“Come on,” Claire said, “I’ll help you carry these things to the kitchen. It’s late.”
“Ja,” Iris got up carefully. “I’m not gonna argue vit you. Und you know vot else?”
“What’s that?”
“If I put da tarot cards away … if I hide dem … und the police come, it vill look vorse for me if dey find dem hidden dan if I chust let dem sit dere in da open.”
So she knew. She’d figured out already that there was going to be a witch hunt. She was even ready for it. The awful thing was that it was Claire herself who’d supplied Johnny with the idea. She patted Iris on her meager arm and carried the tray to the kitchen. It was a harshly lit room, absurdly brisk and clean compared to the casual squalor of the others. The walls were tiled white, much like a hospital operating room except for the relief of one navy blue stripe around the top.
“My liebling room,” Iris’s eyes glittered. “I am in here baking all the morning.”
“No kidding? Every morning?”
“Chust about. Da kids come, you know. I don’t mind dem. Never. So I like to keep da cookie jars full. Dey all have der favorites. Michaelaen likes dat kind you like, the rugelach.”
“Michaelaen comes here?”
“Sure. All da time. Vell, sometimes.”
“Oh. I didn’t know.” Neither, she bet, did Zinnie.
“Chust like Michael used to,” Iris said pointedly, searching Claire’s blue eyes.
Claire leaned against the old porcelain sink. “Do you know what horror is? Not the sureness of death. It’s the uncertainty of life that’s the horror. Not knowing for sure what to do. I always wish there was some way to tell.”
“Ach,” Iris dumped the tea cups into a pool of suds. “Dere is no ‘sure.’ You take a chance. You follow your heart. You know dat.”
“That’s just it. I never do know. How do you know what the heart is trying to say?”
“You have to listen mit it!” Iris yelled at her. “You vant sure, you listen mit brain. Brain is right-left, black-vite. Heart is like a subvay train. You get off any stop you vant to get home. Quick one … march right home. Udder one … maybe takes more time, more valking, but is a more charming route. More trees und flowers along da vay. Dat’s choice. Your choice. Anyvay, eventually, you gonna get back home. How is up to you.” Then Iris hitched up her skirt and started to hum “You gotta have heart.”
“You’re a regular comedian. I feel as though everything’s falling apart all around me … whatever I do goes wrong, whatever I reach for turns sour.”
“Oh, come, come, come. Noting is dat bad.”
“Maybe not. It’s just that nothing goes right.”
“I know von ting. Ven ting’s are going along smoothly, you can be very sure dat you’re not getting anyvhere. Listen to me vell, girl, because dis is as true as true gets. Ven you’re getting a lot of flack, ven everyting you do meets with resistance, den you know dat you are getting close to da source.”
“The source.”
“Ja.”
When Iris walked her out through the foyer, she handed her an umbrella. It was made of paper and sprayed with shellack. When she opened it, it crackled.
“No sense getting vet,” Iris said, “even if it is chust across da street.”
“Okay,” Claire took it gratefully. “This way I’ll have to come back to return it.”
“I’d like dat. As long as you don’t come too often.”
They smiled at each other. “Damn,” said Claire, “now where’s the Mayor gone?”
At the sound of his name, the Mayor bolted from the depths of the pantry. Natasha, Iris’s poodle, followed him out. She was looking very smug. Iris made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat. “Dat dog. He’s gonna make my Natasha mit puppies. Oh, vell. Gotta have someting to do, eh? At least animals, ven dey’re old and useless, dey can still go out to stud.”
Old and useless? The Mayor flinched visibly. What a rotten thing to say.
Iris, clutching her elbows at the door, seemed to feel the need to temper her words as well. “I remember ven he vas a pup,” she reminisced. “Vay before even Michaelaen vas born. Dit you know he used to catch rats?”
“Yes, my father always talks about it.”
“Strange ting for a dog. Almost unheard of. Und once he caught a thief going into Gussie Drobbin’s house. Caught him by da foot und voodn’t let go!”
“Yes, I heard about that, too. My mother wrote me about it. That was when they changed his name from Blacky to the Mayor, wasn’t it?”
Ah, yes, the Mayor remembered, consoled. And not a bad monicker Blacky had been. Dash, it’d had. A touch of the old mischief. Of course, merit warranted dignity. And one never could go back …
“Goot-bye! Goot-bye! Und not to forget dat handsome young fellow. Imagine vat it vould feel in da arms mit a nice little redheaded baby to hold!” She continued to wave as they made their way across the puddled street.
Claire rushed inside. Zinnie was off the porch by now and the house was dark. A nice little redheaded baby, eh? Claire snorted to herself. She hadn’t been red for the last twenty years. But bless her for remembering. The old fox. She looked at the Mayor. “Listen to me. We’re not even on speaking terms and this is the second time tonight I’m imagining having his baby. I must be off my trolley.”
He yawned at her feebly and they went right up to bed.
Across the street old Iris mopped the table with one edge of her kimono. She dusted her way lovingly around the figurines and ruby glass. She stopped when she noticed the cards. Claire had handled them thoroughly, then put them down absentmindedly into three piles. Iris raised her chin in wise disinterest, then turned around abruptly and snatched up the first. It was the moon. Ah, the mistress of the night. Underlying fears wriggling to the surface of a still pool in the body of a crayfish. A wolf and a dog barking. The home of the dead. Illusion. Iris shivered. She raised the second pile. The hanged man. The unconscious again. A sacrifice to be made. Some fearful journey through the underworld of Hades. Iris sat down carefully. She raised the third and last small pile. The wheel of fortune. So. The old order changeth.
Claire was just drifting off when the light went on.
“Sst! You asleep?”
“What?”
“You up?”
“Mmm. Turn that light out.”
Carmela put it out and turned another, less offensive, light on. She sat down on the edge of the bed, right at home, and unscrewed her earrings. Claire felt herself stiffen with exhausted rebellion but smiled encouragingly just the same. There was something prepossessing about Carmela, and impressively desperate. You might be riddled by her disturbance but you were also privileged. A realization, Claire supposed, that had something to do with the fact that Carmela was the assured, if batty, first born. She dragged herself up onto one elbow. Whatever it was that Carmela wanted, it would take her a while to get to it. She’d take you for a stroll along her own peculiar brand of garden path and then come out with it as she was just about to leave, an afterthought.
“I’ve wrecked my car,” she announced.
Claire’s eyes went round.
“I did. It’s all smashed up. On that big curve on Park Lane South.”
“Are you all right?!”
“I’m fine. Freddy went through the windshield.”
“Oh my God.”
“I mean, he’s okay. He’s got a big cut on his ear. Like it practically came off.” She raised her eyes to heaven. “But they sewed it back on.”
“Oh my God.”
“Yeah.”
“What hospital?”
“He’s out. They let him out. They sewed him up and we left. He just dropped me off in a cab.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Me? It was so strange. It all happened so fast. The car went clunk and I thought … I remember thinking it wasn’t too bad, and then there was this terrible sound of shattering glass, and I looked over and there was Freddy heap
ed up on the dashboard with his neck all funny and I thought … I was sure he was dead. He was so still. And then he put his head up and looked at me and he’s dripping blood … spurting blood, and all I could think was it’s a good thing it’s on the other side because I didn’t want the blood on me. What a thought! I mean what a way to think!”
“So then? What happened then?”
“I backed up the car, we were on Tracey’s lawn, right through the sticker bushes—thank God I didn’t hit the house—and the car still went, sort of, and we limped up to Saint John’s to the emergency room and they took care of him. They were great. Freddy was great. He told them he went through his apartment window.”
“But where’s your car?”
“Well, then I started to drive us home, but then the thing that was sticking out under the car was dragging like crazy so I figured I’d better park it while I had the chance, and we walked down to the Roy Rogers and caught a cab. Aren’t you going to ask me what I was doing with Freddy?”
Claire’s head was spinning. She hadn’t been able to get Freddy alone to confront him and had then concluded that it was none of her business anyway. She wasn’t so sure she wanted to hear it now. “All right,” she sighed, “what were you doing with him?”
Carmela twisted her ring. She had a two carat diamond from Arnold that she refused to take off. “I’m seeing him.”
Claire fumbled on the nightstand for a cigarette.
“You don’t seem very surprised.”
“It’s Zinnie who’s going to be surprised.”
“She’s not going to find out.”
“Carmela. You’ve got a head-sized hole in the windshield and Freddy the torn up head that fits in it. She’s not stupid, you know.”
“Freddy’s going to have the car towed to his garage in the morning.”
“And what’s he going to say about his head?!”
“I don’t know. He’s going to make up some story. I’m not supposed to know. I’m not supposed to have seen him.”
“Cozy. Very cozy.”
“Claire. They’re not married anymore.”
“Oh, right. That changes everything. I suppose that’s why you’re being so clandestine about it. Because it’s perfectly all right. Suppose Zinnie started dating Arnold. I suppose that wouldn’t bother you a bit?”
“Zinnie sceeves Arnold. She thinks he smells like a corpse.”
“That has nothing to do with it.”
“You have nothing to do with it, either.”
This was good. “You woke me up to tell me this?”
“Tch. What a mess. It’s all a mess. I never should have started up with him.”
“You’re damn right you shouldn’t have. And what about AIDS? Just where do you think he’s been since he’s out of the closet?”
“Claire. There are such things as prophylactics.”
“Oh. And you’re sure that that’s enough? I mean is it worth it? You and Mom were telling Zinnie you didn’t want him around Michaelaen, for God’s sake.”
“I know, I know, I know.”
“I mean, it’s your business what you’re up to, but you can’t be pleased with yourself. You can’t.”
Carmela snorted. “I haven’t been pleased with myself since I was in school.”
“Because you were challenged there. You only got mixed up in this nonsense because you’re bored. Why don’t you quit that stupid job and sit down, I mean like really sit down, and write something good. You know you’ve got to sooner or later. You know it’s in you. Don’t you owe anything to the talent you were blessed with?”
“No.”
“Don’t be a jerk.”
“Oh, Claire. You talk like a high school guidance counselor.”
“So? What’s wrong with that?”
“What about you? You could get a job in some terrific studio in the city and work hard and eventually open your own. And what do you do? You wander around here like some refugee from the third world who’s too proud to go on welfare.”
“That’s just what I don’t want. A job in the city. A job in a studio. Any studio. That would be the same as your job at the magazine. Being soothingly polite to arrogant clients who you’d just as soon smash in the teeth. I know how those people are and I don’t want to turn into one of them. They act so big. They act so … so … cool. You just want to put them in a black and white film from the fifties and turn off the sound. I’d rather sell cookies in a shop. And keep my photography the way I like it: pure.”
“Nothing’s pure.”
“Yes, some things are. Saving yourself for someone you love is pure.”
“I don’t know why I bother to talk to you. You’re screwing your brains out with that Polack and that … that pig cop.”
Claire flushed. “Michael was one of those ‘pig cops.’ And I haven’t slept with either of them, for your information.”
“Oh, come on.”
“I haven’t.”
“Well, then you’re more of a dope than I figured.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I’d love to be there in the morning when the Traceys wake up and see their sticker bushes gone.”
They both laughed, Carmela harder than Claire, whose heart had gone light and then lead at the mention of Johnny. Her first instinct was joy, but her reason told her bluntly it would never work out. She remembered what Iris had said, and she hugged her knees with grim hope. Carmela’s hearty convulsion was just trailing off in a high, windy note of amusement. She focused her rather bloodshot eyes back on Claire. “Oh, I get it,” she said. “You’re in love. But with which one?”
“Which do you think?”
“The poor one.”
“Bingo.”
“Figures. You always were the one to bring home the mutts.”
“He’s not destitute, Carmela. He has a house. A horrible house, but a house. He’s not some cokie, he’s—”
“That’s all horseshit. What you mean is that he makes your juices run.”
“You’re so poetic. I always liked that about you.”
“Hey. A spade’s a spade. So what’s the plan?”
“Sit back and wait. Either he’ll come after me or he won’t.”
“You wanna borrow something ravishing to sit back and wait in? Like my strapless jewel green?”
Somewhere in the depths of Claire’s mind, preoccupied with the image of Johnny coming across her suddenly in the dazzling green dress, an alarm went off. But Carmela was taking her hand. “Listen, kid,” she said kindly, “if I were you, I wouldn’t sit around and wait for anyone. I’d go after him with big guns.”
“I thought I did. We just wound up wanting to wring each other’s neck.” She didn’t mention his accusations.
“Look. If you want someone, you have to forget your standards and act like a flight attendant. He’ll come around. Dress up. Wear heels. Dip.”
Claire burst out laughing.
“I mean it.” She stood. “You wanna get laid, you have to put aside your values for a couple of minutes.”
“But I don’t—”
“Bullshit. You do. We all do. As a matter of fact, if you’re not interested in the Polack, I’ll take him. That is if you really don’t mind.”
“Carmela, there’s something strange about Stefan. I don’t trust him. He could be the killer, for all we know.”
“Who’s talking about trusting him? I’d like to take him for all I can get.”
“I’m not kidding.”
“Neither am I. I like the type who are up to no good. Mischief. You just don’t want me living in that mansion up on Park Lane South.”
“Carmela, believe me, I know exactly how you feel. I had quite a few of the same thoughts once or twice myself tonight. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about finding a way to live with ourselves. I mean, look at us. Here we are at three in the morning; I’m still drunk and you’re blitzed from God knows what—”
“So I
snorted a little …”
“Yeah. You only ever snort a little. That’s why you weigh about forty pounds.”
“Oh, shut up. Just shut up, because I know what kind of sermon’s coming. And you just wish you had my slender thighs.”
“Thighs, yes, scrawny neck, no.”
“You had to get that out, didn’t you? Make you feel better?”
Claire listened to her heart pounding in her ears. Why on earth did she let Carmela get to her like this? Nobody had ever irked her this way overseas. Was this what she’d run away from? The people who pushed all her buttons? Turned her into a child? She sank back, exhausted, onto her pillow. Carmela moved over to the doorway and looked sadly at Claire. Cruelty had a way of bringing out the best in her. “Anyway,” she said. “I hope it works out with your dick-a-della. I really do.”
“Thanks.”
Carmela hesitated one more time. “Oh,” she said, “by the way. If you could pick up my car tomorrow I’d really appreciate it. Um … as you have nothing else to do. With your camera stolen and all, you won’t be doing much shooting, right?”
Claire smiled wryly. “Sure. I’ve got nothing else to do. And tigers never change their stripes.”
“What’s that face for?”
“I just wish you would once walk up those rickety stairs to see me without wanting something. Just to come up once for no reason at all but to, I don’t know, talk or something. The way you make it out to look before you get to what you really want. Or at least just say what it is you want first. You don’t have to make an ass of me.”
Carmela narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing. The only reason you came home and bothered with us is because you were washed up over there. We didn’t see hide nor hair of you when you were a big success in Germany. You didn’t even show up for Christmas! Never. You just lived your selfish life and went your selfish way … and did you ever think that maybe you were missed? That you were needed? You think you were the only one who suffered losing Michael? You think you loved him maybe more than we did? Do you? Because I can remember nights when I would come up these ‘rickety stairs,’ as you so picturesquely put it, just to get away from the sound of Mom crying at night. And did you ever hear a grown man cry over there in your travels, in your quest to see the wide, real world? Because I can remember nights that Dad would put on his Beethoven tape and think we couldn’t hear him. Or do you think the mourning went away when you left? After the excitement of the funeral parlor died away and all the relatives were gone and nobody from the precinct came around anymore, it was just us, without him. Who the hell do you think cleaned out his sock drawer? You? His dear twin sister? So who are you going to call the user? Me?”
Park Lane South, Queens Page 19