The Art Student's War (40 page)

The DIA was—as Ronny rightly pointed out—the city’s most sacred site, and when previously guiding Mrs. Olsson, Bea had attempted a brief, reverent history of Italian painting. But most of her account had been cut short by Mrs. Olsson, who had hustled them off to lunch. Today, however, Mrs. Olsson wanted to linger—specifically, she wanted to volunteer evaluations. Especially of the portraits.

Mrs. Olsson would have happily conceded that she knew nothing about art history, and yet in her judgments she was, characteristically, opinionated and imposing. They did not intimidate her, those elite faces looking down from the great walls. Leaning confidentially toward Bea, offering pointed little observations, Mrs. Olsson was like a woman at a fête, the belle of the ball, quietly appraising the other, less resplendent partygoers.

Among the French paintings, Mrs. Olsson was particularly drawn toward a pretty aristocrat, a marquise, in a green velvet dress with generous décolletage. “It’s hard to say who admired her bosom more,” Mrs. Olsson said. “The painter or the lady herself.” Then her conversation took an even more indelicate turn, the sort of thing Mamma wouldn’t say in a hundred years: “Bianca, you ever ask yourself why God put them there—breasts?”

Mrs. Olsson awaited an answer …

“I don’t suppose,” Bea murmured.

“D’you suppose He liked them Himself? Or was it just His way of turning the tables in a man’s world?” Mrs. Olsson laughed and Bea, after a moment, laughed with her.

The two of them found their way to a Flemish painting of the Madonna with two children. Mrs. Olsson said, “No surprise this one’s anonymous. That little Christ child is plug-ugly, and the other kid’s the ugliest little boy I ever saw.”

“That’s John the Baptist.”

“I should have known,” Mrs. Olsson said. “No wonder they cut his head off.”

After such an observation, Bea decided to sidestep Bellini’s
Madonna and Child
. It was perhaps her favorite painting in the museum, and Mrs. Olsson just might fail to appreciate it …

French paintings, English paintings. And then—better yet—a Dutch room. “Ronny’s very fond of this one,” Bea said. It was a Claesz still life.

“Isn’t it too dark?”

“He admires the reflection of the window on the wineglass. It’s very subtle. The painting’s quite solid, but everything seems afloat.”

“Yes …”

And Mrs. Olsson, surprisingly, peered long and hard at the painting—as if determined to commune with her son here, within some smoky oak-paneled Dutch interior. Finally she said, “Where do you think Ronny gets it—his talent for art? From me, is it? Or from Mr. Olsson?”

“Maybe both?”

“It has to be me, dear, now doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? Bea, be candid with me. Suppose I lived to be a hundred. Well maybe, just maybe, I’d paint a painting one day. But let Charley live ten thousand years, he’d still paint no paintings. Can you see him in a little beret, doing a water-color of somebody’s poodle?”

Bea laughed again—when was the last time she’d laughed like this? “Mr. Olsson in a little beret? No.”

“And now it’s time for lunch. You
are
going to let me take you to lunch? We’ll go to Pierre’s. Have you been to Pierre’s?”

The question took Bea aback. It remained among the most memorable meals in her life—that remarkable afternoon when Mrs. Olsson had taken her to Pierre’s.

“It’s where we went after our last visit here,” Bea said gently.

Not even a tad embarrassed, Mrs. Olsson replied, “Silly me. ’course it is.”

So they returned to Pierre’s, that dark, cozy, amazingly costly restaurant tucked away off Jefferson not far from the Windsor Tunnel. Once again, the dapper owner, Monsieur Pierre, all but fell over himself at seeing Mrs. Olsson, who again introduced Bea with a flamboyantly elongated enunciation—Bi-an-ca Pa-ra-di-so. And once again Pierre lifted Bea’s hand near enough to his mouth that, although he didn’t actually kiss it, she could feel his rapturous breathing.

In low, earnest tones Mrs. Olsson consulted with Pierre, who led them to a table different from their previous table. This one, fitted into a corner, was less in the public eye. But the beautiful salmon-colored napkins and tablecloth were exactly the shade Bea remembered. A plump maize-colored candle threw an opulent glow over their table.

It seemed this time there were to be no menus, for scarcely had the two of them been seated when a glass of red wine appeared before Bea, and a clear icy drink before Mrs. Olsson, along with a basket of rolls and a bowl of olives.

Bea sipped her wine, and took another sip.

“You haven’t been eating,” Mrs. Olsson told her. “I want you to have a roll.”

Warily, slowly, Bea selected a roll. Lately, she hadn’t done too well when somebody—usually Mamma or Papa—exhorted her to eat. Urgings of this sort turned everything to dust in her mouth.

“With
butter.”

Bea nodded obediently and, more slowly still, buttered the roll, which was warm.

She took a small bite and—and the little roll’s condensed flavor opened and ramified on her palate. Its buttery goldenness filled her mouth. She’d never tasted
anything
so delicious. The roll, resting in her hand, was a thing of subtle textures, and she could feel it calling to her, asking to be eaten. Bea took another bite, and another bite.

“And I want you to drink more of your wine. When was the last time you relaxed, darling?”

The wine, too, spoke invitingly to Bea as it went down. As she was consuming a second roll, a new wave of drinks arrived. Who would have supposed she could ever feel so at ease with Mrs. Olsson?

But this was more than ease—it was
gratitude
. This was the perfect place, these rolls were the perfect food, this wine was the perfect glass of wine. It turned out there was nobody in the world whose company she preferred to Mrs. Charles Olsson’s—Gretchen Olsson’s—and nowhere else she would rather dine than in a restaurant owned by a man named Pierre who wore a pencil-line-thin moustache.

“So you lost someone dear to you,” Mrs. Olsson said.

“Yes. Yes I did.”

“And was he very dear, Bianca?”

“
Very.”

Those unreally large and lustrous brown-black eyes of Mrs. Olsson—they were no longer intimidating. It was a wonderful, it was a thrilling experience to stare deep into the eyes of such a beautiful woman—a celebrated beauty. Mrs. Olsson was a celebrated beauty.

I sometimes think you look a little like me
, Mrs. Olsson had once told her.

“I’ll bet he was very handsome,” Mrs. Olsson said.

“Henry? Handsome? I don’t know. Maybe. He was brilliantly smart.”

“I’m sorry, baby,” Mrs. Olsson said. There wasn’t another woman of Bea’s acquaintance who could successfully deliver a
baby
in quite this way, or that earlier
darling
, lending the endearments such a wry, fluent tenderness.

“It’s been very hard,” Bea said.

“I can see.”

“Is it so obvious?”

“To me it is. You know you can’t fool me, Bea.”

“I know.” And then Bea uttered perhaps the boldest remark she’d ever made to Mrs. Olsson: “But I honestly don’t think I’ve tried to.”

It was as though Bea had declared, in perfect candor,
This is really me
, and for a moment their intertwined glances formed a sort of enclosure, wherein each understood the other intimately. Then Mrs. Olsson smiled lightly and said, “Now eat some olives, baby. And a roll. And drink your wine.”

Bea needed no encouragement. Without the slightest tincture of self-consciousness, she had cracked open a third crusty roll and had downed most of her second glass of wine. She couldn’t remember the last time food had tasted so good. Mrs. Olsson looked amused, perhaps—solicitous, certainly.

“And you felt you couldn’t go on?” Mrs. Olsson said.

“For a while.”

“You felt you’d lost your one true love?”

Bea took the guidance she was so kindly being offered. “That’s right,” she confessed. “I did. I wear the locket he gave me. Every day.”

The look Mrs. Olsson trained on the locket was disconcertingly cool and appraising. “Garnet?” she said.

“Amethyst,” Bea replied. “It’s purple.”

“Garnets come in purple,” Mrs. Olsson said.

“Really? I didn’t know. But I wear it every day,” Bea said.

“Nice.”

“Every day,” Bea repeated.

“You know something? I have something for you to ponder.” And Mrs. Olsson paused melodramatically.

Bea had long understood just how ardently Mrs. Olsson relished this role of interpreter of life’s emotional mysteries. What Bea hadn’t understood, until now, was just how much she herself enjoyed playing audience
to Mrs. Olsson in this role. She
adored
Mrs. Olsson. “Now, with a very pretty girl,” Mrs. Olsson began, “someone like you, Bianca, well, that’s the way it has to be.”

“The way what? The way
what
has to be?”

“Losing your true love.”

What was Mrs. Olsson saying? “You mean Henry was fated to die?”

“Heavens no. But if he hadn’t, then he wouldn’t have been your true love. You see, for very pretty girls, their one true love’s always a lost love.”

“Why pretty girls? What’s so different about—them?” Bea caught herself just in time. She’d almost said
us
. To clear her head, she took another sip of wine.

“Listen closely. Because this is a difficult thing to talk about, isn’t it?”

In the avid way Mrs. Olsson canted forward, with a slight comely turn of the face, Bea was again made aware of just how much Mrs. Olsson was Ronny’s mother, or he her son. They shared this eager impulse to talk their way toward the truth. Although Ronny was a bookworm, and Mrs. Olsson freely confessed to not reading much of anything, temperamentally she was no less a philosopher than her son. What linked together all her wayward and inappropriate talk—her jarring observations about money, or Negroes, or Catholics—was this shared probing conversational propulsion. “But I think I can explain. Consider the homely little mouse in your average high school class. She spends a whole lifetime thinking all her achiness and loneliness would magically vanish if she could just nab the heart of the football captain, or the class president. You know, the Charley Olsson of the class. Of course the Charley Olssons don’t know she’s alive, little mouse. But the Bi-an-ca Pa-ra-di-so of the class, she
can
get the football player, or the class president. Or the Charley Olsson. So let’s say she does get him—then what? The ache’s still there, isn’t it?

“See, it’s the one thing she shares with the class mouse. They both need to believe if they could only meet the right boy, the ache would go away. You see? The girl who can
get
the football captain, for her it’s
got
to be a lost love.
Got
to be the boy whose family moved away when he was twelve. Or else the one drowned at summer camp. Or the one you exchanged glances with on a bus but never spoke to.”

“It’s funny you should mention … I sometimes feel as though everything in my life really started one Friday afternoon last May on a Woodward streetcar when—”

“Or else the one who goes off to war and doesn’t come back.”

Lunch arrived on a cloud of inviting aromas. There were steaks and green beans and also long but very thin French fries, which Bea cut with a knife and Mrs. Olsson ate with her fingers. Each flavor was more satisfying than the next. Although Bea naturally wouldn’t think of requesting any such thing, and indeed hadn’t finished her second glass, a third glass of wine appeared, as well as a new drink for Mrs. Olsson, who talked about her charity work. (She’d recently become active in the War Chest and the Save the Children foundation.) When Mrs. Olsson went off to the ladies’ room, Bea ate four quick warm handfuls of French fries. Honestly, she didn’t know when she’d last felt so hungry.

Mrs. Olsson, the moment she returned to the table, took up the pressing subject once more. “So now you might say your life’s nearly complete, my dear. You have your lost love. And that’s something you’ll always have. What you
don’t
seem to have is some suitable way to live.”

“I’m not sure I—”

“And Ronny doesn’t either. You know he gets
blue
. Poor sweet boy, it breaks my heart, seeing him so blue. He needs to figure out a future for himself.”

Perhaps emboldened by the fancy wine, Bea said, “He tells me you’re pressuring him to become an art professor.”

“Pressuring? Is that what he says? When I just want to see my boy happy? Is that such a crime?”

“Actually, I’m thinking myself of eventually going back to school. Regular school, not art school. I love literature, and maybe it would enrich my art to study—”

“This Henry of yours. Was he as good-looking as Ronny?”

“Oh no. I mean not in the same—”

“Or as smart?”

You could say that Mrs. Olsson kept interrupting, since so many of Bea’s sentences were left unfinished. Or you could say she was facilitating the conversation, given how difficult Bea was finding it to pursue a thought to its end. “Well I think he
was
, though in a different way. Henry was a mathematician.”

“Oh mathematics. Charley’s a whiz for numbers—he can tell you how many bottles of Hill’s nose drops he sold in Grand Rapids last month. But Ronny? Ronny is an
artist.”
Mrs. Olsson offered this with the firm conviction of somebody who had spent the morning in a museum—who had assessed one portrait after another before concluding that, on the whole, her son could have done better.

“I am not pressuring,” Mrs. Olsson went on. “I am clarifying. What
I’m saying is, most professors are stuck living in dreary little shoeboxes with bad plumbing. But Ronny wouldn’t be. I’d see to that.

“What I’m saying is that if—and again I’m not pressuring, dear, I’m clarifying—that if, just say, if the two of you were ever to decide you actually wanted to tie the knot and get married, I would put up no obstacles. None.”

“Well that’s hardly what we’re—I mean I feel sure Ronny isn’t—”