Two-Part Inventions (7 page)

 

All four girls on the block, the little pack of nine-year-olds of which Suzanne was a provisional, half-reluctant member, were collecting money for the March of Dimes. At school they had been given white cans with a slit on the top and, on the sides, a blue-toned photograph of a smiling boy with bangs and missing teeth, sitting in a wheelchair, his hands folded in his lap. He looked like he was waiting for something to happen, maybe waiting for rescue from the chair into which he was strapped and buckled. The money they collected, the girls were told, would be used to help this unfortunate boy and others like him get better. They had polio, the teacher said, maybe from swimming in a public pool; their legs were paralyzed, but they longed to run around as all children do. Nowadays, children were lucky: They had the new vaccine that would keep them from getting polio, and they should be very grateful to Dr. Salk, who had invented it. But some children had gotten sick before there was any vaccine. So the lucky, healthy children must knock on their neighbors' doors and ask them to put coins in the slot to cure the unlucky children.

Suzanne's father hadn't wanted her to go knocking on doors. “I don't like the idea of her begging,” he said. “Last year it was to plant trees in Israel, for chrissake.”

“This is different. It's not begging,” Gerda chided. “It's for charity, for polio. Her friends are going. Let her go with them. She spends too much time alone.” He finally agreed, as long as she did her practicing first. Nothing must interfere with the piano. A gift must be cultivated. Joseph anticipated a career for her as a high school music teacher, at the very least. Beyond that, who could say?

Suzanne set out in the early September evening—the days were long and it was still light, an amber, benevolent light—with Eva, Alison, and Paula. Eva was the leader of the group, and the nastiest. Everyone on the block recognized that, and it was a designation she herself acknowledged, one in which she seemed even to take pride. She was the sort of girl who as she grew older would dream up more and more subtle ways to discomfort her friends; meanwhile at the age of nine, she did what was within her limited powers. She tormented her four-year-old brother by hiding his favorite toys and, at bedtime, describing monsters who might visit in the night, from whom any attempt to escape would be futile. Eva's father's dental practice was in the basement of their row house, with a special entrance near the garage for patients. Sometimes she would sneak a book from his office and show the other girls photographs of rotting teeth and pustulating gum sores, or tiny pointed instruments of torture.

Paula and Alison, who were weaker of will and unresource-ful, followed Eva slavishly; she could always think up something to do or someplace to explore, within the bounds of the few blocks they were allowed to travel. Suzanne joined them only occasionally, partly because of her practicing schedule, partly because she disliked Eva's cruelty and the others' stupidity.
But when she was lonely she would seek them out, although Eva, sensing Suzanne's ambivalence, said she came around only when she had nothing better to do, which was true.

The mothers had given them strict instructions for the expedition. They could ring the doorbells of people they knew, which meant nearly everyone in the identical attached brick row houses. If people were in the middle of dinner, they must apologize for disturbing them and leave. They must remain at the doors and not go inside. And if people refused to give money, they must not insist but simply say goodnight and continue on. And be careful climbing over the porch ledges; it was fruitless to tell them not to climb, for that was the common way of going from house to house. Above all, they must not knock on the door of the man who lived in number 23. They'd been warned before about him: Don't get into conversation if he talks to you on the street, and never go into his house if he invites you. None of the girls knew the reason for this restriction; the parents themselves didn't quite understand it. They knew only that Richard Penzer was different from the other neighbors, and in the postwar decade, different was dangerous. His ways were not their ways.

That he lived alone was in itself suspect. Every other house held a married couple with children, and the occasional grandparents. Each house was fronted by a small brick porch, each porch gave onto a flight of steps bordered by shrubs, here and there a hydrangea bush, and each house had its driveway and garage. The driveways of each two neighboring houses were adjacent, so that when the husbands returned from work at the end of the day, cars were lined up in pairs between the houses, as if preparing to dance an automotive quadrille.

Richard Penzer had the requisite porch and stairs, shrubs, driveway and car. But he didn't resemble the other drivers, the husbands in baggy gabardine trousers and wilted shirts, who trudged up the stairs after parking the cars, jackets slung over their shoulders on one finger, a puny stab at the debonair, past the hydrangea bushes, to read the paper while waiting for their dinner. He dressed more carefully, more crisply, and stood up straight and strode more nonchalantly. He was rumored to be some kind of music teacher—this from the Grubers, his next-door neighbors—but he didn't leave early in the morning and return home in the late afternoon. His hours were erratic and unpredictable.

Richard Penzer, who was thirty years old on the evening of the March of Dimes collection, had occasional visits from other young men, and sometimes slightly older men, all of them well dressed, well built, with noticeably erect posture, often but not always carrying black cases—the Grubers said they contained musical instruments; they could hear little concerts through the walls by the men who parked in front of his house and walked up the steps, looking neither left nor right, and then disappeared inside. If it was a single visitor, after a while the two of them, Richard and the guest, might come out and get into one of the cars and drive off. Sometimes Richard Penzer returned quite late at night, and sometimes he and his car, a red Pontiac convertible, were gone for days at a time.

Little else was known about him, barely enough to supply material for gossip. He had moved in two years ago, after the house had stood vacant for several months. The previous occupants had been renting, the Grubers reported, and when the owner died, Richard Penzer, his nephew, inherited it. It was
odd, the Grubers agreed with their neighbors, that a young single man who worked in the city (“the city” meant Manhattan), teaching music somewhere, would choose to live on their quiet block, but on the other hand it was an inheritance, rent-free. Most likely he wouldn't stay long; he must be saving money for a move to the city. He wrote music, too, they said, though they weren't sure what kind, and he played the bassoon. From time to time they had to phone him when his practicing continued too far into the night. The bassoon, the Grubers said, was a strange-sounding instrument, deep, low, it was hard to explain the otherworldly mournful feeling it induced. Richard Penzer always apologized after playing too late and stopped immediately; he'd lost track of the time, he'd say. Apart from that he was a good neighbor, but the Grubers' endorsement couldn't stop the general distrust.

Despite his difference, on warm spring and summer evenings he might be seen sitting out on his porch like everyone else, reading the newspaper or chatting with the Grubers next door. He seemed to enjoy talking to their grown and marriageable daughter, Francine, who worked as a secretary at a publishing firm in the city, in the hope of being promoted to editor someday, and at night didn't change into a cotton sundress or jeans, like the other working girls on the block, but remained in her citygoing outfit, a print dress or a suit with high heels and nylons, leafing through magazines on the porch, waiting for a date to pick her up. Lately it had been the same young man for several months, so naturally there was speculation, but the Grubers were noncommittal on the subject.

The four girls were on the Grubers' porch—Mr. Gruber had dropped a few coins in each canister—when Eva suggested they
knock on Richard Penzer's door. (Later on, at moments when Eva's behavior was loathsome, Suzanne strove to be grateful for her audacity: If not for Eva, she might not have met Richard, and then her childhood would have been very different.)

“We can see what his house looks like. Maybe it's a torture chamber with chains and stuff. Or maybe he likes to feel up girls. We can see if he tries anything. Nothing can happen with four of us. We can always scream and run away.”

Suzanne, who had a well-deserved reputation for naiveté, didn't know what “feeling up” meant, so Eva demonstrated by lunging forward, her hands spread wide to grab at Suzanne's flat chest. Suzanne shrieked and sprang back before Eva could touch her.

“He's all alone in the house,” Alison said. “He could have dead bodies in the basement.”

“Maybe he was the robber,” Paula suggested.

The robbery, an unusual event for the placid street, had occurred a week ago at number 18, home to a young couple with a small boy. When the boy went to wake his parents in the morning, Sam Reichenthal found his wallet gone from the dresser top where he customarily left it. After a thorough search, the only explanation was that a burglar had slipped in through an open casement window on the ground floor that Sam had forgotten to lock, though he denied this. At any rate, the window was found ajar and part of the rug below was bunched up as if the couch had been moved. The intruder must have crept up the stairs and into the bedroom without waking either Sam or Dora and made off with the wallet containing $60. Credit cards, in the mid-1950s, were far from ubiquitous.
Life in Brooklyn was benign—even the burglars were mild-mannered.

“People don't rob their neighbors,” Suzanne said. “They go out of the neighborhood, where no one knows them.” About this she was not naive; she watched
Perry Mason
on TV with her older brothers, who explained the more elusive points of the plot.

One by one, the girls climbed the low brick wall over to Richard Penzer's porch. The front casement windows were covered by shades, so they couldn't peer in. Without waiting for the others to assent, Eva knocked. The door opened promptly and a tall, lanky man appeared, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, his longish dark hair drooping over his eyes, a slender lit cigar between his fingers. To Suzanne the acrid smell of the cigar was familiar and reassuring; her father smoked them, too, but greener, fatter ones, and gave her their paper gold rings to wear.He left smoldering butts in ashtrays all over the house, which she had learned to stub out.

“Well, good evening. What have we here, a delegation? I've never had the honor before, though I've seen you playing in the street. To what do I owe this visit?”

Eva told him about the March of Dimes and the paralyzed children while Paula and Alison, huddled behind her, giggled at the way he spoke.

“That's very good of you. Why don't you come in while I go and find some change.” He held the door wide for them to pass.

No one else had invited them in. They hesitated, looking at Eva, who after a moment strode inside. The others followed.

“Wait here and I'll be right back,” he said.

Suzanne gazed around the room. There was a red figured Persian rug on the floor, quite unlike the wall-to-wall beige carpeting of her own living room. There were cylindrical hanging Japanese paper lampshades in different colors, and several huge pillows scattered on the floor. On the wall hung paintings with shapes she couldn't identify—they looked like scribbles, or planets, or freakish fish gliding underwater. One wall was painted dark green; another held a large corkboard with slips of paper pinned to it. In one corner stood a large grand piano, bigger than her own, with music on the rack. Near it, propped up against the wall, was the narrow leather case she had seen Richard Penzer carrying from his car: That must be the bassoon. She had never seen a room like it before.

It wasn't the furnishings alone that made it so different. It was the atmosphere; it was not familial. There was another purpose, another principle, animating the life lived in that room. Everything in it was designed to please just one person, to allow him to carry on just as he wished. It was the clear air of solitude she was recognizing, and also dedication, though she had not yet defined those qualities for herself. She simply felt them, like smelling or tasting something with closed eyes, and though it can't be identified, it elicits a glimmer of recognition.

Richard Penzer returned holding a small bronze bowl full of coins and distributed several in each of their canisters, dropping quarters in one by one with a clinking noise. “I hope this helps your cause. But why not sit down for a moment? I'll bring you some cookies and . . . what do you drink? Juice? Milk?”

Suzanne perched on a straight-backed chair and the other three lined up gingerly on the edge of a navy blue velvet sofa while Richard went back into the kitchen.

“Maybe we should go,” whispered Alison. “My mother said—”

“Shh,” Eva whispered back. “I want to see what he does next. This is an adventure. He gave us more money than any of the others.”

When Richard came back with a tray, Suzanne was sitting at the piano, her hands moving on the keys but making no sound. The music on the rack was by someone she had never heard of, Béla Bartók. Maybe it was a woman—her mother had an old Aunt Bella who lived in the Bronx. Richard Penzer passed around the peanut butter cookies and poured the juice into glasses, then went over to Suzanne. “Do you play?”

“A little. I take lessons.”

“Do you want to try it?” As if to encourage her, he sat down beside her and played some arpeggios, then a few notes from Mendelssohn's “Spring Song.”

“Oh, I know that,” said Suzanne. “But we only have an upright.”