In Search of Love and Beauty (24 page)

She had other moments very different from these and yet an extension of them. This was when she was by herself up in the attic. Hours passed, and she really couldn't have said
what she was thinking, if anything. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, her eyes fixed on the landscape outside though usually without seeing it. If anyone came in, she often failed to notice. She felt reluctant to move, as if in moving she might be displacing, disturbing something. There was a peculiar sensation of being attentive and waiting and yet at the same time having already received what she was waiting for. The feeling in her heart was the same she experienced in Mark's presence: a fullness—as of a very full cup—which came to the point of being a physical sensation. That was why she was afraid of moving: as if she really did hold such a cup in danger of overflowing and spilling some drops of its precious contents.

III

O
ne day Louise had a call from a young man whom she didn't know. He said he was speaking from Regi's apartment and would it be convenient for her to come over? No, no emergency, he said to Louise's anxious inquiry—but he hesitated somewhat, so she realized she had better get herself over there as fast as she could. And fortunately Louise, though now in her eighties, could still move fast. Her hat askew, her coat flying open, her handbag bulging with spare glasses and wrong keys, she arrived at Regi's Park Avenue apartment house. All the way there she kept muttering to herself: “I thought she was in Florida”—she said it over and over. She tried to remember when she had last seen Regi: no, Regi hadn't come to this year's birthday party (the eighty-fourth) nor the one before nor the one before that. It must be three years, four years, five—Louise muttered and muttered—the years were like the days now, both infinitely short and infinitely long as they shaded off into the nights and slipped into a big black hole and were forgotten. How luminous the
past was by comparison, how each figure there glowed and moved and was alive, vibrant, real.

“I thought she was in Florida,” Louise muttered to the doorman at Regi's apartment house, and again to the elevator man who took her up. She didn't know them—she had been coming to this building for over fifty years and had been known by name to every doorman who had ever worked there; but the ones today, though old men themselves, were new to her.

And, “I thought she was in Florida,” she repeated to the stranger who opened Regi's door—she didn't look at but only past him to see where was Regi. What was wrong? Was something wrong?

“Who is it, why are you opening the door, what have I told you a hundred thousand times?”

That was Regi, all right. Louise followed the voice and found her in her bedroom, sitting in the middle of the bed in her fur coat. “Oh, it's you,” Regi said. “Where have you been, keeping me waiting like this?”

“But I thought you were in Florida!”

“Ridiculous,” Regi said.

Yes, it was Regi—and yet there was something strange. Louise looked around her at Regi's familiar bedroom with the white bed shaped like a shell and curling around her pink eiderdown (like a vagina, Leo used to say). The place was dusty, and the floors had lost their shine. In the past, Regi had been fanatical, firing maid after maid for not looking after her floors properly; but now the apartment lay unused for months and even years at a time, so its air of neglect was to be expected. The blinds were down, but that wasn't strange either because Regi never had liked strong light. As for the smell in her bedroom, the cloud of stale perfumes—it was the ambience of her latter years, as of a shuttered, shut-up beauty salon: and yet, piercing through it, there
was
something else—what was it? A strange smell, acrid, sweetish, foul.

The young man had followed Louise, and seeing him, Regi cried out: “Who's that—why are you letting people in?”

“It's me,” he said. “Remember me?”

“It's Ralph,” Louise said. He looked at her strangely, so she asked, “Aren't you Ralph?” “No, I'm Eric,” he said. And then Louise remembered—Ralph had been more than twenty years ago.

“She calls me Ralph too sometimes,” Eric said. “Or Billie. Or Chuck. She gets mixed up.”

“Naturally, anybody'd get mixed up with all these people running in and out,” Regi complained. To Louise she said: “There was an Eric. Erich, not Eric. We went out in a boat and he jumped in too late and got his leg in the water. When he pulled it out—ugh, ugh—it had all dirty filthy weedy things on it. On his white trousers. He
was
upset, his whole day was spoiled.” She chuckled.

“But why are you wearing your fur coat?” Louise said, but that made Regi hug it closer around herself.

“I told her,” Eric said. “I laid out all her pretty things I found—her nighties and robes—but she won't wear them. She says she's cold. Cold!” he exclaimed, for the heat was up so high that it was stifling in there; and then that
smell,
all mixed up with the heat.

Regi told him, “You can get my juice instead of hanging around here talking your head off. You have to watch them,” she told Louise when he had gone. “Come here, come closer, I have to tell you something.” Louise approached the bed, and Regi grabbed her and pulled her down to whisper in her ear: “He steals. He's after everything. Why do you think I have to wear my mink?”

Bent over Regi, Louise could look down into that mink and see that Regi had nothing on underneath; her spavined, breastless body was completely naked.

“Where's your jewelry?” Louise whispered back, her eyes on the door.

“I've hidden it. It's under my panties. He's been looking everywhere but he won't know to look there. In the third drawer, go and see. Count it.”

Louise opened the drawer. There were Regi's peach-colored, lace-trimmed panties and camisoles, and tumbled in among them, glittering amid the shiny, slippery silk, was a pirate's hoard of necklaces, bracelets, brooches, bangles, watches, pendants, rings. When she heard a noise, Louise quickly shut the drawer.

“I've been trying to get her to lock them up,” Eric said, “but every time I go near there she blows her top. She thinks I'm after them,” he said simply. “Go on, take your juice,” he told Regi. “You said you wanted it.”

“This is not my English Rose. I want my English Rose.”

“Oh, you've done it again!” he exclaimed. “I told you to tell me when you have to go.”

“It's cold,” Regi said. “It's wet.” She began to cry, and so did Louise.

Louise went to sit on a tubular chair in the living room with the white wolf rugs. Eric came and joined her there. When he found her crying, he was as apologetic as if it were all his fault. He said he had first met Regi about two weeks ago, in the dance studio where he worked. He thought she had come to dance, so he offered himself a few times, but it seemed she only wanted to sit and talk. That wasn't unusual—many of the ladies came there just for the company; it was only natural with no one home except the TV. Once he sat with her, Regi wouldn't let him go, and when he tried to, she held on to him so tight her nails dug into him. Well, he didn't mind, but there were other ladies waiting to dance and he was there on a job. Regi went on and on, she got involved in a long story about a ball she had been to with her friend Louise who had worn a white dress with a big yellow sunflower embroidered right on her bosom: no doubt to draw attention to it, Regi had commented. It all made good sense—until
he realized it had happened sixty-five years ago. And then suddenly, when he tried to disengage himself from her again, she threw a tantrum just like a little child, balling her fists and drumming her heels on the floor. He had no idea what to do, but fortunately Vivera, the owner of the studio, was there that night and he came over straightaway and knew what it was all about. He even knew Regi—she used to come there regularly, though he hadn't seen her for a long time, maybe as long as ten years. Vivera had run this place for thirty years and he was a real gentleman, not only very nice in his manners but also in his feelings toward people. He told Eric to stay right where he was, and then he took Regi's handbag—it was amazing the way she trusted Vivera, just like he was her father—and he found her address in there and her keys, and he told Eric to take her on home. And because it was Vivera who said so, she went as good as gold, though once Eric had got her upstairs and was trying to make her go to bed so he could return to the studio and earn some bread, she locked them both in and chained the door.

“That was two weeks ago,” Eric told Louise.

“You mean you've been with her—you've been looking after her—for two weeks?”

Eric confessed that at first he didn't want to. He had managed to put her to bed, and then he got out as fast as he could and went back to the studio and danced with the customers. Vivera had asked him how he had got on and he said okay and Vivera said who's looking after her now and Eric said no one and went back to dancing with another lady, though Vivera raised his eyebrows right up into his bald head and said, “No one?” When the studio closed—around three in the morning, it was amazing the number of customers suffering from insomnia—Eric went back to his own place and lay in bed, and then he found he was thinking of Regi. He remembered the way she lifted up her poor little skinny arms so he could pull her frock off, and it was just like when he had
undressed his little sister to put her to bed when she was three and he seven (this was before they had been put in different foster homes); and Regi's panties were wet too, just like his sister's used to be, and when he reproached her she looked both guilty and sly. So next night when he was at the studio and Vivera asked him about Regi, he said, “I think I'll just stop by and see how she's doing,” and Vivera said, “Why don't you?” it being Monday anyway, which was always slow. But after that he went every day and even over the weekend, which was his busiest time, and it seemed like Regi was expecting him, like he had been coming there forever, and the first thing she always did was bawl him out for being late.

He had been hunting around in her old address books and he had called a number of people listed there before he got Louise. Some of the numbers were disconnected, and at those that weren't no one had ever heard of the people he asked for; twice it happened that when he asked for a name a woman shrieked, “My God, he passed away twenty years ago; who
are
you?” So he was very glad to find Louise still—and he caught himself but she took him up, “Yes, yes, I'm still here.”

Eric said, “She talks about you more than anyone: all the things you did together, she tells it like it was yesterday.” When Louise began to cry again, he turned his face away discreetly. “I can't always understand on account of she says it in German. She talks a lot in German,” he said, and indeed at that moment Regi called out in German, “Louise”—and she pronounced it in the German way—“
Luise! Da ist jemand hier—ich glaub ein Dieb! Komm schnell!
”

Later it was decided that they would try to get a German-speaking nurse. But when such a person was located—it was Mark who did all that, having had to take charge of all Regi's financial and other affairs—Regi took one look at her and said to throw her out immediately. She did the same with everyone else they brought. In fact, she became very suspicious
and wouldn't let them in without checking to see whether they had brought anyone. She put the chain on the door and peered through the peephole to make sure they were alone. She might be like a little child in many ways, but she was also strong in her will and cunning in getting it enforced.

Every day Louise took the bus across town and she bought food for Regi and cooked it for her and fed her and tried to clean her and keep her happy. But it was not easy—the harder Louise tried, the more discontented and demanding Regi became, so that Louise's exertions were both physically and emotionally exhausting to her. Mark knew he could not let her carry on this way. Unfortunately, Marietta was going through one of her bad times just then and was not sympathetic to the problem of Regi. It struck Mark that the older she got the less sympathetic Marietta was to any problems except her own. Perhaps because the latter were so overwhelming to her—so overwhelmed her—that she couldn't take in anything else: she who had wanted to take in everything! When Mark as much as mentioned Regi to her, she put her hands before her face and begged him not to. “There's nothing I can do,” she said. “Nothing anyone can do. She needs professional care. Leave me alone, Mark.” She added, as if this were an excuse: “I never could stand her, you know that.” It almost made him laugh—and yet at the same time he did excuse her. He put his arms around her and felt her shake with nerves; how different it was when he put his arms around Louise who, whatever happened to her, remained like some rooted old tree.

The only other person Regi would admit was Eric. She was always cross with him, but she did allow him to do things for her, of the most intimate nature. Mark had already tried to repay Eric for his kindness and services when there had been no one else, and he now approached him with the offer of a more permanent position with Regi. He went to seek him out at home and found him living in a neighborhood of grim
turn-of-the-century houses. These would have sunk into decay long ago if people desperate for living space hadn't shored them up: amid broken stoops, dirty gutters, and boarded-up windows, each tenant had tried to scratch out a nice home. Mark groped his way up a dank stone staircase and took a few wrong turnings in unlit corridors before reaching Eric's door; but then, when all the safety locks and bolts had been uncreaked from within, he found himself in a very cozy nest. Eric had painted each wall in a different color and put up large framed photographs of movie actresses of the sixties; he displayed a variety of artistic objects such as crystal ashtrays and silk flowers in a blue vase shaped like a shell; and concealed everything that wasn't artistic—like the old sofa and a couple of armchairs discarded generations since from more prosperous homes—by smothering it with cushions coverd in suede and fur.

Eric served tea with some ceremony in a flowered set, and when his preparations were complete, he settled himself to face Mark in a chair on the other side of the boarded-up fireplace. They were genteel and polite with each other. When Mark tried to thank Eric again for what he had done for Regi, Eric waved it aside: “You'd have done the same. Anyone would.” He poured tea through a strainer and smiled: “You get fond of the ladies you meet at Vivera's and they get fond of you. Too fond, some of them. They want you day and night then, they're never off the phone calling you. You can't blame them. I mean, they're
lonely
,” he said, pronouncing this word with deep personal feeling. “You should see them coming to the studio, sitting there on the chairs waiting to dance. While they still can dance: oh, I've seen some of them go down pretty fast. All the same, they can carry on long past their time—isn't it funny the way women are so tough? But then they start falling, or with some of them it's their minds going—it's always one or the other—and that's it. That's curtains—I shouldn't be talking so morbid,” he said,
giving himself a little shake and picking up the teapot to replenish Mark's cup. He put milk and sugar in for him too, and even stirred it like a good mother. “But sometimes you can't help having morbid thoughts. When you've seen what I have. I don't always go to the studio. Only to help out when I'm not working. I'm an actor,” he said, looking at Mark straight; and Mark nodded respectfully. “I really go there to help Vivera out. The way that man spends himself, it's just incredible. Can you believe it, seven days a week, every day till three
A.M.
Because they can't sleep, you see. And they're scared going home and no one there and not being able to sleep. So he has to keep open. ‘Eric,' he's said to me, and he's said it fifty times if he's said it once, ‘wouldn't it be great to close this place down and go to bed every night at ten?' But where would they go if there was no Vivera's? Another cup? Sure?” Eric slid down from the chair and sat on the woven rug before the fireplace. He put his arms around his knees and his back against the chair and said, “I'm comfy this way; I love it. I only wish I could have a real fire to look into and make my dreams.” He looked up at Mark and smiled an invitation to come and join him on the floor; but didn't mind at all when Mark remained where he was.