The Magician's Girl

by Doris Grumbach

  Once again as they recrossed Washington Street, Rob held her elbow. It made Minna feel her sixty years, something she had forgotten about when she looked at the shining face of the blond waiter. Feeling odd, she shook off the thought of him and asked, ‘What happened to the son who was sick?’ ‘He was dying when we left. I suppose he’s dead by now.’ Minna frowned. ‘When you think about them and their virtues in the middle of tonight’s meeting, remember that most human beings are selfish. And cruel. Leaving a son exposed to die, for whatever reason. Lord!’ Rob agreed. At Schaeffer Hall they joined the rest of the diners. Together, they climbed the stairs to the meeting room.

  November 12, 1978. ‘Dear Liz: You ask about Iowa City. Well, I may be seeing it in a rather roseate way, for reasons I will tell you about, but in your query I detect a tone of true urban doubt. Answer: it’s astonishingly pleasant, a humane city with no traffic or pollution, no hassle, no crowds. Its streets are wide, its buildings low except for a few medical and hospital buildings. There are many small pleasant stores manned (and womaned) by polite and handsome students. Despite the widespread, entirely uninformed beliefs of my city friends (you among them, old girl) that everything here is flat, dull, uninteresting, uncivilized, there are, for one thing, hills so steep in the city itself that it is a trial sometimes to climb them. The autumn landscape (now inching into winter) outside the confines of the city is lovely. Rolling hills, dark draws, little farm ponds, hay piled in bales at the borders of fields that are gray, brown or dark yellow with the remains of cornstalks, a few still green with late-planted barley. There is no high drama in the land out there, but wonderful variety, subtle differences in line and color configuration. It is a gentle city, a delicate countryside. Outside the city are small communities of Amish, Mennonite and Amana people. And over it all, a sky so enormous that it seems to sit over the whole southern part of the state like a blue watch cap pulled down over the ears of a giant. The sky, and what it covers, is customarily even-tempered, unassertive and benign.

  ‘If I sound somewhat rhapsodic it may be the pleasure I have found in the landscape. But there is something else, a phenomenon I am about to confide in you because of your affection for human curiosities. You will recognize my freakishness. I will write it bluntly: I am in love. You may gasp, laugh, shudder, snicker. You will say, “Ridiculous, absurd, nonsense, you, a sixty-year-old woman, a mother once, a grandmother, for God’s sake.” I too am aghast. Leaving New York at the end of August (I apologize for not having called to say good-bye), I was intent to reduce a lifetime of possessions to the barest essentials, more particularly, to what would fit into the VW. I was whittled down to a Giacometti-like thinness. It was a curious shuffling-off process, putting behind me (or into the trash) possessions, events, and persons, not just storing them, but eliminating them, returning them to the forgotten and abandoned past. Grant’s death. My long marriage. My job, all the detritus of six decades of living. I felt weak and frightened, as if I had been through a purgation. By the time I arrived in Iowa City, the molting process was over. I settled down to work, to the course I teach, “Woman and Labor in the Nineteenth Century,” and to the research project on midwestern pioneer women that I told you about, I think.

  ‘For the first seven weeks I felt wonderful, even resurrected, if that is the right word. Perhaps rejuvenated would be better. I was healthy, energetic and yes, young. I could not believe it. Three weeks ago I waited at a light behind a car on whose bumper sticker was the old cliché “Today is the the first day of the rest of your life.” I laughed. But do you know, I have felt this way here, almost every day and even more so now. I believe it. I know it is true, that this unsuitable and unnatural youth I am feeling is accompanied by an even stronger, stranger feeling of moving backward in time instead of the old weary sense of moving inexorably ahead. One example of all this fantasy: since I broke my left ankle five years ago and then sprained it again and again, I have been increasingly frightened of stairs. I take them carefully, measuring the risers, the treads, as the old do. I look down as I descend. There are wary signs of my age in every step, I’m sure. I am decorous, I am fearful, it can be seen, I see it. Well, one evening, going down the two flights of stairs in the building in which I work, I was behind a girl who cut impatiently in front of me, as if to let me know of her irritation at my slowness. I was feeling the usual pull at the back of my legs, in the bones of my left foot. The girl looked fourteen, a long, dark ponytail, and a nose turned up, more expression than physiognomy. But of course she was older than fourteen. Somehow, I could not understand how, she went down. She never once bent her head to look down at her feet. Her feet seemed to move without the rest of her. I thought she ignored the handrail. She was so fast I could not see where her feet touched, if indeed they touched at all. Three? four? steps at a time. Without looking. Without holding on, without being fearful. Could I do it? Well, Liz, that is exactly what I believe I did. True. It is true. I flew down, I was on the first floor before I knew what I was doing, or how I had done it. I was no longer full of the cautions of age, the slow infirmities of broken ankle and fears. I was no longer going down through time, but falling through Space.

  ‘What has all this to do with being in love? I shall tell you. It came about this way. My VW was still running, but fitfully. Some mornings it would not start and when finally it did, its transmission (I believe it was its transmission) noises were terrible. Two weeks ago, my fine, gallant, faithful Bug died, stopped dead in front of a drugstore on Davenport Street, and never stirred again. I stood in the street looking forlornly, I suspect, at the inert engine, when this young man stopped beside me in a white jalopy. Isn’t that what we used to call those broken-down old cars in college? He wanted to know if I needed help. I knew him—it’s a small town. He was the boy who had waited on my table at a local beer hall. He offered me a ride home to Iowa House; I accepted. I offered him a drink in my room; he accepted. He wanted beer. I had none but offered what I drink when alone, a small gin with ice in it from the hall ice machine. He said yes. I drank mine slowly, he swallowed the whole drink in one gulp. And asked for another. We sat in silence. Liz: I had nothing to say to the young man, the boy, as it turned out. He is twenty-two, he told me, he comes from near Dubuque, where his father has a farm. Soybean, corn, pigs, on a “section,” he told me. He is tall, and very slim, he smiles like some unregenerate angel, like the small-boy Grant once did. He is very blond, so light his eyebrows and lashes seem white. He would have another, he said—he had found he liked gin as much as beer. He talked on and on about his family, his job as a waiter, his courses in agronomy out at the campus across the river. I listened, and looked at him, and sank deeper into the boy’s charm.

  ‘After he left I sat there and could not move from the chair to lock the door behind him and go to bed. I watched the moon on the Iowa River, a white disc in an enormous black bowl of sky and wondered what I was, what I had become. A foolish old woman? Lonely? A woman who had mistaken herself in her folly, who thought she had long ago spent all her passion? Or a maternal simpleton wanting a resurrected son? God, Liz, I don’t know. I only know I think of nothing but that blond boy/man. The next day was the one I flew down a flight of stairs. But I ramble on. Write when you can and give Helene my regards. Is she completely recovered from the mastectomy? Yours, always, Minna.’

  In her long letter, Minna enclosed a sepia photograph on a postcard. She had bought it from a rack in the drugstore. She wrote a postscript to her letter: ‘Did you know about this giantess who lived in Paris in 1875? The photographer is not identified, but look at those wonderful ordinary-sized men and woman surrounding her. It reminded me of our giant, your giant, I should say. I like the tallest man in his Edwardian beard and suit, with his eyes fixed, straight across, at her bosom, and the woman who stares ahead at her waist, and the other two men with upward glances to her head, the way the mother of Aaron looked at him. My geometry tells me that if the three men are all about average, five ten or so, and come to
below her shoulder, then her majestic hat with its elegant ostrich feather must reach more than seven feet into the air. The hooped skirt and brocaded jacket, her sloping shoulders, great hands and pleasant but very ordinary face: I love them all. I wish you had been there to photograph her. What do you think? Am I becoming a perverted collector of oversize persons and underage boys? Did I tell you anywhere in that welter of words the name of the boy? Lowell. Lowell Oleson. He’s related, it turns out, to a man in the history department who’s about to retire. Well, I’ll be blunt: he’s his grandson. Yours, again, Minna’

  After the first evening of drinks in her room in Iowa House, Minna saw nothing of Lowell Oleson for a week. She took her new car on two trial runs to get used to automatic transmission, the unaccustomed placement of the turn signals and indicator lights, the buttons that did this or that. As she drove the empty streets of Iowa City she realized she was looking for Lowell’s jalopy. She avoided contact with Bill Oleson, even stayed away from the floor his office was on. Yet one day she found herself standing beside him on the cafeteria line in the Union. ‘How’re you making out?’ he said. ‘Fine, just fine.’ ‘Like Iowa City?’ he asked, the usual question-statement of the native to the eastern visitor. ‘I do. Very much. It’s a lovely town.’ ‘City,’ he said loftily. ‘It’s a city.’ ‘Yes, of course. I apologize. So it is.’ Minna blushed because she had been caught in the expected demeaning gaffe of the New Yorker, and because Bill Oleson was her love’s grandfather.

  Lowell called Minna late one evening. Like a fool, a girlish old fool, she realized that she was blushing as she answered the phone. She was in her nightgown and robe, and had been doing last Sunday’s Times crossword puzzle. She felt the heat in her face. He said, ‘Hi.’ ‘Hello. How are you?’ ‘Good. And yourself?’ She smiled at the form of his question, and waited. ‘Can I come by for more of that clear stuff?’ Her heart raced so irregularly she had to sit down on the bed. ‘Yes, of course. Come along.’ While she waited, she wondered if she ought to dress. Of course, of course. She should put all her clothes back on, girdle, stockings, bra, slip, blouse, suit, shoes, the complete uniform of proper dress. ‘My God, I ought to wear my long boots and beaver coat, a hat with a veil, gloves, a muff and a lap robe.’

  She had turned out all the lights but the one near the door and was in the chair watching the river when he knocked. He had stopped at the grocery store, which was just closing, and bought three bottles of cold beer. When Minna opened the door, Lowell thrust the bag at her. ‘For you, ah, well, really for me,’ he said. He breathed in as though he had caught the thick, sweet, heavy odor of her perfume. He breathed deeper, as though, it seemed to Minna, he felt an edge of sharpness cutting into him. She put the package down on the little table between the two chairs at the window. ‘Have a seat,’ she said. She brought the gin from the closet. The bottle was ice-cold. The closet lay against an outside wall of Iowa House and it was a cold night. ‘I saw you tonight in the parking lot,’ he said, ‘going into Schaeffer.’ ‘Did you?’ ‘Can’t miss that mop of blond hair when the wind is blowing through it,’ he said, staring down at his sneakers. Then he looked at her, and smiled at his own gallantry. He twisted hard at the bottle top. Minna stared at him, at his choice of adjective for her hair. ‘I have no extra glasses,’ she said, ‘except a toothbrush glass.’ ‘No matter. I like to drink it this way.’ He took a long pull from the bottle and then put it down beside Minna’s glass of gin. ‘Then you must have seen my new car,’ she said. ‘No. What new car? When did you buy it?’ ‘A few days ago. The VW could not be resuscitated, for any amount of money. I had to have it put out of its misery.’ Lowell laughed. ‘Too bad. Did you like that little car?’ ‘Not especially. But it did get me here faithfully.’ ‘What kind did you get?’ ‘A Chevrolet,’ and then she added—reluctantly, because ever since her impulsive and inexplicable purchase, she had not been able to explain to herself why she bought it—‘a convertible.’

  ‘Wow!’ Lowell said, his thin, charming face lit with pleasure. ‘Terrific. A convertible. That is something. Boy, I’ve always wanted one of those.’ Minna raised her arms and pulled her fingers through her hair. Her robe fell back for a moment. She recovered herself and lowered her arms, because he was staring at her breast and the flesh of her underarms. ‘Jeez,’ he said. What was he thinking, that I am much older than he? No matter.

  Minna described the new car, which, she told him, she had named Maud. ‘Why Maud?’ ‘Well, it’s black and there are those Tennyson lines “Come into the garden, Maud,/ For the black bat, night, has flown.” I associate black with Maud. Foolish, isn’t it? Then too, I once had a friend named Maud. I don’t know that that’s any sort of reason, either. I always name my cars.’ Minna laughed. Lowell leaned forward toward her, his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands. To him she looked soft and lovely, half undressed like that, in her robe and slippers, her loose, heavy blond hair curled to her shoulders. She made him think of those flowers his mother always grew, large and sort of blowsy, especially when they were almost finished. What were they called? He could not remember.

  ‘If you like, you can take it for a run tomorrow evening. I’ve got a dinner date, but after that …’ Her voice was low and husky and seemed to fall away at the end. She felt incapable of making a more definite arrangement. When he got up to leave, thinking the professor, as he thought of her still, wanted him to go, she put her hand on his arm. He thought she was making fun of him, in her gentle way, when she said, holding his arm, ‘I’ll introduce you to Maud tomorrow night. You’ll prefer her. She’s very young, only nineteen miles on her at the moment.’ He reddened and said, ‘Don’t say that. You’re not old. Golly, Professor Roman, you’re damned beautiful.’ He slammed the door behind him, and raced to catch the elevator about to go down. Walking up the Market Street Hill toward the ratty apartment he shared with two graduate students, he suddenly remembered the name of the flowers she reminded him of: peonies. In her room, Minna still sat in her chair, watching the moonlight on the windows of the hospital buildings. She thought, ‘I may well be going mad. What am I thinking about? Oh, I know very well what I am thinking about. How can this be? How can I love this inarticulate, lanky, towheaded boy? Did he say “Golly”? I have not heard “Golly” in twenty-five years.’

  Lowell fell into the habit of coming to see Minna late every evening after he finished work in the Universal Joint. Sometimes she was not in when he rang her bell. He would go back down to the lobby, sit on the floor with his back to the windows and watch the elevators until she came home. She fell into the habit of looking around the lobby when she returned from a meeting, a lecture, a dinner party. They looked at each other, she nodded to him, he scrambled to his feet, dumped the Des Moines Register he usually read into the trash can and followed her upstairs in the next elevator. She left the door ajar. He waited and then walked slowly down the hall toward her room. She had never advised him of this caution, but he sensed she was not comfortable being seen with him. She refused to meet him for lunch at Pete’s, where he usually had a sandwich and a beer with his roommates, or to allow him to accompany her, on his night off, to a student seminar on Iowa history he had said he would be interested in hearing. He well knew why he did not share her discretion. He was proud of her friendship, pleased she paid attention to him. He wanted to be able to display his connection to her in public.

  Her secretiveness remained in force on the night of the seminar. She said no to his repeated requests to go with her. He was waiting in his usual place; they had their usual drinks at the window, safe because it looked out at the anonymous river. She told him about a paper she had heard that evening, about the end of the world and a group of Gypsies in Iowa in 1910.

  ‘It was late spring, in a cool May, I think, of that year, the time of the expected appearance of Halley’s Comet. On the outskirts of Fort Dodge on a high hill, hundreds of Gypsies were gathered. For months word had spread from one Gypsy family to the next, even beyond the midwestern s
tates, with instructions that they should travel to that hill in Iowa because on that day the world would come to an end. It would be brought about by the passage of the earth through the gases of the comet. The families arrived in their wagons, which were bare. They had rid themselves of almost all their possessions and had stopped eating the day before. The wagons, brightly colored the way Gypsies decorate them, were pulled into circles, in the middle of which they lit fires for warmth. The horses were tied to the rear wheels of wagons, small children slept in the wagons, and the older ones huddled with the adults, cold, fearful, silent, hungry. All night they waited. The comet appeared, a streak of yellow light in the black sky, and then disappeared. Still they waited. By noon they were famished. They realized that nothing was going to happen to the earth, or to them. They relit the campfires, got out the few battered pots that remained to them and cooked a late, silent, sparse lunch. Then they harnessed their horses, and saying nothing to one another about their grim expectations, they drove off in every direction.’

  ‘Jeepers, what an eerie story. Did the Gypsies ever ask who started the scare?’ ‘I don’t know. The writer of the paper was interested in the phenomenon of belief in the end of the world, so he had a number of other examples. Only this one occurred in Iowa.’ Minna smiled at Lowell and said, ‘It was an interesting paper.’ something about himself, which he rarely could bring himself to do, Lowell said, ‘I suppose I always think something important to me, something I do, is catastrophic, that it means the end of the world, in a way. But as time goes by, I guess you discover it rarely is.’ He said nothing for a long time. Then he said, ‘I want more than anything to make love to you. Would you … consider it?’