Part 13 (2/2)
She made a tsk sound between her teeth. ”It's much more fun to torture you.”
He turned to Shoshana. ”Do you see this abuse I put up with? One of these days she is going to poison my soup.”
Shoshana giggled. ”Seems to me she takes really good care of you.”
”Like a pet,” he said. ”A dog she kicks.” He had an impish way of talking out of the corner of his mouth, and his accent was so thick she had to strain her ears to decipher his language.
”A dog, I wis.h.!.+ A dog would be much easier to look after than you. A dog doesn't fall asleep in his armchair fully dressed with a lit pipe in his mouth.”
”Hmph,” Joe grumbled.
Shoshana realized Joe was getting somewhat cranky, and changed the subject. ”So Mimi and you and your wife would harvest the apples?” she asked. ”As a business?”
Joe smiled at her. ”It was mainly your aunt Mimi, when she wasn't on a set, and Georgina. And Greta here, too. The Three Amigas, I'd call them. Unfortunately, I was always traveling ta the Middle East fer work. I thought I had to work in oil, be a big success. But looking back on all those years spent on airplanes and in boardrooms and carrying my briefcase ... the happiest times were when I was right 'ere, picking apples with Georgina. I miss that woman so d.a.m.n much.”
A look of despair crossed his face, but it was gone almost instantly.
”One dollar, sir,” Greta said, stretching out her hand again. Her smile was feisty. Shoshana realized she was trying to cheer him up.
”Oh, here, wretched woman. Take it. And don't dare hide my flask from me anymore.” He dug around his pockets until he found a crumpled dollar bill and grumpily set it down on Greta's palm.
On the walk to the kitchen, they pa.s.sed gold-edged mirrors that took up entire walls. She recognized a Lichtenstein, having taken Art History 101 at Princeton as a freshman. Was it real? She supposed it must be. Other smaller paintings were of rugged hillsides, bales of hay, and apple trees by the hundreds. They were all signed BW in a crooked script in the corners.
BW, BW. Bob Weiner?
”Did my father paint these?” she asked breathlessly, turning to Joe and Greta.
”Yes, dear, of course,” Greta said. ”He was very talented. Mimi had a local artist come and give him lessons when he was a boy.”
”But he was a gardener,” she said, feeling immediately foolish. ”I never knew he painted.” Tears filled her eyes unexpectedly.
”Oh, honey,” Greta said, putting a soft arm around her. ”Everyone has dreams when they're young. I'm sure providing a steady income for your family, supporting two beautiful girls, well, that was just more important to him.”
Shoshana ran her finger over the b.u.mps her father's brush had made. ”He had some canvases and brushes up in the attic. I asked him about them once and he just said he tried painting but wasn't any good at it. But that's not true.” She waved her arm around, gesturing to the paintings. ”He was talented.” A tear spilled onto her cheek and she brushed it away, willing the emotions of the day to stop was.h.i.+ng over her.
”Can I bring Emily here to show her?” she asked, turning toward Joe. Greta squeezed her shoulder.
”Of course,” Joe said. ”Better yet...” He strode over to her and began lifting the canvases off the wall. ”'Ere.”
”Oh, no, that's not-”
”Don't be silly,” Greta said. ”He owns half the art they have on display at the MoMA and hundreds more in a warehouse in Chelsea. He can afford it.”
”They all belong to you anyway, you should inherit 'em,” Joe said gruffly.
”Oh, you just don't like to see a woman cry, you big sap,” Greta said, jabbing him in the ribs with her elbow.
”Clam it, old broad. Now, where the h.e.l.l's dinner?”
”Joe Murphy, that'll be another dollar. Anyway, you're older than me by ten years. I'll be burying you with these two hands under the tree out back, so you'd better be nice to me.”
Did everyone who died around here get buried in the backyard?
Shoshana counted three more living rooms with fireplaces by the time they entered the bright white kitchen that Shoshana remembered. A farmer's sink was stained a dark copper, and the ceiling was tin. Pots and pans hung from hooks, and the last sip of the day's light poured in from two large spotlessly clean windows. A ruffle of white curtain brushed the bottom of the window. ”You babysat us!” she exclaimed to Greta, who was setting out an array of meats and cheeses on a wooden platter with silver handles. She had a simmering pot of soup on the stove, and she used a long-handled ladle to spoon out the broth into small blue bowls. ”I remember this kitchen, we used to bake cookies.”
”You betcha,” Greta said. ”You two girls were cute as pie.” She slapped Joe's hand as he reached for his flask.
Shoshana set the paintings down carefully on the counter. ”After we eat I think I'll get started cleaning Mimi's house,” she said. She corrected herself, the words feeling strange on her tongue. ”I mean, my house. Greta, do you have paper towels and a mop?”
”Honey, I got everything. We'll do it as a team. Joe will probably take a nap-”
”I'm sitting right 'ere, woman, don't talk about me like I'm a child-”
”-so we can just head over there and get to work,” she finished.
The food was delicious, and fresh. They sat in the dining room, along a table that was as long as a football field. Six giant candelabras lined the middle, along with baskets of wildflowers in brilliant blues and purples picked from the nearby fields. Joe Murphy sat at the head of the table in a red velvet armchair, mainly smoking and drinking from his flask and reluctantly sipping the delicious chicken soup with dill picked from the backyard.
And then it was time to leave. Shoshana longed to see the rest of the mansion but was eager to get the farmhouse in decent shape for her mother and Emily to visit tomorrow. The days were getting longer but it was still dark out by six, perhaps even more so here in the country.
After leaning over to give a sleeping Joe Murphy a kiss on the cheek (he had indeed fallen asleep in his armchair), Shoshana bade good-bye to P-Hen and Patrick O'Leary, and walked back over the hills with Greta and Sinatra. She turned around at one point and saw Patrick O'Leary watching them from the front window, his breath fogging up the gla.s.s.
Darkness fell over the rolling hills, like bluffs in an ocean of green, and she took in the rich smell of soil as the moon's light shone off a nearby field of wheat, the sounds of the crickets buzzing ... she breathed deeply and Greta smiled at her, as if to say she understood the wonder of it all, and was glad someone else was there to appreciate it as well. Greta walked quietly at her side, observing the landscape as if seeing it for the first time. Shoshana had so many questions for her-this woman had watched Mimi raise her father, after all-but she wanted to get inside and put down the paintings first, as they were heavy.
”Your trees still produce apples, you know,” Greta told her, her face open and friendly in the smudged navy blue dark.
”No, I didn't know.” She felt a little out of breath from all the walking she'd done today. It was strange-in Hoboken with all its flat concrete she never tired in her walks with Nancy. It must be the fresh air out here. Her lungs were used to the pollution drifting over into Hoboken from all the factories and power plants near Newark Airport.
”You see?” Greta asked, pointing as they came over a hill and saw the lights Shoshana had left on spilling onto the orchard. ”Right now there are apple buds on the trees the size of marbles. They are sleeping. Like a caterpillar, snug in its coc.o.o.n. Safe. Come summer, these trees are going to wake up. Depending on the variety, you'll start to have thousands of apples. I used to help Mimi pick them, so I remember. The McIntoshes will be ready in September, the Winesaps and Red Delicious making their debut in October.”
Shoshana smiled. ”It sounds like it's their debutante ball.”
”Oh, honey, harvest season is so exciting. But this is tr.i.m.m.i.n.g time. I did it for Mimi for years, until these hands got too arthritic.” She held them up to Shoshana to observe, but Shoshana thought they looked just fine, with a few brown spots on them darker than her natural tawny skin color. They'd stopped walking and a b.u.t.terfly flitted around their heads, its purple and black wings moving against the dark, expansive sky. She realized she never looked up in Hoboken; there was always a building blocking the moon, or the clouds.
”You mean tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the trees? Like with pruners?”
”Exactly. You need to use shears for the little branches, I call 'em suckers. Then a small saw for the thicker ones. Mimi's trees are over fifteen feet high right now. You want to grow good apples, you got to s.p.a.ce out the branches so they get an equal amount of sun. Around ten feet tall is perfect. Dwarf trees are the wave of the future, or so I hear when I go into town. You want a bright red Red Delicious? You got to give those babies some sun.”
Shoshana felt overwhelmed. First the house would need cleaning, the leaves swept off the floor, cobwebs wiped from the windows and doorway frames, and the moth-eaten couch replaced. The idea of clearing the tangled Where the Wild Things Are forest in the back of the house was a whole different ball game, as her father used to say.
Back at her house, Shoshana struggled with the heavy bra.s.s key once more. When they entered, she was struck by how low the ceilings were, compared to Joe's mansion. What year was the farmhouse built? She made a mental note to look it up. A time when people were shorter than now. Certainly Mimi had been only about five feet, if that. The floor sloped, too.
”I'll tackle the second floor, you okay working down here?” Greta asked.
”Sure,” Shoshana said. She swept her long, thick hair back into a ponytail; the brown rubber band she used had been around her wrist and left a red mark. She kicked off her shoes and found a bucket and a bottle of Murphy Oil Soap under the sink in the kitchen.
For the next two hours, Shoshana and Greta scrubbed, polished, swept, and wiped down the house. It was too late to make a train back to Hoboken. Her arms ached.
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