“Anything wrong?” Oreo asked.
The woman seemed to be agonizing over a grave decision. When, presumably, she had made up her mind, she was friendlier than she had been since Oreo’s arrival. “You must stay and have some lunch with me, my dear. Can you do that?”
“I’d love to,” Oreo lied. How was she going to fix lunch with one hand in the air? “Is there anything you’d like to tell me about the reading? Anything special?”
The woman dismissed this possibility with a peremptory flick of the left hand. “No, no, the usual, I am afraid. You will marry a basketball player at twenty-one, have three children — two boys and a girl — and live happily ever after.”
Oreo knew all this was a stone lie. With her hand? Amaze the Amazons, perhaps — but live happily ever after with some jive guard and three crumb snatchers? Foul!
While Oreo was fuming, the door opened and two little boys, about six and seven, came in. Their identical cream-colored shirts and navy-blue caps, ties, and short pants suggested a school uniform or a mother with a twin fetish. They had latchkeys on chains around their necks and were carrying small plaid suitcases. The boys stood in front of the door, which they had not closed completely, rubbing what looked like black track shoes against the pitiful calves of their spindly legs and wrinkling their navy-blue knee socks, which they then hiked while keeping their eyes on Mrs. Schwartz and Oreo. They looked like frightened voles. Their large gold-brown lemur eyes seemed to be searching out escape routes.
“Close the door,” said Mrs. Schwartz. “If I have told you once, I have told you thirty-two and five-eighths times.”
The little things that give a foreigner away, thought Oreo. She probably says “Vanzetti and Sacco” too.
Reluctantly, the older of the two did as he was told. He jiggled the knob a few times as if to make sure he was not locked in.
“Come here and meet our visitor,” Mrs. Schwartz commanded.
The children edged forward, eyes looming.
“Marvin, Edgar, say hello to Miss Christie.”
“Anna,” Oreo said.
“No — children should show respect for their elders,” Mrs. Schwartz insisted.
The children aspirated almost inaudible hellos. Oreo gave them the expected pat on their caps, but they did not expect it and shied away.
“Go put your toys away,” Mrs. Schwartz directed.
“So that’s what’s in those suitcases,” said Oreo.
The woman looked at her strangely. “The suitcase is the toy. Miss Christie.”
“Of course,” Oreo quickly amended.
“It is what they like to play with,” she said defensively.
“Certainly,” said Oreo. What would those little voles have in their suitcase toys? Roadmap toys, spare-clothing toys, K-ration toys, Dr. Scholl’s toys?
“And take off those silly track shoes. They are ruining the floor,” Mrs. Schwartz said as the boys clattered into their room.
For the first time, Oreo noticed that the parquet swath from the front door to the children’s room did bear a certain resemblance to Cobb’s Creek Golf Links. Either that or the floor had never recovered from a bad case of a pox on this house.
“They don’t look much like you,” Oreo said, trying to hide the fact that it was a compliment to Mrs. Schwartz.
The woman obviously divined the flattery. She inclined her head in acknowledgment. “They are adopted. My own children… died. I felt the loss keenly and adopted these children. . after.”
She confided to Oreo that her first husband had been somewhat frivolous. His woolly-headed schemes had gotten him fleeced on several occasions. But their children had been dear to them both, their loss almost unbearable. To assuage her pain, she adopted the first children who came along — much to her regret. She was very disappointed in them. They were afraid of slime mold. (“They remind me of a certain animal I used to see when I was a child,” she said. “I don’t know the English word for it.” Oreo smiled and said, “Vole.”) Now all she wanted was children of her own loins. One of the things she was experimenting with was a pill that put the pleasure back into parturition. Mrs. Schwartz gestured to her equipment — occult and natural. “In this age of scientific miracles, man should no longer have to undergo the pain of childbirth,” she said determinedly. She shook her head as though to clear it of further illogic. “But why am I boring you with my life story? I must fix that lunch I promised you.”
She gave Oreo a magazine to read — to keep her away from the flasks and vials, Oreo guessed. No matter. Oreo was soon engrossed in “Burp: The Course of Smiling Among Groups of Israeli Infants in the First Eighteen Months of Life,” the cover story in Pitfalls of Gynecology.
Mrs. Schwartz came back a few minutes later, not lighting her way with her invisible torch and balancing a tray of shrimp, saltines, lemon wedges, and water cress. As she was sliding the tray onto the coffee table in front of the couch, a man walked in. Oreo knew immediately that he was her father.
He was not exactly ugly (a litotes). He was in his early forties, had curly, almost kinky hair (which Oreo knew had been gray since his late teens), noble-savage nose and cheekbones, long cheek creases that would become dimples when he smiled, and the smug, God-favored lips of a covenant David (2 Samuel 7):
If he had seen Oreo, he made no sign. He went straight into a room opposite the children’s.
Mrs. Schwartz excused herself and followed him. In a few moments, Oreo heard low, angry voices coming from the room. The children opened their bedroom door a crack, showing four eyes with a frightened lemur-shine, then closed it hastily. She tried to make out what the voices were saying, but all she could distinguish was the cadence of accusation and recrimination. “Where were you all night?” she imagined Mrs. Schwartz saying. “None of your beeswax,” her father would answer. “I won’t have you lusting after the harlots of Harlem,” she would counter. “Who can shtup a woman who has one arm in the air all the time?” he would say. “It makes me think you’re trying to tell me something.”
Oreo did not touch the shrimp, although her mouth was watering. Might as well win some brownie points for politeness, she calculated.
A minute later, the door to the chambre de combat burst open and the Schwartzes came out. “I will not have that man coming here and frightening the children,” said Mrs. Schwartz.
“So take the kids for a run in the park, the way you always do,” Samuel said sarcastically.
“Someone from the landlord is here,” Mrs. Schwartz said with a warning edge on her voice.
Oreo was ready. She took the mezuzah from her clĕvice and let it drop outside her dress. She gestured with it rather obviously as she said, “I would like to discuss the plan with your husband, Mrs. Schwartz. Mr. Jenkins wants to make sure the members of each family unit are in agreement.”
Samuel’s eyes unfocused at the sight of the waggling mezuzah. He could have been doing a take for a hypnosis scene in a B movie. Trouper that he was, he recovered himself immediately. “Take Marvin and Edgar out. Dominic will be here any minute. I’ll see Miss…”
“Christie, Anna,” Oreo said. Her father smiled what she interpreted as a chip-off-the-old-block recognition smile. Probably thinking of his lousy clues, she would bet.
“Yes, I’ll see Miss Christie out, Mildred.”
Without another word, Mrs. Schwartz turned on her heel and knocked on the door of the boys’ room. Inclining her head, she motioned them out. They scurried past her, clutching their little suitcases. Clack — r-i-i-p, clack — r-i-i-p went their track shoes as they passed the par 3 section of the parquet. Mrs. Schwartz walked behind them. At the door she gave Samuel a look Oreo couldn’t define, then said, “Don’t forget to have your lunch. Miss Christie.”