“I wish you’d written to let me know you were coming,” I said. “Where are you staying?”
“I’ll find someplace. Take it easy, I’ll be out of your hair soon enough. Tomorrow, probably. Why are you doing this, Boy? Don’t you understand that I just want to take care of you any way I can? Or do you think I don’t know what I’m saying when I say things like that?”
“I love you,” I said, then sat there, appalled at what had just come out of my mouth.
He moved forward in his chair, rested his forehead against mine. “I know. So, please, Boy. I’m asking you, please. Don’t marry him.”
“I don’t want to be taken care of, Charlie. That’s not what I want.”
“How dare you write me a letter like that? You wanted me to come here and say this. Don’t marry him.”
Just one kiss, I thought. But then I couldn’t pull away.
Out in the hallway, Mia bawled: “Anyone seen Boy Novak? That girl owes me a pastrami sandwich.” That might have been her way of making a tactful entrance. We’d let go of each other by the time she tried the door handle. I introduced them, praying Mia wouldn’t say “That Charlie?” She didn’t.
Instead she said: “Come to lunch with us,” and looked up at him with a smile that made me want to stick a No Trespassing sign on him. Charlie excused himself on the grounds of having to find a room, but once Mia and I found a quiet booth at the diner, I had words with her about that smile she’d given him. Not straightforward words; I just asked a few questions about her love life, whether she was seeing anyone she liked, etc.
“No, not really—I’m just snacking right now.”
“Snacking, Mia?”
“That’s the only way I can think of to put it to you, my dear, innocent Boy. But about that Charlie . . . why did he say ‘Good-bye’ when he left? I mean, ‘Good-bye,’ not ‘See you later.’ Isn’t he in town to see you? Did you just break his heart? Don’t you know how to let ’em down easy?”
—
webster was all aglow at her wedding, and Ted was in awe.
(“I get to grow old with this woman? This woman right here?”
Arturo slung an arm around his neck and told him it was clearly a charity case.)
There was hardly a dry eye in the house. The miniature Ted and miniature Webster stood on top of the cake looking resigned, if not content. They realized that nobody was even going to think about rescuing them. We filled the reception room with paper flowers that each of us seven bridesmaids had spent a total of twenty-one hours folding—three hours a day for a week. It was gratifying that Webster sobbed over the flowers. She seemed to understand that we were trying to say good luck and trying to say that we were there just in case. Her official name might be Mrs. Ted Murray now, and she might have forsaken the Mamie Eisenhower haircut for long romantic waves that she flung to and fro like some kind of cape, but to me she was just the usual Veronica Webster.
Webster and Ted were on honeymoon when I married Arturo at Worcester City Hall. Olivia, Gerald, and Vivian were there. Mia too, and Snow. I hadn’t asked Mrs. Fletcher because she’d made it clear that she disapproved. I hadn’t asked Agnes because being Julia’s mother would have made the ceremony difficult for her. Mia gave me away, and I think Olivia was scandalized by that, but managed not to comment. I wore a plain dress that was somewhere between white and gray; its skirt was long and straight, and Snow said that when I stood still, I looked like a statue. Arturo wore a red bow tie and his hair slicked back. And his power doubled, maybe even tripled—that power he had of making me feel certain. The black of his hair, the red of his tie, the gold band I slipped onto his finger. Outside it snowed lightly, lifelessly, thousands of white butterflies falling to earth. Becoming Mrs. Whitman was a quiet affair that I didn’t have to diet for.
11
i remember Vivian Whitman said something a little odd at the wedding, as we were walking down the steps of city hall in the snow. She said: “You know, you’ve made my mother happy today. I think she only ever wanted one daughter, and nature never did give her the one that fit the bill.” I said: “What? Last time I looked I wasn’t a law student—” And she said: “Oh, come on. Look at you!” I’d thought she was just getting emotional because she thought Arturo and I should have made our wedding more of an occasion, but when the hothouse calla lily arrived, her remark was the first thing I thought of. The little card that came with the lily said: Congrats, Boy, and welcome to the family! Sorry this is late; I only just heard. Always wanted a sister, and never did see eye to eye with my biological one—Clara.
Snow wandered over, eyeing the purple blooms, assessing their potential for wearing in her hair. I told her to forget it.
“The calla lilies ah in bloom again,” she announced, in a surprisingly decent imitation of Katharine Hepburn’s voice.
“That’s right.”
“Where’d it come from?”
I watched her face as I said: “Your aunt Clara sent it,” but there was no flicker of recognition. She lost interest, said “Mmm hmmm,” and wandered away. It’s true that kids are inquisitive, but sometimes you forget that they pick and choose their projects.
I took the plant pot to Arturo’s workroom and knocked. He didn’t answer, so I kept knocking, switching hands when my knuckles got sore. Eventually he came to the door wearing goggles that covered half his face and asked: “What’s the big idea?”
I held up the lily. “It’s from Clara.”
He removed his goggles, read the card she’d written, and laughed.
“Any particular reason why you’ve never said anything about her? Snow doesn’t seem to know who she is, either.”
“She’s estranged from our parents. From our mother, really.”
“What did she do?”
“Oh, God. A lot of stuff, Boy. Too much to talk about.”
“So she’s estranged from you too?”
“No. She’s my big sis. It was her, then me, then Viv. Matter of fact it was Clara who put a roof over my head for a year. When Julia died. Snow was too young to remember. Don’t mention the roof over my head part to my mother, she’d have a heart attack.”
He kissed me and ducked back into his workroom.
—
mia said she’d never heard of a Clara Whitman, and Webster broke her Vow of Silence against me (punishment for getting married while she was away) to say the same thing. Mrs. Fletcher breathed out when I said Clara’s name. She breathed out and held on to the nearest bookshelf and said: “So you know. All this time I’ve been thinking how wrong it was of Olivia Whitman to send that girl away and act as if she only had two children.”
“What did she do?”
Mrs. Fletcher shook her head. “Nothing out of the way, Boy. Was just herself and fell in love. I must say, I’m glad you find it so humorous.”
“I don’t. I don’t know what to think. You say she didn’t do anything, Arturo says she did a lot of stuff he can’t even talk about. I mean, which is it?”
Mrs. Fletcher peered at me for a long time. Her expression became grim. She said: “They didn’t tell you about her.”
“You tell me. Someone’s got to. How did you meet?”
“She contacted me about a book she wanted to buy for her husband’s birthday. It was the first I’d heard of her, and I didn’t believe her when she said she’d been born in Flax Hill, and that Olivia Whitman was her mother. Then she came by to look at the book, and I saw she was a Whitman all right. She said the book was too expensive and went away, then came back the next day, said she guessed it was worth the price, paid up, and left town. That was four years ago. I haven’t seen her since.”
“Where does she live?”
“In Boston, I believe.”
“With her husband . . .”
“Yes. Her married name is Baxter.”
“Any kids?”
; “I don’t know.”
“What was the book she bought from you?”
“It was an 1846 edition of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.”
“She’s a historian?”
“No.”
I couldn’t think of anything else to ask; a riddle ran all the way through the account I’d just heard. I questioned a detail and the answer didn’t tell me anything. Finally I said: “Okay. Do you have her address or telephone number? I’d like to talk to her. Introduce myself. Thank her for the flowers, that sort of thing.”
Mrs. Fletcher hesitated, and I said: “Nobody else needs to know about it. I guess I just want as much family as I can get. Surely you understand that?”
I tried the telephone number she gave me three times, but the phone on the other end just rang and rang, and no one picked it up.
12
charlie sent a letter to the boarding house and Mrs. Lennox sent it on to me at Caldwell Lane.
This doesn’t count as bothering you; it’s just that there’s something that’s been on my mind and I can’t do anything to get it off my mind but tell you. I’ve always liked the way you listen—you have what they call an impartial air, like the ideal judge. Then afterward you just say four or five words and the case is closed. This is about my aunt Jozsa, in the old country. You know, we read the papers, but it’s hard to say what’s really going on over there. We just know it’s something. Aunt J was sent to an internment camp in Szeged, which is so crazy, I don’t even know how to express the insanity of her having been interned—hand on my heart, she’s red all the way through, risked her life for the party and the cause on too many occasions to talk about back when the fascists ran things. So we don’t know . . . someone with some sort of grudge against her must have denounced her. The camp officials wanted her to confess disloyalty and collaboration with enemies of peace (enemies of the government, I guess) and she racked her brain for weeks and weeks but couldn’t think of anything she’d said or done that could even be construed as disloyal or treacherous. So then she started putting some of her own statements of the past few weeks to herself, to see how they sounded. She remembered that once, at a party meeting, her mind had wandered, she’d looked out of the window at all the snow and whispered to her friend: “Will spring never come?” So maybe it was that. Aunt Jozsa told my dad she sat in her cell repeating those words until they became sinister . . . and incriminating. But when she confessed to having asked if spring would come, her interrogator just said: “Oh, I see we’ve got a joker here.”
I don’t know, Boy. I think she got close to going crazy. But when Stalin died last March, they let everybody out of the camps and Aunt J went home again. I wrote to her right away. She hasn’t seen me since I was a boy, but she says I’m her favorite and stupidest nephew. I wrote: Hey, Aunt Jozsa, what can I do for you, what can I send you? A plane ticket maybe? I mean, I could do it too, with a little help from my dad and my uncle in Milwaukee.
She answered: Send me candy, my boy. Send a lot of that great American candy. Send an amount that will shock me, send enough to make the neighbors say “That is a LOT of candy, the New World is certainly being kind to the Vacics.”
So I did, Boy. I sent her a cardboard box by freight. A couple of feet wide, a couple of feet tall, and heavy. At the bottom of the box I put a note saying that there was more where that came from if she came to America. She’s a skinny woman and I now know for sure that she doesn’t really eat much candy, because she only found the note a couple of weeks ago—a year and a few months after I sent her the candy box. She wrote: You know very well I can’t live in your shitty capitalist country, Charlie. I’m not even interested in visiting.
I got angry. Because who was it who locked her up—communists or capitalists? I asked her that question, and I asked her what had become of her communism now. And I’ve got her reply right here; I’m looking at it as I write to you—she says:
I don’t know. I don’t know anything. But it will not always be like this.
That’s it. What am I supposed to do with that?
C
Charlie’s Aunt Jozsa, who just couldn’t walk away from certain principles. I thought of her, on and off, for days. I didn’t reply to his letter, but if I had, I would’ve told him that his aunt probably called him her favorite because their hearts worked the same way. Charlie and I were still in love. How strange it is to wake up in the middle of the night with that feeling that someone has just left the room, that just moments before someone has been whispering: Me and you, you and me, soft music that stops playing the moment you really begin to listen. Who’d have thought that Charlie Vacic could be so tenacious? “People underestimate the freckled.” He’d told me that more than once, with all seventy-two of his own freckles scrunched up together. I’d underestimated him too, and I had to face up to the reason why.
It’s true that nothing really happened the night I ran away. It’s a night two weeks before that I don’t like to think about. It was a Saturday and Charlie Vacic was back in the city visiting his mom. He met me for a slice of pie at the diner where I worked, and then he walked me home. I told him and told him there was no need to walk me right to my door, but he insisted, and the rat catcher came out with a covered cage just as we reached the front doorstep. I bet he’d timed it that way. I bet he’d been watching us from the window. “Hello, Charlie,” he said, friendly as could be. “I’ve seen the way you look at my daughter. You think she’s pretty, don’t you?”
Charlie said: “More than just pretty, sir. I think she’s beautiful.”
They both turned to me and went on a looking spree. I left them to it and wished I could sail over their heads and into the acid blue sky. They didn’t look for long, it was more a practiced series of glances; they knew what they were looking for and seemed to find it. It was a wonder there was anything left by the time they were through looking.
“Say thank you, Boy. Didn’t you hear what Charlie said? He thinks you’re beautiful.”
I told the sidewalk thank you, and the rat catcher took me by the arm, thanked Charlie for “bringing me home safe and sound,” and closed the front door in his face. We walked side by side down the hallway to our apartment door, the rat catcher and I, and he scraped away at me a little more with his dull nickel gaze. “So you’re a beauty, hey?” He slapped me. “Or are you not?”
“I’m not.”
“So you’re ugly?”
I nodded.
Another slap, harder. “You have to say it.”
“I’m ugly.”
I went to my room, switched on the radio, and lay down with a book. But I didn’t read it. I left the door open and watched for the rat catcher’s approach, feeling very bitter toward Charlie Vacic. He’d really done it this time. I heard the rat catcher moving around the apartment and waited for him to yell that it was time I made dinner, but he didn’t. I smelled cooking. Good cooking. When my father called me to the table, there was chicken paprikash and dumplings and cold beer to cool the heat of the paprika. Foodwise it was the best dinner I’d had yet, and I ate a lot. We didn’t talk, he watched foam swirling in his beer, but he kept biting his lip, and I stopped eating when I clocked that he’d bitten down so hard that blood came through. The rim of his beer glass was smeared with it. I muttered a compliment to the chef, went to bed, and lay on my swollen stomach in the hope that it’d be flat again by morning. Yeah, ideally in the morning my stomach would be flat again and the rat catcher would already have left for work and life would be as good as it could get.
I woke up in the basement with the rats. I tried to lift myself out of the chair I was in, but my arms were tied behind me and my ankles were so tightly bound to the chair legs that they already felt broken. There was no light, and the rats crunched on the newsprint that lined their cages. The rat catcher loomed over me and I smelled wet fur. The blinded creature he held paddled the air with its front
paws. A paw thudded against my forehead, but if I hadn’t seen it happen, I wouldn’t have known. No part of my face would move. I looked up into the rat catcher’s clear eyes.
“I’m glad you liked the paprikash, stupid. Do you think Charlie really means it when he calls you beautiful, Boy? Do you think he could be the one?”
I watched the rat lap hungrily at the corner of my mouth with its pink, delicate tongue; I saw it, but couldn’t feel it. The numbness was total. It froze my fear. After a moment he hauled the rat back up into the air and it snapped its snout this way and that, seeking me.
“There is no exquisite beauty without strangeness in the proportion, is that not so? Let’s fix it so that Charlie is truly mesmerized by you. Let’s fix it so that he stares. Seven scars should do it.”
There was a teardrop on my cheek; I know this because my father flicked it with a finger and thumb to make it fall faster. With effort I closed my eyes. No way out. Get through this, then kill him. Figure out the rest later.
“Why are you shaking like that?” my father asked, tenderly. “Do you think that if I scar you no one will love you? You’ve got the wrong idea, girl. This will help your true love find you. He’ll really have to fight for you now.”
There was a thickness to his voice; I cracked one eye open. He was crying. The rat hung limp and lay its head on my cheek in a confiding way, exhausted and childlike. Drool bubbled from its jaws, but it didn’t bite me. Perhaps it had become too hungry to eat. I don’t know if that happens to rats, I don’t know . . . a second later the rat was dead, its head smashed against the basement floor, and my father was running up the stairs, cursing, still crying. A true thing I can still hardly believe of myself is this: I fell asleep again until he came back to untie me.
Boy, Snow, Bird: A Novel Page 10