Her Hungry Heart (27 page)

‘No, not morbid. I think it’s wonderful that it no longer bothers you.’

‘Oh, yes it does. It’s just out in the open.’

‘Don’t you have any curiosity, don’t you want to see the Blocks again?’

‘You’re leading me into something, Rick, and I don’t think I’m ready for it.’

‘Go on. Take a ride down there. I’ll get out a map. We’ll find your Chicopee Falls, take a look at it, see it again, so it will vanish for ever from your life.’

‘You make it sound like an evil place. How did you know?’

‘No, not an evil place, just a transient hell you had to go through. Just remember there is no going back, no going home. You can’t go home. This is only viewing, just having a good old last look.’

‘Good God, Rick, who would want to go back home to the Blocks? Viewing will be enough, thank you. And I’m not even certain I want to do that.’

‘We don’t have to go, Mimi.’

She hesitated for only a second, ‘No, we’ll go. It’s Wednesday. I chose today because Wednesday is the day Joe Pauley always went to the Blocks.’

‘OK, then, let’s take a look at your Blocks,’ he told her, ‘and then we’ll go to a great restaurant on the Connecticut River I once went to, if I can find the place on the map. You’ll love it. The food is great, the place and people.’

‘Rick, I want to go by way of Otis. I’ll show you Ida Hall’s General Store.’

‘When’s the last time you were there?’

‘Probably the day you were born.’ She began to laugh. ‘I can’t believe we are doing this.’

It was quite remarkable to Mimi. Nothing looked very changed. There it was, the kerosene pump in the courtyard of Ida Hall’s Store. She couldn’t equate it with being here as an adult. It was like some banal Norman Rockwell painting, the cover of
The Saturday Evening Post.
Too perfect, too picture-postcard, too untouched. She adored it. Memories of the day she stopped here as a child were so vivid, and somehow seemed more real than sitting in the car as an adult with Rick, her young lover, at her side.

‘Don’t pull in, let’s keep going.’

‘You’re not afraid, are you?’

‘No, not afraid. But I suddenly remember how hungry I was. We had fresh hot doughnuts. The pedlar’s daughter understood how starved I was. Ida Hall’s was where I made
my first girl friend. It was only for a few hours that we were friends but they were the most important few hours of my life to date.’

They drove through the leafy green forests of the Berkshires, followed the map to Springfield and then to Chicopee Falls.

‘Do you recognize anything?’ he kept asking her.

‘I wouldn’t recognize anything. You don’t seem to understand. I lived with two paranoid caretakers who hardly let me out of the house. The furthest we ever went was to Chicopee, and that was only once or twice. Maybe once to Springfield. No, I recognize nothing. You’ve no idea how awful a life it was, Rick. I don’t actually know what we’re doing here, but funnily I’m less upset than I thought I would be.’

They had to ask several people the way. Then finally, in a chrome and red plastic diner where they had a cup of coffee and huge wedges of coconut cream pie, Mimi asked the short order cook, who was grilling hamburgers, if he knew where the Blocks were. He gave them directions and made no other comment. Who was this Mimi Steindler sitting with a young lover in a diner in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts? What madness was she dragging back into her life? She suddenly began to laugh. She looked at her lover and kissed him on the cheek. He smiled.

‘You’ve turned me into an adventuress, frightened of nothing, looking for my perfect wave. A child again.’ They both began to laugh, and left the diner.

‘You see how easy it is to live and to love? Don’t mess it up, don’t make complications. Life can be sweet.’

‘My God, you’re an innocent.’

‘No, not an innocent, a hopeful. Mimi, you don’t know what misery and poverty really are. You haven’t been to Calcutta or Bombay.’

‘And you haven’t been a displaced child living in an alien world on the Blocks.’

The directions given at the diner were perfect. Ten minutes later they turned a corner and down a narrow street, and there they were. The place was exactly as she remembered it. It looked no different to her from the day she left in a pedlar’s lorry during a relentless heat-wave. It was not as hot today as it had been when she left Mashinka there to die, and was sent out into the world alone to find a place for herself. But not a blade of grass had grown in all those years, not a tree had been planted, nor a house been painted. The Blocks were more dilapidated than ever. The long flights of wooden stairs baking in the sun seemed more rickety. The children looked the same as the children of her day: dirty, dishevelled, wild.

Rick parked the car and they got out. They stepped over the granite kerb stone and walked down the barren road between the buildings. A breeze ruffled dust from the hard-packed earth. Mimi felt grit in the back of her throat.

That generation of immigrants fled to America at the turn of the century. Till before the Second World War they clung to the old world, resisted learning English, still wanted to be European with American citizenship. Now they seemed to be dying out on the Blocks. They were there still, but were rapidly being replaced by their Americanized children, who were prettier, more slender, wore rollers in their hair, were possibly a little less poor, a little more educated, but still living with a ghetto mentality, factory workers and wives as they had always been. And Mimi noted they had the same ability to scream, pinch, and smack their unruly children hard.

She looked away from them. As the adult Mimi, Mimi Steindler of Upper East Side, New York, she could stand aside, as Rick had suggested, and consider this place, these people, with an objectivity she never had as a girl. She could no longer feel the pain of that little girl. It could have been someone else. How could she have carried it so long? Now, miraculously, it was gone. With no pang of nostalgia
or unhappiness, she was so free of it, she felt a kind of elation. About to tell this to Rick, she looked up at him and stopped herself. She saw the look on his face, and understood. He recognized the Blocks for what they were: ugliness, survival accommodation and nothing more. Nothing had changed. New generations didn’t mean a thing to the place. It had not suddenly become a beautiful housing development.

‘I had no idea. I simply had no idea that places like this still existed. Christ, it’s like the concentration camps. The Nazis might have modelled them on this place. Mimi, I …’

‘It’s okay. I’m an onlooker now, seeing it the same way you are. It really doesn’t hurt any more.’

‘Which one did you live in?’

She couldn’t tell him. They all looked the same to her. She did try to remember. Mimi even imagined herself inside one of the ground-level flats, looking out of a window. What would she have seen that might pinpoint the location of those survival years on the Blocks? The views would be the same whichever window she looked through. It was of no help, she could not locate the exact flat.

They walked down the centre road. People looked at them. She did see the occasional old woman who surely had been there in her time. The same peasant stock in thin loose-fitting printed cotton dresses over fleshy, aged bodies seated on old wooden chairs. The language was Polish. Still the reek of raw onions and stale bodies. They wouldn’t know her. She could pin no name on any of them. Mimi and Rick were almost in the centre of the Blocks when she saw two women, old, fat and wobbly in their cotton dresses, visibly without bras, old-timers who would know about Joe Pauley. She put her arm through Rick’s, approached them and spoke to them in Polish.

‘Excuse me,’ she asked, ‘a long time ago a fruit pedlar used to come here. He was called Joe Pauley.’

One of them answered. ‘The fruit pedlar. He comes still, once a week, today. He doesn’t come in winter any more, only in summer. In winter he goes to Florida. He makes so much money, he goes to Florida. What do you want with Joe?’ But before Mimi could answer, she heard the rattle of the lorry jumping the granite kerb stone, and then the horn. It honked three times.

‘That’s him,’ she told Rick.

She turned around just as one of the women confirmed, ‘There he is, there’s the pedlar.’

She watched the truck – no longer a Mac but a Ford, no longer green but red – kick up dust as it rolled down the road. The screen doors of the houses opened, children ran out and women followed. Slovenly women with curlers in their hair. The dismal femininity of the Blocks streamed out of their dark houses into the sun, gravitating towards the pedlar’s lorry. Mimi could hardly believe she was watching this scene. As the truck lumbered slowly down the road towards them, she placed her hands over her face, trying to isolate herself for a minute, to regain her ebbing composure. Rick looked nonplussed.

‘What now?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. Let’s see.’

They walked towards the Ford lorry. She saw him clearly as the cab doors swung open and he stepped out on to the running board of the cab. He removed a cap and placed it on the seat, then lumbered down from the cab slowly and, she could see, painfully. He had a slight limp. Mimi and Rick stood with the others and watched the pedlar drop the tailgate and hang the galvanized scale. He looked old, worn, much shorter than she remembered. He seemed to have shrunk in size and stature. He was thinner. He still had all his hair, but it was grey. And his eyes looked sad, tired. He wore silver-rimmed glasses. The shirt was the same lumberjack plaid, blue and white, and the trousers heavy-duty cotton. He saw her but didn’t recognize her. She drew his
attention because she was different, not belonging in the Blocks. He greeted his customers, a tired old man, his assistant doing the hawking, taking care of the younger women. Joe attended to his old cronies and spoke to them in Polish, teased them and gossiped with them, and filled paper bags with fruit and vegetables for them.

Finally he turned to Mimi and asked her, ‘Did you want something? You don’t have to wait, they’ll understand. You want something? Plums, maybe. Got first class, sweet, like sugar. Grapes? The peaches are a little hard, but a few days and they’ll be perfect. Better than you’ll find in the supermarket.’

‘Plums,’ she said in Polish. ‘I was always partial to plums, Mr Joe.’

‘You know me?’

‘Yes. When I was a little girl, you were very kind to me.’ All this she told him in Polish. ‘I lived here in the Blocks with Mashinka and Tatayana. I’m Mimi. You knew me as Mimi Kowalski.’

She had to bite her lip to hold back the tears that brimmed in her eyes. Quickly, she put on her sunglasses.

‘How long ago was that?’

He didn’t remember. That took her aback. He had been the kindest man in the world to her and he didn’t remember.

She swallowed hard, and gathered her strength. ‘A very long time ago, more than twenty years. It was during the war. You were very kind and helpful to us. You were my only friend, and you read me
The Jewish Daily Forward,
Mr Singer’s stories. You would come to our house, take a snack with us. We were so poor you used to supply little extras for us, and Mashinka used to make something special for you, some Polish speciality. You found us doctors and lawyers, and helped us all you could, because we were strangers unable to cope once Mashinka’s brother died. I don’t know how we would have survived without your weekly visits.’

‘Kowalski … the drunk. A bum and a liar. Yes, now I remember. Mashinka, a good woman. Little Mimi, you never belonged here. Such a pretty little girl.’

‘You took me to Beechtrees, to the exiled royal family, remember?’

‘Sure I remember. That’s a long time ago. Well, you turned out a pretty woman like you were a pretty child. Ah, well, it’s nice to see you.’ He took her hand, shook it and said, ‘You’ll excuse me? I’ve got to make a little business here.’

Mimi could hardly believe it. That was it with the man who saved her life. This man, who was the kindest of strangers, and that was
it.
She didn’t know what she had expected. She had, after all, made no contact with him for years. She looked up at Rick. He shook his head as if he understood. ‘Let’s go.’ And they turned to walk back to their car.

‘Are you upset?’

‘Yes, I think I am. He seemed so uninterested.’

‘He’s an old man now and not well.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘His eyes, the way he holds his head.’

‘Should we do something?’

‘I’m sure his family knows and takes care of him.’

‘Should he be working?’

Rick was touched by the concern in her voice. ‘Yes, probably. It won’t be for long.’

‘I feel terribly sad. He was such a giant of a man, so strong. He loved his work, and his lorry. I used to think him such a powerful presence, and now he seems almost frail.’

‘Miss, Miss,’ someone was shouting. They turned to see Joe’s young assistant running towards them. He caught up with them. ‘Here. Joe says he remembers you like bananas, a little on the green side. And he’s put in some grapes. He says you were always partial to black grapes.’

‘Please wait a minute,’ she begged.

‘I’ve got to get back.’

‘Just one moment, please.’ She opened her handbag, pulled out a note-pad and wrote quickly on it: ‘My Dear Joe, Always taking care of me. I have never forgotten you and I never will, Mimi.’ She pushed it into the young man’s hand and watched him run back towards the lorry where Joe was engulfed by women intent upon cheap vegetables, the insatiable in pursuit of the affordable. His back was turned to Mimi.

Chapter 22

‘Remember, Poste Restante, Colombo. For the next month they’ll have a forwarding address. No regrets?’

‘No, no regrets.’

‘Good. If it’s positive you’ll cable me. And if you want to join me, you’ll cable me. Give it a week for me to get my post. If I’m on a longer trip, don’t panic. I’ll get back to you.’

They were at the Pan Am building at Kennedy Airport. A stewardess was running down the narrow corridor leading to the plane. ‘Dr Walters, Dr Walters! Please, we’ll lose our place in the queue for take-off. Now, Dr Walters, we won’t hold the plane any longer.’

Without another word he grabbed Mimi in his arms. ‘Be happy, Mimi.’ He kissed her deeply, and she kissed him with the same hunger she always had for him. And then he turned on his heel and ran with the stewardess down the funnel-like entrance that led to the open door of the plane. He turned once more to wave goodbye to her, and then he was gone and the aeroplane door slammed shut.

Mimi walked quickly down the ramps round the terminal towards the exit. Suddenly, just when she thought she had their parting under control, she had to sit down. At first she felt as if she were going to be sick, and then she felt quite weak-kneed. She found a chair and from her bag took a handkerchief to cover her mouth. Instead, there were involuntary floods of tears, sobs as if her heart would break. The sickness passed, and the tears and the sadness slowly
ebbed. How many women, she wondered, had seen their lovers off as bravely as she had, only to succumb in the aftermath of parting? Millions, just millions. She didn’t have time to analyse why she should feel that way.

Two stewardesses and a security man came to her rescue. ‘Is there something wrong? Are you all right?’ Still the tears trickled. But choked up as she was she managed, ‘No, I’m not all right, but I will be. I’m sorry, there isn’t a problem. I’m not ill, just an emotional wreck.’

‘Oh, that’s it.’ One of the stewardesses sat next to her and, putting an arm around her, said, ‘We know about that. We’ve all been there.’ Those kind words from a stranger, a beautiful, kind young woman trained to serve in-flight tea and sympathy, a ministering angel of the airways. Rarely would she appreciate a stewardess more than this grounded angel.

‘I’m all right.’ Mimi smiled. ‘I’m actually not even unhappy.’

‘Just emotional,’ said the security guard.

‘Yes.’ She smiled up at him. ‘Just emotional.’

‘Partings are never easy, especially for the one not on board. I’m sure it would have been different if he’d left by ship. It makes things more acute, the aeroplane, the flying away. I often think about that. I know you’d feel a lot less bad if you’d seen him off on a Greyhound bus.’

‘Even worse,’ said the other stewardess, ‘if it was Pennsylvania Station or Grand Central. Nothing like a railway station for bringing out the tears.’ It was kindly meant.

‘Grand Central,’ said the security guard. ‘It’s more dramatic there, lovers parting under the clock and all that.’

What a bunch of romantics, thought Mimi. It had worked. She was laughing. They smiled. ‘I feel quite foolish.’

‘And we got quite carried away on your emotions.’

The stewardess stood up. ‘You all right now?’

‘Just fine.’

‘It’s usually more than just the parting of a loved one,’ said the philosopher security guard, ‘all those emotions running riot. The one you’re leaving most times has hardly anything to do with it.’

Yet another psychiatrist, thought Mimi. She shook his hand, amused by the disinterested concern of these strangers. How extraordinary, she thought as she walked away, I’m still amazed at the kindness of strangers who are always saving my life: Joe Pauley, Barbara, Rick. These people I’ll never see again, helpful in a moment of need, replacing the comfort of family. Is it my function always to elicit the kindness of strangers? How pure and real that can be. Something to do with no strings attached. A case in point, Joe Pauley. Had she, she wondered, all her life been confusing love with kindness? Well, it no longer mattered. Even if she had, it had saved her emotionally enough times for her to distinguish now between love and the kindness of strangers.

Driving back into Manhattan, Mimi had a good deal of sorting out to do in her mind. Yet, when she tried to unravel what had happened to her in the last week, it had been, as Rick had predicted, less complicated.

She was ready for the next step in her life. Now the idea of having a child, either Rick’s or Jay’s, of being a real mother instead of the surrogate she had been to Jay’s boys, seemed natural, as it never had before. Until her affair with Rick, it had seemed an unnatural act for her to have a child; now it seemed right, exciting, a natural progression in her life. For a moment she thought of going home, not the home she shared with Jay but her family home, to her father and Sophia in the town house off Fifth Avenue. But just as she was about to make the turn into the street she changed her mind and drove to her own home, hers and Jay’s. First and foremost this was to be between them.

The following afternoon she found herself yet again at
Kennedy Airport, this time at the terminal where Alitalia came in. She was waiting for Jay, something she rarely did, meeting him at the airport. As many times as she had offered, he had rejected the idea. ‘It’s too much trouble, not at all necessary.’

And she, not fond of public places like airports and railway stations, had been happy to oblige. So Jay’s secretary was surprised when she asked for his arrival time and flight number. She even tried to discourage Mimi from going to the airport. In a moment of wavering Mimi agreed with Debbie: it was a hassle, she wouldn’t go. But here she was, having changed her mind again, and glad of it. The sooner she saw Jay and they went home to talk through the changes she wanted to make in their lives, the better for both.

The flight arrival was announced over the tannoy system. It echoed through the terminal. Mimi felt a shiver of excitement. She joined the crowd waiting for the passengers to exit from the customs hall. It was not overly crowded, no holiday-weekend stampede. But the people were standing four-deep, waiting for lovers, friends, business associates. She marvelled at how differently she perceived the airport today from yesterday, how different a sense of herself she had had there with Rick from her sense of the Mimi there today awaiting her husband. How important it now felt that she had come to Kennedy to meet Jay. She was aware of her feelings of happiness, love for Jay, for the life they had built together, for the marriage that had worked so well and for so long for them both. Those feelings quite overwhelmed her. She felt strong and determined that this path she wanted to take with Jay was the right one. She could only hope that he would feel the same. Her determination that it should work out for them, that he would understand, gave her strength.

The waiting seemed interminable. She distracted herself by people-watching. They were not a particularly
interesting crowd, standing there impatiently, nor notably attractive. More drab than gruesome, except a few young people garishly dressed.

Unmanageable children, bored and mischievous, ruffled their elders. A group of chanting, orange-robed, shaven-headed, Hari Krishna people limply tapped their tambourines. Mimi predicted loud and enthusiastic performance once their friends came though Customs. It would provide a few minutes’ distraction. She spotted at twenty yards from where she was standing a woman with a baby. Not an enchanting baby. Curly dark hair, a pinched, half-appealing face. But he was good. He laughed and giggled and played patty-cake with his hands while in the arms of his nanny, a young woman in grey. Mimi knew nothing about babies but thought this one must be about a year old, possibly eighteen months. He kept chattering baby-talk, a dialogue of one. ‘Yum, yum, nana, baby, mummy, dada.’ A babel comprehensible to God alone. She liked the way he was dressed. How comfortably old-fashioned-looking he was, with a white cotton shirt trimmed with broderie anglaise, and a pair of pants with buttons at the waist, attached to braces that went over his little shoulders. They were puffy, bloomer-like trousers, like a little Dutch boy’s costume, in a navy-blue corduroy. She watched the child for several minutes and became enchanted by him. She began to see he was quick and had a clever look. She detected sweetness, affection in the way he occasionally pulled his nanny’s collar to make her bend her head. He would give her a kiss, then giggle. Mimi, rarely drawn to babies, saw this little boy in a different light. She began to hope that, against the odds, she and Rick had been lucky, that she might already be carrying an embryo within her womb.

She was distracted from the child by a rush of people through Customs. She looked for Jay among the crowd. Not there. Her attention was caught for a moment: a squeal of
pleasure from the child in the nanny’s arms. She watched as he reached out, excited by the nanny telling him, ‘Here’s Mama, here’s Dada.’

‘Mama, Dada.’

Mimi turned her attention back to the arrivals. There was Jay, briefcase in one hand, a girl in the other, passing by her without a glance. He hadn’t seen her, perhaps. So many people. Mimi was only a few feet away. She raised her hand, and was about to call to him. She saw him stop and talk to the beautiful young girl with him, kiss her. She was a classic, Bennington College, bright-young-thing type, with long blonde hair and dark blue eyes. A very American, Mayflower, WASP kind of face. Slender limbs. Wearing a smart pink cotton shirtdress with sleeves pushed up, ivory bangles on her wrists. Still Mimi could have called out, he was that close. But he was having words with the girl, and had on one of his very serious faces. At last the Bennington Miss nodded. A look of relief came over Jay’s face. He placed his briefcase on the floor, took the young girl in his arms and told her something that seemed to appease her. He picked up his briefcase again and was about to walk on. Mimi was surprised rather than stunned at what she was seeing. She had lost neither her composure nor her determination to confront what was going on.

She pushed her way past the people between Jay and herself. ‘Jay, Jay!’ She waved. The look on the young girl’s face said it all. It was relief rather than anxiety at Mimi’s appearance. For the first time since she had known her husband, he said the wrong word at the wrong time.

‘But you never come to the airport.’

‘That’s true. Clearly I’m not meant to.’

The girl did not move, said never a word. One hand was still gripping Jay’s, the other was clenched in a tight fist. He tried to slip his hand from hers. ‘This is awkward,’ he said with his usual suave charm. Just a little embarrassment at finding no words equal to the situation: No guilt. But he
needn’t have worried about Mimi catching him with the girl. Worse was to come.

‘Dada, Mama.’ The curly-haired baby and its Swiss nanny had pushed their way towards Jay and his blonde. ‘Dada, Mama.’ Hands outstretched, gurgles of laughter. Jay blenched.

‘Well, I guess that about says it all, Jay.’

The Bennington girl took her baby in her arms, kissed it and then shoved it upon Jay, obliging him to exchange baby for briefcase. Kisses and cuddles from the baby. A kind word for it from Jay, and he passed it back to the Bennington girl.

‘The car’s outside. You take it. I’ll call you,’ he told her.

Mimi could see he was angry, less with her than with the girl. He picked up his briefcase. Then taking Mimi by the arm over the barrier that was still between them, walked her swiftly from the hall.

‘Did you come by car or taxi?’

‘Actually I came with my father’s car and driver. Yours and your driver were unavailable. Or so your secretary said.’

‘Are you all right, Mimi? I didn’t want this to happen. I wanted you never to know.’

‘The irony is too much, Jay.’

‘Irony? That’s a bit subtle.’

‘Oh, but it is. You don’t think so because you don’t know why it’s ironic.’

‘Mimi, we have to talk.’

‘Let me tell you why it is ironic. I came here because I could hardly wait, wanting to talk to you. To tell you I want to have a baby.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. At this stage in our life, have a baby?’

‘Ironic, I told you.’ He flushed red with embarrassment. ‘Didn’t I just see a baby? It was your child I saw. Or am I wrong?’

‘I didn’t want it. I don’t want children now. I have had all
the children I want. Look, we have to talk about this.’

‘You may not want it. But it was still a child I saw. And I saw that upmarket bimbo you’re playing Dadas and Mamas with.’

‘Mimi, please!’

She held up her hand. ‘No wearisome explanations, please. And spare me the love saga.’

‘It is not a love saga. You and I are that, for me.’

‘Oh!’

‘You’re not going to dispute that, are you?’ Jay was shaping a defence.

‘No, actually I’m not, because I know it’s true.’

The look of relief on his face was immense. They were at Karel’s car now, a 1948 Rolls in a deep, rich maroon colour with a thin black coachline. He shook hands with Karel’s chauffeur, then looked at Mimi. She was already seated comfortably in the back of the car. He slipped in next to her. ‘We can’t talk, not here.’

‘Of course we can.’ And she pushed a button. The magic of hydraulics raised a glass partition between the driver and the rear compartment.

‘Mimi, about Claire and the baby …’

‘Do you want to leave me? Do you want to marry her?’

‘No, I don’t want to leave you, ever, I adore you. I like your being my wife, and our marriage. That is not what this is about.’

‘So what is it about?’

‘A brief infatuation, an unwanted child – unwanted by me.’

‘A brief affair, an unwanted child? That child looks to me to be more than a year old. The mother a travelling companion, a brief encounter? I hardly think so. Listen, this is the moment of truth for us. Do you want to leave me and marry this young woman? If you do, speak up now, Jay.’

‘Absolutely not, it’s out of the question.’

‘You merely want to have two families, one with her and another with me?’

‘No, I don’t even want that.’