The Art Student's War (31 page)

“I’ll make the tea. You’re not feeling well.”

“No, I want to. Please, just sit …”

So Bea sat and, though naturally uneasy about being waited upon by Mrs. Olsson, offered a few family anecdotes, many of which Mrs. Olsson had heard before. Mrs. Olsson greeted every detail as something new, however. Under her solicitous gaze, Bea rapidly turned to the subject of Uncle Dennis and Aunt Grace and their upcoming move. Bea chatted away, though uncertain whether Mrs. Olsson was listening out of genuine interest or merely showing the polite fatigue of somebody feeling not quite like herself.

“And so last week they put their house up for sale and do you know what? Why, they’ve already sold it!”

“I’m not surprised. Given the housing shortage. The whole city’s gone barking mad.” Mrs. Olsson set two cups of tea and a plate of biscuits on the table. “Mr. Olsson suggested we take in a boarder. As a patriotic duty. I said, Fine, he can have my place, Charley, because the day he moves in I’m moving out. As if
we’re
not doing enough, putting every cent into war bonds and Charley running every wartime committee in the city.”

The next thing Mrs. Olsson did was quite surprising. Although she hardly sought to conceal her drinking, she usually carried it out with an air of refinement. Now, though, she opened a cupboard and removed a brown pint bottle of whiskey, which she placed squarely on the kitchen table. “I have to nurse my throat,” she said.

“Yes,” Bea said.

Mrs. Olsson poured whiskey into her tea—not a lot, but not such a little, either. “Honey, would you like a little splash?” she said.

“No thank you,” Bea said.

“It seems you love your aunt and uncle a lot, Bianca,” Mrs. Olsson said.

“Well of course I do. I mean they’re both so wonderful. Uncle Dennis is so brilliant and kind, and also eccentric—he’s obsessed with science-fiction stories. He truly believes we’re all going to fly to the moon someday. Honestly.”

“Everybody’s got a nutty uncle, Bea.”

Bea flinched. Though having described her uncle as eccentric, Bea recoiled at
nutty
. She went on: “And Aunt Grace is so kind, too, and gracious just like her name, and so beautiful, though of course, I mean not…”

Bea couldn’t quite propel herself to say
not so beautiful as you
. She knew no suitable way to compliment the only woman she’d ever personally known who might reasonably be cast in a movie alongside Gary Cooper or Tyrone Power … Nonetheless, if it
were
possible to utter such words, it surely ought to be possible on a night when Mrs. Charles Olsson sat sipping whiskey tea in a dark kitchen, looking disheveled and puffy-eyed.

Mrs. Olsson heard the unspoken compliment. Graciously praising somebody whose graciousness had just been praised, she said, “I can certainly believe she’s beautiful. Perhaps you look a little like her?”

“Oh not really.”

“You know what? I sometimes think you look a little like me. Tall. Dark hair, dark eyes. Maybe that’s why you’re Ronny’s type.”

“Oh well … I hardly … I mean
you—”
All the blood in Bea’s body was clamoring to her face. “Well, that’s very kind.”

“Kind? Listen to you! You’re making me sound conceited.”

“I didn’t mean …”

Bea felt thoroughly outmaneuvered. There were occasional moments when Mrs. Olsson seemed not merely a bold and outrageous but also quite a crafty woman. For somebody who, by her own cheerful admission, had never finished high school, and who apparently thought
reticent
was the same as
reluctant
, and
representative
the same as
representational
, Mrs. Olsson sometimes seemed a not implausible mother for her scholarly, epigram-coining, fine-distinction-loving son.

“Speaking of family,” Mrs. Olsson said, “you know I’m worried about Charley. Does that seem incredible to you—that I’d be worrying about Charley?”

“Of course not.”

“Well I do worry. And last week I found blood in his handkerchief. That sounds like consumption, but it’s not. It’s his ulcer. He drives himself to it.”

“Well, he’s very driven.” Bea reached out and took two biscuits. Suddenly, she was feeling almost shaky with hunger. Hadn’t she been invited for dinner?

“That’s one of the qualities that drew me to him: his exceptional drive. But now I sometimes have to ask: is that such a good idea? Why was I so drawn to that?”

“Isn’t it only natural for a woman to be?”

“Bianca, would you say Ronny is driven?”

“Of course,” Bea replied. “I mean”—all at once, Mrs. Olsson was watching her
very
closely—“not to a worrisome degree. But yes. Driven as an artist I mean.”

“And you do think he’s a talented artist?”

“Without question. Oh, he was the best in our class! I mean, he was the best at capturing a thing’s likeness. I do wish he’d take more classes …”

“I’ve
always thought he was talented,” Mrs. Olsson declared. “But Charley says, You want a likeness, a camera’s far more lifelike. He’s not at all sure art like that has a future.”

“Oh but it does!” Bea cried, feeling that here at least she could provide Mrs. Olsson with the reassurances the woman seemed to crave tonight. “He’s got quite a future. And art does, too,” she added.

In the pause that followed, she couldn’t resist: she reached out and filched another biscuit.

“Why, you haven’t had dinner!” Mrs. Olsson cried. “Agnes just now—she was trying to tell me something, wasn’t she? That I ought to see my guest is properly fed! Bianca my dear, you’ll have to excuse me: truly I’m not feeling well.”

“Oh I’m perfectly—”

“I’ll make you some eggs. Would you permit me to make you some eggs?”

“Good grief, there’s no need to—”

“Eggs. I’ll make us both some
eggs
. And you must promise to sit
right there …
”

You might well suppose Mrs. Olsson would be the sort of woman who wouldn’t know how to boil water, but as she slid to and fro in her jade-colored robe, it quickly became apparent she was adept in a kitchen. She diced, beat, stirred, and in just a few minutes a tasteful
plate was set before Bea: a mound of cottage cheese, toast (sliced on the diagonal), some apple wedges, and half an omelet.

The golden omelet, which enfolded cheddar cheese and finely cut ham and browned onions, turned out to be quite wonderful.

“I can’t believe I’m letting a sick woman wait on me. What must you think?”

“Oh but it was good of
you
to drop everything and race over … You rescued me when I felt orphaned. You know where I was supposed to be tonight? Another charity ‘do.’ I swear it’s
every night
. You do understand, there’s no man in the whole city sitting on more of these war committees than Charley.”

“His name is often in the paper.”

“He’s running one of the biggest drugstore chains in the Midwest, and he’s also running half the war committees in Detroit, and where does that leave Ronny?”

The question came out on a high-pitched note—almost as though Bea were being accused of something. “It’s damn difficult, isn’t it,” Mrs. Olsson went on. “Of course, Charley could put him on any number of committees, but Ronny doesn’t want that. You know Ronny
is
a block captain.”

“Yes.”

“And he does far more than he lets on.”

“Yes?”

“But it never stops, does it. Tonight’s ‘do’? They’re raising funds for displaced Belgians—or maybe Spaniards? Do I sound cruel?” And though
cruel
wasn’t a word Bea would employ, there was a hard unreachable glint to Mrs. Olsson’s gaze. “Oh I believe in charity. Did you know I have money in my own name? It’s one of the conditions I insisted upon when I married Charley, and I recommend you do the same. He signed over certain properties. And now I drive him crazy by giving away ten percent of the income. To charities. To orphanages. Charley says my philanthropy is disorganized, and I say, Christ, Charley, do you think
Christ
was an organized philanthropist? Do you suppose he kept records of what he gave—ten bucks to the leper, five bucks to the blind woman? I wouldn’t help an able-bodied man out of a ditch, my dear, but I’ll contribute to the Negro Children’s Betterment Fund.” And while it was easy to overlook, since it didn’t emerge all that frequently, there was this facet, too, to Mrs. Olsson’s riddling personality: she could be a woman of moralizing fervor.

“No, it’s not the charity I mind, it’s that whole damned world where
Charley feels you always have to be climbing another rung. I don’t think I’m criticizing myself when I say, Maybe Charley married the wrong woman.”

It was too painful a remark to let stand. Bea protested, “Oh but honestly, how could Mr. Olsson have done better?”

“And aren’t you the sweetest girl!”

Mrs. Olsson then added—sadly?—“Sometimes maybe almost too sweet?”

“Too sweet for what?”

This was a train of conversation Bea longed to pursue, but Mrs. Olsson had her own ideas. She went on: “And I’m worried about Ronny. Do you think he can ever be happy in this line—this art business?”

“Well I think so. I mean happy sometimes. What I mean is, I don’t think he could possibly be happy doing anything else. Do you?”

“Does Ronny seem happy to you?”

“Well he’d be the first to admit it, he can be moody.”

“Moody—yes. My son has always been moody. Show me a truly intelligent person who isn’t. But overall—do you think you can make him happy?”

“Me? I don’t claim—”

“But you’re happy with him?”

“I’m not sure when you say
with him
what you’re—”

Again, Mrs. Olsson didn’t allow her to complete a sentence. “I’m not going to ask whether you’re in love with my son, Bianca. I’m not sure that asking you would be appropriate. But surely a mother might justifiably ask whether you understand what all’s going on inside his mind right now, studying art while so many boys are in the Army, and living with a father who races off to work and then, after coughing blood into a handkerchief, races off to a meeting attended by Max Fisher and Mayor Jeffries and Henry Ford himself. Surely a mother can ask how much you think you understand.”

Bea took her time in answering: “Well, I do think I understand some of the pressures Ronny’s feeling. It’s a strange time for anybody to be an art student, frankly, but it’s especially so for a boy, and yet maybe there’s such a thing as artist’s hunger, regardless of everything else, including whether you’re a boy or a girl? It’s as if your hand is hungry—and your hand has never heard of the War. It just wants to draw, to create things. And
that
—well I do think I understand
that
about Ronny.”

Mrs. Olsson’s attention had begun visibly wandering the instant Bea
opened up the topic of art. “No doubt about it,” she said vacantly. Then her look and her voice changed. She brought her palms together, in a slow clapping motion, and on this night when she’d introduced so many sides to herself, she came up with an affecting show of glowing maternal gratitude: “Bea, I think you understand my boy!”

Mrs. Olsson carried Bea’s plate, on which everything had been eaten, and her own, where the food had been mostly shifted about, over to the sink. “Of course a lot of people can’t understand him, can they? Can’t understand a boy whose heart is hungry in that way you so vividly describe? What about a boy whose heart wants to draw?”

“Hand, actually. What I said—”

“They want Ronny to be his father and he’s not his father.”

“That’s right.”

Mrs. Olsson returned to the kitchen table. “And people leap to conclusions, don’t they? In their ignorance. It’s the one kind of ignorance I can’t abide. You see what I’m saying. Being smart is
knowing
you’re smart. And being dumb is knowing you’re smart when you’re actually dumb. It’s different. That’s why I left Scarp, though you find it everywhere. You know what they said at Groton? Where they ought to know better? When we sent him off to a fancy boarding school? They didn’t understand Ronny at all, did they? Well: they insinuated that my boy is cur.”

Cur? For a moment, two moments, Bea hadn’t the faintest idea what Mrs. Olsson might be intimating. But this interval was succeeded by different, elongated moments, during which Bea’s insides turned all fluttery and queasy.

It was remarkable how many things happened instantaneously inside her. First, a wild, ghastly thought materialized: the strange term,
cur
, was meant to stand for a similar sound, all but unmentionable. Oh, Bea was
used
to having such thoughts—particularly at night, when crazed, unsupervised notions snuck into her brain and wouldn’t, just wouldn’t, depart. But not here, not in a place like the Olssons’ kitchen …

Then it grew apparent to Bea—and this was the strangest, strangest thing yet—that she wasn’t misinterpreting Mrs. Olsson at all. No, Mrs. Olsson’s thoughts were in the very same place as hers: their minds were meeting in the queerest spot imaginable. Mrs. Olsson said, “Obviously, the whole idea’s ridiculous. I mean, a mother
knows.”

While remaining seated at the kitchen table, she drew her spine erect, and her eyes flashed, and for the first time tonight she was
absolutely Mrs. Charles Olsson, that legendary figure whose beauty set the
Detroit News
society pages ashimmer. Mrs. Olsson’s hand fluttered at her ample bosom—a reflexive gesture at once magnificently self-possessed and coyly vulnerable. “My boy isn’t cur. A mother knows such things. And how does she know? How do I know my boy isn’t cur? Why, I can see it in the way he looks at me.”

CHAPTER XVIII

Perhaps the very worst aspect of the Poppletons’ painfully abrupt departure was its effect on Mamma. She watched without visible emotion as a huge moving van, the words “Turk’s Trucks” emblazoned in red letters on its side, carted the Poppletons’ lives away. (The moving van belonged to that strange, voluble man, Yusuf Caglayangil, whom Bea and Aunt Grace had met at Sanders—the one who claimed Uncle Dennis had saved his daughter’s life. Mr. Caglayangil and his daughter Melek—looking healthier, and broader, than ever—personally oversaw the truck’s departure, and the two of them, peripheral figures though they were, appeared far more bereft than Mamma.) Three days later, when a postcard from Aunt Grace arrived, Mamma was rosiness itself: “She says their house has two guest rooms—there’s room for all of us. And
guess what …
there’s an actual greenhouse in back!”