The Art Student's War (74 page)

“But Bianca, you’re not seeing the whole picture.” Grant canted forward and narrowed his eyes. He was about to become lawyerly. “You’re not making the right distinctions. You’re comparing yourself to them, but I’m saying compare yourself to me. And who am I?
I’m
somebody who tries to fire them—I’m doing my best to ensure that people like them go out of business. And then you go behind my back and restart deliveries. And what happens? Not two months later, they go and save somebody’s life on our
very own street
. Talk about having your instincts vindicated! Those men are heroes.”

These days, Grant was never more endearing than when saluting the milkmen, father and son. “Top of the morning, gentlemen!” he’d cry, with a deep, respectful ducking of his head. It was a wonderful, all too rare example of life making perfect sense: of
course
Grant would come to live in a world with genuine heroes serving as his milkmen.

Grant would scarcely have suffered a pang if you informed him he could never enter another art museum, and yet he loved being married to an artist. He lived in a world of practical—legal and financial—realities, but he longed to believe in his wife’s second sight. Why had she resumed milk deliveries? Why else but to contrive, through supernatural agencies he could only dimly discern, that the Bootmakers would save Mr. Bickey’s life?

“You give me too much credit,” Bianca repeated. “Go and call me an artist after I’ve actually been doing some art.” But she said this mildly. It was all right if he couldn’t accept this notion, because she couldn’t either, quite. Sometimes her heart took journeys. Certain rare and remote experiences mustn’t be denied or discounted, and it was their imperishable value—not mere vanity—that rendered her a little insistent now. By claiming to be something of an artist, she wasn’t making a claim solely on her own behalf, was she? Rather, on behalf of art generally—and on behalf of that little man, her nonno, of whom she, pressed so hard by life, too seldom thought, but who had once been celebrated in mythical Liguria … And suddenly, preposterously, her eyes welled up.

The little man who had painted trompe l’oeil windows? Dead. Like Mrs. Olsson, like Henry Vanden Akker, her nonno was dead. And she would never again step through the front door of her childhood home, and a particular quality of light was disappearing from this city, her own Detroit—it was disappearing unrecorded, for no canvas in the world, for all the potency of her visions, had managed to capture and preserve it. She must go back—go back to her pencils and her charcoals and her oils.

On the way home, in the passenger seat of Grant’s sporty Mercury, Bianca leaned her head against the window. Ahead, an aging streetcar clattered up Woodward. One of the city’s few remaining streetcars. There were only four lines left and, according to the newspapers, the Jefferson line would vanish in a couple of months, leaving only the Gratiot, the Michigan, and the Woodward. Already gone was the Grand River line she’d taken through the rain that day—the unforgettable day when she’d confessed,
Maggie, the very worst thing has happened
. It wasn’t their leaving she minded, was it? Only her failure to know what to do with their leaving, only this sensation that no one was trying earnestly to record what was being lost …

Mrs. Ives looked relieved to see them. Whenever she babysat, which was seldom, she always suggested that—though she wasn’t about to go telling tales—the twins had been especially difficult. Nonsense, of course. The boys were out in the yard—where they’d probably spent most of the time since their grandmother’s arrival. It was how Mrs. Ives chose to meet the world:
I am so put upon
.

Grant went out to join the boys. He’d recently purchased a tether-ball set—a very simple arrangement, just a metal pole with a ball
attached to the top by a long cord. Ostensibly, Grant went out to “offer a few pointers.” The real reason was to hit the ball himself.

Bianca and Mrs. Ives stood in the screened porch. The minute Grant stepped out the backdoor, her litany began.

“It’s like a child. It’s like taking care of a child that will never grow up. Day after day after day …”

She was speaking of Mr. Ives, whose recovery had stalled long ago. And who continued to pinch and pat and poke any female—irrespective of age, race, body type—who wandered within reach.

“I’m so sorry,” Bianca said.

“Your boys will grow up,” Mrs. Ives went on. “But Mr. Ives won’t. He’s frozen the way he is until he dies.”

“I’m so sorry,” Bianca said.

“It could happen to you,” Mrs. Ives went on in a sharpened voice—almost a spiteful voice. “Your husband could have a stroke, and you’re left taking care of this wreck of a man for the rest of your life.”

Out in the yard, Grant tossed the ball into the air and gave it a solid, resounding whack. He was demonstrating his prowess for his twin boys. Round and round and round, in rapid, ever tightening revolutions, the crimson ball orbited the pole. The soaring ball seemed a more powerful rebuttal to Mrs. Ives’s grim imaginings than anything Bianca might say. Legs spread wide, shoulders thrown back, Grant was indomitable.

“It’s not that I mind taking care of a child,” Mrs. Ives went on. “Honestly, I like children just fine. It’s that Mr. Ives is really a big
nasty
child. At bottom, he’s a very big
nasty
boy.”

She was twelve minutes early but he was too. They met on the great outside stairs of the museum, side by side before they knew it. “Our minds are synchronized,” she said.

“Hearts too,” he said gallantly, and took her by the arm. Oh, she adored his quick suavity! She’d been feeling like a cow all day—as of this morning she’d gained thirty-six pounds—and yet she turned giddy, almost airborne, as they mounted the steps together.

At the cloakroom, something amusing and actually quite delightful happened. Behind the counter stood one of those gray-haired women of a certain age for whom all pregnancies are an open topic. Nothing like
Are you expecting, my dear?
from her. “When’s it due?” she demanded.

“Not for almost two months,” Bianca confessed. And felt herself blush.

“This your first?”

“My third, actually.”

The woman appraised her admiringly. “You don’t look it. I had just the one, but I never did get my looks back.”

Bianca started to say
I’m sorry
, but caught herself. “Well—yes.”

“Congratulations,” the woman called to Ronny, who for a couple of seconds regarded her blankly.

And then he did what he so rarely did: he grinned unreservedly, a full-faced explosion of a smile. “Well, thank you very much,” he said.

Fatherhood—even mistakenly attributed—patently agreed with him. His face was aglow as he led Bianca through the great hallway, past the glassed-in suits of armor the twins loved so much. Ronny was even able to glance upward at the murals in the Diego Rivera courtyard with benign approval—something he’d never shown them before.

“How are your boys?”

“Mm?” she said. It was unlike Ronny to ask about her family right away. “They’re fine. They went through a rough patch a while back. I had some serious problems with my parents—my mother—and I guess the twins were feeling neglected.”

“But when were there no serious problems with your parents?”

The question wasn’t posed sarcastically or maliciously. In fact, it was a good question. Bianca pondered and said, “It’s just a coincidence, but do you know when the real problems started? About when I first met you. Ten years ago, I guess. You’ll have to take my word for it. But there was a time when life seemed quite happy at home.” She could confide things to Ronny she could confide to nobody else on earth, but she would never divulge that her mother had once regularly shoplifted from Olsson’s, any more than she would tell him about the evening when his mother—sitting in the kitchen in a jade-green robe, drinking whiskey—had raised the possibility that her boy might be “cur.”

“I didn’t mean to sound flippant,” Ronny said.

“You didn’t. It was a good question. You always make me think about things, which I appreciate. I remember you once asked me, Why do you want people thinking you understand
less
than you do? I’ll never forget that.”

“I don’t remember the circumstances.”

“Neither do I,” Bianca said, although she did. It was the disastrous
evening at the Coral Club when Mrs. Olsson had spoken of
courage
and
niggers
and
kikes
. “Anyway, the point is that maybe someday I’ll piece it all together, but what I can tell you now is that everything changed that summer I met you. The summer of ’43. Everybody talks about how hard the Depression was, but that’s not my memory. For the most part, I remember my childhood as being so happy. It was the War that really did me in. And how’s your father?”

As they conversed, the two of them were not looking at each other. They were both staring upward at the Diego Rivera murals, into the blazing blue and green phantasmagoria that a modernist Mexican had created in response to the greatest industrial city in the world. To confront its packed, elevated inferno somehow made talking easier …

“It’s the oddest thing,” Ronny said. “He’s really come undone since Mother died. He’s aged ten years at least—you’d be amazed. I would have sworn he didn’t really like her. I would have predicted you’d see him two months later with some young honey on his arm. But he’s haunted by her.”

“She was a haunting woman.”

“You’re telling me?” Ronny said. And laughed.

They wandered around the museum, halting before the old favorites. Ronny showed little of that instructive impulse he’d displayed on their last visit. His comments were uncharacteristically minute: “I like the handling of the snow,” or “Isn’t the lining of the robe splendid?” or “He got the dog’s fur, didn’t he?”

Bianca held her tour guide’s arm the whole time. It had been a long while since she’d felt so content—or so content in this particular fashion. Normally, she would not have been wholly comfortable continually holding the arm of someone not her husband in this open and public space. People might come to the conclusion reached by the coat-check woman … And yet it felt completely right—walking arm in arm with Ronny here. In some way that Grant himself would have understood, and even approved of, had she only been able to express the point properly, this museum was the one place on earth where she was Ronny’s; it was simply appropriate that she take his arm.

After a while, her weight got the better of her. Her lower back began to ache. “I think we better sit a spell.” They made their way to the Kresge Court and Ronny fetched her a cup of coffee. “I hope your father finds his bearings again,” she said. “It pains me to think of him aging all of a sudden.”

“More surprisingly, it pains me. You might think I’d welcome it. You know it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world being the son of the former U. of M. track captain.”

“I can imagine.”

“The weird thing is, I’m actually a pretty good athlete.”

“I know. I’ve danced with you. I’ve seen you ice-skate.”

“Even if I don’t feel the slightest desire to go down into a little gym and punch a punching bag.”

“I know you don’t. How’s Chris, by the way?”

She’d meant merely to sound warm and accepting, but Ronny stiffened. “Chris? Who could possibly say how he’s doing? He’s in advertising.”

“But you always liked advertising, Ronny.”

“Liked?
I hope not. I prefer to think I sensed a magical power in it. It’s like television. You own a television set?”

“We do. But I don’t watch it so much.”

“Nobody does. Nobody does, and yet it’ll take over the world anyway. Who’s going to look at a canvas when you can look at a canvas that moves?”

“Oh Ronny, you’re depressing me.”

“I don’t mean to. It’s the painter manqué talking.” He looked to see whether she understood the term. She understood the term.

He went on: “I think that’s something you and I shared. Neither of us really belonged in art classes. Or you could say we were actually the only two who did belong. The son of the owner of Olsson’s Drugs wasn’t meant to be studying still life at the Institute Midwest. And neither was this Italian girl from the heart of the city. I always admired that about you, by the way: you didn’t play the girl artist. Tatiana Bogoljubov—she did, with the yellow hair and the breasts in everybody’s face.”

“I didn’t have the breasts.”

“You were deeper than that. You saw things.”

“Saw things?”

“Yes, you saw things.”

Such a welcome phrase … In their baldness, the words called up dear Grant’s repeated declaration,
You make things interesting
.

“Seeing things? Sounds a little cuckoo,” Bianca protested. “Which always makes me nervous, given my mother.”

“What I’m saying is, our not belonging was a sign we actually belonged.”

“I know what you mean,” Bianca said, and though his words sounded nonsensical, she did.

“You know what I think of? I think of a conversation we had, I don’t know, ten years ago. I said something, and you said,
I’ll remember you said that.”

And it was proof of what soul-intimates they were that she, with so skeletal a clue, was able to say, “I know what you’re referring to.” Again, she did. “You said to me,
I’d like to be sitting on a park bench with you when I’m sixty …”

Oh, Ronny looked grateful! Had she ever in her life felt closer to him?

“I did!” Ronny said. “That’s what I said. And you know what? In thirty years, they’re going to tell me I’m right. It’s going to come clear—all the peculiarities will come clear, you and me in Manhardt’s class, our romantic walks through the park …”

Did Ronny himself know what he meant by that? Or was the point only that, in time, he would know what he meant by that?

“We will,” she said. “We’ll be sitting there together.”

“As we’re sitting here now,” Ronny said.

In thirty years, the baby in her womb would be almost thirty years old—roughly her own age now. No such future seemed possible, though it was almost certain to happen. It was the world Chip and Matt would inherit—a world where one twin would be driving over, with his wife and kids, to visit the other, with
his
wife and kids, and given enough elapsed time this was the very world she, too, would naturally inhabit—but this could hardly be her world. Thirty years—1983? Everything likely was
unimaginable
, and where was her true, her own world? She was feeling quite upended today …