Goodbye Without Leaving (19 page)

“She's not wrong,” I said. “Don't say I went to the movies, okay?”

“I'll tell them you vanished into the night mist.”

“I don't hate
you
,” I said.

“Gertrude adores and fears you. She worries about you,” Johnny said. “Give her a break.”

“She can go to hell,” I said. I threw the twenty on the floor. “So long, sucker.”

44

I had absolutely nowhere to go, a humiliating thought. Here I was, the mother of a child, and I had nothing. What would I do with myself? I did not want to go and see Mary. I was not fit company for anyone. Perhaps I would do what I generally did when depressed: buy an expensive fashion magazine and drink a cappuccino.

I ambled over to the magazine store. It had begun to drizzle a fine, late-spring rain. I had stormed out of the house with only a light coat and I was cold.

There, browsing over a glossy Italian magazine was none other than Ann Potts, wearing a man's hat and a trench coat.

“Oh, hi there!” she said. “What are you doing here? I thought your parents were coming for dinner.”

“I'm running away from home,” I said.

“What a great idea!” said Ann. “It's too bad we have nowhere to go, because I am too. Winnie and Amos have formed this primitive tribe that finds women useless. I thought little boys were supposed to be in love with their mothers in this stage.”

“Franklin finds me moderately amusing, but fun dad is where the action is,” I said. “Let's go get drunk.”

Ann yawned. “I told Winnie I was going out for cigarettes but he'll never miss me. If I came home at six in the morning he would say, ‘Oh, I bet you ran into Geraldine and had a little chat.'”

We meandered into a glossy bar. Our neighborhood was slowly being upgraded. The seedy saloon that seemed to have only one customer, and smelled of cat pee, had been replaced by a sleek bistro with a long marble and brass bar in the front and a restaurant in the back.

“Are we dressed?” I said. I was wearing blue jeans and a turtleneck, and I realized I had no wallet. Ann and I rifled through our pockets and created a pile of rumpled dollar bills and quarters in the middle of the little round table.

An extremely handsome waiter appeared. His hair shone in the soft light, and he appeared to be quite put out to have to wait on us.

“Can I get you ladies something?” he said, looking at us as if we were a mess on the floor.

“I'll have a beer,” Ann said.

“We have Palm Ale, Fisher from India, Watney's Red Barrel on tap, Silas Mountain Beer from Idaho, Cliff Davies Natural Lager from England, Anchor Steam, Meridia Ale, Palace, Guinness, Brown Ale, Foster's and Cabinet Home Brew.”

Ann considered this. “Don't you have any of that tasteless American beer?”

“I'm so sorry, we don't,” he said.

Ann narrowed her eyes. “Well, can you repeat what you just said?”

The waiter clamped his jaw. “I suggest Foster's. And you?” he said, turning to me.

“Do you have more than one kind of coffee?” I said.

“We have ten kinds of coffee,” he said.

“Do you have more than one kind of decaffeinated coffee?”

“Brown roast, French roast and Swiss process Vienna roast,” said the waiter.

“I'll have that,” I said. “Do you have more than one kind of hot milk?”

“Plain or steamed.”

“Steamed,” I said. “No, plain.”

“Steamed,” said the waiter. “Thank you.”

The beer came in a frosted glass, the coffee in an oversized cup. “Gee, I hope we don't have to call the boys to send a runner over with some money,” Ann said. “Let's see. We have nine dollars and fifty-seven cents.”

“That ought to cover it,” I said. “If we don't leave a tip.”

“If we don't leave a tip, that guy will come out and spank us.”

We stretched our legs and watched a group of well-dressed people walk past us on the way to their tables.

“I guess they all have baby-sitters,” Ann said, staring at them. “How did we come to this? I mean, motherhood.”

“Oh, in the usual way,” I said, filching one of her cigarettes. “Unless you and Winnie did something weird.”

“It's like a costume party,” Ann said. “You put on some silly dress and you get married. Then you put on an even sillier dress when you're pregnant. You find yourself wearing the same thing day after day and you're a mother.”

“I often wonder about my own mother,” I said. “I remember her closet. Blue tissue paper. Ostrich shoes. Little shoe trees made of some kind of stuffed fabric. Those things you hang on hangers that make your closet smell good. Lingerie bags.”

“Life was different then,” Ann said. “We missed out on the silver tea services and the frilly aprons. I remember my mother sitting with us when we played with clay and she was wearing a
dress
.”

“My mother cooked with a white pinafore over her suit,” I said. “I guess we don't make it as real adults. For instance, do you remember your mother coming back from the hairdresser?”

Ann blew a smoke ring. “I haven't been to the hairdresser since I had that green streak put in.”

“How I loved your green streak,” I said. “I've been so hoping you'd put in another.”

At the exact moment our glass and cup were empty, the waiter reappeared.

“Is there anything else I could possibly get you?” he said.

“You could get us a different waiter, but we'd be happy to have the check,” Ann said.

Out on the street she said, “Well, we'll never be welcome in there again.”

“Oh, to hell with them,” I said. “They're open for lunch. We'll take the boys. That'll show 'em.”

We ambled around the neighborhood. Our usual haunts were closed. The park lay quiet and still. In the dark the jungle gym looked like the bones of a prehistoric creature. The C&P Cafe was closed and the gates were locked over the windows. The evening dog walkers were out, wandering down the street with the abstracted look that seems to go with dog walking. The air was misty and still and there were haloes on the streetlights.

“It's so mournful here at night,” I said. “I guess it's time to go home, or perhaps you'd like to invite me in for a sleep-over.”

“Swell,” Ann said. “I'll send Winnie over to Johnny. Gosh, look at us. Renegade matrons on the loose.”

We walked around the corner. The street spread before us, house after house full of yellow light. Carefully parked cars. Carefully planted front gardens. Fuzzy buds on the trees.

“I used to live in a loft in Chinatown,” Ann said, yawning. “Can you imagine?”

“And I spent my youth in a tour bus,” I said. “And now look.”

Johnny was waiting for me outside on the stoop.

“I gave your mother a lecture,” he said. “She apologizes. I told her she should be proud to have such an upstanding daughter with such intact values. I told her you find compromise intolerable and because of that Little Franklin will grow up to be another Abraham Lincoln.”

“My hero,” I said.

“It's easy for me,” he said. “She's not
my
mother.”

As we went up the stairs I felt a warm surge of optimism. I would call the Hansonia Society. They would hire me because of my intact values. Little Franklin would grow up to be another Abraham Lincoln. I would find my place in life. It seemed, for the moment, a total snap.

P
ART
F
OUR

Goodbye Without Leaving

45

The office of the Hansonia Society was a series of small, connecting rooms. I had called up and a man's voice said that they were in fact looking for someone to do part-time work and told me to come for an interview. I set off on a fine morning, a week after Franklin's school started.

The door to the office was frosted glass. Painted in gold letters, backed in black, was a list of names:

THE HANSONIA SOCIETY

HANSOPHIE RECORDS

BERNARD REGENSTEIN, AGENT AND EXECUTOR

THE KINDERVATER TRUST

VOGELWEIDE PUBLICATIONS

I opened the door. There, sitting at a calculator with a scowl on his face, was a person I took to be somewhat my senior. He was wearing an expensive cashmere sweater with a silk ascot, and he ran his fingers through disarranged, thinning hair.

“Yes?” he said without looking up.

“I came about the job,” I said. “I'm Geraldine Coleshares.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, still fixated on his calculator. “Can you type?”

“Oh, well enough,” I said airily.

The young man finally looked up.

“Well enough for
what
?” he said.

“Well enough for a graduate student, I guess I mean.”

“Are you a graduate student?”

“I'm a mother,” I said.

“Really? The mother of what?”

“I mean, I'm not a graduate student at the moment. I used to be one. I have a little boy who's three.”

“Do you also have any office skills?”

I had never asked myself this question and now I found I had to think about the answer.

“I was a researcher,” I said. “At the Race Music Foundation. The Reverend Willhall sent me to you.”

The man looked totally blank.

“Are you Bernard Regenstein?” I said.

“I am Bernard Regenstein, Junior.”

“Oh, I see,” I said. “Well, then I must have spoken to your father.”

“My father is in London.”

“But didn't I speak to him on the telephone?”

“You spoke to
me
. As far as I'm concerned, you've got the job.”

I stared at Bernard Regenstein, Jr., who, I began to see, was gazing intently at the front of my sweater.

“This is very confusing,” I said. “Aren't you supposed to tell me what this job is?” I had never had a job interview before but it seemed to me that this could not possibly be a normal one.

“We need someone to answer letters, answer the telephone and, in general, help out. This is a very small office. It's just me, my mother and my father.”

A loud series of barking coughs could be heard from an inner office.

“That's Dr. Frechtvogel,” Bernard junior said. “
He
doesn't really work here. He kind of sits here.”

“I see,” I said.

“What we really need is someone who doesn't have a lot of fixed ideas about how an office should be, because we get a lot of crazy types in here. My father also represents a lot of writers and illustrators. Mostly they're refugees and they sort of hang around. A lot of people would find that strange in an office.”

I said it sounded fine to me and that I had no fixed ideas whatsoever about offices. At that moment a very old man, of medium height and a shuffling gait, appeared. He wore an aged blue suit, a sweater vest, white shirt and skinny black tie. Stuck in the corner of his mouth was a little cigar which shed ashes down his front. His skin was as translucent as parchment, with the same sheen, but his hair was brown, and his immense eyebrows shot up from his little eyes, giving him the look of an astonished beaver.

“Who is this voman?” he said. He pronounced his
w's
as
v's
.

“Ludo, this is Geraldine Coleshares, who is going to work here.”

“How do you do?” he barked, extending his hand. His hand was pale and soft and had probably never done anything more strenuous than hold a pen or a cigar.

“This is Dr. Ludwig Frechtvogel,” Bernard junior said.

“Are you a doctor?” I asked.

“In Vienna everyone is a doctor,” said Dr. Frechtvogel. “I am a doctor of law. Are you capable of hard work?”

“I think I am,” I said.

“Yes, but what can you do? Anyone can work hard,” Dr. Frechtvogel said.

“I used to be a researcher,” I said. “I researched female blues singers of the twenties and thirties. I did archive work.”

Dr. Frechtvogel peered at me. A cloud of blue smoke hung between us. Never since my days on tour with Ruby had I seen anyone able to talk, yell and never once take the cigar out of his mouth. I had once stood in absolute wonderment when a blues belter named Bones O'Dell who opened for us did an entire set without removing his cheroot.

“And before?” demanded Dr. Frechtvogel. “These are the things Buddy has forgotten to ask you.”

“Are you Buddy?” I said to Bernard, Junior, who was clearly embarrassed.

“It's my family nickname,” he said.

“And before?” barked Dr. Frechtvogel. “What did you do before, or did you do nothing?”

“I was a backup singer for a rock and roll act called Ruby and Vernon Shakely,” I said, looking Dr. Frechtvogel straight in the eye. “I was a backup singer and dancer. I was a Shakette.”

“Very nice!” said Dr. Frechtvogel. “A Shakette. What is this?”

“It's not the sort of thing you might put on your résumé,” I said, although I had no résumé.

“This is not an office,” said Dr. Frechtvogel. “It is a lunatic asylum. You will see. Dancing experience may come in handy.”

“He likes you,” Buddy said. “You've got the job.”

“What about money?” I said. “What about your parents?”

“Oh, money,” said Buddy grandly. “Come over by the calculator and we'll work out what you want. As for my mother and father, they'll be happy to have someone here. Our last office person just quit.”

“A catastrophe,” said Dr. Frechtvogel. “A nice, steady young man.”

The telephone rang. “Answer it,” said Buddy. “Let's see how you do.”

“What do I say?” I asked.

“You figure it out,” said Buddy.

“Hansonia Society,” I said. “Good morning.”

A sweet, girlish voice asked for someone called Ludovic. I covered the receiver with my hand. “Is there someone called Ludovic?” I asked.