Twice Told Tales (16 page)

Myrna got the message. Only a few minutes before, she and Krasner had been kicking around the work situation, present and future, gloom and doom. Then, in a few swift taciturn Krasner-like images he had sketched out Operation Tulip. The word would be spread about the kid in the hat check room. People would tell each other. It would give curious New Yorkers and naive out-of-towners a rooting interest in coming—like a mascot on a football team. He didn’t actually say all this because there was no appropriate quotation in blank verse for him to use, but Myrna got the idea.

“You’re crazy,” she said.

“Never mind,” Krasner said. “I know a hawk from a halvah when the wind is North.”

“I thought you were so worried about Captain Kolevitch finding out.”

“One step at a time.”

“You’re crazy,” Myrna said. “You can’t use a kid to increase business.”

Krasner didn’t think much of this. “All grown-ups use kids for something. See Shaw—preface to
Misalliance.
”

Myrna had turned away in confusion. Now she told Tulip, “You shouldn’t say things you don’t understand.”

Scornfully, Tulip said, “
Das Vedanya
means ‘good-bye.’ In Russian. Mr. Blatas says a child can learn to speak a lot of languages.”

Myrna shut up.

Krasner counted the house.

Then the real craziness began.

Katherine Eudemie came to the restaurant, without Tulip, looking for Myrna, who was menstruating at the time and depressed. Always she had been sad at that time of the month. Later, when the two women were walking in Central Park, Myrna confided that she’d heard women were sad at that time of the month because they were mourning the loss of the birth possibility and Katherine said “Crap”—(like many of her women friends she liked to talk tough even though none of the men they liked talked that way.) “I never believed that stuff. That’s only literature.”

“I would have thought biology,” Myrna said. “But I never took either.” That was when Katherine Eudemie made the offer of payment. “No, no, don’t look so horrified. It’s not for helping to take care of Tulip. That would be like paying you for babysitting. You really
care
about Tulip. No, this is a genuine bribe.”

“For what?”

“If Mr. Eudemie asks about Tulip spending a lot of time with you at the RR, just say—well, you can say the truth—that I’ve given you money for that. That it’s not accidental or strange or anything.”

Myrna laughed. They crushed dry leaves underfoot as they turned south back toward the park exit. It was chilly. Myrna’s mind was a jumble. Depression was gone—so much for menstruation mythology. She decided not to tell Katherine Eudemie that her husband knew all about it, that he was now an accomplice, having added a suitcase full of Tulip’s clothes to the conspiracy.

She said: “Here’s what I’ll do. If I take your money I won’t say anything. But if I don’t—and I won’t—I’ll be glad to tell your husband you
are
paying me to take care of Tulip. Okay?” Such are the deals made by everyday craziness. Katherine recognized the logic and instantly accepted it.

The two women strolled through the September light, still a sort of straight sunshine, not yet the slanting light of winter.

“What do you imagine is actually happening?” Katherine Eudemie asked.

“Oh, I’m beyond imagining,” Myrna said. “I’m just grateful for Tulip.”

“Do you see what I’m doing as something mad?”

“I see it as a—gift.”

“In other words you’re thinking about your own life; not mine, not Tulip’s mother …”

“I suppose I should be ashamed at my selfishness. But I’m too desperate for that.” Katherine looked at the young woman. “You too,” she said. “Is it possible that every woman I meet these days is desperate?”

Myrna said she didn’t know. She could only describe her own situation … lost … the sense of time having almost run out … herself grateful for a new, inspiriting career, Tulip-raising.

“If anyone should be ashamed, it’s me,” Katherine Eudemie said. “You’re helping. I’m doing an imitation of being helpless.”

They were at the park playground. Puerto Rican children climbed all over the statue of Alice In Wonderland. The day became noisy.

“
Is
it an imitation?” Myrna asked. “Or can you really not help doing it?”

“I don’t know,” Katherine Eudemie said. “There’s so much masquerade in my life, anyway. All I know is when I needed someone—and I didn’t even
know
I needed them—you were there. I’ve never been too good at having friends. Emerson says the way to have a friend is to
be
one. And I’ve had and lost so many.” She was speeding now, as she did a lot these days. “Do you have many friends?” she asked.

“No,” Myrna said. “Not right now.”

“Friends were such a comfort when I was a youngster.”

“Me too,” Myrna said. “Actors are always with friends—hanging out at coffee shops.” She sighed a memory. “Whenever I smell coffee that’s bitter from reheating I think of friends.” Katherine Eudemie fixed Myrna with a stare that made Myrna nervous.

“I’ve been on the move so much,” Katherine said. “My only friends have been my ambitions. I had an older man who guided me in Chicago—but we were lovers so—and then I came East. I HAVE TO DO SOMETHING WITH MYSELF BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.”

“I understand that,” Myrna said, uneasy.

Katherine Eudemie grabbed her hand; on an impulse she held it to her lips.

“Can we be friends?” she said.

Myrna did not know where to look until she got her hand back. Then she said, “I don’t really understand what’s going on.” And began to cry. Short quiet sobs. Katherine Eudemie held her until she stopped. Then they walked on talking and listening.

Myrna felt her life had all been a waiting game in which nothing added up to much until Tulip. There was no explaining why Tulip was the answer, since the question was so unclear. But there it was! Tulip was what had happened. It was as complicated and as simple as that. But that was the one thing you couldn’t tell the child’s own mother. Impossible to discuss the surprises of Tulip with her own forgetful lost mother, Tulip so found, her mother so lost. For a moment Myrna felt she loved Katherine Eudemie the way she loved Tulip. But it was only for a moment.

It had been spring when Katherine Eudemie’s copy of
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life
had been forgotten; now it was fall.

Fall also brought an offer from Paul to buy out Lew’s share of the RR.

“I’ll keep paying that fat philistine forever before I’ll give him a crack at this restaurant,” Lew yelled into the phone. “Ask him if he’d like smaller bills so they’ll fit better.”

“Hey,” the lawyer said. “Hey.”

“Or maybe your client could lend me some money without interest just for auld lang syne?”

“Hey,” the lawyer said. “Hey.”

Myrna’s obsession with Tulip grew with each passing parapraxis. But now it was split between kid and mother. Myrna read Katherine Eudemie’s novel,
The Country of the Young.
She thought she’d never read such a beautiful book. Why, she wondered, wasn’t it famous? Sometimes, when business was slow she read passages aloud to Tulip informing her that it was her mother’s book.

“She did that before I was born,” Tulip commented, placing the work in correct literary historical perspective.

Myrna also ran after dogs because Tulip ran after dogs. Lew didn’t mind. He hated dogs in his restaurant. She also ran after ’cellos because Tulip did. (There were more such to worry about in the RR than there were dogs.) Both dog owners and ’cellists were charmed by Tulip and Myrna was made happy.

Krasner was livelier than usual, too. Operation Tulip was starting to work. The actor put together pages of numbers, hand-crampingly compiled—(B.C., Before Computers.)

“Lunches are up,” he called out.

But when the afternoon light began to slant, when Tulip arrived wearing purple mittens and a matching wool scarf, bad news about Katherine Eudemie began to seep into the RR.

Someone mentioned sickness, someone else spoke of a diagnosis; someone even more else mentioned another diagnosis. Lew understood Jackson Eudemie’s ambiguous but grim remarks the day he’d brought Tulip’s clothes in. From the way things had run, Myrna expected something psychiatric. After all—forgetting a child, even once! … But fifty-six times!

What was needed was a confirmed diagnosis!

One such came from Joe Larrabie, Lew Krale’s personal surgeon. Yes, Lew had such an animal. Not for himself, but for the regulars who needed medicosurgical advice. Not for Lew was the usual, “Ask your doctor.” The RR was a complete life-support system, not just a restaurant. Hence Doctor Joe Larrabie with his own practice and his own booth just at the entrance to the dining room.

It was Larrabie who passed along the awful diagnosis of cancer. He glanced around as he hissed the terrifying middle sibilant. By chance, neither Myrna nor Tulip was on the premises.

Only Lew and sly old Sasha heard Joe. The old Russian woman swallowed the fearful word with the stolid acceptance of age.
“Boije moy,”
she muttered; a familiar Russian incantation of woe to come and woe remembered.

Fatalism, okay! But what Imp of the Perverse made Sasha tell Myrna when she came on the next afternoon?

Sasha tells Myrna.

Myrna, despairing, tells Krasner.

Krasner’s first thought is Jackson Eudemie. He assumes Jackson brought the suitcase full of Tulip’s things knowing she needed a new home, soon to be motherless. “I know Jackson Eudemie,” Krasner says, jowled with suspicion, “from the old days. Once a hanger-on, always.”

Lew butts in. “You think Jackson’s laying off his kid on us? Crazy!”

Krasner nods, rabbinic. “Everybody should be so crazy. Books and poetry but he lives.” In Krasner shorthand this translated as: anybody who can actually make some kind of living by putting together anthologies of Chassidic Love Poems isn’t so loony.

Myrna’s heart slowed down in terror. Maybe Krasner was right. Not only the girl’s father but even her mother must have known all along that they had an imminent orphan on their hands. Myrna remembered the fall afternoon Katherine Eudemie had sought her out offering her money and confiding her life story and her terrifying lapses of memory.

Parapraxis my ass! Myrna murmured. (Perhaps the first time in history the first and third word had ever been used in a single sentence.)

Katherine Eudemie’s impending mortality changed everything. An impromptu Educational Planning Commission was set up. Music, art, dance, these were easy to come by at the RR. But what of science, what of English, what of math? Lessons were needed. But, for example, which—the New Math or the Old? There were so many issues to be decided. Being a parent was no easier when there were a dozen parents instead of the usual two.

Then, shortly after the terrible gossip circulated as fact, Myrna became a prisoner of her new obsession. Her insides moved in calligraphic certainty. The message was as clear as if the entrails of a chicken were spread out before a medieval rabbi: a childless destiny. There was no evidence; no cysts, no spotting; only an obsessive sense of permanent internal decay. The abortion sponsored by Sheffield and endured by her was much on her mind. Such an event was a permanent judgment, she decided. It had sealed her fate. She was so convinced she told no one.

The result was: Tulip became Myrna’s last chance. The kidnapping which later astonished everyone was now inevitable. Thus are born future
New York Post
headlines:

ACTRESS SNATCHES KID FROM POSH RESTAURANT

NOVELIST MOM MAKES POIGNANT PLEA FROM HOSPITAL BED

The first heavy snow brought to New York the Asian flu Type B and Russian refugees of all types. One of them was Yuri Yevshenkowitz, a skinny chain-smoker from Moscow University, formerly a professor on the verge of a breakthrough paper in topology and now a waiter at the RR.

“Chulip,” Yevshenkowitz said, “a/ex times the square+=is how you arrive at the answer. I hed a student in Moscow half your age. Well—”

“Tell me again,” said Tulip who had not even departed from the question. Myrna watched in despair.

“Eh, maintenant,” the small bald man said to Tulip, “Il faut que tu fasses ton leçon pour le jour. Répète, Les sanglots longs des violons …”

“Les sanglots longs des violons …” Tulip murmured in perfect imitation.

“Harold,” he said, “Elle a une bonne oreille.”

“Eugene,” Clurman said, “Isn’t she a little young for Verlaine?”

“Jamais trop jeune pour Verlaine,” Ionesco said. He was in town for rehearsals of a new play and Clurman thought it would be nice for Tulip to start learning another language besides Russian. After rehearsals Ionesco would get slightly tipsy and start teaching. Once Clurman caught him in an error of grammar. Ionesco replied, “I am a Roumanian. We are not fanatics of grammar as are the French.” They were cheery sessions. No one had told either of them about the condition of Tulip’s mother.

“The elongated sobs of the violins of autumn wound my heart,” Tulip recited happily in French. She bowed and the entire bar area applauded. Myrna watched in despair.

The day that Captain Kolevitch came for lunch, Tulip was in the kitchen learning how to make chicken Kiev. She didn’t feel too well but she didn’t want to spoil her first cooking lesson. And she didn’t want them to have to summon Myrna from the front.

“Congratulations,” Lew said. “It’s Wednesday. The Siberian pelmeny is terrific today.”

“Nu, Lew,” Kolevitch said. “It’s been a while.”

“What’s this ‘nu’? You’re not Jewish. I’m Jewish! You’re of Ukrainian anti-Semitic derivation.”

“That’s what made this country great. All of us living together. The place has changed.”

“Yeah. We put Christmas decorations on the ceiling.”

“I meant something much more profound. All these new faces.”

“Which? What new?”

“Lew, I know this territory. Don’t forget I wrote six unproduced plays before I decided to give it up and become a policeman. And two of them were as good as anything your snotnose off-broadway scribblers are doing today. So I know.”

“Know what?”

“I know that the place is full of agents, suddenly. There’s Sam Cohn, there’s Flora what’s-her-name? ICM, CAA, the restaurant is lousy with acronyms. Movies, plays. Also, Woody Allen has been seen here.”