The Misfortunes of Others (5 page)

“Fabric? You’re going to do the curtains?”

“No. I’m going to lay the beautiful and, may I say, very expensive white muslin I got on the floor and use it as a drop cloth while I’m painting. Any more questions? Now, get the roll out of the car for me, there’s a good boy, and bring it upstairs. Get me an old shirt of yours, something nice and roomy—that shouldn’t be a problem, should it now?—and then vamoose. I’ll do the painting myself.”

“No, no, Weezy, you were just supposed to pick out the paint. I’ll do the room.”

“Thank you. Now do what I say, and then vamoose. I don’t let anybody else do my painting for me. It’s like coitus interruptus to buy the paint and not put it on the wall myself.”

Maya was angry about this. She stormed into the nursery. “Weezy, you’re crazy. I didn’t want you to have to do the painting and make the curtains. I just asked you to pick out the right color for Bernard.”

Weezy straightened up, paint dripping from the roller in her hand. Her wild frizzy red-yellow hair was tied back with a lacy scarf, and a child’s plastic barrettes, red and yellow and green, held back different tendrils which threatened to escape and curl onto her forehead. She had narrow jewel-green eyes and an intelligent horsey face which was illumined by her smile. She was wearing an old white shirt of Bernard’s, vastly big for her, which was rolled up to reveal her pale freckled forearms.

“Don’t be silly, sweetie.”

“I’m not being silly. I don’t want you to do this. Bernard can do the work. He’s happy to do it.”

“I’m a full-service decorator,” Weezy said, rolling the paint smoothly onto the wall with a practiced hand. “Curtains, walls, even furniture, we do it all.”

“Weezy!”

“Go away, you’re bothering me. Get out of here. You’re pregnant, you shouldn’t be smelling the paint anyway. Now, what do you think of the color?”

Maya looked around the room, seeing it for the first time. She smiled slowly.

“Oh, Weezy, it’s … it’s perfect. Like a dream.”

“It’s going to take two coats to cover those dark colors Bernard so obligingly put up here.”

The wall Weezy had been working on was a pale creamy color with a suggestion of gold overtones in it. Awash in the afternoon sun, that part of the room glowed like a ripe juicy peach.

“Nice, isn’t it? Of course it is. It’s perfect for your dream child. Now go away and lie down or whatever you feel like doing. And keep Bernard away from here, I’m still not talking to him.”

After a few days, having finished the walls, Weezy relented enough towards Bernard to order him to strip the linoleum off the floor.

“I don’t do that kind of work,” she announced.

“I’m happy to do it.”

“I don’t see why. It’s boring and difficult.”

“Why should it be different from the rest of my life?”

Weezy gazed at him in astonishment. “How can you say that? With your firstborn on the way?”

“Maya says it doesn’t seem real.”

“That’s because she’s not showing yet. She’s always been sticks and bones, that girl, ever since she was little. Wait till she gets nice and round, and the baby starts to move. Then she’ll believe it.”

Bernard perked up at this, and went away to change into his work clothes.

For the next two days they worked happily side by side, Weezy in the hallway cutting fabric and sewing on the old Singer machine that had been stored away in the attic, and Bernard on his hands and knees ripping up the floor. When the tiles were gone, he laboriously sanded, stained and finally oiled and waxed the oak planks that were revealed underneath. When he was finished, the floor glowed a honey-gold that complemented the walls perfectly.

Weezy was approving. “Very nice. Excellent work, sweetie. Now take a breather, and we’ll hang up the curtains. Look at these beautiful golden rods I picked up for a song at
the thrift store. Take down those old curtains and rods, I can’t bear to look at them one more second.”

They hung the stiff white curtains which Weezy had made, and Bernard swept up the room. Afterwards they stood together in the doorway for a long time.

Bernard put his arm around Weezy and kissed the top of her head, an unaccustomed display of affection for him. “It’s beautiful.”

“Of course it is.” Weezy’s eyes were aglow. “It’s divine. Almost good enough for your and Maya’s baby.”

“Let’s go get her.”

“Let’s.”

Maya and Snooky were dumbstruck when shown the results of their work. Maya became quite weepy over it.

“It’s … it’s so beautiful!”

“Hormones,” said Snooky, patting her shoulder. “Calm yourself.”

“It’s just the way I dreamed it would be,” said Maya, sniveling into a tissue.

“Remain calm. It’s a room, Missy. It’s not the Sistine Chapel.”

“It’s not a room. It’s … it’s my baby’s nursery!”

Eventually she had to be led away protectively by Bernard.

“Perhaps you did too good a job,” said Snooky, lounging in the doorway.

“She’s pregnant. She’s allowed to cry as much as she wants.”

Snooky looked around in appreciation. “It
is
perfect.”

“I know.”

The muslin curtains swayed in a breeze which carried in the sweet smell of the pines. Snooky took Weezy’s hand.

“Perfect,” he said, kissing it.

Downstairs in the kitchen Snooky made a cup of brown rice tea and handed it to Weezy on a saucer with a shortbread cookie. Weezy gazed into the murky depths doubtfully.

“What is this shit?”

“Genmai-cha. Brown rice tea. Japanese. I thought artists liked that kind of stuff.”

“Don’t you have any real coffee?”

While he made a pot of coffee, Weezy sat back in her chair and looked around the kitchen with satisfaction on her face. “Beautiful room. Look at the dimensions. It looks like the golden proportion, honestly.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“The golden proportion, sweetie. The dimensions that look best to the eye. Didn’t Maya send you to college?”

“Nobody seems to be sure. She asked me that herself the other day.”

“You went in body, not in soul.” Weezy chuckled softly to herself. “I mean that with all possible double entendres. I’m sure the women on campus will attest to it.”

“Mind like a sewer. That’s why you’ve always been my favorite among Maya’s friends.”

“We’re two old reprobates, you and me.”

“It’s too bad you don’t go for younger men.”

“Younger men, perhaps,” Weezy said, twirling a strand of red hair thoughtfully around her finger. “Children, no. Boys I’ve known since they were in diapers, no.”

“A shame.”

“You have to draw the line somewhere,” she said, with what seemed like real regret. She accepted a cup of coffee gratefully and inhaled its aroma with a snort of delight. “Delicious. Nothing like real coffee. I assume this isn’t the wimpy decaf variety?”

“No. Bernard drinks real coffee.”

“Bernard is a real man.” She drank deeply from the cup. “How Maya managed to unearth him when Bernard never meets or talks to anybody, I’ll never understand. So how have you been, Arthur?”

“I insist—I must insist that you not use my real name, Louise. So few people know it, and I don’t want the news to get around. I’ve been fine. I flew in from the islands when I heard about Maya’s pregnancy.”

“Don’t be coy with me, Arthur. Don’t try to impress me. I knew you when your only language was “dah dah” and you spat up three times a day.”

“Still do.”

“I’m sure. What’s this feeble attempt to impress me with a reference to the islands? Which island? Or were you simultaneously on all of them?”

“I was on St. Martin. We also took a trip to a volcanic island called Saba.”

“Which side were you on?”

“Which side of what?”

“Of St. Martin, you moron. The French or the Dutch?”

“Oh. The French side. I was staying with some friends there.”

“I was on St. Martin years and years ago,” Weezy said dreamily. “Lovely place. The St. Tropez Hotel. That little fresh-air market in Marigot. Conch stew under the stars.”

“I was telling Maya about conch stew.”

“I ate it every night. I couldn’t get enough of it. Of course, I was young then.” Weezy sighed and crunched into her shortbread wafer. “I’m sure now it would constipate me.”

“You’re hardly old.” Both Maya and Weezy were in their early thirties.

“Old enough,” Weezy said gloomily. “Old enough. Old enough to have avoided all the good relationships, and to have to eventually settle for something lousy or for nothing at all.”

“Is that how it is?”

Weezy breathed heavily into her coffee cup. The steam rose luxuriantly around her face, dewing her forehead and frizzing her hair even more. “There’s nobody, Snooky. There are no decent men.”

“I’m a decent man.”

“God, you’re self-centered. What is this? Are we discussing you or me?”

“One day, Weezy, you’re going to come to your senses. You’ll turn around, and there I’ll be, waiting for you.”

“What a horrific thought,” she said. “Promise?”

“I promise.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll be married, just like they all are when they reach my age. You’ll marry some little chickie.”

“I hesitate to correct you, Weezy, but I’m never going to reach your age. I’m always going to be younger than you.”

“Don’t try to cheer me up. You’ll marry some little chickadoo and go off to live somewhere exotic, like northern New Jersey.”

“Why northern New Jersey?”

“Her family will come from there.”

“A grim prospect,” said Snooky. “Let me just clear up one point. Am I fated to marry a little chickie or a little chickadoo?”

Weezy exhaled into her coffee. “They all do. They all go off and marry some younger woman. You give them the best years of your life, and then they leave you and end up with somebody else.”

“Who is this guy?”

“Oh, nobody.” Weezy pushed her cup away. “Nobody. A man. One of the great race of men. As childish and self-centered and piggish as all the rest.”

“What was his name?”

“Harold.”

“Well, you should have known better, then.”

“What’s wrong with the name Harold?”

“Nothing, if you’re an early Anglo-Saxon king. Otherwise, come on.”

“True,” said Weezy. This seemed to cheer her up. “True. Perhaps you’re right. I should have known.”

“Harold left you for a chickie?”

“Yes. Yes, he did.” Weezy looked despondent. “It’s too painful, Snooky. Too fresh. I can’t talk about it.”

“Try.”

“Okay.” The chair squeaked as she sat back in it. She took off one of her scarves, a filmy beige chiffon, and looped it around her head several times. “He was a doctor.”

“Oh, God.”

“I met him in the hospital.”

“Why were you in the hospital?”

“Visiting a friend who had just given birth to the most adorable little girl you ever saw. Peaches and cream complexion, not at all like the scrawny red apelike things you usually see in photos. An angelic infant. Lay in her mother’s arms and looked around peacefully while we visited.”

“Sounds drugged.”

“Oh, no, no, sweetie, you don’t know my friend. No drugs. Nothing like that. Nothing at all, not even Demerol. Forty-two hours of natural labor.”

“How did your friend look?”

“Radiant.”

“I’m quite sure that’s not true.”

“All right. Terrible. But the infant was gorgeous. Wasn’t I supposed to be telling you about Harold?”

“Go on.”

“Harold was her baby’s pediatrician. Wouldn’t you think that would make him a nice person? A baby doctor.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“He came in to check out Alissa while I was there. I don’t know why all newborn girls seem to be named Alissa or Elissa or Elyssa, you know, with a
y
, these days,” Weezy said fretfully. “It seems ridiculous.”

“They should all be named Louise.”

“Yes, and the boys should all be named Arthur. Anyway, he came in and looked the baby over, and talked to my friend, and somehow we got to talking, and after the visit was over he walked me to my car and asked me out. That was the beginning of the end.”

“What did Harold look like?”

“A tall, dashing person. The kind I like. Dark hair, handsome features, a wonderful nose.”