Authors: Francine Prose
“Vera,” he says in the serious tone that augurs heartfelt and way-off-the-mark advice. “That conversation Friday night. This thing that’s come up at your job. Did I ever tell you…?” And he’s started the story before she can ask, “Tell me what?”
“This was forty-five years ago. Me and Manny Satz and a couple other guys were coming back from Figueras with supplies. We kept hearing of battles up ahead, the Fascists weren’t so far away. So we took plenty of detours, you can be sure.
“One of them took us through a little village. San Xavier de los Something. The Anarchists had got there the day before and were celebrating with a giant feast and promising the villagers they’d eat like that every day. This was early in the war. So they set out tables and chairs in the plaza and told everyone to bring all their food, empty the granaries and root cellars, kill the fattest lambs. They said, Go ahead. Eat. Drink. Don’t worry. War? What war? Plenty more where this came from.
“Well, what the hell. Me and Manny didn’t want to be killjoys, we threw in our rations, too. But Jesus, after a while we couldn’t help asking how they meant to provide. After all, it was fall and the start of a war that even then looked to be a long one. The Anarchists just shrugged: no problem.
“The next morning we left, and that night the Fascists came in and wiped out the whole goddamn village.”
Vera
has
heard this story, more than once. It always reminds her of Breughel’s
Peasant Wedding
, a painting she hates. That poor bride and groom, looking so terrified and sick. If that’s life in all its greedy richness, count her out. Likewise, Dave’s story: the more she thinks about it, the less she likes it. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Is that how Dave sees destiny? Can watching TV all day be his way of making merry?
Now she says, “I don’t get the connection.”
“Oh,” says Dave. “I guess what I’m telling you is: You never know what’ll happen. All you can do is give it your best shot. If you can’t see round the corner, stay in your lane and drive like hell.”
Vera’s astonished. What she’d always thought was a cautionary tale about the Anarchists’ lack of foresight turns out to be a story in praise of their spirit. “That’s a pretty terrific story,” she says.
“Isn’t it?” says Dave.
“Thanks for telling me,” she says.
“It’s nothing,” he says. “So what’s new?”
“Not much,” says Vera.
“Here neither,” says Dave. “The usual. Your mother dragged me to Alexander’s yesterday morning. They were having a sale on men’s winter coats.”
“Coats?” says Vera. “It’s August.”
“Mrs. Rockefeller,” says Dave. “What’s wrong with saving a few bucks?”
Eat, drink, and be merry. Vera thinks of Dave and Norma shopping, Norma standing on tiptoe, smoothing the cloth over Dave’s broad, stooped shoulders, then stepping back for a look. If Vera can only step back, the picture’s quite lovely: a handsome, elderly couple preparing for winter. What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong is the other picture Vera can’t shake. In the photo of Dave with his Lincoln Brigade battalion, he’s wearing a leather bomber jacket that Vera bets he didn’t buy the summer before, didn’t think of till his ship was due to sail and it was already cold.
Vera’s imagining a story about some maniac concealing syringes of poison in the linings of brand-new jackets, thinking
BARGAIN BASEMENT BEDLAM: KILLER COATS
when Dave says “So?” and she wonders if it’s a follow-up to some specific question or if he’s just ending the silence.
“So nothing,” she says. “Thanks for calling. I’m glad you told me that story, I feel better.” How effortless, how instinctive it is to lie! She should take it for granted that Rosie is lying to her with every breath.
“Hold on, hold on, where’s the fire?” says Dave. “What about this big recital tonight? Don’t tell me you forgot.” Suddenly the conversation threatens to turn into one of those exchanges that question—first implicitly, then overtly—her competence as a mother.
“I wish,” says Vera. “If you’d lived with Rosie this week, you’d
want
to forget.” At such moments it’s important to remind Dave that he doesn’t live day in, day out with a ten-year-old, and Vera does; it’s why he has a brain left to remember with. “It’s at seven,” she says.
Dave says, “Talk to my social secretary. Norma!”
“Don’t bother her,” Vera says. “You can handle it.”
“Okay,” says Dave. “Want us to pick you up?”
“No thanks,” she says. “I’m meeting Mavis, she’s coming for dinner later. It’s easier if we meet you there. Ten to seven?”
There’s a deep and—unless Vera’s imagining it—accusatory silence through which she can hear Dave wondering why she’s feeding Mavis and not them. It’s like this whenever he hears she’s having someone over—like jealousy, but more primitive, as if he’s accusing her of wasting family food.
“
Quarter
to,” he says. “That is, if we want to get seats.”
“All right, quarter to. See you then.”
“Where you running?” he says. “Don’t you want to talk to your mother?”
“Sure,” Vera says disconsolately; Norma likes news, and she has none. Just then she hears Kenny’s knock—
Jumpin’ Jack Flash it’s a gas gas gas
—on the door. “Just a minute!” she calls.
“Who’s there?” says Dave.
“Kenny,” she says. “From downstairs.”
“You’re kidding,” says Dave. “I didn’t know the
feigelach
got up so early Sunday morning.” It’s the first indication he’s ever given of knowing it’s an uncivilized hour.
“Paper boy!” Kenny sings out. “Don’t mind me! Just keep on keepin’ on!”
But why should she? It’s the perfect excuse to get off the phone. “Got to go,” she says. “Tell her I’ll see her tonight.”
When she opens the door, Kenny’s already gone. On the doorstep is a Sunday
Times
, a
News
, and a bag of croissants. Vera wants to run downstairs and tell Kenny how much she treasures him, then decides against it. For one thing, Kenny’s so anxious for her to find love, he’ll just be disappointed to learn that the reason she was slow in answering the door was not that she was in bed with a lover but on the phone with her Dad. For another, he and Dick are probably getting ready to go out, and that’s when their arguments frequently start.
Vera picks up the papers, loving their weight, their smooth, unviolated quality, the sharp newsprint smell. Saving the
Times
for later, she steals a glance at the
News
’s front page.
BOMBS BLAST BEIRUT
. It’s too reminiscent of
This Week
, worse for being true. She can never read the comics or
Parade
; today’s entertainment page offers listings for Kung Fu movies in Brooklyn neighborhoods where not even Vera will go. Aware of the incongruity of munching croissants while trying to decide if a fifty-cent coupon is reason enough to buy a new brand of fish stick, she’s trying to remember if Rosie even eats fish these days when out of the coupon section falls a glossy invitation to her local Belmontbooks, where this very afternoon Karen Karl will be here direct from L.A. to autograph her new bestseller,
I Predict: How Seeing the Future Can Help You Live in the Now
.
Last week this might have seemed a coincidence worth paying attention to: just yesterday she’d read six months of Karen Karl’s columns and now here she is. But after all that’s happened, it just seems like daily life. A week ago she wouldn’t have crossed the street to see Karen Karl, and now she’s planning a route that will take her past Belmontbooks on her way to pick up Rosie.
God alone knows why. Curiosity, certainly, and beyond that—though Vera would never admit it—the possibility that Karen Karl will say something useful or even applicable. Applicable to what? What scares Vera is the suspicion that she’s becoming one of those poor souls who’ll go anywhere for help, even to Karen Karl. More likely her dropping by the book-signing is simply one way of getting through a day on which she’s got nothing much else to do but pick up Rosalie and cook dinner for Mavis Biretta. There, then, that’s it. The lift she’s getting is the one she remembers from Sundays when—faced with the prospect of a day alone with little Rosie—she’d see in the paper some mention of a clown or puppet show, a charity street fair, anything to take them out into the world of other lives. Oh, thank heaven. This day can be survived.
The book-signing is at the back of the store, but Vera sees it from the street, just as she’s heard you can see Chartres or Mont St. Michel—except that what she sees is not a cathedral spire directing her spirit toward heaven, but rather the black tip of Karen Karl’s witch’s hat. The aisles are lined with men with the shifty faces of perverts, the kind who waits till you pick up a book on Mexican cooking or Billie Holiday, say, then presses against the shelves and slides his penis into the empty space. They can’t all be perverts, there are too many; and soon Vera realizes they’re just husbands, checking to see if their wives are done chatting with Karen Karl. Karen Karl’s crowd is nearly all female, all in fact except three huge boys whose identical, lumpish noses, bad skin, and fishnet T-shirts proclaim them to be brothers, possibly even triplets.
Karen Karl looks as she did on TV: same round face, blond Dutch-boy hair, same long, pointy sleeves and tenty black chiffon. Where in the world does she shop? You can’t just pick two-hundred-pound-witches’ gowns off the rack. She’s standing on a platform behind stacks of books with shiny black jackets, white lettering, and a spray of multicolored stars like the ones on her hat.
Flanking her are two young men in horn-rimmed glasses, pressed jeans, rolled shirtsleeves. One of them takes the books that people hand up and gives them to Karen Karl to sign. The other passes them back. When they’re not doing that, they stand with their legs apart, arms folded, glaring into the middle distance like Secret-Service agents. In contrast, Karen Karl seems freakishly animated. The two-foot-long gold fountain pen she’s brandishing like Cinderella’s fairy godmother keeps almost cracking them in the face.
“When’s your birthday?” she’s asking a skinny old lady in tight stretch jeans and a beehive hairdo. “Not the year, now,” she warns coyly. “Just the day and month.”
The old lady mumbles something and Karen Karl calls out, “Sagittarius! It’s your year!” She waves her magic wand for order. “Okay. Let’s say you get up tomorrow and open your paper and your horoscope says, ‘Sagittarius: Don’t be surprised if loved ones seem short tempered. Drive carefully and watch for falling masonry.’ What are you gonna do?”
“Go back to bed,” says the old lady.
“Abso-goshdarn-lutely!” says Karen Karl. “Pull those blankets over your head. Now let’s say you open the paper and it says, ‘Sagittarius: An old problem will be settled. Romance in the air. Don’t overlook new chance for fame and fortune.’ What then? You’re gonna feel like a world-beater, right?”
The old woman draws herself up and pats her hair and says, “Right.” Then one of those boys in the fishnet shirts raises his fist and says, “Way to go, Mom!”
“Is that your son?” asks Karen Karl.
“They’re all three my boys,” says the woman. Everyone applauds motherhood, and even Vera feels warmed, as if the tightness of the woman’s jeans is a statement of faith in the future.
“Say it again, son,” orders Karen Karl.
“Way to go, Mom,” he says, no longer sounding convinced.
“That’s what I’m talking about in my book,” says Karen Karl. “Positive Energy Potential. P-E-P. Pep!” As she punches the air for emphasis, her sleeve falls back, revealing an armful of digital watches set, Vera imagines, to tell the time on other planets or, at the very least, in L.A.
Karen Karl goes back to asking names and signing as fan after fan approaches with such awe and reverence they could be touching a god or the fingerbone of a saint. When they reach out, they actually pale a little, as if bracing themselves to hear their fortunes told on the spot. Vera’s so moved by these women and their questions, she suddenly wants to ask Karen Karl something, too. Perhaps she should introduce herself, one professional to another, saying, “My paper carries your column.” But she can’t stop thinking of that scene in
Wise Blood
when Enoch Emory goes up to Gonga, the man in the gorilla suit who’s shaking children’s hands in front of a theater, and Enoch is so overcome with feeling he confesses his life story and all his deepest hopes, and Gonga says, “You go to hell.”
Just for something to focus on, Vera lifts a book from the stack and gets as far as the title page when one of the owlish boys snatches it from her hands. “What’s your name, Sweetie?” Karen Karl asks, and Vera’s horrified to hear herself whispering. Karen Karl scribbles a few words and motions for Vera to follow her book down the line but Vera just stands there. She’s searching for the tiny eyes in that wide face, and as soon as she finds them, she says, “Do you believe in coincidence?”
“Now what do you mean by that?” The wariness in Karen Karl’s voice moves Vera all over again; it’s the voice of a not-very-bright child going stiff when the smarter kids tell riddles. A dozen answers swim through Vera’s head, but all seem way too complicated, and finally the best she can do is, “Yesterday I read your column—really read it—for the first time. Then I read every one—back through the last six months. Then today I pick up the paper. And now you’re here!”
Karen Karl stiffens again, but the fervor of Vera’s conversion—six months of columns at once!—seems to mollify her. She rubs her eyes with the heels of her palms. How tired she looks. Then she waves her wand and says, “Let’s put it like this. It’s all in the stars, and we earthlings don’t know the teensiest bit about it. What we call coincidence may be two distant planets crossing the plane of our orbit. I don’t care
what
you believe—the big bang or the little bang or God created it all in seven days. Whether you think the universe stops at a certain point and there’s something else beyond it, or that it never stops but just goes on and on…Believe any of that and you can believe
anything
. Compared to that, your reading my column and my showing up here today is chickenfeed!”