Banana Rose (28 page)

“How?”

“There’s just something about you—I don’t know,” she said.

“You mean, that my parents got emotional at the wedding? That my grandfather played with me?” My voice was rising. I took a breath. I had every right to say what I was saying.

“You don’t seem to want to do the housework. My son—”

“That’s not Judaism. That’s feminism,” I cut her off.

“Nell, I’m sorry. I get mixed up.” She put her hands at the edge of the table. “I’ve been so nervous around you. I don’t know, I wanted to be a good mother-in-law to you, the way Camille was to me. I guess I botched everything up, especially my marriage.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “No, you didn’t! He was a terrible husband. He slept around.”

“Oh, you know? I guess Gauguin told you?” She looked at me beseechingly. She wore a thick layer of face powder, and I noticed how some of it had congealed in the lines at either side of her mouth.

“Yes.” I hesitated. “He mentioned it.” I could see she was starving for affirmation. “You were very strong to leave.”

“You know, women of my day stayed married no matter what.”

“Times are changing.” I nodded my head. “Maybe now you can understand why I don’t want to do all the housework. I’m not a maid.”

“It’s so hard, Nell. When I see him with another woman—” She looked down.

“Who? Gauguin?”

“No, Rip.” She gave a little laugh of recognition. “Well, maybe Gauguin, too. I’ve been awful, haven’t I?” She reached her hand across the table and laid it on mine. “Please forgive me? All I know is the kind of marriage where the wife cooks and cleans and the husband is the boss.”

Hearing that last word I cringed. “Do you understand it’s different now?”

Just then, the waiter brought over the check.

“Please, let me get it.” Alice grabbed it off the tray.

I had barely touched my soup.

As we walked out, Alice took my arm. “Please, Nell, give me another chance.”

I remembered last Friday night and my walk in the rain down Ashland. Alice still didn’t have a clue who I was, but she was Gauguin’s mother and she was trying now.

“Okay,” I said, “but on one condition.”

“Of course,” Alice replied. “What is it?”

“Please don’t thank God for Hitler.”

“S
O WHAT DO
you do all day?” my mother asked.

“Mom, I found a job, but it doesn’t start for three weeks,” I replied, the telephone receiver cupped between my ear and left shoulder. I was standing in front of my eleventh pear painting. This one was of a corner of the ceiling in the living room, and I had the pears suspended in a hanging planter.

“Nell, what kind of teaching job starts at the beginning of November?”

“This one,” I said impatiently. It had been hard to land a job in Minneapolis. Finally, federal funds had come through for a remedial reading teacher in a junior high school.

“Do you see Alice and Rip—what kind of name is Rip, anyway? Do you see them often? Oh, how I wish you lived in Brooklyn. Am chance of you moving here?”

“Mom, you ask me that every time I talk to you.” I reached for lemon yellow with my paintbrush.

“Well, is there a chance?” she tried again.

“No,” I said emphatically.

“You should have Gauguin’s parents over every Friday night for dinner,” she insisted.

“Mom, they’re divorced, get it? They aren’t a couple anymore. Besides, they don’t want to come over so much. And they’re not Jews. Friday is Shabbos.”

“Why don’t they want to come over?” she asked suspiciously. “Aren’t you keeping a clean house?”

“Ma, please, I have to go. Send my love to Dad, Grandma, and Riteey. Okay?”

We hung up.

I cleaned my brushes and ambled down to the bus stop. It would take two to get out to the Jewish Community Center, but I didn’t care. I liked taking city buses; they made me feel ecological.

I had joined the health club at the JCC a month ago and was on an intramural volleyball team. It was comforting to be around other Jews, even if they were Midwestern Jews. Of course, I didn’t tell my mother that I had joined the club. It would please her too much.

In late afternoon, when the bus let me off on the corner, I could see Marian, our upstairs neighbor, sitting on the stoop. I waved, and when I got to our place, I sat down next to her.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Matthew’s not coming home tonight till late. I don’t have to make dinner.” She smiled, pleased.

“Hey, want to walk over to the Riverside Café for an early dinner?” I ventured. “Gauguin won’t be home till seven.” I was proud that I knew some places now in the city.

“You know, this is where Gauguin asked me to marry him,” I explained after we sat down, our plates piled high with cheese enchiladas. I took a forkful. “This isn’t bad. Almost as good as New Mexico.”

“What’s it like there? I’ve never been. My family liked to stay close to home. They played it safe.” She took a swig of water.

“My family hardly left Brooklyn,” I told her. “I discovered New Mexico later on my own.”

“You seem different from other people here.”

“How so?” I asked her.

“You know, looser. We’re all kind of conservative. No one from my family ever left Minnesota.”

“You’re kidding.” I took a bite of salad. “Not me. Once I hit New Mexico, I knew I was home.”

“How come you’re not there now?” she asked.

“I dunno.” I looked down at my plate and stabbed at my food. I didn’t want to talk about this. “I left, that’s all.” What a dumb answer, I thought to myself.

I glanced up at Marian. She looked down. I didn’t want to be unfriendly. I just didn’t want to tell her about who I used to be. I wasn’t sure Marian would understand my past life.

“Hey, look at those dog paintings.” My mouth was full of cornbread. “There, on the brick wall.”

Marian turned her head around. “Oh, they have monthly shows here, I think.”

“They do, huh? For anybody?” I asked.

“I dunno. You could ask,” she said.

“Just a minute.” I got up and walked over to the cashier. “How do you get to show here?”

She didn’t know what I was talking about. “On the wall”—I pointed—“the pictures?”

“Oh, that. Ask Margaret, the manager. She’s behind, in the kitchen. I saw her a minute ago.” She turned her head and yelled, “Hey, Margaret, someone here wants to talk with you.”

A minute later, a blond woman about my age appeared. “Can I help you?

“I’m a painter”—as I spoke those words for the first time, my blood raced through me—“and I’d like to have a show here.”

“We have an opening in February. You frame it, you hang it, if you sell anything, you keep the money,” she told me.

“For the whole month?” I asked. She nodded.

“Can I just mat them?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said.

“Okay, sign me up.”

I floated back to the table. “I’m having a show here in February. It’s my first.” I was stunned how quickly it had happened.

“That’s great,” said Marian. “Let’s toast.” She held up her water glass. “To Nell’s one-woman show, the first of many.” We clicked glasses.

“I’ve got to get working.” I looked at the walls of the café, figuring out how many paintings it would take. “Twenty. I need to have twenty ready. I’ve got about eight that I like well enough so far.” My mind was buzzing. “And I probably should type up a personal statement.” I paused. “I should sell them cheap since it’s my first.” I looked around. There was a very scruffy clientele, mostly university students. “Otherwise, no one could afford them.”

Marian looked around. “Do you think these people buy art?”

“Probably not, but I’ll only charge fifty dollars a painting, just in case.” I popped a cherry tomato into my mouth.

B
Y THE SECOND WEEK
in December, the weather hit a constant twenty-five below. Gauguin didn’t have to leave for work until later, and it was agony to leave the heat of his sleeping body as I crawled out of bed in the dark. I had to be at school by eight o’clock, and I gave myself at least a half-hour to drive there, especially since there might be ice. When the cold hit my face as I went out to the car each morning, I was thoroughly stunned. I couldn’t get used to it. Never had I experienced weather like this.

The flu was going around the school and had a strong hold by the middle of December. When I walked into class on the Wednesday before Christmas, not only were the students absent, but Jean, my aide, was too. I usually taught five or six kids at a time, but today only Maurice, an eighth grader, showed up for the fourth-period class. He was chunky and had the sleeves of his gray sweater pushed up to the elbows.

“Hey, it’s only you and me.” He looked around and smiled.

“Yes. Why don’t we read a story aloud?” I said enthusiastically, showing him that I thought reading was a treat. Elm Street Junior High was in the northeast section of Minneapolis. Locals called the place Nordeast, and it was like a separate country of Norwegian immigrants. Black kids were bused in from the yellow cinderblock tenements on the other side of town.

“You’ll sit next to me?” he asked. “And help me with words I don’t know? You know, there might be a few I don’t know.”

“Fine. You pick out a story.” I watched him go over to the rack of books that were easy reading and high interest. He selected a thin volume, then came and sat beside me at a long wooden table.

The third floor of the school hadn’t been used in five years, but when I arrived to teach in this special program, they’d put me there. It was the only classroom used on that floor, and the janitor, a bulky man in green trousers with a hundred keys hanging from a ring on his belt, quickly informed me, “The third-floor ladies’ room isn’t in our contract. We don’t clean it. You have to use the one on the second floor.” And he pointed to the stairwell.

The cover of the book Maurice had selected had a photo of a group of boys his age standing around a motorcycle. “I’d like to get me a motorcycle. My mama says I can when I’m fifteen and if I lose weight. A doctor put me on a diet. Mama boils my meat so all the fat goes in the water.”

“You look thinner, Maurice. I was going to ask you if you were on a diet,” I said.

“Yeah, for three weeks now. I eat boiled potatoes and no eggs and no cookies, no ice cream, no butter, no french fries, no malts, no Milk Duds, no Jujubes, no cake or pie or Oreo cookies or Twinkies.” His eyes grew large as he counted the different foods off on his fingers.

“Hmmm, why don’t we open the book and start reading? First the title.” With Maurice, it was easy to get off the subject. I liked teaching reading, especially with such small groups. I got to know kids individually, which was unusual in a public school.

“ ‘The Boy Who Wanted a Bike.’ ”
He pointed to each word with his index finger as he read it. He turned to me. “They don’t mean a bike you pedal. They mean a motor bike.”

“You’re probably right. Can you tell me who the book is dedicated to?”

“This book is dedicated to the one I love,” he sang, and laughed.

I smiled. “Do you know what
dedicated
is?”

“Yeah, you’re dedicated to someone. My sister’s thirteen. She lost her last baby, so this time my mom is taking real good care of her. My mom’s dedicated to her. She makes her lie down a lot and not work, and my mom cooks for her.”

“She’s thirteen and she’s having a baby?” I asked. Now I was off the subject.

“Yeah, her boyfriend is seventeen. He leaves every morning to go home to his mama’s and work out. He’s got barbells over there.”

“Does he work?” I asked.

“No, he stays with my sister,” Maurice explained to me.

“Does your mom work?” I was caught.

“No, she’s taking care of my sister.”

“Here, let’s start reading.” I pressed the book open to page one.

“Why don’t you read it to me?” Maurice suggested.

“I’ll tell you what—you read one paragraph, and I’ll read the next,” I said.

“Let’s see how long this chapter is.” He counted four pages and shook his head. “I don’t know if we can finish it by the bell.”

“Let’s try. At this rate we haven’t read one word.” I pointed to the book.

“ ‘Joe was standing on the street when a boy went by on a motorcycle...’ ” Maurice read the first paragraph. He stumbled over two words. One was
alley.
I told him the word. I didn’t make him sound it out. I did not want to explain that
all
in
alley
didn’t sound like the word
all.
The other word was
mechanic.
When he finished the paragraph, he smiled and pushed the book toward me. “It’s your turn.”

I read my paragraph slowly, giving Maurice a chance to rest after his turn. When I finished, I looked at him. He was staring out the window.

He had a sweet round face. “What’s it like in those houses? And what’s those little houses?” he asked.

“You mean the garages?” I asked.

“Those are garages? For cars?” He digested the information.

“Yes,” I answered.

“I always look out the window of the bus at the streets. There’s so much space here.”

“You’ve never walked down those streets?” I asked him.

“No, I only see them from the classroom and from the bus,” he said.

“When it gets warm out, we’ll take a walk. Now let’s see if we can keep reading until the bell rings.”

The bell rang. Maurice stood up. “I gotta go. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He waved as he walked out the door. We had only gotten through two paragraphs.

After lunch I had a prep period and then one more class to teach. I looked at the school absentee list for the day. Only Randall wasn’t absent from seventh period, and if I knew Randall, by seventh period he would have skipped out. It began to snow again. I watched the flakes fall on the frozen rooftops. As I looked out the window, I wondered where Gauguin was eating lunch in downtown Minneapolis.

I locked my classroom door and went down to the teachers’ lounge on the first floor. The lounge was painted a pale yellow, and the only daily newspaper was being read by the French teacher. I went over to the Coke machine and dropped a quarter and a dime in the coin slot. The PE teacher, the hall monitor, the math teacher, and the science teacher were all sitting around a small table in the corner playing poker. Smoke curled from two cigarettes in a red plastic ashtray at the gym teacher’s elbow. They were playing for money and she was winning. They didn’t worry that the principal might walk in.