Girl in the Moonlight (16 page)

I
ZZY DIED. NO ONE TOLD ME. I READ ABOUT IT IN THE
TIMES
.
ISIDORE BAUM, PHILANTHROPIST, IS DEAD AT
90. The obituary described his life, primarily his business career and good works. It mentioned his three children by name. Of his grandchildren the only one singled out was Cosmo. “One of his grandsons is the musician Cosmo Bonet.” The funeral would be private. A memorial service would be held at a later date.

I sent a letter of condolence to Roger, but that was all I felt was appropriate. I assumed the whole family had returned for the funeral, but I could not bring myself to contact Cesca directly even if I knew how. Her life had once again closed to me. For all I knew she had ran off with someone else or even remarried. Even Aurelio had dropped away, making good on his promise to avoid America.

It was June. I was having my regular monthly dinner with my father in New York. He had recently remarried. His new wife, Patty, was younger than him and pretty. She was also a good cook
and a passionate entertainer, two attributes my mother lacked. I had never known him in better spirits.

My year to become a painter had become two and I was no closer than before to selling my work. I dreaded our dinners, knowing he would inevitably bring up my lack of success and my dire financial situation. There was a steak house on Third Avenue he had been going to for years. It had beige-jacketed waiters who all knew him and greeted him by name. “Service. That’s the most important thing in a restaurant,” he would tell me. “These days you can get good food in lots of places, but if they don’t know you they won’t take care of you the same way.” The maître d’ was a short Italian guy in a sharp suit. His name was Joe, and he always led us in to my father’s favorite table. I watched as my father thanked him with a neatly palmed twenty-dollar bill. My father no longer needed to look at a menu. They knew what he liked. Jack Daniel’s. The chopped salad. New York strip, rare. House fries. I had the same.

After grilling me about my life and finding my answers unsatisfactory as usual, he decided to move to other topics. Not that I blamed him. The subject of my life was depressing even to me at this point. I was stagnant, broke, even if I wasn’t willing to admit that to my father yet. I remembered listening to Esther and Paolo tell me about the camaraderie they had enjoyed with fellow artists in New York in the late forties and fifties. Many of these artists had, like them, escaped the threat of Nazism to find safety and a new place to work in New York. This motley group of Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, Romanians, Dutch, and even a few Americans had been at the forefront of an artistic revolution. Yet they were all friends. They all socialized with one another, critiqued each other’s works, had affairs with each other’s husbands and wives.

There was none of that around now. At least not that I saw.
Artists were more competitive, more secretive. As Esther said, “Artists these days don’t care anymore about creating art. Art has become a commodity, like pig bellies or steel. Something to be bought and sold. They just want to make money,” pronouncing the last word “mo-nee.”

“By the way,” my father said as the steaks arrived. “Izzy Baum died a few months ago.”

“Yes, I know. I saw the obituary.”

He looked philosophical for a moment. “He was quite a guy. I owe a lot to him.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” he said, waving his hand as though it were possible to brush mortality away like a gnat. “Izzy had a full life. It’s just hard to believe how fast it all goes. It seems like only last week that I met him for the first time. And now he’s dead. Makes you think.”

I nodded my head. I was too young and self-absorbed to give much thought to death. In those days, life seemed to stretch out forever, and I was just beginning my journey.

“Anyway, the reason I brought up Izzy is that his memorial’s this weekend,” he said. “In Amagansett.”

“Are you going?”

“Of course.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“A few years ago. He was already looking old and feeble. He’d had a stroke. I went over to the house once, and he was in a wheelchair. The left side of his face was paralyzed, so it was a little hard to understand him, but he was mentally all there. He knew who I was. Asked about business. Told me he was proud of how I had turned out.” He stopped chewing.

“What about Roger? When did you see him last?”

My father nodded his head and resumed eating. “About the same time. I haven’t really had much to talk about with Roger
lately, you know. He’ll call me up every now and then and try to pitch me some crazy idea. He had one about making paper out of garbage. There were some people he had met. They had invented the process. All they needed was some start-up money. So I met them. They came to the house one day. They had brought along prototypes. Not only would it find a use for the billions of tons of garbage produced every year but also think of the trees that would be spared. A win-win for everyone. The only problem was that the prototypes smelled like shit. We can fix that, they said. That’s what we need the money for.” My father laughed and shook his head.

“So what happened?”

“I told them if they could find someone to invest in their shit paper, I wished them luck. Roger said I was being too harsh. I didn’t get the big picture. Some crap like that. That was the last time I talked to him. I told him to quit wasting my time. Roger was always kind of a schmuck when it came to business. He was a real disappointment to Izzy.”

I let his last comment hang in the air. It was obvious he felt the same way about me. There was nothing I could say.

“Anyway, do you want to come with Patty and me to Izzy’s memorial? It’s this Saturday. You knew the family, right? As I recall you and Kitty’s oldest boy were friends. What was his name again?”

“Aurelio.”

“Aurelio. Right. It will be at the compound. Why don’t you come out on Friday, and we’ll go over.”

Several days later, at a quarter to two in the afternoon, I was driving behind my father onto the Baum compound. There were scores of other cars on the grass. It reminded me of Izzy’s eightieth birthday. That had been ten years ago. I handed my keys to a valet, and followed my father and Patty to where another man, this one in a gray suit, was handing out programs and showing us where to go.

It was a lovely June day. There was a large open tent on the lawn shading rows of folding chairs facing the water, most of which were already occupied. At one end of the tent was a lectern surrounded by a semicircle of more chairs that was flanked by flowers. To one side, on an easel, was a large, framed, black-and-white photograph of Izzy. On the other side was a black grand piano. Several photographers milled around the crowd. There was no sign yet of the family.

We found three seats together near the back. The noise of dozens of people talking filled the tent. Most of them were quite old. My father knew several of the guests and stood to shake hands and speak with them. He introduced Patty and sometimes me. I looked through the program. On the cover was the same photograph of Izzy that now stood on an easel at the front of the tent. Underneath was his full name, the date of his birth, and the date of his death. Inside, the left side contained the words to the Twenty-Third Psalm. The right side listed the names of the people who would be speaking. I saw Roger’s and Cosmo’s names. The rest were unknown to me.

The tent fell silent as the family walked in. Roger came first, in a dark suit with a serious expression on his face. Diana on his arm. Kitty and Randall came next, followed by Dot. Then Cesca, Aurelio, Cosmo, and finally Carmen. They were all soberly dressed, which contrasted sharply with the lush green of the lawn, the sparkling azure of the water, and the light blue of the sky.

They kept their gazes forward without looking at the crowd. After they had all taken their seats in the first row, a rabbi in a black suit with a shawl around his shoulders stood and intoned a prayer in Hebrew. Many of the mourners murmured along with the words, my father included. Then Roger rose and addressed the crowd. Like many of the other men under the tent, he was wearing a yarmulke. He thanked everyone for coming and then
explained that his mother was not able to attend. She was too weak, but she was grateful that so many people had loved Izzy. Roger then led the crowd in reciting the psalm.

When he finished, he removed several folded sheets of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket, put on his reading glasses, and proceeded to eulogize his father. He talked about how strong a man he was and how much he loved his family, and that they were everything to him. At several places Roger’s voice broke. When he sat down another man stood up. He was elderly and stout with a heavy accent. He had been Izzy’s business partner for many years and spoke of his acumen and told a few funny stories that lightened the mood of the crowd. The other speakers included men who remembered Izzy’s philanthropic work, his support of education and his contributions to the arts.

The last to stand up was Cosmo. But instead of going to the lectern, he went to the piano. “This was a favorite of Gog’s,” he said and then started to play. It was beautiful. The mourners were rapt. He played like an angel. When he finished, he stood up and without bowing returned to his seat. Roger then returned to the lectern and thanked everyone else again for coming and invited anyone who wished to join them for some refreshments inside.

There were more than one hundred guests, many of them elderly, so it took them a long time to file into the house. I hung back, trying to look inconspicuous.

“I thought I saw you here.”

I turned around. It was Lio.

We embraced. He looked very well. Clean-shaven. Dressed in a dark suit.

“I’m sorry about your grandfather.”

“Thank you. I loved him very much.”

“How is everyone else?”

“They’re all right. We’ve all had time to let it sink in. He had been ill for a while. Some are more upset than others. Cesca’s been taking it particularly badly.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. She always felt very close to Gog. Might have something to do with being eldest grandchild.”

We talked for a little about his work, and he asked about mine. He seemed excited about what he had been doing and promised to show it to me. I wished I could have been as enthusiastic. In recent weeks I had come to feel as though I lacked the talent or the vision or the drive or whatever it was that was required to be a successful artist. I would stare with grim dissatisfaction at my canvases. I had all but stopped working, walking guiltily past my easel on the way in or out of my small apartment, staring into space, drinking too much, and generally feeling depressed. When I did work, it was often only to scrape away and repaint something I had already done.

I wanted to share how I was feeling with Aurelio. He of all people would understand and could lend a sympathetic ear. Maybe even provide some useful advice. But I was hesitant to tell even him. To do so would have been an admission of my inadequacy. To doubt was to admit that I wasn’t up to it, like a seminarian questioning transubstantiation.

“And you, Wylie? How is your work?”

“It’s going well,” I lied. “Will you be in New York at all? Maybe you could come by? It would mean a lot to me to have you critique them.”

It had been months since I had shown my work to anyone. I was working alone, virtually living alone. Most of my friends had entry-level jobs at banks or were going to graduate school. We were on different schedules. The young bankers worked late hours, and when they went out, they usually opted for expensive
nightclubs like the Palladium. I rarely joined them because I was always short of funds.

“I might be in next week if I have time before I return to Barcelona.”

“When are you going back?”

“Wednesday.” Today was Saturday. “I’ll let you know. Come on in,” he said. “If I don’t start mingling with the guests, Mare will be furious.”

He led me inside the house. I saw Cesca across the room. She was talking to some guests. She looked tired. Her hair was pulled back and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. I wanted to say something to her but didn’t want to intrude.

Instead I bumped into Cosmo.

“Sorry about your grandfather,” I said.

“Thank you,” he responded, not even taking the time to talk to me and pushing ahead through the crowd until someone he actually wanted to speak with detained him.

Standing there alone, I scanned the room. It was packed, the guests spilling out into other rooms. Some children were playing on the lawn. I spotted my father and Patty as they chatted with another couple in a corner. I also saw Roger and his new wife shaking hands solemnly. Kitty. Carmen.

“Hello, Wylie,” said a voice behind me. I turned and recognized Gianni, Paolo and Esther’s son. He was as handsome as his father but in a softer way, and taller, though not as tall as me. He was about twenty years my senior. It was said that when he was a student at Harvard he dated Edie Sedgwick. Now he was a professor at a small college in New England. I had recently heard that his marriage had broken up.

“Are your parents here?” I asked.

“No, my father wasn’t feeling well so Oma stayed to take care of him,” he answered, using the nickname the family called Esther.

“Nothing serious, I hope.”

“His back has been bothering him lately.”

I felt guilty about not having seen them for a while.

“Would it be all right if I visited them?”

“I’m sure they’d love to see you. Just call ahead of time. Oma will let you know if it’s okay.”

At this point Cesca walked up to us and slipped her arm around Gianni’s waist.

“Hello, Wylie,” she said.

It was done so naturally it took me a second to realize what had just happened, and then it became obvious. “Hello,” I replied.

“I forgot you two knew each other,” she said, giving Gianni a kiss on the cheek.

“I’m sorry about your grandfather.”

“Thank you. It’s been rough. Poor Bushka. She’s taking it all very hard.”