The Art Student's War (48 page)

And Grant’s mother would be positively elated. She’d always wanted a granddaughter—perhaps because, Bianca secretly speculated, she’d mishandled her own two daughters, who lived so far away and returned home so rarely.

Dad Ives would be pleased, too, though the news wouldn’t strike deep. Ever since his stroke, two years ago, few topics engaged him except his own health, which wasn’t good. Though he had trouble moving and walking, the stroke had left his mind unimpaired—which only increased his frustration. “But he’ll be
glad,”
Bianca said. “He’s always liked girls.”

“All too well,” Grant said, and laughed. Girls—grown-up girls—were one of the few things that still pricked Mr. Ives’s interest. “And Stevie?” Grant asked.

“Oh he’ll be delighted, truly. But then the next time I see him I’ll have to remind him. After all, there’s no reality but the Ford Motor Company.”

Stevie had taken a job at the Ford plant in Highland Park. He was forever working overtime.

“And Rita?”

Rita, Stevie’s wife, presented a more complicated question. The whole issue of pregnancy was an uneasy matter in Stevie and Rita’s little house, which lay almost under the shadow of the plant. Stevie had married Rita two years ago, in a panicky hurry—though as it happened they managed to beat, by exactly one week, the arrival of her miscarriage. Back then, Rita had been just-turned-seventeen.

“And Edith?”

“She’ll concoct some new health regimen for me. I must henceforth eat only what pregnant Armenian women eat. Or vegetarian Koreans.”

Grant laughed. Edith was forever reading about faraway lands, but
always—Edith being Edith—with an eye toward improbable, practical applications. “And Aunt Grace and Uncle Dennis?”

Bianca pondered a moment. “They’ll make a special trip, won’t they, when the baby’s born. Aunt Grace in particular—she’ll be
so
pleased.”

Grace’s cancer had appeared four years ago. She might plausibly have turned bitter, having had her right breast removed at the age of forty-five, but the illness had made her, if anything, more generous.

“Priscilla will find it odd,” Grant said.

Bianca laughed. “Odd? Yes, she will, won’t she. I don’t know how or
why
, but she’ll find it odd.”

Priscilla was a new friend—and much the best-educated woman in Bianca’s circle. She’d gone to Mount Holyoke College, in Massachusetts, and then to the University of Michigan for medical school. She found most developments in Bianca’s life “rather odd,” which was only fitting, since she herself was so odd. Grant didn’t much care for her—he said she wasn’t a real woman—though her observations amused him.

“And Maggie,” Grant said. “She
won’t
be pleased.”

Lunch was going very well. It was a sign of how much fun they were having, and how secure Grant was feeling, that he would bring up Maggie in this way—a sore subject for a variety of reasons.

“No, she won’t be, will she?” Bianca said, and laughed.

“Hey, just
listen
to my girl’s mischievous laughter. It’s time you admitted it: you don’t like her, do you?”

“I like her,” Bianca protested.

“But you don’t much like spending time with her.”

“That’s true.” And this time Bianca’s laughter emerged as an unladylike snort.

“Oh you
girls,”
Grant said, and shook his head mock-sternly. “Always complicating everything …”

“It isn’t that I don’t enjoy spending time with her. What I don’t enjoy,” Bianca began, and saw that, propelled perhaps by the second glass of wine, the distinction she meant to draw was difficult to express. She pushed on anyway. “What I don’t enjoy isn’t so much how she’s always showing off her money. No, it isn’t that. It isn’t that at all. It’s how she fails to understand what
a fluke
her life is. In her eyes, she was
born
to have all this money. She doesn’t see how odd it is (and now I know I’m sounding like Priscilla, but I’m going to say it anyway), how
odd
it is she’d wind up filthy rich.”

Maggie’s marriage to George Hamm had dissolved soon after his
return from the Army. Displaying even poorer judgment the second time around, she’d married Peter Schrock, who owned a tavern on Seven Mile and who mistreated her even worse than George had—though Maggie hadn’t treated Pete much better. And then, already twice divorced and still in her twenties, Maggie had consented to marry Wally Waller, whose devotion, originating at Field Elementary, remained unwavering. It was one of the greatest of all mysteries of that greatest of all mysteries—love.
Why
was Wally so devoted? He’d become a man of note in the city—a highly eligible bachelor, somebody who could range far and wide in pursuit of a wife. Exempt from military service because of his deformed hand, Wally had done very, very well in business, both during and since the War.

“In any case,” Bianca said, “whether I want to or not, I’m seeing her tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

Grant could never keep her schedule in his head, no matter how many times she reminded him. “She’s coming over for coffee—remember?—while you’re at the game.”

The Tigers were in town and Grant and the boys would be in the bleachers tomorrow. Cheap seats. When it came to sports, Grant enjoyed slumming it. He was never happier than when playing handball with a factory worker who hadn’t bathed in a week.

“That’s right.”

“She said she wants my advice about something. What’ll it be? Whether to buy a yacht? Whether to spend Christmas in Florida, or would California be even nicer?”

The game contentedly petered out over coffee and Bianca’s third—and last—cigarette. Grant called for the check. At the door, Pierre, roused to his former magnificence, actually kissed Bianca’s hand while murmuring,
“À bientôt.”

“You’ve got to love the old fruit,” Grant said the moment they stepped out into the sun. Having seized her kissed hand in his, he lifted his free hand and pointed: “Look! Another gull.”

This one, too, was wheeling toward the river.

“I take that as a good omen,” Bianca said.

A couple of years ago, desiring a still bigger house, Grant had proposed a move up to Huntington Woods or even Birmingham. Bianca had resisted, but it had taken a couple of days before her objections crystallized. If she settled any further north, she’d lose all sense of living
by the river. “I don’t want to move to Birmingham because there aren’t enough gulls up there.”

It was
precisely
the kind of answer Grant loved her for—loved the artist’s eccentricity of it. He broadcast the story everywhere, to everyone. Who was he? He was the sort of man who offered to build his wife a splendid house in Birmingham. And his wife—who was she? She was the sort of woman who refused his offer because there weren’t enough gulls up there.

CHAPTER XXVII

Maggie arrived twenty minutes late—which was all right. She breezed in and, without so much as a single question about Grant or the boys, launched into a lament about her impossible new maid—which was a little annoying but mostly all right. But why was she wearing pearls and a cocktail dress?

Bianca was wearing khaki pedal pushers and a yellow cotton blouse from Montgomery Ward. Maggie made a passing but significant reference to having somewhere else to go—clearly prodding Bianca to ask the where and what. She didn’t ask.

Maggie shifted topics from her maid to her mother-in-law, whom she called Witch Waller. In appearance, Maggie’s life was altogether transformed from the days when she’d shared a cramped bungalow out Grand River with the Jailer, but fundamentally it was the same, and would always be the same. If Maggie were to get married and divorced a hundred times, it was a safe bet that all one hundred mothers-in-law would be insufferable.

Maggie got along fine with Mr. Waller, but no surprise there: men adored Maggie.

Bianca asked whether she’d like tea or coffee, and Maggie wondered whether there might be some beer or wine, and Bianca replied that she had both, and Maggie pointed out that some wine might be nice. So Bianca poured Maggie a glass of wine and, a little guiltily, recalling those two glasses at yesterday’s lunch, a half glass for herself. They both lit cigarettes.

When Maggie had called she’d suggested, rather urgently, that she needed Bianca’s advice, and it turned out, after a few minutes’ conversation, she did indeed have a problem—quite an amazing problem. “Walton wants me to have plastic surgery.”

“Plastic surgery!” Here was something completely out of the blue. “Why? On what?”

“On my chin.”

“On your
chin!
I don’t think they even
do
plastic surgery on chins.”

“They do,” Maggie said softly, almost meekly. “It’s called chin enhancement.”

“Chin enhancement! Who ever heard of such a thing? Maggie, do you plan to walk around town with an
enhanced chin?
Are people going to say about you, There goes the lady with the
enhanced chin?
This is absurd.”

“I have a weak chin,” Maggie said, more meekly still. They were sitting at the kitchen table. Each was on her second cigarette. Maggie was on her second glass of wine. Bianca was on her second half glass.

“You don’t have a
weak
chin, Maggie. You have
your
chin.”

“I do have a weak chin. Not like yours. You with your bone structure, easy for you to talk. But I’m getting a double chin because my chin is weak.”

“You drop five pounds, you’d lose it I’m sure.”

“I’m not so sure. I have a weak chin. You don’t. You’re lucky.”

“Maggie, you look great as you are. You’re forever turning heads.”

“It’s very hard to argue with Walton’s logic—”

“It always is,” Bianca interrupted, though Maggie didn’t seem to notice and went right on: “He says, Kid, you’re twenty-eight years old. Do you want to spend the next forty, fifty years with a double chin? Or without a double chin? You choose.”

“Maggie, is this plastic surgery something
you
want?”

Maggie hesitated. “I think so.”

“Maggie, you go tell Walton to have his own chin enhanced.”

“Easy for you, giving that advice …”

“What do you mean by that?” The conversation had turned a little dicey, all of a sudden.

Maggie again hesitated, then plunged in: “Just that you’ve got Grant wrapped round your little finger. That’s all.”

Bianca laughed a little as she protested: “Maggie, I do not.”

Maggie proceeded more confidently, with dramatic pauses: “Around … your … little … finger. Look, I say it with envy. What wouldn’t I give to have Walton wrapped round my little finger?”

“This is absurd,” Bianca protested. “Walton’s the most devoted man I know.”

“Devotion’s different. We’re talking about having the say-so. We’re talking about having somebody like a bug under your thumb. Honey, believe me, Walton’s not the sort of man you have under your thumb.”

This pronouncement was vexatious on a variety of fronts: the cinematic
way Maggie exhaled a cloud of smoke before uttering it; the
honey;
and, worst of all, the implication that somehow Grant was a victim or a patsy—which manly Walton refused to be. Behind this remark lay an assumption that everybody in the world, except Bianca, now seemed prepared to concede: Walton Waller was a formidable personage. Even Grant, though often tough on the men in their circle, had nothing but respect for Walton, who was “one helluva businessman,” who was “easy to underestimate,” who was “a gutsy guy.” Grant was forever pointing out that having been born into a good thing—his family’s plate-glass business—Walton hadn’t needed to venture out as he had.

All right, she’d concede this—but what a way to venture! He’d started buying up small businesses, beginning with some car washes. Over each one he’d post a sign: “A Walton J. Waller Establishment.” You saw those signs all over town. Grant used to share her laughter at the overweening solemnity of it. But in recent years, as the signs proliferated, he’d stopped laughing. And it had fallen on Bianca to recall that, even were he to become the new Henry Ford, Walton J. Waller was really Wally Waller.

Bianca said: “Look, Maggie, do you want your chin enhanced?”

“Well I think I do,” Maggie replied. “Only—”

“Only?”

“Only I’m frightened. Terrified. Of needles, knives. I get the jim-jams. You know how I am.”

Bianca did. It was a famous story: Maggie’s fainting after a shot in the doctor’s office. Here she sat in pearls and cocktail dress, the wife of a helluva businessman, and yet she was still Maggie Szot, of Inquiry Street, that brash young lollapalooza who blanched at the thought of a little needle …

Bianca felt an impetuous surge of affection for Maggie. “Speaking of doctors’ offices,” she said, “I’m hoping to be in one myself. You know, we’re trying to have another child.”

Maggie didn’t respond with the right warmth. “Your idea?” she asked. “Or Grant’s?”

Bianca leaned back in her chair. “Both of ours.”

“Not that it really matters.” Given that she’d been trying for ages to get pregnant herself, Maggie’s coolness perhaps was understandable. Still, she might have
pretended
to be nice.

“Maggie, what are you saying?”

“I’m just saying he’ll always go along, you’ve got him under your thumb.” Maggie was quite set on establishing this particular point today. “That’s all. Look, I’m envious,” she said and, irritatingly, smiled. “I envy you.”

“One,” Bianca said. “I don’t have Grant under my thumb. Two, I don’t
want
Grant, or any other man, like a bug under my thumb, as you so memorably put it.”

“Like fun you don’t. Look,” Maggie said again, “I’m envious.”

The two friends stared at each other. Each drew on her cigarette, exhaled, tapped ash into the ashtray. Then Maggie said, “You know, sometimes I get the feeling you’ve never forgiven me.”

“Forgiven you?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“Maggie, that was four years ago.”

“I know! So why won’t you let it go?”