30 Pieces of a Novel (27 page)

Saw her a week later. It was late afternoon and they were going opposite ways again on the same sidewalk and he said, “Hi,” and she smiled and said, “Hi, how are you?” and he said, “Fine, thanks, and you?” and she said, “I'm in a rush to something very important now so I really can't stop, excuse me,” and he said, “Don't worry, I understand,” and walked on. He turned around a few seconds later and looked at her hurrying up the hill. God, what a shape, and so goddamn beautiful! If only he had gone along with what she was saying that night, stopped talking or only spoke softly, not got angry or vulgar, touched her where and when she wanted to, pretended to have more dignity, just held back, let her make the moves, call the shots, the rest of it, because it should have been obvious that was what she wanted, something he only realized after he left her place, then it would have happened. She was a little scared, or wary, had reservations, that much he knew when he was there—meaning she had to; it would only be natural; you don't want to just jump in with an old guy, no matter how forward and out front she was in the apartment, bar, movie theater, et cetera, but he didn't deal with it intelligently. And again, with someone so young and lovely. Ah, you've gone over it plenty, too much already, so don't start killing yourself some more over it. That it didn't happen, wasn't successful, but got so close: no clothes, their bodies pressed together, kissing, his hand on her ass … forget it, and you don't ever want to try it again with someone her age, not, as he's also told himself too many times, that he'll ever have another chance. They really don't want to be doing it with you, that's what it comes down to. They think they have the body and face and youth and spirit and who knows what else—the time; they got just about everything, far as they're concerned, and instant oblivion also—and can dictate the terms because of that, if they do, for whatever fluky reasons they have, want to go through with it, and that can take care of the scariness and wariness and so on. So what's he saying? He's saying nothing. Or he's saying little. But he just should have shut up. But also done what he did in the theater, and that's pull his hand away from hers—in other words, something like that—or is that what he did? No, he just didn't, when she wanted him to, kiss, but anyway, done what she wanted but with some reservations and reluctance or wariness himself till he got her in a position where she couldn't call things anymore, where he had her pinned or locked but was inside her and nothing was going to stop it till he was done, and after that told her to screw off with her demands if she made any from then on or made them excessively. Because just to have done it once with her. To be walking down this street, after having just stared after her from behind, and thinking, I laid that gorgeous girl, and then to be able to go over it all in his head. But he didn't think of that then.

Saw her a few more times after that, and they waved or smiled at each other or both or said hi or hello and went on. Then he saw her when he was with his younger daughter. They were going the same way, she was at the corner waiting for the light to say
WALK
and he was a little behind her and got alongside her and said, “Hi,” and she said, “Oh, hi, hello”—and smiled—“how are things going?” and he said, “Couldn't be better, and you?” and she said, “Same here, thanks. Well, I'll see you,” when the light said
WALK
and she crossed the street, and he and his daughter crossed it a little more slowly. Then he yelled out, “Lorna, by the way …” and she turned around, and he said, “This is one of my daughters, Josephine,” and she waved and said, “Hi, Josephine, nice to meet you,” and continued on, and Josephine said, “Who's that? One of your students?” and he said, “No, just someone I know from the block,” and she said, “I didn't know you were so popular,” and he said, “I'm not.”

WHERE'S
HIS
MOTHER
? Didn't expect his father to be here, he's always too busy for things like this, but did his mother. Other kids are picked up. They run to their parents or just their parent or grandparent or older brother or sister. Lots of shouting of names, hugging, squealing, kissing, just what he expected to do with his mother, though no squealing; that's for girls. He looks around and around. Half the kids were picked up the second they were brought to stand under the big Kodak sign. Most of the others were picked up in the next few minutes. “Mommy! Daddy! Nana!” and so on. Now he and a kid he didn't like all summer are the only ones left from their division. Of all people to get stuck with, this one: Arthur. Not Art or Artie but Arthur, he had them all call him. “My mother said that's the name on my birth certificate and the only name I should be called and not to answer to any other name,” or something. Good thing he also wasn't in his bunk or on his team in color war. July first, camp started; now it's August twenty-fifth. In a little more than a week, the day after Labor Day, he'll be back in school. The thought of it makes him sick. Really, he has this sudden sick feeling in his gut at the thought of going back to school. It won't be so bad the first day. There shouldn't be too much to learn, the teacher will try to be nice, and he'll see which kids he's with, though they were told on their report cards last June which class they were promoted to, but he forgets who'll be in his of the ones he likes. His best friend, Willy, won't be in his class for the first time since second grade. His mother said it was just a fluke they stayed together this long in the same class. That it defied, she said, the law of averages—always big talk like that and with words he has to ask her the meaning of. She's the reader in the family, the brain, and the one people say he takes after that way. But he gets his sense of humor and gabbiness from his father, they also say, besides his looks. Which, someone said in joking, he got shortchanged on or the worst of the bargain, his mother being thought of by most people as some kind of beauty when she was young and still a little today. Anyway, he forgets what he was thinking. School. In about eight days. No Willy in his class, but he'll see him every day and walk to and from school with him unless Willy gets another best friend. But they'd still walk together, he's sure, because he's the only other boy on the block from their grade who goes to that public school. But his mother: where can she be? Maybe the subway got stuck or she took a taxi and the driver drove her to the other train station by mistake. What would he do if she stayed there waiting for him and all the campers here had gone, and the counselors and Uncle Sol, the camp director, wanted to go and she didn't know where he was, maybe thought she got the pickup day wrong and went home to check because she'd left the camp schedule there—or didn't have to go home at first, phoned and his dad wasn't there; he was working, even though it was Saturday—so then she had to go home and the schedule said today and Grand Central Station and she was already two hours late and Uncle Sol by this time had got tired of waiting for her and left him there alone with his duffel bag—his trunk had already been sent home from camp by truck. But the camp would never do that. They'd stay with him till someone picked him up or they'd deliver him to the person his parents had told them beforehand about if his mother couldn't come and get him or just didn't show up. In other words, an emergency name and phone number. His father's office, even. So, nothing to worry about, really.

“Where do you think your parents are?” Arthur says, and he says, “It's probably just my mom who's coming, and I don't know. She's usually never late—she's a stickler about time—so something must have gone wrong with the city: a detour by cab because of a parade or something, or a car crash in front of hers. And your mom?” and Arthur says, “My parents, and they're always late, so I'm used to it. They'll be here, though, that I'm sure. They never fail. Look,” and points to the ceiling; it's as high as any ceiling Gould's seen. Higher up than the one in the Great Hall at the Natural History Museum, even, which he's seen hundreds of times, since he lives so close to it. “Yeah, that's a pretty high ceiling, all right, but near where I live? The Natural History Museum?” and Arthur says, “The what museum?” and he says, “The American Museum of Natural History,” and Arthur says, “Oh, that one; I didn't know which museum you were talking of,” and he says, “Why, there aren't two like it in the city,” and Arthur says, “There's one in Washington, D.C., and another in San Francisco and in Philadelphia, I think, and probably lots of other places in America. That's why you have to distinguish them or identify them correctly, because there's only one called the American Museum of Natural History, and that one's in New York,” and he says, “But I did say ‘near where I live,' right? and that couldn't be Philadelphia or San Francisco, right?” and Arthur says, “Sure it could, for Philadelphia. It's only an hour away by train from Pennsylvania Station. For you never told me what city you specifically live in. Or if you did, this summer or last, I forgot,” and he says, “Oh, what's the sense in talking to you? You always say this and that instead of talking about what we're talking about,” and Arthur says, “If you remember, Gould, I was the one who was pointing something out when this conversation started, and it wasn't the height or breadth of this train station either. I mean, both those we know, correct? I'm saying, both of us left from here two months ago, didn't we? and we both left and came back from here last year too.” “All right, so what's your point?” and Arthur says, “My point, sir, is pigeons,” and he says, “‘Sir'?” and Arthur says, “I was only joshing with that. But look up. Did you ever see so many pigeons inside a building like this, if at any time any bird flying in one? It's so mysterious and eerie,” and Gould sees way up, right at the top—it must be a thousand feet away—with big long sunbeams slanting through the whole station from the big windows, making the place look like it has prison bars: anyway, a whole flock of pigeons flying around up there, or just birds. Because they are so far away, who can tell for sure what kind of birds they are? “Why do you say they're pigeons?” and Arthur says, “What else can they be, in a city so filled with them? Besides, they flap and flutter like pigeons, and I think I heard one before, even from way down here, go
coo, coo, coo
. And they also have to be them because look at those two there,” and points, and about a hundred feet away, walking between some people and their luggage on the floor, are two pigeons, a mother and father it was pointed out to him once, the father with a green shiny neck and much bigger and more beautiful—or handsomer, you can say—than the mother, who had no colors like that on her neck and not as many feathers there and no puffy chest either or not as much so and her head sort of shaped like a woman's. More graceful, a softer look; something like that. “Well, I guess that clinches it in a way,” Gould says, “though if all those by the ceiling are also pigeons, how come these two aren't up there?” and Arthur says, “Boy, you're a hard one to convince. Because they're resting from flying, what do you think?”

“Arthur,” a woman says, and they look and it's his mother. Gould recognizes her from a visit during Parents Day, even if she's wearing city clothes now while this summer she had on shorts and a camp T-shirt. She must have not come with the right country clothes then, so borrowed the shirt from Arthur or bought it at the camp store and maybe the shorts from someone else. He forgets what she had on her feet; here it's high heels. But what he remembers most about her is her ugliness. She's maybe the ugliest woman her age he's ever seen in real life—“Ugly as sin,” as his dad's said about some people, men and women and even a couple of kids, though he isn't completely sure what that expression means—with big everything on her face: nose, eyes, chin, even her lips, plus holes in her cheeks and yellow pimples and bushy hair, but a normal unfat body and legs. Arthur runs to her and Gould stays there and they hug and she stares at Arthur's face and for a moment almost looks as if she's going to cry but then grins, kisses the top of his head and one of his hands, and starts talking, and Arthur covers his eyes in embarrassment, it seems, so it must be how tall he's grown the last month and how older he looks and more mature and so healthy with his tan and things like that and how his hair's grown so long and it's going to have to get cut for school. Though who knows? They might be weirdos, as his dad also likes to say about some people, so they'll let him go to school with hair halfway down his neck and over his eyes. “Where's Father?” and she says, “We couldn't find a parking spot so he's sitting in the car. He can't wait to see you. Think you're strong enough to carry your duffel bag alone? You look it,” and he says, “I don't know, I'll try,” and with some struggle gets it onto his shoulder; then he begins to sag under it, says, “Help,” and she grabs a handle at one end and he the other and he says, “Give me another year,” and they laugh. As they're starting out she looks at Gould and says something, and Arthur shrugs and they come over, put down the bag, and Arthur says, “Mother, this is a friend from camp, Gould Bookbinder,” and he thinks, Friend? I talked more to him here than I did all summer, but he wants to lie that he has lots of friends, that's okay. She says, “How do you do, Gould, did you have a good summer?” and he says, “Yes, thanks. I just hate the end of it because it means going back to school,” and she says, “I don't think Arthur will have that problem. You're looking forward to school, aren't you, dear?” and Arthur says, “Sort of. It can be stimulating and fun,” and she says to Gould, “Did I meet you this summer when I came up?” and he says, “I don't think so; Arthur and I were in different cabins.” “You're waiting for your parents, though, yes?” and Arthur says, “Just for his mother; she's unusually late,” and she says, “I'm sure she'll come, and if not, Mr. Birmbaum will look after him, so don't worry.” Mr. Birmbaum—Uncle Sol to the campers—has just run over and says, “Glad I caught you whisking Arthur away before you got past me. But I guess Gould would have let me know who swiped him, right, there, kid? So, so long, Arthur, my boy, and hope to see you at the camp reunion. It'll be at the President Hotel, February, same as last year,” and Arthur says, “Will we be notified of the exact date a little longer beforehand than last time?” and Uncle Sol says, “I'll see to it personally that you have plenty of time to get it into your engagement calendar. Goodbye, Mrs. Singer,” and she nudges Arthur, and he says, “Goodbye, sir, and have a good winter, Gould,” and he says, “You too, see ya,” and they go.