A Way of Life, Like Any Other

by Darcy O'Brien

  “‘Darling, darling Anatol. We don’t have to go on like this. I still believe in our love, you know that. You know what we must do? We must go to Europe together. Wouldn’t it be wonderful? We could see all the places we’ve never seen together. Don’t you have a holiday from Disney coming up?’”

  He did, and he agreed on the spot to the trip. I was a little surprised at this, because Anatol had told me that he hated Europe and never wanted to leave America again. He didn’t even want to leave California, which he called paradise. Besides, he was fearful of getting too close to the Iron Curtain, because he had the idea that communist agents would be on the lookout for him as an illegal emigrant. They would put him in a camp and torture him and kill him, the way they had the rest of his family. But evidently Mother had been very persuasive.

  “Is Anatol in jail now?” I asked.

  “They’ll let him out in the morning,” said Mother. “I suppose I’ll have to drag down to pick him up. They’ll probably take his license away for a couple of years but that’ll be a blessing. We were coming down Sunset. I was making plans, talking about whether to go to Paris or Rome first, and all of a sudden he crossed over the double line and started driving down the wrong side of the street. I screamed ‘Idiot! Idiot! You’ll kill us!’ Naturally he panicked and swerved all over the place. I grabbed the wheel and got us over to the side and made him step on the brake. It was a nightmare. A policeman saw the whole thing. Thank God. He was right there in two seconds. I told him to throw the book at him. They asked me to drive him to the station but I told them I had to get home to you. They were nice boys, very sympathetic, so they put Anatol in the squad car. He could hardly walk.”

  I was to fly to Paris to meet them for the last week. Mother had said that she didn’t want me to miss the opportunity to see Europe but she was sure I understood that she and Anatol would need to be alone together at first to work out their problems and start a new life. Unfortunately she didn’t have the money for my fare, so I would have to ask my father. He refused, saying he was broke and was trying to save a little to take me to Bora Bora in a year or so, after they ironed out a TV deal he was working on, but then my mother came on the telephone:

  “What do you mean you won’t pay for it? For Christ’s sake what kind of a father are you? I suppose you want him to sit around this crummy town for the rest of his life with all the bums. Don’t you want him to see what culture is? Do you want him to grow up uneducated not knowing anything better than how to shovel horse manure? You’re broke, what a laugh that is. I know you’ve got money stashed away I never knew anything about. You called that a settlement! I don’t care if you are broke, you haven’t worked in fifteen years, what do you expect? It’s not like the old days getting thousands for sitting on your ass on a horse. If I were a man I’d go out and dig ditches just to give my son something. You never go anywhere, you don’t drink, you never see anybody or do anything, where the hell do you expect me to believe you spend your money? I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you give it all to the godamned Church. Well let me tell you, you may be able to fool a lot of halfwits but you can’t fool me, no sir, I know you too damned well, and if I learned anything living with you all those years it’s not to listen to your bullshit. You put that check in the mail today.”

  So he came across. Mother said she was glad she was still good for something. If there was one thing she couldn’t bear, it was people who cheated their children out of things. And when the time came for me to go to college, I could count on her to be my ally again.

  She had wanted to go direct to Vienna to see the opera, but Anatol managed to talk her out of that. He was desperate to keep a buffer zone of at least one country between himself and the KGB. He said that going to Vienna was just asking for it. Austria was practically still an occupied satellite. They settled on a week each in London, Rome, Florence, and Paris. She gave me the name of their Paris hotel so I could join them there.

  6

  PARIS

  AT THE Georges Cinq, the desk clerk had a letter for me:

  Darling little man,

  You know I adore Europe but Anatol has done everything possible to ruin it for me—London was fun, a real honeymoon, but when we got to Rome the trouble started—I didn’t get to my age to watch my husband vomit into the fountains at Trastevere—I knew it was the drinking but the prick pretended to be really sick—lying in the hotel room shivering and moaning like a dog—What am I to do—the Pope was marvelous but I’ve had to do almost everything on my own—the story of my life—Here we are in dear Florence almost a week behind schedule but I am determined to get him to the Uffizi if it’s the last thing I do—and to think I have such precious memories of these places—yes dear, some of them even with your father—I trust you arrived safely—now listen, dear, the George V is too big a barn for you to stay in alone you would be utterly lost and besides I understand it’s gotten hideously expensive—change the reservation to Friday when we will arrive noon meantime find yourself a decent little pensione or hotel over in the student quarter there are hundreds of them—be sure to find a place where you can take your meals there and I will pay the bill when we arrive—I wouldn’t want my only baby to starve to death—just because the monster I’m living with has made things so difficult—try not to run up too ghastly a bill—see you Friday dying to talk to you we will have such fun I know at last—

  Your own Mama

  I departed the Georges Cinq with regret, but I was able to carry out Mother’s instructions. My hotel was small, noisy, dirty but agreeable; the food was good and I was provided a liter of wine a day. I spent my time in the streets looking for women to admire, following them into shops, excited in the trail of their scent. In the Rue St. Severin I found Henry Miller’s books in the Traveler’s Companion Series. These proved excellent bedfellows and spurs to the exploration of the city, but they filled my head with disquieting images. Henry Miller wrote a lot about whores and I gathered that Paris was swarming with them, yet in the streets I saw nothing but healthy-looking people running errands. This was the city of love but I was ill-equipped to find it. My French was rudimentary, I had little hope of engaging a woman in conversation, and, could I have found an English-speaker accessible to my purpose, I doubted that I had the aplomb to engineer success. My only sexual encounter, aside from the ritual exhibition of organs in grammar school, had been with Dot, and while this had been instructive, I neither knew where to go to find a whore nor possessed the means to secure her services, if Dot’s fee were representative. Comparing prices of bread, cheese, shoes, and books in shops, I found them lower than in California and reasoned that the balance of commerce might favor me in human terms, but I had only 1,000 francs, or about $20, and figured that if Dot had been $75, no Frenchwoman would take less than $50.

  Waiting for Mother, I took stock of my life and found it wanting very little. There were other boys my age stuck on farms. In a few years I would be in a position to do almost anything. Heads would turn as I strolled the boulevards and lounged scanning Le Monde in the cafés. There would come a time when my options would narrow, but I would be ready for it. In the dining room of my hotel, I contemplated the American tourists and the French residents and observed that everyone else was worse off than I, old men dining alone, a pair of old women, American college students boorish in sweatshirts, a married couple silent, next to me a married couple crotchety. It would take some effort and shrewdness to navigate through life avoiding loneliness, boorishness, or anger. My father was lonely and I pondered what missteps he had made. Probably he didn’t have enough education, so that when his movie career faltered he couldn’t go right to law school or medical school. That day in the streets I had seen young lovers. They were appealing. My parents must have been like that. The trick was to keep love going. It might work if you gave enough love. Imagine being forty-five embracing by the Seine.

  “They call this coffee?” half the couple next to me said.

  “You mail those postc
ards?” said the other half.

  “Sure I mailed them.”

  “I want to be sure you mailed them because we’re leaving the day after tomorrow.”

  “Why wouldn’t I mail them?”

  “You might of forgot. You are very forgetful now.”

  “If I forgot, so what? I’ll mail them tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow is too late. Don’t you see? If you mail them tomorrow we might get home before they do. That wouldn’t be nice.”

  “Would you stop?”

  “We have to send those postcards, you know we do. You don’t go away and not write. I spent all day on them. They are the only ways people will know we were really here.”

  “If I tell somebody we were here, he will damn well better believe me.”

  “I just know you didn’t mail them. Now we’ll be home and people will get the postcards after and it won’t be right.”

  “Maybe you would like to stop in New York City.”

  “What do you mean, you’re talking silly.”

  “Maybe you would like to stop in New York City, pay thirty dollars a night in some big hotel and stay there so we won’t get home before the postcards.”

  “I don’t want to go to New York City.”

  I met Mother and Anatol in the bar at the George Cinq. With them was Peter Pines. He was an ex-actor whom Mother had known in the old days. Now he was working in the Publicity Department for Fox, living in Rome.

  “Isn’t it too fantastic, darling?” Mother said. “Peter and I knew each other before Christ. There we were having a drink at the Excelsior and Peter walked up out of the blue.”

  “Very glad to meet you, Mr. Pines,” I said.

  “He has beautiful manners, doesn’t he,” Mr. Pines said. “He doesn’t look anything like his father. His father was so . . . big.”

  “He was big, all right,” Mother said.

  “Oh shut up, you,” Mr. Pines said. “Don’t be a silly bitch. His father was one of the handsomest men in Hollywood. I’m sure you love your father, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Peter couldn’t resist coming with us,” Mother said. “Rome is wonderful, of course, but it’s not Paris. I wish we had more time. Why did you have to get so damned ill?”

  She looked at Anatol and sighed through her teeth. He sat silent, motioning to the waiter for another round. He had vodka and a bottle of beer brought in a silver ice bucket. When he put the bottle to his lips Mother threatened to leave the room. Mother drank Dubonnet and Mr. Pines had a perfect Rob Roy with a twist. I took sips from everybody.

  “And what have you done with yourself?” Mother said to me. “Was the Louvre not absolutely beyond description?”

  “I didn’t go.”

  “You didn’t go to the Louvre? I suppose you didn’t go to the Jeu de Paume either?”

  “No.”

  “Jesus Christ what a half-wit! Oh brother, that’s the last time I’m taking you to Europe. A week in Paris and what did you do?”

  “I wandered around. I like it here.”

  “I’ll bet. Holy God.”

  “You should go to Amsterdam,” Mr. Pines said to me. He looked me in the eye.

  “Why Amsterdam?” said Mother. “I’ve never had the slightest desire to go to Amsterdam.”

  “You could stick to the Rijksmuseum, dear,” Mr. Pines said.

  Mother said there was a Russian restaurant off the Etoile that was out of this world. We should go there to cheer Anatol up.

  Anatol fell asleep after the blinis and caviar. His glass was still in his hand and Mother took it from him, drained it, and set it down with tragic resignation.

  “He looks a bit worn out,” Mr. Pines said. “What have you been doing to him?”

  “Let’s not talk about it,” Mother said. “It’s too painful. He started having dreams about slave labor camps at the Dorchester. I know how rotten the communists are, but you’d think he could set aside his selfishness just for this trip, wouldn’t you? I tell you, Peter, I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my whole life. When you walked up, I could have cried.”

  “Don’t punish yourself,” Mr. Pines said. “Aren’t we having a wonderful dinner?”

  “It’s so sweet of you to put it on your expense account.”

  “How do you think I live?”

  “I don’t know how any of us do. It was one thing when we had money. At least that made living with a bum palatable. But now.”

  “You should move to Europe,” Mr. Pines said. “Come to Rome. It’s cheaper. You could make wonderful friends.”

  “Do you think so? But what about poor Anatol? He has his work.”

  “Dump him.”

  “I couldn’t do that. He’d die without me. He worships me, you see. That’s part of the tragedy of the whole thing.”

  “You can’t throw away your life for a child,” Mr. Pines said. “You’re still a beautiful woman. He doesn’t deserve you. He’s a peasant.”

  “His father was a very respectable contractor in Tiflis. He had an audience with the Tsar. The communists slaughtered everyone. Anatol got a scholarship. I believe in his art, I really do.”

  “Dump him, sweetheart. Look at him. He’s not lovely.”

  “You’re terribly understanding, Peter, you always were. I’ll have to think it over, though. You can’t just change your life in two minutes. What do you think, darling?” Mother said to me.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I was wondering what I would do if Mother went to Rome. I didn’t want to live in Rome. I was just getting used to my high school. I was the first freshman ever elected president of the International Statesmen Club and I was a cinch for the boy’s honor society.

  “You must have some ideas. I’ve always confided in you. I’ve treated you like a man. You have a deep understanding, I know you do. Could we have a cognac?”

  Mother and Mr. Pines thrashed things out over a lot of cognac. Mr. Pines said they had a great little colony going in Rome and Mother would be a hit in it. If she needed work he knew someone who could get her a job dubbing Italian pictures. They always needed American voices with experience. I asked Mother whether she still loved Anatol. She said certainly she did, you didn’t fall out of love with somebody just because of difficulties, life was complicated under any circumstances, but maybe they were fated to love each other and live apart, there were people like that, it was God’s will, that was all she could say. There was no question of Anatol’s love for her. He called her his goddess. You had to have a pretty hard heart not to be moved by his devotion, and of course she was moved.

  We woke Anatol up and went back to the hotel. I shared a room with Mr. Pines as there was little difference in cost from having a room of my own. The bathroom was as big as my room on the Left Bank and I spent a long time in the bathtub looking at myself. When I came to bed Mr. Pines was propped up reading the latest Variety. He had on silk pajamas with tiny lions all over them and he was wearing a hairnet.

  “Stand there a minute,” he said. “I think I see a resemblance to your father.”

  “I’m tired, Mr. Pines.”

  “Please call me Peter. It’s in the mouth. You have his mouth. He was a very handsome man. You love him, don’t you.”

  “Every son loves his father,” I said, getting into bed.

  “You’re very young. It’s very hard on you, isn’t it? I know. I went through it myself. My father walked out when I was five.”

  I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to hear about Mr. Pines’s father. He meant well. We all do.

  “I think your mother deserves better than that cretin, don’t you?”

  “He’s all right,” I said. I felt like crying all of a sudden. I turned my face to the wall. Poor Mother was going to be alone again. And poor Anatol, what would he do? Go on at Disney till he dropped? I felt sorry for everybody. What was I going to do? I wished people could stay together. I thought about baseball.

  “This is one of the great hotels,” Mr. Pines went
on. “I don’t know whether I prefer the Ritz, it isn’t what it was. The Hassler in Rome is gorgeous. Tony Quinn was in town last week with a new girlfriend. I’ll bet you have a lot of girlfriends, do you?”

  “Not many.”

  “Don’t kid me. You’re not as big as your father but your face is more sensitive. I’ll bet you have a lot of girlfriends. They grow up so fast now, they all look like little whores at fourteen. Wouldn’t this be a wonderful place to bring a girlfriend? You could bring her up here and do whatever you liked, couldn’t you? Would you like that?”

  I didn’t answer. I pretended to fall asleep, and I wished he would turn out the light. I heard him unscrew a bottle and take a drink. He sighed a lot. He began a monologue I couldn’t follow, something about having children and dying with no one to mourn. When he stopped talking I turned over to look at him. He was wearing a blindfold, asleep, his tongue lying on his lower lip. I put out the light.

  That night Anatol raped Mother, or tried to: I am uncertain of his success, I have only her account, and in these cases the shrewdest legal minds have often despaired of definition. This much is certain, that he caused a disruption in the business routine of that hotel and closed forever his avenue of happiness with my mother. I have never seen him since. If he is alive today, I wish for him his health and that after death he may find like Van Gogh the fame denied to him in life.

  Mr. Pines and I were awakened in the early light by a terrific pounding, as though a body were being hurled again and again against our wall. He, still blindfolded, let out a yell and threw himself into the bedside table, knocking over his bottle, drenching himself with alcohol and cutting himself badly trying to remain upright. I was going to attend to him but I could only rip off his blindfold so he could deal with himself, as the screams in the next room were my Mother’s. As I entered the corridor guests were rushing from their rooms, shouting for the bell captain and the gendarmes. With the assistance of a brute anxious to get his hands on the Algerians who had disturbed his sleep, I broke open Mother’s door. She and Anatol were struggling at the window. She was resisting his attempts to push her out the window. Had I not arrived at that moment, I doubt that the metal comb with which she was stabbing him vigorously in the chest would have been sufficient to prevent her ejection, for Anatol, bloody but unbowed and like her bare ass naked, had already lifted her up and was moving into his backswing. I slammed into him like a runner breaking up a double play, and my Gallic companion went after him with an awful display of foot work. Other guests crowded into the room and cheered him on to crucify the cochon, and by the time the gendarmes arrived Anatol was unconscious. They took him away. His French, thanks to the Congo, was better than his English, and I hope he was able to explain himself to the satisfaction of French justice, but neither Mother nor I stuck around for the arraignment.