Minding Ben (31 page)

“Hey, why not?” He sucked spit through his snout. “Maybe another day after work, I could come by if I'm off, or next Friday?”

What was the non-Kathy way out of this? The way that didn't involve a head thrown back with a wail of laughter, a fly swat of the hand and “Oh, please”?

“Thanks for asking me, Danny, but I can't. I'll see you later, okay.” I tried to walk past him, but he sidestepped and blocked me.

“Yeah, but hey, why, Grace? You seeing somebody?”

He smelled like milk one day past good.

“I know you're not seeing the big boss man upstairs because you can't give it to him the way he likes it, if you know what I mean.” He thrust his bony hips, and I stepped back. “But hey, ha-ha, butt, maybe you're giving it to the other boss man, the redheaded one? Is that why you won't go out with me, Grace? You and Mr. B getting it on?”

I walked past him without answering. I was my mother's child after all, and we didn't waste our time entertaining village trash.

I
heard voices before I rang the Bruckners' bell. Sol's and Miriam's and others, loud laughter and silverware against plates. It was Nancy who opened the door.

“Grace, darling, long time no see. How are you?”

“Hi, Nancy. Good, thanks.” She leaned and kissed me somewhere between my cheek and my lips, managing to hit and miss both at the same time.

She'd been drinking. I walked down the long hall behind her and came to the dining table under the sunflower clock. Sol sat next to Miriam massaging the bare, swollen foot she had propped in his lap; Susannah looked beautiful and deathly pale in a white cotton top that showed off her skinny arms and sharp clavicles. Michael looked tired. Dave's hair was a fuzzy mess, still in the cane rows.

Nancy put her hand on my back and presented me to the table. “Amazing Grace is here.”

I said hello to everyone and hi to Dave, whom I hadn't seen since our trip two weeks earlier. He winked at me and smiled. “Are you coming up this week?”

“Maybe.”

“Oh, come on up, Grace.”

“Okay, maybe Wednesday.”

“I'll expect you on Wednesday, then.”

“Hey, Grace-before-meals,” Sol said, “have some wine with us.”

“No thanks, Sol.”

“Oh, come on, Grace.” Nancy picked up a bottle and started to pour red wine into one of Miriam's fancy gold-rimmed goblets. “We're having a soiree.”

“Don't force her, Nancy,” Miriam said. “Grace is shy.”

“Well, okay, if you're shy, here.” Nancy handed me the glass poured to the brim. “Go have it in your room, but you are having some wine tonight, because we are celebrating.”

I took the offered glass, told Dave I'd see him later, and went into my room. I could hear them all out there, laughing and talking, Susannah at times piercing through the rest. I sipped some of the wine Nancy had poured. It was much drier than Canei, but not unpleasant once I swallowed.

Chairs scraped back from the dining table, and Susannah's shrill voice said, “Now? You're going to go up and look at plants now, in the middle of the night? You men are ridiculous. Michael, plants?”

“Come on, Suzy,” Nancy said, “you know what kind of plant they're going to look at. Green trees, wacky tobacky. Dave always had the best stuff. Roll me one for the road, Sol.”

Miriam said, “Nancy.”

And Nancy laughed. “Hey, I'm an artist, and anything that will conjure the muse is welcome.”

“Muse my ass,” Susannah said.

“But you have no ass, darling,” Nancy replied, and they all laughed. I drained my glass and listened. More wine was being poured.

“Oh, Nancy,” Susannah said, “don't you dare pour more wine for Miriam.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that it's only during the first trimester you're not supposed to have alcohol,” Nancy told her. “The organs are all formed already. I was premed, remember? One glass of red after a full meal isn't going to hurt the baby. In fact, the French think it will 'elp zee baby. Here, Miriam.”

“Bullshit that's her first glass. When she's born with flippers, you'll say I told you so.”

“Suzy!” both Miriam and Nancy called.

“What? I'm just saying. Pour me another glass, darling.”

“Come, come,” Nancy said, “another toast, now that the males of the species have gone. To Miriam, about to join the ranks of the idle rich. Here's to time, money, and help.”

They all laughed, and their glasses clanked off each other.

“Grace!” Miriam called me. I had hoped I wouldn't have to go out until they were all gone. “Yes, Miriam?”

“Do me a favor, darling.” She had never called me darling before. “Put on a pot of Sol's coffee and then start clearing this mess, will you?” She turned to her sisters-in-law. “You guys want gelato? The real deal from Luigi's in Carroll Gardens. Full cream and heavenly.”

Susannah patted her nonexistent stomach. “I'm so full I cannot eat another bite of air. I can drink, but no gelato for me.”

“Nancy?”

Nancy looked at me while she nodded yes to Miriam.

“Bring it, Grace, and the glass clover bowls from the top shelf,” Miriam said. “Be careful.”

I took some dishes with me into the kitchen, put on the coffee, and came back with the ice cream, leaving Miriam's
DON'T TOUCH
! label. And, even though Susannah had said she didn't want any, three of the green, leaf-shaped bowls. “You have the most beautiful arms,” Nancy said as I set a bowl in front of her. “Can I feel your muscles?”

Without waiting for me to answer, she groped my upper arm. “Like marble. Suzy, feel Grace's arms.”

Susannah set down her glass and felt my right arm. “Wow.” She flexed her own right bicep. “Do you lift, Grace? I can't tell you how much I had to curl to get this little bugger to pop. How'd you do that?”

I set down the last bowl in front of her, the one she didn't want. “Climbing.”

“Ah,” she said, “rocks.”

I laughed. “Not rocks, trees. I grew up in the country.”

Miriam sniggered, and I took another load of dishes to the dishwasher. Suzy's voice was lower but still shrill. “I really don't know how you do it, Miriam.”

“Do what?” Miriam snorted.

“Have such a smokin' nanny working for you. You've seen our Theresa—face looks like the rocky mountain in Peru she climbed down from. Perfect for me, not for Michael.”

Nancy laughed. “Susannah Bruckner, you are so uncharitable.”

“Only where no charity is due, darling. What, Miriam, you think Sol can't see? Michael totally checked her ass out when she walked by. Remember that maid's outfit she wore at Pesach? Pure fetish. I don't care what Aunt Ettie says, there's no way I would hire her.” I held my breath.

“Sol's not into black women,” Miriam said.

Both Susannah and Nancy said at the exact same moment, “Alana Monet.”

“Who?” Miriam asked.

“Suzy, are you trying to get my little brother in hot water?” Nancy asked.

“Not me,” Susannah said. “I just want some more red wine and maybe the world's tiniest scoop of gelato in the lower-left quadrant of my lucky clover.”

“Have the hazelnut,” Nancy said. “Divine.”

“Okay, so maybe two tiny scoops, because I want to try the pistachio too.”

“Pig.”

“What? You're eating from the tub.”

Nancy and Susannah bantered on, and, by either wine or design, neither answered Miriam's query or my curiosity about Alana Monet.

Later I heard Miriam's raised voice, and I realized then that in the five months I had worked for them I had never once heard her and Sol quarrel. They'd bickered, but I'd never heard them have a proper row. Miriam's growling anger rumbled through the walls. Sol's voice was a lower, steady murmur. Then I heard her cry.

“W
hat'd you kill in my absence?”

“On the contrary, I'll have you know that I propagated several colocasia.” A long, skinny pot held a row of variegated, heart-shaped leaves. Dasheen-bush cousin, my mother would call them. I tugged gently on one of the stems, feeling resistance as the baby tubers held tightly to the soil. “Not only that—” Dave pointed to the papaya and the Jesus Christ arms that branched out just below the vase.

“Yay, Dave. Look. I told you so.”

“You did indeed. Now we have to see the flowers.”

“O ye of little faith.”

He laughed. “No, my faith in you is solid, Grace. It's the rest of mankind I'm not too sure about. Just don't come anywhere near me with shears, okay?”

His deck was glorious on a summer evening. The forest in the sky was in full bloom, and unless you parted the trees and looked down on the busy city far below, it was easy to imagine island isolation.

I tucked a waxy, white frangipani behind my ear. “I like that it stays light for so long in New York. On the island, the sun sets at six, and then it's like you trip and fall into night.”

He laughed again.

“What's so funny about that?”

“It's not funny, it's just the way you said it.”

“Well, how'd I say it?”

“Like poetry, Grace.”

It was good to be upstairs again. Over the last few days, Miriam had ridden me hard. Any time I didn't spend with Ben at the park was spent indoors working. Her lists had grown longer, and I had cleaned out kitchen and bathroom cabinets, scrubbed top shelves and floorboards, and begun sorting Ben's used things in anticipation of the new baby. Yesterday, Ule had explained to me that Miriam was experiencing the nesting instinct, and I said I thought that mother birds took pride in building their own nests.

I worked with Dave. The colocasia wasn't the only plant that needed separating. The warm weather, the humidity, and the occasional summer shower had come together to create rain forest conditions, and the plants in the sky garden had done well and multiplied. We potted baby alpinias, trimmed runaway zebrina, and watered everything. Tucked along the farthest wall, I found the dropped fruit of a lucky seed tree. “Hey, I didn't know you had a lucky seed,” I said to Dave. “Helen and I used to play jacks with these outside my mother's church. Let me show you.” I threw the seeds onto the worktable to start the game.

Dave gave me the look I associated with benne and hibiscus toothbrushes. “Lucky seeds, Grace? You played with these?”

“Uh-huh, go ahead and destroy another part of my childhood.”

“You're lucky you
survived
your childhood.” He pointed to a bin, but I refused to drop in the diamond-shaped nuggets. “Try oleander, Grace. Poison.”

“Oh, come on, lucky seeds are poisonous?”

“Those things can trigger a fatal heart attack in a grown man. The whole tree is toxic.”

“Are you serious? Then why are you growing it?”

“The flowers are pretty, plus I don't have a crazy daughter trying to play jacks with poison, do I?” Dave pointed to the bin again, and this time I dropped in the seeds, liking the
plonk-plonk
sound they made when they hit the bottom.

His stand-in children, Brutus and Cesar, were miserable in the heat and moved from the shady spots only to lumber over to the many water bowls scattered around the deck for their convenience.

“They need trimming too, Dave.” I pointed my shears at a melancholy dog.

“I know, poor boys, but they've had their cut already and need to fill out for the cold weather. Looks like we might still be in New York.”

“What do you mean? You had plans to be somewhere else?”

He pulled off his leather work gloves. “Let's take a rest, okay?”

We washed up at the deep outdoor trough. He used the opener attachment on the penknife I'd got him to open our beers. It was sweet to sit on the lounges and look up at the ten city stars, to hear the distant hum of the nighttime traffic far far below.

“So answer me, Dave. Where you going?”

“Back to Old Town, maybe. Someplace where it's always warm.”

That I could understand because, even in late July, I thought with dread that it would turn cold again.

“What about you?”

“What do you mean, what about me?”

He cocked his head. “I don't want you to disappear again for two weeks.”

“I will not disappear, plus, it's not like you didn't know where to find me.”

“So then, what about you? What are you going to do?”

I faced him on the lounger. “Well, maybe I'll take a class at Hunter in the fall.” I shrugged, but saying it out loud made it sound so possible. That I could be on my way.

Dave sat up and straddled his lounge. “Grace, that's a brilliant idea. Hunter's a good school.” He reached his beer to knock cheers. “What do you think you want to study?”

“Plantology.”

“What?”

“Botany, Dave. Something to do with plants. I don't know. Maybe I could design gardens, work outside.” I shrugged.

Dave was nodding. “That is so solid, Grace. Wow.”

“You think so?”

“Oh yeah. You're good with people, and you healed my papaya. Grace?”

“Yeah?”

“This could really be something.”

We knocked our beers together again, and I relaxed into my seat to look up at the twinkling stars. The longer I looked up, the more I saw.

BEN TWIRLED A STRAND
of spaghetti on his Pooh fork. “You going home, Grace?”

“I am. I'm getting on the choo-choo train and taking a ride into Brooklyn.”

“Wow, Grace. Ya-ya took me on the choo-choo train.”

It was the first time in months he'd said anything about Ya-ya.

“Was it fun on the train?”

He nodded, then covered his ears. “But it was too loud. . . . Hi, Mama!”

“Hi, big boy.” To me Miriam just said “Grace—” and placed a large manila envelope on the table. My heart did a little flip. I tried not to smile too broadly, because I knew that finally INS had replied to my application. It wasn't going to be a green card, but it was something.

“What's this, Grace?”

Miriam was not smiling. I spun the envelope around and saw that it wasn't from INS at all but from Hunter College.

“Oh”—the disappointment in my voice was clear even to my ears—“I thought it was something to do with my papers.”

Miriam pulled out a dining chair and sat spread-legged across from me. Her white maternity shorts were very short, and her now fat thighs filled their width.

“Your what papers?”

“The sponsorship papers. I thought something might have come by now.”

“Oh, that.” She spun the envelope around to face her again. “But what is this?”

“I called up the college to get a catalog.”

“And why did you have them send it to our address?”

“Just to be sure that I got it.”

“Yes, but you don't live here, and you shouldn't get personal mail here.”

I didn't know what to say.

“So you're going to school? You're leaving? When were you planning on telling us? After the baby came?”

Ben, seeing that his mother was upset, threw down his Pooh fork, and it clattered off its matching plate. “I don't want Grace to go, Mommy.”

I understood now why she seemed so upset. “Oh, Miriam, no,” I said and shook my head. “I'm not leaving. I'm thinking about taking night classes.” I ran my hand over Ben's curls. “I'm not going anywhere, mister.”

“You promise, Grace?”

I handed him the fork. “Promise.”

Then Miriam said, “Night classes when?”

I pulled the envelope over to me again. I could feel the heavy catalog inside. “I have to look at the schedule, but probably evenings after work. Hunter's not far.”

“You should have talked to Sol or me before you did this.”

I hadn't done anything, just called for a catalog.

“Because this isn't going to work.” She went to the kitchen and came back with the list she had given me on the day of my first interview. Since then the paper had been bayoneted to the fridge with a chicken magnet. After the first few weeks, once I had got the rhythm of all I had to do, I never bothered to look at it.

“What does that say?” She pointed to almost the end of the list.

“What?”

She shook the piece of paper. “Number twenty-four, Grace.”

I read out loud: “Tend to Ben at night if he gets up.” In the five months I had been at the towers, Ben had never once awakened during the night.

“You can't do it,” Miriam said, “unless of course you want to go on Friday or Saturday night. Those are your nights to do as you please. But from Sunday through Thursday night, you're needed here. I'm not paying you to go to school, or to read, or to run around New York City. You're full-time live-in, and I need to have access to you at night. Midtown isn't upstairs. Do you understand?”

And Ben, who had been listening to his mother, said, “You understand, Grace?”

Miriam turned to him and laughed. She put her hand under her big belly and cradled it as she laughed. “Oh, baby,” she said.

Ben, happy that he could amuse his mother so, said it again, and Miriam laughed even harder. After a bit, she sobered up.

“Okay, Grace?”

“Okay.”

She got up and took some bills from the pocket of her maternity shorts. “Here you go. The receipts in the money cup were off by three ninety-four, so there's a hundred and ninety-six dollars here.”

KATHY WAGGED HER FINGER
at me. “I warned you about these people, Grace. Once you see they start that sponsorship for you, it's over. Now she feels she owns you.”

I wanted to disagree with her, but how could I?

“And talking about sponsorship, what she say about that? Anything come yet?”

“Not that she's told me about.”

Kath sat on the pouf. I lay on her quilted bedspread. “Grace, you have to ask her. Maybe something come already and she isn't saying anything. You suppose to at least get a letter saying you've filed, right? Something.”

My head hurt, and I wondered if Miriam would do that. Get something that important for me in the mail and not say anything.

“Anyhow,” Kath went on, “if it was me, I'd already dig up in every drawer to see what I couldn't find. You too good for your own good.”

“Don't say that, Kathy.”

She spun on the pouf. “I am saying it. Time to start acting as if you really planning on staying in this country.”

I sat up and looked at her. “And how is that, Kath?”

She clenched her hands into two tight fists. “With some balls, Grace.”

Her spunk was coming back, but this was bullshit. “So what about you then, hypocrite?” I pointed my palm at her. “How you been acting lately?”

“Don't you worry about me, darling.” She reached for the ponytail, but her hair was down. “I've already made up my mind. I'm not staying in this country.”

“So you're really going to do it. You're really going to go back to live at home with your mother and father?”

“Well, what so wrong with that, Grace? It's not like . . .” She stopped.

“It's not like what, Kath?”

“Nothing, Grace.”

“No, please, tell me. What's it not like?”

Kath stretched out her legs and crossed her left ankle over the right. She put her elbows onto her Formica dressing table and arched her back. Her hair dipped down. “Well, I'll just say that I'll have it easy, is all. Can I say that without pissing you off?”

She didn't piss me off at all. What she said was fact. She was rich at home, and there she could live like the young white girls who lived at the towers, the ones who talked about boyfriends and college and nightclubs. Never about work or money.

“See, now you're pissed. Grace, don't be mad. After”—she paused—“after, you know, I don't know. I just want to go home.”

I got off the bed and started searching her upside-down room. “What you looking for?” she asked.

“Comb. At least you could go home looking decent, right?”

“SO WHAT YOU KNOW
, Sylvia?” We were busy bagging up her existence on Eastern Parkway. I never would have thought it possible that the apartment could have looked more dilapidated than before, but here it was, finally not fit to be inhabited by humans. Micky and Derek had been banished to Dodo's. Dame remained with his mother, and Sylvia had stopped taking assignments from her agency to try to get out of the building as soon as possible. Of course, every weekend when I got in, the packing looked stalled at exactly where I had left off the previous Sunday night, but Sylvia just claimed that the more she did, the more there was to do.

“Not a damn thing. You ever see more? Jacob really playing the ass in truth. I suppose to be moving in two weeks, and up to now he not telling me where I going.” She sized up a dress that Micky might have worn three summers ago and flung it into one of her piles. “As long as he keep me on the number three line, I tell him, everything good. But enough already, man.”

I was getting worried. There was noplace I could rent for sixty-five dollars a week, the most I figured I could spend out of my two-hundred-dollar pay and still be able to save something. At least noplace I wanted to live. Kath had told me not to worry, that I could stay with her, rent free, until I found a place, but her little hot room could barely hold her.

Sylvia read my mind. “So what you planning on doing, Miss Grace? You going to stay seven days with them white people? You know you could always go and stay with Dodo, right. She would be glad for the extra fifty dollars.”

“Are you crazy? Me and Dodo in the same house?”