Bereavements (18 page)

And now he paid her back for her rudeness and cruelty, the cigarette, the burn, the rank odor that would remain in his trouser cuff until he had it cleaned. “There are all kinds of mothers, you know. There are those mothers, the root of which, the origin, is derived from the word motherfucker.” She noticed he watched her closely to see if there’d be a flicker of surprise or anger at the use of the obscenity. There was none. “And there are, of course, the mothers of dormitories, as well as, most importantly, the dream merchants—mothers of the lactating, breast-feeding type, which is to say, the suppliers of heroin.”

Slight pause; a prayerful tent made of his fingers. “And, of course, there are the Gold Star mothers, whose numerous sons rot in their graves.” The tent flew apart. “And we mustn’t forget the Mothers of the American Revolution. Oh!—” surprise “— they’re daughters, aren’t they, but so old, wouldn’t you say, that I’m sure they’re all mothers, too, and grandmothers, and great-grandmothers, besides.”

A thoroughly depressed young man; clearly; perhaps almost as suicidal as she. And then she remembered, truth or lie, that in his letter he’d said he had
tried
it once, after his mother’s death. She suspected he’d dare anything, risk anything—for whatever it was he desired. She hoped it wouldn’t turn out to be being “a star” and “a celebrity”—something altogether tiresome and hardly worth killing one’s self for.

“And finally,” he concluded with a sigh, “there are those mothers—always widows, enormously wealthy, usually from the south or mid-west with the smell of crude oil emanating from their armpits and between their legs—who are looking for well-hung sons by the name of
Paulo, Raphael or Mario
—who are to be found standing three-deep, their legs crossed at the ankles to give prominence to their genitals, amid the glitter of the most expensive bars to be found in Rome . . .”

And now Martin Dzierlatka stood up, distressed, blinking hard, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d done or said, a hand reaching to hold his head: an actor who had just blown everything, forgetting his lines, missing a vital cue, improvising outrageously, hating the director of this wretched play, the imbecile author, and—if he got anything out of it at all—the pathetic pittance for himself involved.

“Shall I leave now?” he asked. “Or wait until you call the cops?”

Mrs. Evans third husband, the Harrison-Smith of her name, had, among other lucrative pursuits, been a successful theatrical producer. Jamie, to his step-father’s pleasure, had called him “the Maestro,” and he was also fond of referring to himself as an impresario. Mrs. Evans herself had taken some interest in the theatre, producing a successful play after her husband’s death, and maintaining his 57th Street office for more than a year afterward. Then interest waned. She read hundreds of scripts but nothing she cared to produce. To her comedies of the Broadway variety were a bore and inane; musicals usually shallow and meaningless besides being too difficult and demanding for her meagre business abilities, and no drama of significance (meaning impressive poetic content) had crossed her desk.

So the gold-leaf lettering that spelled out
Harrison-Smith Productions, Inc.,
was scraped from the milk-white, pebbled glass of the office door.

These years of theatrical preoccupation were in her mind as she continued to size up Martin Dzierlatka who was not only not thrown out after his astonishing, virtually obscene tirade, but, after tea, had been offered (no less) a saucer for an ashtray and actually been invited (if he wished) to smoke.

He wished. And lost no time extracting a cigarette from a leather case and also emptying his trouser cuff.

Watching him, Mrs. Evans decided that the boy—man, of course (though to her any attractive male under thirty seemed a boy)—was an inspired opportunist, or a half-crazed one; if not a borderline psychotic almost ready for the net, then a functional neurotic, an obsessive-compulsive of classic proportions. It was a fatal case of give me the theatre, i.e. commercial success (and a Hollywood contract) or give me death.

She was prepared to give him neither; indeed, nothing beyond tea, an opportunity to talk (selfishly occupying her mind as well as an hour or two of the dreary afternoon) and—a rare privilege—to smoke. But the reason he was here at all, she decided—answering her ad, arranging such an elaborate delayed entrance with a mother monologue so bizarre one could hardly have found it outside the theater, and only in an absurdist theater at that—was because his fantastically (quite ill) mind had put together a dream in which she would, upon meeting him, instantly recognize his neglected genius, revive her interest in producing, and star him, posthaste, in a Broadway play.

How wrong she was she was soon to find out. Oh, the fantasy was there, and it
was
connected, if vaguely, with “the theater,” specifically with his superlative talent, but he wasn’t auditioning for the lead in a Broadway play. No indeed. The part he wanted was far more important.

He wanted the role of her son.

Why, why (he asked) should she be so astonished? Wasn’t that what her ad was all about, now that she maintained its authenticity and her own sincerity, odd as it was. Who better than he could do it? He wanted to replace Jamie—like an understudy the star:
Jamie
—and he actually
named
the boy, not only knowing all about him, but about
her,
about virtually every important event of her life.

“After all—you are a celebrity, Mrs. Evans, and a socialite, if you don’t mind my calling you that. I believe fate brought us together, it was inevitable, because I have known of you, read of you, seen your pictures in newspapers and magazines all my life. I have followed your exploits, every facet of your career. I have admired you always. I have
adored
you, in a sense, as I am committed to adore
all
women of beauty, of wealth, of position, of family, of
talent . . . !”

Her eyebrows must have raised themselves slightly at the emphasis given the last word, because he was then driven to explore and justify it.

“Yes, talent. You did, on your own, quite independently after your husband’s death, produce an enormously successful play. I have also read of your fine organization abilities; I mean, those countless social affairs you used to arrange to raise money for so many worthy causes and institutions. And would you believe—” (it turned out she didn’t) “—that I have on my bookshelf at home—” his voice becoming intimate, slightly seductive “—a well-thumbed copy of
Doves and Jackels?”

This was too much.

“You haven’t.” She shook her head, her voice firm, for the first time really cold. “I don’t
care where
or
how
you may have heard of it, but you do not have
Doves and Jackals.
It has been out of print for years. There are simply no copies—” (what was the word?) “—extant.”

Whereupon this incredible boy—
man,
quoted softly, to her discomfort and shocked pleasure:

The bleeding doe

turns

love-filmed eyes

to the hills

of sweet

wild grass

beyond the hunter.

There were even more surprises. Quite a few.

“I knew your son,” Martin said.

If he hadn’t, moments ago, quoted exactly one of her early poems, she would now have called Dori to throw him out. As things stood, she was silent and listened.

“I didn’t mean to say I
knew
him,” Martin corrected. “Once, I met him; we spoke.”

He waited, expecting Mrs. Evans to reply, but she didn’t, so he went on.

“It was some years before he died, before I read of his death—” frowning, stretching a confused memory to make the time more exact—”two years, more or less. In Palm Beach; September or October, I believe. I was with a play then; the company toured Florida.”

Jamie
had
been there at the time—before his illness. Indeed, if she’d kept him there, quiet, peaceful, rested and resting, instead of, panicked, flying him to New York, then speeding him, like the victim of a gangrenous appendix, into the vast bowels of the Medical Center in January where, to her own passionate, distorted view, he’d been doctored and tested to death for a disease so mysterious it couldn’t be named, he might now be alive. Had an autopsy been performed, they might have given it a name:
mysteriosa,
perhaps, nomenclature being so indigenous and indispensable to the medical profession it coudn’t possibly function without it. But she wouldn’t allow her beautiful boy to be butchered.

“He’s dead! You’ve
killed
him! Now you want to
bleed
him,
skin
him,
quarter
him, like
meat
on a hook!” So she’d raved, her voice shrill, frightening the coven of doctors and nurses who shrank back before her, her teeth bared, nails raking the air, desiring to disembowel them, gorge out their eyes, rend their pallid faces to ribbons, while a choked Dori, his face streaming tears—proud, ashamed, embarrassed, endlessly loyal, understanding, loving, devoted—literally dragged her to a waiting room where a handful of pale visitors, seeing the wretched thing that was upon them, a writhing, shrieking maniac, exited in a flash.

“My boy! My boy! My boy!”
She would not stop, her voice flooding through the hollow halls, the miles of empty corridors in that vast and hideous building. Not even Jesus calling to Lazarus in his tomb had
her
power,
her
command,
her
love,
her
desire, What then was missing? Only faith.

As a consequence, presumably, Jamie did not rise from the dead.

I’ll find a way!

“I’m upsetting you.”

It was Martin. She’d forgotten he was there, and heard him long after he’d said what he had, startling her just a little.

“No no. Not really—if you don’t mind a few useless tears.” She wiped them away. “It’s a disease, I think, like measles, or love. Show me a kitten new born, or a sunset mixing violet with gold, or a ragged man sleeping in a doorway, and I’ll cry you a summer’s shower. Tell me about Jamie. Where you met. What he said. How he looked.”