The Gallery of Vanished Husbands: A Novel (24 page)

‘Hey, I know you,’ he said.

Vera looked up quickly.

‘Yeah, take off those specs,’ said Jerry.

Obediently, Frieda propped them on her forehead.

‘Yeah, for sure. It’s Elizabeth Taylor.’

Frieda smiled and went bright pink, clashing beautifully with her orange sunglasses. Vera, who had stopped filing her nails and had been staring at the children, let out a sigh that might have been relief and retreated behind the counter.

Juliet returned from the drugstore and held open the door for the children.

‘Come on now. Thank you for watching them,’ she called to Vera.

She did not notice the paper aeroplane clutched in Leonard’s hand or the tall teenage boy with black eyes who watched them through the glass as they hurried away.

 • • • 

Vera Molnár waited until Juliet Montague was safely down the street, not moving until a full five minutes after the car had disappeared past the window, the children’s faces a pale blur. Then she crossed to the door and silently turned the ‘Open’ sign to ‘Closed’ and clicked the lock. She leaned against it for a second.

‘Are you all right, Mom?’ asked Jerry.

She smiled. ‘You’re a good boy, my little
aidesh
. I thought we’d take an early lunch.’ She reached into the till for a handful of change. ‘How about some of those hotdogs from the deli? Will you go get them?’

Jerry shrugged. ‘Sure.’

She waited until he’d gone and then disappeared through the door marked ‘Private’ into the house at the back of the shop. She measured out several spoons of thick ground coffee, slid the pot onto the stove and then, as she waited for it to boil, stepped into a small blue-patterned living-room. The curtains fluttered in the morning breeze and a bee landed on the television set in the corner. Vera perched on the worn sofa and looked at the wall where she’d pinned up a poster of some Van Gogh sunflowers. The print wasn’t very good, the petals more brown than sunshine, and it wasn’t straight. It also failed to conceal the unbleached rectangle on the wallpaper around it, where a larger picture used to hang. Vera remembered it well – that picture had been the one good thing they owned. It was a portrait of a young girl with brown hair and greenish eyes, her skinny legs folded beneath her as though she couldn’t stop fidgeting. If Vera hadn’t known otherwise, she would have believed it to be a portrait of the kid who’d come into the shop – what was her name, Frieda? But Vera knew it wasn’t Frieda. She knew the painting was of George’s other wife. Mrs Juliet Montague.

 • • • 

For the next week, Juliet prowled the walk path beside Venice Beach, pacing up and down as though George was lurking between the cracks in the cement. She wrote to the private detective in Brooklyn, asking him for the envelope the newspaper scrap had arrived in, but he’d replied on a postcard of the Empire State building to say that he’d already trashed it and couldn’t recall the postmark. He wasn’t a detective of the first rank. Meanwhile the children swam and squabbled and ate too much ice cream and surreptitiously watched their mother.

 • • • 

Leonard began to wonder whether he’d got it all wrong and that it wasn’t his father who was the spy on a secret mission but his mother. He kept a close eye on her, waking up in the night to check that she was still in bed and hadn’t sneaked off to go on a stakeout, but she was always there – he could hear her sighing in the dark or smell the burning cigarettes that she lit and did not smoke. Leonard, however, had read sufficient detective novels to know that covert means must be employed to catch her and so checked her pockets while she was in the shower. He discovered the frayed piece of newspaper and studied the gallery of photographs. So she was on a mission. A mission so secret that he and Frieda weren’t supposed to know about it. He sat on the kitchen linoleum and studied the photos of the assorted men, trying to insert the circled picture of ‘George Molnár’ into vague memories of his father. He screwed up his eyes in concentration and pictured the snap of his parents on their wedding day – Juliet in a white dress beside a man in a suit with a gouged-out hole instead of a head. Leonard replaced the hole with the face of George Molnár – like when Leonard had stuck his head through a cardboard cut-out of a cowboy at the fairground and Grandpa took his picture. He scanned the rows of men. If he could pick, who would be the father he’d choose? He was glad George didn’t have a beard because they tickled and stuff got lost in them – bits of lunch and keys and things. From the bathroom the sound of trickling water stopped, and Leonard heard the soft thud of his mother stepping out of the shower. Silently, he slipped the newspaper back into her pocket and considered whether to tell Frieda about his discovery. The door to the roof was ajar and he could see her perched on the edge of the wall (where they’d been told never ever to sit) dangling her legs, blowing fleshy bubbles the size of beach balls and then popping them with a grubby finger. Since they’d arrived in California Frieda was rarely without a sticky pack of Bazooka Joe.

‘Frieda, can I have a piece of gum?’ he asked, padding out to join her.

‘Bog off,’ she replied.

Leonard turned around and went back inside. No, he decided, he wouldn’t tell her anything at all.

 • • • 

On Tuesday as Juliet hurried along the walk path to collect bagels for breakfast, she passed a few artists at work, easels sunk into the edge of the strand. Instinctively she slowed to look at the pictures. The first couple were unremarkable pastels of the sea by cheerful hobbyists – the colours flat, the water much too still – but the last caught her eye. She lingered behind the painter’s chair, not speaking as she watched him work. A girl with brown-red hair flew above a star-filled sky, the night sand drifting white below her. As Juliet waited, the sea turned choppier and blacker under his brush.

‘So, you like it, or no?’ asked the painter, not turning around.

‘Yes,’ said Juliet.

She stood for a while, watching the white horses rise out of the painted sea and night-time gulls encircle the flying girl, until the man pointed with his brush to a bench.

‘Sit. You’re making my legs ache.’

‘But I won’t be able to see.’

‘Then I shall break and sit with you.’

The painter stood and turned to face Juliet. He grinned, raising his sunhat, a herringbone trilby, in salutation. He was in his sixties, hair thinning and grey, eyes the same blue as the sea in his picture.

‘Tibor Jankay,’ he said, offering a smudged hand.

‘Juliet Montague.’

They shook hands, smiling, pleased with one another, and settled side by side on the bench.

‘Who’s the girl in the picture?’ asked Juliet.

‘You,’ said Tibor.

Juliet laughed.

He pulled a large sketchbook out of a bag, passing it to her.

‘You can look, if you’re interested.’

He lit a cigarette and pulled his hat low to shade his eyes, dozing contentedly in the sunshine, humming to himself. Juliet thumbed through a series of sketches, most of them in charcoal, most of them of the same girl drawn in bold, simple lines, her hair tumbling like rushing water and her profile displaying a good strong Jewish nose. Every now and then she was drawn in colour – her hair was usually red-brown, but here and there it was crimson or yellow, but it didn’t matter, it was always the same girl. Juliet sighed.

‘You don’t like?’ said Tibor, opening an eye.

‘I do, I do. I’m on holiday and I hadn’t realised how much I missed looking at pictures,’ she said.

‘Ah well,’ he said. ‘I like pictures too. Pictures and sunshine. This is the best quality sunshine in all the world, fifty-three per cent better than every other kind, did you know that?’

Juliet shook her head, unsure if he was kidding. Tibor produced a fat Hershey bar from his pocket.

‘You want some chocolate? It’s not like the good stuff from Europe, but it was either good quality chocolate or good quality sunshine.’

He spoke with the same
Mitteleuropa
accent as Vera, only the notes from the old country were stronger, closer to the surface. Not wishing to be rude, Juliet accepted a soggy square. Apart from this elderly man, the only person she knew who wanted chocolate for breakfast was Leonard. She supposed she ought to get back to the apartment and rouse the children, but it was pleasant sitting on the bench with Tibor, basking in the warmth of the Californian morning. As he passed her another square of chocolate, Juliet realised with a jolt like a hunger pang that she was lonely.

‘You’re the first grown-up I’ve really talked to since we got to America,’ she observed.

Tibor smiled. ‘I’m not so sure I’m a grown-up.’

Juliet laughed. Most people would have asked why her husband didn’t keep her company, or else commented on the fact that she was a woman travelling alone.

‘Come back tomorrow, same time, same place and I’ll paint you.’

Juliet started. She’d never even considered that she might have her portrait painted over here. She closed her eyes, filled with warmth at the thought. The city was so busy, everyone zooming from place to place in their cars, the Montagues had slid unnoticed into its slipstream and no one would notice when they left. But a portrait painted here on Venice Beach would connect her to this place. It would last even after they’d sailed for home.

‘It would be nice. I’ll try to come tomorrow,’ she said, regretting a vague promise to take the children to see the Hollywood sign.

‘You’ll come.’

Juliet licked the chocolate off her fingers. Yes, of course she would come.

 • • • 

The next morning Tibor was waiting for Juliet as she traipsed along the walk path, a huge string beach-bag clutched in her hand and the children at her side. Leonard was curious and Frieda snarled in a temper. Why did everyone want to paint Juliet? But then she caught sight of Tibor and her mood improved. She’d assumed that most painters were like Philip or Charlie or Jim but this man was more like Grandpa. He was welcome to paint her mother – Frieda wouldn’t pose for him, even if he asked.

The wind was up and the beach busy with tropical flocks of kites, while a handful of surfers dabbled in the waves – most of them flopping about in the shallows pummelled by the tide, but one or two galloped across the cresting surface like bareback circus riders.

‘I’m going for a swim,’ announced Frieda, wriggling out of her jeans and strutting off across the sand towards the surfers.

‘Stay where I can see you, and keep an eye on your brother,’ called Juliet.

‘I’m right here,’ said Leonard. ‘I’d rather stay and see the picture.’

‘Very good,’ said Tibor. ‘You may assist.’

‘Are you using oils or acrylics?’ asked Leonard.

Tibor chuckled. ‘You are a painter too?’

‘Yes,’ said Leonard, preening a little. ‘But I don’t mind just being an assistant today.’

Juliet spread out a towel and lay across the bench, watching the kites flap against the sky, and listened to the patter of the men.

‘You’ve got a foreign accent,’ remarked Leonard.

‘So do you,’ replied Tibor.

Leonard paused, considering. ‘I suppose for you I do. But your accent isn’t American foreign or English foreign, it’s
foreign
foreign.’

‘Hungarian.’

Juliet glanced at Leonard, wondering if this meant something to him, whether he remembered that his father was Hungarian.

‘Did you always like doing paintings?’ Leonard asked.

‘All my life. And that is a long time,’ said Tibor stretching out his arms. ‘It would have been a short time, but a picture saved my life.’

Leonard stopped rinsing brushes and looked up at Tibor. Juliet wriggled round on the bench.

‘You,’ he said pointing with a palette knife at Juliet, ‘don’t keep fidgeting. Stay still and I’ll tell you.’

 • • • 

His brush moves across the canvas, quickly in bold red strokes – he has the confidence of an artist of many years who doesn’t much care whether anyone else likes his picture or not. He’s never sold a picture, not in sixty years. He likes to joke that he’d sooner sell his kids but he doesn’t have any kids, only a house full of pictures. Pictures all the way up the stairs, on the landing, in the bedroom, piles of them stacked against the wall in the spare room and leaning against crates in the garage. He doesn’t care that there isn’t any room left – they’re not for sale. Not now. Not ever.

Her hair appears first, flying in the wind like the tail feathers of the kites. Next comes the hot disc of sun, bouncing on the horizon like a yellow beach ball. He talks. They listen.

 • • • 

‘I was on a train, a terrible train headed for somewhere unspeakable. One of those places that steal men’s souls. We were packed in so tightly that even when someone fainted or died, they kept standing up, rooted in place by the others. But in my pocket I had my chisel and I chipped away at one of the wooden panels until it was just wide enough for a skinny man to fit through and I was skinnier even than you.’

He wiggled a brush at Leonard, who sat watching, not wanting to interrupt.

‘My neighbours screamed at me, yelling curses that I’d brought trouble on them all and everyone would be punished for what I had done. I argued and begged for them to come with me. But do you know how many did?’

Leonard shook his head and Tibor continued.

‘None. Not one. So, I went alone. I spied through my peephole, watching the white landscape rush past. Sometimes there was a farmhouse and sometimes a few of them together, little wooden houses huddled to make a village, but I waited until the train was far, far from anywhere, and then as the women screamed at me and the men rained fists down on my head, I slid out through the broken panel and onto the snowy tracks. I lay still as a mouse when he knows a housewife with a rolled-up newspaper is waiting to clobber him. The train roared over my head and I thought that probably I should die but I choose that I die like this than shot in the back of my head or—’

He paused, catching sight of Juliet who shook her head, ever such a little. He shrugged and continued.

‘Your mother is quite right. You don’t need to know all these things just now. So the train goes on for ever, cars and cars of it rattling above my head and then suddenly it is quiet and I’m alone. It’s dusk and the cold is getting colder. You are from England?’