The Girls of Cincinnati

by Jack Engelhard

  “I have a surprise for you,” she said.

  She sounded terrific. Once in a while she got that way, so warm, so giving, so loving, so uninhibited, no tricks, no games; if only I could bottle it for safekeeping. She simply let herself go, at these times, and I wondered if it was something within me, something I communicated to win this sort of affection. If so, what was I doing wrong the other times? Most of the time. Why couldn’t she always be this perfect? Why couldn’t I always be perfect?

  The big question for me was this: What made it click then but not now, or now but not then?

  Stephanie often said that love is chemistry. Well, chemistry is an exact science. Love is not an exact science.

  “You sound happy.”

  “You know those paintings I’ve been working on all these years…”

  “The ones you refuse to show me.”

  “Well I’ve decided to show them to you.”

  “Great.”

  “You won’t be too critical, will you?”

  They were on giant canvases, these paintings. I asked her how she was going to bring them over.

  “I’ve already strapped them to the roof of my car.”

  “But that’s ridiculous. Why don’t I go over to your house?”

  She’d feel self-conscious about them with her parents around…and besides, it was very late.

  She said, “You know what I’ve come to realize?”

  “What?”

  “That you’ve been the inspiration for every painting I’ve ever done. I even drew something of you.”

  She said she hadn’t painted a thing in California, but couldn’t stop since she’d been back in Cincinnati.

  “Back to you,” she said.

  I was touched. I really was.

  She asked me if I still loved her.

  Trick question?

  “Yes I do.”

  “Because I think you should only show paintings to people who love you. Paintings and poems are like dreams. Only the interpretation counts. Are you watching the ballgame? Stay put, I’ll be right over.”

  Only the interpretation counts.

  I stepped outside to behold the hills of Cincinnati, seven of them, like Rome, Cincinnati’s sister city. Cincinnati, in fact, was named after the Roman general Cincinnatus who retired from the battlefield to take up the passive life of a farmer, which also held true for the town to this day, passive and tranquil (except for a riot here and there). I suddenly loved this town and this entire universe very much. All it took was one phone call. Back when we were perfect together we shared King Solomon’s haiku – “I am my beloved’s my beloved is mine.” It started to rain. I went inside, took a shower, dressed up in fresh clothes and carefully combed my hair. I watched some more of the ballgame but wasn’t paying close attention. Futility, like these Reds in LA, can be contagious. Then I went back and combed my hair again. I decided to shave. Then I combed my hair again. This time WILD.

  I was wondering how we could hold these moments. This had to be the first discussion between us in ages where everything had clicked and I wondered what could happen to mess it up. We were so good at messing things up. What would it be this time? Always it was something unforeseen.

  It was taking her a long time to get here. I turned the sound down on the TV and put on some Brahms. I hadn’t been able to listen to music for eight months. Now I leaned back and let it sweep me along and take me places, like that country home of hers in which we had spent a magical 12 hours, even walking along a stream and discussing the children we would one day raise, me a famous actor, she a great painter. Now there – that had been a perfect day, from beginning to end.

  Even when anticipating the best, I was invariably on edge awaiting her arrival, so to pass the time I thought I’d go out and bring us back some beer, though I didn’t drink the stuff, she did, had developed a renewed taste for beer ever since California, naturally, and I found myself wondering what else went along with beer, but anyway, I decided to step out to 7-11, a bit of a walk, and it was raining. I taped a note to the door in case she got here before me with her paintings. I figured her showing me her paintings was a big moment for us, renewal, rebirth, salvation.

  Least I could do was get some beer and maybe some cookies and things.

  It was raining all right but I didn’t take an umbrella. Real men don’t use umbrellas. As I started walking in the rain Claudius, Kevin’s dachshund, began to follow me and Kevin yelled out from the window that it was all right for his dog to accompany me, since he, Kevin, didn’t want to go out in the rain to walk him. I loved the dog anyway. He sniffed everything along the way and I was afraid he might get run over, but he was a smart dog and did not venture out into the street.

  I picked up a 6-pack and as the clerk rang it up the machine, not the clerk, said, “Thank you. Have a nice day.”

  We now leave it to machines to express courtesy.

  When I got back I brushed my teeth again. Stephanie wasn’t here yet.

  Kevin asked me where his dog was.

  “Dog?”

  I never walked a dog before so I guess I forgot that when you took them out you had to bring them back.

  “Oh shit!” He ran out yelling for his dog. “In the rain,” I heard him say.

  In the rain?

  In the rain?

  Son of a bitch, it’s raining.

  It’s RAINING!

  * * *

  Dad called to ask if he was disturbing me.

  “They get killed out there,” he groaned.

  Dad was an ardent fan of the Reds. Make that passionate. Better yet, irrational. He never watched them on TV, old-timer that he was, or read about them in the papers; only listened to them on the radio and faithfully kept score of each play, as he had done nigh on 50 years. He still thought all the players were white. (Pissin’ and moanin’ was how it was in Cincinnati over these Reds. Johnny Wilder, the guy in the stock room back at Harry’s Carpet City, swore that his ulcers came from the Reds.)

  The high point of Dad’s life was when Cincinnati’s Johnny Vander Meer pitched back-to-back no-hitters a million years ago. (A feat never duplicated.) The low point was when, during an open tryout for kids, I misjudged a fly ball in the outfield, which wasn’t nearly as small and tidy as it appears on TV. A major league outfield is IMMENSE, is like WYOMING, and in this vastness you were supposed to spot a tiny ball, run it down, and catch it, too?

  “You know what it means when the Reds lose,” Dad now said.

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  But he would.

  “It means bad luck.”

  He really believed that and he even had evidence to support his view that when the Reds went bad, everything went bad. Mother died three weeks after they dumped Tony Perez. Nothing could dissuade Dad from his belief that there was a connection. Dad had predicted disaster after that misguided trade, and not just for Cincinnati, but for all America as well, and yes, the entire WORLD. (The Reds never recovered, as if cursed.)

  Subsequent wars, famines, economic plunges, earthquakes, tornadoes, typhoons, mudslides, plane crashes, hijackings, kidnappings, drug epidemics, fires, explosions, hostage-taking, public decapitations, honor killings, jihads, riots, rebellions, terrorism, school shootings and a general worldwide restiveness – proved him prophetic.

  “We need pitching,” he said.

  “We need hitting,” I said.

  We never talked about the real things, about things that really touched us, using, instead, baseball to express our emotions, though Dad had no emotions. For example, Dad was dying of cancer, and from the day they discovered it, Dad only bitched about the Reds.

  He had not been the kind of guy you’d talk to about your job, your career, your ambitions, your love life, your successes, your failures, your fears, your FEELINGS. Such stuff was too remote for him. He had done his job. Provided the semen. The rest was up to you. And if you needed help, there was always the Reds bullpen in the late innings.

  Co
uld I ever tell Dad that I maybe slew a man in New York? He didn’t even understand why I went to New York, or why ANYBODY went to New York. Cincinnati was all he knew, except for a stint in France in World War Two, which had no affect on him at all, didn’t broaden him as travel and adventure were supposed to. He came back, obviously the same way he left. International, cosmopolitan were not words you’d use to describe Dad. (Or Cincinnati.) He was a regular guy. Still wore suspenders. Never went to church, and he was a religious man, in his own way. But he never went to church. Never went to parties and when the Reds won the World Series that year, that wasn’t Dad jumping up and down in Fountain Square.

  (He stopped going to church after Mom died and stopped being formally religious after Mom died. He had always been a man of teetering faith and scoffed at church sermons as mumbo jumbo. He refused to visit Mom’s grave as that would mean she was really gone. He had to be coaxed to the funeral. He stared out the window, waiting.)

  “I’ll be over tomorrow night for about an hour,” I said.

  He took that as a warning.

  “Make it around nine.”

  The game came on at 10.

  * * *

  She arrived as if blown from a shipwreck. She was soaked from the rain, face dripping water and make-up, tears bubbling in her eyes.

  “They’re gone,” she said. “Everything’s gone.”

  She was sobbing. She needed comforting but to take her in my arms would be cheap, and what is there to say at a stricken time like this? Some people have it worse? Thank God you’ve got your health? You’ll paint again? You’re rich, you’re young, you’re beautiful, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you – what’s a couple of lousy paintings? This is no tragedy, merely a setback. But this wasn’t the time to bring that up, especially after she said that every work of art is a testimony to perfection, therefore perfect, in the eyes of the artist, and irreplaceable.

  But it hadn’t happened as I thought, for she HAD wrapped the paintings in burlap and tied them down securely on the roof of her car – or so she thought. “I didn’t count on the wind,” she said. “As soon as it started to rain – I was on the expressway – I gunned it, going at least seventy.” Knowing her, probably ninety. “I saw the clouds. I thought I could beat the downpour. Then I started feeling vibrations. I thought it was from my driving so fast. Then the wind came. Then one of the canvasses dropped and started dangling on the windshield. Oh, Eli…I was terrified. I slowed down to pull over and another painting fell off to my right side, then my left side. By the time I pulled over they were scattered all over Reading Road. I was so stupid. I tried to chase them down, until I realized, what’s the use, in all this rain. They’re gone. Everything’s gone. Oh, Eli.”

  I put on my raincoat, grabbed her and said, “Let’s go.”

  She said it was futile but I said we had to give it a try.

  I drove. She was too shaken to do anything. We got to the spot where it had all happened, walking along the side of the highway under what had become a thunderstorm. She was right. Everything was gone. Not quite. Far off, near the Exit, I had spotted a couple of the canvasses but they were so shredded from the wind and the rain that I thought it best not to draw her attention to them; the sight of them would only make it worse for her.

  We drove back to my apartment, drenched.

  “I was so sure I had them tied down right,” she said.

  “How could they have come loose? Did you drive off after you tied them down?”

  “No. I went back in the house to call you, remember?”

  “Then?”

  “Then I did a few other things.”

  “For how long?”

  “About a half hour. Why?”

  “I don’t know. Could somebody have tampered with the cords?”

  “Impossible. You know my driveway. You can’t miss any car driving up. What are you getting at, Eli?”

  “Just playing detective.”

  “It’s nobody’s fault but my own. Now everything’s ruined.”

  “Not everything.”

  “EVERYTHING.”

  I said nothing. There was no reaching out to her at a time like this.

  “This was supposed to be such a beautiful night. OUR night. We haven’t had many of those, lately.”

  “No we haven’t.”

  “It’s like an omen.”

  “There’s no such thing as omens. An accident happened. That’s the beginning and the end.”

  “It’s not the paintings anymore,” she said. “It’s – EVERYTHING. Everything seems to go wrong with us.”

  I’d never seen her sink so low, in such despair. Never thought she had it in her, this daughter of fortune. I’d never seen her as anything but proud and regal and high spirited. This wasn’t like her to be so bruised and afflicted. Just then – it happened to be Wednesday – Felice upstairs was having her big bang climax for Kevin. We both listened and I must have smiled as I always did when Felice gave up her fireworks.

  Stephanie stiffened. “You’re laughing?”

  “Not at this. Upstairs.”

  She bolted for the door.

  “Stephanie, please…”

  She calmed down and gave me the benefit of the doubt, but it was a bad moment, that inadvertent smile of mine.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Believe me, I’m as upset as you are about your paintings.”

  Was I? I was upset that she was upset, but not about the paintings.

  “Everything seems to go wrong, period,” she said. “Never mind the paintings.”

  “The wind wasn’t that strong,” I said.

  “Yes it was. Don’t forget I was driving. Fast. That’s wind. I’m going home.”

  She said it was WONDERFUL and VALIANT of me to go out with her to try and save her paintings.

  Actually it wasn’t the paintings I had been trying to save; it was us.

  I felt, as I usually did around her, that I wasn’t doing enough. I was letting her down. Was all this my fault?

  She was standing by the door.

  “I wish you’d stay,” I said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t. You know I can’t. I can imagine how I look.”

  “You can take a bath here.”

  She offered a smile.

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’m all in favor of cheap thrills.”

  Her cheeks began to crimson and I thought I was getting her back but then her eyes clouded up again.

  “It just doesn’t work for us,” she said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “It simply doesn’t. I know that I love you. I do know that, Eli. But it doesn’t seem TO WANT TO WORK!”

  My eyelids were getting heavy. Let this pass, I thought. Let this pass and we’ll see about tomorrow.

  “Maybe it’s good,” I said. “We’re getting all this crap behind us.”

  “Perhaps. You’re wonderful, Eli.”

  “How about a shower?”

  That sensational Stephanie sigh. “Oh, Eli.”

  God how I loved this dame!

  She kissed me and said goodbye and I went straight to bed. I lay there wondering what was to follow. Was this the final act, curtain, end of story? Where do you go when there’s no place to go and what do you dream when there’s nothing to dream? I realized, after about an hour, that I hadn’t heard her car start. I looked out the window and her car was still there. I opened the door and there she was, still in the hallway, standing against the wall, arms crossed over her chest, shivering.

  “Stephanie,” I said.

  She ran to me and hugged me. Then she left.

  Chapter 15

  The next night I went to visit Dad, as threatened, and the Reds were losing again. They had lost the night before, when all that had happened to Stephanie, but I refused to believe that when the Reds lose we all lose. As usual we didn’t do much talking and i
n fact we didn’t do any talking at all. I guess everything’s been said or that anything he had to say he’d already said to Mom. He had the scorecard on his lap but wasn’t keeping score as diligently as he used to. I could see it coming, as it had with Mom. One day you’re surrounded by family, friends, neighbors, children, pets, by photos, mementos, trophies, and the next day you’re in an empty room staring at the four walls of a nursing home.

  I left after the sixth inning (he hardly noticed) and went out with Maishe to Maxy’s in Mount Adams fiercely determined to get drunk. I told him about Stephanie. He shrugged as only Maishe could shrug. When it came to NOT CARING Maishe was the original. He suggested we try New York again, just get in the car as we used to, and just GO, except for the fact, I said, that we were getting old, surely OLDER, and it simply wasn’t the same anymore. We were now MEN. That sounded strange to the ears, but we were. We were men.

  Years before – when we were still GUYS – we’d jump in the car with Myron and a couple of others and agree to drive across the bridge to Covington, Kentucky, to pick up girls by shouting at them from the car, and not once, not one single time, did we ever pick up a girl that way, and yet, each Friday night we’d gather up and say, “Let’s go to Covington and pick up some girls.”

  We were in our late teens or early 20s then, and though we had the regular crowd we lusted for those Kentucky girls.

  “Strange pussy,” was the motivation.

  Maishe was onto his seventh beer. Maishe was incapable of getting drunk or even high. He could drink and drink and drink to no effect. I got drunk just watching him. He kept shaking his head. We sometimes spent hours like this, me drooling about this and that and Maishe shaking his head. He had no complaints, nothing specific, but he was upset that I had again turned down New York.

  “You’ve lost it,” he said.

  “I haven’t even found it,” I said.

  “You used to be ready for ANYTHING. You’ve gone stale.”

  We batted around names from our past, of GUYS who had metamorphosed into MEN and out of 15 came up with three lawyers, one accountant, three in computers, and all the rest in marketing. No comment necessary. Except for Maishe to note: “It’s all marketing.”