The Art Student's War (22 page)

“Back there? To the fighting? But I’m never going back,” Private Donnelly declared in a new voice, harsh and flat and contentious—a voice without a trace of irony. “How could I?” he asked her.

Even though his body lay under a blanket, Bea had naturally avoided laying her eyes on the male torso and legs in the bed before her. She had kept her gaze trained on Private Donnelly’s face. But now her eyes followed the example of Private Donnelly’s burning blue eye, coming to a halt where his eye halted.

The lineaments of his lower body were traceable under the blanket. Near the base of the bed, two pointed mounds should have stood—the projecting bumps of his feet—but only one showed. Under his bedding, Private Donnelly’s right leg flatly trailed away, into nothingness. Somewhere below the knee, it had been amputated.

CHAPTER XII

It was hardly as if Bea were unaccustomed to the presence of alcohol. Many of her richest, oldest memories concerned her father’s winemaking. As a little girl, she’d yearn and yearn for the day when the magic train pulled in from California. Somehow the news had gotten out—this would be the train loaded with the special winemaking grapes—and a couple of dozen hatted men, mostly Italians like Papa, stood waiting for its clanging arrival. Papa would have removed the car’s backseat, so he could load up from floor to roof, and Bea would be driven home in a vehicle that held nothing but her father and herself and the wild scent of a million, million grapes.

Papa drank a beaker of wine every night, when he came home from work, and lately—ever since the terrible mess began—he often arrived home already smelling of beer. Although Mamma generally avoided drink—it didn’t agree with her—she’d sip a glass of wine at Sunday dinner, the Italian dinner, when Nonno and Nonna came for their weekly visit. Bea herself drank half a glass on Sundays, and sometimes a whole glass. Papa often poured an inch or so of wine into Stevie’s water glass, turning the water pink, and would announce, with his handsome smile, “Put hair on the boy’s chest,” and thump his own chest—all of which never failed to make Stevie blush. Sometimes Papa even poured a few drops of wine into Edith’s water glass—a subtle shift of tint fit for a painter’s eye—so that every Paradiso partook of the same bottle. Still, for all her experience, Bea didn’t initially understand just how much Ronny’s parents were consuming.

At the zoo once, Bea had watched a long-legged bird that maybe was a heron swallowing a fish. It was the strangest sight. The bird flipped the fish over its rigid beak eagerly, greedily—but with a jerky wince, as if the very process of self-nourishment were hurtful. That’s precisely the way Mr. Olsson drank. He tossed back the liquor as if he craved it, but with a grimace as if it pained him too (possibly it did, given his ulcers).

Mrs. Olsson drank with no evidence of urgency, slowly and almost absentmindedly, and yet a glass was usually at hand. Ronny said, “If
maybe Mother drinks too much, I blame it mostly on Dad. He’s always working. Always away. And even when he
is
home, he’s off in his little gym, punching at things.”

In recent days, Ronny’s dealings with his father had soured. Ronny seemed much more openly bitter. Bea couldn’t fully explain the change, though in her lunch at Pierre’s she’d learned that the Institute Midwest was a source of father-son disagreement. Could she herself—the Italian girl Ronny was now dating, the one whose immigrant father worked with his hands—possibly be another source? Bea kept awaiting some signal that her name and background, or her presumed Catholicism, or her family’s modest home within the Boulevard—that such things presented an insuperable problem. But she honestly never received such a signal. Within the cavernous tree-shadowed Olsson home, her presence seemed universally appreciated. In their different ways, all of them greeted her so warmly!

Although he could be remote at times, Mr. Olsson showed her especial warmth. He called her
my dear
, and told her how pretty she looked, and even spoke vaguely of someday—“when things calm down somewhat”—sitting for a portrait. (“But you must promise me, my dear, not to make me look
too
old.”) Addressing Ronny and Bea, he also made occasional, excruciating references to their “wish to be alone.” This was said with not quite a wink but the unignorable intimation of a wink. Into that lynx’s face of his—the round cheekbones slanting upward, the bald tan temples slanting downward—a sort of firelight shone.

In such moments, Mr. Olsson unwittingly touched upon another mystery. Ronny had followed up that unforgettable walk in Palmer Park, the one where he’d kissed Bea so voraciously that she all but swooned, where his tongue against her tongue had sent splashy fireworks fountaining along the inner walls of her brain, with another memorable walk, this one on Belle Isle. They sauntered hand in hand out to the lighthouse at the remote eastern edge of the island, and standing beneath it Ronny said, “Wouldn’t you think it was the last thing the world needed? An Art Deco lighthouse designed by a man famous for industrial buildings? This is Albert Kahn’s work, and isn’t it lovely when an architect gets the proportions right? It’s one of Detroit’s most beautiful buildings.” And
he
was right, indeed it
was
, and the thrill of sharing this discovery covered his body in goose bumps and led naturally to another round of kissing, and fireworks again, only with intenser colors—if that were possible. And the very next day a return to Palmer
Park, and colors brighter still. And Riverside Park, and Waterworks Park, and way out to the lovely fields at Cranbrook School (which Ronny said gave him the “jim-jams;” it reminded him of his brief prep school stint at Groton). The two of them would stand in some field or park for long, long minutes that seemed to unroll into hours, bodies so fiercely locked they might have been—one more of Maggie’s vivid phrases—feeding off each other’s faces. Afterward, Bea had resolved to speak with him. Weren’t things proceeding too quickly? Wasn’t this a little dangerous?

And yet it seemed Bea didn’t need to speak, after all. The walks suddenly halted and Ronny retreated, which was perhaps his way; he seemed prone to intervals of withdrawal. He was feeling “a bit depressed,” and Bea didn’t know how to answer such a confession. Oh, she was used to foul states of mind—there were Mamma’s Dark Spells, and though Papa was far steadier, every so often ominous states overcame him, when everybody knew not to cross him. But never in a million years would you hear him declare, as Ronny matter-of-factly declared, “I’m feeling a bit depressed.” It was all new and perplexing—Ronny was so unlike any other boy.

He didn’t look like a rebel, at least as rebellion was envisioned at the Institute Midwest. Unlike Hal Holm, Ronny wasn’t about to go around in dungarees and a big red beard. Yet a rebel is what Ronny Olsson was … His powerful father didn’t want him in art school, but he was in art school. Most of the male students at the Institute were fascinated by industrial design, or at least pretended to be, but Ronny judged it “a terrible bore.” He listened closely to Professor Manhardt, but only to hone his objections to the famous professor, who could be a “purblind fool.” (Bea had literally felt her jaw drop at that one.)

Like his mother, Ronny spoke his mind. And even when his reckless talk was objectionable (and it made Bea very angry indeed when he’d announce that the War was “the latest in a series of wars”), inwardly she thrilled at his nonconformity. Ronny was forever challenging her. It wasn’t just his being remarkably smart. It was his gift for making connections, for constantly demonstrating that in his ruminations he’d surveyed
this
place, too, long before you thought to explore it. Over the years Bea had heard a number of professors talk about art, but none could match Ronny when the right sort of painting—say a painting called
In the Studio
, by a Dutchman named Michael Sweerts—stood before him. There wasn’t a single professor who could convey the ardor
and the vivacity and the tactile reality Ronny conveyed—who could so light-handedly transport you back to the actual physical process, though it lay submerged under whole centuries, of a bristly brush being freshly dip-dip-dipped into a viscous little pool of pigment. (“You’re a born teacher,” she told him once, and clasped his hand—something she rarely did, having always been advised that boys don’t like your taking the initiative. But while Ronny warmed to the unexpected touch—squeezing her hand in reply—he balked at her message. “But Bianca,” he replied, “I don’t want to teach. I want to
paint.”
)

Yes, she had a little cautionary speech assembled, after all those overheated walks in Detroit’s principal parks, but when his ardor suddenly cooled, and it grew apparent her speech was temporarily superfluous, it likewise grew apparent that Bea yearned to be kissed again in Ronny’s hell-bent swashbuckling way: his gorgeous mouth open, his hips welded to her hips. Ever since those thrilling walks, it was as though he’d grown even more handsome—resembling more and more, with his longish hair and burning gaze, some Romantic poet of a nineteenth-century portrait, the sort of canvas optimally displayed in a gleaming black lacquer frame.

Those cheap words Maggie tossed off so easily—always finding men so
attractive
, always announcing she was so
attracted
to someone—undeniably applied here. Bea was
attracted
, Ronny was
attractive
. The word had come alive in all its various forms:
attractive, attracted, attraction, attractiveness
. Spoken aloud, to herself, the sounds were quite marvelous—the rupturing second syllable mimicking the expansive, ripped-open feeling in her chest. (The mystery of
attraction
ran so deep that even Stevie was touched by it—in his case, magnetic attraction. Did anyone else understand what Bea understood? That it really was all the same phenomenon? For when Stevie magically set iron filings dancing on a sheet of paper, stroked underneath by a horseshoe magnet, the look on his rapt face was spookily recognizable: it was a wooer’s lust enflaming his eyes.)

One morning she woke so shamed from a dream of disrobed abandon that she could scarcely face the bathroom mirror. She was supposed to meet Ronny for coffee at Herk’s, but she telephoned and canceled, claiming she had a stomachache.

The following night she went with Ronny and his parents out to dinner at “the club”—the Coral Club, overlooking Lake St. Clair. Drinking started early, before they left the house. Although Mrs. Olsson usually
handled liquor well, there were various little signs—like the faintest drag on concluding syllables and a slight indignant lurch when settling into the car—that she was, as Mamma would say, a wee bit pickled. And Mr. Olsson, looking ruddier than usual, was more than a wee bit. And Ronny had had a couple of Manhattans before leaving Arden Park.

For a while, dinner passed smoothly enough. Everyone ordered fresh drinks and a glass of red wine was set before Bea. (Wherever the Olsson party descended, the laws of the State of Michigan went into suspension. That Bea was underage meant nothing.) There was the sound of a singer and a piano in the next room—a woman was sighing her way through “I Don’t Want to Walk without You”—and Mr. Olsson invited Bea to dance. Mrs. Olsson glanced meaningfully at Ronny, who asked his mother to dance.

Mr. Olsson turned out to be a first-rate dancer—but what else would you expect? The old track star and fraternity president, the only man Bea had ever heard of whose house boasted a gym, piloted her around the floor with unshowy assurance. He held her a little more closely than she initially was comfortable with, but once she settled in, trusting to the firm splayed hand on her back, they whirled with enviable nimbleness. She felt lightheaded, and giddily grateful.

I don’t want to walk without the sunshine;
Why’d you have to turn off all that sunshine?

Over dinner, the atmosphere progressively chilled, each new conversational lull icier than its predecessor. Things were in no way helped by an improbable announcement from Mrs. Olsson:

“Bianca, did you know that Ronny and his father are planning a trip together? To Grand Rapids?”

“To Grand Rapids?” This was news to Bea. She looked for clarification first to Ronny, whose features went blank, and then to Mr. Olsson. His face, too, closed up.

“Why don’t you explain it to the girl, Charley?” Mrs. Olsson offered in a peppy kind of way—the sort of cheeriness that parades its own falsity.

“Well, I have a few stores out there,” Mr. Olsson began, after a moment. “Periodically, I go check on them.”

“How long does the drive take?” Bea asked. Grand Rapids was way at the other, the western, side of the state. She’d never been over there.

“Depends how you drive,” Mr. Olsson replied, again after a pause.

“Charley goes like a bat out of hell,” Mrs. Olsson sang, and sipped her drink. She added, sweetly, “I thought it would be nice for father and son to spend some time together.”

Another gruesome pause. Tonight it seemed exclusively Bea’s job to relieve these. She said, “How long will you be gone?”

“Just overnight,” both Mr. Olsson and Ronny answered simultaneously.

“I was at the Olsson’s at Seven and Woodward just yesterday,” Bea said, purely in order to say something. “I needed some cold cream and—”

Mr. Olsson interrupted: “You were
buying
something at Olsson’s! But my dear girl, you mustn’t. No, no, no. You just tell me what you need … Here.” And with that smooth rapidity which his lean, dapper body always seemed to be tensely holding in check (you felt his athleticism in even the simplest acts—the way he drove a car, or flipped a cigarette into an ash can), he plucked from an inner jacket pocket a little notepad and a pencil. “Here. You just make up a list. I’ll have the girl take care of it in the morning. You just make me up a little list right now.” As Bea stared, paralyzed, at the blank notepad, Mr. Olsson added, “Cold cream, brushes, tooth powder, cosmetics, Mrs. Olsson gets all her things at Olsson’s.”