The Misfortunes of Others

by Gloria Dank

  “Oh, yes, of course we are, Weezy,” the girl said.

  “Will one of you please find me a vase, so I can put these flowers down?”

  Nikki vanished into the studio and came out with a wide-mouthed green glass jar. “Is this okay?”

  “Perfect.” Weezy began to arrange the flowers. “Gorgeous, aren’t they? The first of the crop. King Alfred, large yellow trumpet. That’s how they were described in the bulb catalogue I ordered them from last fall. And look, here they are, blooming out back. A host of yellow daffodils. What is that you’re holding there, Snooky? It looks suspiciously like a present.”

  “You’ve guessed it. A gift from my sister.”

  Weezy was delighted. She took the package and began to tear at the paper. “A gift? How wonderful. But why?”

  “She said it’s to thank you for the baby’s nursery.”

  “Oh, that’s silly. But how wonderful of her. What is it? I love gifts, I can’t wait. It’s … it’s …” She lifted a pair of ceramic candlesticks from the pink tissue paper. They were an antique Italian design, with red and blue flowers. She was ecstatic. “I love them. You must tell her how perfect they are. Maya knows my taste. She knows I have a thing for candlesticks. I can’t get enough of them. I must have ten different pairs. Let me see now. How will these look here?… hmmmm … I can’t wait to see how they look with candles in them. But right now, Nikki, back to work. How are you getting along with that drawing? All right? Good. I’ll be back in the studio in a minute. As for you, Snooky, thank you so much. Now please get out of my house. I can’t concentrate on work when there’s visitors around. Give your sister a kiss for me. How’s she feeling?”

  “About the same.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it. Give her a kiss. Now shoo.”

  “Any more strange phone calls, Weezy?”

  “No, thank God. Don’t the three of you have anything better to think about? Tell Maya to stop fussing over me, it’s ridiculous. Now shoo, I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Okay.”

  On his way to the front door, Snooky nearly bumped into a young woman who was hurrying down the hall with a leather portfolio in her hand. She pulled back and drew herself up regally. She was almost as tall as he was, which put her at close to six feet. She had silky black hair which fell to her waist, and a proud face with strong features. Her dark eyes regarded him with distaste, as if he were some kind of strange insect which she had found devouring her rose bushes. “Who are you?”

  Snooky felt vaguely miffed by her tone. “Who are you?” he responded.

  “You’re not a new student, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Then who are you?”

  “Don’t you recognize me from TV?”

  The contempt in her eyes slowly increased as she stared at him. “No,” she said. “Should I?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “This is pathetic,” said Weezy, standing in the door of the studio with her arms crossed. “Pathetic. Two young people, supposedly adults, unable to manage the most basic introduction. Jennifer, may I present my friend Snooky Randolph. Snooky, this is a student of mine, Jennifer Zalinsky. You’re late, Jennifer. Nikki’s been here for half an hour already.”

  The young woman brushed past Snooky, her long dark hair flying. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. I read the train schedule wrong, and then I had to wait forever for a cab at the station. I’m sorry, Weezy, because there’s all this stuff I have to discuss with you …”

  The studio door closed behind them.

  “Yes, I knew Weezy had some students,” Maya said. “What about it? So one of them’s six feet tall? So what? Were you threatened by that? Is she attractive?”

  “Uh-huh. Like some kind of exotic model,” said Snooky.

  “I see.” Maya chewed thoughtfully on a piece of frozen pita bread. “Do you absolutely have to get involved with various trashy women every time you visit us?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry, she’s not my type at all. And I’m willing to bet I’m not hers. She looked at me as if I were a rare mold. Maya, that bread isn’t defrosted yet. Get a grip on yourself. I’ll be serving it at dinner.”

  “I thought you were devoted to Weezy. I thought you promised her your life.”

  “I am devoted to Weezy, but it’s an unrequited love. A twelfth-century Eleanor of Aquitaine and her chevalier kind of romance.”

  Maya pried off another hunk of frozen bread and inserted it into her mouth. “I wasn’t aware of Eleanor of Aquitaine ever having an unrequited love. I thought she was married twice.”

  “Think of all those years shut up in the tower. What’s the matter with you, Missy? Didn’t you go to college?”

  Maya rested her head on her hands. “I can’t keep up this smart repartee anymore, Snooky. I feel too sick. My life is at an end. All I’m good for is sitting here eating this rock-hard piece of pita bread.”

  “Your life is just beginning, Missy.”

  “My whole consciousness is focused on my stomach.” She took a piece of bread, swallowed and gagged slightly.

  “So? Now you and Bernard have something in common.”

  “I’m tired of hearing you imply that Bernard lives for food. Bernard does not have a weight problem. He burns it off.”

  “That’s right.” Snooky expertly sliced an onion. He ladled some soup out of a steaming tureen, blew on it and tasted it. “He burns it off sitting in his study thinking about lobsters.”

  “It’s true,” Maya said miserably, “I don’t think his work is going very well.”

  “His work never goes well, but he always gets it done on time. I wouldn’t worry. You have other things to think about these days.”

  “He can’t come up with a name for the lobster. You can’t write a book about a character with no name.”

  Snooky lifted a lid and examined the contents of the pot. “Are you positive you’re up for curry tonight?”

  “As long as it’s not greasy. I can eat spicy foods, I just can’t stand anything that’s the least bit greasy. I had some falafel the other day, I thought it was going to kill me. Rolling waves of nausea, like the ocean.”

  “How poetic. How about Henry?”

  Maya was disconcerted. “Henry?”

  “For the lobster.”

  “Why Henry?”

  “I don’t know. It always seemed to me like a good name for an invertebrate.”

  “I think Bernard is looking for something more … you know … more lobsterlike.”

  “How about Janie?”

  Maya was irritated by this. “Janie? Snooky, what is wrong with your head? What in the world is lobsterlike about Janie?”

  “Sophie?”

  “I don’t want to discuss it anymore. There is nothing in the least bit lobsterlike about Sophie. Sophie is a perfectly lovely name. In fact, it’s one that we’ve considered for the baby.”

  “Oh, really? What else have you considered?”

  Maya turned suddenly secretive and vague. “Oh, you know. Names. The usual names. We don’t want anything too different. Too unusual.”

  “That’s good. Pick something proud, Missy. Something to carry on the family tradition.”

  “Something like Snooky?”

  “Nothing wrong with Snooky. It’s better than the alternative.”

  “Arthur?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ve never understood why you always hated your name so much. It’s a lovely name. Arthur. It resonates.”

  “I’ve never liked it. I never felt it was me. The true me. The me underneath. What do you think of this curry?”

  She tasted it. “Delicious, Snooks. As always.”

  “Rolling waves of nausea?”

  “None.”

  Bernard, when he heard about it over dinner, was pleased with the name Sophie. “That’s perfect,” he said with enthusiasm. “Sophie. It has all the right connotations.”

  Maya gazed at her husband in astonishment. “What connotations?
”

  “You know. Lobsters, and fins, and … you know.”

  “Lobsters don’t have fins, Bernard,” said Snooky, carrying the soup tureen in from the kitchen. “Back to the drawing board.”

  “Well, you know.”

  “I don’t know,” Maya said. “All I know is that we were considering it as a name for the baby. And now it’s perfect for a lobster?”

  “Sophie was never a first choice for the baby.”

  “I liked Sophie. Sophie Woodruff. It’s a beautiful name.”

  “Too many f sounds,” said Snooky. “Sophie Woodruff. No, no, Missy. Think again.”

  “Sophie Constance Woodruff,” said Maya tearfully. Constance was their mother’s name.

  “Beautiful, and touching, but not quite right, if you ask me.”

  “I didn’t ask you,” said Maya, tears rolling down her cheeks, hormones thundering in her veins. “I never did ask you. You with your criticisms of the f sounds, and Bernard naming our baby after a lobster. I hate both of you.”

  “Fine,” said Snooky, ladling soup into her bowl. “Try this soup. I guarantee it will bring calmness and peace to the household.”

  Maya wiped her face with her napkin. She grudgingly dipped her spoon into the bowl. An expression of beatific calm spread over her sharp, worry-worn features. “Delicious. And nutritious. It tastes—I don’t know—like mother’s soup. What is it?”

  “Your favorite. Celery soup. I saw three tons of it in the refrigerator and decided I had to do something to correct the situation. Not bad, is it?”

  “It’s wonderful. What do you think, Bernard?”

  But Bernard was far away, his lips moving slightly, his gaze focused out the dining room window.

  “He’s gone,” Snooky said. “Far away in lobsterland. I told you Sophie was a perfect name. Have some bread, Maya, it’s nice and warm now.”

  The next day Snooky picked up the phone after lunch and dialed Weezy’s number.

  “I’m tired of cooking and cleaning for this household,” he told her. “Can I come over and drink some of your wine?”

  “Of course, sweetie. Bring your sister and Bernard.”

  “Maya’s upstairs lying down, digesting her lunch. Bernard’s in his study planning the route of a lobster migration.”

  “What fascinating lives you all lead. All right, so it’s just you?”

  “Just me.”

  “Come on over. I have a couple of students here, but we’re almost done.”

  When Snooky walked into the studio twenty minutes later, Weezy was conferring over a painting with a tall young man whose torn T-shirt did nothing to hide his well-muscled physique. In the corner, hunched over an easel, was a sweet-faced old lady with a cane.

  Weezy was in the middle of a thought and did not like being interrupted. “Oh. It’s you,” she said ungraciously.

  “It’s me.”

  She waved her hand and performed perfunctory introductions. “Snooky Randolph. Elmo Oliveira. Snooky. Mrs. Castor.”

  The students nodded and turned back to their work. Snooky lounged around for a few moments; then, seeing that the lesson was not in fact coming to an end, he went out on the deck and sprawled in one of the lounge chairs, lifting his face to the unseasonably hot sun.

  He slumbered for a few minutes; like a cat, he could fall asleep anywhere, at any time. When he opened his eyes, he felt disoriented. He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes had gone by. Stretching, he yawned hugely and then went inside to poke around in the refrigerator. He poured himself a glass of orange juice. Hearing voices from the studio, he wandered back in.

  Weezy and the young bodybuilder known as Elmo were having a heated argument over a painting.

  “No, no, no,” Weezy was saying, raking her hands through her hair until it stood out in a frizzy aureole around her face. “No, Elmo, that’s all wrong. You can’t do things at random, there has to be a vision before you start …”

  “Who says, Weezy? Where’s the room for creativity then? What’s wrong with doing it that way?”

  “Creativity comes from the moment, but there has to be a glimmer of purpose, surely you see that …”

  The sweet-faced old lady was packing up her paints and brushes. She seemed to be unaffected by the sight of Weezy and Elmo shouting at each other.

  “I’ll be going on my way now,” she said mildly.

  Weezy raised her voice. “Haven’t I taught you anything? You can’t just toss paints at a canvas, that’s not art—”

  “That’s not art?” the young man said incredulously. “Where have you been, Weezy, living with your head under a rock? Let me take you to a museum or gallery sometime—”

  “Thank you so much for the lesson,” the old lady said in bell-like tones. She took her leather portfolio and her cane and edged past Snooky. He held the door open for her. “Thank you, young man.”

  “I would get going while the going is good.”

  She smiled at him, her face wrinkling into a thousand little fissures. “What, that? That’s nothing. They do that every time. See you next week, Weezy.”

  “Good-bye, Mrs. Castor. Good work. Elmo here could learn something from you. See you next week.”

  Mrs. Castor crept away down the hall. Elmo, his huge arms crossed and the veins across his biceps bulging out monstrously, was towering over Weezy in a threatening manner. Weezy, uncowed, was shouting up at him, like a mouse threatening a skyscraper.

  “You never learn! You are the most bullheaded, the most ignorant—”

  “I don’t have to listen to this—”

  “You are driving me slowly crazy, trying to teach you a thing or two—”

  “You don’t have anything to teach me, I’m better than you are anyway—”

  “I don’t know why you came here in the first place—”

  “Well, neither do I—”

  “I feel like pounding your face in—”

  “I could crush you,” Elmo said, his face red, “flat as a pancake, and not even feel it.”

  Weezy was beside herself. “I dare you to do it! Go on, you big lug! I dare you!”

  “This is ridiculous,” said Elmo. He packed up in a huff and left. The front door closed with a loud bang. Snooky could imagine him, muscles bristling, striding off down the street.

  Snooky and Weezy looked at each other.

  “You’ve enrolled Grandma Moses and the Terminator as art students?” said Snooky.

  Weezy patted her hair into place with a careful hand. She went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and poured herself a large glass of ice water, then went back into the studio and methodically began to clean up her paints and brushes. She stacked Elmo’s work against the wall along with Mrs. Castor’s, put her supplies away in a large wooden cupboard, and hung up the light blue smock she always wore when she was working. Then she went into the living room, sat down on her white overstuffed couch, kicked off her shoes, put up her legs and sighed.

  “He’s so talented,” she said admiringly. “He’s going to be big. Very, very big.”

  “Elmo?”

  “Yes, of course Elmo.”

  “I have news for you, Weezy. He’s big already.”

  “Oh, he’s going to be famous. Far more famous than I am. I don’t have one-tenth his artistry, his vision. He’s going to be huge. I should convince him to give me some of his paintings now, so I can sell them later and make my fortune. He’s working on one called ‘Girl in White’ that’s absolutely breathtaking. Did you see it? That’s the one we were talking about in there. I should beg him for it right now, before he’s even done.” She sighed again, comfortably, and dabbled a finger in the ice water.

  “So what was all the shouting about?”

  Weezy looked at him vaguely. “Shouting?”

  “Yes.”

  She waved a hand in the air. “Oh, that’s nothing. That’s how he and I communicate. I’ve known him for years. You know I have a thing for younger men. I keep telling him the only way I can get
through to him is to shout as loud as I can. He’s so stubborn, the big lunk. Looks are deceptive, though. Very deceptive. Inside, he’s a sensitive person. And a wonderful painter.”

  “I’m jealous.”

  “Not as jealous as you’re going to be when I tell you that he’s Jennifer’s boyfriend.”

  “This comes as no surprise to me. He’s the only one tall enough for her. And they have the same sort of surly, misanthropic expression in their eyes.”

  Weezy smiled. “She’s not for you, anyway. Take my word for it. Jennifer needs someone like Elmo who is as interested in art as she is. You don’t know the first thing about art, do you?”

  “Gouache.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Gouache. I know the word ‘gouache.’ ”

  “It’s not enough,” Weezy said regretfully. “I’m sorry, but it’s not enough.”

  “Oh, well.”

  “You’re young. You’ll get over it. You didn’t have time to fall in love with her yet, did you?”

  “Weezy, I didn’t even like her. I liked that other student, what’s her name, Nikki, a lot more. At least she seemed like a decent human being.”

  “Oh, Nikki. That’s her problem. She’s too decent.”

  “Too decent?”

  “Oh, she’s always doing for everybody else, always putting herself last. She doesn’t take care of herself at all. She’s too damned nice, I can’t stand it. You know, a real martyr type.”

  Snooky shrugged. “I don’t understand what you and Maya have in mind, setting me up with everyone I meet. You know, I only have one plan right now.”

  “Yes? What’s that?”

  “It involves exerting all my considerable charm on you while I’m here.”

  She shook her head and laughed.

  “Any more of those mysterious phone calls, Weezy?”

  “Oh, no, no, no. I’m sure Bernard has frightened whoever it was away. I’m so glad he answered the phone. Anyone else would have hung up immediately, when the caller didn’t say anything.”

  “True.”

  They sat quietly together, in companionable silence.

  “How’s your sister?”

  “I hate to say this, but sick as a dog. Sick as a dog, and cranky to boot. She seems to be appreciating my efforts less and less as the days go by. I feel undervalued.”