On Bear Mountain

by Deborah Smith

  Quentin had just rounded the corner of the street in front of that bakery. He had been at the library studying and was carrying an armload of books home for a physics test. He looked down the street and saw with horror that Meyer hadn’t lied, the annoying little prick. Piled on the sidewalk in front of the apartment’s stoop was a small mountain of Riconni possessions — furniture, Papa’s table sculptures, clothes, Mother’s books, pots and pans, and so much more — spilling into the street like garbage.

  He broke into a run, tossing his books onto a bin of apples outside a grocery he passed, dodging people going about their afternoon business on the crowded sidewalk. Those people drew aside, clutched their belongings, looking around hurriedly for a policeman. He was fifteen years old now, more a grown man than a boy, muscled and tall. The look on his face frightened them.

  Mrs. Silberstein, old and plump and dressed in a bright flower-print housedress with soup stains on her apron, stood guard over the belongings, using a closed black umbrella as a weapon. Mother had done a thousand kindnesses for the elderly woman, looking in on her when she was ill, bringing her food, running errands. Quentin had often helped. Mrs. Silberstein was the closest semblance to a grandmother he had.

  “Get back, get back!” she shouted at a trio of brawny young men. They grinned at her and darted their hands out, as if dueling. “How dare you!” she told them. “I’ll whack you if you break anything else!” Papa’s plaster copy of the Picasso Head of a Woman lay in chunks on the pavement, like some burst-open melon with dusty white innards.

  Quentin plowed into the group with a low growl of fury, fists swinging. Two of the men landed on their backs, one with a bloody nose and the other clutching his groin. The third, however, caught Quentin with a fist to the side of the head, and he went down on his knees. By the time his vision cleared all three men were gone, and Mrs. Silberstein bent over him, cooing in Yiddish and anxiously stroking his face.

  “Poor boy, oh poor boychik,” she moaned. “I called your mama thirty minutes ago. She’ll be here any time, now.”

  He staggered to his feet. Determined, dizzy, swaying, he pulled off his denim jacket, gathered the broken plaster sculpture, and wrapped the pieces for safekeeping. “Please don’t tell her I was fighting.”

  “Of course not! But those dirty gonifs got what they deserved!” Mrs. Silberstein made a spitting sound of disgust.

  A cab pulled up. Mother got out, fumbling the handful of quarters — her lunch money — that she poured into the cabbie’s impatient palm. Quentin braced his legs and handed the ruined Picasso to Mrs. Silberstein, who cradled it like a baby. When Mother saw him, and then looked at their belongings, her face went stark white.

  “I’m going to take care of this, Mother,” he said firmly, as if he had any way of doing something.

  Moving like a statue, she held out both hands. She plucked a jumbled book from the mess, straightened its bent pages, closed its cover, then drew herself to her full height. “You stay here and look out for our things,” she told Quentin. “I’m going to talk to someone about a small loan. Enough to cover the back rent. Then we’ll get these things upstairs somehow, and we’ll be fine. Your father won’t ever have to know. Mrs. Silberstein, I can’t thank you enough for helping.”

  “How can I not help? You’re like family. I’m sorry I don’t have the money to loan.”

  “Just thank you for caring.”

  Quentin stepped forward as his mother turned to leave. He churned with misery and frustration. “You’re going to Siccone’s, aren’t you?” Frank Siccone was a pawnbroker and loan shark.

  She nodded. “Money is money. Just a utilitarian necessity. Be calm.” She put a hand along his face, met his gaze with quiet command in her own eyes, then pivoted and limped down the street, leaning heavily on her cane, her worn brown overcoat flinging back like the wings of a sparrow.

  By nightfall the apartment resembled itself again. Quentin carefully fit the Picasso’s pieces back together with glue, while Mother watched him with exhausted but satisfied eyes. Then she lay down on the living room sofa and he sat in his bedroom staring at the floor. The silence was a toxin.

  “I’m going to work for Goots,” he announced the next morning. “I’m too old for you to tell me I can’t. I have to get a part-time job, or we’ll get evicted again.”

  She put down the bread she had been slicing for toast. Laid the serrated knife aside carefully. Sat down at the empty table. For as long as Quentin could remember she had kept fresh flowers on the kitchen table, in a small crystal vase that had belonged to Aunt Zelda. “My vase was broken yesterday,” she said in a low, empty tone. “I found it under a chair.”

  Quentin winced. “Where are the pieces? Maybe I can glue them back — ”

  “No. I threw it away. Not everything can be fixed. No matter how hard you try.” She looked up at him wearily. “I have failed to fix my family.”

  He sat down across from her and grasped her outstretched hands. “You can’t fix our lives without my help. You’ve done your best. If the old man really cared — ”

  She stiffened. “What did you just call your father?”

  Quentin looked at her for a long moment, his jaw tightening. “It’s just the way guys talk. I’m sorry.”

  “In this house, he’s your father, your papa, and you show respect for him.”

  “We’re not exactly close anymore.”

  “I know that, and it worries me all the time.”

  “He’s been up at that warehouse for seven years. Seven years. It’s time for him to quit kidding himself and come back. Get a real job. Make your life easier.”

  “But you know it’s always been my choice not to tell your papa about our money troubles. He has enough on his mind. He has a gallery opening next month, and two buyers coming to visit — ”

  “And it’s my choice to go to work for Goots. If I have to let Papa go on believing he’s not ruining us — then you have to let me help. It’s only fair.”

  She shut her eyes, removed her glasses, and steepled her hands to her forehead. When she looked at him again her mouth was set, her decision made. “I want your classes to come first. I expect you to quit work if your grades drop.”

  “You’ve got my word. And my word’s good, Mother. I won’t let you down.”

  “You think your father has?”

  He said nothing, but she could see the stark answer in his face. She bowed her head in defeat.

  And so he went to work at Gutzman’s garage. “You want to work at my other place?” Goots asked slyly. “Five times the money, half the effort.”

  Quentin flipped a rubber mallet into his hands, expertly swinging it, as if it were a sword. “I just want to fix dents and paint scratched fenders. Thanks, but the other place isn’t my kind of game.”

  “Just wait. It will be,” Goots said, and laughed.

  • • •

  The next autumn there was a breakthrough in Papa’s career. He told them the widow of a businessman in a posh upstate town had fallen in love with his work. The woman decided to host a party at the warehouse, to introduce Papa to her friends in the arts community. Papa sent Quentin and Mother enough money for bus tickets, and on a warm September afternoon they left for the night’s event. Mother was excited. Quentin’s mood was lighter than it had been in years.

  The warehouse was a hulking metal and wood building aproned by a dingy parking area of cracked concrete. It squatted in a fringe of anemic pine trees at the edge of an old industrial park. But on that autumn night the big windows glowed with golden light, and cars filled the lot. The sounds of a band could be dimly heard, and inside, almost a hundred artists and art patrons milled among Papa’s statues, as waiters served them champagne and hors d’oeuvres. Mother was nervous and ecstatic. Papa looked grim and incredibly handsome in a new black suit. Women could not take their eyes off him.

  Papa’s hostess, his investor, he called her, was not exactly old, as it turned out. Mother had just assumed, because he
said she had white hair. She was a stately woman in her late fifties or early sixties, dressed in a slim black pantsuit that showed off her body, and her hair, while white, was cropped in short, fashionable layers. Damn, she’s not some wrinkled old lady, Quentin thought with surprise when he was introduced to her. “Oh, you look so much like your handsome father,” she said in a throaty voice.

  Remembering this, and thinking how funny people turned out to be when you least expected it, Quentin leaned against the fender of a car in the deepest shadows beyond the building’s lone security light. His head buzzed from a glass of champagne Papa had presented to him with manly ceremony, and with the effect of another glass he’d lifted from a tray when Mother wasn’t looking. He grinned in the darkness, then took a cigarette from his jacket pocket and lit it after expertly flicking a match against his palm. His mother would have plucked it from his lips and forced him to eat it if she’d caught him. She had done that once before. “I read doctors’ warnings about tobacco all the time,” she said.

  “Aw, Ma,” he’d replied, cocky and rebellious and still gagging on crushed tobacco. “If you listen to the screwy docs you’ll think everything’ll kill ya. Hey, I don’t booze it up and I don’t smoke dope, so what’s your problem with a cigarette or two?”

  She had stared at him in stunned silence, her ice-cold eyes like onyx. “My title is Mother,” she said finally, “and in my home you will speak correctly, enunciating your words and avoiding slang language, because you are an educated person with self-respect and respect for me. I realize that you have learned to conduct yourself like one of the neighborhood gangs when you’re outside my presence, but I will not have you turn into a street thug before my very eyes.”

  He had been embarrassed enough to apologize sincerely, but he had continued to sneak an occasional cigarette. That night when he heard people coming he quickly cupped one hand over the glowing tip and eased further into the shadows. He was frugal with his vices.

  Several of the patrons, a mixed group of men and women, strolled by and paused near a car, while one of the men fumbled in his jacket for his keys. Quentin heard a hoot of laughter. “Riconni’s work is quite good and may even be brilliant,” a woman said, chortling. “But you know she picked him for his work in bed, not as an artist.” There was more laughter.

  Quentin dropped the cigarette and came to rigid attention, listening. “Maybe he’s a legitimate discovery of hers,” one of the men suggested. “No strings attached.”

  There was more laughter. “She never invests her money without screwing the poor SOB first. Never. It’s part of the allure of the whole art scene to her. She told a friend of mine so over a few martinis one time. I guarantee you, Richard Riconni earned his keep between the sheets before she ever wrote a check to him.”

  The group said no more and climbed into the car. Quentin stumbled out of range before the vehicle’s headlights could find him. He flattened himself against the wall of the warehouse, breathing hard, his mind churning.

  This was bullshit, mean gossip, a goddamned lie. Papa would never cheat on Mother, not for money, not for his art, not for any reason. Just a lie circled in Quentin’s mind until his breathing slowed and his brain cleared. All right, think. Mother preached logic and methodical analysis. Patterns came easily to him, like stacking the building blocks with their fragile connections. He had his father’s eye for perspective, for visualizing forms, context, how a joint fit together, how a welded seam knit metal to metal at the strongest points.

  He made a simple plan. Then he lit another cigarette, squatted on his heels, and smoked in silence, his hands growing so calm that he could have cut his father’s heart out with surgical skill.

  They had splurged on two tiny rooms at a motel only a quarter of a mile from the warehouse. At midnight, Papa was still ushering out the last of his guests and closing up the building. Quentin and Mother strolled to the motel. She insisted on taking long walks as part of her daily routines, even slowed by her limp. She hummed in the pleasant September air, laughed at the moon, then mused over theories of the universe’s creation. Quentin could only manage fractured replies.

  Mother slumped contentedly in a chair by the door of her room, her simple black dress swirling around her, her shoes off and her bad leg propped on the bed nearby. “It was wonderful, seeing your father surrounded by people who understand and appreciate his work!” She sighed happily. “He sold five pieces! Five! Not for huge sums, but that doesn’t matter. The people who came here are quality collectors. They’ll talk. Word will get around.”

  Quentin stood in the center of the room. He could not sit down. His skin tingled. The walls were closing in. He went in the bathroom and changed into jeans, an old football jersey, and a jacket. Even his ordinary clothes felt coarse, as if the slightest rub could bring his blood to a raw surface. “There’s a game room around the corner,” he said. “We drove past it coming in. It’s full of kids and people — it looks fine. I think I’ll go play a couple of pinball games, all right?”

  “Oh, Quentin, it’s so late. Don’t you want to see your Papa when he gets here?”

  “I won’t be long.”

  She studied him shrewdly for a moment, then gave up. “All right, but please be careful.”

  He went out into the night, walked a dozen yards toward a corner brightly lit with a service station, a small grocery, and the game room, in case his mother was watching, then pivoted in the shadows and headed down the road that paralleled the industrial park. In a few minutes he reached the warehouse, and saw his father’s old truck parked outside. There were no other vehicles.

  His heart rate calmed slightly. At least she wasn’t here. His worst fear had not come true. Yet. The broad windows high on the building’s sides showed a faint glow of light. Quentin angled to a side door, found it unlocked, and ducked inside. He entered at a dark corner where his father stored materials. Piles of sheet metal, stacks of automobile chassis, and other items surrounded him. He began to pick his way through when he heard the crash and his father’s garbled yell.

  Quentin leaped forward then halted, staring. Papa had stripped off his jacket, tie, and dress shirt, and now stood in the middle of the floor wearing his slacks and T-shirt, stained with huge splotches of sweat. His face was contorted with fury and despair. He held a sledgehammer in both hands, and as Quentin watched he raised it over his head and slammed it down on a sculpture made of curving bands of metal. The relatively delicate piece collapsed, a huge dent appearing in its fragile design.

  Papa made a roaring sound in his throat and swung the sledgehammer again. The look on his face was diabolical, blind with emotions so painful and so stark that Quentin hunched over slightly, holding his own stomach, feeling as if he’d been punched. What was torturing Papa? The night had been a success, he’d sold his work, he’d made a few thousand dollars, and gotten attention from people who mattered in the arts community. Why was he tearing everything apart?

  Quentin had come there to confront him, to ask him for the truth, but now he could only stare with fear. His father continued to utter incomprehensible moans and shouts of anger as he pounded one sculpture after another. He finally slung the massive hammer aside then grasped some of the smaller works and hoisted them, staggering, yelling, then throwing each one into the tumbled confusion of other sculptures he had beaten or turned over.

  Quentin took a step forward, thinking, I’ll hold him before he hurts himself, but then, You can’t! You can’t let him know you saw him this way! The dilemma stopped him. His father’s face streamed sweat or tears or both. He ran to his welding equipment in one corner, and began to pull tools from a wall covered with neat rows of hangers. He hurled wrenches, tongs, whatever he could grasp next.

  Quentin could take no more. Right or wrong, he stepped carefully toward his father, who did not see him, but instead drew back one powerful arm and slung a heavy pry bar as high as he could. It struck the bottom panes of a window, and the thick industrial glass shattered into glitte
ring pebbles, falling like a hard rain. Papa sank to his knees, suddenly quiet, and bent his head into his hands.

  “Angele,” he groaned.

  Quentin’s head reeled. This was about Mother, and this was about the other woman, too. About shame and frustration. Whatever he’d come to say to his father was useless, and the question he’d come to ask had been answered. Quentin backed up slowly, silently, and left the warehouse through the door he’d entered.

  He was shivering. He dragged his hands over his wet face. “Goddamn you, Papa,” he said brokenly, both hating and loving him, wanting him to suffer and wanting to save him from himself.

  In the end, Quentin simply walked back to the motel, then past it to the game room, where he feigned an interest watching other people play the machines. When he returned, his father’s truck sat in the parking space out front and his mother peeked out through their darkened doorway. “Your papa’s sound asleep,” she whispered. “He’s exhausted. I gave him some aspirin and rubbed his back. He pulled a few muscles moving some sculptures around after the crowd left. We’ll see you in the morning, all right?”

  “Fine,” Quentin said, and went to his own room.

  He lay fully dressed on the unmade bed, sleepless in the dark, numb, composed, dying inside. He would never ask his father about this night, and his father would never tell him. But it would always be there, between them.

  CHAPTER 4

  Out in the ordinary world, hippies were said to be running around everywhere, the Arabs were said to own all the oil, every major public event (even the Mountain State graduation) featured a naked man streaking, and President Nixon was about to resign. I had my own problems.

  I hid in the ferns by the creek, accompanied by the farm cats, a few of Daddy’s particularly adventuresome pet hens, and the shaggy farm dog, Bobo. I carried Daddy’s small box camera on a strap around my neck. I was hunting for photographic proof of Granny Annie.