Foreign Bodies (3 page)

Marvin aimed high. How happy he would have been, Bea told Mrs. Bienenfeld, who taught history (this was during lunch break, in the teachers’ lounge), to have been sired by a Bourbon, or even a Borgia. A Lowell or an Eliot would have done nearly as well. Unfortunately, he was the grandson of Leib Nachtigall, an impoverished greenhorn from an impoverished village in Minsk Province, White Russia. Poor Marvin was unrelated to the Czar of All the Russias — unless he was willing to cite a certain negative connection: grandfather Leib had fled the Czar’s conscription, arriving in steerage and landing in Castle Garden with nothing but a tattered leather bag to start life in the New World. Marvin, miraculous Marvin, was the miraculous work of miraculous America. By now he was a dedicated Californian. And the greatest wonder of all was that he was a Tory (a Republican, in fact), an American Bourbon, an American Borgia! Or, if you insisted on going lower in the scale, a Lowell or an Eliot. If you
did
insist on going lower — just a little — you would discover that he had married a Breckinridge, the sister of a Princeton classmate. Her blood was satisfyingly blue. She had relatives in the State Department.

New York rarely drew him — an infrequent business trip; the two funerals, nearly a decade apart, first for mother, then for father. Bea had never set eyes on Marvin’s son. She had seen Iris, the older child, only once, on the sole occasion Marvin brought his wife and their little girl east, for a landmark class reunion. Iris and Julian: Bea could barely remember their names. When Julian was born she dispatched a present; it was politely acknowledged by Marvin’s wife: “Many thanks for your good wishes, and surely little Julian will enjoy the delightful giraffe” — something of the sort, on thick perfumed letter paper with that preposterous crest at the upper left margin.

Yet Marvin kept the ancestral name, and Bea, in deference to her students, had not: what were those big rough boys, with their New York larynxes, to make of Nachtigall? What they made of it was a cawing, a gargling, a sneezing, until she surrendered — though Nightingale had its own farcical consequences. Miss Mary Canary. Miss Polly-Want-a-Cracker. Miss Old Crow. Miss Robin Redbreast —
that
one produced smirks and snorts and whistles, and a clandestine blackboard sketch of a fat bird wearing eyeglasses and flaunting a pair of ballooning protuberances. As a penalty she ordered the smirkers to memorize “To a Skylark,” and tested them on their performance. Oh, what she had come to! Poetry as punishment. Wasn’t the summer’s trip to have been an antidote to all that, an earned indulgence?

“But can you imagine,” she said to Mrs. Bienenfeld, “he’s pushing me to go back, when I’ve just come home. He snaps his fingers and expects me to jump. As if I don’t have a life —”

That letterhead! Out of raw California, an aggrandizing crest — a silver shield displaying a pair of crossed swords rising out of a green river. A tribute to Margaret’s signal line: Marvin had found it in a book of Scottish heraldry.

T
HE AIR-CONDITIONING
was on everywhere, rattling as always. It was eight o’clock. They had eaten supper on trays in the living room, where the machine ran cooler — poached eggs on toast. There was a pitcher of iced tea on a side table.

“Is it this hot in L.A.?” Bea asked.

“Mostly. Sometimes hotter. What was it like in Paris?”

“Worse. Horrible. Fainting-hot.”

“Did you actually faint?”

“No, but I drank gallons. The hotel people said it was the worst summer they’d had in fifteen years. Are you worn out from the plane, or would you like to take a walk? There’s still plenty of light. I can show you famous upper Broadway.”

“I’d rather sit here with you,” Iris said.

“We don’t have to get down to business right away. There’s tomorrow, and the two days after.”

“Business? Oh . . . about Julian.”

“What you’ve come for.”

“What dad says I’ve come for.” She stretched her neck to take in everything around her. “How long have you lived alone?”

Intrusive, impertinent!

Bea said, suppressing annoyance, “Nearly all my adult life.”

“I guess I sort of knew that. I heard you were married once.”

“Then your father’s had me on his mind a lot more than I would have thought —”

“Dad mentioned it a long time ago. I remember it because he almost never talks about his family.”

“Does your mother talk about hers?”

“Not really. But she can’t help it, people talk to her about them. Especially about my uncle who died. You know he was in Congress, he was even thinking of running for president.”

“So the papers said at the time.”

“I never knew
him
either.”

The girl had a way of flicking her hair out of her eyes with a shrug that was half twitch and half shudder. Yet there was nothing unsure in this. A sign of boldness rather: the shake of an impatient colt. Her hair was long, neither light nor dark — a kind of bronze. Metallic, and when she whipped it round it had, faintly, the sound of coins caught in a net. Her resemblance to her mother hinted at some indistinct old photograph, insofar as Bea could conjure up her faded impression of Margaret. Iris had the same opalescent skin — fragile white smoke, and the thin nose with its small ovoid nostrils, and the pale irises. Iris: had they named her for the human eye? Hers was more bland than vivid — a screen. She might look out at you, but you couldn’t fathom what stirred behind it.

“I thought while you’re here,” Bea said, “you might enjoy seeing a play. I’ve got us some tickets — a little theater down in the Village. Would you like that?”

It was self-defense. What did Marvin expect when he thrust his daughter at her? A walk, a play, sightseeing, what was she to
do
with this self-possessed young woman? The Empire State Building, views of the city? How to fill the time, how long would it take to be made privy to Julian’s habits, Julian’s predicament . . . Julian’s soul? And to what end?

“Those two days,” Iris said. “Well, I don’t have them anyhow.”

“But I understood from your father . . . you won’t be staying till Monday?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m sorry about the tickets, if they have to go to waste —”

Bea said, “Tomorrow?”

“Yes, and if you wouldn’t mind phoning dad, I know you usually write, but he won’t care if you call him long-distance collect. Especially if it’s urgent. Just explain that you want to keep me the whole week, and by Friday I’ll be back.”

Bea took a bewildered breath. “Back from where?”

“From seeing Julian. It’s all set, plane fare and everything, but only if you help. If dad found out he’d blow up.”

“Your father told me you have to be back at school, that’s one thing,” Bea said. “And the other is you can’t possibly go off to Paris all on your own —”

But it came to her that she had herself hinted exactly this to Marvin: Iris as envoy.

“I’ve got the fare and practically the whole rest of it left over. In traveler’s checks. The money dad gave me to give you for the rescue operation, bring ’im back alive.”

“You don’t know where he is.”

“Mom and dad don’t know. There’s been a letter, only not for them, for me. I sneaked it past them, I always do that, they never saw it. Part of it nobody can read anyhow, it isn’t even French, it’s in a weird sort of writing, one of Julian’s jokes — he’s a funny boy sometimes.”

“I won’t go along with this,” Bea said. “I can’t let you, your father sent you here, you can’t just run off —”

“I’m not twelve years old, and
you
don’t want to go. You told dad you have to teach, you can’t leave.”

“It wouldn’t be so easy, not that I can see the point of it. Why won’t Marvin send your brother some money if he needs it and let him be? Why all this ambassadorial traffic —”

“Dad won’t let anyone be. Poor Julian — it’s dad’s scenario. I’m supposed to be the family Madame Curie, and Julian’s . . . hopeless. He doesn’t apply himself, he’s a parasite, he hasn’t got an ounce of practicality, he doesn’t know what he wants, no focus, too emotional — all that.”

Bea asked, “And
are
you Madame Curie?”

“I don’t have dad’s push, nobody does. He’s got me going for the degree that’s supposed to be Julian’s, I’m the stand-in for the star. Only there isn’t any star.” The twitch-shrug of the head. “I mean I really
can
see it from dad’s point of view.
Merlin
— that’s a magazine they have in Paris? It’s run by a bunch of Americans over there, and Julian actually had an article in it. About pigeons.”

“Pigeons?”

“Well, I guess doves. ‘Doves in the Marais,’ he called it, people worthless as pigeons, nuisances pecking around in the streets, in every body’s way, nobody wants them. Then he had something else, sort of like poetry though not exactly, in a big thick thing called
Botteghe Oscure
. Some rich American woman started it, a princess actually, married to a real Italian prince. So he sent us these things, and dad got mad, and wrote him I don’t know what. And after that he never let on what he was up to.”

The girl was tumultuous — Bea saw that she had read her too quickly. What had seemed strong-willed was a leaf propelled by a storm. For the first time she noticed how the upper lip was tilted forward, like an eave, over the lower one; in profile it made a small round bulge. Marvin’s mouth! The tie of blood, an astonishment after all.

“Iris” — she opened out her hand to ward off the recognition — “what if your brother’s content as he is?”

“Dad’s considered stopping the money. And for a while he tried it — only last month he tried it. But Julian’s perfectly willing to live on the edge, hand to mouth, so that won’t work.”

“Then what makes you think he’ll listen to you?”

“He won’t, I know he won’t. I just want to
see
him. And I want him to see me. I want to give him the money myself. Especially if it’s the last he’s ever likely to get. That’s why it’s better for me to go, Aunt Bea, better for me than for you —”

“You don’t have to say Aunt.” An unexpected jump of whatever lurked in the ribs.

“That’s just what I mean. Why should Julian care? Julian and I practically never knew we
had
an aunt. Going over there doesn’t make sense for you, whatever dad’s convinced himself about it. He feels he’s out of options, he says it’s business that’s keeping him, but it’s not that. He understands . . . well, he understands he’s lost all his power when it comes to Julian.”

“And when it comes to Iris?”

“I’m no different from Julian. It’s only that I let him believe I’m different. It’s taken me longer.”

“To do what?”

“To get away.”

A stillness blundered between them. The girl stood up and began to roam here and there, from the bookshelves to the window — the late sun just starting to slant toward dusk — to the aging Käthe Kollwitz prints on the walls to the striped davenport with its worn brown cushions. And finally to the grotesquerie of the grand piano, too roaringly huge in this modest space: a stupendous lion in a cramped cage. Watching Marvin’s daughter examining the entrails of her past (the museum-shop prints, the flaking paperbacks, the piano on its thick paws, Iris’s finger striking a key), Bea took in with new knowledge how everything in this overly familiar room was foreign to the girl, and poor, surely, to this offspring of affluence. In Marvin’s bragging snapshots the big house in California resembled a castle in the shape of a conquistador’s hacienda. Marvin the conqueror! The girl wandered off into the bedroom and back again: how unblemished she was, how young, what a limitless tract of unsullied years stretched ahead, and what was all that, Bea scolded herself, if not commonplace middle-aged envy? Her entire body was no better than a latticed basket leaking stale lost longings. That damn piano! That damn Leo!

And now this trespasser who called her aunt. Aunt? Then like it or not, swallow the role and act the part.

“You must be tired,” Bea said. “You can have the bedroom, and I’ll take the davenport. It opens up quite nicely.”

“I was really thinking a hotel —”

“You’ll have enough of that in Paris.”

“No, I’ll be staying with Julian . . . Paris? Aunt Bea! Then you’ll do it? You’ll call dad?”

A conspiracy. Reckless. “All right,” Bea said. She felt a kind of pleasure in disobeying — no, deceiving — Marvin.

T
HE GIRL LEFT
the next morning. Bea walked out with her to Broadway, where even at that early hour — the buildings all around still gray with sleep — taxis were sure to be cruising. Iris had declined breakfast.

“I’ll be fine, there’s always something to eat in the terminal. Or else on the plane —”

“And meanwhile,” Bea said, “your father will be eating me alive.”

“I wonder how it started, you and dad, the way things are —”

Bea thought this worth no more than a grunt. “My brother doesn’t like me, that’s all.”

“But why?”

“It’s not so unusual. Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau —”

But then a yellow light winked toward the curb, and Iris vanished. A phantom. A visitation. A brevity! And without an instant’s intimacy. A young stranger who came and went. Or came, and touched a random key on the piano, and dissolved with its sound.

The call to Marvin turned out not to be a trial. Bea had expected bullying and booming, Marvin’s blowhard tactic. But he was almost pacific, even ingratiating: not in the mood, it seemed, to eat her alive.

“Good,” he said, “looks like the two of you are hitting it off. She tell you about those fool magazines the boy got involved with? Didn’t pay a red cent. He won’t grow up. His sister’s worth two of him, you saw that. Sure, let her take a few more days, what’s the harm? Pump
the kid, she knows her brother inside out, so all right, as long as she can paint you his portrait, if you get my drift —”

Paint his portrait! This was Marvin struggling to put on the dog,
You understand that Margaret would go if it was feasible, but as you are aware she is somewhat neurasthenic
, or lurching into a foreign tongue, what he presumed to be Bea’s language, the uppity language of Poesy: the featherheaded birds’ choir. She could not accuse him of satire or even sarcasm. Forget white-shoe Princeton, Marvin at his most genuine had a voice out of the streets. There was a kind of innocence in it: he was earnest, he was oblivious, he was honestly trying to please her, he was working at being conciliatory. He was seeing her, for the moment, as useful.