Freddy leapt from the car.
“Now look vot he’s doing!” Iris screeched. That wasn’t all. The hubbub of horns from behind them got louder and meaner. Freddy could have cared less. He shook Jupiter’s hand pleasantly and invited him to come along with them. Delighted, Jupiter joined them in the back seat.
Finally, they were in the auditorium. The lights dimmed once, sending the last of them, hushed and hurried, to their seats. Carmela peeked out at them, scrutinizing the faces of these, her unworthy judges. She watched through a slit in the heavy purple curtains. Terror was what she felt. All the smugness disappeared. This had been a terrible mistake. If she could call it off, she would. There were so many things she should have rewritten. What was the matter with her?
She watched her parents take their seats in the third row, center. They were too dressed, too working class. What was her mother wearing? Was that a cape? How could these bumpkins be her parents? Then she saw her father take her mother’s lopsided hand and kiss it tenderly. Their eyes met for a moment, Stan’s and Mary’s, and she saw something there that she had missed, that she hadn’t thought to write about and that she knew, right then, was what was failing: very simply, faith.
She prayed frantically, suddenly, for that gallivanting predicted snowstorm that would send them all straightaway home. Once, as a child, unprepared for a math test, this had worked. Of course, she’d failed the make-up test as well, but by then the great terror had passed.
The audience fidgeted excitedly, noisily. They stretched and craned their necks, took off their coats, folded them into their laps, stood up and sat on top of them instead. Some jerk was selling candy before the intermission. What a moron. Where was Claire? She was supposed to be photographing everyone. She should be shooting the group of Manhattanites who’d just clattered disdainfully, rambunctiously in. She lit a cigarette. Where was Freddy? He was supposed to make sure the right people got the good seats. And where was Stefan?
“No smoking back here, Mrs. Stefanovitch,” the elderly custodian reminded her.
“Drop dead,” she said.
Backstage, in the star-determined cubby set aside for her, Narayan was filling Zinnie up with Prana.
“Prana,” he explained, “is the vital force of the body and the universe, which makes everything move.”
“Big boy,” she wiggled her eyebrows at him, “you can fill me up with anything you like.”
“Oh, Zinnie,” he said, crooking his head, “you are so very beautiful. If you go out on the stage and sing, the world will take you away from me.”
“No, it won’t.” She went and stood next to him. “It never could. Or did you forget last night already?”
“Forget?” He rushed to take her in his arms.
Whatever had they done to deserve such happiness? They stood and held each other, frightened by good fortune.
Claire was in the men’s room, photographing dorks. They lined themselves up against the white tile wall good-naturedly. They were enjoying themselves. They loved this sort of thing. Born cavorters. You had to give them credit, they did look their parts: all jazzed up and rock-and-rolly.
Over the loudspeaker crackled the last of the seventy-eights, the program’s preliminary diversion. Billie Holiday warbled “Blue Moon.”
Freddy and Jupiter Dodd were in the school kitchen, clandestinely having a solitary coffee klatch. What was astonishing was that they had always seen each other from afar and never gotten the chance to really talk.
“I mean,” Fred pulled a linen napkin accommodatingly across Jupiter’s gabardined knees. “… Of course I always knew who you were. I could hardly help that. I mean, who doesn’t know who you are? Last time I was on Mykonos—”
“You don’t go to Mykonos? Oh, not really. So do I.”
“Well, that’s what I’m saying. Last time I was there, eating fish with my feet in the water at Spiro’s, I heard you’d just left the island. I have to tell you, I was, well, upset that I’d missed you.”
Jupiter Dodd grabbed his bottom lip softly with his magnificent row of revitalized top caps.
Freddy watched him from between the blunt white cup at his lips and his heavy, lashy lids.
They were neither of them fools. Or naive. This, they both knew right away, could be it.
The lights went off and on for the last time and there was the commotion of coughing and laughs that are a prelude to any show. An extra flutter of noisy excitement rose as the news spread that it was indeed snowing outside. The late stragglers wore the proof on the shoulders of their topcoats. There were the expected groans and a smattering of enthusiastic hands rubbing together in anticipation of an early ski season, for once. Men and women cleared their throats.
A piano played from offstage and the curtain pitched, then glided open on a woman standing by a window overlooking darkest night above a lake. The lake shimmered with myriad reflections. A sickle moon and stars glittered.
Really, a mirror had been placed low on a black velvet drop cloth with appropriate holes and attached to a spotlight, but the scene looked, for all the world, like a Renaissance princess beholding her doubts in an August Lake Como.
She began to sing, very slowly, “Autumn Leaves.” A hush of unfolding magic suspended the audience. Then a man, off to the side, began to weep inconsolably.
It had an odd and disconcerting effect, and it seemed to be part of the scene, but it was only Stan.
Zinnie, singing louder and louder, appeared to grow stronger and stronger.
Carmela, sick in the ladies’ room, missed the entire opening number and only made it back for the laughs in Scene Two, where by now Portia, as Lola Schneewittchen, the Queen’s young fan, had snuck in with the professional backup singers to try out for the remainder of the Central States Tour. One singer was missing, eloped with a yogurt bacteria inspector from Madison, Wisconsin.
Because the dorks were so crude to the young girl, really coming on strong and giving her “what she was looking for, after all,” the rock star, named Alte Königen, took pity on her. Well, she liked her. She was flattered. The kid knew all her songs by heart. She decided to stick it to her band and make them eat their filthy words. She would champion the girl. She made a bet with Doc, the lead guitar player, best-looking and smart aleck of the group, that she could have this, this Lola Schneewittchen, Pygmalionized in no time at all. She would have her singing as well as any one of the other pros.
That it would backfire against her was clear to everyone but Alte Königen, but the audience loved it, especially loved Alte Königen, who they believed to be doing a great job being furious at the dorks but who, in truth, was no great actress but very angry with her father for his sobs.
Claire, back from her shoot in the men’s room, slipped into a spot in the rear. There were no more seats. She smiled with relief more than with laughter. Carmela needed success more than anyone she knew. The wish to light a cigarette materialized, then evaporated, and Claire watched, fascinated, as Oral Gratifier Number One became the conquerer. The conquerette.
Swamiji was up in front beside her parents. Look at this, she told herself, this was wonderful. Only … only what? For the first time now, she should be able to relax. Mrs. Dixon was dead. Dead, she told herself again. And the kids were safe. Did Dharma know that she was an heiress? Would the jewels go to her or would Andrew get to keep the lot? At any rate, that was a pleasant problem. At least old Dixon was dead.
Yes, a nagging voice agreed, but if it hadn’t been Dixon, that day in her home trying to kill her, who had? The fact that no one else believed her was not exactly a consolation, but perhaps they were right, no one had. Yes, that must be it. The radio had fallen of its own accord into the tub. She’d probably knocked it in herself as she’d bolted to get the ringing phone. Yes, that was it.
Claire sat and laughed with the rest of the audience as the dorks sang and danced to “Let Yourself Go.” Claire gasped along with the rest as the dorks achieved a splendid, flawless couch catapult o
n Great Aunt Greta’s couch. She remembered very well that the radio had been tucked safely away on the back of the shelf, though. Her own father had secured it there. There was no way out for it but with a good strong yank.
Well, so then, she must have yanked it with her body. No. No, that didn’t gel. She couldn’t push away the persistent feeling of something else, something palpable in the house that she’d recognized only after it had almost taken her with it. Still, tonight was tonight and the children were safe. That was the main thing. She looked for Narayan’s tall frame, for they would be sitting with him. No, there were Anthony and Michaelaen up front with her parents. Narayan must have generously given them his seat. And where was Dharma? Claire looked around. She was startled to see her in the last row, beside Andrew Dover in the aisle seat.
“Claire,” Johnny whispered urgently in her ear, “I gotta go!”
“Oh, Johnny, no, not now! You can’t!”
“It’s Red. Red Torneo. He had a heart attack. Claire, I gotta go.”
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry! Go. Go ahead. Don’t worry. Wait! I’ll come.”
“No, stay. Bad enough, I have to leave. He’s at the vet’s hospital down in Brooklyn there, on the Belt Parkway. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything. I’ll call you at Freddy’s, all right?”
“All right.” She turned around and he was gone.
She hated that, when he would take off without that special look between them. It was her own fault. She should have been more sensitive to Johnny’s old friend. She should have found the time, made the time to have him over, fuss over him a little bit. God. She’d never forgive herself if he didn’t make it. He was all her husband had on his own side, and she’d neglected him. She’d even suspected Johnny of having the beeper because of the horse. He’d known something was up. He’d told her he was worried about Red, and she hadn’t listened.
A cold misery crept through her. She felt the green stone in her pocket. She walked hurriedly out to the vestibule to see if she might catch Johnny. He was gone. She pushed the heavy school door open and beheld the swirling and profound silence of nighttime snow. Narayan stood on the corner. He looked left and right.
“Narayan!” she called.
“Ho! Claire!” He put his arms up in the air and twirled around in a circle.
She laughed. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to find Zinnie tea. She wants tea. Hot tea.”
“What about the lunch room?”
“They have only coffee. And no lemon.”
“There’s nothing open, now.”
“I daresay there is. This is America.”
“Try the bodega,” she called and pointed towards Jamaica Avenue. “That way.”
“I am gone,” he whooped, and ran and slid down past the convent towards the el train.
Claire watched him go with fond reluctance. Something in her wanted to chase after him and rev up a snowball fight.
“Narayan!” she called out.
He turned and jogged in place. “What is it, Maharani Claire?”
He got a snowball right between the eyes.
She got another back. But his heart wasn’t in it. He laughed and waved and turned and zigzagged away.
Claire turned back smiling and spotted Andrew, headed home with Dharma by the hand. She called out but they didn’t turn; they kept on walking. Andrew carried a small suitcase.
For a moment, Claire didn’t know what to think. She felt betrayed. She remembered a story her mother had told her to keep her from getting her hopes up about keeping Dharma. It was about Mrs. Cashin, years ago, who’d taken a newborn from the Foundling Home. Then, when the child was two, they’d taken it back. They took it away. Every time Claire’s mother told the story, her eyes would fill up, remembering Mrs. Cashin and her empty house, her empty baby buggy and the pain, conveyed over years and years and mother to mother. Claire stood there watching the two of them walk away into the teeming snow, and she felt so sorry for Mrs. Cashin. She raised her face and opened her mouth to the snow. Then she went back inside. Knowing they wouldn’t return, she sat down in Andrew’s seat. Portia was singing “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” rather nasally, she thought. She’d never found it a silly song until she heard her sing it. Still. Perhaps that was the point. She couldn’t see Andrew leaving just now. It was, for one thing, very rude. She wondered, guiltily, if Dharma had needed her and they hadn’t been able to find her.
“You’re Claire Breslinsky, aren’t you?” the woman beside her leaned over.
“Benedetto, yes. Née Breslinsky. I’m sorry. Do I know you?”
“I’m Dharma’s teacher,” she whispered.
“Ah. Hello.” She pointed to her chair. “She was just here.”
“Yes. What a shame she had to leave just now.”
“She wasn’t sick?”
“Sick? No, I don’t think so. Her father told her it was time to go. She seemed excited.”
“Sshhhhh!” The man in front of them turned and hissed.
They sat behaved and quiet, the two women. Then the teacher said, “I was so glad when Dharma moved in with you.”
“You were?”
“Phh. Suddenly she was coming to school in neat clothes. What a difference. Homework done.”
“She didn’t used to?”
“Lord, no.”
“Sshhh!” someone else hushed them.
Claire and the teacher half-stood simultaneously and headed, crouched, for the back where no one was. They went into the vestibule.
“I left my cigarettes inside,” the teacher said.
“Don’t smoke,” Claire said, meaning she herself didn’t and so couldn’t offer her one, then realized the woman took it as advice. What difference did it make?
The teacher hugged herself for warmth. “I hate to sound like I know what I’m talking about here,” she said, “but some kids have an orderly home life and some come from chaos. Dharma was one of those poor, unattended kids who kind of fended for herself. No parental supervision on projects, no one who took an interest in what was going on.”
She would have, though, Claire thought. Tree would have, had she lived. After she and I hung out together for a while, I would have influenced her to take more of an interest. It would have rubbed off. No one could tell her that that child was better off without her mother.
“Why, the very day that child’s mother died, there was a problem.” The teacher’s eyes glowed, warming to her gripe. Claire wondered if she’d made a mistake coming out here. “That was the first day Dharma was supposed to go home for lunch. I’d had a letter the day before, giving permission to have her released. But no one had come.” She squinched up her face. “It was one of those rare days when our school crossing guard was sick, or she would have noticed something was wrong. I didn’t even have lunch duty that day, but I just happened to look out from the teacher’s room and saw the kid standing on the corner by the school, floating up and down on her own, not knowing if she was coming or going.” She shook her head.
Claire shook hers, too. Then she said, “Miss … uh—”
“Wingertner. Mrs. Meta Wingertner. Please call me Meta.”
“Meta, that was that day? That day Theresa Dover died?”
“That very day. To tell you the truth, I felt awful. Here’s the mother at home dead. No wonder she didn’t pick Dharma up! And here I was thinking, you know, what an inconsiderate parent she was. I was burned up at her and she was dead. Tch.”
“But didn’t Dharma walk home on her own, usually?”
“Well, I guess she did. But this was lunch. I guess her mother told her to wait. And no one ever came. Isn’t it sad?”
“I have to go back in,” Claire said, suddenly cold. Then, “How do you like the play?”
“Isn’t it grand? Don’t know how we’ll get home in all this snow, though.” She gave an excited, girlish shrug. “Nice to have met you.”
“For me too,” Claire said. “Oh. Mrs. uh … Meta? Would you remember �
�� When you saw Dharma outside school, was it just as all the other children were let out?”
“Well, that was just it. She’d been waiting there for fifteen minutes, easily. I know, because I’d gone to the ladies’ for a smoke before I headed up to the teachers’ room and that’s when I spotted her. Boy. Poor kid.”
“Yes.”
They went back to their seats.
Alte Königen, the rock star, was beginning to feel jarred by her new backup singer’s successful solos. Doc the dork was shaking his head and telling her again and again how right she had been to insist upon keeping her. He strode back and forth, raving, marvelling, admitting how wrong he’d been. This new gal was just what they’d needed: new blood!
Alte Königen laughed, delightedly, and kissed both his rosy cheeks as he marched out the papier-mâché hotel-room door. His midterm break would be over and he would soon be heading back to school himself. Alte Königen stood center stage and the light changed suddenly and she looked, heartbroken, towards the empty doorway and she sang, very softly, “For Your Love.”
Claire sat, transfixed. Before the song had come to an end, Claire stood up and was out the door. She looked at her watch. She made it to her house, walking normally, in a minute and a half. She trod the easy snow across the street and banged on Andrew Dover’s door.
On Jamaica Avenue, Narayan found the bodega easily enough. He stood, shivering but happy, by the door while the chap packed him up three cups of Tetley tea. He’d found her a ripe avocado as well. A young fellow came in, oh my, he looked ill, poor fellow. And cold. Narayan was just about to ask him had he heard the latest weather report when the boy, for he wasn’t more than a boy, pulled out a .380 semiautomatic and told the man beside the cash register, “Put it in the bag. Put the cash in the bag. All of it.”
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” the frightened little man called out.
“Put the fuckin’ money in the bag,” the boy insisted. He kept moving towards the door and then back. He knocked the metal tower of potato chips on clips onto the floor.
The man behind the counter put the money in the first bag at hand. The one with Narayan’s tea. He put all the money in and then he picked up the change tray and put the money from underneath in as well. It all happened so fast. The boy grabbed the bag, ran into Narayan, ran out the door. A shot rang out. The man behind the counter was on the floor, crouched down. His brother stood in the cereal aisle. He held his Smith and Wesson .38 in front of his heaving chest. “I got him,” he said.
Foxglove Page 29
