The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims (163 page)

On this particular Wednesday night, he chose not to tell his aunt where he was going. This was not out of deviousness, for he was not by nature a liar. Rather, he believed that she would not have understood or even heard him in the advanced stage of her senility. He did ask the neighbor, a widow with bad knees, to look in on his aunt throughout the evening, and she agreed to. He had already been to a boxing match the month before, and had briefly, late one Saturday, stood in the doorway of a loud and dangerous local bar, so this was not his first attempt to
observe a seediness he had never known. He learned little out of those first two experiences, however, except that the smell of tobacco smoke clings stubbornly to hair and clothing. He had higher hopes for this evening.

The nightclub he found was considerably darker inside than the street outside had been. It was an early show, a weekday show, but the place had already filled with a shifting, smoking audience of men. The few lights around the orchestra dimmed just as he entered, and he was forced to feel his way to a seat, stepping over feet and knees in the aisle. He tried not to touch people, but brushed nonetheless against wool and skin with every move until he found an empty seat and took it.

“Time?” a voice beside him demanded. My grandfather tensed, but did not answer.

“The time?” the voice questioned again. My grandfather asked quietly, “Are you talking to me?”

There was a sudden spotlight on the stage, and the question was forgotten. Babette began to sing, although at that time, of course, he did not know her name. When his eyes adjusted to the glaring white light, it was only the color of her dress that he saw—a vivid green that today we call lime. It is a color decidedly not found in nature but is now manufactured artificially for the dying of paint, clothing, and food. It cannot shock us anymore; we are too familiar with it. In 1919, however, there were not yet cars to be found in that shade, or small houses in the suburbs, or, one would suspect, fabric.

Nonetheless, Babette wore it, sleeveless and short. My grandfather did not at first even notice that she was singing, on account of that vivid lime-green dress. She was not a gifted singer, but it is almost petty to say so, as musical ability was clearly not required for her job. What she did, and did well, was move in swaying, dancing steps on very pleasant legs. Novelists writing only a decade before that night still referred to beautiful women as having “rounded, well-shaped arms.” By the end of
World War I, however, fashion had changed such that other features were now visible, and arms got considerably less attention than they once had. This was unfortunate, for Babette’s arms were lovely, perhaps even her best feature. My grandfather, however, was not very modern, even as a young man, and he noticed Babette’s arms appreciatively.

The lights at the back of the stage had risen, and there were several dancing couples now behind Babette. They were adequate, efficient dancers—the men slender and dark, the women in short swinging dresses. The nature of the lighting muted the shades of their clothing into uniform browns and grays, and my grandfather could do little more than note their presence and then resume staring at Babette.

He was not familiar enough with show business to know that what he was watching was the insignificant opening act of what would be a long bawdy night of performance. This particular number was no more than an excuse to open the curtain on something other than an empty stage, to warm up the small orchestra, and to alert the audience that the evening was commencing. There was nothing risqué about Babette except the length of her hemline, and it is likely that my grandfather was the only member of the audience who felt any excitement at what he was watching. It is almost certain that none of the other men around him were clutching at their trousers with damp hands or moving their lips, silently searching for words to describe that dress, those arms, that startling red hair and lipstick. Most of the audience had already heard the song on a recording made by a prettier, more talented girl than Babette, but my grandfather knew very little of popular music or of pretty girls.

When the performers bowed and the lights dimmed, he jumped from his seat and moved quickly back over the men in his row, stepping on feet, stumbling, apologizing for his clumsiness in a low murmur. He felt his way up the center aisle and to
the heavy doors, which threw quick triangles of light on the floor behind him as he pushed them open. He ran into the lobby and caught an usher by the arm.

“I need to speak with the singer,” he said.

The usher, my grandfather’s age but a veteran of the war, asked, “Who?”

“The singer. The one with the red, the red—” He pulled at his own hair in frustration.

“The redhead,” the usher finished.

“Yes.”

“She’s with the visiting troupe.”

“Yes, good, good,” my grandfather said, nodding foolishly. “Wonderful!”

“What do you need with her?”

“I need to speak with her,” he repeated.

Perhaps the usher, seeing that my grandfather was sober and young, thought that he was a messenger boy, or perhaps he only wanted to be left alone. In any case, he led him to Babette’s room, which was under the stage in a dark, door-lined hall.

“Someone here to see you, miss,” he said, knocking twice and leaving before she answered.

Babette opened the door and looked down the hall at the departing usher, and then at my grandfather. She wore a slip and had a large pink towel wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl.

“Yes?” she asked, lifting her high, arched eyebrows even higher.

“I need to speak with you,” my grandfather said.

She looked him over. He was tall and pale, in a clean, inexpensive suit, and he carried his folded overcoat under one arm as if it were a football. He had a bad habit of stooping, but now, out of nervousness, was standing perfectly straight. This posture helped his appearance somewhat, forcing his chin out and lending his shoulders a width they did not generally seem to have.
There was nothing about him that would have compelled Babette to shut the door in his face, so she remained there before him in her slip and towel.

“Yes?” she asked again.

“I want to paint you,” he said, and she frowned and took a step back. My grandfather thought with alarm that she had misunderstood him to mean that he wanted to apply paint to her body, as one would paint a wall, and, horrified, he explained, “I meant that I would like to paint a picture of you, a portrait of you!”

“Right now?” she asked, and he answered quickly, “No, no, not now. But I would like to, you see. I would love to.”

“You’re a painter?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m terrible,” my grandfather said. “I’m a terrible painter, I’m ghastly.”

She laughed at him. “I’ve already had my picture painted by several artists,” she lied.

“Certainly you have,” he said.

“You saw me sing?” she asked, and he said that he had indeed.

“You aren’t staying for the rest of the show?” she asked, and he paused before answering, realizing only then that there was a show other than what he had seen.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t want to miss you. I was afraid you might leave right away.”

She shrugged. “I don’t let men into my dressing room.”

“Of course you don’t!” he said, hoping he had not insinuated that he expected an invitation. “I had no intention of that.”

“But I’m not going to stand in this hallway and talk to you,” she continued.

My grandfather said, “I’m sorry that I disturbed you,” and unfolded his overcoat to put it on.

“What I mean is that if you want to talk to me, you’re just going to have to come inside,” Babette explained.

“I couldn’t; I didn’t mean to—”

But she had already stepped back into the small, poorly lit room and was holding the door open for him. He followed her in, and when she shut the door, he leaned against it, anxious to intrude as little as possible. Babette pulled an old piano stool over to the sink and looked at herself in a silver hand mirror. She ran the water until it was hot, dampened two fingers, and pressed a curl just behind her ear back into shape. Then she looked at my grandfather over her shoulder.

“Now why don’t you tell me just what it was that you wanted.”

“I wanted to draw you, to paint you.”

“But you say you’re no good.”

“Yes.”

“You shouldn’t say that,” Babette said. “If you’re going to be something, if you’re going to be someone, you’ve got to start telling people that you’re good.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m not.”

“Well, it’s easy enough to say that you are. Go on, say it. Say, ‘I am a good artist.’ Go on.”

“I can’t,” he repeated. “I’m not one.”

She picked up an eyebrow pencil off the edge of the sink and tossed it to him.

“Draw something,” she said.

“Where?”

“Anywhere. On this wall, on that wall, anywhere. Doesn’t matter to me.”

He hesitated.

“Go on,” she said. “It’s not as if you could make this room look any worse, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

He found a spot next to the sink where the paint wasn’t too badly chipped or marked with graffiti. Slowly, he began to draw a hand holding a fork. Babette stood behind him, leaning forward, watching over his shoulder.

“It’s not a good angle for me,” he said, but she did not answer, so he continued. He added a man’s forearm and wristwatch.

“It’s smudging like that because the pencil is so soft,” he apologized, and she said, “Stop talking about it. Just finish it.”

“It is finished.” He stepped back. “It’s already finished.”

She looked at him, and then at the sketch. “But that’s just a hand. There’s no person, no face.”

“See, I’m no good. I told you I was no good.”

“No.” Babette said. “I think you’re very good. I think this is an excellent hand and fork. From just this I’d let you paint my portrait. It’s just that it’s a queer thing to draw on a wall, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I never drew on a wall before.”

“Well, it’s a nice drawing,” Babette decided. “I think you’re a good artist.”

“Thank you.”

“You should tell me that I’m a good singer now.”

“But you are!” he said. “You’re wonderful.”

“Aren’t you sweet to say so.” Babette smiled graciously. “But I’m really not. There are no good singers in places like this. There are some fine dancers, and I’m not a bad dancer, but I’m a terrible singer.”

He didn’t know what to say to this, but she was looking at him as if it was his turn to speak, so he asked, “What’s your name?”

“Babette,” she said. “And when a girl criticizes herself, you really should crawl to the ends of the earth to contradict her, you know.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

She looked at herself in the mirror again. “So do you want to only paint my hand?” she asked. “I haven’t got a fork with me.”

“No,” he said. “I want to paint you, all of you, surrounded by black, surrounded by a whole crowd of black. But there will be a
white light, and you in the center”—he lifted his hands to show placement in an imaginary frame—“in the center in green and red.” He dropped his hands. “You should’ve seen that green and that red.”

“Well, it’s just the dress you like, then,” she said. “Just the dress and the hair.”

And your arms
, he thought, but only nodded.

“None of that is really me, though,” Babette said. “Even my hair is fake.”

“Fake?”

“Yes. Fake. Dyed. Please don’t look so shocked. Really, you can’t have ever seen this color hair before.”

“No!” my grandfather almost shouted. “I never had. I think that’s exciting, that you can make it that way if you like. I wondered about it, but I didn’t think, of course, that it had been dyed. I think that there are so many colors I’ve never seen—could I touch it?”

“No,” Babette said. She reached for a comb from the sink and pulled a single red hair from its teeth. She handed it to him. “You can have this one piece. I’m sure that I don’t know you well enough to let you drag your hands all over my head.”

He carried the strand to the lamp and stretched it taut under the bulb, frowning in concentration.

“It’s brown at one end,” he said.

“That’s the new growth,” she explained.

“Your real hair?”

“The whole thing is my real hair. That brown is my real color.”

“Just like mine,” he said in surprise. “But you’d never know it to see you onstage. I tell you, you’d never imagine we two would have the same sort of hair. Isn’t that remarkable?”

Babette shrugged. “I wouldn’t say it was remarkable. But I suppose I’m used to my hair.”

“Yes, I suppose you are.”

“You’re not from New York City, are you?” she asked.

“Yes, I am. I’ve always lived here.”

“Well, you don’t act like it. You act just like a little boy from the country. Don’t be put off by that, now. It’s not a bad thing.”

“I think it is. I think it’s awful. It comes of not talking to enough people.”

“What do you do all day, then?”

“I work in the back of a print shop sometimes. And I live with my great-aunt.”

“And she’s very old,” Babette said.

“Yes. And senile. All she can remember anymore are the names of flowers and girls.”

“What?”

“The names of flowers and girls. I don’t know why, but that’s how it’s become. If I ask her a question, she thinks and thinks, but then finally she’ll say something like, ‘Queen Anne’s Lace, Daisy, Emily, Iris, Violet . . .’”

“No!” Babette said. “I think
that’s
remarkable. She must be very pretty to listen to.”

“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s just sad, because I can see how frustrated she is. Other times she just lets herself talk and strings them all together: ‘Ivy-Buttercup-Catherine-Pearl-Poppy-Lily-Rose.’ Then it’s pretty to listen to.”

“I’m sure that it is,” Babette said. “You forget how many flowers’ names are girls’ names, too.”

“Yes.” My grandfather nodded. “I’ve noticed that.”

“She used to take care of you, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” he said. “When I was young.”

“You still are young.” Babette laughed. “I’m even young, and I think I’m much older than you.”