Eagle Eye (8 page)

“What?” Buddy said.

“Oh, nothing.” He had caught his own words just in time, always unnerving.
Comforts are aging
—Jasmin would have laughed. “Who built this place, some dictator?” Two steps more and they could look down unseen, from a prayer-corner torn from some church.

“Dunno. Man I bought it from was a former tenor at the Met. See those spotlights in the ceiling? Work out fine for the art.” Buddy coughed. There was pride here.

“Rothko’s, are they? And Clifford Still.” Down below, each panel glowed like a looking-glass entrance to a provence just behind it. Or an exit.

“You know about them, huh. What do you know!” Buddy held out his hand. “Sorry kid. What I said. Go round the world again, you want to.”

“Please.” Button up.

“Right. But we won’t move from here. You can depend on it.”

What a place to stop. Even the pictures want out.

“Some South American had the place before that. The original owner, I don’t know.”

People should save those things. There ought to be a bank for it.

“Gangsters maybe? Al Capone, that period? Those peepholes.” The niche they were standing in came from a church, maybe forty years back. It would be an interesting place to take a girl.

“Bunt, the whole place went up only five years ago.”

“Wuddya know.” Already he was talking like Buddy. “Well, let’s not lurk.”

“I don’t see your mother down there. Maybe she’s in the terrarium.”

“Where’s that?”

“We couldn’t put it on the Avenue side. Around the corner, on the court. Even for that, we had to have a variance.” He cast Bunt a look. “I’ve had to take an interest. More and more.”

There were about fourteen people down there, wandering party-style, their heads vulnerable to any boy on a viaduct. He saw that it was old party-style, twos and threes. No clusters, nobody on the floor. A grouty homesickness jumped him from behind and hung on him like an ape-girl, from that world of fur pillows, jack-in-the-beanstalk boots, cavalier hair, and music cuffing the neck like a steady training partner, which he had made for and hit in any town in Europe. If he turned his head, he would surely see her topaz lantern-eyes, blubbery from the smoke-tickle. A lovely gorilla girl, with a look of Jane Fonda about her little nose. Then she would get off his back, and turn into maybe a girl in a shabby greatcoat with a pile like rinsed feathers—Clara Rentschle, Dutch girl working for Air France as an airport-meeter for middle-aged Americans who liked to be shoe-horned into their hotels—saying “You’re new to Lipps. Care to join us in a
kir
?” And the town would begin.

Trouble was, he didn’t want to go back. He wanted it to begin here.

“Maybe Maeve doesn’t want to see us.” Or me.

From as far back as summer camp, they had always written jointly, the same couple of pages, rambling over the sparse facts, and full of their dependable duty to
him.

“Come on. I just told her a later plane, so we could have our talk.”

“Do I see a couple of
priests
down there?”

A wheelchair, containing a clawy little creature in a church hat, was being pushed toward the pair by a figure in blue. No Maeve.

“Only two? Soon they’ll send the army. Bunt, I should warn you. You’re the one really bought this place.”

“Me? Gramp’s policy? You’re kidding.” A twenty-year endowment for $10,000, payable on his majority. In the load of insurance Buddy had mortgaged for his stake, that had been the only one left out. Thanks kid, it won’t help.

“My sacred promise to the old lady. To get her down here.”

“You don’t mean you promised? That we’d convert?” After the funeral visit, there’d been a breath of it. If they’d send him up there to St. Joseph’s-in-the-Valley, Mother MacNeil would board the New York orphan, as well as reform him. Cut her Mother’s throat first, Maeve said.

“Me, they’re satisfied if I go back to being a good Jew. The church is very liberal these days. You’re the tender morsel they’re hungry for.”

“Sonofa gun.”

“So I’m a rascal. Allow me, once.”

They were both grinning.

“How do I know I brought you up right? I have my guilts.”

“You know I’ve never been anything. You took advantage of it.”

“What a thing to say, you’re a nothing. No, I only took advantage you’re young. It’s your turn now.”

“Jesus, what a birthday present.”

“You want the farm?” Swiftly. “You can have it. I won’t sell it, then.”

Canny canny. He turned on his heel in the prie-dieu, puzzling.

“Mother MacNeil loves it up here. Brings up her portable Virgin every day.”

Maybe the old Brooklyn money-fear wasn’t so false. Deuces wild, the money says to you. You have a fantasy?—act it out. You can move. You’re not hemmed in.

“I’ll h-have a cow, maybe.”

“Fine. She’ll look just right in that dining room.”

“Well, let’s go down, huh.” He took his father’s arm, as height permitted. “Maybe they’ll make a man of me.”

“Of us,” Buddy said.

On the bottom step, he stopped. “What are they doing about Maeve?”

His father held up his newsboy face. “For her—they pray.”

The two of them had to get all the way down the stairs to see all of it before he understood what had happened to the Bronsteins, and how rich they were. Anybody who had been reared in his collection of angles, walls, views, courtyard-juttings that almost provided the city-coveted “double exposure,” fire escapes that did at last bring the morning sun—a whole mute storehouse of wistful accommodation—could be excused for thinking it.

The Fifth Avenue side was all glass—so much of it, and so clean, it seemed all air. Maybe angels came and licked it in the early morning—Paulina Vespasi again, telling him why the Chrysler Building’s needle always shone so clean, “same as the Vittorio Emmanuele monument.” And the air curved and wrapped itself nonchalantly, accepting a roofline, but dispensing with smaller privileges. Outside there, the whole upper city offered itself at sunset-level, no cover-charge, a gorgeous cloud-cafeteria for all bums. Strain for more meaning at your own risk. In case of too much ardor, on the terrace beyond the windows there were parapets.

To the left, where the building curved in, an open door—yes, that was air, like summer on his boots—gave on a striped party-marquee and all the fixings, white tables and spots of chrysanthemum bushes, stacked against the dusk. He had no trouble believing they were real. There were even a couple of girls in front of the nearest bush. I see you, he signaled to himself. I’ll get back to you. Stay there.

To his right, on the far north corner, about fourteen feet back from the angle, he saw the terrarium, a bulb of opaline glass perhaps ten feet in diameter, extruded on air again, as if the building had blown a last bubble before it gave up its climb. Outside a just-perceptible sliding-door, a life-sized porcelain lion raised its chub head. Inside, all the shapes of hothouse-green pressed lovingly toward him. They wanted to get in here, why was that? In their center, behind lattice, vine and spike, a life-sized statue with its back turned—the old Kwan-Yin from Park Avenue Two, its ivory coif bent, looking out. Clever.

No, it’s Maeve.

You must know, Betts, that she was absolutely lucid. Perhaps more absolutely lucid than she had to be. Her only aberration was that she had to go into that place once an hour—not on the hour, nothing so bald as that—and gaze down. Whatever was being looked at there, the former owners of such vantage points as tree-houses, captain’s walks and pergolas—or a small porch in the Berkshire past—are not required to say.

She tripped out of there, not seeing him at first, in the same white wool dress and bronze shoes he and Buddy had had to applaud over and over before she could trust herself to wear them to his graduation, an event she had trained for—as she did for all public appearances outside their house, and some in it—as if she were a movie star. “There’ll be so many bigwig parents there.” Though nothing ever came of that for her—she always became ashamed of the impudence that had brought her thus far, and hung back inside the shell she had made to be looked at—he had been proud of her, when he saw some of the other boys’ old bags. And Buddy had afterwards lunched downtown with one of the fathers, who in a whisper to his own son, had asked to be introduced to him.

As his mother came toward him, seeing her now, it was hard to believe she was not a girl. Since he’d last seen her, she must have given up “keeping up the red” of her hair. It was now a silvery white, brushed high off her face and clipped at the back George Washington-style, in an exaggerated version of half the girls he knew—why should going white make her look like a girl? Thanks to the procession of them between her and him, he could wonder now if she had a lover—something in the way she looked over her shoulder and away from him—looking back:

“Welcome to your party,” she cried toward him.

There were people about; this was for their benefit. He understood her need of falsity, compact between them since their shopping days.

She fell upon him then, saying the archly natural thing. “Where’s your beard?”

“Left it with a friend.”

Maeve tapped his shoulder. A little smile. “Mick mouth.”

His heels were bumped from behind.

“Sor-ree!” Too loud to be.

He turned. Wheelchair croquet. The woman who was manning it shed him a hard-nosed glare from behind her navy-blue. Same as the mothers in the park: babies take precedence. Or because
they
had to be with the carriage all day. And you were with a girl.

“Mother, this is Bunty,” Maeve said. “He’s been in Wales.”

He took the little claw, half afraid it would scratch. Under her blanket, Mother MacNeil still looked like a cat they had talcumed over very neatly, and put a hat and bunioned shoes on. Her black wrinkles matched her coat.

“She can understand you, but you have to bend down,” the attendant said. “She must have been a little deaf even before. Lip-reads a little.” She bent down. “
Wales.
He’s been in
Wales.
”

The old woman struggled to speak. Said something.

“Learning to talk.” His mother said quietly. “That’s the day I leave.”

“For shame, Maeve.” The attendant had a champagne glass in one hand. Whose companion was she?

“You remember Mrs. Reeves,” Buddy said behind him.

“Buddy was so generous, bringing Mother here,” Maeve said at Buddy. “I thought I’d be generous back.”

He squinted, removing himself. They had never used him like this, or had they. Maeve was looking down—her bronze buckles. Her shoes never showed wear. She wouldn’t look at him.

Old Reeves’s white hair had been dyed brown. A little of her backbone had gone with it. Or into the wheelchair.

“I had a mother once,” Mrs. Reeves said. “For a very—
hic
—long time.”

The light was pretty here. Acknowledge it. Not a cathedral light, but the old chemical stain gathered anywhere there was a roof and a dusk. Not to be spent with old people. A waiter came up and changed their glasses, each full of light. Mother MacNeil was given a sip too. Their four faces looked at him hopefully. Yes, Bunty, this is how rich we are.

“Oops, she wants to write something.” Reeves bent to his grandmother. “Well, off we go. She won’t—except in the bathroom. Isn’t that extraordinary? Most people read.”

“Well, I’m off to my party. I see two possible love-objects over there.” He touched his mother’s arm. “Watch my line, anyone?”

“Excuse me a minute. Take your father. He never knows many people here.”

Buddy and he watched her open a door in the terrarium and disappear among the plants.

“When a depression gets very low, Bunt, people say anything they think. The doctor says.”

“Wuddya know, I do it without thinking.”

He would have to cheer them up.

In succession, he took three fast tries.

A yellow-haired man came up, and was introduced to him as the designer of the terrarium.

“Claes Hilversum here—haven’t we met somewhere?”

“You Dutch? El Paradiso, maybe, I used to hang out there.”

“That government place? No, I have not been. I have not been a student for some years.” This was no exaggeration. “Cheapest pot in Europe, though, I hear.” He took out a wildly elegant case and angled it. “Have some.”

Bunty handed Buddy his glass. “Hold my bottle.” He and the blond boy, so called, lit up.

“Morocco?” Claes said, breathing close. “Rue de l’Art? Leuwenstrasse? Lapses like that bawthair me. We must talk.”

“The M-Mowzel,” Bunt said quickly. He turned to Buddy. “English for mousehole.” Handed Claes back his joint. “That place in Soho, with a—with a suit of armor takes your hat.”

“R-right,” Claes said. “What a lovely idea.”

“We had a place with a suit of armor, once, remember Buddy? Central Park West.”

He and Buddy exchanged smiles. In the foyer, like a truant from the lobby, sent to guard them with its pike. One of the cousins, asking its price, had scolded, “Maeve, you could have a mink coat for that.” His mother’s report of this had become family-famous between the three of them, Buddy teasing for years. At the time Bunty hadn’t understood why. Suspecting his mother didn’t either, quite. “Imagine,” she’d said that night at dinner. “Imagine anybody wanting a mink coat. When you could have a suit of armor.”

Maeve, just returning, slipped under Bunty’s arm. The way she smiled, she understood it now. “The armor? Wish we still had it. I could put it in the terrarium.”

“Why?” Keep it going, if you can’t cheer.

“She’d like to put everything in there,” Buddy said. “Last week that little safe with the jewelry. Thought it would be a swell place for it. And this week, another load of plants.”

They’d bought the jewel-safe, an imposing many-drawered affair, in the gift shop, their first trip on the Michelangelo—the most expensive item there. Since then Buddy put something into it any anniversary handy; it must be crammed. Mostly with the diamonds she was indifferent to—“I always feel I’m only boarding them.” There was also the pale Ceylon ruby she’d told the cousins was a tourmaline, more gold junk she never wore, and the small pearls which were her emblem. She had them on now, hung with the opal she did love, and called her bad-luck-piece.