Boy, Snow, Bird (12 page)

As we walked back to the hotel, I said: “So we’re never going to talk about Julia?” A straight question, just as Mrs. Fletcher would have asked it. (Why am I always imagining that I’m other people?)

Arturo asked what I wanted to know.

“What do you want me to know?”

He looked down at our feet. We were walking in step, which was taking some effort on my part.

“Our parents were good friends, double-dated all the time—it
felt like they’d picked us out for each other. Whatever they did, it worked, because she’s almost everything I remember about being a kid and being a young man—I got my first job so I could buy her an opera record she just had to have; still remember what it was—Offenbach’s
The Tales of Hoffmann.
It was never ‘Will you buy me candy?’ with her; she always wanted stuff that . . . I don’t know, stuff you always felt in danger of losing her to. Books, music. If you took her to one of those big art galleries, you wouldn’t be able to find her again until closing time. I was in a running battle with the Phantom of the Opera. The Phantom won, but—”

“Arturo.” I held him closer, walked with my head above his heart.

“I gave him a run for his money. I never had eyes for anyone but her, right up until she died. And even then, for a long time after . . . it just didn’t seem true that she was gone. She had to have Snow by Caesarean, and when she came home, she got a fever. She said she was just tired, and she’d just sleep it off. I knew why she was saying that: She hated it at the hospital; didn’t want to see any more white coats or nurses’ uniforms. Two days, she kept saying,
I’ll just sleep it off, Arturo—don’t fuss
. Her mother and mine kept telling me I didn’t know what it was like for a woman after she’s got through childbirth, that I should just let her hold her baby and rest. She died in the night, Boy. It seemed impossible. She was laughing and singing to Snow in the afternoon, then in the middle of the night she woke me up saying
Call a doctor, call a doctor,
and I was downstairs for an hour or so trying to get hold of someone. I couldn’t. It was Saturday. I went back upstairs and Julia was so quiet. It didn’t feel final; it was
more like she was thinking and was about to speak. It looked like she was breathing, but it was just air escaping. I remember I covered Snow’s eyes. And . . . I don’t want to say any more.”

He sighed when I told him I was sorry. “I’ve still got Snow,” he said. It sounded rehearsed, a phrase he’d assembled around his real feelings like a screen.

“Hey. Hey, you. I’m here too.”

I thought that was that, but in the morning I woke up to find him kneeling beside my bed. His eyes were on me; I think they had been for a long time.

“Say you love me,” he said. The sun hadn’t been up for long, and Snow was snoring in the bed beside the window. She wriggled when he spoke, then tucked her head deeper into her pillow. I tried to fake a return to sleep myself, but Arturo said: “No. Say you love me.” I sat up and he trapped my heel in his hand, so hard that my other foot, the free foot, drew up in a weak pirouette.

“I’ll stay with you,” I said. We both spoke lightly, we were both smiling, but I didn’t know what Arturo was going to do if he found he couldn’t make me say I loved him. Not much, surely. Snow was right there, after all. And she wasn’t sleeping. She didn’t give herself away even for a second, but that kid was keeping tabs. I knew and she knew.

He stood up and went over to his suitcase. “I made you something.”

It was the first piece of jewelry he ever made me, and it was the equivalent of an engagement ring. I say “equivalent” because it was a bracelet, a white-gold snake that curled its tail around
my wrist and pressed its tongue against the veins in the crook of my elbow. When I saw it lying on its bed of tissue paper, I didn’t want to pick it up, let alone put it on. All I could think was:
I will fear no evil, I will fear no evil, I will fear no evil.
That snake was what he’d made for me, it was what he thought I wanted, was maybe even what he thought I was, deep down.

I’d said I’d stay, so I stayed. I put it on for him. I said I’d marry him. He said: “Are you sure?”

I ran my fingertips over the scales, dozens of colorless hexagons that warped even as they reflected. According to them, the room was a lilac-wallpapered blur, and my forehead was west of my nose. I didn’t go inside Arturo’s workroom, and he’d never invited me there, just came out when he was done for the day, sweating hard. He said it was because of the details, having to get them right. The switch from pliers to magnifying glass to the rubber mallet, back to magnifying glass, then the reach for the scoring knife. He said that most of the time he felt as if he were making a monstrosity right up until the last step. It’s not work I could do, breaking something and then breaking it again and again until it looks the way I want it to. I’d falter, and try to go back to where I’d started. I’d just be there all day making solid gold blobs.

I said: “What do you mean, am I sure? What kind of question is that? Of course I’m sure.” And I kissed him.

“It’s just that sometimes you get this look . . . you know how in movies people come around after fainting or hitting their head and immediately start asking, ‘Who am I? Where am I? Who are
you
?’ I’ve seen you looking like that sometimes, and I can’t tell
if that’s just how life strikes you or if you’re only like that when you’re around me. I kind of like that look. It’s endearing. But what if one day you figure out who you are and where you are and who I am and realize it’s all a big mistake?”

“Impossible. For the last time, I’m sure.”

Magic words. As soon as I’d said them, Snow was halfway to the ceiling, waving her arms and yelling “Hurray!” Arturo climbed up onto his own bed, stating that it was the principle of the thing. I was the one he’d said yes to, so he had to bounce higher than Snow. Then of course I had to show them who the real bed-bouncing champ was. They surrendered pretty quickly.

I put the bracelet in the hotel-room safe, and checked on it once a day. We were almost carefree for the rest of the weekend, Snow, Arturo, and I; they were carefree, we built sandmen and taught Snow’s dolls how to play beach volleyball with water balloons. The snake was always there each time I checked, and there was no way to go back to Flax Hill without it.

—

when mia saw
the bracelet, she said: “Oh, Boy.” She spun the jewelry box around on the tabletop, wouldn’t even touch its contents.

I said: “I know.”

“I mean, could that scream ‘wicked stepmother’ any louder?”

“I
know
.”

Mia ruffled my hair. “It’s okay, it’s fine. It only looks like that. That’s not how it really is.”

10

i
shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that there was a man three blocks away from the boarding house who specialized in bespoke wedding-cake toppers. It was Flax Hill, town of specialists. He had a storefront full of ready-made cake toppers available for sale. Clay ballerinas and baseball players and owls, numbers shaped out of wax, all of which were far less unsettling than the wedding-cake toppers. Each tiny bride and groom had this beseeching smile painted onto their face. The kind of smile that suggested dark magic was afoot, a switch had been made, the couple leading the first dance were not who they claimed to be, and wouldn’t someone please intervene? That’s what I’d think if I saw a pair of smiles like that on top of a wedding cake, anyway. But Webster had set her heart on having a pair of cake toppers made by this particular specialist. Something about his father having made her parents’ cake toppers, and his grandfather having made her grandparents’ . . . so I sat with her while she went through photographs of her and Ted together. Mr. Cake Topper
Specialist wanted the photographs to work from, and she dismissed every photo I suggested. “Maybe we’ll have to take a new one,” she said.

I’d collected my bridesmaid’s dress from the seamstress’s store the day before and run into a couple of Webster’s other bridesmaids. We’d debated whether or not to tell her that if she didn’t end her diet now she wouldn’t look pretty on the day, just brittle. As her friend Jean put it: “She’s got no business getting this thin for a December wedding. If there’s snow, she’ll catch pneumonia so quick she won’t know what’s hit her.”

“Ted keeps saying, ‘Let’s just elope,’” Webster said, and gave me such a wicked grin that I didn’t have the heart to say anything about brittleness.

Brenda, Webster’s neighbor, knocked on the door. “You’ve got a gentleman caller, Novak. No, no, not Loverboy. Though it could be Loverboy Mark Two. He says it can’t wait.”

“Is he handsome?” Webster asked, following me to the staircase. Brenda shrugged. “I guess so. In a freckled kind of way. Some girls get all the luck.”

Webster and I took a peek over the banister. We saw a mop of light brown hair, then Charlie Vacic looked up and gave us the full winsome-puppy-dog treatment. I was already on my way down the stairs, so the push Webster gave me was wholly unnecessary, as was her crowing that she was going to tell Arturo on me, which brought seven of our fellow tenants out onto the landing to see who I was two-timing my fiancé with.

“Hi,” I said, pulling him into the front parlor and closing the door behind us. “What are you doing here?”

“How are you, Charlie, long time no see, how’s med school, was it a long bus ride, can I offer you something to drink?” Charlie said. He dropped into an armchair and closed his eyes. I sat down too, in the chair opposite his. My knees had turned to water.

“I’m well, thank you, Boy,” he supplied. “Yes, it has been a while. Med school’s fine, I’m not failing, and I’ve avoided hypochondria by deciding my time’s up when it’s up. The bus ride aged me by about ten years and a cold beverage would be the best thing that could happen to me right now.”

What could I do or say, other than bring him a glass of someone else’s root beer that I found in the icebox? He drained the glass without speaking, so I got him a refill. Then he was ready to talk.

“I got your letter. Are you really getting married?”

I looked into his eyes. He couldn’t return the gaze steadily, kept focusing on my left eye, then on my right. I could guess what he was thinking: that there were two of me, that was the explanation, that was why I was acting like this. I had applied this rationale to the rat catcher the first time he’d punched me. First you try to find a reason, try to understand what you’ve done wrong so you can be sure not to do it anymore. After that you look for signs of a Jekyll and Hyde situation, the good and the bad in a person sifted into separate compartments by some weird accident. Then, gradually, you realize that there isn’t a reason, and it isn’t two people you’re dealing with, just one. The same one every time.
Keep switching eyes all you want, Charlie. You’re going to hate the conclusion you reach.

I answered: “Yes, Charlie, it’s true.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

He loosened his collar, swallowed air. “Why?”

He smiled when I didn’t answer. Not an amused smile, a nervous one. The quirk at the left corner of his mouth when he smiled. For so long I’d wanted to kiss him just there. He was Charlie. Maybe I could tell him: Listen, there’s this little girl who makes herself laugh. You hear her from the other room, and when you try to get her to explain, she just says: “Don’t worry about it.” And maybe it’s the thief in me, but I think this girl is mine, and that when she and I are around each other, we’re giving each other something we’ve never had, or taking back something we’ve lost. Maybe Charlie would say: Let’s kidnap her, go to Europe, and raise her as our own. We’re young. Starting over won’t be so hard for us. But even if some madcap spirit did pick that moment to possess Charlie Vacic, what I felt for the girl wasn’t all that distinct from what I felt for her father.

“I wish you’d written to let me know you were coming,” I said. “Where are you staying?”

“I’ll find someplace. Take it easy, I’ll be out of your hair soon enough. Tomorrow, probably. Why are you doing this, Boy? Don’t you understand that I just want to take care of you any way I can? Or do you think I don’t know what I’m saying when I say things like that?”

“I love you,” I said, then sat there, appalled at what had just come out of my mouth.

He moved forward in his chair, rested his forehead against mine. “I know. So, please, Boy. I’m asking you, please. Don’t marry him.”

“I don’t want to be taken care of, Charlie. That’s not what I want.”

“How dare you write me a letter like that? You wanted me to come here and say this. Don’t marry him.”

Just one kiss, I thought. But then I couldn’t pull away.

Out in the hallway, Mia bawled: “Anyone seen Boy Novak? That girl owes me a pastrami sandwich.” That might have been her way of making a tactful entrance. We’d let go of each other by the time she tried the door handle. I introduced them, praying Mia wouldn’t say “
That
Charlie?” She didn’t.

Instead she said: “Come to lunch with us,” and looked up at him with a smile that made me want to stick a
No Trespassing
sign on him. Charlie excused himself on the grounds of having to find a room, but once Mia and I found a quiet booth at the diner, I had words with her about that smile she’d given him. Not straightforward words; I just asked a few questions about her love life, whether she was seeing anyone she liked, etc.

“No, not really—I’m just snacking right now.”

“
Snacking
, Mia?”

“That’s the only way I can think of to put it to you, my dear, innocent Boy. But about that Charlie . . . why did he say ‘Good-bye’ when he left? I mean, ‘Good-bye,’ not ‘See you later.’ Isn’t he in town to see you? Did you just break his heart? Don’t you know how to let ’em down easy?”

—

webster was all
aglow at her wedding, and Ted was in awe.

(“I get to grow old with this woman? This woman right here?”