The Art Student's War (41 page)

Mrs. Olsson’s dumbfounding announcement sparked so many questions and objections that Bea couldn’t assemble anything coherent. But Mrs. Olsson quashed all her struggling with one regal wave.

“Do you recall what I asked the last time we lunched here? I asked you:
In your heart of hearts, what is it you want, Bianca?”

It was one of those typically abrupt turnarounds from Mrs. Olsson. One moment, she couldn’t remember having taken you to Pierre’s; the next, dark eyes suddenly sharp as tacks, she was reciting verbatim the question she posed at Pierre’s three months before.

“Back then, honey? I was thinking maybe you’re a bit of a gold digger. You blame me? I wasn’t going to blame
you
if you were just a bit of one. I was a bit of one, once upon a time. But I wanted you to understand you couldn’t put one over on me.

“Isn’t it funny? I worried you were a gold digger and now I’m worrying you’re not
enough
of a gold digger—worrying you’re so smitten with this idea of a lost love, of becoming some sort of gorgeous starving girlartist, with such big starving girlartist eyes, that you don’t realize you may accidentally be throwing your life away.

“Do you see what I’m saying? Hell, you can have your lost love, Bea. He was brilliant and he was good-looking and he gave up his life, no less, for you and his country. That’s so beautiful. It’ll always be so beautiful. But you can also have a life that allows lunches at Pierre’s and shopping in New York, all the while married to a husband so handsome you’ll be the envy of every woman you meet.”

“I better tell you something,” Bea began, and then, needing fortification, sipped from her newest tower of wine. She could hardly believe she was going to utter the words she was going to utter: “I gave myself to Henry.”

So challengingly sharp was Mrs. Olsson’s scrutiny, she obviously expected Bea’s glance to curtsy and drop away in shame. Bea flinched—she wavered—but she held steady. She fully met that gaze. It was Henry who steadied her. She was not going to deny Henry.

“You gave yourself?”

“I did.”

“To this soldier boy?”

“That’s right. The very last night I saw him. Somehow I knew he wasn’t coming back.”

“And not also to Ronny?”

“To
Ronny?”
Bea said. “Heavens no.” What must Mrs. Olsson be thinking of her?

“Heavens
no?” And yet, Mrs. Olsson seemed faintly offended, rather than what you might expect—relieved.

“Well—no.”

“And Ronny knows what you did?”

“I’m not sure.”

A long silence fell. “Well, if he does,” Mrs. Olsson said, dropping her own eyes to the maize-colored candle beside the ivory-colored ashtray, “it doesn’t seem to trouble him. And if he doesn’t? I can tell you from experience, it wouldn’t be the first time a man mistook his wife.”

Apparently, there was nothing on God’s green earth that could not be divulged at this corner table in Pierre’s. Bea said, “You make it sound like ours to decide—as if Ronny had no say …”

“Of course he does. My boy is no milquetoast. Only, I do think you can bring him round. I think you’re a young woman of extraordinary powers, my dear. Haven’t I made that clear? That I believe in you?”

“I’m so flattered,” Bea said. “Nothing could mean more to me than—”

“And”—Mrs. Olsson added, finishing her drink—“I’m so tired. I’m so deathly tired of seeing my boy unhappy.”

“I’ll be right back,” Bea said.

“Yes, you go on,” Mrs. Olsson replied, nodding confirmingly, as if she herself had proposed this trip to the ladies’. “You think it over. What I’m saying.
You think it over.”

But Bea was not in need of anything so high-minded as space to think. She needed a toilet—her tummy suddenly felt very shaky. It had been quite a while since she’d eaten so much, so fast.

What had she been
thinking?
She could no longer eat the way normal people might eat.

One other aspect of Pierre’s was unchanged: the same doleful Negro woman served as the ladies’ room attendant. Worse yet, she was still wearing the same strained-looking, too-tight pink dress.

Bea recalled how, the last time she was here, some word or coin from
Mrs. Olsson had elicited this woman’s blessing. Bea announced, rather nonsensically, “I’m here with the lady who was just in here.”

The woman did not look impressed. No, the truth was she looked poised and canny. And amused. Bea felt herself in the wrong somehow. And, flustered by the woman’s look, and by Mrs. Olsson’s astounding revelations, and by the wine, and flustered, most of all, by her distressed stomach’s imminent collapse, Bea had to check herself from additionally blurting out, “And you know what she did? She just proposed to me—on behalf of her son.”

CHAPTER XXIII

At home, Edith had a problem—the sort of problem no child on earth except Edith would have.

Months and months ago, she had been given the name of a soldier to write to. Each student in Edith’s homeroom had been randomly assigned a soldier, but it seemed safe to say no classmate had a letter in the mail sooner than Edith did—an extremely long and no doubt extremely informative letter. Her soldier’s name was Ira Styne.

And surely no classmate would have kept on writing even when no reply materialized. She must have written half a dozen letters in all. Now, miraculously, a letter addressed to Edith Paradiso appeared and, more miraculous still, it enclosed a five-dollar bill.

Bea studied the letter minutely. Everyone in the family studied it minutely. A total stranger had just sent little Edith a five-dollar bill! The soldier’s penmanship seemed childish or shy—the letters were
very
small—but the tone and vocabulary were wry and sophisticated.

Private Styne apologized for being so tardy. “All sorts of things came up. To tell you the truth, I had a bit of a time for a while. Anyway, I won’t bore you with the details, except to say I’m
very sorry
.

“I was interested to hear that you like mathematics,” he went on. “It’s very strict, isn’t it? I think I like math less than I used to.

“Speaking of math, I enclose five hundred pennies in convenient paper form. Rereading your letters, I was distressed to see that I missed your birthday a few weeks ago. You have become a teenager! This is a very special birthday: thirteen. The gift comes with one strict condition attached: you must spend it on something that makes you
very happy.”

Edith’s problem—or at least her larger problem—did not involve the gift itself. She knew precisely what to do with the money. She would buy four dollars’ worth of war stamps—she would support our boys—and she would reserve the remaining dollar for treats for herself. No, the problem was what to do with the letter. Specifically, could she legitimately place it in her scrapbook entitled “My Testimonials”?

When Bea eventually realized how much Henry would have enjoyed
this story, tears came to her eyes … Henry would have understood Edith’s quandary. He would have taken it seriously. Edith
couldn’t
place it in her scrapbook if it wasn’t an authentic testimonial.

The letter had arrived from a stranger, like a testimonial, but in response to mail from Edith, like a regular letter. Would it make sense to compile a new scrapbook, of notable correspondence—or was it a testimonial?

Henry would never have the opportunity to savor this story; Henry would never extend any helpful advice.

Haunted as she was, it was the most haunting thought Bea knew: the sentence that began,
Henry will never …
When she stepped off the bus, it was,
Henry will never see Woodward Avenue again
. When she stood in front of the white stucco house, each and every window decoration on the left precisely balancing a twin decoration on the right, it was,
Henry will never see his home again
. Bea was paying another visit to the Vanden Akkers.

Tragedy was the great human reality—Bea grasped this at last—and yet tragedy turned everything else unreal, and to walk up that house’s walk was like entering a dream, or a fairy tale, and nothing in Bea’s known world could possibly match the queerness of the vision when the front door swung open. It was the same horrible enactment all over again, only worse—far worse. Again Bea knew it must be Mrs. Vanden Akker in the doorway. And again there was a split-second refusal to believe it. In this fairy tale, stolid Mrs. Vanden Akker had been transformed by some curse into a wizened little wraith.

How much weight had she lost? Thirty pounds, forty? Whatever the figure, mere loss of weight could scarcely account for how much shorter she seemed—and how altered in every movement.

To be fair (but why, under these circumstances, be fair?), everything in the spectral Vanden Akker home was being filtered through a haze. Bea had awakened this morning to the realization that she was coming down with something. Or was it all in her mind? She was feeling a little dizzy, and quite achy. And for days now, dreading this visit, she’d been walking around with a knotted stomach.

Bea hadn’t expected to hear again from Mrs. Vanden Akker, whose telephone call had stirred up various accusatory resentments. What did the woman
want?
This request for another visit seemed wholly unreasonable
… Why
had Bea been summoned again to this ghostly living room, where Mr. Vanden Akker, more woolly-haired than ever, stood
waiting to shake her hand? Was it possible to convey a vein of madness in a handshake? If so, this was what Mr. Vanden Akker’s trembling hand conveyed.

After a good deal of clumsy fussing, Bea was seated upon the couch. And after a good deal more fussing, coffee was served.

Again Mrs. Vanden Akker asked conscientiously after each Paradiso, in order of age. Her constant nodding at Bea’s observations suggested a tremor. Truly, both Vanden Akker parents had aged ten years, twenty years, in just a few weeks …

Under these excruciating circumstances, Bea felt it would hardly be suitable to complain of feeling unwell. Was she about to fuss about a little sickness to two people who had lost their only child? Still, she was having trouble answering even simple questions. Her head had floated away.

Mr. Vanden Akker was letting his hair grow—a wild white thicket of curls, somewhat thin on top. Bea didn’t understand some of the references at first, but eventually it dawned on her that he’d left his job. Mr. Vanden Akker was unemployed, or he had retired. “I am pursuing my true interest—moral issues in theology,” he announced, and Mrs. Vanden Akker, who formerly had treated her husband’s abstruse pursuits with undisguised impatience, nodded respectfully—respectfully and, yes, tremulously.

Bea was also served hard little biscuits—they might well have been the same tooth-cracking biscuits she had met when last here, a few weeks ago. She drank deeply from her cup, hoping the coffee would clear her head. In recent days, it had sometimes been very difficult to tell whether she wasn’t feeling well or merely thought she ought to be feeling unwell. So there was some reassurance in declaring categorically:
I’m coming down with something
.

After a time, Mrs. Vanden Akker said, “I have consulted with Mr. Vanden Akker, and he informs me that when you last visited I may have committed a significant omission.”

Bea drew her spine erect and tried to focus. This must be it: the true, intensely-brooded-upon motive behind this invitation.

“Yes?” Surely they were not going to offer her another portrait of Henry. No, since there were no other portraits of Henry …

“Mr. Vanden Akker has examined the issue from all angles, in the light of his scholarship, and he has concluded that I misled you. Not deliberately. I do not lie,” Mrs. Vanden Akker declared forthrightly, her projecting chin a poignant throwback to her old forcefulness.

“No of course not,” Bea whispered in reply.

“But Mr. Vanden Akker, he made me see that I may have misled you by an act of omission. It is possible to mislead through omission, you see.”

“No less possible,” Mr. Vanden Akker interjected, and added, “though it’s often trickier to analyze.”

“Of course,” Bea murmured, since some such reply was evidently expected, but what was she agreeing to? Where in the name of heaven was this conversation headed?

“We received a letter from Henry before he passed away.”

“Various letters,” Mr. Vanden Akker qualified.

“But one in particular.”

“One in particular,” Mr. Vanden Akker said.

“Henry spoke of you.”

“Me?” The word emerged from Bea’s throat in a cracked whisper. She found herself blinking rapidly. She couldn’t quite bring either Mr. Vanden Akker or Mrs. Vanden Akker wholly into focus.

“Actually, in his letters Henry spoke of you various times,” Mr. Vanden Akker said.

“One letter in particular,” Mrs. Vanden Akker pointed out.

“One letter in particular,” Mr. Vanden Akker concurred.

“Henry said”—and Mrs. Vanden Akker’s stalwart manner abandoned her. With fluttery hands she hoisted her coffee cup. Her eyelids didn’t blink so much as flap; Bea was aware of the effort involved in brushing back tears.

It was Mr. Vanden Akker who restarted the conversation: “Our son wrote and told us that he was in love with you and that he wished to make you his wife.”

“He did? He wrote that to you?”

“It is not such an easy thing for someone in our church to marry someone outside it,” Mr. Vanden Akker said. “Though of course it can be done.”

“You would need to
convert,”
Mrs. Vanden Akker injected fiercely.

“There is no shame in conversion,” Mr. Vanden Akker pointed out. “At bottom, and here I’m taking the historical perspective, we are all converts. I explain that to my wife: we are all converts.”

“We are all converts,” Mrs. Vanden Akker echoed, her head wagging up and down.

“Our Henry wished you to be his wife,” Mr. Vanden Akker said. “And we didn’t tell you that.”

“I had no idea. I’m sure you didn’t mean—”

“Our duties are not restricted to our actions,” Mrs. Vanden Akker intoned.