The Orange Blossom Special (7 page)

He found a small walk-up studio with just enough room for a bed and his easel. He'd paint all morning and in the afternoons take his sketch pad and a box of colored pencils to the café downstairs where he'd sit with a sign that said
LES BEAUX PORTRAITS DIX CENTIMES
. Barone attracted people with his dark exotic looks and easy manner. Turned out, he'd inherited his father's talent for sweet-talking.

He was in Paris for three months before he met another American. That afternoon, he was sitting at the café when he heard a woman ask the waiter for
“un demitasse sil vous plais.”
The waiter scrunched his nose as though he had just smelled rancid butter, then shrugged. Once again she said,
“Un demitasse sil vous plais,”
and once again the waiter pulled away and knitted his eyebrows as if the mangled French were a physical assault. Barone knew the waiter and knew that he understood English perfectly. The woman seemed to be getting angry and Barone sensed there could be a scene. “Henri, give this lovely woman a demitasse and put it on my bill,” he said.

“
Okey dokey, Monsieur,
” said Henri, and hurried off to make the coffee. The woman turned around. She had large horseshoe-shaped lips the color of holly berries and tawny-colored hair. She wore a tight purple sweater and had, as Christian would have so eloquently said, “tits that could knock you from here to Yonkers.”

“How do you do, Miss . . .”

“Fran. Fran Faberge,” she said, in a fractured accent part-English part-American.

“Fran Faberge. What a refined name,” said Barone.

“You can tell so much from a name, don't you think? And speaking of names, may I ask, what is yours?”

“You're going to find this hard to believe,” he said. “It's Barone Antonucci.”

She laughed, an unguarded husky laugh that was purely American. And then she said the thing that he would always remember. “Get outta here. You're as much of a Baron as I am a Faberge.”

“Ah, but,” he said in an exaggerated French accent, “My father is Christian Antonucci, the king of the restaurant supply business in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. And I have come to Paris to be an artist.”

“Yeah, well, my father is king of the royal pains in the asses in Tea-neck, New Jersey,” she said in her native accent. “Joey Moresco. Maybe you heard of him?”

Fran, it turned out, had also come to Paris to pursue her art. She'd been a ballet dancer since she was eight years old. Her teacher at Swan Studios, where she'd studied for twelve years, had urged her to follow her dreams. “Fran,” she'd told her, “It's in your blood. A natural like you comes along once in a lifetime.” She told her she must go to Paris, France, where the ballet was thriving, unlike in Teaneck. So Fran went to Paris where her gifts were just what they were looking for at the new strip club, Café Crazy. “What the hell?” she told Barone. “Art is art.”

About the time that Fran packed up her leather valise and moved into Barone's flat, he got a letter from his mother.

Your father has a horrible cough. Sometimes he spits up blood. He tries to hide it from me by covering his mouth with his handkerchief, but I see the awful stains later. He gets tired very easily. I want him to go see Dr. Phipps, but he tells me that nothing is wrong and that I carry on too
much. You know how he is. He is so stubborn and proud. I worry about him all the time.

He showed the letter to Fran. “You gotta go home and help her,” she said. That was the thing about Fran—Barone never had to spell things out. She was canny without being a know-it-all. One month later, Fran and Barone landed in the United States.

The first time Barone saw his father, he thought it was the old neighbor from down the street. Christian had lost so much weight that it seemed as if his face was falling away. The sheer effort of taking in air exhausted him. He knew better than to let on about what he saw or how it shocked him. So he said the only thing he knew would be okay. “Papa, how's the business?”

“Never better,” his father whispered. Later that night, after everyone had gone to bed, Christian asked Barone to join him in the living room. Barone rarely had a conversation alone with his father. He didn't even know where to begin. Finally Christian broke the silence. “I won't beat around the bush,” he said. “I'm sick. I need someone to help me with the business. God should forgive me for what I'm about to say about my sons. They're my children and I love them but they are as dumb as rocks. You're the only one of them who has a brain in his head. I am asking you as your father to do me a favor. I promise you if you do, you will be a rich man some day.”

Six months later Christian was dead and Barone was president of Peerless Restaurant Supply. Fran and Barone were married in a small wood-framed church in Teaneck, New Jersey, on an early fall day in 1927. Their first dance was to the song “Someone to Watch Over Me,” the popular George Gershwin hit from the year before. When the singer sang, “I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood . . .” Fran
and Barone each thought of themselves as the lost little lamb, and each felt blessed.

After that, no one ever asked Fran what kind of a dancer she'd been in Paris. She'd put behind her the brief but colorful career of Fran Faberge. From now on, she would simply be known as the Baroness.

Victoria hated Memorial Day weekend. It was a different kind of being alone, as if everyone was at a party and she was left behind. When she would say something to Maynard about wanting to go away, he'd flat-out refuse. “It just isn't right for me to leave the kids alone at the store,” he would answer, shaking his head. “This is one of the busiest weekends of the year.” On the Saturday of this long weekend, she showed up for her usual appointment at Baldy's.

“Where the hell is everyone?”

“They've all gone to the fish,” said Jésus.

Victoria squinted. “You don't mean that.”

“Yes,” he said. “To Key West. To the fish.”

“Oh, they've gone fishing. Well, the hell with them. It's just you and me and that new girl.”

“Sonia?”

“Yes, Sonia. Where is she?” Victoria scanned the room.

“She's off today.”

“Gone to the fish,” she said, her voice flattening. She told Jésus how she hated these long weekends, and how Maynard always felt as though he had to be at the store. “What's the point of having buckets of money if you don't get to do what you want to do?” she asked.

“Maybe Mr. Landy is doing what he wants to do,” said Jésus.

“Well, what about me? When do I get to do what I want to do? Charlie's off to college in the fall. That leaves Crystal, who right now can't stand the sight of me. Maynard's never home. I'm not getting any younger.”

“Mrs. Landy, you don't look . . .”

“Cut the crap, Jésus. You know what I mean. It's lonely, just me and Ella rattling around that monster of a house.”

Jésus rubbed her shoulders. “Sonia will be back next week,” he said. Victoria patted his hand. “You're so good to me, even when I mouth off like a witch.”

“I've been thinking about your hair.”

Victoria perked up.

“Maybe it's time for a change. Something young and fresh like a bouffant.”

Right after they were married, Maynard made her promise to keep her hair long. “How it flows on the pillow,” he'd said, staring down at her. “Like ripples in the ocean.” It was an uncharacteristically romantic sentiment from Maynard and Victoria never forgot it. She wore the same flip for the next twenty-two years. Now, Jésus piled her hair on top of her head and pulled a few tendrils around her face. “It would be very Ann-Margret,” he said.

“Ann-Margret? My goodness.” Victoria giggled. “Shucks. Why the hell not?”

As Jésus trimmed the hair around her face—graduating the hair, he called it—she could see her younger self emerge: she began telling him about Victoria, the president of Kappa Delta. Victoria, with the loud mouth and beautiful smile. “Miss Pearly Whites,” of the University of Georgia, 1935. Got put on suspension when she was found kissing Nora White, a freshman pledge, on the lips one night behind the sorority house. Got turned in by Sandra Beasely, some ugly small-minded girl from Asheville, who said that Victoria had unhealthy
tendencies and was a threat to the other girls of Kappa Delta. Just like that, Victoria turned around and found herself a steady boyfriend. The first girl in her year to get pinned, the first to go all the way. Married before graduation. Donald Pierson. Football player, president of his fraternity, great dancer. Took her back to the family farm in Hawthorne, Florida, where his daddy raised cattle. Away from the razzmatazz of college and frat parties, Donald's drinking took on an ugly desperation. One night she found a handful of hairpins in his night-table drawer.

“Where'd these come from?” she asked him.

“What the hell you doin' going through my things?” he shouted. His face turned gray.

She told him she was looking for the nail clippers.

“Don't you ever, ever go through my stuff again,” he said. “Do you get that?”

“What've you got to hide, anyway?” she asked

“Nothin',” he said.

“Sure doesn't sound like it.” Her voice was playful, taunting if you wanted to hear it that way.

“Just stay the fuck out of my things,” he said.

Out of nowhere, a fist slammed into her right jaw. It was as sudden as a bad dream. Before the pain, she felt a gap where her bottom incisor used to be. The tooth was floating in a pool of blood. The blood tasted bitter, metallic. The two of them put their hands to their mouths in disbelief.

“Oh my God, honey, I am so sorry.” He reached for her, but she slapped his hand away.

“You touch me and I'll kill you,” she said, then ran inside the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. She rinsed her mouth, ran water over the tooth, wrapped it in a piece of toilet paper and tucked it inside her pants pocket, just in case.

Donald was mewling at the other side of the door. “Sweetie, I didn't mean anything. You know what a hothead I am. I swear, this will never happen again.”

She opened the door, moved him out of the way without looking at him. Went to the closet and pulled her valise from the top shelf. He watched cow-eyed as she threw her clothes into the bag.

“C'mon Victoria, you gotta gimme another chance.”

“Not on your life,” she answered and walked out of Donald Pierson's life forever. She hitchhiked to Gainesville, where she stayed with a sorority sister.

“The weird thing is, I never found out if the hairpins were his or someone else's,” she said.

“Where is he now?” asked Jésus.

“Dead. He volunteered when the war broke out and was killed in Italy. That's the last I heard, anyway.” She gave a little laugh.

It pained Jésus to think of someone wounding his beautiful friend. He stroked her right jaw.

“It ended all right,” she said. “I met Maynard Landy three weeks later. The kindest man I've ever known. He was generous, you know what I mean? Dressed well, didn't ask too many questions about my past. We went out for a while, and then he asked me to marry him. I didn't hesitate for a minute. There was a man I could depend on. He'd make a good living. He'd always respect me. These are the important things when you're thinking of building a life with somebody. Physically, it was okay, but between you and me, that's never been the big thing between us.”

Peace of mind, that was worth more to Victoria than all of it. Maynard was a strong man. His thick arms and barrel chest were a barrier between her and the rest of the world. No one in his right mind would pick a fight with a guy built like Rocky Marciano. If
someone takes a punch at you from out of the blue once, there is never a time when you don't think it could happen again.

Whenever Victoria felt restless or like Maynard wasn't paying enough attention, she'd pull out the little music box he had given her one Christmas. It had a skater figurine on top, which twirled in circles, while the box played its frothy version of “As Time Goes By.” Lying like a jewel on the green velvet lining inside was Victoria's old incisor. The center of the tooth had long since rotted, but the carcass remained. Her only link to Donald Pierson, a reminder of how far she'd come.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” she asked Jésus.

“Of course,” he said.

“Do you ever feel safe?”

“I always feel safe. I am an American citizen.”

It never dawned on Victoria that for many people, that was enough.

“And you? Do you feel safe?” he asked.

“Not for one iota of a second,” she answered. “My daddy left when I was eleven. Seven years later I got married. Life is a matter of avoiding one hazard after another as far as I'm concerned. Lord knows, without shopping I would be a psychological wreck, always worrying about what it will be next.”

She laughed as pieces of freshly cut hair trickled down her neck.

“If I may say, Mrs. Landy, sometimes it is just matter of allowing yourself to be okay. Because you are waiting for the next bad thing doesn't mean you can keep it away. It is unfortunate to waste the times in between.”

“Jesus H. Christ!” shrieked Victoria.

“What is it?”

“You're right, I do look like Ann-Margret!”

C
HARLIE SWAMPED HIS
mother with attention when she came home with the short curly hairdo.

“That's very modern,” he said.

“Oh sweetheart, I am so glad you like it. You know how a little thing like a new look can shape a person's attitude. Jésus is an artist. What that man knows about hair, I swear, he could write a book.”

Charlie never said he liked it, but his mother seemed less edgy, almost giddy, and so silently he thanked God for the brilliant and gifted Jésus Baldisarri. That night, when Maynard came home from work, he pulled her into a hug.