“No.”
“You know about it?”
“Yes. A man who greatly admired Eunice took care of it. Joe can live here the rest of his life if it suits him. And I can drop a hint and the phone will be turned back on. The phone was an oversight when the rent and power and water and such were arranged for.”
“We don’t need a phone. I think half the people on this level used Joe’s phone as a free public phone—some still try and get sore when I tell ’em there’s no phone here, please go away; Joe is working. Uh, that man who admired Eunice—named ‘Johann’ maybe?”
“No, not ‘Johann’ and his name isn’t ‘Joan’ now. Gigi, I can’t tell you without his permission and I don’t have it. Has Joe ever said anything about the rent?”
“Truthfully I don’t think he’s thought about it. He’s a child, some ways, Joan. Art and sex—doesn’t notice other things until he bangs his nose into them.”
“Then maybe he wouldn’t notice this. I’ve got my cat radio link in my purse, I can call for it. If you tell Joe you’ve got to grocery-shop, he’ll let you go, won’t he?”
“Oh, sure. Won’t even fuss—even though he has his heart set on painting us all day today.”
“So you tell him you must and I offer to take you in my car. We can pick up a big load, with a car and two guards to carry for us. Maybe Joe won’t suspect that I’ve paid for it. Or maybe you can tell him that a picture sold.”
Gigi looked thoughtful. Then she sighed. “You tempt me, you cuddlesome little broad. But I had better hold off and eat pizza till we sell another painting. And we will. Best not to monkey with a setup that works, I think.”
(She’s right, Boss. Leave it alone.) (But, Eunice, there’s not a thing for breakfast but coffee and dry toast. That’s no matter but there are only four Reddypax in there and three pizzas—we ate three last night. A few other items, not much. I can’t leave it alone.) (You’ve got to leave it alone. You trying to cut off his balls? Or split him up with Gigi? Gigi’s good for him, she’ll find a way. Do I, or do I not, know more about Joe than you do?) (You do, Eunice—but people have to eat.) (Yes, Boss, but it doesn’t hurt to miss a couple of meals.) (Damn it, girl, what do you know about being hungry? I went through the thirties.) (Okay, Boss, louse it up. I’ll keep quiet.) (Eunice—please! You said I did fine last night.) (So I did, and you certainly did. Now keep up the good work by leaving them alone or by finding some way to let Gigi come by groceries honestly…but don’t give them anything.) (All right, sweetheart, I’ll try.)
“Gigi, here in the fridge—bacon grease in this can?”
“Yes, I save it. Can be useful.”
“Can indeed! And I see two eggs.”
“Well, yes. But two eggs split three ways is sort of feeble. But I’ll fry one for you and one for Joe.”
“Go soak your head, cuddle baby; I’m going to teach you Depression cooking I learned in the nineteen-thirties.”
Gigi Branca suddenly looked upset. “Joan, you gave me goose bumps. I can’t realize how old you are—but you’re not, really—are you?”
“Depends on which rubber ruler you use, dear. I remember the Great Depression of the thirties; I was about as old as you are now. By that scale I’m ninety-five. Looked at another way, I’m only weeks old and not able to crawl without help. Always making mistakes. But by still a third way to measure it I’m the age of this body—Eunice’s body—and that’s how I like to be treated. Don’t let me be a ghost, dear—hug me and tell me I’m not.” (What you got against ghosts, Boss?) (Nothing at all, some of my best friends are ghosts—but I wouldn’t want my sister to marry one.) (Very funny, Boss—who writes your gags? We did marry a ghost—in Dr. Olsen’s examining room.) (Ouch! Sorry about it, Eunice?) (No, Boss darling, you’re just the old goat—old ghost, pardon me!—I want for our little bastard.) (Love you, too, Busybody.)
Gigi hugged her.
“First we melt the bacon grease and make sure it’s not rancid—or not too rancid. Then we soak the bread in it and fry it. We scramble the eggs and since we don’t have cream to stretch them, we use what we find. I’ll settle for powdered milk, or flour, or cornstarch. Even dry gelatin We don’t salt the eggs, the grease may be salty enough—salt to taste, afterwards. But if you have Worcestershire sauce, or A-1, or anything like that, we add a little before we scramble. Then we spoon this goop onto six slices of fried bread, two to a customer, and garnish with paprika, or dried parsley, or chopped most anything, to make it look fancy. This is creative cookery à la W.P.A. We set the table the best we can manage—fancy cloth and real napkins, if you have them. A flower, even an artificial one. Or a candle. Anything to swank it up. Now—do I fry the bread while you stretch the eggs? Or vice versa?”
Joe reluctantly came to the table, absentmindedly took a bite—looked surprised. “Who cooked?”
“We both did,” Joan answered.
“So? Tasty.”
“Joan showed me how and we’ll have it again sometime, Joe,” Gigi amended.
“Soon.”
“All right. Joan, you can read, can’t you?”
“Why, yes.”
“Thought you could. There’s a letter from Joe’s mother, been here three days. I’ve been meaning to find somebody to read it, but Joe’s kept me busy posing and Joe is particular who reads his mother’s letters.”
“Gigi, Joan’s company. Not polite.”
“Joe, am I company? If I am, I won’t finish breakfast and I won’t pose—I’ll call Anton and Fred and go home!” (‘That’s telling him, Fat Lady!’) (That’s a vulgar joke, Eunice.) (I’m vulgar, Boss. Come to think about it, you’re about as vulgar as they come yourself, though I wasn’t sure of it till I woke up inside your head.) (I give up. But Joe can’t make us ‘company.’) (Of course not. Quiver your chin and make him kiss you—he’s never kissed you with the lights on.)
Joe said soberly, “Sorry, Joan Eunice.”
Joan pouted her lip. “You ought to be. You ought to kiss me and tell me I’m family. Not ‘company.’”
“She’s right,” agreed Gigi. “You’ve got to kiss and make up.”
“Oh, hell.” Joe stood up, came around to Joan Eunice’s chair, took her face, tilted it up and kissed her. “Family. Not company. Now eat!”
“Yes, Joe. Thank you.” (He can do better.) (So we both know.) “But, Joe, I won’t read your letter unless you want me to. Gigi, you startled me when you indicated you could not read. I thought I could tell by the way a person talks. Is it your eyesight?”
“Eyes are okay. Oh, I’m a real Talking Woman. Had some coaching, done some little theater. Probably should have learned to read—though I can’t say I’ve missed it. Computer fouled up my pre-school test records and I was in sixth grade before anybody caught it. Then it was sort o’ late to change tracks and I stayed on the ‘practical’. There was talk of putting me through a remedial but the principal put his foot down. Said there wasn’t enough budget to handle the ones that could benefit from it.” She shrugged. “Maybe the fact that he was a third had something to do with it. Anyhow I don’t miss it. Joe, shall I find the letter?”
“Sure. Joan Eunice is family.”
Joan found Mother Branca’s handwriting difficult, so she read the letter to herself to be sure she could read it aloud—and ran into trouble. (Eunice! How do I handle this.) (Twin, never tell a man anything he doesn’t need to know. I censored as necessary. Even some of your mail, when you were sickest.) (Know you did, baggage, as I reread some you had read aloud.) (Boss, some went straight into the shredder. And this one should have gone there—so censor it.) (You were married to him, sweetheart, but I’m not. I have no right to censor his mail.) (Twin, between being ‘right’ and being kind, I know which way I vote.) (Oh, shut up, I won’t consider Joe’s mail!)
“Takes a while to get used to strange handwriting,” Joan Eunice said apologetically. “All right, here it is:
“‘Darling Baby Boy,
“‘Mama don’t feel so—’”
/>
“Don’t read all,” Joe interrupted. “Just tell.”
“That’s right” agreed Gigi. “Joe’s mother puts in a lot of kark about noisy neighbors and their pets and people Joe never heard of. All he wants is news. If any.”
(You see, twin?) (Eunice, I’m still not going to censor. Oh, I can leave out trivial gossip. Uh, maybe edit the wording.) (You damn well better, Boss, and you know it.)
“All right. Your mother says her stomach is troubling her—”
(“Mama dont feel so good and cant seem to get no relief nohow. The medicare man says it’s not stomach cancer but what does he know? Sign says he’s an internist and everybody knows an internist is a student, not a real doctor. What do we pay taxes for when just a student can half kill me like I was a dog or a cat or something they’re always cutting up behind locked doors like they say on teevee?”)
“Joe, she says that her stomach has been bothering her but she’s been getting tests from an internal medicine man—that’s a doctor who specializes in such ailments, they are very learned—and he has assured her that it isn’t cancer or anything of that sort.”
(“The new priest aint no help. He’s a young snot that thinks he knows it all. Wont listen. Claims I get just as good treatment as anybody when he knows it aint true. You got to be a nigger to get anything around here. We white people that built this country and paid for it are just so much dirt. When I go to medicare clinic, they make your Mama wait while Mexican women go in first. How about that?”)
“She says that there is a new priest in your parish, a younger one than the last, and that he has investigated and has reassured her that she is getting the proper treatment. But she says that she sometimes has to wait a long time at the clinic.”
“Why not?” said Joe. “Got nothin’ but kill time. Don’ work.”
(“Annamaria is going to have a baby. That snot priest says she ought to go to a Home. You know what terrible places those Homes are and its Unamerican to bust up families. They don’t do that in the Old Country and that’s what I told the Visitor. Youd think the way they throw away money on people that dont deserve it they could spend a little on a decent family that just wants to be left alone and not bothered. The other Johnson twin—not the one that dropped out, the one I told you was out on parole again—got busted again and about time! There’s a family the Visitor could look into—but oh No, he just told me to mind my own business.”)
“Someone named Annamaria is pregnant.”
Gigi said, “Which one is that, Joe?”
“Baby sister. Twelve. Maybe thirteen.” Joe shrugged.
“Well, your parish priest thinks she ought to go into a home for expectant mothers but your mother feels that she would be better off at home. There is something about a neighbor family named Johnson.”
“Skip.”
(“Baby Boy, Mama dont hardly never get a letter from you since Eunice died. Aint there no letterwriter in your block? You dont know how a mother worries when she dont hear from her little boy. I watch the mailbox every day, be sure nobody swipes it fore I get it. But no letter from my little Josie—just ads and once a month the Check.”)
“She says she hasn’t heard from you in a long time, Joe. I’d be glad to write one for you before I go, anything you dictate—and send it by Mercury to be sure she gets it.”
“Maybe. Thanks.” Joe did not seem enthusiastic. “See later. Paint first. Any more? Just tell.”
(Eunice, here comes the tough part.) (So skip it!) (I can’t!)
“I seen you in the teevee and almost dropped dead when you said you gave away a thousand million dollars you had every right to. Dont your own mother mean nothing to you? I didnt raise you and love you and take care of you when you busted your collarbone to be treated like that. You go straight to that Miss Yohan Bassing Bock Smith and tell her she can just wipe that nasty sneer off her face because I want my rightful share of whats coming to me and I’m going to get it. I already been to a lawyer and he said hed take my side for fifty-fifty as soon as I paid him a thousand dollars for expenses. I told him he was a thief. But you just tell that stuckup Miss Smith to pay up or my lawyer will put her in jail!!!!
“Sometimes I think the best thing is just pack up everybody and go visit you till she pays up. Maybe just stay. Would be hard to leave all our old friends here in Philly but you need somebody to keep house now that you havent got no wife to do for you. It wont be the first time Ive made sacrifices for my darling boy.
“Your Loving Mother.”
“Joe, apparently your mother watched my identity hearing on video and heard your testimony. She seems disappointed to learn that you gave money to establish a memorial to Eunice, when you could have kept it.”
Joe made no comment.
Joan went on: “She says she may pack up all the family and pay you a visit but the way it’s phrased I don’t think she will. That’s all except she sends you her love. Joe, I can see how your mother could be disappointed in what you did about—”
“My business. Not hers.”
“May I finish, Joe? From this letter I think she must be poor and I have been poor myself and know how it feels. Joe, I think that your memorial to Eunice was a wonderful thing, the most gallant tribute of a husband to the memory of his wife I’ve ever heard of. I heartily approve and I think Eunice must feel honored by it.” (I do, Boss. But maybe he overdid it, huh? Jake could have set up a little annuity for Joe—eating money, I mean—with part of it. But Joe never did know how to do anything part way—whole hawg, or nothing; that’s Joe.) (Maybe we can fix it, dear.)
“Joe, if I paid your mother an allowance—you know I can afford it!—it wouldn’t be you accepting money from Eunice’s death.”
“No.”
“But I would like to! She’s your mother, it would be sort of an additional memorial to Eunice. Say enough to—”
“No,” he repeated flatly.
Joan Eunice sighed. “I should have kept quiet and arranged it through Jake Salomon.” She memorized the return address, intending to do it anyhow. “Joe, you are a lovable man and I can see why Eunice was devoted to you—I’ve fallen in love with you myself and I think you both know it—without any intention of crowding you out, Gigi; I love you just as much. But, Joe, sweet and gallant as you are…you are a bit stiff-necked, too.” (Sure he is, Boss darling, but it’s no use trying to change people. So drop it. You didn’t need to sneak that address; I could have told you.)
“Joan.”
“Yes, Gigi?”
“Hate to say this, hon—but Joe’s right and you’re wrong.”
“But—”
“Tell you later, we’ll talk while we pose. Grab the bathroom if you need to while I put dishes to soak; Joe wants to start.”
Joan was surprised to learn that she could visit with Gigi while they posed. But Joe assured her that he had the expressions he wanted from the photographs; he simply wanted them to hold still. He took even more pains to get them arranged than he had for the camera. Talk did not bother him as long as it was not to him. Nevertheless Joan tended to whisper while Gigi used the normal tones of a face-to-face conversation.
“Now I’ll tell you why you must not send money to Joe’s mother. But wait a sec—he’s done it again. Joe! Joe! Put on your shorts and quit wiping pigment on your skin.” Joe did not answer but did so. “Joan, if you’ve got money to throw away, flush it down the pot but don’t send it to Joe’s mother. She’s a wino.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Joe knows it, her Welfare Visitor knows it; they don’t let her have her family allowance in cash—she gets one of the pink checks, not a green one. Just the same she’ll take groceries around the corner and trade ’em for muscatel. That stomach trouble—forget it. Unless you want to help her drink herself to death. No loss if you did. The kids might be better off.”
Joan sighed. “I never will learn. Gigi, all my life I’ve given money away. Can’t say I did any good with it and I know I’ve done lots of harm. Me a
nd my big mouth!”
“Your big heart, dear. This is one time not to give it away. I know, I’ve had a lot of her letters read to me. You trimmed that one, didn’t you?”
“Did it show?”
“To me it did—because I know what they sound like. I learned from the first one never again to have somebody just read them aloud to Joe; he gets upset. So I listen—I’m a quick study, used to learn my sides and cues just from two readings aloud when I was finding out I wasn’t an actress—and then I trim it to what Joe needs to hear. Figured you were smart enough to do it without being told and I was right—except that you could have trimmed it still more and Joe would have been satisfied.”
“Gigi, how did such a nice person as Joe—and so talented—come from such a family?”
“How does any of us happen to be what we are? It just happens. But—look, it’s never polite to play the dozens, is it?”
“I shouldn’t have asked.”
“I meant it isn’t polite for me to. But I’m going to. I’ve often wondered if Joe was any relation to his mother. He doesn’t look like her; Joe has a picture taken when she was about the age he is now. No resemblance.”
“Maybe he takes after his father.”
“Well, maybe. But Paw Branca I’m not sure about; he left her years back. If Paw Branca is his Pop. If she has any idea who his father is.”
“I guess that’s often the case. Look at me—pregnant and not married; I can’t criticize.”
“You don’t know who did it, dear?”
“Well…yes, I do. But I’m never, never, never going to tell. It suits me to keep it to myself and I can afford to do it that way.”
“Well—none of my business and you seem happy. But about Joe—I think he’s an orphan. Somebody’s little bastard who wound up with this bitch though I can’t guess how. Joe doesn’t say so. Although he never talks much—unless he has to explain things to a model. But his mother has had one good influence on him. Guess.”