Losing Julia Page 20

“You can’t do that. You can’t shoot me. I already shot you. You gotta fall down. You’re dead.”

  “I’m not dead, you are. Bang! Gotcha, right in the face.”

  “No, you didn’t!”

  “Bang! Now I got you in the stomach.”

  “Stop that!”

  “Bang! Right in the eyes.”

  “If you don’t die, I’m not going to play anymore.”

  “Bang bang bang!”

  “You keeping that bench warm enough, Mr. Delaney?” says June, the big-butted and big-hearted cleaning lady who pushes a big dolly of very dirty sheets down this path twice a day.

  “I’m just sitting here watching all the pretty ladies go by,” I say, feeling suddenly cold.

  She smiles and then leans into her dolly, giving it a great big shove. I wave and then fold my hands in front of my chest, shivering.

  I used to generate tremendous heat, sweating in anything above seventy-five. I fought with every woman I ever slept with over the window and the thermostat.

  “Look honey, there is only so much I can take off,” I’d say, standing in my boxer shorts and perspiring profusely, “while you can simply keep adding layers until you’re comfortable.”

  At Great Oaks the temperature is a source of constant and bitter recrimination. “Excuse me, nurse, is there a window open somewhere?” says The-Woman-Whose-Name-I-Can-Never-Remember,

  a little bitty thing with hands like bonsai trees and the demeanor of a Jack Russell terrier.

  “I’ve never been so cold in all my life,” sputters Helen, who wears several sweaters at once, even in summer.

  “It’s a disgrace they don’t heat this place,” says a tiny creature in the corner, whose great big hooded eyes are always oozing some fluid or another. “Just criminal.”

  “A draft! I feel a draft!” howls Mitzie, tugging at her cardigan.

  Slowly, we are all turning cold.

  NUMBING COLD. We sat close for warmth: Daniel, Page, Giles, Lawton, Tometti and I. We were huddled together in the back of a camion, part of a long convoy that spilled over the sides of a muddy road, drenched by an icy October rain. I kept rubbing my hands together but they refused all but the simplest commands. As the truck bobbed and lurched I had to hold on to keep from falling off, which made my hands even colder.

  “When’s the last time the Germans and French fought a war?” I asked, stomping my feet on the floorboards.

  “That would be in 1870,” said Page, who was still recovering from a broken nose caused when an explosion threw him against a beam in a trench. I wondered if his looks would ever recover.

  “What was that all about?”

  “Nationalism,” said Page.

  “Who won?”

  “Guess.”

  We all nodded.

  “The Germans had Paris surrounded,” said Page. “Nearly starved it. The only way out was by balloon.”

  “Balloon?”

  “One of the French leaders actually escaped from the city in a balloon to try to raise an army from the countryside.”

  “There’s a lot of bad blood in Europe.”

  “No shit.”

  “Fuck it’s cold.”

  I looked out the back and saw an old man on a sickly looking horse pass by. His black beret was tipped rather elegantly on his head, which he held inordinately high, as though in defiance of the whole catastrophic mess. Farther up, soldiers with the Signal Corps were erecting telegraph wire, while nearby, others were standing around a small fire, holding their hands above the flame.

  “The French and the English used to fight, didn’t they?” asked Giles.

  “Like cats and dogs.”

  “Didn’t the French fight in the Revolutionary War, on our side?” asked Tometti.

  “You’re not such a dumb fuck after all,” said Lawton. “At least not for a pushcart Italian.”

  Tometti sputtered some Italian insults.

  “That’s Lafayette,” said Page.

  “Where the fuck are we headed anyway?” asked Lawton.

  “This cozy little hotel just up the road. Great big featherbeds. Nice restaurant. Not a bad whorehouse next door either,” I said.

  “Funny.”

  I looked out the back as we passed the ruins of a farm and saw German prisoners in long gray coats building a fence. A lone elderly Frenchman stood nearby, a rifle resting in the crook of his arm.

  “Anybody get laid in Reims?” asked Giles, speaking into his cupped hands, which he was trying to warm. “Heard you get a half hour for five francs.”

  “Well then, Giles you could drop a franc and get change,” said Lawton. He hadn’t been lisping much lately and I wondered if the cold had dampened his libido.

  Tometti found that incredibly funny.

  Giles ribbed him with his elbow. “One of these days, Tometti, you’re going to hit puberty and that voice of yours is going to go to shit—unless we cut your balls off.”

  Tometti began muttering Italian epithets again. At least I assumed they were epithets, though in Italian they sounded quite lyrical, almost complimentary.

  “They had MPs keeping Americans out of all the whorehouses. Pershing’s a goddamn Puritan,” said Lawton. “Bet he’s never even been laid.”

  “His wife and children died in a fire back at an army base in San Francisco,” said Page.

  “No shit.”

  We were quiet for a few minutes. Then Lawton said, “I heard the whores were pretty ugly anyway. And old. Fat and old.”

  “I thought you liked the fat ones,” said Giles.

  “No, he likes the old skinny ones,” I said.

  Lawton rolled his eyes. “I ain’t even seen a single pretty girl since I got here,” he said. “I thought French girls were supposed to be pretty.” His lisp crept in again. I imagined he must get completely tongue-tied during sex.

  “They’re hiding the pretty ones from us, you fool,” said Giles. “After the war is over and we’ve been shipped back home the villages will be crawling with them.”

  We each contemplated villages teeming with French girls; busty French girls in white lace with big toothy smiles and thick hair and picnic baskets slung on their silky smooth arms.

  “I figure if you’re a young Frenchman who lives through the war, the odds have got to be heavily in your favor,” I said.

  “Shit, they’ll probably be fighting over the ones who aren’t crippled,” said Giles.

  “You can’t beat American girls,” I said, thinking of a pretty girl named Nancy who lived on my street and wondering again why she had steadfastly refused to look at me since her family moved in to the neighborhood nine years ago. Maybe a few medals would change things.

  Tometti reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small, black leather frame, reverently opening it. “Ain’t no one as pretty as my Teresa,” he said in a high-pitched voice that made me wince.

  I leaned over and glanced at the photograph. “You really expect us to believe that this gorgeous creature is carrying around a photograph of you?”

  “Identical frame,” said Tometti, beaming. “We bought them at the same store in New York.”

  Several of us shook our heads.

  “What do you do, stand under her window and sing?” asked Page.

  “I used to, till her father threatened to shoot me.”

  Daniel leaned forward and gestured for Tometti to hand him the photograph. He took it and studied it carefully. “What is it about a beautiful face that makes it beautiful?” he asked, handing it back. He had been quiet all morning and I wondered if he was thinking of Julia or the cold. It seemed to me that if you were in love like he was it helped you during the tough times but it also meant that you had a lot more to lose.

  Tometti shrugged.

  “Think about it,” said Daniel. “What makes one face so much more attractive than another?” Lawton and Giles and Page turned toward him, their dirty and unshaven faces suddenly creased in thought. I tried to picture Julia’s face but all I coul
d think of was how warm her skin must be and how cold mine felt. I imagined crawling in bed with her, naked; the feel of her full breasts and her smooth stomach and her thighs and hips and neck. The thought made me sick with longing.

  “Think of two women with similar facial features, only one woman is rather plain looking and the other quite striking,” said Daniel. “Why does a centimeter here or there make such a difference, so much so that you’ll walk by the one and risk your life for the other?”

  “I’d take either one,” said Giles.

  “Seriously, why does a certain look make us feel so emotional?” continued Daniel. “What does that particular face trigger?”

  “Didn’t your daddy have a talk with you?” said Lawton.

  “It’s an interesting thought,” said Page.

  I looked out the back of the truck and saw a field lined with rows of wooden crosses. On the far end more German prisoners under guard were digging fresh graves. The symmetry made me smile.

  “I sometimes wonder whether we don’t each contain a template within our minds of a certain woman who is just right for us,” said Page, rubbing his palms up and down his thighs.

  Daniel lit a cigarette, then said, “The first time I saw Julia I felt as though I had found something that I had lost. There was something so familiar about her.”

  “That’s it, they look familiar,” said Page, smiling. “You see them and there is a strange sense of recognition. I remember once I was walking across the yard at Harvard and I looked up and saw this woman passing by me and I felt absolutely awestruck.”

  “Start with her tits,” said Lawton, now lisping heavily.

  “No, that’s just it. She wasn’t sexy. I mean, she was but that wasn’t it. The point is, I knew that face. It was as though I had come within inches of my own salvation. Her face still haunts me.”

  I cupped my hands and blew into them, then stomped my feet again.

  Page continued: “I’ll bet there are no more than four or five of those faces out there in the whole world.”

  “You really think it’s only four or five?” I asked. “I can’t work with odds like that.”

  “That’s why most people settle for less,” said Daniel.

  “This is depressing,” said Giles.

  Tometti placed his photograph of Teresa against his lips and kissed it.

  “What about Julia?” I asked. “Did she feel the same way when she met you?”

  “I got lucky,” said Daniel, turning toward me and smiling.

  “So where do we get these images?”

  “I get mine from this little magazine I bought once in Chicago. Woo eee!” said Lawton.

  “I think that face must be some sort of composite,” said Daniel, ignoring Lawton.

  “But of what?” I asked.

  “Of our dreams; of women we’ve known and liked. But it’s more than that. I look at Julia and I think: she’s what I’m missing.”

  “So now you’re complete?” I said.

  “It feels that way.”

  “Remember Plato’s allegory?” asked Page.

  “Plato’s allegory? What the fuck is this, a philosophy lecture? I ought to get a diploma listening to this shit,” said Lawton, stomping out his cigarette.

  “The one about how humans used to have four legs and four arms and two faces until the Gods split us in two so we wouldn’t pose a threat to them, and how we’ve been searching for our other halves ever since?”

  “I’ve heard of that,” said Daniel, pursing his lips.

  “You have?” I asked, looking at him.

  He smiled back.

  “What do you think?” asked Page.

  “It’s pretty good.”

  “But do you think it’s true, that there is only one other person out there for us?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Daniel. “Giles, what do you think?”

  “Well, personally, I can think of three girls from my hometown that I’d give my right arm for, and it’s a small town. So, if there are, say, fifty counties in Ohio, each with at least… ”

  “You have no taste,” said Tometti, turning his attention back to Teresa.

  “So let’s say you’re lucky enough to find this person, does it last?” I asked.

  “The love?” asked Daniel.

  “No, not just the love. My parents love each other. I mean more than that. What you were talking about earlier. That magic.”

  “I don’t know yet,” said Daniel.

  “I have my doubts,” I said. “I’m not sure that we ever feel like we’re whole for long.”

  “I think Delaney’s right,” said Page. “Besides, I’ve always felt there was something sad about beauty.”

  “Is that what they teach you at Harvard?” asked Lawton.

  “Because it’s usually unattainable,” I said, agreeing with Page.

  “Or we know we won’t always be around to enjoy it,” said Daniel.

  “So even beauty is about death,” said Page.

  “You guys are fucking nuts,” said Giles, spitting out the back of the truck.

  “Or maybe the allure of beauty is that it defies death, at least temporarily,” said Daniel, who had his hands folded under his armpits. “It’s like looking at heaven.”

  “So now we’re talking about angels, am I right?” asked Lawton.

  “Am I following here?”

  Giles spit again.

  “Here, hand me that,” said Page, extending his hand toward Tometti’s photograph. When he was done I took the photo but my hands shook so badly that I couldn’t see her clearly. I handed her back to Tometti, buried my hands into my armpits and spent the next few hours imagining crawling naked into bed next to Julia.

  “SO, WHAT’S she like in bed?” It’s a question I’d been wanting to ask for months and as Daniel and I stood guard by a huge stack of ammunition crates in the predawn darkness, I decided to give it a shot.

  “I’m not going to tell you what she’s like in bed.”

  That’s another thing that was unusual about Daniel: he didn’t boast about his conquests, real or imagined. In fact, he was the only soldier I ever met who didn’t like to talk about sex, as though it was too fine a thing to be bandied about with a couple of louse-ridden men.

  “Just in general.”

  “In general?”

  “Yeah, in general.”

  “She’s passionate.”

  “How passionate?”

  He looked at me and grinned. I longed for a cigarette, but we were under strict orders not to smoke. “Very passionate.”

  “As in… ”

  “As in, very passionate.”

  “I see.”

  For the rest of the day I tried to visualize very passionate.

  By evening I was practically lisping.

  THIS AFTERNOON I fell asleep in a large brown reading chair in the recreation room and dreamed about precious little Amy Sperling, the sweet-smelling apparition who hypnotized me throughout the eighth grade. Is Amy really in her eighties now, with East Bloc ankles and reverse biceps that sag and sway like the gullet of a pelican when she walks? I don’t believe it. Not my Amy Sperling. To me, Amy will always be fourteen, her soft features framed with even softer blond hair that made barrettes do things that barrettes haven’t done since.

  Amy was one of the smartest girls at Winthrop Junior High. She had perfect posture and perfect clothes and a melodious laugh that ricocheted around her perfect teeth before dancing off down the hallway like a shiny stone skipping perfectly across the water. Even the way she carried her books, clutched to her breast with one or both hands, caused me enormous grief. (To be one of her books!) And the way she stood at the blackboard and made her letters, so flawless and ornamental, while my illegible efforts caused the blackboard to shriek with horror no matter how I held the chalk.

  When I knew she wasn’t home I would walk by her house just to stare at the windows and wonder which one was hers and what on earth did her bedroom look like? No matter
how I tried to picture it, the details of her room were inconceivable to me; I saw only a holy place bathed in blinding light. What I would have given for just a swath of her sheets, a relic of my dear sweet Amy with the perfect barrettes!

  I don’t think Amy ever looked at me more than twice during that school year, but when she did, adrenaline flooded my insides and I felt the same giddy feeling one might get in the presence of royalty or fame. To my mind, Amy had the power to transform mere boys into White Knights with just a glance. Sitting but three seats away from her I felt, finally, that I was ensconced right smack in the sultry center of the universe.

  I wasn’t always faithful to Amy. After all, Nina Zumbrowski and her long black hair and blue eyes were only six seats away. Nina didn’t look at me much either, but never mind. That made it easier to stare without being noticed. And how I stared, absorbed in the delicacy of her wrists, her neck and her shoulders, which seemed to twitch back and forth in unison with her fanny. I knew with certainty that if Nina but kissed me, I would get straight As for the rest of my life, and I knew with certainty that Nina would never kiss me.

  I ARRANGED for a piano to be delivered the Tuesday morning of Howard’s birthday, just after lunch. It was a small beat-up black upright that I had rented for a month for twenty dollars. “We’ll get him some lessons and see if he takes to it,” I told Martin.

  “You got him a piano?”

  “I rented him a piano. From the Yellow Pages. Nothing fancy. Besides, this place needs a piano. Whoever heard of an old folks’ home without a piano?”

  “Oh boy, I hope he’s got his inhalator handy when he sees it.”

  I smiled as I turned off my reading light.

  Three months later Howard held his first recital, a stripped-down version of “Lara’s Theme” from Doctor Zhivago. He wore a light blue seersucker suit and a red bow tie and an extra splash of cheap aftershave. I served brandy from the private collection I keep in the back of my closet and wore a blue blazer with a white handkerchief tucked into the breast pocket, which isn’t like me, which was the point. Helen wore a bright green dress that strained at her waistline and her normally garish smile was exaggerated by lipstick that traveled a good way toward her ears. “Oh, I’m just percolating!” she announced as she plopped down in a chair next to me.