Vivian In Red (40 page)

“Dr. Joel is upstairs with him now,” Esme reports. “He is awake and fairly alert, but not in spirits.”

I lead the way up the steps, but after a moment notice Alex hasn’t followed me. I look back to see him rooted to the entry floor. He’s looking at a chandelier above his head, a dusty, fussy thing I’d forgotten was even there. “This way,” I prompt him, with a jerk of my head. Alex catches himself, and shoots me a small, shamefaced grin.

Joel’s head jerks up at my entrance to Grampa’s bedroom, and his gaze snaps right to Alex. “Who’s this?” he demands.

Something about Joel I’d forgotten: his manners seem to evaporate when tired, and he’s tired all the time as both a doctor and a father of baby twins. He’s been better about this since his residency years, but these are trying times all around.

“He’s a new friend,” I answer, adding, “He’s helping me with the book.” I look at Grampa Milo and wave. He raises his good hand, and glances at Alex with a questioning face.

Joel wrinkles up his head at Alex, as if he could read the answer on Alex’s face why this skinny slacker would be any help with the book. Today Alex wears black jeans, a T-shirt, and a plaid shirt open over that. It seems to be the only type of clothing he packed. Over the top of that, he’s got an old leather motorcycle jacket with visible cracks and scratches.

Then Joel shakes his head and rubs the bridge of his nose. “Not sure how much book work you’re going to get done today, kiddo.” He rubs Grampa Milo’s arm almost absently, as if his hand moved of its own accord, doing the reassuring while the rest of him was in Doctor Mode. “Don’t tire him out too much, okay? He’s only got a couple hours of lucidity at a time.”

A thud on the mattress draws our attention. Grampa Milo scowls, and thumps his own chest in an
I’m here, right here
, gesture.

I rush to say, “I’m sorry, Grampa, we don’t mean to speak for you, like you’re not here. Joel’s just worried for you, we all are. You took care of all of us for so long, and now it’s our turn. I know you hate it, but there you go.”

Joel and his long face stride out of the room, and I feel for him just then, what it must be like to never put aside “the doctor” to be just “the worried grandson.”

Grampa Milo looks at Alex with his tired eyes and waves his hand like a benediction.

“This is Alex. He’s from Michigan.”

Grampa Milo raises his eyebrows slightly. My talkative Grampa would normally be riddling Alex with questions by now, and no doubt asking if there were any Jews in Michigan. He used to ask this of any out-of-towner who should chance to cross our threshold. He’d be just curious, just wondering how our people were faring outside the big city, but something about the question always made me cringe.

He’s staring now with intensity at Alex, such that I follow his gaze instinctively. Alex turns to me, perhaps also wondering about the hard stare. It’s in this way that I finally look straight into Alex’s eyes, noticing for the first time their vibrant, arresting shade of green. I pull my attention back to my grandfather.

“We’ve got something to talk to you about,” I begin.

Alex nudges me. He’d set the box down on the floor by the bedroom door as we came in. He widens his eyes at me now, as if to ask,
What, now, right now?

“Yes, now. Could you get a chair for me from down the hall?” I point with my thumb at the door.

Ordering people around is more Naomi’s thing than mine, but there’s a certain serenity that has come over me since I stepped into this room, and saw my grandfather with waxy skin and hair all tufted up because no one has bothered to run a comb through it yet.

I’m reminded of something I learned when my dad was sick, something I’d managed to forget, somehow. Sickness enforces a dismissal of things that don’t matter. By the end of my father’s life, it seemed the fact of his own death barely rattled him, perhaps because it had been advancing long enough to lose its terrifying mystery. Except, now and then, I’d catch him gazing at me with bottomless sadness.

Alex has by now returned, dragging a chair from the office.

“You see, Grampa, it’s like this. We found Vivian’s family.”

I settle into the chair, watching my grandfather’s face for shock, anger, distress. Instead, he nods with patient solemnity, as if he’d been waiting for this all along.

O
f course they know all about Vivian. It seems crazy now, to think that sixty years was long enough for every trace of her to drift away like ashes.

I look past my daughter and this man, this long-haired stranger with the unsettling green eyes, and look for her in the room. But she’s not here, still not here, not since the time I saw her dripping wet and blue, and I miss her; though I hardly believe this, it’s true. Maybe it’s because I need to see her one more time, whole and dry and okay, though of course I know Vivian is actually dead, and died long, long ago, and she was not okay when she died. No one who dies that young is okay.

Eleanor and this Alex from Michigan kid keep exchanging looks, and they seem to understand each other that way, which is interesting to me, even as I lay here mute and probably dying and almost too tired to care anymore about either of those things.

When they tell me that Vivian had a baby in Michigan before she died, you know I’m not even shocked?

Oh, Vivian, why didn’t you ever tell me? I could’ve helped you, I would have done something. I don’t know what, but something.

And this Millicent lady was Vivian’s daughter, and they think maybe… Eleanor can’t spit it out, poor kid, she looks like she’s going to vomit, and this Alex fella reaches out his hand to steady her with a touch on her shoulder, and I think good for you, fella.

I scrabble my good hand out of the bed sheets and I seize Eleanor’s hand. I squeeze as hard as I can muster and I look her straight in her golden brown eyes, those eyes like topaz, and I nod, hard. Yes, I know what you’re getting at. I get it.

Alex speaks up now. “There’s a test they can do these days, Mr. Short. It’s just a little blood test, and someone can even come right here and do it. They mail it in, and in ten days, we can know.”

Wonder of wonders.

I nod. Yes, we should, this test. We should know, though I feel like I already do. It makes so much more sense now, those last days I saw her.

Fat tears roll down Eleanor’s face. “I’m so sorry to do this to you, to make you think about things like this now…”

I shake my head at her. Not her fault. All mine, really. My fault from sixty years ago, but my fault all the same.

“How are you feeling, are you in pain?”

I shake my head again. I’m not, not the kind of pain she means, anyway.

The next few minutes overflow with anguish, Eleanor for seeing me so frail and sick, mine for seeing my loss predicted in the pain of her watery eyes. This Alex stands like a pillar of salt next to her, coming to life only when she says goodbye to me with a kiss on my cheek, smelling of her raspberry shampoo.

He picks up a box on the way out, and I wonder about that box, but of course I can’t ask.

And so I’m alone now, briefly, I’m alone so seldom anymore, always they’re keeping one eye on me for my moment of demise.

And then she’s next to my bed, and it’s my turn for tears to course down my old papery face.

She’s wearing a black dress, and a tiny hat with a puff of black veil; I hardly ever saw her in black. Her face is pale compared to the slash of red lipstick and her dark wavy hair, but otherwise she appears how she always used to. There’s no vicious smirk, no sneer or tease in her expression. It’s a softness I rarely noticed, even in 1936, and even then mostly when she didn’t think I was looking. Then she’d catch herself, and a hardness would settle into her features like she was made of marble.

Oh, Vivian.

V
ivian had said she’d be wearing a green dress, and Milo kept jumping at every splash of green in his vision. This seemed hopeless; how did he think he would find her in this crush of humanity? There had to be thousands of people cramming together along the 72
nd
Street Lake in Central Park to see this Water Carnival mishegoss.

Milo had just thought it would be a nice place to spend time with her, being both entertaining and also free of charge, and furthermore, not intimate or scandalous in the least. Just two friends out watching some folk dancing, what could be more innocent?

He might never even see her in this mess, that’s what. Milo shifted the package in his arm, a little something he bought for her, considering her current situation did not seem likely to leave her much pin money. He’d wrapped up another surprise in there, too: the Playbill for
The High Hat
’s New York opening next week.

Milo had put his head down and polished off the song right that day, the morning after their night together, not sleeping or eating until he was finished and satisfied. He kept some of the words from their night together, but not all. Some of them, in the bright light of sobriety, were just wrong. Clunky, or too easy. But by the time he brought the words over to the theater, where rehearsals for other parts of the show were already underway, he and Allen could play it through without interruption, to the delighted appreciation of the cast and director, and Gordon, too, when they played it for him.

With the flush of accomplishment still high in his cheeks, he’d phoned Vivian up to take her to the movies to see
Show Boat
. His mother would never have approved, but he didn’t live at home, and he didn’t have to tell her he was taking a gentile girl to a movie. It was just for friendliness and appreciation, anyway. Once in a while he’d phone her up, or she’d phone him, and then they’d meet for a coffee, or a sandwich, or a show. This turned out to be a pleasant way to spend the summer, while he and Allen worked on the finishing touches of
The High Hat
and steered clear of each other at all other times.

But with their recent call, Milo had gotten worried. She’d confessed, due to his persistent asking, that the girlfriend and her new groom were due back home soon, and she needed a new place. Milo had already approached the director of the show about a job for Vivian and been turned out flat; her reputation preceded her.

“I suspect I can find a room in a boarding house somewhere,” she’d said with a sigh, sounding bored with the line of questioning. “Anyway, it would just be temporary, wouldn’t it? I have that feeling.”