Monkey Boy

by Francisco Goldman

  Mamita, I’m so sorry, I say. And so that you’ll feel the truth of what I’m saying, I make myself stare into the seemingly transparent depth of your oil paint eyes, where nothing happens. I won’t ever do that again, love with a heart that’s deaf in one ear, that’s a lazy, cowardly, gets-you-nowhere way to love. Still, I think I heard Gisela in stereo loud, soft, and clear, but that wasn’t enough. I’ve never thought this before, but maybe it was her heart that was deaf in one ear. I’m sorry I haven’t given you a grandchild, Ma, but I guess you can say I’m trying. Do any of those children who live in Lexi’s house ever come to visit you? There’s a ten-year-old girl, Monica. I think you’d enjoy her.

  What am I doing, talking to this painting? I can do it again tomorrow if I want to, at Lexi’s. Why don’t I just go back to Green Meadows and try to talk to Mamita some more?

  I think this copy of the painting is better than the one we had in our house growing up. Herb kept the better one for himself. I’m concentrating on the corner of Mamita’s lips, trying to see that visibly invisible, if only I could think of something funny to say right now, see if I can provoke a quiver of a smile. I’ve always been good at getting my mother to laugh. But no words come but these: Mamita, I’m sorry I didn’t save you from Bert. I’m sorry you didn’t save me from Bert. I’m sorry neither of us saved Lexi from Bert, but I think you finally did, starting when she was in her late teens anyway. Ay Mamá, your Herb-painted eyes look through me in a way that makes me feel not here.

  I turn and look at Beth and say, I’m keeping you up, aren’t I? I’m sorry. She’s sitting slumped back on an old dark-red sofa, its silken upholstery slightly shredded here and there, her knees wide apart, her long frail hands clasped over her abdomen. Besides the couch, the only other furniture is an upholstered sea-green old armchair, the wood of the arms chipped, and a couple of hard chairs pulled up to a small, round wooden table with a red-and-white checkered tablecloth on it, an empty green bottle of wine on top, and a plastic ashtray. It’s like we’re in an old-fashioned pizza restaurant with only one table and nothing on the walls but a portrait of Yolanda Montejo de Goldberg. An unplugged standing brass lamp in the corner, the shade missing. Grace Paley’s The Collected Stories on the floor next to the sofa. Beth’s dress fits her like a sack, hiding her very slight frame, which you can sort of make out when she’s standing by the way the dress falls around her, her collarbones with their pearl-sized knobs under the taut ivory skin inside her open collar. It’s a black dress, with a dense pattern of small white letters like Linotype print all over it in no discernible order, letters like hundreds of rioters milling around waiting to see what comes next. She’s so small and delicate looking, Beth Alamy. You look at the bones in her wrists and think of sparrows. She still has that pretty face, eyes like lustrous prunes, and abundant dark-brown, silver-streaked hair, simply pulled back and tied in a knot. Something Emily Dickinson about her, maybe it’s that impression of a small intelligent face inside an old pendant. Her teeth are a little uneven, slightly stained with nicotine or coffee in the way nearly everybody’s used to be. She lives in these top two floors, rents out the bottom two. We didn’t talk much before I went and stood before that painting. She did tell me that she’s a lawyer. Beth sits up and looks perfectly awake, her eyes like black lamps beneath the light thrown by the naked bulb in the ceiling.

  Oh really, don’t worry about it. I was up anyway, she says. I would have told you to come back tomorrow if I’d really wanted to.

  Herb is still alive, in Morocco, living in Marrakesh. That’s what she told me even as we were climbing the stairs to come up here. I ask, How old is Herb now?

  Ninety-seven years young. He has that exhausting male monster longevity. You know, like Picasso. Saul Bellow and Pinochet, one who I love and the other who I obviously don’t, were born the same year and died last year, at ninety-one.

  Kissinger is still going, I say. It’s like that saying, Mala hierba no muere.

  But good Hierba Felman no muere, either, says Beth, pleased with her pun.

  Bert, too, well he made it to ninety-three. I won’t say what kind of weed he was. Let Beth think good enough. Nicanor Parra, I add, because how can I not?

  That sort of longevity is rarer in men than in woman, says Beth. Somehow female longevity doesn’t seem to derive from that monster energy whose ideal seems to be to go on making yourself the center of the universe until no one else is left. Grace Paley. Penelope Fitzgerald. Georgia O’Keeffe. Agnes Martin. Oh my God, Louise Bourgeois. Doris Lessing. She’s not that old yet, but Toni Morrison better live to be a thousand. I’ll stop because I can just go on and on.

  Mother Teresa, I say. Beth nods and says, Mother Teresa too. So what kind of law do you practice? I ask.

  I’ve worked as a public defender here in the Suffolk County courts for twenty-five years and still going. This house is still Herb’s. His income nowadays comes from his properties and investments; he was smart with his money. My father’s old bakery gives me some income too. It’s a Brazilian coffee shop now, and Herb rents the upstairs part, where our family used to live, to store his art and papers. I feel bad taking it but he insists and I do need that money. But I’m so ready to try something new. I want to write a biography of Herb Felman, Frank. Herb has had such a remarkable life, and the obscurity he lives in now makes it all seem even more, I don’t know, poignant and profound.

  You’re going to go to Marrakesh to talk to him?

  In two weeks. I’m planning to spend at least three months there.

  How is Herb’s memory?

  Herb the Memorious, she says. I must have a slight look of surprise. She says, Upstairs, it’s wall-to-wall books, and I love Borges.

  I wonder what Herb remembers about my parents, I say. He spent a month painting that portrait of my mother. She sat for it three times a week. He must know what she was like back then better than anybody else who’s still around.

  I know Herb adored your mother, Frankie. You don’t mind if I call you that, do you? It was your name when we met, it feels weird to call you Francisco. You can tell he did from the portrait, don’t you think? Your mom sure does look smokin’, but that’s not what I mean. She has that compelling mysterious something that tugs at your heart. I find myself just wanting to stare into her eyes and, I don’t know, become her friend. That portrait has hung there on that wall exactly where it is now since the day Herb finished it. That has to tell you something about how he felt about your mom.

  Beth, has it really?

  How many years now? Well, we’re the same age. A long time. Don’t be depressed. She smiles.

  Fifty years, oh man. And the chair she sat in, and the screen she told me she used to change behind, are they still around?

  Long gone. That stove has never moved; of course we can’t use it anymore. There’s a room upstairs with a skylight and views out the back window where you can see some of the river. I never really understood why Herb didn’t use that room as his studio.

  Maybe he just liked looking out that window down at the street.

  Yes, just waiting for you to turn up at two in the morning some snowy night and see the light on and the portrait through the window and then ring the doorbell to ask the person who answers the door if you can come up and see it because it’s your mother and Herb used to tell you war stories when you were a boy.

  I’m amazed you let me in.

  I guess I am too. But you really were convincing. It’s more furnished upstairs, by the way, and there’s more of Herb’s work hanging, but my friend Mickey got in from London earlier tonight and she’s asleep up there. I’ll give you a tour the next time you want to come by.

  Sure, I say.

  You know, I was thinking of trying to get in touch with you anyway, now that I’ve decided to try to do this book. Given the obvious importance of your mother and of that portrait to Herb.

  Why don’t you come
out with me to her nursing home sometime and we can talk to her. Her memory isn’t always so reliable. Some days are better than others.

  I would love that, she says. There aren’t so many people still alive who had their portraits painted by Herb.

  Did you know of or ever hear Herb mention a painting of a Normandy forest scene with forest animals during the war, and with himself and another soldier named Eddie?

  I’d have to check in the storage. Herb has thousands of works, finished and unfinished, in there, but I don’t recall hearing about that one. Forest animals? Really? Herb?

  Eddie was his lover during the war, I think.

  You know a story about Herb having a lover during the war? Wow. I sure don’t. I was always innocent little Beth. He would never tell me stories like that, but I expect he will now. Beth’s eyes in her small face are opened so wide and glow so blackly that she resembles one of those cute nocturnal jungle animals, clinging to her branch over our heads. There was somebody important to him in Marrakesh, she says. I know that. But during the war?

  You know, I don’t even remember how I know about that war painting with the animals, I say.

  From your mother, maybe? Please don’t be offended, she says, but, you know, I really hadn’t thought of you in years. Someone in my family told me that Bert Goldberg’s son had become a writer, and then I sort of did connect you to some things I’d seen around by—she portentously lowers her voice—Francisco Goldberg. But I only really began to think of you when I decided to write about Herb.

  Even apart from Herb, I say, you must have a lot to say and tell about. All those years in the Boston courts. I remember that letter you sent me, after we went with Herb and my father to the Celtics game. I remember just how impressed I was by how spooky smart but also winsome, charming, your writing was.

  Oh, thanks, Frankie, she responds, her expression lighting up. I remember the letter you sent me too. She giggles, mischievously, and looks at me as if she thinks I must know what’s so funny about it.

  C’mon, what? I ask.

  You wrote that you had an Indian arrowhead you wanted to give me.

  Oh yeah, I say. I remember that arrowhead. If I pull it out of my pocket now, it’ll freak her out, probably not in a good way. Anyway, I’m giving it to Lexi.

  It just seemed like such a boy thing, she says. What, this kid is trying to impress me with an Indian arrowhead? She laughs and I laugh; we sit on the couch laughing. Maybe I was too mature for my age, she says. I was already into the Velvet Underground. I wanted to be Nico. I was only interested in boys who played electric guitars. I have to say, after I let you in and we came up here and I got a good look at you, I got nervous that it really wasn’t you, because from when I met you back then, you just don’t look anything like I would have imagined.

  Ha, I say. Is that a good thing?

  Beth laughs again, such generous jollity. Yes, it’s a good thing. But don’t take that the wrong way. You were very sweet. With your arrowhead. She smiles.

  I really love your dress, I say. All those little letters all over it, they look like they’re about to break out into a riot, you know what I mean? Hey, motherfuckers, we can spell out whatever we want. Don’t even think of trying to stop us or we’ll burn this whole language down!

  This dress, really? says Beth. She plucks it in her fingers and holds it out over chest, looking down at it. Rioting letters, wow, really? After so many years of being a public defender, I could get down with some anarchy now. Frankie, I am having such a good time, and this has been the most fabulous and serendipitous surprise ever, but it’s really late. I do have to get to sleep. You can crash here on the couch if you want. I reach into a pocket and pull out my phone. 3:43 in the morning, and there’s a message from Lulú: “Panchito, I dreamed we were riding bicycles together.”

  June 22, 2020—CDMX

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to the directors and staff of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, where part of this book was written during the 2018-19 fellowship year. Dr. Robert J. Kelly was a generous guide to the “science and art” of artificial tooth production. Thank you to Sandra Hernández Estrada; to Sean E. Fitzgerald for his long-ago email; to Felito (Consuelo) and Tía Babu (Barbara); to Stephen Haff for the opportunity to participate in the ongoing miracle of Still Waters in a Storm and the Kid Quixotes; to friends and colleagues who read earlier versions and provided indispensable insights and comments, Bex Brian, Dominique, Gonzalo, Chloe, Susan, and Valeria; to Lucas, Hernán and Ieva for a consequential, if hilarious, conversation at Kirkland T & T. With gratitude to Morgan, Elisabeth Schmitz, Katie Raissian, Yvonne Cha, and all the team at Grove. Amanda Urban gave staunch support from start to finish. Jovi and Azalea, and also Jovisitas during the months she spent with us, were the sun that rises every day.