Vivian In Red (16 page)

Milo dropped onto the piano bench next to Allen, and plunked his elbows into the piano keys with a jarring, dissonant clang. Milo ran his hands through his own hair, gripping by the roots like he might rip it out, as the sickening echo rang out into the house.

“You know, you never even asked me how much we were gonna make off this gig.”

Milo let go of his hair and pivoted just enough to see Allen from the corner of his eye. “Okay, I’ll bite. How much?”

Allen told him, and Milo grabbed the edge of the piano bench. “No fooling?”

Allen laughed. “Nope, no fooling. You think Mr. Max Gordon is gonna pay you in peanuts? We’re gonna do fine, I told you.”

“Course if we fail, we might never work again.”

“That’s the spirit.” Allen began to plink out ominous chords again, then swung into a jazzy rendition of “Hilarity.” “So, whaddya say, pal? You said something yesterday about a better rhyme? I happen to know you’ve got nothing else better to do at this here moment.”

“I came here to slug you.”

“I know you did. And I did you the courtesy of sobering up first. Aren’t I swell?”

“How am I going to tell my family I’m fired? Oy, my father. I’ve got to explain this to Keenan. Will you come back with me and explain it? Tell him I was always going to be loyal. Maybe he’s cooled off enough now and he’ll listen.”

“Milo, what’s your beef? You’ve got a job, and a job that pays well enough I saw your eyes bug out just now. And you don’t have to report to that bully Keenan, and you can work anywhere and anytime you want.”

“‘Anytime’ as long as it’s right this minute, and all day and all night, isn’t that it?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“You’ve either ruined us both, or you’ll make us famous.”

“Probably both! Now let’s get to work. Gordon is in a rush, seeing as he’s paying all these people to rehearse songs he hasn’t got. There’s paper and a pencil right over there,” Allen said, pointing with his head at a music stand next to the piano.

Milo hauled himself up off the piano bench, and walked with a resigned step to the music stand. He looked up to absorb the soaring grandeur of the theater and it hit him all at once, like a wrecking ball, that his brother had taken him to see the Follies here in ’27. And now it would be his words filling up all this beautiful air, soaring out of some ingénue, or maybe even a star, dare he imagine?

He began to drum up some rhymes, then tried them out on Allen. Hours passed before he realized he was hungry, and by then it was three o’clock. He shook his head as if coming to from a dead faint, and violently started when he spied, a few rows back sitting in the theater seats, Vivian, her hair still mussed from the wind, her coat draped over the seat in front of her. She waved at him with a flutter of her fingertips and shrugged, smiling, by way of saying that she’d lost another job, and such is life.

I
smile at my granddaughter as she walks in, a huge backpack hanging off her narrow shoulders. Bee would have fussed at her to have something to eat, and would have set about cooking her something. Bee could have employed a cook; we could afford it, of course. For a big enough party she would hire someone. But someone else should cook for family? Not on your life, she declared, and that was that.

Eleanor kisses my cheek, her hair tickling my face a little. She mostly misses my face actually, but she doesn’t go back for a second try. Just as well. I’m worried I’m getting that old man smell. I mean, I shower and all, even if it takes me an age one-handed and a nurse has to hover outside the door, which is humiliating all by itself. But there’s something about being in a bed or chair all the time that I think must create its own scent. Eau d’Invalid.

Eleanor makes small talk of the cooling weather, leaves turning, as she pulls a notebook out of her bag. She notes that Rosh Hashanah is next week and says she plans to come with the family to services. Her voice keeps trailing off and then she shakes herself back to what she was saying. Something’s on her mind. Something more than usual.

“Grampa, I heard a name that might mean something to you. Vivian Adair?” The name hits me in the chest like a sandbag.

I can’t help it. My eyes go to the window seat, the corner, the stairs, I know I’m looking like a crazy person, looking everywhere like this, but she keeps popping up. The other day I saw her at the piano, though she never played, so far as I knew. She was sitting on the bench, and her fingers were skating over the keys. She was looking down, her head tilted sideways like a curious child. She was wearing a glossy dress with fluttery sleeves, the waves of her hair covering her ears, her nose looking pert in profile. The nurse had been sitting right in the corner of the room, none the wiser.

“Grampa? What’s wrong?”

I shake my head at Eleanor and shrug, like I thought I’d seen something and was mistaken. I smile, but I have to close my good hand tight to keep it from trembling, which will look strange to her I know. My heart feels like it’s beating both harder and slower. Ominous drums in a film score.

“I know,” she says, cringing, “you can’t say exactly, but… Do you remember her?”

I bite my lip and look down at my knees, feigning an attempt to recall. This is also the perfect excuse to break my gaze away from my granddaughter’s earnest eyes, which look even bigger behind her thick lenses—sorry, kid, you got that from me.

Why is she asking? Who the hell mentioned Vivian? Anyone in the city who would’ve known her is dead now, and that’s sad but also just as well.

I look back and bunch up my forehead like, “Who?”

Eleanor looks down at her notebook, tapping it idly with her pen. “I was talking to Mrs. Allen. Bernie Allen’s widow.”

Oh jeez. Dorothy. I kinda figured she’d be dead by now, too. How on earth did she think to talk to Dorothy? I shudder to think what she might’ve said. I was never in her good books, after…

This is the precise reason I didn’t want any damn biography written. Maybe I’ll die before it gets published. Then they can put on my show and everyone will go see it as a tribute and they’ll make a bajillion dollars and Paul and Naomi will be thrilled.

Eleanor’s still looking down at her notebook. Now she’s swirling doodles all down the margin. “She said her husband could never stand her for some reason, and that she was from Chicago?”

I swallow and shrug, to indicate I don’t really know. Then I narrow my eyes, tilt my head. I’m getting good at telegraphing my thoughts with my face. Who knew I’d have to pantomime my whole life someday?

Eleanor gets it. She was always good at reading these little non-verbal things. Like with babies and toddlers, before they could talk. Eleanor would always seem to know what they wanted, sometimes even faster than their mothers. Drove Naomi and Eva crazy, I could tell.

She says, “She might not be important at all, but I was just curious. Mrs. Allen, and well, her son, seemed to think she was significant. In your early life. But you don’t look like you even remember?”

I take a deep, slow breath, otherwise willing myself not to move, not to shift expression, not to betray a thing. I shake my head, sighing, eyebrows up, as if to say,
whaddaya gonna do?

“Hmm. Well, maybe something will come to you. I’ll ask next time, just in case. Well, then, I have this list of yes or no questions, to double-check my library research. Got enough energy for this?”

I’m so relieved to be off the Vivian topic that I nod emphatically, and lean forward in the upholstered chair.

Eleanor begins to ask. Her hair keeps sliding in front of her face, and she keeps pushing it back, until she finally ties it back with a hair thingy, sticking her pen in her mouth as she does this. The yes questions are easy, of course. When I shake my head no, it takes some doing to zoom in on what the wrong part is, but Eleanor asks enough details that she hones in on it quick. Smart girl, that one. She could be a superstar, career-wise, right there with Dr. Joel and businesswoman Naomi, though she’s made it clear as crystal she doesn’t want to be some executive in a suit. She might yet be that superstar, of course, though I overheard Paul saying she’s not doing her journalism anymore. I wonder why he assigned her this book, if perhaps it was at least partly to give her a job. Well, why not? A family business should help the family.

Then Vivian is right next to Eleanor’s chair. She’s looking down, even, as if she’s reading what’s on the paper. The fright of this apparition so close to my granddaughter fills my head with a screaming white noise.

Don’t touch her!
I want to holler, though I’m not sure why that scares me so.

Vivian is wearing a brown wool suit, and a hat with a little piece of net coming off of it. She bends down to adjust her stockings, the net of the hat almost brushing Eleanor’s cheek.

Eleanor looks up to me and I force myself to snap my gaze away, toward the piano. I pretend to be thinking, then cup my hand to my ear, waving my hand at her.

She pulls a sweater out of her bag, remarking lightly that she feels a sudden chill.

She repeats her last question, which I still didn’t hear. I sink deeper into my chair. My breathing is fast and shallow, and the effort of trying to act normal while a ghost or hallucination or demon is hovering near my darling granddaughter is only making my old ticker pump harder.

A voice, that smoky voice, drifts into my mind:
I used to depend on you, Milo. And look what happened to me.

I told you not to quit that job. I didn’t ask you to follow me around.

“Grampa?”

Vivian perches on the arm of the chair now. If Eleanor were to sit back, she’d bump right into her. Through her? I’ve never seen the Vivian apparition get so close to another person. I have no idea what might happen—maybe not anything, since I’m probably just losing it, a stroke-damaged brain coughing up stuff just to make me crazy.

Vivian’s voice again, purring:
You loved the attention.

When you were nice, sure, who wouldn’t?

That word, “nice.” Seems to me it’s usually used to describe a quiet girl, who will do whatever you like, without question. Like a loyal, devoted worker bee…

Don’t. Don’t you start. Leave her out of this.

“Grampa!”

I jerk my attention back to Eleanor, and that’s when I realize I’d been staring just over her left shoulder, at the space where until one split second ago, there was Vivian. A movement out of the corner of my eye makes me startle violently. In an instant she’s in the window seat, without ever seeming to have crossed the room. Well, why should she—it—have to walk?

“Grampa, you look terrible. Are you not feeling well? Can you hear me?”

I pantomime headache, fatigue. I grip my head, grimace, wipe my brow with my good hand, and in doing so notice I’m genuinely sweaty.

By this time the nurse is at my side, today a male nurse named Alejandro, who is taking my pulse.

“His pulse is rather fast,” he says. “Were you talking of anything upsetting?”

“No, just boring stuff, like what year his first show was produced, double-checking the names of the co-stars… All stuff he’s heard a thousand times.”

“It’s not your fault. I was just wondering.”

Eleanor hugs herself tight. I’ve seen that gesture pass down from my children now to their children. My daughter Rebekah used to be famous for it. She’d told Bee that she started doing it on her first day of kindergarten because her mommy wasn’t there to do the hugging.