“Anyway, they have extraordinary faces for black and white.”
Zinnie rolled her eyes. “If you think they’re good, I oughta take you with me on my four to midnights. You want characters, I’ll give you characters.”
Claire looked stung. “I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“I’m having a hard enough time getting used to the idea of you being a cop … let alone drive around with you in uniform … and you deliberately conjuring up all sorts of dangerous possibilities just to make my day … even though I would give anything to photograph the authentic types you must meet up with.”
“I don’t get it. I mean, how can you get so excited about these normal creeps when you’ve been all over the world? You’ve seen just about everything, and you act all hepped-up and goggly-eyed to photograph the local riffraff.”
“You’d be enthused, too, if you’d been gone for ten years.”
“I doubt it.”
“Ah, but you would, Zinnie. You’d come back with new eyes. You only can’t see what you’re so used to you can’t see it.”
“I dunno. You’re the artist in the family. I’ll let you ‘capture’ the neighborhood while I go capture the mutts.”
“The who?”
“The mutts … perps. The inmates from our very own concentration camp: Ye Olde Ghetto.” She stood up and retrieved her gun from the fridge, slipped it into her arm holster, and covered it with her very best seersucker jacket.
The Mayor was rummaging through his toy box. He had a worn out grocery carton that housed his decade of a lifetime’s accumulation of bones and doggy toys, silly things that people give to animals to chew on: plastic frogs and purple pussy cats and, in the Mayor’s case, a fine figure of a gnawed up Barbie doll. The Mayor never gave up on a toy. He might stick it away in the box and forget about it for a year or two, but he was a sentimental old sod, and out he’d haul the smelly thing, sooner or later, give it a friendly chomp, and rest his snout on it for old times’ sake. Then he’d fall asleep, its reminiscent odors transcending him to dreams of long ago and far away. This morning it was a little french fries container, shredded and almost colorless, but a favorite just the same at times like these, when no one paid him any mind.
Claire leaned back in her chair and watched him. How easy it was, she thought, to love someone or something that could never hurt you. How wonderful it would be not to know that—to be innocent and still think that the world offered nothing more than what you wanted to take. She longed, for a moment, for the innocence she’d lost. Growing up hadn’t solved all of the mysteries. It just pushed them to the back shelf.
Out the window and across the street, an elderly figure in red tottered across her backyard lawn. Even at that distance, her gash of lipstick was visible.
Claire sat up straight. “Is that Iris von Lillienfeld?”
“Huh? Oh, sure, that’s her. Who else wears Japanese kimonos and emeralds at seven o’clock in the morning?”
“I can’t believe she’s still alive!”
“Oh, she’s alive all right. To the great dissatisfaction of every real estate agent in town.”
“I’ll bet. That house looks like Rhett Butler will be home any minute. I wonder if she’d let me photograph her?”
“Not likely. That old broad is a recluse from the get go. She thinks she’s Garbo. Ooo, this was funny. Her dog—she’s got this really themey poodle—well, this dog was in heat and you know how uh … virile the Mayor here is—”
“Ha.”
“Yeah, he practically lived over there. Wild. She won’t be bothered with people, but the dog didn’t seem to put her back up too much. At least she didn’t complain. Although how is she gonna complain, when all she bothers to speak in is German? Hey! You speak Kraut. Naw, she’d never let you in. She wouldn’t even let the city tree pruners in—”
“Do you remember, Zinnie,” Claire interrupted, “how Michael used to love that woman? He used to tell me she could read the future. Remember how he was the only one not afraid to go into her backyard? We all used to call her the old witch and throw stones and run away, and Michael used to crawl through the hedge and visit her? Remember?”
“I don’t know,” Zinnie turned her head away moodily. “I was too young, I guess. No, wait. I do remember him going over there. There was a nest of baby robins knocked out of the maple in a storm and everyone said that the cats were sure to get them and that it was too bad because you couldn’t put them in a cage or they would die in captivity. Michael went over there—I remember he did, because I was scared to death she’d put a spell on him. Yeah, and then he came back … went into the garage, put the ladder smack in the middle of the backyard, in the shade but not too close to the trees, made a nest at the top, and popped them in, and he covered, I mean completely covered, the ladder steps with thorny rose branches so the cats couldn’t climb up.”
“And Mom was furious that half of her rose bushes were destroyed.”
“Right. But those robins, they lived. Remember they lived? He left his little nest open at the top so the parent robins could go on feeding them from above, and they all lived. Every one of them. And Iris von Lillienfeld gave Michael that idea.”
They shook their heads fondly at the memory. Claire bubbled with laughter. “I can still see Pop putting bacon bits on a pole with scotch tape and hoisting it up to them.”
“They ate it, too, the carnivorous little devils. I wonder where Mom and Michaelaen went,” Zinnie bolted back to the present. “Probably up to the woods to see what all the sirens were about.” She put the ceiling fan on low. They could hear the strains of Pagliacci from upstairs.
“Zinnie, I wanted to speak to you about Carmela.”
“Oh, yeah? How come?”
“I don’t know. Is she all right?”
“Whadda ya mean? Carmela hasn’t been all right since I’ve known her.”
“Yes, but besides that. She seems so sour.”
“Yeah, well, her divorce was pretty bloody. And he took the house ’cause he supported her while she was getting her masters.”
“But why did they break up?”
“They fought all the time.”
“So does everyone.”
Zinnie looked left and right. “Promise you won’t tell anyone? Especially not Mom?”
“Certainly I promise,” Claire crossed her heart. She liked the idea of a secret with Zinnie. Particularly since Zinnie had come across her twice talking to herself since she’d come home.
Zinnie lowered her voice. “Right when Carmela was working on her finals, she got pregnant. And she got an abortion. Without telling Arnold.”
“What?”
“Sure. You know nothin’s-gonna-stand-in-my-way Carmela. The only reason I found out was because she started hemorrhaging afterward and she called me up to take her back to the clinic. He wound up finding out about it anyway. She hit him with it during one of their famous shouting matches. You know, top of the ninth and the bases are empty? She just laced it into him ’cause she had nothing else left to hit him with, I guess. Anyhow, that was the beginning of the end. Now she’s all wrapped up in this therapy shit. Even the people she hangs out with are these intellectual, overanalytical uptown types.”
“Too much Freud, not enough roast beef?”
“Yup. Exactly. Now she writes about ‘winter- or summer-palette people’ and ‘hemline psychosyndromes’ and she calls herself a columnist. She makes me sick. I mean, she has such a good mind and it’s all off in the wrong direction. The divorce just sent her off the deep end, Claire, I swear it did.”
“You and Freddy went through it. And you had Michaelaen. You seem all right.”
“Do I? I was pretty shaken up at the time. But with Freddy and me it was different. We were friends growing up. I still love him, you know it? I always will, the sap. I mean, behind all the fresh-out-of-the-closet fruitcake, Freddy’s a stand-up guy … and he pays all of Michaelaen’s bills, without being asked to. He�
�s got a steady boyfriend already, can you imagine? They’re opening a restaurant on Queens Boulevard.” She laughed ironically. “May they live happily ever after.”
Zinnie stretched as though she didn’t give a hoot. “God, I’m tired,” she moaned. “I just get used to one shift and they put me on another. Say, Claire? Whatever did happen with that duke guy?”
“Wolfgang? The last time I saw him he was leading some Brahmanic heiress around by the nose.”
“You still hurting?”
Claire’s eyes went out the window and all the way up Park Lane South. “It’s difficult to describe. I feel lighter. After I left Wolfgang in Delhi, I spent six months on my own in the Himalayas. In a place called Dharam Sala. McLeod Gange, Dharam Sala. It’s a sort of refugee camp for Tibetans. Anyway, after one sort of difficult but illuminating month, I couldn’t figure out why I’d stayed with him as long as I had. In Dharam Sala, I started looking at things in a different way, you know?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Those Himalayas’ll clean your eyes right out.”
“Aw, c’mon Zinnie. Not you, too.”
“All right, go on. The Himalayas cut your cataracts. And then?”
“And then I decided that as long as I was changing half of my life, I might as well change the rest of it. No more working for travel brochures or fashion magazines. I didn’t have too much money left over so I sold my pearls—”
“Those luscious pearls from the German doctor? How could you?!”
“They didn’t exactly go with my life-style anymore,” Claire laughed. “They hadn’t for a long time.” (No sense mentioning all the other things she’d had to sell.) “Anyway, to make a long story short, without Wolfgang’s expensive tastes to support, I figured I could do what I wanted for a while. You know, the ‘virtue of selfishness’ and all that.”
“That doesn’t sound like you. You usually bolshevize everything.”
“Not anymore I don’t. Not after Wolfgang.”
“Tell me something. Did he do coke?”
“Sure he did coke. That’s why his allowance from home was never enough.”
“Did you?”
“Oh, God no. I got high on my mantras.”
“Huh?”
“Meditation.”
“Oh. Well, just don’t go doin’ none a that stuff around here,” Zinnie warned. “Bad enough Mom’s got Michaelaen going to church with her.”
Claire stood up and paced to and fro. “I don’t pray anymore,” she scowled. “I’m so full of self-congratulation when I do that I disgust myself. It’s like, I’ve done this, so now I deserve a reward … or … or progress, at least. My motives are all egotistical and self-serving, which is not the point at all, or it shouldn’t be.” She threw her arms up in a hopeless, almost comical gesture. “I’m much better when I’m not so good.”
They looked at each other.
“And,” she added, “I did used to smoke hashish occasionally. Does that make you feel better?”
“Not really. So then what happened with Wolfgang?”
“I guess I started seeing him for what he was.”
“Yeah, a pimp.”
“I wouldn’t call him a pimp.”
“I would. He sent you out to work and he collected, right?”
“He helped me, Zinnie. I have to say that. He got me lots of clients and he can be very charming. He kept things running smoothly on the shoots.”
“Like I said. A pimp. What are you defending him for, huh? So you wised up and got him out of your life. Next?”
“You’re funny. You really are a cop, aren’t you? Okay. I thought I’d start all over, you know? Back to go. I’ve been trying to get a book together for years. Only my best stuff. When I came home I started looking around me. Zinnie, the Himalayas are magical, but this is real life. This place is a photographer’s dream.”
“I get the idea. Real life is what you photograph after you’ve photographed all the dreams. But you don’t wanna go along even on a day tour with me. And how are you going to support yourself while you’re being artsy-craftsy?”
“I’ve got enough money saved to pay Mom and Pop rent, and I thought I’d ask Mom if I could make a small darkroom down in the cellar.”
“In all that junk?”
“I only need a sink and darkness, Zinnie, not atmosphere.”
“So make a darkroom. Maybe you’ll meet some nice guy in Manhattan when you try and sell your pictures.”
Vexed, Claire rummaged through a little bin of blueberries. “I don’t want to meet anybody,” she said. “I want to stay around here and shoot pictures that tell stories without words. I want to shoot anything I well please and not what some art director thinks will sell.”
“And the first time you hear someone mention they’re going to clean up Michael’s grave … you’ll hightail it off to some ashram and not come back for another ten years.”
Claire shook her head slowly. “No, Zin. I came to terms with Michael’s death a long time ago. I carry it always, in my heart, like you do. New York doesn’t bring me any closer to it.”
Zinnie, angry and embarrassed by her own emotion, blurted, “It’s New Yawk, jerk! This ain’t no David Niven film.”
They laughed together at themselves, relieved not to speak about Michael. Zinnie sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe this is a David Niven film and I’m the one going off the deep end.”
Impulsively, Claire threw her arms around Zinnie and held her. “Of all of us, I think you’re the one who’s the most together.”
“That’s not saying a hell of a lot,” Zinnie smiled.
“You’ll be just fine,” Claire said. “Although I’ll never understand how you can be a cop. You’re so beautiful and smart. You did so well in college. Why don’t you go to law school?”
“I don’t want to, Claire,” Zinnie pulled away. “You’re not the only one who loves what she’s doing, you know.”
“I know. Those aren’t the reasons why I don’t want you to be a cop, anyhow.”
They watched each other carefully, each checking the other one out for emotional scars from Michael’s death. Claire knew that a good part of Zinnie’s joining the force had been because of him. She hoped there had not been too much revenge in her reasoning. Zinnie, on the other hand, remembered just how devastated Claire had been at the time. She wondered how difficult it was for Claire to watch her go out the door with a gun. Whatever she felt, that pain would always be there between them as a bond, and there was nothing either of them could, or wanted, to do about it.
Zinnie touched Claire’s hair. “What about you? You wanna come out with me tonight? Do a little trip the light fandango up at Regents Row?”
“Me? Oh, no, thanks. I’ve had it with men.”
“Is that right? And how do you expect to hold them off, eh?”
“Don’t you worry about me. I’ve got castration toxins leaking out of my eyeballs.”
“I’ll bet,” Zinnie sneered.
“Anyway, I’ve got no time. I want to finish my black-and-white series as soon as possible. The colors around here are just too tempting in this season. Look at the dog! He’s playing catch all by himself! Look!”
“Oh, he’s just showing off. So. You think this neighborhood is great, eh? Let me see. You’ve got the old Jews and the young Israelis north of the park. You’ve got your mafia fledglings along Lefferts. And you’ve got your Puerto Ricans, Colombians, and Indians down on Jamaica. You’ve got some taste, kid.”
Claire didn’t say anything then, because she couldn’t describe what she felt when she saw an Indian woman in a shocking-pink sari gliding past an el train covered with graffiti. She’d have to shoot the scene and show it to her. Claire’s heart swelled when she thought of all the ideas she had for portraying the neighborhood. She’d show the standing-stillness in all the flurry of transition. She’d achieve something true. And then maybe Zinnie wouldn’t look at her with that suspicious, worried face. “Look, Zinnie,” she said, “I want to get o
ne thing straight. No, listen to me. Don’t look off as if you weren’t listening. I just want to tell you that I’m not running off again. Not anywhere. And I won’t have you and Mom and the rest of them pussy-footing around me as if I were a ghost. When I said I was over Michael’s death, I meant it. Will you tell them that? Will you help me try and make them understand?”
Zinnie pried a perfectly good cuticle up with her teeth and bit it off. “Sure,” she said. She would have said more, but then Stan came back into the kitchen, lilly-legged in his bermuda shorts, and announced that he was heading on up to the woods to see what all the commotion was about.
“Wanna come?” he asked.
Claire shook her head no.
“I was looking out the bathroom window. They’ve got the brass up there,” he tempted Zinnie.
“Okey-doke,” Zinnie agreed.
I’ll not be left out of this, the Mayor thought, and he hoisted his broad beam up on all fours.
Claire wandered around the old house while they were gone, sipping her bowl of coffee, enjoying the dark rooms and the full sun blasting against the screens. She sat up in the dining room, window seat, always her favorite place, and felt the house—just her and the house. This was where she’d curled up as a child and pored through each new issue of National Geographic, struck with wonder at the glossy, important-looking pages alive with color and exotic cultures. This was where it had all begun for her. The tall-ceilinged rooms were littered with dusty books and her father’s homemade cannons. All of these things, she thought, so long in their same old spots that you forgot they were there. She bet nobody in the family ever saw the stained glass window over the pantry anymore. Well, maybe Michaelaen did.
Michaelaen saw a lot of things the others didn’t. He was an intense child, very involved in his four-year-old world of animals and mechanics. Michaelaen seemed to have inherited his grandpa’s love of junkyards. That’s what the two of them would do for fun: visit junkyards and collect “treasure,” odd bits of copper and brass and all sorts of rubble that could only attract little boys and old men. It was a good education for the boy, Stan swore. He was learning the value of real resources, he said. There was some question as to who enjoyed these jaunts to the junkies more, Stan or Michaelaen.
Park Lane South, Queens Page 2
