should. Was your mother also ... political?” she asked Paolo.
“My mother died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Even under a junta some people manage to die of natural causes. It’s much less glamorous, I know.”
“Okay! You don’t have to make it an international incident. What ever happened to your sister? The one who was left with the two small children.”
“Ah, my sister. A few years after her husband disappeared, my sister met a man, very nice, very decent. Also a radio announcer, it happens. But she keeps thinking maybe her husband is still alive somewhere. She won’t get married—she is afraid of being a bigamist.”
“But they emptied the prisons long ago, I read. Surely he’s not going to turn up after all this time?”
“No. But she’s a religious woman. God could send him back. I’m not sure if it would be a reward or a punishment at this point.”
Margie finished her third can of beer. She grazed Paolo’s bare foot with her own, then crossed her ankle over his. “She should see my therapist. She’s terrific with endings. I mean, like a special talent. Scrapes you up off the floor and puts you back into shape for the next bout.”
“Maybe you should find someone who does middles,” Della suggested.
“There never seem to be any middles, just beginnings and endings. And everyone can handle beginnings. They’re the fun part. Endings are the real challenge, don’t you think? I mean, they’re costing me a fortune. That’s money I ought to be using to visit my father in Butte.”
Paolo turned to Della, his eyes large with injury, entreating. “But I’m not ending anything! I’m right here with her. I don’t know why she keeps talking that way. Too much beer, that’s what.”
“You’re right. I’m talking nonsense.” Margie put the beer down. She squeezed Paolo’s hand, then kissed it. “Let’s get it together here. Your turn, champ.”
A week later the apartment was finished. Like new, Della thought. Light filtered through the slatted shades, striping the fresh walls. The kitchen was metamorphosed by a white tile floor. Paolo had hung a pegboard for pots and pans, and screwed the magnets into the latches of the cabinets. The bookshelves, stained and in place, awaited their books, still packed in cartons. In the bedroom, Margie had hung a full-length mirror Della got at the Salvation Army store, and in the bathroom, once Della put up a shower curtain, she had installed a more invigorating shower head. As a final touch, she hooked up the stereo system and speakers. Then they had cleaned up the debris and left. But they must get together very soon, they all vowed. Della must come down to the studio to see their work, and they would go to dinner in Little Italy or in Chinatown. And Paolo and Margie must come back for a real dinner, sitting around a table, as soon as Della got her dishes unpacked and got a table.
She returned to work. It took enormous effort to get herself dressed and presentable for the office each day and do the projects assigned her. She tried to reestablish a routine of shopping on the way home and preparing dinner, as she had done for most of her adult life—programmed like a machine, she had often thought. But she couldn’t seem to break the newer habit of dropping in at the pizzeria, the Chinese restaurant, or the delicatessen. Unlike H.M., she had succeeded in learning something new—not to cook dinner. In the evenings she listened to records on the stereo and sent change of address cards to magazines, to her bank and her credit card accounts. When writing to Frank, she remembered to ask how Milagros was, and remembered it was a school he was building, not a hospital. She unpacked dishes and books, and bought items like wastebaskets and ice cube trays, which she had forgotten to take from the old apartment.
Out all day, she naturally didn’t see the babies at the window across the street. But when they didn’t appear over the weekend, she decided the family must have gone away on vacation. To the country or the seashore, where the buildings were low.
Often she thought about calling Paolo and Margie, but a cloud of uncertainties, like gnats, surrounded her. Perhaps they had only felt sorry for her. Perhaps it was the custom in their generation or in their circles for people thrown together by circumstance to become intimate at first sight, then to forget each other as easily when circumstances changed. But could an instinct like friendship change from one generation to the next, or in different circles? Surely not, yet customs could be more powerful than feelings, and among these new new customs Della was at a loss, like a foreigner, or Rip Van Winkle.
Perhaps Paolo and Margie made friends with all their employers, for fun and profit. Yet hadn’t Margie confided that they had never had such a good time on any job? Often they couldn’t wait to leave. Paolo, she said, usually felt uncomfortable with new people. Constrained. Why, at their previous job he hadn’t even been permitted to smoke indoors and had to go out on the fire escape. Literally fuming, she recalled, with her chuckle. Neither had they been taking advantage of her, Della knew, for their meticulous records of hours worked and expenses at the hardware store tallied with her own: they had not charged for the many hours spent sitting on the floor eating and playing games or telling stories, nor for the whimsical excavation of the bathroom walls. Still ...
Della tried to brush doubt from her mind, tried to trust. She would call at precisely the right moment—too soon would appear dependent and clinging, too late could find her drifted to the gray recesses of memory. She chose one early evening twelve days after they had left. The sunlight in the apartment was declining, but still rich and gold. Paolo answered on the first ring.
“Della! It’s good to hear you! How’re you doing?” He sounded truly pleased. With an awkward haste, Della in
vited him and Margie to come for dinner on Friday or Saturday night.
“I hate to tell you this, but ...”
Her chest felt rammed in. Don’t say it, she thought. But he already had. She was gone. “But why? What happened?”
“I don’t understand it myself. One of those things.”
“Of course you understand. She wanted to get married and have a baby.”
“That was part of it. But there were other things too. She’s ... Oh, it’s too involved. We wanted to call you, Della, but things were really rough for a while. I’m okay now. I’ll come Friday, or would you rather go out somewhere? Or else come down here and I’ll show you my stuff.”
“Oh no,” whispered Della. Her heart was racing, she was feeling sick, she wanted only not to talk anymore. “No. I couldn’t do that.”
“I don’t get it. Why not?”
“I wanted to see the both of you.”
“But ...You sound like a child, Della.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Oh. Was it just that we were a cute couple? Was that all? The hired help? The spic and his chick?”
“No, no, stop. You don’t understand at all. Please, just forget it. I’m sorry.”
“Do you want the number where Margie’s staying?” he asked coldly.
“Another time, maybe.”
She knew they would be there, even before she looked. They were leaning far out, waving at a flock of birds overhead. Back from vacation, or perhaps they had never gone; yes, that was another fantasy. The babies flung their arms about and shouted, so for the first time Della could hear their voices. The syllables were foreign, though at this distance she couldn’t tell whether they were Chinese or Spanish or baby talk. As always, they looked about to topple out—she should be used to it by now. But she would never be used to it. It took only one time. She wished they would fall right away, if they were going to, and get it over with. Where was their mother? Where was their father, for that matter? How would she live the rest of her life here?
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