Vida (46 page)

“Fuck his money.” He swaggered to the hot plate to put on water for tea. “We’ll make our own. We’ve done it before.”

“Since we bought the car, we’ve been living on what he gave us.”

“Your alimony checks. Big deal. Tell Natalie to get us some other gig.”

“Natalie has a lot of heat on her. But there are other sources. I’ll think about it” She looked at him and he looked back at her with the dead weight of fact. “We have twenty-four dollars left. Not enough to get back east. I don’t want to hit Natalie. She’s broke.”

“Yeah, she’s in a lot of trouble. I like her better this time”

“You like her because she likes you. You don’t see her as a person yet.”

“She’s so much older than me it takes time.”

“Joel! She’s only six months older than me!”

“Are you kidding?”

“Joel, she is.”

“That’s weird,” he said. “You seem closer to me and she seems closer to my mother. Don’t be so upset. It’s just that she’s a mother and she’s overweight.”

“You should have seen her when she was taking karate and got into her only affair with her instructor, a Japanese-American woman named Suki. She dropped twenty pounds.”

“I bet she was attractive that way.”

“To tell you the truth, I like her better plump and a balabusteh. A little sloppy in her person and curly and feeding everybody.”

“How come she got involved with a woman?” The kettle whistled and he went to make tea.

“Why not? That’s who she mainly meets. Imagine big Daniel on top of her. She must have felt smothered.”

“Is she still involved with that woman? Smokey?”

“Suki insisted she leave Daniel. Daniel said he’d go to court and take the kids. I think she feels it’s not fair in her situation to get involved with anyone again.”

”Nobody?”

“Joel! Don’t get that tone of voice on your face. You aren’t Freud’s gift to Natalie. She sets her own priorities. They aren’t the same as mine. You just love and respect her as she is. You hear me?”

“I neither wept nor screamed!”

“But you wanted to.”

Her sinuses were draining forcing her to spit delicately into a crumpled paper handkerchief as she huddled in the doorway of a doughnut shop. Paul’s Malibu was parked across the street. She had to hope he came out of the bar, The Brass Monkey, alone. Her plan she was to intercept him, but she was freezing to death waiting. Before flying back last night, Natalie had given her Paul’s schedule. The sisters had decided Paul would be the new go-between, but that he could not be consulted in advance. Natalie felt sure Paul was not being watched; it was Natalie’s observation that the right believed their own myths about the working class being solidly conservative and acted on such presumptions.

Four years ago Paul had been in the process of divorcing Joy and wedding Mary Beth, and she had got sucked into family squabbles and had risked a sudden appearance from underground to put in her lively and unpopular opinions. It was getting dark and harder to see men’s faces as they pushed out through the padded door, their heads ducked into the fierce wind. She thought she saw him and started across, only to stop and turn back in the middle of the street when she got a better look. Pacing in the doorway, she beat her hands together to fight numbness.

Suddenly Paul pushed out the door with another man. What should she do? She immediately knew it was him: not because he looked exactly as he had four years before, but because he looked too much like Tom to be anybody else but his son. She was almost afraid at the resemblance. Not that Tom would have turned her in. He had a rough patriotism and a pride at having served in the Pacific, but he had a strong sense of class. He hated politicians and the rich. His anger was undependable, turned as easily inward or against his family as out into the world. She’d come running up to him when he entered the house saying to him, “Here’s Daddy’s little girl!” and he’d swing her up in the air, but the seventh time he might knock her across the room shouting, “Don’t jump on me like a puppy, you noisy brat!”

Maybe it was that memory of violence which paralyzed her. Now Paul was slapping the other guy’s shoulder and they were both ritually laughing at some ritual joke. The guy turned and walked down the block to his car, Paul waved after him, then turned to his own. She let him start unlocking the door before she crossed. Coming up behind him, she took his arm as a bus whooshed past close enough to stir her jacket, “Don’t jump, big bro. It’s me. Don’t yell. Can I get in the car with you?”

“What? Jesus, Vida, what happened? Did they give you amnesty or something?”

“No, and please let’s get in the car. Could you not use my name, pretty please? Call me Cynthia, remember?” She went around the car and got in the other side as he reached over to unlock it. Then she gave him a kiss, his face crinkling up in a big beery smile.

“What a surprise! You almost gave me a heart attack. You can’t just come up behind somebody in Chicago and grab them and not give them a heart attack … “ He realized that the reference was tactless. “Er, well, have you seen Mama?”

“Not yet. Natalie says they’re watching the hospital. That’s what I’m here for, to see her.” She had a scheme, but she had to work on Paul to get him to agree. She owed it to her mother to see her no matter what the risk was, to be clever and able enough to pull the visit off. That was her daughterly duty.

“Hey you want to go back in and have a drink? It’s not a fancy bar—”

“We can’t go anyplace where you’re known. Let’s get a bite to eat somewhere they won’t wonder who you’re with.”

“Mary Beth’s getting supper for me at home.” He eased the car out of the tight parking space and into the rush-hour traffic. “I’ll call her from where we go. She’ll think I’m seeing Joy, but I can deal with that.”

“But you do see Joy and the kids. Don’t you?”

“Yeah, but Mary Beth don’t like it.”

Paul had four kids from his previous marriage. The eldest, Marsha, was … twenty-three? Only the two youngest girls were still living at home with Joy. With Mary Beth he already had a baby that she had never seen. Paul sure had multiplied. He had had his share and hers too of babies. Mostly they were stuck in her head in little home movies of toddlers and ten-year-olds long out of date.

Vida and Paul were both half Jewish. Paul had fought with his Christian father all through adolescence, and yet he did not consider himself Jewish. She had gotten on much better with Tom, yet she had always thought of herself as a Jew: like mother, like grandma. When she had learned that rabbinical law was matrilineal, she had thought, Of course. Both Paul’s wives were lapsed Catholics.

”Listen” The lines cleared from Paul’s heavy brow. “I know where to go. Not a dump, either, like this place. It’s a bar, but they got good food, Italian. I been in there once or twice with the guys, but they don’t know me.”

Paul ordered manicotti and meat balls and spaghetti and salad for her, while steadfastly insisting he wouldn’t have a bite to eat and eating all the bread on the table as he talked, tearing it in his big scarred hands. He had heavy, bony brows like their father’s but Ruby’s brown hair going gray. He was heavy now, his paunch heaved against his pants, yet she still thought of him as a kid. She loved him, she pitied him, she felt guilty sitting across the table. She felt as if she had stolen something vital and decamped; escaped and left him to their class fate. Ruby had married into the middle class too late to do Paul any good. Already he had quit school and gone to work in the mills. Jobs were easy to come by then. Steel production was booming. Now he wheezed as he laughed, he was short of breath, his hands and face were scarred, and he was stuck.

“Don’t worry about me, blood’s thicker than water,” he was saying. “I think you’re crazy, but you’re my own sister. Fuck ‘em all. But don’t try to see Sharon. She’s got a bee up her ass. She’d turn you in quicker than you can say Cincinnati. She thinks you’re to blame because that asshole she’s married to never got promoted. But anybody else can see it’s because he’s such an asshole even those jerks can see through him … But you know you’re killing Mama.”

“Don’t lay that on me. If Tom didn’t kill Mama, I sure couldn’t”

“We all worry about you. What’s gonna happen to you … I think of you every time they put it on the TV about terrorists and shoot-outs and skyjackings.”

“Paul, I am not a terrorist. I am not. We don’t go after individuals, we don’t terrorize. We go after corporate targets, governmental targets, landlords, IBM, the Department of Corrections. We do what we do carefully and we never hurt anyone physically.”

“Yeah? What about these guys in Italy that are offing all those people?”

“We’re not connected, you know, with every little group in the world … “ Should she attempt to defend them? He wasn’t understanding. Her head hurt. “So how is Mama?”

“Not good, to tell the truth. I don’t know what’s going to happen … I think she’s been in trouble with her heart for a couple of years and she just kept it to herself.”

She felt scared. She excused herself and went to the women’s room, where she had diarrhea. Then she washed her hands and face and collected herself. I’ll see her, I have to see her; then I’ll
know
how she is. That ox Paul has never been right about a thing in his life. Don’t talk about it at the table.

She came back bright and determined to change the subject, “How’s Mary Beth?”

“She’s pregnant again.”

“Wow, Paul, do you want another one?”

“Sure we do … It’s going to be hard. Jacky’s fun, but I’ve got five kids already … Mary Beth wanted it. She feels outdone by Joy.”

“How come she’s so threatened by Joy? After all, you left Joy to marry her.”

“I left Joy because she was fucking that dumb Polack Fred. Making a monkey out of me. Playing around behind my back”

“Then why is Mary Beth jealous?”

“I’ll deny it, I’ll deny it to my daying day. But what can you do when you lived with a woman for twenty years? I mean, I go over to see the kids, I’m glad to see her. You know, we have a little fun together. For old time’s sake.”

“You go to bed with her?”

“What harm is there in it? We were married for twenty years. It’s not like she’s married to anybody else. She’s always got boyfriends. That woman’s older than me. She’s forty-two and fat, and her teeth stick out. But she’s always got boyfriends. It’s the way she laughs. When you hear her laughing, you can’t help thinking about it, you know, sex.”

“You miss her, don’t you, bro?”

“She’s a slob, but she’s an easygoing woman. She likes to cook, she just don’t like the cleaning up. She’s a good mother to the kids. She’s always horsing around, ready to go bowling or out for pizza or see a dirty movie or watch a game on TV. She’s no alkie, but she likes her beer. She doesn’t make you feel like you’re some kind of jerk for drinking a beer at night”

“Oh, Paul, you’re not so happy with Mary Beth. Are you?”

“She’s okay” His face closed up. “Always wanting something. When are we getting a new couch, when are you going to get the stairs carpeted, when are we going to take a real vacation? … meaning no vacation for me, not relaxing or taking it easy, but pissing out money in some dude place … Joy always had a job on the side. She liked to get out of the house. Maybe she did it because she wanted to meet guys, it’d be just like her. But it took some of the weight off my back. Mary Beth is a good wife. She stays home with Jacky and she keeps her nose clean … But she’s driving me to the poorhouse. I was moonlighting weekends driving a delivery truck for a liquor store, but the doc told me I can’t do it. Like Mama, I got high blood pressure. Runs in the family, I guess. How’s your blood pressure, Vida?”

“Steady as she goes.” Actually, Dr. Manolli had told her she had to keep an eye on it when he had dealt with her infected leg. Paul should never have left Joy. He’d been much happier with her; only his useless male pride had convinced him if she went to bed with somebody else, he had to get rid of her.

“Do you ever think of going back to Joy?”

“I think about it. But now Mary Beth’s knocked up again … Joy says it’s better like this, we appreciate each other … How could I live with that slut, anyhow? I’d always be scared what she was doing behind my back … So Leigh’s got his girlfriend knocked up, huh? They got married, the three of them. Won’t be the first time in our circles, right? I guess you must have been expecting it?”

“Sure” she said automatically. “How do you know Susannah’s pregnant?”

“I heard Natalie and Ruby talking. You didn’t know?”

“Naturally he told me they were marrying,” she said, toughing it. “But he didn’t say Susannah was pregnant already.”

“Three months. I guess they been fighting about it and she won. Joy was bigger than that when we tied it. She was starting to show.”

“Three months. September. When they had gone to Montauk together, Susannah had been carrying his child. In New Hampshire he knew; he had to know. She could have broken his head in. She hated him. Say something. “Hey, you want another drink? Do you have time?”

“Not really, toots. I told Mary Beth I had to get the battery checked, the car didn’t start when I came out of the mill. She’ll believe anything about the car, she won’t look under the hood. But if I come home tanked, I’ll have to listen to her screaming about Joy all night. It gives me heartburn.”