Boy, Snow, Bird: A Novel Read online

  There were houses along the road back into town. I hadn’t taken much notice of them when I was walking toward the trees, but the closer it got to nightfall, the more those houses stood out. They were mostly basic, hutlike structures, and the majority of them looked abandoned, but I saw stripy curtains here and there, or a basketball hoop fixed to an outer wall with a freshly chalked scoreboard beside it. One of the bigger houses had brambles growing up the front of it in snakelike vines. The smell of baking chocolate-chip cookies aside, it looked like a house you could start fanciful rumors about: “Well, a princess has been asleep there for hundreds of years . . .” and so on. The front door was open, and the porch light was on, and a little girl came around the side of the house, singing loudly. I couldn’t see her face properly—it was obscured by clouds of dark hair with big red flowers plaited into them—but she had a large cookie in each hand and more in the pockets of her dress, and I wanted to go in at the door behind her, sit down at the old piano I could see in the living room while she stood on tiptoes to retrieve the glass of milk set on top of it. Her voice sounded exactly the way I’d thought it would sound. For some reason that scared me, so I didn’t stop at the gate to greet her even though I heard her saying “Hi” in a startled way. I just said “Hi, Snow” as if we’d met before, when of course we hadn’t, and I kept going, kept my gaze fixed on the road ahead of me. “Scared” doesn’t even really describe it. I almost crossed myself. It felt like the evil eye had fallen upon us both.

  3

  i became well acquainted with the Help Wanted column in the local paper. I read it in the mornings, lying in bed with my little wireless set on my chest, pouring piano concertos directly into my heart as I scanned job descriptions I couldn’t answer to. I continued my reading at the Mitchell Street lunch counter, where Gertrude the waitress called me (and everyone) “schatzie” and kidded that I was cold-blooded because I drank my coffee without blowing on it first. One day I opened the newspaper to Help Wanted as usual, slumped for no particular reason, ordered a cream soda for a change, and started reading an article on the other half of the page. A “shy, quiet” girl of sixteen had been missing for a month and a half, and various developments had led to the police dragging the river. They’d found the remains of a young female, but apparently it wasn’t the shy, quiet girl—this one was older, “somewhere between twenty and twenty-six years old, well nourished . . .” The police were looking for help identifying the body, and there were a couple of other details, but it was “well nourished” I got stuck on. How could they say that? How was that going to help jog people’s memories? Were they calling her fat? I mean, being well nourished is good, it means you’re healthy. But when you’re dead and someone says that about you without any kind of modification to the description—I guess it’s all wrong to describe a corpse as “well nourished yet slender”—I just wouldn’t want that for myself. I pushed the cream soda away. I should cut back on treats. I pulled my cream soda back toward me, feeling as embarrassed as if I’d just said that out loud. What a way to be thinking when some poor girl had been murdered. I returned to the Help Wanted column and read it with extra attention to make up for the past few minutes’ slacking. A company that specialized in cocktail mixers had put a call out for blondes (lots of blondes, most shapes, shades, and sizes! Tell your friends!) to act as hostesses for their Valentine’s Day soiree. It was a one-off, an evening cruise on Lake Quinsigamond in a party boat, but the money was good, so I picked up the telephone around the corner from the soda fountain and gave my dress measurements to a decidedly unfriendly receptionist who instructed me to be at the club at four p.m. the following Friday. “You’d better not be lying about those measurements, by the way. This party is for the big-shot investors, and the bosses want to make sure that these investors like what they see. So if you don’t fit into the dress we’ll have ready for you, you’ll have to go home.”

  Webster lent me bus fare. “Must be great being a blonde,” she said. “Maybe you’ll meet a millionaire!” I couldn’t find any sarcasm in her gaze. I told her she could quit secretarial college and join “us” anytime she wanted.

  I was one of about a hundred blondes who showed up at the dock that afternoon, and none of us got sent home—in fact, quite a few of us found that our violet chiffon dresses were too loose, evidence of the prune juice diets we’d been on ever since we’d heard the secretary’s malignant warning. When we all stood in front of the event director, he rubbed his hands together and chuckled and announced that he liked what he saw. The boat would be sailing to Drake Island, where we’d continue the drinking and dancing begun on the boat before returning to Worcester. This was going to be the best party we’d ever been to, because this party was going to represent the spirit of Herb Hill Beverages—fun, accessible, yet exclusive, just like us lovely ladies. Accessible and yet exclusive? It seemed to me that a party could only be one or the other, never both, and I for one did not understand exactly what it was he expected of us. “Oh, and it’s my birthday,” he finished, and we chorused, “Happy birthday, sir.”

  He split us into groups. Then he and a few other suited men who never spoke to us directly gave us little tasks to do—walking up and down the subtly shifting floor of the cabin, with or without a tray that had glasses balanced on it, or saying “Hello” with a smile, or matching tickets to numbered hangers. It turned out I had a genius for matching tickets to hangers, so I was one of ten coat-check girls.

  “Not terrible, but not great,” a girl in my group commented. “The hardest thing is staying awake long enough to give the coats back at the end.”

  “Yeah, I think I heard Mr. Ramsey say that this thing’s gonna go on ’til six in the morning,” someone else said. We were sitting in the belly of the boat, looking over the deck plan. We’d already padded around the velvet-draped suites making sure the fire extinguishers were where they were supposed to be. We’d already stood silhouetted by the sunset, letting the lake breeze blow our hair into a golden haze around our heads as we tested the outer railings on all three levels. We checked the escape hatches and made each other locate them blindfolded, because the two more experienced girls said that sometimes the lights cut before the alarm went off. “When rich folks get drunk . . .” Betty began, and Dinah finished: “They burn money. Handfuls of dollar bills.”

  I said I found that hard to believe.

  Dinah sniffed, “Don’t, then,” but Betty said kindly: “Sweetie, I didn’t believe it either until I saw ’em do it.”

  “Businessmen do all kinds of things we wouldn’t be able to understand,” Dinah said.

  “It’s all the pressure they’re under,” Betty agreed.

  I listened in silence, hoping that they’d say more. They were women so determined to think well of people that they made it seem effortless, and I hadn’t really come across their kind before.

  “Baloney. We’re all under pressure. If these guys really do set dollar bills alight, they’re a bunch of devils,” said the girl beside me. She put a napkin around her neck and another one on her lap, took a sandwich out of her handbag and sank her teeth into it. She was a tidy eater, and like me, she had very dark eyes for a blonde. I’d also noticed her looking exasperated when the event director said it was his birthday.

  Her name was Mia Cabrini, and I was paired with her at the coat check; we were on for the first three hours. I’d thought there’d be a busy period of checking in coats and then a slow period until it was time to give all the coats back, but the coat check never stopped being busy. These big shots were indecisive; they couldn’t make up their minds whether they were cold or not. Mia had a notepad and filled pages of it with shorthand. I didn’t ask her why.

  When our first three hours were up, we switched with Dinah and Betty and “mingled” with the guests. Well, Mia mingled. I went out onto the top deck and smoked my leisure time away. The boat was going pretty fast; the solid brick and earth of the waterfront lagged stubbornly,
it seemed to be having a hard time keeping up. We left streaks of light on the dark water behind us. Canapés were brought around, but the girls with the trays didn’t offer me any. The same went for wine; we weren’t supposed to drink. I watched wealthy men and their wives and dates dancing and playing cards and making deals: I will admire you exactly as much, no more or less, as you admire me. I will love you in the strictest moderation. Some couples seemed pleased with their negotiations and others were in despair. They looked around with drained faces and drank less than their friends did, barely wetting their lips so as to keep their secrets. Merchant families, mostly, descendants of Englishmen who’d gotten rich trading with the tsars and sultans and rajahs of long ago, then come over to America because all their money didn’t stop the aristocrats from snubbing them. Now their great-grandchildren just made a few investments here and there, and kept charitable institutions the way an average Joe keeps a pet. I’d read quite a number of lifestyle magazines over the years; you’ve got to have some sort of setting for your daydreams. At the end of the interview about the redecoration of a nursery or the refurbishment of a mansion, the reporter never failed to ask the price of a loaf of bread and a pint of milk at the nearest corner store, and the interviewee always knew the answer, down to the last cent—it reeked of research. So I got a kick out of seeing the stars of the show close up. Some of them even knew how to jitterbug. But I remembered my manners. I didn’t let anyone catch me staring. I reminded myself over and over again that I wasn’t at the zoo.

  Mia came and found me when the band started playing “Pico and Sepulveda.” She grabbed both my hands and I let her lead our quickstep, trying to match the swing of her hips as we mouthed the names of Los Angeles streets at each other, streets neither of us had ever been on. Doheny . . . Cahuenga . . . La Brea . . . Tar Pits!

  The thing about dancing when you’re hungry is that at the end of the song you find yourself sitting on the floor, or the nearest knee, whichever happens to be more readily available. I settled for a knee, and its owner got overfamiliar, put a hand to my waist, and said in my ear: “So she loves me.” It was Arturo Whitman, got up in all his finery, managing to look both drowsy and savage at once, as a bear might if forced to wear a tuxedo.

  I said: “Arturo Whitman, are you . . . rich?”

  He held both hands up in the air. “I’m not. I swear I’m not. Ask the guys I came in with. I’m just here to amuse them.” He gave me the once-over. “Same as you. What would you do if I kissed you right now?”

  “Sock you in the solar plexus.”

  “Do you even know where to find the solar plexus?”

  “No, but I’d keep going ’til I got there.”

  “Aw, she loves me not . . .”

  I opened my mouth with that reckless joy that comes just before you give someone a genuine piece of your mind, but Mia pounced on us before I got started, crying, “Dr. Whitman!” They gave each other an odd, fleeting look with some kind of question in it. Arturo said: “Mia Cabrini. How the hell are you? Still involved in passionate love affairs with long-dead German philosophers?”

  She glanced at me with a smile. “Mind if I hog this old man? He taught me history a million years ago, and I need to tell him all about how a guy called Mr. Friedrich Nietzsche and I finally split up for good.”

  I said: “What do I care?” at the same time as he said: “Why would she mind?”

  He found a table inside for the two of them, and a dish of ice cream just for her, and I took a sudden interest in “mingling,” passing them more often than was strictly necessary. “Do you want this ice cream?” he asked her, whisking the dish all around the tabletop. “I mean, do you truly want it? Would you fight for this ice cream? Would you bear a deep wound in order to possess this ice cream completely? How deep a wound? What if it was as deep as the grave? What does this ice cream really mean to you, Miss Cabrini?”

  They looked good together. They were what society columnists called “a striking pair.” I don’t say this maliciously—at least, I don’t think I do—but it was only when I saw her with him that I fully realized I was younger than she was. She pulled a face and whacked him with her spoon. Not gently, either. “How’s Snow?” she asked.

  I didn’t catch his answer. A few minutes later Dinah and Betty were back in circulation, and Mia and I were back on the coat-check desk. For almost an hour we hardly said a word to each other. Then she kicked off one of her shoes, placed her bare foot on the hem of my dress so I couldn’t move away from her, and said: “Say, what’s the meaning of this? Are we back at kindergarten?”

  I said: “I don’t know.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t sound so sure.” She moved her heel in a slow circle, dragging the material along with it.

  “Okay, okay. I’m sure.”

  “Whitman and I are just good pals,” she said. “Goodish—whenever I catch a glimpse of him, anyway. And yeah, maybe . . . maybe we were almost something more once, but it would’ve been a complete disaster. I don’t know . . . he’s a nice guy, but there are thoughts he doesn’t allow himself to think. So you can’t think aloud around him . . . it’s too risky. You might accidentally hit a nerve. Did I already say he’s a nice guy? He is, but you just stumble across one of those thoughts he hates to think and—it ain’t pretty. When I die, they’ll make me the patron saint of lucky escapes. And that’s all there is to it.” She took her foot off the dress and we both checked for a print. Luckily there wasn’t one.

  “I don’t know why you feel a need to tell me—”

  “Because he says he can’t stand you and you act like you can’t stand him, and whenever a man and a woman behave like that toward each other, it usually means something’s going on. There’s a precious metal kind of gleam about you, and the man’s a jeweler, you know. So look out. And listen carefully, Boy—we’ve got to start right. I’m talking about you and me. Kiss me now, right this minute, and I’ll take it as a promise that the next time you get mad at me it’ll be a fight that’s actually worth having.”

  I kissed her cheek, and she kissed mine. “He said he can’t stand me?”

  She chuckled.

  “What have you been writing in that notebook all evening?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  The boat docked at Drake Island and every one of us hired blondes temporarily became a coat-check girl. Afterward I stood on the middle deck and sipped a glass of water as I watched a crowd of fur coats with people in them tottering across the sand. I was one of the girls who had to stay on board with the guests who didn’t want to go ashore, and my interpretation of “exclusive yet accessible” was to offer a smiling side profile to anyone who spoke to me. If my conversation partner moved to try to face me directly, I just turned my head again, and if they made another attempt to adjust our interaction, then so did I, and it was a merry circle that we walked until my opponent was defeated and either went away or settled for a cozy chat with a silhouette. It got so Arturo was the only man on board who’d talk to me.

  “What are you playing at?” he said, taking my glass of water from my hand and tasting it.

  “Keep it,” I said, when he tried to hand the glass back. “I hear you can’t stand me.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “You feel you’ve seen a hundred of me. You know how my tiny mind works. But maybe it goes both ways.”

  That tickled him. “I doubt it,” he said, when he was through laughing. He wiped tears from his eyes—that’s how tickled he was. “But Mia likes you, so . . .”

  “I like Mia too.”

  “She’s a sweet kid,” he said, and I thought: What? You didn’t have to talk to Mia for five minutes to get the message that she wasn’t any sweet kid.

  “Why’d you quit teaching?”

  I felt him look at me, but I gazed steadily into the pastel pink dawn.

  “I’m just trying to l
ook busy, Whitman. I’m throwing myself on your mercy here. If you don’t talk to me, I might not get paid.”

  “Ha. All right, since you asked so nicely. Two reasons. First of all history got itchy. As a field of study, I mean.”

  “Itchy?”

  “Yeah. I’m telling you it itched. I figured it’d pass, but it didn’t. I’d sit in my office with my shirtsleeves rolled up, kind of clawing myself from wrist to elbow—my neck sometimes too. It got so bad I’d have to take my shirt off. I was terrified my wife would think they were love scratches, but . . . anyway, she didn’t think that. No, don’t look at me . . . stay just as you are, if you don’t mind. Talking to you like this reminds me of confession.”

  “Well, go on, my child . . .”

  “Thank you, Father. I think I got too close to the details of my era of supposed expertise. You lose certainty that anyone or anything is really instrumental; you know, maybe time just does all the deeds from great to despicable, and uses us, and we pitifully try to save face by pretending we were at the controls. From where I was sitting the whole thing looked and felt like a flea circus. Not entertaining, not illuminating, just endlessly pathetic. Why is this flea being made to carry that grain of rice across a stick of spaghetti? Sure, it’s the strongest flea there, the strongman of the crew, but it’s struggling . . . the rice is obviously too heavy. The whole thing’s kind of degrading to watch . . . I decided to quit, with no clear idea of what I wanted my new job to be. That wasn’t as important as planning how to break it to my family that I was about to throw away a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice, theirs and mine. Snow was well on her way to being born, and my wife liked things the way they were; I think her favorite thing about our . . . collaboration was her actor and musician friends rubbing shoulders with my academic colleagues, she liked the atmosphere of challenge, the way anything that came under discussion could be claimed or rejected by either side. Time and time again the power of an idea or a piece of art was assessed by either its beauty or its technique or its usefulness, and time and time again my wife was surprised by how rarely anything on earth satisfies all three camps.”