The Gallery of Vanished Husbands

by Natasha Solomons

  pillows slipping.

  • • •

  Leonard lost count of how many days they’d been on the bus – was it two or three or a hundred? – or the number of times Frieda had been sick. She looked skinnier and crosser than ever and in the diners sucked Coke through a straw and scowled at him as he drank milkshake after milkshake, never worrying about it coming back up again. Sometimes he sat next to Juliet, sometimes Frieda (except when she was going to throw up) and every now and again he sat next to strangers, real-life Amer-i-cans. Leonard liked this the best. Between Louisville and Fort Smith he sat beside a travelling salesman with a briefcase full of imitation watches (that kept real time just the same) and as they shared meatloaf sandwiches with tomato ketchup Leonard listened to his history of troubles with drink and the troublesome ma-in-law who’d driven him to it, and looked at the pictures of ‘my boy Huck Junior’. Leonard wondered if his father was sitting on a bus somewhere sharing sandwiches with another kid and showing him pictures of ‘my boy Leonard’. He expected so.

  • • •

  They reached downtown Los Angeles in the middle of the afternoon on the fifth day, stumbling off the bus into fierce Californian sunshine. It was hot and airless between the buildings, the fronds of the grimy palms perfectly still. Unable to bear another bus, Juliet herded the children into a taxi that deposited them half an hour later outside a gloomy apartment building in Venice. Juliet looked over the children – Leonard in dirty trousers and wild, unbrushed hair, and Frieda her skin grey, eyes ringed with purple as she blinked in the light. Trying to ignore a gathering headache, Juliet hammered on the front door. It was answered after a few minutes by a thin man with a perfectly bald head and a fulsome, furry beard – making him look, according to Leonard, like an upside-down egg in an egg cosy. The bald man led them up several flights of stairs, the children dragging their suitcases, thump-thumping on every step. He ushered them into a small apartment on the top floor and, on handing Juliet a key, disappeared back down the stairs.

  When he had gone, Leonard and Frieda were filled with a sudden rush of energy and started rootling around the room, opening cupboards and poking at the shower and toilet partly hidden behind a mouldy plastic curtain. Leonard flung open a door and gave a cry.

  ‘This isn’t a cupboard! It’s a – garden,’ he concluded, reaching for the right word.

  Frieda and Juliet followed him outside and onto a concrete roof. A lone shrivelled pot plant balanced on the roof ledge was the closest thing to a garden, but beyond the tangle of telephone cables and the nests of electricity wires was the ocean. And it was an ocean, not a sea like at Margate or Swanage. It was huge and blue and the sand stretched away hot and white, edged in the far north by a ridge of mountains half-concealed by a bandage of mist. Juliet narrowed her eyes, searching the shore. Are you here, George? Will you let us find you?

  ‘Can we swim?’ asked Leonard, transfixed by the glittering expanse, drawn like a magpie to silver.

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  • • •

  ‘We need to hire bicycles,’ Juliet called through the manager’s door. She rapped again, and he eventually emerged in a pair of orange pyjamas, a hand-rolled cigarette drooping between his fingers.

  ‘Bicycles?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mickey the bald and bearded manager gaped at Juliet, ash from his cigarette littering the already filthy carpet.

  ‘What in God’s name do you want a bike for?’

  Juliet swallowed a sigh. ‘To get around.’

  Mickey threw his head back and laughed, revealing two rows of neat yellow teeth like kernels of sweetcorn. He wiped spittle from his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that no one – no one – rides a bike to get places in LA.’

  He paused, waiting for Juliet to get the joke but she merely stood quite still and waited. ‘You need a car,’ he added at last.

  ‘I can’t drive.’

  Mickey looked at Juliet for a minute and then stepped out into the corridor, wafting with him a stale smell emanating from his room. ‘You have cash?’

  ‘Some,’ said Juliet, picturing the dwindling stash in the icebox upstairs.

  ‘My brother’s out of town for a few weeks and I could give you a loan of his car at a very reasonable rate.’

  ‘I think you missed the part where I said I can’t drive.’

  Mickey wafted away her objections with his cigarette. ‘It’s easy as pie. I’ll teach you a bit and then afterwards you can drive around and practise.’

  An hour later Juliet sat behind the wheel of a huge tan Plymouth, Mickey beside her and Leonard and Frieda in the back, thrilled at their mother’s audacity. This was something else not to tell Grandma.

  ‘I think you got it,’ said Mickey towards the end of the afternoon.

  Juliet made no answer, concentrating heart and soul on steering the enormous car along the road. It wallowed out into the middle like a boat caught in the tide and streets that had seemed so wide now appeared alarmingly narrow. Mickey was a surprisingly good teacher. He was patient – grinning his yellow smile as he dangled his cigarette out of the window – and he also appeared to have no concerns over the wellbeing of the car, not wincing even when Juliet grazed a row of parked cars or thudded into the kerb as she took the corner of Wilshire Boulevard. He made her practise parking and then drive them all the way up to Sunset in the traffic that at rush hour was thickening like porridge.

  ‘Here we are,’ he announced, suddenly.

  ‘Here we are?’ repeated Juliet, unaware that they were driving somewhere in particular.

  ‘Told you there isn’t nothing to driving. You can drop me here.’

  He waved at a bar with a green neon sign. Juliet pulled over without a signal, a chorus of car horns berating her. Mickey leaped out with sudden dexterity.

  ‘How will I get home?’ called Juliet.

  Mickey stared at her. ‘You got a car.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t know how to get back to Venice.’

  Mickey scratched his nose. ‘Ask the kid. He probably knows.’

  With that he was gone. Juliet turned to look at Leonard on the back seat.

  ‘Do you know?’

  Both children shook their heads. The car horns rising to a crescendo, Juliet accelerated away. She tried to guess the direction of the sea, failing to distinguish the sun through the scarf of fog. In the back of the car, the children held hands. Caught in a surge of traffic, Juliet found herself propelled onto the freeway. Unaware of how to escape, she sailed along in the middle lane watching a flotsam and jetsam of cars float by her on both sides. The afternoon wore into dusk and, as the cars thinned she found herself stepping on the accelerator with an electric buzz of exhilaration. Then suddenly the city was left behind. Scrub gave way to desert and the hot dirt from the open windows battered Juliet’s skin. She smiled with pleasure. I could go anywhere. I’m not lost, I’m free. The little house in Chislehurst felt very far away. A sign loomed at the edge of the road: ‘Las Vegas 200 miles’. After the endless bus ride, that didn’t seem so very far. Everything that mattered most to her was in the car. I could vanish too, she thought. Drive and drive and drive and never come back and move here and become someone new. A great black bird watched her from the side of the road, hunched on a scrap of twisted metal, hostile and indifferent. The road rushed on, grey and endless and the first of the stars appeared in the sky beside a lemon slice of moon.

  She glanced in the mirror and saw that both children were asleep, coiled awkwardly on one another. Love pricked at her. She remembered coming home from the hospital clutching baby Frieda, terrified she’d shatter like the china babies in her dreams. George had prised her out of her hands and laid her down on their bed, and they’d both sat staring at this immaculate creature with the angry red face, at once awed and terrified. Frieda could still make her uneasy. When Frieda was six, Juliet had collected her from school and they’d sat on the bus in silence, Juliet search
ing for things to say, trying topic after topic, sensing her small disapproval. Leonard was different. She’d known the moment the midwife handed him to her that they’d be friends. He’d first grinned up at her at only two weeks old, even though everyone told her it was impossible. Smiling, she pulled off the freeway and parked. Opening the glove compartment she discovered a bottle of bourbon. She slid out of the car and took a swig, conscious that she drank not for pleasure but because this was a moment that needed to be marked. Alcohol seals occasions as varnish does garden benches. Even the most austere of rabbis drank at weddings. It brought them closer to God, or so they said. She tipped a circle of liquid on the ground, watching it seep into the dust and thought of Max in his green wood. And then of George.

  Cars swarmed past, throwing up grit and noise and then the road was still again. She could climb back in the car and drive on for ever, but she chose not to. She chose to go back.

  • • •

  The following day Juliet began her hunt for George. They traipsed along the walk path beside Venice Beach, past a couple of painters who had set up easels on the edge of the sand and a handful of ageing surfers struggling in the shallows, their white beards the same colour as the choppy water. While the children attempted to build a sandcastle, observed by a couple of drunks who offered them some beer-bottle tops for battlement decoration, Juliet looked up ‘Gorgeous George’s Glasses, Culver City’ in the telephone directory. Armed with an address, she wondered how to explain the visit to the children. Leonard laid his spectacles on the towel beside her and then rushed over to Frieda, knocking her into the sea. Juliet lay back on the sand listening to their shrieks. She picked up Leonard’s specs, wiping away a smear on the lens with her shirt. She hesitated, wondering if she dared. Could she be so wicked? Then, before she could talk herself out of it, she wrenched the spectacles, snapping them in two. She stared at the broken pieces, heart beating, feeling a little sick at what she had done. The children emerged from the sea and flopped back on the towel next to her, panting. Leonard groped for his specs. His eyes teared as he found them. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh.’ He crouched in the sand and peered through them like two monocles. ‘I can’t see,’ he said, his voice breaking. ‘I’ll have to go home.’

  ‘Oh darling, we can get them mended here,’ said Juliet. ‘It was an accident, I sat on them and they snapped. I am so sorry.’ She leaned over and kissed his cheek, salty with tears and seawater. ‘I know a place that’s not too far.’

  Gorgeous George’s shop was at one end of an ordinary suburban street lined with low houses and dusty palm trees and lawns mouthwash green. She opened the car door, clipping it against the kerb, and led the children towards the shop, steering the half-blind Leonard around a fire hydrant.

  Paint peeled off the doorframe and the display of spectacles in the window needed a good dust. A fly thudded against the glass. Juliet felt dizzy with nerves. She wiped moist palms down her dress and paused outside the shop, suddenly not ready to go inside. It was almost sixteen years since she’d marched into Harry’s Specs on Penge High Street determined to meet the dishy new assistant, George Montague; fourteen years since she’d married him under the chuppah and eight years since he’d kissed her goodbye on her birthday and gone to work and hadn’t come home. She glanced at the children and anxiety kindled into anger. Juliet took a breath and stepped inside ready to face George. It seemed right that they should meet again in an optician’s store.

  ‘Hi, my name is Vera. How may I help you?’

  A woman in a smart yellow summer dress shot Juliet a perfect shop assistant smile. She looked about forty with bottle-black hair and Pacific-blue eyes edged with thick lashes. She wore open-toed sandals, toes painted red like little pieces of candy. Juliet delved into her handbag and produced Leonard’s broken spectacles.

  ‘I’m afraid we had an accident. I hoped you might be able to fix them.’

  Vera took them from Juliet, placing them on the counter.

  ‘Let’s take a look.’ Her voice was low and beneath the Californian accent sounded a note of something European. Juliet frowned, trying to place it. ‘Sure we’ll be able to do something for you but I’m sorry to say the optician isn’t in today.’

  ‘Oh.’

  The fluttering in Juliet’s chest subsided; she wasn’t sure whether in relief or disappointment. At the edge of the store, Frieda and Leonard played dress-up with fat plastic sun-specs. Juliet swallowed, forcing her voice to remain casual.

  ‘Is this George’s store? George Montague. Sorry. George Molnár?’

  Vera looked up sharply, saying nothing for a moment, and then retrieved her shiny service smile.

  ‘Yes, the store belongs to George. Do you know him?’

  Juliet frowned. ‘I’m not sure. I think maybe, a long time ago.’

  Vera bent over the counter. ‘Are you here on vacation?’

  Juliet nodded. ‘Yes, from England.’

  ‘And the name, please? For the ticket.’

  ‘Leonard Montague.’

  There was a giggle from the corner of the shop and the display stand wobbled ominously. Frieda caught it before it fell.

  ‘Stop playing with that and come over here,’ snapped Juliet. ‘Stand here quietly until we’re finished.’

  The children slid over, Frieda leaning against the counter, still wearing a giant pair of sun-specs with orange polka-dot frames.

  ‘Can I have these?’

  Juliet glanced at the price and winced. ‘No. They’re far too expensive.’

  Vera said nothing, only stared at Frieda, her head cocked to one side, then with what appeared to be a great effort roused herself into a fresh round of sales patter.

  ‘They’re all the rage. All the movie stars are wearing them.’ She paused. ‘I can give you a discount. Two dollars off.’

  ‘Please, Mum, please. They’re the most beautiful sunglasses in the world.’

  Juliet had to laugh at her fervour. Frieda wiggled the glasses down her nose. They were enormous.

  ‘Fabulous,’ said Vera. ‘Pass them to me. I’ll adjust them.’

  Frieda surrendered the specs and Juliet sighed, realising she’d been outmanoeuvred.

  ‘There’ll be no more presents for the rest of the trip,’ she said, but Frieda was twirling around in ecstasy.

  ‘I’ll never want anything again, ever.’

  ‘Can I have sun-specs too?’ asked Leonard.

  ‘We do a marvellous prescription-only range,’ cooed the assistant, still eyeing Frieda as she spun nearer and nearer the rack of spectacles.

  ‘No,’ said Juliet.

  ‘Come back tomorrow afternoon and I’ll make sure the young man’s glasses are fixed.’

  Juliet licked dry lips. ‘Do you think George might be here?’

  ‘No,’ said Vera. She did not smile.

  Juliet ushered the children out of the shop. She paused in the doorway and looked back at Vera. Suddenly she could place the accent lurking beneath those bright American vowels – it was Hungarian, the same as George. It sounded different on the woman, in a cocktail mixed with New World sounds instead of the familiar London blend, but Juliet recognised it all the same.

  • • •

  That night when the children were tucked up on the foldout sofa bed, Juliet did not sleep. She stepped through the door that was not a cupboard and out onto the rooftop. The sea glittered in the dark. From somewhere down below a vagrant or a dog rifled through the garbage cans. She tapped her pocket, listening to the rustle of newspaper. Was her George now running an optical store in Culver City? Or was it an entirely different George? She tried to picture the grand reunion. She was nine years older than when he’d vanished and the children were nothing like the babies George had left behind. Then, Leonard had been a doughnut-cheeked toddler, toppling around the living room with his milk-sop smile. Juliet felt a pulse of the old anger. She forced herself to uncurl her fists. And George himself. What would he be like? Try as she could, in her mind he remained as u
nchanged as a photograph. She tried to age him – thin his hair, plant a bald patch on his scalp, give him a blossoming paunch and a pair of horn-rimmed specs – but he always looked like an actor playing dress-up. She sighed and there was the old George again: black hair, suit hanging loose however many potato latkes Mrs Greene pressed on him. She saw the once loved lopsided smile and the restless tap-tapping foot as he crooned Hungarian ballads to Frieda.

  In the morning she forced the children to shower and put on clean clothes, despite their objections. She winced when Leonard knocked her coffee all over Frieda’s white trousers, aware that his temporary blindness was entirely her fault. After rinsing the trousers through, she dangled them over the telephone wire she used as a laundry line and lit a cigarette. Frieda sat beside her in her knickers and shivered.

  ‘There’s an optician here in Venice,’ she said.

  ‘Oh.’ Juliet tried to sound uninterested.

  ‘We didn’t need to get in the car and drive all the way to Culver City.’

  ‘But then you wouldn’t have got your beautiful sun-specs,’ said Juliet.

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ agreed Frieda slowly. She took a bite of peanut butter toast and eyed Juliet with her grandmother’s stare.

  The car was warm to braising, and the children wriggled, damp thighs squealing against hot plastic seats. They got lost twice – pulled along in the gush of LA traffic, the children managing not to snigger even as Juliet uttered two bad words. Vera had said to come back in the afternoon, but Juliet was determined to be early – perhaps then she’d catch George. Unawares would be better. She’d present Leonard and Frieda to him. ‘These are your abandoned children. This is your son.’ A giggle burst from her lips like an unexpected burp. She never said things like that. Those weren’t her words – they sounded like the stupid advertisement her father had penned for ‘The Gallery of Vanished Husbands’. Maybe George wouldn’t recognise the children and she’d leave without saying anything to him at all.