Part 3 (1/2)

”Studio?”

”I call it that. It's also the room I sleep in. Ignore the bed. I have to multi-task, so Ahmad has his his privacy in privacy in his his room. We shared a room for years, maybe too long. These cheap apartments, the walls are like paper.” room. We shared a room for years, maybe too long. These cheap apartments, the walls are like paper.”

She opens the door she came out of, ten minutes ago. ”Wow!” Jack Levy says, entering. ”I guess Ahmad told me you painted, but-”

”I'm trying to work bigger, and brighter. Life's so short, I suddenly figured, why keep fussing at the details? Perspective, shadows, fingernails-people don't notice, and your peers, the other painters, accuse you of being just an ill.u.s.trator. Some of my regulars, like a gift shop in Ridgewood that's sold me for ages, are a little bewildered by this new direction of mine, but I tell them, 'I can't help it, it's the way I've got to go.' If you don't grow, you die, right?”

Stepping around the carelessly made bed, its blanket tugged up roughly, he surveys the walls with a respectful squint. ”You really sell this stuff?”

He regrets his phrasing; she goes defensive. ”Some, not all. Not even Rembrandt and Pica.s.so sold all all their work, right away.” their work, right away.”

”Oh, no, I didn't mean . . .” he bl.u.s.ters. ”They're very striking; you just don't expect it, walking in.”

”I'm experimenting,” she says, mollified and willing to go on, ”with straight out of the tube. The viewer, that way, mixes the colors with his eye.”

”Terrific,” Jack Levy says, hoping to conclude this part of the conversation. He is out of his element.

She has got a kettle of water heating on the little electric coil set on a bureau whose top is crusty with spilled or wiped-off oil colors. He finds her paintings pretty wild but he likes the atmosphere in here, the messiness and the icy-clear fluorescent lights overhead. The smell of paints speaks to him, like the fragrance of wood shavings, of a bygone time when people made things by hand, hunched over in their own cottages. ”Maybe you'd prefer herbal tea,” she says. ”Chamomile makes me sleep like a baby.” Her eyes glance his way, testing. ”Except when I wake up four hours later.” Needing to go pee, Needing to go pee, she doesn't say. she doesn't say.

”Yeah,” he says. ”That's the problem.”

Cut short and knowing it, she blushes and tends to the water, which already is sending a plume of steam out through the hole in its hinged spout cap. ”I forget what you said about what kind of tea. Chamomile or what?”

He resists this woman's New Age side. Next thing she'll be pulling out her crystals and / Ching Ching sticks. He says, ”I thought we had agreed on instant decaf, even though it always tastes scalded.” sticks. He says, ”I thought we had agreed on instant decaf, even though it always tastes scalded.”

Her color stays high under her sifting of freckles. ”If you feel that way about it, maybe you don't want anything.”

”No, no, Miss-Mrs.-” He gives up trying to name her. ”Anything wet and hot would be fine. Anything you want. You're being very gracious. I didn't expect-”

”I'll get the decaf and check on Ahmad. He hates studying when I'm not in and out of the living room; he feels he's not getting credit, you know?”

Teresa disappears, and when she comes back with, a stubby jar of brown powder in her hand-a short-nailed, firm-fleshed hand tbat does things-Jack has turned off the hot plate so tbe water wouldn't boil away. Her mothering has taken some minutes; he could hear her in the other room bantering in a light, probing, female voice, and her son's scarcely deeper voice whining and groaning back at her with those inarticulate high-school denials he knows too well- as if the very existence of adults is a cruel and needless trial they're being put to. Jack tries to pick up on this: ”So you see your son as a pretty typical, average eighteen-year-old?”

”Isn't he?” Her maternal side is a sensitive side; her beryl-green eyes bulge out at him between colorless lashes that must get mascara from time to time, but not today or yesterday. The hair at her hairline is a lighter, softer tint than the metallic red up top. The set of her lips, the plump upper one lifted a bit as with someone listening hard, tells him that he has used up her initial gush of friendliness. She comes on strong, then gets impatient, is his take.

”Maybe,” he tells her. ”But something's throwing him off.” Jack gets down to the business he came for. ”Listen. He doesn't want to be a truck driver.”

”He doesn't? He thinks he does, Mr.-”

”Levy, Teresa. Like in 'Down by the levee' but spelled differently. Somebody's putting pressure on Ahmad, for whatever reason. He can do better than be a trucker. He's a smart, clean-cut kid, with a lot of inner-directedness. What I want him to have are some catalogues for colleges around here where it's not too late for admission. Princeton and Penn, it's way too late, but New Prospect Community College- you have to know where that is, up past the falls-and Fair-leigh d.i.c.kinson and Bloomfield, he might get in, and could commute to any of them if you can't swing room and board. The thing would be to get him started somewhere and, depending how he does, hope to transfer up. Any college these days, the way the politics of it are, wants diversity, and your boy, what with his self-elected religious affiliation, and, pardon me for saying it, his ethnic mix, is a kind of minority's minority-they'll snap him up.”

”What would he study at college?”

”What anybody studies-science, art, history. The story of mankind, of civilization. How we got here, what now. Sociology, economics, anthropology even-whatever turns him on. Let him feel his way. Few college students nowadays know what they want to do at first, and the ones that do get their minds changed. That's the purpose of college, to let you change your mind, so you can handle the twenty-first century. Me, I can't. When I was in college, who ever heard of computer science? Who knew about genomes and how they can track evolution? You, you're a lot younger than I, maybe you can. These new-style paintings of yours-you're making a start.”

”They're very conservative, really,” she says. ”Abstraction's old hat.” The open set of her lips has closed; his remark about painting was dumb.

He hurries to finish his pitch. ”Now, Ahmad-”

”Mr. Levy. Jack.” She has become a different person, sitting widi her too-hot decaf on a kitchen stool bought unpainted and never varnished. She lights a cigarette and props one foot, in a crepe-soled blue canvas shoe, on a rung and crosses her legs. Her pants, tight white jeans, bare her ankles. Blue veins wander through die white skin, Irish-white skin; the ankles are bony and lean, considering die soft heft of the rest of her. Beth's weight has had twenty more years than this woman's to settle low, drooping over her shoes and taking all the anatomy out of her a.s.s. Jack, though he used to be a two-packs-a-day Old Golds man, has grown unused to people smoking, even in the school's faculty room, and the smell of burning tobacco is deeply familiar to him but verges on being scandalous. The stylized acts of lighting up, inhaling, and hurling smoke violently out of her pursed lips give Terry-how her paintings are signed, big and legibly, with no last name-an edge. ”Jack, I appreciate your interest in Ahmad and would have been more so if die school had shown any interest in my son before a month before graduation.”

”We're swamped over there,” he interrupts. ”Two thousand students, and half of them it would be kind to call dysfunctional. The squeakiest wheels get the attention. Your son never made trouble, was his mistake.”

”Regardless, at diis phase of his development he sees what college offers, those subjects you name, as part of G.o.dless Western culture, and he doesn't want more of it than he absolutely can't avoid. You say he never made trouble, but it was more tiian that: he sees his teachers teachers as die troublemakers, worldly and cynical and just in it for the paycheck-the short hours and summer vacations. He thinks they set poor examples. You've heard die expression, 'above it all'?” as die troublemakers, worldly and cynical and just in it for the paycheck-the short hours and summer vacations. He thinks they set poor examples. You've heard die expression, 'above it all'?”

Levy merely nods, letting this now-c.o.c.ky woman run on. What she might tell him about Ahmad could be a help.

”My son is above it all,” she states. ”He believes in the Islamic G.o.d, and in what the Koran tells him. I can't, of course, but I've never tried to undermine his faith. To someone without much of one, who dropped out of die Catholic package when she was sixteen, his faith seems rather beautiful.”

Beauty, then, is what makes her tick-attempts at it on the wall, all that sweet-smelling paint drying, and letting her boy hang out to dry in grotesque, violent superst.i.tion. Levy asks, ”How did he get to be so-so good? Did you set out to raise him as a Muslim?”

”No, Christ,” she says, dragging deep, playing die tough girl, so that her roused eyes seem to burn along with die tip of the cigarette. She laughs, having heard herself. ”How do you like that for a Freudian slip? 'No, in nomine Domini.' in nomine Domini.' Islam meant nothing to me-less than nothing, to be accurate: it had a negative rating. And it meant not much more to his father. Omar never went to a mosque that I could see, and whenever I'd try to raise the subject he'd clam up, and look sore, as if I was pus.h.i.+ng in where I had no business. 'A woman should serve a man, not try to own him,' he'd say, as if he were quoting some kind of Holy Writ. He'd made it up. What a pompous, chauvinistic horse's a.s.s he was, really. But I was young and in love-in love mostly with him being, you know, exotic, third-world, put-upon, and my marrying him showing how liberal and liberated I was.” Islam meant nothing to me-less than nothing, to be accurate: it had a negative rating. And it meant not much more to his father. Omar never went to a mosque that I could see, and whenever I'd try to raise the subject he'd clam up, and look sore, as if I was pus.h.i.+ng in where I had no business. 'A woman should serve a man, not try to own him,' he'd say, as if he were quoting some kind of Holy Writ. He'd made it up. What a pompous, chauvinistic horse's a.s.s he was, really. But I was young and in love-in love mostly with him being, you know, exotic, third-world, put-upon, and my marrying him showing how liberal and liberated I was.”

”I know the feeling. I'm a Jew, and my wife was a Lutheran.”

”Was? Did she convert, like Elizabeth Taylor?”

Jack Levy snarls out a chuckle and, still clutching his unwanted college catalogues, admits, ”I shouldn't have said 'was.' She never changed, she just doesn't go to church. Her sister on the other hand works for the government in Was.h.i.+ngton and is very involved in church, like all those born-againers down there. It may be just that around here die only Lutheran church is the Lithuanian, and Elizabeth can't see herself as a Lithuanian.”

” 'Elizabeth' is a pretty name. You can do so much with it. Liz, Lizzie, Beth, Betsy. All you can do with Teresa is Terry, which sounds like a boy.”

”Or like a male painter.”

”You noticed. Yeah, I sign that way because female artists have always seemed smaller than the male ones, no matter how big they painted. This way, I make them guess.”

”You can do a lot with 'Terry.' Terry cloth. Terri-ble. Terri-fy. And there's Terrytoons.”

”What's that?” she asks in a startled voice. As laid-back as she wants to appear, this is a shaky woman, who married what her harp brothers and father would have called a n.i.g.g.e.r. Not a mother who'd give a lot of firm guidance; she'd let the kid take charge.

”Oh, something from long ago-animated cartoons at the movie show. You're too young to remember. One of the things when you're ancient, you remember things n.o.body else does.”

”You're not ancient,” she says automatically. Her mind switches tracks. ”Maybe on television I saw some, when I used to watch with little Ahmad.” Her mind switches tracks again. ”Omar Ashmawy was handsome. I thought he was like Omar Sharif. Did you ever see him in Doctor ZhivagoV Doctor ZhivagoV ”Only in ”Only in Funny Girl. Funny Girl. And I went to see Streisand.” ”Of course.” She smiles, that short upper lip of hers exposing imperfect Irish teeth, die eyeteeth crowded. She and Jack have reached a stage when anything they say to each other is pleasing, their senses ratcheted up. Sitting with her legs crossed on the high unpainted stool, she preens, stretching her neck and doing a slow s.h.i.+mmy with her back, as if easing out a kink caused by standing at her easel. How seriously can she work at this stuff? He guesses she could slap out three a day if she tried. ”Handsome, huh? Does your son-” ”And he's a fantastic international bridge player,” she says, not jumping her own track. And I went to see Streisand.” ”Of course.” She smiles, that short upper lip of hers exposing imperfect Irish teeth, die eyeteeth crowded. She and Jack have reached a stage when anything they say to each other is pleasing, their senses ratcheted up. Sitting with her legs crossed on the high unpainted stool, she preens, stretching her neck and doing a slow s.h.i.+mmy with her back, as if easing out a kink caused by standing at her easel. How seriously can she work at this stuff? He guesses she could slap out three a day if she tried. ”Handsome, huh? Does your son-” ”And he's a fantastic international bridge player,” she says, not jumping her own track.

”Who? Mr. Ashmawy?” he asks, though of course he knows who she means. ”No, die other one, silly. Sharif.”

”Does your son, I tried to ask him, have a picture of his father in his room?” ”What a strange question, Mr. -”

”Come on. on. Levy. Like a levy of taxes. School taxes, let's say. Or those things that keep the Mississippi from overflowing. Get an a.s.sociation, that's what I do with names. You can do it, Terrytoons.” Levy. Like a levy of taxes. School taxes, let's say. Or those things that keep the Mississippi from overflowing. Get an a.s.sociation, that's what I do with names. You can do it, Terrytoons.”

”What / started to say, Mr. Down-by-the-Levee, was you must be a mind reader. Just this year, Ahmad took the photographs in his room of his father and put them face-down in drawers. He announced it was blasphemy to duplicate the image of a person G.o.d had made-a kind of counterfeiting, he explained to me. A rip-off, like those Prada bags the Nigerians sell on the street. My intuition tells me this terrible teacher at the mosque put him up to it.”

”Speaking of terri-ble,” Jack Levy says quickly. Forty years ago he thought of himself as a wit, quick on the verbal trigger. He even daydreamed about joining a team of joke writers for one of the Jewish comedians on television. Among his peers at college he had been a wise guy, a fast talker. ”How terrible?” he asks. ”Why terrible?”

Signalling with her hands and eyes toward the other room, where Ahmad might be sitting listening while pretending to study, she drops her voice, so Jack has to move a step closer. ”Ahmad often returns disturbed from one of their sessions,” she says. ”I don't think the man-I've met him, but just barely-shows enough conviction to satisfy Ahmad. I know my son is eighteen and shouldn't be so naive, but he still expects adults to be absolutely sincere and sure of things. Even supernatural things.”

Levy likes the way she says ”my son.” There's a homier feeling here than his interview with Ahmad had led him to expect. She may be one of these single women trying to get by on sheer bra.s.s, but she's also some kind of nurturer. ”The reason,” he tells her, in a conspiratorially lowered voice, ”I asked about a picture of his father is that I wondered if his . . . if this faith of his had to do with a cla.s.sic overestima-tion. You know-not there, you can do no wrong. You see a lot of that in, in”-why did he keep putting his foot in it?- ”black families, the kids idealizing the absent dad and directing all their anger at poor old Mom, who's knocking herself out trying to keep a roof over their heads.”

Teresa Mulloy does take offense; she sits so erect on the stool he feels the hard wood circle of the seat biting into her tightened b.u.t.tocks. ”Is that how you see us single moms, Mr. Levy? So thoroughly undervalued and downtrodden?”