Bereavements

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Bereavements Page 10

by Richard Lortz


  “I’ll see him,” she decided. “Do we need a new vacuum cleaner, Rose? I’ll buy one. Or a twelve-speed blender? Or a few scented tapers to burn along with our prayers . . . ?”

  The woman had been impossible since the moment she’d gotten out of bed that morning, changing the breakfast menu from the invariable three minute egg, whole wheat cinnamon toast and tea, to fresh strawberries, light cream, melba toast and grapefruit marmalade—all of which had to be sent out for.

  Worse: she had returned, though it was to be hoped only for the day, to her mourning, wearing a black chiffon dress that was just a bit too young for her age, and penny-size onyx earrings, together with a double-twist throat string of narrow black velvet, knotted in the back, and so long it not only reached, but trailed dramatically on the floor behind her. If anyone stepped on it (the girl thought) she’d be choked to death, a second Isadora.

  Mrs. Evans went directly to the living room to confront a most attractive, slender, well-dressed young man whom she instantly liked: at least his appearance, and his initial ease of well-bred good manners.

  “Mr.—?”

  “Dzierlatka.”

  She made him spell it, and found it simple (stupid Rose!) It was that “dz” was not found in the English language and was to be pronounced with the teeth closed, tongue pressed against them, producing a sound like a buzz.

  “Martin,” he supplied, “Martin Dzierlatka.”

  “Ah yes,” as if she’d made a connection. But the young man was not to be deceived.

  “You’ve forgotten me.”

  Mrs. Evans shook her head. “Not forgotten. I don’t know you. We’ve never met.”

  “My letter,” he smiled. “Some weeks ago . . . The photo torn in pieces.” Good heavens! The mad one; “one of the mad ones,” as her mother used to say.

  “Did you put it together; the photo?”

  How shameful and annoying to confess that she had! But the rules of this game, from the very start, she knew, was to tell the truth. ‘Else there was no reason to play it at all.

  “Yes I did. Carefully, and with scotch tape. And then I threw it away. But I remember it clearly. And clearly that it wasn’t you. It must have been a photo,” looking at his handsome face (he was at least twenty eight years old), “that was taken ten years ago. Or more.”

  “I’m in the theatre,” he replied. As if that explained everything, which quite possibly it did. “I’m an actor; a good actor; a fine one. With a great deal of experience and considerable critical acclaim, but without—these things do happen—commercial success. I’m not a star. Or a celebrity. Not yet. Do you have an ash tray?”

  “We do not smoke in this house.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” His eyes were a bit wild looking for a suitable place to discard his barely half-inch of burning tobacco. Finding none, and no help at all from a cool and mildly curious Mrs. Evans who simply watched to see what he would do, he was marvelously resourceful. He simply dropped the cigarette into the cuff of a trouser leg and with a quick pressure of his fingers crushed it out. Not a trace, not even the faintest whiff of smoke remained. Admirable, and absurd.

  In addition, he seemed to have forgiven her rudeness, or was hiding his anger, awaiting his turn. Either way, she now felt guilty. But it was her grief turned inside out. She was so tired of suffering that, even in small ridiculous ways, she wanted others, everyone, to suffer, too.

  “About the torn photo,” she said, really wanting to know, “it puzzled me exceedingly.”

  “Did it.” He was surprised. “I thought you were playing a joke, a game, and I wanted to tease you, or amuse you with one of my own. I mean—after all! Your ad! A mother!—looking for a son!”

  And now he paid her back for her rudeness and cruelty, the cigarette, the burn, the rank odor that would remain in his trouser cuff until he had it cleaned. “There are all kinds of mothers, you know. There are those mothers, the root of which, the origin, is derived from the word motherfucker.” She noticed he watched her closely to see if there’d be a flicker of surprise or anger at the use of the obscenity. There was none. “And there are, of course, the mothers of dormitories, as well as, most importantly, the dream merchants—mothers of the lactating, breast-feeding type, which is to say, the suppliers of heroin.”

  Slight pause; a prayerful tent made of his fingers. “And, of course, there are the Gold Star mothers, whose numerous sons rot in their graves.” The tent flew apart. “And we mustn’t forget the Mothers of the American Revolution. Oh!—” surprise “— they’re daughters, aren’t they, but so old, wouldn’t you say, that I’m sure they’re all mothers, too, and grandmothers, and great-grandmothers, besides.”

  A thoroughly depressed young man; clearly; perhaps almost as suicidal as she. And then she remembered, truth or lie, that in his letter he’d said he had tried it once, after his mother’s death. She suspected he’d dare anything, risk anything—for whatever it was he desired. She hoped it wouldn’t turn out to be being “a star” and “a celebrity”—something altogether tiresome and hardly worth killing one’s self for.

  “And finally,” he concluded with a sigh, “there are those mothers—always widows, enormously wealthy, usually from the south or mid-west with the smell of crude oil emanating from their armpits and between their legs—who are looking for well-hung sons by the name of Paulo, Raphael or Mario—who are to be found standing three-deep, their legs crossed at the ankles to give prominence to their genitals, amid the glitter of the most expensive bars to be found in Rome . . .”

  And now Martin Dzierlatka stood up, distressed, blinking hard, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d done or said, a hand reaching to hold his head: an actor who had just blown everything, forgetting his lines, missing a vital cue, improvising outrageously, hating the director of this wretched play, the imbecile author, and—if he got anything out of it at all—the pathetic pittance for himself involved.

  “Shall I leave now?” he asked. “Or wait until you call the cops?”

  Mrs. Evans third husband, the Harrison-Smith of her name, had, among other lucrative pursuits, been a successful theatrical producer. Jamie, to his step-father’s pleasure, had called him “the Maestro,” and he was also fond of referring to himself as an impresario. Mrs. Evans herself had taken some interest in the theatre, producing a successful play after her husband’s death, and maintaining his 57th Street office for more than a year afterward. Then interest waned. She read hundreds of scripts but nothing she cared to produce. To her comedies of the Broadway variety were a bore and inane; musicals usually shallow and meaningless besides being too difficult and demanding for her meagre business abilities, and no drama of significance (meaning impressive poetic content) had crossed her desk.

  So the gold-leaf lettering that spelled out Harrison-Smith Productions, Inc., was scraped from the milk-white, pebbled glass of the office door.

  These years of theatrical preoccupation were in her mind as she continued to size up Martin Dzierlatka who was not only not thrown out after his astonishing, virtually obscene tirade, but, after tea, had been offered (no less) a saucer for an ashtray and actually been invited (if he wished) to smoke.

  He wished. And lost no time extracting a cigarette from a leather case and also emptying his trouser cuff.

  Watching him, Mrs. Evans decided that the boy—man, of course (though to her any attractive male under thirty seemed a boy)—was an inspired opportunist, or a half-crazed one; if not a borderline psychotic almost ready for the net, then a functional neurotic, an obsessive-compulsive of classic proportions. It was a fatal case of give me the theatre, i.e. commercial success (and a Hollywood contract) or give me death.

  She was prepared to give him neither; indeed, nothing beyond tea, an opportunity to talk (selfishly occupying her mind as well as an hour or two of the dreary afternoon) and—a rare privilege—to smoke. But the reason he was here at all, she decided—answering her ad, arranging such an elaborate delayed entrance with a mother monologue so bizar
re one could hardly have found it outside the theater, and only in an absurdist theater at that—was because his fantastically (quite ill) mind had put together a dream in which she would, upon meeting him, instantly recognize his neglected genius, revive her interest in producing, and star him, posthaste, in a Broadway play.

  How wrong she was she was soon to find out. Oh, the fantasy was there, and it was connected, if vaguely, with “the theater,” specifically with his superlative talent, but he wasn’t auditioning for the lead in a Broadway play. No indeed. The part he wanted was far more important.

  He wanted the role of her son.

  Why, why (he asked) should she be so astonished? Wasn’t that what her ad was all about, now that she maintained its authenticity and her own sincerity, odd as it was. Who better than he could do it? He wanted to replace Jamie—like an understudy the star: Jamie—and he actually named the boy, not only knowing all about him, but about her, about virtually every important event of her life.

  “After all—you are a celebrity, Mrs. Evans, and a socialite, if you don’t mind my calling you that. I believe fate brought us together, it was inevitable, because I have known of you, read of you, seen your pictures in newspapers and magazines all my life. I have followed your exploits, every facet of your career. I have admired you always. I have adored you, in a sense, as I am committed to adore all women of beauty, of wealth, of position, of family, of talent . . . !”

  Her eyebrows must have raised themselves slightly at the emphasis given the last word, because he was then driven to explore and justify it.

  “Yes, talent. You did, on your own, quite independently after your husband’s death, produce an enormously successful play. I have also read of your fine organization abilities; I mean, those countless social affairs you used to arrange to raise money for so many worthy causes and institutions. And would you believe—” (it turned out she didn’t) “—that I have on my bookshelf at home—” his voice becoming intimate, slightly seductive “—a well-thumbed copy of Doves and Jackels?”

  This was too much.

  “You haven’t.” She shook her head, her voice firm, for the first time really cold. “I don’t care where or how you may have heard of it, but you do not have Doves and Jackals. It has been out of print for years. There are simply no copies—” (what was the word?) “—extant.”

  Whereupon this incredible boy—man, quoted softly, to her discomfort and shocked pleasure:

  The bleeding doe

  turns

  love-filmed eyes

  to the hills

  of sweet

  wild grass

  beyond the hunter.

  There were even more surprises. Quite a few.

  “I knew your son,” Martin said.

  If he hadn’t, moments ago, quoted exactly one of her early poems, she would now have called Dori to throw him out. As things stood, she was silent and listened.

  “I didn’t mean to say I knew him,” Martin corrected. “Once, I met him; we spoke.”

  He waited, expecting Mrs. Evans to reply, but she didn’t, so he went on.

  “It was some years before he died, before I read of his death—” frowning, stretching a confused memory to make the time more exact—”two years, more or less. In Palm Beach; September or October, I believe. I was with a play then; the company toured Florida.”

  Jamie had been there at the time—before his illness. Indeed, if she’d kept him there, quiet, peaceful, rested and resting, instead of, panicked, flying him to New York, then speeding him, like the victim of a gangrenous appendix, into the vast bowels of the Medical Center in January where, to her own passionate, distorted view, he’d been doctored and tested to death for a disease so mysterious it couldn’t be named, he might now be alive. Had an autopsy been performed, they might have given it a name: mysteriosa, perhaps, nomenclature being so indigenous and indispensable to the medical profession it coudn’t possibly function without it. But she wouldn’t allow her beautiful boy to be butchered.

  “He’s dead! You’ve killed him! Now you want to bleed him, skin him, quarter him, like meat on a hook!” So she’d raved, her voice shrill, frightening the coven of doctors and nurses who shrank back before her, her teeth bared, nails raking the air, desiring to disembowel them, gorge out their eyes, rend their pallid faces to ribbons, while a choked Dori, his face streaming tears—proud, ashamed, embarrassed, endlessly loyal, understanding, loving, devoted—literally dragged her to a waiting room where a handful of pale visitors, seeing the wretched thing that was upon them, a writhing, shrieking maniac, exited in a flash.

  “My boy! My boy! My boy!” She would not stop, her voice flooding through the hollow halls, the miles of empty corridors in that vast and hideous building. Not even Jesus calling to Lazarus in his tomb had her power, her command, her love, her desire, What then was missing? Only faith.

  As a consequence, presumably, Jamie did not rise from the dead.

  I’ll find a way!

  “I’m upsetting you.”

  It was Martin. She’d forgotten he was there, and heard him long after he’d said what he had, startling her just a little.

  “No no. Not really—if you don’t mind a few useless tears.” She wiped them away. “It’s a disease, I think, like measles, or love. Show me a kitten new born, or a sunset mixing violet with gold, or a ragged man sleeping in a doorway, and I’ll cry you a summer’s shower. Tell me about Jamie. Where you met. What he said. How he looked.”

  “Well . . .” He settled back in his chair. “First—where. The Vincenti Gallery, on Park Row.”

  Mrs. Evans laughed. “I own it.”

  Martin: “I know.”

  “—Though I haven’t thought about it in years. Heavens knows who manages it now, or what they’re selling. I’ll have to inquire. I remember, there was a fire, and things got very upset. Two Picassos were burnt, at least smoke damaged, and a Matisse. The insurance company—But nevermind that. October. Yes. I remember, because we exhibited one of Jamie’s paintings—for the fun of it!—sandwiched between Picasso and Matisse! That one there—” pointing to an opposite wall “the very one: the snow scene. More snow than scene you’ll notice, to hide the shortcomings of the artist!” She laughed again. “However, you’ll agree that the signature—his initials, are blindingly legible and bold: Jde VR—de Vinaz Rojas. He liked his father’s name.”

  Her eyes, briefly on the painting, now returned to Martin. It seemed impossible to tell this odd young man anything about herself he didn’t already know, but she felt inclined to mention, before he spoke again: “Evans is my maiden name. Having survived three husbands, I thought I’d give precedence its due and again use it last. My full name . . .” she paused, “I don’t know why it pleases me—I suppose because it sounds so absurd—is Carma de Vinaz Rojas Vincenti Harrison-Smith Evans!”

  She smiled her most radiant.

  “But about Jamie . . . ?”

  It was a large Kandinsky (Martin said), “I believe one of his women—all streaked red and black, blue, yellow, green. Thickly painted, smeared; you know how he is, or was . . . ”

  Mrs. Evans waited.

  “Well, Jamie and I stood looking at it; he amused and perplexed, wandering back and forth, touching a blob of paint, actually straightening the frame on the wall, quite as if he owned the gallery, which, in a way, though I didn’t know it immediately, he obviously did . . .”

  Waited.

  “I had no idea who he was until after I’d left—some precocious youngster hung up on painting, but then I remembered a photo of you and him, just the previous day in a newspaper, attending . . . some society bash or other. So, of course, I made the connection: Vincenti, and his straightening the painting with such an air of—possession.”

  “You said you spoke. He spoke.”

  “Yes, but—it was just a small joke between us. He simply . . . simply asked me how I liked it: the Kandinsky, and I . . . I said that I hated it; which I did.”

  “No no. You’re des
cribing, not saying his words. Tell me again. I want to know them, exactly; his words, their inflexion, his manner.”

  “Well . . . ”

  Martin blinked, swallowed, and seized the opportunity. He rose, pushed back his chair, became the perfect mime he could be, the superb actor, creating the gallery, the painting, Jamie, himself.

  “‘How do you like it?—do you like the Kandinsky?’ That’s what he said, not with a smile, but a grin; he was a boy who grinned, the left side of his mouth going up a little higher than the other. I said—‘I hate it.’ And I did. To which he replied: ‘How do you know? Are you sure? Because, just before you came in, I hung it up-side-down.’”

  She had no clear idea of why she agreed to see him again. In retrospect, their mutual desire seemed tagged to something cheap and sensational.

  The games they finally played were games of desperate people, those who are weary, bored, cornered, feeling cheated by life; shallow, meaningless Pinteresque pauses and glances creating mystery where none existed at all, “smart” show-off repartee and barbed epigrams tossed relentlessly in a sea of incipient sadomasochism.

  But how could she think or consider things rationally at all? He had exhausted her, leaving her weak and without defenses, his persuasiveness overpowering—a salesman so extraordinary one couldn’t possibly resist. Whatever he was selling, and exactly what got confused after a while—“I’ll buy it!” she thought; “anything, as long as he leaves now and lets me rest.”

  The confusion—the “what” of what he was selling lay in the greedy multiplicity of roles he wanted to play: primarily and absurdly her “son” of course, whatever that could mean under the circumstances to a man his age and a woman hers. But also, although he was circumspect and carefully euphemistic, a kind of carte blanche “friend” and “escort”—surely (though he might pretend otherwise) none other than the Paulo, Raphael and Mario he had named, albeit he had superlative credentials: youth, grace, wit, charm, good manners (when he desired) and exceedingly fine looks.

 

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