The Art Student's War (78 page)

“Big place,” Uncle Dennis said.

“Big enough for a batty old woman and a dozen cats,” Bianca said.

“Or a growing family,” Uncle Dennis suggested.

“I suppose.”

The two of them turned around, heading at last toward home. “And Edith,” Uncle Dennis resumed. “She seems well.”

“Very well. Getting into medical school cheered her up remarkably.”

“Now I had
nothing
to do with that.”

“I’m not saying you did.” Surely, Edith had needed no help in getting admitted. The lowest grade she’d ever received at Wayne was an A—. “But the
idea
of applying …”

“It was already in her head.”

“Actually, I do worry about her decision, though.”

Bianca felt a little guilty bringing up this topic. Tonight, Uncle Dennis so clearly yearned for reassuring news. But she’d been waiting such a long time to open her heart to him … “You know, she almost never dates. And now medical school? I worry Edith’s going to wind up an old maid.”

“Edith an old maid?” Evidently, this particular worry didn’t trouble Uncle Dennis. No, it tickled him. “What an idea!”

“But she says she’s going to become a doctor.”

“So what? She’ll be a married doctor,” Uncle Dennis said. “I don’t know if you’ve happened to notice, but when she takes her glasses off, your baby sister has grown into quite a beautiful young woman.”

“She never
does
take them off. And she won’t listen when I tell her they’re the world’s least flattering design.”

“She’s beautiful with them on, for that matter.”

Edith a beautiful young woman? She’d lost her baby fat, somewhere along the line, and grown taller. Though she hadn’t the slightest interest in clothes—as a shopper, Edith showed a positive
knack
for the unbecoming—there was no way fully to disguise that she’d developed quite a fine, shapely figure.

“Think about the boys at medical school,” Uncle Dennis said. “Now what’s going to happen when they see someone as pretty and brilliant and competent as that? They’ll be lining up six deep behind her. Not that—my guess is—she’ll be wholly unattached come fall.”

“Uncle Dennis, what on earth are you talking about?”

“Mm?” He pulled tranquilly on his pipe.

“What are you talking about?”

“Why, Ira Styne, of course.”

“Now you’re ribbing me! I don’t think I get the joke! What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Ira and Edith.”

“Ira? Ira Styne?”

Ira Styne? Ira Styne? The self-described “old soldier,” who had appeared on their doorstep one day in January? The gray-haired young man on a cane, talking so fast and so nervously that Bianca had hardly understood him?
Edith and Ira?
“You’re talking about them as some sort of twosome?”

Uncle Dennis paused dramatically. Again he drew on his pipe. He was about to deliver one of his pronouncements. “I’m talking about the fact, my dear girl, that Ira Styne is so mad for your little sister that he can hardly see straight when she enters a room. His heart palpitates. He gets short of breath and words die in his throat. He forgets what he was going to say. As a medical man, I’d hazard a guess the boy’s in love.”

“Uncle Dennis, you
can’t
be serious …”

“Couldn’t be more so.”

“But he must be thirty years old.”

“As a medical man, I’ve heard tell of men as old as forty falling in love …”

“But you
can’t
be serious.”

“For somebody with second sight, my dear, you sure missed a lot this time around.”

Bianca let the words sink in.
Was
it possible? Ira and Edith? Yes—she supposed—it was possible. And there was something else as well: an unexpected
delight
in realizing she’d been an utter fool.

But if it were possible … Well, the delicate truth of the matter (something she could never tell anybody) was that she’d harbored flattering suspicions that shy, blushing, stammering Ira Styne was susceptible to her own charms, pregnancy and all. And all this time he was dreaming of her sister?
Was
it possible she’d been such an utter fool? Yes, it was possible.

“Let me tell you another little story,” Uncle Dennis said. “Would you mind another story?”

“I’d love another story.”

It was the perfect place for a story. They were on Wellesley Drive, and these were some of the very largest, the most enchanting houses in the city. These were Papa’s mythical palaces.

“Once there was a young athletic Jewish boy who went off to fight people who were dead-set on exterminating his entire race. And he was gravely wounded—shrapnel in the leg—which meant he would never walk smoothly again, though he’d once been quite a runner. And shrapnel in his esophagus, which traumatized the vocal cords and rendered him mute for a couple of weeks. This very shy young man didn’t know whether he’d ever talk again.

“And he had some sort of mental breakdown and then he recovered, and after the war he went home and married his high school sweetheart, to whom he was devoted, and in time she left him for his best friend, and he had another catastrophic breakdown.

“And one day he happened to find himself in a distant city where a girl lived who once had written him amazingly precocious letters while he lay in a hospital, unable to walk and talk. The girl is unfinished business, and all these years later he decides to go thank her properly. Sure, he’d been shot in the leg, and in the throat, but that hardly justified not answering a little girl’s letters. He remembers the name of her street but not the house number, though the girl had told him it was a prime number, and so he does calculation after calculation, and the number he
thought he remembered is indeed a prime number. Of course he could have looked the family up in the phone book, but that wouldn’t have been the same, would it? No, that wouldn’t have been a signal from Heaven. This is a somewhat fragile young man, and he needs nothing less than a signal from Heaven. And then, after all sorts of agonized hesitations—for he’s very, very shy—he climbs up the front porch and rings the doorbell. And while he’s standing out there, she comes down the street, carrying a satchel full of books.”

“My goodness, how do you
know
all this?”

“Simple. Let’s just say it’s my story. I was that boy.”

“Uncle Dennis, what are you talking about?”

“It’s my story, sweetie. It’s only all the details that are different.”

“I think you’re trying to give
me
a nervous breakdown. Now you must tell me: what are you talking about?”

“Put it another way: one frog recognizes another frog a mile off.”

“Come on, please! Now you’re just torturing me. Even by your standards, you’re talking in riddles tonight …”

“I mean, I recognize all the symptoms. Do you remember the night at Chuck’s Chop House? Your aunt’s fortieth—”

“How could I forget?”

“And your mother revealed how your Aunt Grace came home after our first date and told your mother I looked like a frog?”

“Oh, Aunt Grace obviously didn’t mean—”

“But she obviously
did
. It’s all right, sweetie. Hey, it’s all right. On our very first date—you know how quick and intuitive Grace is—she saw how the land lay: I was a frog who’d found his princess. And Ira? Christ, honey, I recognize all the symptoms! I know what it’s like to feel that way. You can’t
believe
her, you can’t
breathe
near her. One amazing day, Ira beheld his princess, walking down the street with a satchel full of books: this pretty girl who happens to be kind and unselfish and so intelligent it’s positively scary.”

“But what about Edith?” Bianca said. “What about Edith?”

“What
about
Edith? What’s been Edith’s primary complaint about boys? They’re silly. Well, Ira couldn’t say ‘boo’ to a rabbit, maybe he’s someone who’s going to go through life bullied by bellhops and elevator operators, but heaven knows he isn’t silly. I think he’s going to wind up a history teacher.”

“Yes …” Yes, Edith herself had mentioned something of the sort. “But what about her feelings?”

“What
about
her feelings? If Edith commits to him, which I suspect she will, which I suspect she already has, she’ll never waver. She’s got the loyalest heart I’ve ever seen.”

Bianca stiffened—she wasn’t accustomed to hearing her uncle promote some other girl ahead of her. But in the end there was no arguing with this remark. Once Edith joined your team—once she’d agreed to supervise your family’s move, or to knit sweaters for your country’s soldiers—her commitment was absolute.

“But he’s a Jew,” Bianca pointed out.

“That’s right,” Uncle Dennis said contentedly. “He’s a Jew.”

“And how would Mamma like that?”

“She’ll like it just fine. We grow, honey. We grow as we go.

“The real question,” Uncle Dennis went on, “the question your father and I keep wondering, is, How many rooms is Ira going to renovate in that big house before he finds the courage to pop the question?”

“You’re telling me that
Papa
knows? Everybody knows but me?” And this, too, delighted her.

“Of
course
he knows. Your dad’s the father of two pretty girls. You don’t think he sees why Ira’s over every other night? You don’t think he notices when Edith’s darning one of Ira’s socks, or when Ira’s talking about putting up a wall or tearing down a wall, reflooring the basement, renovating the attic? Sweetie, Ira can’t stay away from Edith. And the question is, Is Ira going to build a solarium, or a bowling alley, or a tennis court, before he screws up his nerve?”

Bianca said, “I’m just—amazed.”

She was—and yet she wasn’t. For this was how momentous turns in Edith’s life typically unfolded. Some dumbfounding improbability would emerge—and very soon it took on an air of rightness and inevitability. Of
course
Edith was going to marry Ira. The nuptials were set back when Ira sent his earnest schoolgirl correspondent “five hundred pennies in convenient paper form,” and oh how his cleverness had enchanted the—actually—hopelessly romantic heart of our little coolly calculating Edith …

“So you’re saying Edith’s knight in shining armor is a cripple?”

“They’re the best kind. They’re stronger.”

“Another of your riddles?”

“Honey, look at the facts. Ira’s been to Hell and back. And it toughens you. He came back from Hell for Edith.”

“I suppose what you’re saying is obvious. Now it’s just so
obvious
.
But I didn’t know. I guess my thoughts were elsewhere. The things I didn’t know …” Bianca said.

“That’s okay. He didn’t know it either.”

Her pronouncement echoed pleasingly in her head, and she repeated it: “The things I didn’t know …”

But Uncle Dennis wasn’t through. He said, “You mentioned Ira’s making a profit on the house? What profit? No, no. He’s never going to sell. Because that’s the house he and Edith are going to live in, after they’re married. He’s building his princess her palace. Do you honestly suppose the upstairs library is intended for him?”

“Well I’ll be,” Bianca said.

She’d fantasized that she and Grant would buy Ira’s house once the renovations were complete. Now she needed to ponder a moment—reordering things, moving things. And as she walked along, it silently slipped away, her claim to the house in Palmer Woods whose renovations her father was overseeing.

The neighborhood was transfiguring itself, even as she walked through it.

And it was strange, but even here in Palmer Woods, the most magical neighborhood in the world’s most magical city, you could still hear the pulsed detonations of fireworks. Ever the patriot, Grant was planning to take the boys to the downtown parade on Saturday. It was dear Grant, after she’d removed it from the wall, who had insisted on restoring Henry’s portrait. And wouldn’t it be something if she had her baby on Memorial Day? It came now as a sharp intuition: her body had been waiting, all along, to deliver a Memorial Day baby …

“I’m sorry you can’t stay through till Sunday,” Bianca said. Uncle Dennis and Aunt Grace were planning to drive back to Cleveland on Saturday morning. His hospital beckoned. “We don’t see enough of you. And we never see Grace.”

“Well—we may be seeing more of you. It’s one of the things I wanted to discuss. Now please don’t say anything to anybody yet. Not even your father.”

“Yes …”

Bianca did not know where this chain of revelations was headed, but with every cell in her body—again, with her soul’s second sight—she grasped that this was news she’d been yearning for.

“As a medical man, I would have to say that your aunt’s long-term prognosis looks doubtful. But as I say, there’s always room for hope. And
I’m hopeful. I remain hopeful. Even so, Grace feels—your aunt feels that if we’re looking at the worst, well, she wants to do that at home.”

“You’re saying—”

“She wants to move back. Now not a word to anybody. But I’m telling you tonight, I’m telling you first, because I think maybe over the years it’s been hardest of all on you: you do get so emotional, Bia. But yes, we’re moving back to Detroit. Where Grace was born. We’re going to look at a few houses tomorrow.”

“Oh Uncle Dennis … Oh
Uncle Dennis …”

Bianca didn’t know the words—but she didn’t need the words, which would in time take their own shape, they were as voluminous as the child within her. There were so many questions to ask—to ask Uncle Dennis, to ask Aunt Grace. There was so much wonderful talk ahead, and, beyond all the talk, such wonderful prospects! And if it was the worst for Aunt Grace, well, Bianca would
be
there for her aunt, as her aunt had been there once for her.

Then the words spilled out of her. She said: “Does that mean it’s over? Could it really be over? Really? Really all over? It’s as if Mamma declared war, so long ago, and everything was torn apart, it never has been the same, and could it really all be over? I don’t even know why it started.”

The man who had always served as the family’s military analyst drew on the remaining embers in the belly of his pipe. Then he said, within a sweet cloud of smoke, “That’s how it is with most wars. The origin is usually a mystery. What matters is that it comes to an end, darling. And this war’s over.”