Part 31 (1/2)
She took the key and held it in her hand It ar, bitterly and happily, asha for hi the handkerchief from his jacket pocket
”I wanted you to have a key, becausebut I did the wrong thing” He gestured toward the painting ”I forget to say I love it Rosa, I love it! It's incredible! It's a whole new thing for you”
She laughed, taking the hankie from him, and dabbed at her eyes ”No, Joe, it's not that,” she said, though in fact the painting did represent a new direction for Rosa's work It had been years since she had atte a likeness, a contour, her innate sense of shadow and weight, had biased her toward life drawing early on Though she had worked partly froraph this time, the details of Joe's body and face were filled in fro You had to know your lover very well-to have spent a lot of ti him-to be able to paint his picture when he was not around The inevitable erations she had made struck her now as proofs, artifacts, of the mysterious intercourse of memory and love ”No Joe Thank you for the key I want it very lad”
”And I' wouldyou want to move in here ” She looked at him Yes He had been ”Well, I don't think I should For Thoht not understand”
”No,” he said ”I as thinking-but no You're right, of course” thinking-but no You're right, of course”
”But I will absolutely be here whenever you need me As much as you needas you needabout a very long time”
She held out the soiled handkerchief uncertainly, setic s”
”Thank you,” she said, and this time burst unrestrainedly into a ridiculous, even bizarre, fit of uncontrollable sobbing She knew perfectly well that the handkerchief was expressly intended for the co of women, and that Joe always kept another, reserved for his own personal use, tucked into the back pocket of his trousers
13
MANY years afterward, o bar ician named Joe Kavalier had performed his brisk, lively, all but wordless act, could sumentary memories of the entertainer So lish and seemed hardly older than they Another, an avid reader of comic books, recalled that Joe Kavalier had invited him to drop by the Eiven him a tour and sent hi, which he still had, of hi next to the Escapist Yet another reerie of artificial anioldfish carved froy stuffed parakeet that, to the surprise of spectators, ree vanished into thin air ”I saw hientleman recalled ”In the bowl of water, they really did look like little fish” Stanley Konigsberg, however, whose bar mitzvah receptionCavalieri, retained for the rest of his life-like young Leon Douglas ”Pipe Boician hiis for his classh by Joe's natural movements, his solemnity, and his flawless presentations of the Miser's Dream, Rosini's Location, and the Stabbed Deck to insist that Joe be engaged to baffle his own relatives and schoolsberg's youthful ad kindness shown hi Cavalieri in his ular perfor of Deceh vanished into thin air ”I saw hientleman recalled ”In the bowl of water, they really did look like little fish” Stanley Konigsberg, however, whose bar mitzvah receptionCavalieri, retained for the rest of his life-like young Leon Douglas ”Pipe Boician hiis for his classh by Joe's natural movements, his solemnity, and his flawless presentations of the Miser's Dream, Rosini's Location, and the Stabbed Deck to insist that Joe be engaged to baffle his own relatives and schoolsberg's youthful ad kindness shown hi Cavalieri in his ular perfor of Deceh
Joe arrived an hour before the reception began, as was his habit, to check the disposition of the Trevi's ballrooo over the order of events with Manny Zehn, the bandleader whose fourteen Zehnsations, riotous in theirup on the bandstand behind the out an expression he had just heard in the subway on his way uptown He pictured a row of pages fro, he wasmoney hand over fist, and his little brother, after six , and those terrible days last hen it seeht, at the last moment, cancel all the children's entry visas, was on his way Thomas would be here in three more days Here, in New York City
”Hey, kid,” Zehn said, squinting a littlethe hand Joe proffered They had worked together twice before ”Where's your sombrero?”
”Sorry? I didn't-?”
”Our theme is 'South of the Border' ” Zehn reached behind his head and lifted a black so pate He was a good-looking, portly man with a pencilup one of the waitresses, in a pink beribboned dress with Latin flounces Sid turned around, an eyebrow arched Manny Zehn raised his hands in the air and threw his head back ”Number three”
The trombonist nodded ”Hit it,” he said to the band The Zehnsations broke into a spirited bounce version of ”The Mexican Hat Dance” They played four bars and then Manny Zehn cut his throat with a finger ”So where's your Mexican hat?”
”No one told me,” said Joe He smiled ”Beside to which I' to the ”loaded” silk hat on his head, which he had purchased secondhand at Louis Tannen's Or else icians' union will coain ”You're drunk,” he said
”Not at all”
”You're acting goofy”
”My brother is co,” said Joe, and then, just to see how it sounded, added, ”and I aoing to ask her tonight”
Zehn blew his nose ”Mazel tov,” he said, giving the blot on his handkerchief a chiroetting out out of chains” of chains”
”Excuserather ically at Joe's side ”But that's what I wanted to ask you?”
”You can callDo you ever do escapes?”
”At one tiive it up” He frowned ”How long have you been standing there?”
”Don't worry, I won't tell anyone you hid a queen of hearts in the centerpiece of table seven,” said Stanley ”If that's what you're worried about”
”I did not do any such thing,” said Joe He winked at Manny Zehn and, with a firm hand on Stanley's shoulder, steered the boy out of the ballroo off their coats, shaking the rain fros could you escape fros? Could you do it ju? What's so funny?”
”You remind , Rosa shoved her paint box, a folded canvas tarp, a yardstick, and a small stepladder into the back of a taxi, and headed uptown to the apart emptiness of the place, a tin-plate rattle in the ears, unnerved her, and although with Joe's approval she had hastily called Macy's to order a dining table and chairs, sos, and bedroom furniture, there would be no time to furnish the rooms properly before Thoone from the cramped jumble of a two-family flat on Dlouha Street, to the provisional pandemonium of a convent refectory, to the packed-in-oil tin of a staterooht actually welcome a bit of space and emptiness, but all the same she wanted hi last, was home, or a kind of home She had tried to think of ways she could accoh about thirteen-year-old boys to be fairly certain that a plush bathrobe, a bouquet of flowers, or a ruffled canopy on the bed was not going to do the trick She thought that a dog or a kitten ht have been nice, but pets were not allowed in the building She asked Joe about his brother's favorite norant of such preferences Rosa was irritated with him-she had said he was impossible-until she saw that he was, for once, pained by his ignorance It was the mark not of his usual lufte separation that had opened up between the brothers in the last two years She apologized at once and went on trying to think what she could do for Thomas, until finally she'd had the idea, which struck the the blank expanse of his bedroom with a mural It was not just that she wanted Thoht away-and she hoped that the es of his arrival or not, would at the very least stand as an offer of friendshi+p, as a hand extended in welcoled with, secretly bubbling beneath, these other esture was concealed a desire that had nothing to do with Thoht actually welcome a bit of space and emptiness, but all the same she wanted hi last, was home, or a kind of home She had tried to think of ways she could accoh about thirteen-year-old boys to be fairly certain that a plush bathrobe, a bouquet of flowers, or a ruffled canopy on the bed was not going to do the trick She thought that a dog or a kitten ht have been nice, but pets were not allowed in the building She asked Joe about his brother's favorite norant of such preferences Rosa was irritated with him-she had said he was impossible-until she saw that he was, for once, pained by his ignorance It was the mark not of his usual lufte separation that had opened up between the brothers in the last two years She apologized at once and went on trying to think what she could do for Thomas, until finally she'd had the idea, which struck the the blank expanse of his bedroom with a mural It was not just that she wanted Thoht away-and she hoped that the es of his arrival or not, would at the very least stand as an offer of friendshi+p, as a hand extended in welcoled with, secretly bubbling beneath, these other esture was concealed a desire that had nothing to do with Tho to dabble, on the walls of a boy's bedroo, her doctor had called to confirm the tale of a missed period and of a week of sudden squalls and unexpected flare-ups of emotion such as the one that had sent her into hysterics over the loan of an old pocket square Tho to be an uncle That was how she had decided that she was going to put it to Joe
When she got into the apartarees and an old shi+rt of Joe's, and put her hair back with a kerchief Then she went into the bedroo to be Thomas's and spread out the tarp on the floor She had never painted a mural before, but she had talked it over with her father, who had been involved in the fracas over the Rivera murals at Rockefeller Center and who knew many artists who had worked ontime with the proper subject Characters fro princes and gingerbread houses, such motifs would be considered hopelessly puerile by a boy of thirteen She considered doing a New York scene- tall buildings, taxicabs, traffic cops, the Ca Or perhaps soe, with redwood trees and cotton plants and lobsters She wanted it to be sort of generally American, but also to relate in so here Then she had started thinking about Joe, and the kind of work that he did She suspected that Tholish froes of E a mural that featured the Monitor, the Four Freedoms, or-God knew-Luna Moth, the idea of heroes, Aued her She went to the public library and checked out a big book, with iends of the Aends of the Aures of Paul Bun-van, John Henry, Pecos Bill, Mike Fink, and the rest-her favorite was the original arac-struck her as perfectly suited to the mural form, and not beneath the conteely unknown What wasof Joe himself as a hero-he had paid, out of his own pocket, for fifteen of the children ere now steah she would not put Joe into the e of Harry Houdini, that irant boy from Central Europe, just to connect the theme of the er-than-life figures of Paul Bun-van, John Henry, Pecos Bill, Mike Fink, and the rest-her favorite was the original arac-struck her as perfectly suited to the mural form, and not beneath the conteely unknown What wasof Joe himself as a hero-he had paid, out of his own pocket, for fifteen of the children ere now steah she would not put Joe into the e of Harry Houdini, that irant boy from Central Europe, just to connect the theme of the mural that much more directly to Thomas's life
She had made dozens of preliminary sketches and a two-by-three cartoon of the , by est of the roouidelines on the walls with the yardstick, first the horizontals, ht three feet at a hop, then the verticals, easy enough at the bottoerously obbliness as she drew nearer to the top and was forced to go up on tiptoe It required far more patience than she possessed, and several ti to sketch the thing out freehand on the wall But she reminded herself that patience was a cardinal virtue in a h-and kept to her careful plan
By ten o'clock, she had finished laying out the guidelines Her shoulders ached, and her neck, and her knees, and she felt that before she started in on transferring the gridded cartoon to the wall she would go for a walk around the block, for a sandwich or a cigarette She h with his show by now and on his way up to meet her So she pulled on her coat and took the elevator back down to the lobby She walked up to the corner of Seventy-ninth Street, where there was a late-night grocery
Later, Rosa would i person, she had seen her lost happiness at the instant of its passing As she was paying for her Philip Morrises, she happened to glance down at the Sunday papers stacked in front of the counter, bulldog editions hot off the press In the upper-right-hand corner of the Herald Herald there was an extra, boxed in red She read it five times, with all her heart and attention, but the tiny amount of information it conveyed never increased or-then or afterward-made any better sense The ten lines of tentative, bland prose said only that a boat filled with refugees, many from Central Europe, most if not all of the in the Atlantic off the Azores and believed lost There was no mention, as there would not be for several more hours, of a U-boat, a forced evacuation, a sudden stor in out of the northeast Rosa stood there for a s filled with smoke, unable to exhale Then she looked up at the storekeeper, atching her with interest Evidently so on in her face What should she do? Was he still at the Trevi? Was he on his way up to the Josephine, as they had planned? Had he heard the news? there was an extra, boxed in red She read it five times, with all her heart and attention, but the tiny amount of information it conveyed never increased or-then or afterward-made any better sense The ten lines of tentative, bland prose said only that a boat filled with refugees, many from Central Europe, most if not all of the in the Atlantic off the Azores and believed lost There was no mention, as there would not be for several more hours, of a U-boat, a forced evacuation, a sudden stor in out of the northeast Rosa stood there for a s filled with smoke, unable to exhale Then she looked up at the storekeeper, atching her with interest Evidently so on in her face What should she do? Was he still at the Trevi? Was he on his way up to the Josephine, as they had planned? Had he heard the news?
She drifted out to the curb and fretted for a o back to the apartment and wait for hi for her there, whether in ignorance or grief Just as she was co to this decision, however, a taxicab pulled up and let out an elderly couple in evening clothes Rosa brushed past them and climbed into the back of the cab
”The Trevi,” she said
She sat in a dark corner of the taxi The light came and went, and in the mirror of her compact, her reflection was intermittently brave She closed her eyes and tried to recite a snatch of Buddhist prayer her father had taught her, clai effect It had little apparent impact on her father, and she wasn't even sure she had the words right Om mani padmi om Om mani padmi om Somehow it did make her feel calmer She said it all the way from Seventy-ninth Street to the curb outside the Trevi By the time she stepped out of the cab, she had pulled herself fairly together She came into the severe marble reception hall, with its icy chandeliers, and went up to the desk to inquire Frohter of the famous fountain Somehow it did make her feel calmer She said it all the way from Seventy-ninth Street to the curb outside the Trevi By the time she stepped out of the cab, she had pulled herself fairly together She came into the severe marble reception hall, with its icy chandeliers, and went up to the desk to inquire Frohter of the faician was a friend of yours?” said the clerk with an unaccountably hostile air ”He cut out hours ago”
”Oh” It hit her like a blow He was supposed to come up to the apartment after the perfor terrible had happened to hie, he had not wanted to see her ”Are they-is anyone-”
”There's the barto a skinny little kid in a three-piece pink suit lolling on one of the watered silk couches in the lobby ”Why don't you ask him?”
Rosa went over, and the boy introduced hi for Joe, that she had soive him Oh, she had some wonderful news, too, but hoould she ever be able to tell hi to make some horrible equivalency, when it was only one of the monstrous coincidences of life
”I think he already knows,” Stanley Konigsberg said He was a squat boy, se, with crooked spectacles and coarse brown hair The suit was incredible, trousers trimmed hite braid, pockets and buttonholes hite frogs, precisely the color of humiliation itself ”Is it about that boat that sank?”
”Yes,” Rosa said ”His little brother was on it A boy about your age”