The Art Student's War (56 page)

“Oh no,” Bianca groaned, but she wore a smile on opening the door. “Mr. Bootmaker. Very nice to see you.”

“Mrs. Ives.” He bowed his bare head. She hadn’t realized he was mostly bald, and that his face was so lined.

“You’ve come because I’ve canceled service.”

“Indeed, ma’am.” The little man looked just miserable, standing out on her front porch. “Roy has no idea I’m here.”

“Please, you must come in.” She would have to be courteous, of course. But whatever else, she must stand firm. She’d made such a point of deferring to Grant, who so rarely put his foot down. She would respect Grant’s judgment …

More hesitantly still, Mr. Bootmaker stepped inside with his hands extended, as though parting veils. He’d been driving up to this house for years, but evidently this was the first time he’d stepped inside. He posted himself beside the mantel.

“Please, you must sit down.”

“I never mind standing,” Mr. Bootmaker said. Given how diminutive he was, it was odd that his son was so big-boned. In his sweet, beaming way, Roy had more than once complained to Bianca about the burden of finding shoes that fit. He wore a size 12½ EEE.

“Let me get you something, Mr. Bootmaker. A cup of coffee? A bottle of beer?”

“Don’t need a thing myself, ma’am. I’ll just be a moment of your time. I apologize for disturbing you.”

“You’re not disturbing me. I’m glad to see you.”

Bianca wasn’t certain whether she ought to remain standing, given Mr. Bootmaker’s refusal of a seat. She sat down on the couch and said, “I’ve been feeling very bad about this. But we have two cars, you see.”

The little man looked down at his hands, which he had linked and knotted at his waist, and said, “Mrs. Ives, I don’t know whether you’re aware. My boy’s health?” He looked up from his hands and stared her straight in the eye. “Roy has epilepsy. He’s an epileptic.”

“Oh my, oh no, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry,” Bianca said. “He’s never mentioned it.”

“He wouldn’t, would he? Roy? Nor would he be quick about forgiving me if he knew I’d come tonight. Not our Roy. Oh no. He thinks I’m playing pinochle. But I thought the word might have got round the
neighborhood. Some weeks back, he had a little seizure in Mrs. Dahle’s kitchen up the street. Do you know Mrs. Dahle?”

“Hardly at all.”

“After that, she canceled on us. I thought the word about him might have got round, you see. People don’t understand there’s no harm in it.”

“But Mr. Bootmaker, you honestly don’t think I would cancel because …” Bianca let the sentence drop. The idea was almost too hurtful for words.

“He can’t drive a car, of course. That’s why I do the driving.”

“I never knew that was the reason.”

“But I put it to you, ma’am: what other sort of work are they going to give him, people the way they are? This is something he can do, so long as I drive the truck. I watch over him, you see.”

“Of course you do.” It was going to be disastrous if she started to cry.

“Mrs. Bootmaker, God bless her, she’s been gone a long time, you see. So it’s just me now watching over the boy. I’m all the family he’s got.”

“It’s still family,” Bianca pointed out, as the shadowy room began to fill with ancestral ghosts, one of whom—another little man—she recognized.

“I say to myself, Dicky, you’re seventy-seven and you’ve got to keep going, you can’t retire. And you’ve got to take care of yourself, because you still have a boy to watch out for. You know what that is. You have two sons yourself.”

Something heaved within her and it was all decided in a moment.

“Mr. Bootmaker, I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

“Ma’am?”

“I’d like to start up service again. It was my husband who insisted.” But this wasn’t fair. This wasn’t right. She had to take responsibility. The little man before her was seventy-seven years old, and today he’d finished his long route and gone home and put on his one good suit and, swallowing all his pride, driven over to plead with a woman young enough to be his granddaughter. “What I did was wrong,” Bianca said. “I don’t know what I was thinking to agree to it,” she said, but again this wasn’t quite fair. “It was wrong. I made a mistake.”

“I don’t ask on my own behalf. I don’t need a thing myself,” Mr. Bootmaker said. “It’s my boy. I have to watch over him.”

“Of course you do.” Of course he did: this little old man had to watch over a grizzled “boy” who wore a size 12½ EEE shoe.

“You won’t regret it,” Mr. Bootmaker said.

“I know I won’t, Mr. Bootmaker.”

The old man was looking toward the door. His errand successfully run, he was eager to be on his way.

“Well if that’s your decision, Mrs. Ives, I have something for you.”

“Something for me?” Bianca couldn’t imagine what this might be.

Mr. Bootmaker drew from the inner pocket of his suit coat an envelope, on which was artfully written
Mister Roy Bootmaker
, embellished with a holly wreath and little red bells. “If we have you back, Mrs. Ives, that’s all the Christmas present Roy and I would ask.”

She accepted the envelope. “Let me be the first to say it, then: merry Christmas, Mr. Bootmaker.”

The old man smiled broadly, creasing his face in a hundred radiant lines. For the first time since he’d stepped inside, he looked at ease. Any portrait artist would have glimpsed it in an instant: the old man had a wonderful, luminous face.

“It isn’t just the milk and eggs,” he explained. “Roy will watch out for you. You go on vacation, he checks up on your house. Makes sure everything’s all right. It’s good to have someone looking out for you.”

“Of course it is,” Bianca said.

“Good for the entire neighborhood.”

“Of course.”

“And not a word about my coming today.”

“Heavens no. You’ve been off playing pinochle.”

And the old man actually winked at her. He’d been a charmer, once. He was still a charmer. “You’re in good hands,” Mr. Bootmaker said.

“Good hands,” Bianca said.

The breaking of the news to Grant was something to be done thoughtfully. Not that she
needed
to be cautious—not after the official word of her pregnancy. He was feeling
over the moon
, as he kept announcing to everybody.
It’s a wee bairn, is it?
The last few nights, the two of them had been jubilantly, passionately celebrating …

Still, she wanted things to go smoothly. Ever since Maggie’s remarks about Grant’s being under her thumb, Bianca had been feeling misgivings about his authority at home, or lack of it. The truth was, he rarely put his foot down as he had over Mr. Bootmaker, and how had she responded? She’d agreed to follow her husband’s advice, then done the very opposite.

She waited until Friday, catching him the moment he came home from work. “Grant, I need to talk to you.”

Experience had taught her that a direct approach worked best. The very phrase—
Grant, I need to talk to you
—had a way of turning him jittery and accommodating. She took a seat on the living-room sofa; he took a seat across from her, in the armchair.

“Grant, did you know Roy Bootmaker is epileptic?”

“Who?”

“Our—the milkman. The man who has been delivering our milk ever since we moved here.”

“No,” Grant said. “How would I know that? Did you know?”

“I didn’t, but I had a visitor. Mr. Bootmaker Senior.”

“Senior?”

“You know—his father? The little man who drives the truck.”

Grant’s response came quickly: “Listen, either of them has anything to discuss, they can take it up with me.” It was one of his most appealing traits—this unnecessary, chivalrous impulse to protect her even from men who posed no threat or problem.

“Roy-the-son can’t drive a car. Now what sort of job is he supposed to get?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea …” Grant paused a moment—he seemed to take the question seriously—and then his expression clouded. “Bianca, you didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“Start up with them again.”

Bianca felt her face flush. “Well, yes—yes, I did.”

“After you wrote that note and everything?”

“I didn’t know the circumstances at the time …”

“And what if old Bootmaker Senior got cancer? Would that be a reason for starting up again? What if Roy’s house burned down, would that be a reason for starting up again? What if he got an ulcer, would that be a reason for starting up again?”

“Maybe,” Bianca said.

Grant’s line of questions veered unexpectedly: “And what if I were absolutely to forbid it?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if I said, You and I came to a solemn agreement, Bianca, and now you’re reneging, which is wrong, and I absolutely
forbid
it, we’re not having the milkman again—what if that’s what I said?”

“But you wouldn’t do that, Grant.”

“I know. I know, I know. But
what if
? I say,
What if
?”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Bianca repeated.

“I know, I know, and goddamn it we’ll have the goddamn milkman back, of course we will, but what if I were to actually
forbid
it? What if I said, Bianca, we made a solemn deal and
you
can’t go back on your word? You’d still have him back, wouldn’t you? Damn what anybody says, you’d have him back, wouldn’t you?
Wouldn’t
you?”

The living room had become a courtroom. The two of them considered each other: the attorney and the woman of the house. Grant’s face wore an expression of great intensity, but for the moment Bianca couldn’t follow his line of thinking. He looked at her dead-on, demanding an answer, and she said, softly but firmly, “Yes, I would still have taken him back.”

A queer moment’s pause, then Grant’s face broke beautifully into a smile, and Bianca saw that everything was all right. This was a smile of pride. In Grant’s eyes, she’d passed some sort of crucial test. She wasn’t “one of those wives.” He’d married someone else.

He stood up and came eagerly to the sofa, sat down beside her, and took her in his arms. “You do what’s right, don’t you?”

Instantly, she experienced all the warm radiant well-being her husband’s praise dependably stirred. She basked in the feeling, and his words allowed her the freedom of graciousness. “I don’t know about what’s right, sweetie. I just did what I felt I had to do.” Her arms had drifted around his back. Her mouth was at the side of his neck. She was murmuring into his ear.

“My tough,
tough
little girl,” Grant said, murmuring into
her
ear. “Damn what anybody said. You’d take him back.”

“Tough? Don’t I wish. Honey, I had to cave in quickly, otherwise I was going to start crying. You know who he suddenly reminded me of? I felt it very vividly. He reminded me of my
nonno
, back from the grave. I was
helpless
. A total pushover. For these little old men with big hearts …”

But this wasn’t the direction Grant wanted to take. “Wouldn’t matter,” he said again. “Wouldn’t matter what anybody told you. No, you’d take him back. My girl would take him back.”

The muscles in Grant’s big shoulders were quivering and she understood, belatedly, what he was referring to. He too was looking into the past. She’d tried to put that distant day behind her, as an insurmountable
embarrassment. But Grant had never put it behind him. He never would. Yes, one day she’d left him a note—another of her notes!—and she and his children had gone away on a train. And having left his law firm early, he’d driven down to Cleveland at a hundred miles an hour to plead the case of his life. And his tough,
tough
little girl—the one who did what was right, damn what anybody said? She’d taken him back.

CHAPTER XXX

Having given it all some thought, Bianca concluded that the only place for a family celebration—and there did have to be a celebration—was her own home. No solution was ideal. Stevie’s little bungalow was out of the question. While her parents’ house could have done in a pinch, it would have
been
a pinch, for they were now eleven: in addition to Grant and herself and the twins, there would be Uncle Dennis and Aunt Grace, Mamma and Papa and Edith, Stevie and Rita. Mamma often seemed resentful about how the family’s social life had shifted from Inquiry to Middleway. But she’d be far more aggrieved, surely, if asked to arrange dinner for eleven.

Of course they could go to a restaurant, but they hadn’t all chanced a restaurant together since Grace’s birthday party at Chuck’s Chop House. Restaurants were dangerous. All the more so because this visit, though long postponed, had originally been intended to coincide with Aunt Grace’s birthday. She’d turned forty-nine a couple of months ago.

The family dinner was set for Saturday. The Poppletons arrived the night before. On their Detroit visits they always stayed on Middleway, since Bianca had “so much room,” though Mamma and Papa’s house, now that Bianca and Stevie had moved out, held plenty of space for guests. But—an unspoken agreement—the days were gone forever when Aunt Grace would lodge under her sister’s roof.

Aunt Grace arrived looking tired, and pale. Bianca always studied her aunt’s appearance closely, nervously. Of course Aunt Grace was cheerful …

Uncle Dennis looked mostly unchanged, though perhaps a little heavier. Years ago, it seemed he’d reached a point of near-stability. Yes, the gray was slowly infiltrating his hair—but far more slowly than into Papa’s, who recently had grown silver, almost white, at the temples. This, and the limp Papa had developed, because of the plantar wart he could never shake, had seemed to bring the two men closer in age. It was no longer incredible that the two were contemporaries.

The twins adored their great-aunt and great-uncle, who shortly on
arrival were dragged into the basement for a display of Ping-Pong prowess, then into the screened porch, to watch a game of catch in the backyard.

Aunt Grace accepted a glass of wine. Grant had already poured his day’s drink: a hefty whiskey. Uncle Dennis also had a whiskey. Bianca chose iced tea. The news that she was going to have a baby had turned alcohol, instantly, into a distant memory.