The Art Student's War (55 page)

“Dolores? Truly, I found it painful to look at her. But did that stop him?”

“No,” Bianca inserted into the expectant silence. She could hear the boys outside, ecstatically calling challenges to each other. She could hear Grant and his father, laughing together over one of Grant’s jokes. (It was one of the many things Grant did for his father—saved up for the weekend the funny stories he’d heard during the working week.) She wished she were somewhere other than behind closed doors with her mother-in-law. But Mrs. Ives was inescapable.

“So then I figured, age was the only safeguard … And now I’ve got a seventy-three-year-old great-grandmother telling me she’s tired of having to watch her backside. I ask you: what am I going to do with that man?”

“I wish I knew …”

Here was a gruesome example of everything Bianca had been thinking about these past few days. Having somebody under your thumb? Mr. Ives had had Mrs. Ives under his thumb for forty years, exposing her to every womanly humiliation imaginable, but nowadays he had nobody under his thumb. And only his intense self-preoccupation blinded him to a realization that otherwise must be crushing. What had he harvested in forty years of married life? Didn’t the woman hate him? The creased expression etched into her face—it suggested raw hatred.

Still, it was hard to be fully sympathetic with Mrs. Ives when you watched dinner materialize: she’d neither cooked the meal nor would she serve it. She apparently felt it was enough—it was her nature-appointed role—to carp about how it was cooked and served. Even if Bianca didn’t say it outright, someone else might: the woman had done all right for herself. Though Grant would deny the accusation—not so much hotly as uncomprehendingly—Mrs. Ives had been a negligent mother. And when Grant had gone off to college, a dozen years ago, her maternal responsibilities had all but come to an end.

Bianca had grown up with the notion that once you’d finished Sunday dinner you must commence a serious cleanup. But not in the Ives household, since the cook and the maid would wordlessly handle it. The rest of them were free. Laughing, kicking at each other’s heels, the twins scurried to the backyard. Grant and his father resettled in the family room. Again Grant took up the topic of his law firm, Cutting and Fuller, and of Detroit business scuttlebutt generally. As each new name surfaced,
Mr. Ives, in his jovial way, chuckling contentedly, dismissed one man after another: “Oh Danley, yeah, he’s a real bastard,” and “Isaacson, he’s a
real
bastard,” and “As for Hutchins, he’d sell his sons for a saw-buck, the bastard.” And Smythe? “That son of a bitch? He’s a real
bastard.”

Bianca was led, all too inevitably, back behind the den’s closed door. But what happened next was unexpected. “You know, Grant has a big birthday coming up.”

“He sure does, Mrs. Ives.” Grant would turn thirty on September twenty-eighth.

Some, though perhaps not most, of Bianca’s friends called their mothers-in-law by their first names—though Mrs. Ives would certainly never permit that. Some called them “Mom” or “Mamma” plus their last name—but Bianca would never wish to do that. The solution was to insert just a hint of a weary protest when reciting that name, which was also her own name: Mrs. Ives, Mrs. Ives, Mrs. Ives.

“And I want to give him a present, a very special present.”

“That’s very kind,” Bianca said.

“Now, you know Mr. Ives doesn’t approve when I do anything lavish for the children. He says they have to make their own way.”

Grant’s two sisters were usually so distant, and so little spoken of, that they were easily forgotten. The elder, Kate, had married a ne’er-do-well mechanic and lived in Flagstaff, Arizona. The younger, Nancy, had married an actual missionary, a Presbyterian, and lived in Bangkok, Thailand. It seemed safe to say both girls had deliberately settled far from home.

Yes, Mr. Ives believed that children must make their own way—that was one plausible interpretation. Another was that he loved having his hands on the purse strings while they yearningly looked on. It galled him that Nancy, the missionary’s wife, wasn’t angling for any early slice of an inheritance. And it pleased him, though he railed endlessly, that Kate was always “trying to stick up the old man.” To Grant’s credit, he honestly didn’t look for any financial boon from his father. Still, there was the knowledge that eventually it would be there—and in abundance.

“But I have some money of my own. Which I can spend as I please. I don’t need his say-so.”

“Not if it’s yours …”

“For Grant’s thirtieth birthday, I want to buy him a car.”

“A car? Oh, Mrs. Ives.”

“A car of his choosing. You can help him pick it out, dear.”

“Oh, Mrs. Ives.”

“Mr. Ives will
not
be pleased. But I’m going to do it anyway.”

It was a wonderful, prodigal, astounding gift, and Grant would naturally be overjoyed. Bianca, too, felt joy—though tempered immediately by something else, a gradually clarifying sense of frustration. Oh, never in a million years would she convince Grant of what had secretly inspired the gift. In all his warmhearted gratitude, Grant would never perceive that cold hostility—Mrs. Ives’s decades-long resentment of her husband—was the chief motivation.

Bianca had the house to herself by eight the next morning. Grant was off early to work and the twins had flown outdoors, equipped with two glass jars into whose tin lids she’d poked holes with an awl. One of their friends had seen a frog in a ditch near Hampton School.

It made sense, in retrospect, that Ronny hadn’t called yesterday, when everyone was apt to be home. What didn’t make sense was his failure to call this morning. What was he thinking?

Another night’s sleep had left her feeling less desperate but more resentful. Didn’t Ronny feel the need to talk? Hadn’t they always understood each other so well? It pained her to think he wasn’t trusting in their shared ability to sort things out.

Imagining his call, Bianca saw herself breezily laughing off the entire afternoon: “I guess I
did
have too much wine.” Or saw herself speaking with a noble veracity that reproached his craven evasiveness: “I have the very deepest feelings for you, Ronny, and I want to thank you for a day I’ll never forget.” She read the
Free Press
and waited for his call, tidied the kitchen and waited for his call, took a bath rather than a shower so she would not miss his call. But Ronny did not call.

The twins came home late in the morning and each wolfed down two tuna sandwiches with sweet pickle relish and three glasses of milk. Then they were off again—they loved these summer days. Bianca realized that she’d forgotten to have breakfast and was actually ravenous. She made herself a tuna sandwich and, after only a slight pause, poured herself a glass of her father’s wine—something she would normally
never
have done. Not on a weekday, not when eating by herself. “I’m sinking fast,” she said aloud. It was all excessively histrionic—the wine, the talking
to herself. But hardly so by another light: she
was
feeling anxious, she
was
intensely confused. Tomorrow morning, at ten o’clock, she would see Dr. Stimpson, who would inform her that she was pregnant.

As she poured a second glass of wine, she spoke to herself once more: “I’m not one of those wives,” she declared, and then she said, “I’m going to call
him.”
The wine would strengthen her resolve. But she didn’t call. Instead, having finished the tuna, she made herself a grape-jelly-and-cream-cheese sandwich, something she rarely ate these days. When she’d finished the sandwich, and the wine, she telephoned Ronny.

Ronny wasn’t home. He was doing nothing,
nothing
to reach her. She poured herself a half glass of wine. It would serve him right, when he finally thought to call, if he got no answer. She would track down the boys and take them off to a park. It was a beautiful day. Or she would get a sitter, who would be here when the boys returned, and she would visit Maggie, or Priscilla. But she did nothing of the sort. Instead, she telephoned Ronny.

Again, no answer.

By the time Grant got home from work, her mood was poisonous. He seemed in quite a foul mood himself, scowling when informed of dinner’s delay. He always came home famished. He poured himself a stiff whiskey. She poured herself a glass of wine. The two of them parked themselves at the kitchen table.

Grant quickly got onto one of his most tiresome hobbyhorses: the need to economize. Usually, he was very good about money. He accepted, gratefully, their happy state. Their married life had begun comfortably, with a tidy inheritance from his little-mourned grandmother Ives, who had conveniently died a week after his college graduation. They had a lovely home. They had two cars. (They would have a third soon—though Grant didn’t know about his mother’s spectacular plans.) They had money in the bank.

But Grant occasionally got into an aggressive, faintly panicky state about money and absurd economies would be suggested—they were going to start using oleo instead of butter, and why did the boys need haircuts quite so often?

On such occasions, Bianca had learned the wisest course was complaisance. Grocery shopping a week later, Grant would look blank when she proposed buying oleo.

Usually, his suggestions were harmless, but tonight, as he was peering
hungrily into the refrigerator, his inspiration took a painful, awful turn. Why did they have a milkman? They no longer needed a milkman. It was silly to have milk delivered when they had two cars. And the boys would enjoy hauling the bottles. It was good exercise.

No milk delivery? But what about Mr. Bootmaker, their milkman, big-black-shoed ever-smiling Roy Bootmaker? Bianca was very fond of Mr. Bootmaker, whose elderly little father always rode in the truck.

“Well, it’s one thing to be fond of people. It’s another to throw away money.”

“But he’s a friend. I
like
Mr. Bootmaker.”

“I like plenty of people. Doesn’t mean I have to line their pockets.” Grant was spoiling for a fight.

“He cheers me up in the mornings. He’s always got a smile.”

“How much do we spend a month with Bootmaker?”

“I don’t know, offhand.”

“What’s our yearly bill with Bootmaker?”

This was one of Grant’s most lawyerly, irksome tricks of argumentation: once he heard you admit ignorance to something, he would go on asking you the same question in variant forms.

For a moment, a burning rage welled within Bianca’s chest, and it appeared the two of them were about to have one of their rare, terrible, blasting arguments, right here in the kitchen before dinner. Fear prickled her skin all over (though Grant’s temper was slow to kindle, when finally ignited his whole big body would shake with rage), as well as a giddy kind of righteous excitement. She wouldn’t be bullied. Uh-uh. And then, precipitately, her rage collapsed. What had she done all day but sit over glasses of wine waiting for a call from an old boyfriend, whom she’d kissed many, many times while parked in his green MG? A sense of shamed unworthiness leaked from her very bones. “We’ll cancel the milkman,” Bianca murmured. “And now I’ve got to make dinner.”

It pleased her to see Grant immediately so flummoxed. She did this to him fairly often: effectively won an argument—won it from a moral standpoint—by abruptly, graciously conceding defeat. “It’s the logical thing to do,” Grant insisted, but his softening features were already admitting uncertainty.

“I’m sure you’re right,” Bianca said sweetly.

After dinner, knowing she couldn’t confront Mr. Bootmaker face-to-face—it would be disastrous if she started to cry—she wrote him a note, explaining her changed situation and thanking him for his cheerful
services. She showed the note to Grant, ostensibly seeking his approval but actually looking to heighten his confusion and remorse. “Oh it’s a fine thing, lass,” he said. He was wanting to make peace. He was making preliminary amorous overtures. “Thank you,” she replied coolly.

She would leave the note in the milk chute. As an afterthought, although the milkman generally wasn’t somebody you tipped, she wrote a P.S. explaining that she wanted him to have a very early Christmas gift, and slipped a ten-dollar bill into an envelope, on which she, warming to the task, wrote out his full name with an artful script—Mister Roy Bootmaker—and then drew a little holly wreath. The P.S. wasn’t something she showed Grant. Yet even as she was sketching the wreath, embellishing it with little Christmas bells that called out for a bright red pencil, which she would supply, in her heart of hearts Bianca knew this wasn’t the end of the matter.

The next day, she found out what she already knew: she was pregnant. The news was almost anticlimactic.

Of course the news changed everything. She was going to have a baby next year, in the middle of May. The baby would come with the spring. She would have to buy new clothes soon. Fashions had changed since she last needed maternity clothes; her tastes had changed. And she would have to decide who was going to be told when. She was going to have a baby, and this time around, the child would bear
some
resemblance to its mother. This time around, she would have a girl …

The fight, or near-fight, of the night before belonged to a buried past. Maybe the two of them had been more anxious than they realized, awaiting the official news? But such explanations, too, belonged to a buried past. Had she really sat around all yesterday, soaking up wine like some slatternly housewife and waiting in vain for Ronny to call and waiting, too, to squabble with Grant? How did any of this connect with the quickened, wholesome world she now inhabited?

The following day, Wednesday afternoon, she didn’t at first recognize the little man who shuffled hesitantly up her front walk. It was Mr. Bootmaker Senior.

She didn’t know him, partly because she never saw him anywhere except behind the wheel of his truck (he did the driving, while his son lugged the deliveries), and partly because he was so much shorter than
she’d imagined, and partly because he’d removed his checkered cap. And put on a suit and tie.