It’s okay, Mambo! she said, pulling away. No need to go bananas!
I watched her run away, sans Band-Aid, watched the glimmering Hudson, and awaited my share of wisdom. These pages were no gift to Esther. To invert Dante’s poetics of praise, Romei had spared her nothing — he’d stripped her bare, exposed her as an hysterical, nymphomaniacal, cross-dressing hypochondriac. He dug his penna into her pain — her tears now the ink that filled his pen — and to what end? So he could play the martyr? What purpose could he have but injury? The modern meaning of libello, Dante’s “little book,” was libel. How could she bear to read this defamation? I felt a traitor’s desire to soften the language, to protect Esther from Romei’s vituperation. But I couldn’t. Who was I? The translator. I was no one.
38. ALWAYS WE RETURN TO DANTE
The next morning I awoke late. A note from Ahmad advised me that Andi was upstairs at Pammy’s. Again? Surely it was Pammy’s turn to come here, but I wouldn’t insist. Pammy was what Ahmad liked to call an expert: spinach makes you fat, childhood is incomplete without a parrot. My adulthood was complete without Pammy.
I visited the Flying Girl, who was in good form, flying over the head of the artist’s crazy mother. What was Romei doing? I asked. Did he hate his wife? What was his game? Would Ahmad move to Connecticut? What would Andi and I do then?
You’re pondering imponderables, the Flying Girl said. Go get lunch.
I got a hot dog from Cohn’s Cones’ beach menu, decided to take it for a walk — up Broadway, past Abdul’s, past the Eight Bar, then west to Riverside Drive, where I stopped at the Skating Park to watch mad young men turn upside down on their boards. I was heading to Grant’s Tomb, apparently, where Ahmad and I had walked every day when I was pregnant, talking about the future — how the world would begin again when she was born. We didn’t talk about the future these days; we didn’t talk about much of anything.
I was nearly at the Tomb when my phone rang.
Who is the child’s father? Romei asked. He didn’t say hello.
I beg your pardon?
Andray-a. Nice photograph, but who is the father?
You are unbelievable! I said. My daughter’s father is none of your business!
He is Ahmad from this last story you are writing? I like this story!
He was referring to “Domino,” the story about Jonah as a boy, the story that made Ahmad’s face go white, that made Jeanette stop talking to me.
Oh, I said. Well, thank you. But, no. Ahmad isn’t her father.
I found a bench facing the Hudson and sat down. In front of me, industrious, red-faced people jogged or roller-bladed along the Riverside Park path.
She looks like a good girl, Romei said, writing like her mother.
Yes, I admitted, looking for my MOM! handkerchief. She’s writing a story. About a boy at school.
She is loving this boy?
The thought made me laugh: like Dante loving Beatrice at her age. Was it so impossible?
She empathizes with him. He’s had a hard life. She confuses herself with him, maybe.
She is also having the hard life?
She thinks so … But that’s a long story.
I felt a strange urge to share with Romei the story of Connecticut, of Mirabella and Jonah, and all our hurts — he was so avuncular! Except he wasn’t, not really.
You too, maybe, are writing a story?
I am not writing a story. I’m working, like I said. Just working.
The muse is not with you? There is no fidanzato who inspire you?
I laughed and wiped Indian-summer sweat from my neck and brow.
Men may amuse me, I said, but they do not muse me.
This I cannot believe!
“Domino” was a bear, I said. The last story I ever wrote. I’ll probably never write again.
A bare? You mean you hide nothing?
Bear, orso! I mean it was difficult. But, yes, it was also rather bare.
You do hide, if you refuse to be with a man.
You have too little knowledge of my life to make that judgment with, I said, too flustered to take care with my prepositions.
I mean you in the impersonal sense of one. This is the American way, no?
You don’t mean you in the impersonal sense, but I forgive you. Besides, if I hide, it’s no more than Dante does.
Always we return to Dante when we want to understand our life! Romei said.
Is that we in the royal we sense, the you-and-me we, or the impersonal we?
Wee, wee, wee! the poet cried. All the way home! This is American, no? A game played with the children’s feet?
Maybe it was Indian summer or the hotdog napkin still in my hand — a memory struck me, of little Shira on the beach, skin roasting, sodas warming nearby, bathing suit sticking like a reassuring second skin. Screaming with glee as someone, her mother, wee-wee-weed up her fat little thigh, little Shira laughing till she wee-wee-weed in reply. And my mother, smiling a sun-kissed smile, calling me babydoll and, caking my legs with sand, picking me up and running me to the sea. I couldn’t have been more than two. Baby Shira laughing with her mother? Was it possible?
Yes, Romei said, after a pause that seemed to respect my silence. Dante is fearful, this is true. But he has a muse. Beatrice motivate him, she inspire him.
He was referring to my fax of that morning.
Beatrice cause Dante to change, he continued. Because of her, he choose change.
He changes his aesthetics, I said. First he writes about romantic anguish, then he writes poems of praise. Is that change? At the end of the book he decides to write not just lyric poems but narrative. What kind of change is that? Who cares?
Is still change, Romei said, and he sounded grumpy about it.
We were going to have to agree to disagree.
You’ve written a bare tale about your muse, I said. Would you tell me why?
Bear, meaning difficult?
Meaning not hidden.
I tell you already, I hold no interest in poetics.
What are you interested in? This story is no gift to Esther.
You are wrong. This is the biggest gift I give my Esther. You will see. Send me when you can. Goodbye.
Wait! I have questions!
You were at Trixie’s! You heard me read! Why didn’t you tell me?
I think this is all. Goodbye!
Infuriating man!
•
Ahmad was in his studio; Andi was back early from Pammy’s. Pammy, it turned out, needed “alone time.”
You guys fight? I asked.
No. They’d disagreed about how to punish Tink. Andi said he should sit quietly and think about what he’d done; Pammy thought he needed a spanking. Andi said spanking was uncivilized. Which was when Pammy slammed the door and said she needed alone time.
Does Pammy’s mother know you left? I asked.
She gave me an apple.
You upset?
About what? she asked.
39. GOOD ON PAPER
I was awakened the next morning by the telephone. Someone get that, I thought, then realized it was my cell, Brahms’s “Lullaby.” Andi had been at my ringer again.