He put on his silver-rimmed bifocals and peered at me over the top. “They’ll be very quiet,” he said with his diffident smile. “They’re good kids. I had no choice.”
“I don’t mind. I’m used to it.”
That was automatic politeness. I am not used to small children around the house anymore. I have children myself, twin sons, but they are grown up, in college now, and quite able to take care of themselves. They have not been around the house for a very long time. My husband took them and left, years ago, when it became clear that I was choosing perfection of the work rather than of the life. True, I was a good provider, he said, but he needed more than that. Warmth, companionship.
From the dining room table I could see into the kitchen where the three ruddy robust boys were playing cards. Go fish or rummy—they each held seven cards. A little young for cards, weren’t they? Well, my accountant was noted for his crafty intelligence. It shouldn’t surprise me that his children were the same. The slender, pale boy who resembled his father was drawing an abstract, geometric design with crayons on a sheet of white paper, and the girl was breaking off pieces of her cookies and eating them in minuscule bites, staring straight ahead with a sly, ruminative expression. Her oily brown hair fell over her cheeks, and every now and then she wiped her fingers on it. I could give her a napkin, I thought, but we were in the middle of a technical point about foreign sales, and besides, she seemed like the kind of little girl who would not willingly accept a napkin, who preferred using her hair.
For about fifteen minutes he explained and advised while I nodded soberly and assented, but I was distracted by a rumbling noise, like heavy things being moved some ways off. All week long, outside in the hall and on the landings, men had been installing and painting new window frames. They must have to work on Sundays too, in these inflationary times. I used to work on Sundays myself before I got sick, not out of financial need but out of compulsion—a frenzy to make up for years when I hadn’t worked at all. There was also a muted sound of footsteps, most likely on the roof—I live on the top floor. Lately men had been up there adjusting the television cables, and on warm spring mornings like this one, some of the younger tenants go up to sun themselves.
Suddenly a high and pathetic wail pierced the air. We dashed into the kitchen and found the little girl huddled in a corner between the refrigerator and a china closet, hugging her arms close to her body. Her face was screwed up in despair, and as she wailed she stamped one foot rhythmically on the floor.
“What is it? What is it, sweetheart?” my accountant cried, rushing over and taking her in his arms.
I sensed something specious about her wails. Having had children, I am a connoisseur of their cries. These had erupted too suddenly and at too high a peak; they had been aimed too carefully in our direction. The stamping foot wore a white anklet and a black patent-leather Mary Jane. It looked odd, like some lone, detached thing pounding obsessively, like a heart in a researcher’s jar.
“I want to go home,” she wailed. “I don’t like it here. There’s nothing good to eat.” She rolled her eyes towards me accusingly.
“Didn’t you like those cookies?” I asked.
“No. They were disgusting.”
I looked over at the table. Her cookies were gone and in their place was a perfect ring of golden crumbs. The other children, oblivious of her wails, were still absorbed in their card game and abstract drawing.
“But you ate them.”
“I didn’t realize they were disgusting till after I ate them.” She rolled her eyes again, with her head slightly tilted. A very knowing, almost decadent glance. For a moment those were the eyes of a forty-five-year-old woman, cannily assessing her power.
“What a silly thing to say,” said my accountant. “That makes no sense at all, Erica.” Or Angela. I could never quite make it out.
Her remark didn’t seem so silly to me. I could remember feeling the same way about several of my own experiences, though not cookies. Her words and her mature glance interested me, and while my accountant tried to soothe her and at the same time admonish her rudeness, I said, “I have apples. Maybe you’d like an apple better. Also Doritos, but I happen to think they’re disgusting. How about an apple?”
“I don’t like apples. I happen to think they’re disgusting too.” And then, after a brief struggle of the facial muscles, she finally smiled unwillingly at her own absurdity. I smiled back. All three of us began to laugh. But when she saw Ron and me exchange a wry private look, the way grownups do at the caprices of children, she stopped laughing and stamped her patent-leathered foot again. In the distance, the rumbling, bustling noises got louder, and the footsteps sounded closer.
“Now cut this out, Angela” (Erica?), Ron said, “and behave yourself. There’s not a thing wrong with you. This is all an act.”
Slowly and deliberately the girl sank to the floor, sliding her back against the refrigerator till her bottom hit the linoleum. She hugged her knees to her chest, pulled her white flowered dress modestly around them, put her thumb in her mouth, and bent her head.
My accountant squatted down to her level. “Sulking is no fun,” he said gently. “Wouldn’t you rather read one of the books you brought along?”
The oily hair swung four times from side to side.
I was about to say something in defense of the cookies, Pepperidge Farm Capri, and really very good, when all at once there came muffled sniffs and sobs from behind us. The green-eyed boy who resembled my accountant was hunched over the kitchen table, weeping breathily.
“I can’t believe this,” Ron said. “They’re usually so good. I can take them anywhere.”
I shrugged. I tire easily these days and all I wanted was to get the accounting done with. Besides, I had a feeling that the girl, huddled on the floor, was peeking at me through her hair, waiting to see what I would do. The children might be in collusion, testing me in some way, but I had no idea how to behave to pass the test. There was nothing phony about the boy’s sobs, though. My accountant must have felt that too: he sat down at the table, stroked the boy’s head, and whispered something.
The three dark-haired robust boys continued to play cards, and I wondered what imminent scene they had in store. They might be triplets, yet my accountant had never mentioned having triplets, and it is the sort of thing one would mention, especially to someone who has had twins. They weren’t identical—one’s face was more round and merry, another had a faint cleft in his chin, and the arch of their eyebrows was not alike—but there seemed to be some visceral bond. When one smiled the others smiled too. They smiled in unison. They had the same mother, at the very least. Ten months apart? He had certainly kept her busy.
I went over to the weeping boy. “What’s the matter? Can I do anything?” Not the cookies again? That would be too much.
The boy left his father’s embrace and went to lean against the china closet near his sister, or half-sister, who didn’t raise her head. “I’m so unhappy. I have no one. My mother is away on vacation for three weeks and my father is on a business trip in Spain.”
“Your father?” I turned to Ron. “Aren’t you his father?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” he said impatiently. “His mother just remarried, so he’s a little confused.”
“Well, don’t you think you ought to straighten him out? After all ...”
“He really knows, underneath. He’s just saying that. Don’t you know I’m your father?” he asked the boy.
“What’s the difference who is, if everyone is gone?” With moist green eyes and skin the color of ivory, his face appealed to me, as if imploring me to agree. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t tell if that version of his life was real or not. And no one but me seemed disturbed by those rumbling noises.
“But I’m not gone,” my accountant said. He sounded hurt, loving, and exasperated all at once. He took the boy’s hand in his. “I’m right here. Aren’t I with you right now?”
Turning his back on his
father, the boy blinked away tears and told me, “My father’s name is Juan Diego Cesar Romero de Castellan. He’s Spanish. From Spain.”
Again I glanced at Ron.
“It’s true.” His eyes clouded. “She married a Spaniard. He likes to pretend it’s his kid. Can you imagine? The nerve of him!”
“It’s a very long name,” I said to the boy, and I smiled.
He smiled back. His anguish seemed to evaporate. The gleam that had left his father’s eyes reappeared in his. Once more he looked cunning and inquisitive.
“A hidalgo,” I added, and immediately amended it to “An hidalgo” not pronouncing the h.
“What is that?” the boy asked.
“Oh, a fine gentleman. A knight, maybe.”
The boy grinned, and with a nervous, adult gesture, ran his fingers through his russet hair. His lips curved in irony and a shadow passed over his face, accentuating lines and deepening hollows, so that I had a fleeting intimation of those places on the face where furrows would appear years later. It was a glimpse of him as an adult, with glasses and a smooth coppery mustache and a faintly weary look, like his father.
“Do you realize,” I said to him, “that a minute ago you were crying because you were so unhappy, and now you’re laughing at a silly joke? So you see, things pass.” I felt foolish as soon as the words were out. It wasn’t at all a useful sort of thing to say to a five-or six-year-old boy. On the other hand it was a superfluous and pompous thing to say to that wry, adult face.
“Are you feeling better now?” his father asked. “I’ve told you that you’ll be with me. You’ll be staying with me the whole time she’s gone. All right? So why don’t you blow your nose and draw some more pictures.”
We returned to the dining room, to the work we had barely begun, but after a few moments the rumbling, bustling noises and the sounds of footsteps became so loud that I excused myself and started down the hall to investigate.
Three men in single file were walking out of my bedroom and towards the front door of the apartment. They were short, dark, thin men dressed in white painters’ clothes and white caps, and their shoes were spattered with paint. My face froze. Then I remembered the long fire escape outside my bedroom window, and I understood. They must have been painting the outsides of the window frames and had used my open window to get back in, the quickest, safest way. They appeared harmless and left without noticing me. It was odd that I hadn’t been told of this arrangement in advance, but odd things do happen in apartment buildings these days. Superintendents are lax and take liberties with long-term tenants. I was just beginning to breathe again, accommodating this oddness and planning to mention it to the super in a diplomatic but firm tone, when two more people emerged from my bedroom and headed for the front door. Young women, one black and broad-boned, with a large Afro, and one white and slender, with blond hair in a straggly bun. Each one wore patched blue jeans and leather boots and carried a cork board about a yard square. The black woman had a Mexican-style striped poncho over her shoulders. A moment later more painters entered, followed by more young women in jeans carrying cork boards, cardboard boxes, and shopping bags. I watched as a bustling traffic moved in and out of my apartment, the painters silent—gliding, it seemed—with their paint cans and brushes, and the young women lively and chattering, with an air of purpose.
My instinct was to call Ron, but I didn’t obey it. No, this was my place and I would handle it on my own. I strode down the hall and into the bedroom. A painter was climbing out the window onto the fire escape. The two young women with the Afro and the straggly bun were in there also, with several others. In the center of the large, bare room were things I had never seen before—green velvet cushions with fringes, and tall brass vases or urns that looked vaguely Oriental and might have been used in a religious rite; they held peacock feathers. The women were moving these objects here and there, stepping back to observe the design, moving them again.
I should have accosted them right then, but I went to see what was going on in the outside hall. I think I wanted to see how far this strangeness extended. I hoped I was not hallucinating because of the mononucleosis. I hoped the strangeness was not confined to my apartment. For the first time in a long while I wanted to feel common cause with my neighbors. Form a committee. Fight this latest infringement on tenants’ rights. I did feel relief of a sort when I opened the door. Painters, the ordinary painters I had seen all week, were working on the window frames with serene up-and-down strokes. Over near the elevator was a small crowd of very real young women, black, white, and Oriental, wearing colorful shirts and dangling beads. They carried folding tables, cartons, and bags filled with all sorts of merchandise—pots, jewelry, ceramic tiles—and they were clearly headed for my door. I realized that the strangeness had nothing to do with simplicities like inside or outside my apartment. It would extend as far as I could see. And where I could not see—well, that was like the tree falling in the forest.
I shut the door quickly and returned to the bedroom. Two young women brushed past me, and their touch, slightly electrical, shocked a response out of me.
“What’s going on here? What do you think you’re doing? This is my bedroom, not a public thoroughfare!” I said it to the large black woman with the Afro and the Mexican poncho, who had an air of authority.
“Yes, we know that.” She was bent over, rummaging through a carton, and barely looked at me.
“Well, then pack that stuff up and get out!” I managed to sound properly outraged, but underneath I was afraid. They kept unpacking their things as if they hadn’t heard.
Then the black woman stood up straight and turned in my direction. She had a square, smooth face with regal cheekbones, and seemed limitlessly self-assured. Eyeing me, she pulled off her poncho and carefully folded it into smaller and smaller triangles. At last she spoke, with the forced and finite patience one uses with a nuisance. “This is the Annual Upper Manhattan Crafts Fair, and we’re getting our stuff organized.”
“You’d better get it organized and out right this minute! I’ve never heard of anything like this. A fair! It’s a felony!”
She turned back to her work to show that the conversation was over. A few women began setting up folding tables between the vases and the green velvet pillows.
A wave of exhaustion swept over me, a common aftereffect of mononucleosis. Even so, I thought of grabbing one of the heavy brass vases and brandishing it at their heads. I didn’t. As intruders, they might be armed. Their multipocketed jeans, their loose ponchos and Mexican sweaters and colorful Pakistani shirts with endless folds could easily conceal weapons. Daggers. Even the dense recesses of their abundant hair.
I stepped back into the hall. “Ron!” I called. “Come here quick and help me!”
A moment or so later my accountant ambled down the hall.
“What’s all this?” he asked in his judicious way. Ron is not easily shocked. He works with money, after all, which represents human desire in its crudest form. For some clients he has managed to yoke into balance enormous fluctuations of investment and reward, that is, of desire and gratification.
“I don’t know. It’s a madhouse!” I waved my arms and babbled. “They say it’s some kind of crafts fair, God only knows. But look! In my apartment! I mean—how can this be? Just get them out, will you?”
As I spoke, painters glided back and forth with their brushes and cans. They ignored the young women, a dozen or so now, who were setting things up on the folding tables. My bedroom is an airy corner room, twenty-four by thirty. That they had chosen it for their fair was really a supreme irony, because I had striven so hard all these years to keep it empty, for my fantasies. My mystery stories, I mean. The room has almost no furniture. In my mind I would use it as a blank stage. I would furnish it, and it would become the setting for any scenes I imagined.
Ron gazed into the bedroom and then off to the left, into my study, a small adjoining room where I had not even thought of looking. In there were
my own cork bulletin boards with notices and clippings, my own work spread out on the desk and the studio couch. Also in there was a young woman I knew from down the street.
“That’s Penelope!” I gasped. She was setting up a loom the size of a harp, which held a half-finished rug in brilliant reds and blues. Other rugs were piled on the floor, their bright colors peeking through brown paper wrappings.
“Oh, do you know that one?” asked Ron.
“Sure, she’s a neighbor. A weaver.” I chuckled. I had never before connected her name with her trade. “Penelope. A weaver!” I began to laugh uncontrollably. “Don’t you get it?”
Ron seemed baffled, but he stared at Penelope with curiosity. I stopped laughing.
Penelope was tall and lithe, with a sheet of straight black shining hair. Her oval face was radiant; possessing a perfection of line seen in Renaissance paintings. Botticellian, but more earthy. She was perennially cheerful, the kind of person who predicts that the sun will shortly come out even on the grayest of days, which was why, though I couldn’t help liking her, I avoided meeting her on the street, especially in winter. Her vivacious greetings in that pure, ringing voice were like a shower of ice pellets, and made the cold air crackle around my ears. She believed in raw sprouts and home-baked bread. She had put up Thank You For Not Smoking signs in the lobbies and elevators of all the buildings on the block. Often I had seen her from my window, setting out at dawn in her white satin shorts, not so much jogging as breezing to the park while a wan crescent of moon still hung in the sky.
Still, her presence was reassuring. The others might be her friends. She might have told them of my spacious bedroom, which she had been in once or twice when I was sick and she kindly brought over a jar of pills from the drugstore. The fair was still an outrage, but an outrage with links to the real world. The perpetrators could be dealt with in the usual ways.
Acquainted with the Night Page 13
