And on the subject of crying out loud? Sam and Libby sometimes could hear their son and Summer Girl thumping away. They found the noise intrusive, actually loathsome, but they chose to say nothing about it. They could only wait it out, ride summer’s slow slide into autumn and peace. Matters concerning sex were difficult for Sam and Libby to discuss, as were all of the other bodily functions, and their reaction to this neighborhood girl bunking in with their boy night after night, using the apartment’s one bath, scurrying around in a towel and flip-flops, shaving her legs, applying her mascara, joining them for breakfast, coming home in the early evening with little goodies like soaps and fancy jams pilfered from the hotel where she worked, their reaction to her basically becoming a member of their household was to say nothing. It was a situation with an expiration date; if there was one thing that could be depended upon, it was time passing. They registered their annoyance and embarrassment via long pauses, and the occasional pointed question. Some of these pointed questions were directed at Thaddeus, such as, How is it you never seem to have money and we’ve been paying you at the bookshop all summer? (“Because you put the mum in minimum wage, Mum.”) But mainly the questions were directed at Grace, and the queries ranged from curiosity about her mother, whom they had yet to meet, her brother, whom they sensed was involved in illegal activity, and her education. She had tried to pass herself off as a student at the Art Institute, which was not exactly the London School of Economics, or the University of Chicago, or even the University of Michigan, but it was, as art schools went, a good one. However, upon further questioning it was revealed that Grace was taking only one summer evening class at the Art Institute. And the kicker was this—the girl had not even graduated from high school.
It was all quite obvious—though more to Libby than to Sam: the girl was a climber, and though the Kaufmans were merely middle class (or maybe a sniff or two higher), to scrappy, skinny Grace Cornell, Thaddeus was a catch. Sometimes she spoke like a girl from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, which was what she was, whose g’s were lucky to make their way to the end of a gerund, and sometimes she tried to sound like that skin-and-bones actress from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
“Grace,” Libby called from the kitchen, as she and Mrs. Thomas prepared to bring out the food for the farewell brunch, “I hope you come and visit us at the store from time to time after Thaddeus leaves. Just because he’s off in New York is no reason for you to be a stranger.”
“Thank you, Libby,” Grace said in a quiet voice, as if she did not care if she was heard or not.
“In case you’re wondering what kind of Jews we are, here’s your answer,” Sam said to Grace, with a voilà wave toward the platter of bagels and lox Libby was placing before them. He was dressed for the heat in loose-fitting slacks and a sheer guayabera shirt through which his shaggy chest could not be ignored. He was a large, shambling man, with a high forehead and sleep-deprived eyes. He shaved daily, sometimes twice a day, and never failed to miss a spot.
The bagels, big, bloated Chicago bagels, were ready to eat, schmeared, loxed, onioned, tomatoed, and cut into quarters—no muss no fuss. The guests received them eagerly and with pleasure, except for Mr. Thomas, who frowned at his bagel and pulled it apart to inspect what was inside.
Grace’s hand hovered over the platter, deciding which one to choose, and Thaddeus looked on with keen interest. She always tried to choose the best one; she was never on automatic pilot. Libby kept her eyes on Thaddeus while Grace deliberated. See what you’ve gotten yourself into?
“We’re bagels-and-lox Jews,” Sam said to Grace. He felt sorry for her. Awkward, pretentious little shiksa. Sweet, though. “Here, we’re Jews of the belly and the book—but not the Bible, not the Torah, or any nonsense. Real books make real Jews, that’s what I say.”
“The old Sam Kaufman would have had something to say about that,” chided Margie Mendelsohn. “Who used to wear the little beard like Trotsky himself.”
Trotskyism ended with Hannah, and by the time of the Chicago riots at the Democratic National Convention in ’68, Sam and Libby were no longer calling themselves socialists. They didn’t even want to call themselves Democrats anymore—the Dems had seemed weak-kneed and complicit, aiming their outrage at the city’s mayor and its police force, who admittedly were ham-handed in the face of student revolt, but the idiot liberals were doing what idiot liberals did best, namely wringing their hands and getting it all wrong. In the case of the so-called hippies and yippies, the liberals failed utterly to realize this new crop of so-called leftists were basically barbarians. Stalinoid, narcissistic, violent, and entitled, antagonistic toward Israel, and actually rooting for a Red takeover of Southeast Asia. Back in the old days, Sam and Libby used to say humanity’s choice was socialism or barbarism. Well, socialism was a dead letter but barbarism was alive and kicking.
“So tell me, Grace,” said Herman Mendelsohn, who seemed to know a little bit about nearly everything, “are you related to the Cornell after which one of our great Chicago streets is named? That of course would be Ezra Cornell, of Cornell University fame. And who also founded Western Union.”
“I’ve never received a telegram,” Thaddeus interjected. He had just noticed Hannah, slipping out of the room, holding a bagel in one ghostly hand, a paper napkin in the other, on her way to wherever it was. He closed his eyes, waited a moment, cleared his throat to make damn sure his voice would be cheerful. “It would be amazing, like being in a Fred Astaire movie or something.”
“I don’t know very much about my ancestors and all,” Grace said. “My brother’s going to get some expert to do a family tree for us.”
Mrs. Thomas rose to bring pitchers of orange juice and tomato juice from the kitchen, but Libby insisted she sit and enjoy herself. Libby returned just in time to hear the words family tree.
“Those family trees,” Libby pronounced. She was dressed festively, in turquoise stretch pants and earrings befitting a Mayan god. “All these people who think they’re special because some great-great-second cousin came over on the Mayflower. Who cares? The Jewish people have been making history for five thousand years, writing law and making breakthroughs in science and industry and music and literature, and I’m supposed to plotz over some idiot who takes a boat ride three hundred years ago?”
“I always say, I’m not a Jew, I’m a human being,” said Stanley Davidson.
“But you’re not even Jewish, Stanley,” said Sam.
“I mean if I were,” Stanley said.
Sam adopted a more brunchlike tone. “So, how was Montreal?” To the Thomases he said: “He was up in Canada.”
Davidson had been there for the Summer Games. In his youth he had hoped to go to the Olympics as a member of the fencing team, but he hadn’t made the cut. He’d gotten close, however, and his friends deferred to him about all things athletic, including baseball and chess.
“It was an eye-opener,” Davidson said. “I hate to tell you, but the Soviets were very impressive. I’m sorry, but that’s just how it was.”
“We can live with it, Stan,” Sam said.
“I lost count, they medaled so many times. The women fencers, gold gold gold. I never saw anything like it. I don’t know what they’re feeding those gals. . . .”
Libby had to interrupt. “A steady diet of Stalinist lies, I’d say.”
Grace was staring at her plate. As many times as Thaddeus had explained to her that his parents used to be followers of Leon Trotsky and in fact were anti-Communist, it still unnerved Grace to hear their guests go on about how wonderful the Russians were. Maybe, she thought, maybe they were all spies and Thaddeus was just too naive and cheerful to catch on?
“You’re going to get the real bagels and lox once you get to New York,” Margie Mendelsohn said to Thaddeus. She was a fleshy, forgiving woman. Thaddeus had always felt a special bond with Margie. He remembered telling a joke when he was ten or eleven years old to a roomful of his parents’ friends and her being the only one to respond, how her gr
eat soaring laugh rose like the clarinet in a Dixieland band while all the other musicians sat still with their horns in their laps, scowling at their shoes.
“And where will you be staying?” Herman Mendelsohn asked. “Right in the city?”
“College friend,” Thaddeus said. “He’s got a place in Greenwich Village.” He reached under the table and took Grace’s hand, squeezed it reassuringly. “There’s a million jobs in New York, and good ones. My friend Kip just got a job as a stockbroker and he majored in comparative lit. He can’t even do simple math. I’ll get a job and after a couple of paychecks get my own place. I’m thinking editor in chief at Random House.”
“Funny, funny,” Libby said. “You can always become a comedy writer.” She was back from the kitchen again, circling the table with the coffeepot. It was an old tin percolator that looked as if it had been stolen from the set of a cowboy movie. The Kaufmans had been burning coffee in it for at least twenty years. They were not poor. Their shop afforded them a decent living, yet their apartment had a bare and sullen quality to it. It wasn’t a form of Early Minimalism—they just didn’t believe in squandering money on nonessentials. Why would you piss away your money on butter if you could have margarine for a third of the price? Shampoo? Shampoo was for suckers who didn’t realize it was just soap in liquid form. What kind of half-wit would pay extra for Levi’s when the store brand at Wieboldt’s was just as blue, kept you just as warm, and was probably made in the same factory? This disdain for life’s little niceties was a daily, practical application of their otherwise dormant Marxism.
“And what about you, darling?” Margie asked Grace. “Will you be continuing with your studies?”
“I’m not rilly sure, quite yet,” Grace said. She moved her wedge of bagel and lox around her plate as if guiding a planchette around a Ouija board.
Thaddeus pressed his knee against hers. I’m right here, his leg said to hers.
“Is David Sheffield teaching human anatomy over there?” Herman asked. “Such a bright man. And a gifted teacher.”
“I’m not rilly sure,” Grace said.
“That would be a great job,” Thaddeus said, his voice booming. “Teaching anatomy. It’s not like you’d ever have to revise your syllabus!”
Grace smiled gratefully. It was what he lived for.
“She can’t be expected to know the entire staff, Herman,” Libby said. “You’re mainly a summer student there, isn’t that right, dear?” And then, to quickly cover the pettiness of her remark, Libby added, “Have you seen her work yet? It’s absolutely breathtaking. You’d think they were photographs—eggs and artichokes and what have you. All done with a pencil. Out of this world. So tell us. When did you start this? Is it a hobby, or is this something you’d like to pursue?”
“Oh pursue, definitely pursue,” said Grace. “I’ve been doing it my whole life. I’m self-taught, I guess. But I do my art every day. Even if I’m sick or having my period or anything.”
Libby’s eyes widened at the mention of Grace’s menstruation.
“Well, you’re such a lovely girl,” said Libby, the irony in her voice like a concealed weapon. “And pretty girls have so many options.”
But Grace was not going to back down. “Art is my option,” she said. “I’m not in the least bit pretty. I’m a visual person and I see myself clearly. I wasn’t cute as a little girl and I’m not pretty now.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” Sam pleaded.
“But I don’t mind it. It’s just a fact. You live in the body you’re born with. Anyhow . . .” She glanced at Thaddeus. He was looking at her with considerable amazement, as if the option of not doing everything imaginable to please Libby and Sam was being demonstrated for the first time. “I would love to be an artist,” Grace said. “I’ll just keep at it and maybe someone will discover me. That would be my dream.”
“Dreams are beautiful,” Libby said. “I wish we could all live in dreams.”
It was suddenly so quiet that when Grace put her coffee cup back down onto the saucer it clanked loudly.
Some of his friends talked about how it felt to be trapped at the parental table, and how mothers and fathers ran guilt trips if the visits were too short. Thaddeus was grateful he didn’t have that to contend with. He had told his parents that Grace was due at work at 1 P.M. and they were going to have to leave the good-bye brunch no later than noon. Grace worked in the Palmer House, the very hotel in which reporters and Democratic bigwigs watched from the windows in ’68 while the police gassed and clubbed the demonstrators on the other side of Michigan Avenue.
AT NOON, THADDEUS AND GRACE stood on the corner of Kimbark and Fifty-Fifth Street, hands linked. Not very far away was Stagg Field, where Enrico Fermi and his coworkers built America’s first atomic bomb in the squash court beneath the stadium. Thaddeus always wondered if radiation was running beneath the sidewalk, zizzing through the cement, entering his body through the soles of his feet.
“Was that awful?” Thaddeus asked.
“It was fine. I liked the part when you walked around the table and shook everybody’s hand. It was so formal.”
“I play by the rules.”
“Whose rules?”
“My parents. My poor parents.”
“Poor? With that big apartment and air conditioning and a maid?”
“I didn’t mean poor in that way. Anyhow, they sell used books. They don’t have much.”
“They have a maid. She comes every Wednesday at nine and leaves at two.”
“Anyhow, we don’t call it a maid. Housekeeper.”
“Whatever. She’s still mopping the floors and cleaning the bathroom. It’s kind of funny, them being such Communists and everything.”
“They’re not Communists. They never were.”
“Well, it’s still funny. And she never said a word and neither did her husband. I bet they would rather have been spending Sunday with their own people.”
Thaddeus wondered if there might be a bit of racism in that phrase: their own people. “They’re part of our family,” he said.
Grace laughed, but let it go at that.
They walked east to catch the number 5 bus downtown. A professorial-looking couple was walking toward them, the man balding, the sunlight throbbing in his little round eyeglasses, the woman with a straw bag and the look of an aging folk singer. They pushed a stroller with their shirtless two-year-old in it, and nodded and smiled as they passed.
“Do you know them?” Grace asked.
“Maybe they come to the store. I don’t know.”
“People like you, though. I see that. It must feel strange.”
“It’s fine. Why shouldn’t they?”
“People don’t like me. I don’t rub people the right way.”
“You do me,” Thaddeus said, wagging his brows Groucho style.
“Strangers then. When people get to know me, it’s better.”
“That kid liked you. He was looking right at you and smiling.”
“What kid?”
“Sitting in his stroller like a little king.”
“I didn’t notice. Kids are not my thing. It’s hard enough for a woman to be an artist.”
They were just then passing the building where Grace lived. Thaddeus had yet to see the inside of her apartment. It had seemed awkward and strange before, her refusal to allow him into the rooms she shared with her mother, but he no longer questioned it. He had even stopped imagining what it might be like in there—though he was sure the place was dark, untidy, sad. It had once been the janitor’s apartment until he refused to live there, saying that his doctor told him the lack of daylight was driving him into a depressed state of mind. Grace’s older brother, Liam, paid the rent, but rarely visited. She was evasive about where Liam lived; different answers were given, Boston, Mexico City, Tucson. Maybe all the answers were true, maybe none of them. Liam sold marijuana in quantities. That much he had been able to ascertain. The idea of breaking the law was terrifying to
Thaddeus, but Grace seemed to take it in stride.
THE PALMER HOUSE. GRACE HAD been working there for two years, starting off in housekeeping and more recently behind the desk in her blazer and skirt. She sometimes complained about work, because that’s what you did, but she was proud of the hotel, proud of its luxury and its history. It had been bought and sold a few times, torn down, rebuilt, renovated, modernized, and through it all, it remained a home away from home for people used to the best things—presidents who came to Chicago slept in the Palmer House, as did bankers and movie stars, Capone himself, Mark Twain, Sarah Bernhardt.
“Should I come in?” Thaddeus asked her as they approached the gilded entrance, with its carvings, its bright windows, its fairyland glow.
“Definitely,” she said.
“I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“We’re like a family here,” she said, as she took Thaddeus’s arm and led him in. The traffic hummed behind them. The heat was epic, the noonday sun. Stanley, the oldest of the bellmen, opened the door for them and touched the bill of his braided cap. Grace stood so straight she seemed an inch taller. They were on her turf now. “Here I am not liked,” she said. “Here I am loved.” She whisked Thaddeus through the lobby, her lobby, which looked like a room in a sultan’s palace, red and gold, with inlaid ceilings and soaring arches. There were still dozens of American flags, large and small, scattered through the lobby, left over from the July bicentennial celebration.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Surrender,” she said. She led him to the elevators, where the brass doors were finely etched with Art Deco designs.
Through the corner of his eye he saw the chimera of his sister crossing the lobby. He always looked. He’d looked a million times. It was a reflex.
When he turned back again, the elevator doors opened and he followed Grace in. The car was carpeted and upholstered and lit with cheerful little lamps.
River Under the Road Page 2
