Banana Rose

  Gauguin called the waiter over. “Let’s order two.”

  We finished the bottle of wine as our ice cream melted in silver dishes.

  “Nell, have we ever gotten drunk together?” He laughed.

  “I don’t thank soo,” my words slurred.

  He caught me by the elbow as we walked out the door and swung me around at the curb. “Nell, I love you.”

  We kissed passionately, leaning against a parked car.

  I looked around. People were staring at us. “Let’s go home.”

  As soon as the front door shut behind us, we ripped off our clothes and slipped under the bed sheets. We groaned at the sensation of skin on skin, my breasts against his chest, his arms across my back, our legs stretched out long next to each other.

  Then I froze. “I can’t,” I said, remembering Sherry.

  Gauguin swallowed. “Oh, Nell, I’m sorry.”

  I let him hold me for a while, then pulled back and looked at his face. “I really hurt. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it.”

  He nodded and was silent.

  We lay naked, next to each other, for a long time. My mind was blank and felt dry, like uncooked oatmeal.

  Suddenly I noticed the neon light of Mr. Steak blinking through the window into our apartment. I remembered sitting on the stoop that first evening I drove up here, how I imagined making love to the rhythm of that light. The whole place had been new to me then, with the delicacy of twilight filtering through spring leaves. Just before I arrived, I’d made love to Anna and before that Neon. The whole Southwest had been at my back as I drove, and I’d carried it with me up to Gauguin’s stoop. A surge of energy crackled in me as I lay in bed.

  I turned to Gauguin. “I want you,” I said, my voice full of a new authority.

  I began kissing his mouth as though I owned it, as though every inch of his body were my possession.

  “Nell!” he said, first from surprise, then delight. “Nell.”

  I climbed on top of him. “That’s right,” I said, “you’re mine.”

  Everything’s mine, the whole world is mine, whistled through my body like a mantra. I glistened with sweat.

  Gauguin was trembling. “Nell, I love you so much.”

  I took him out of an ancient power and he came into my body. “I bet you do,” I snarled into his ear. “Now you remember this.”

  “Yes, I will, I will.”

  And then I rolled off of him and climbed through the night into a dark sleep.

  41

  TWO WEEKS LATER I received a call from my mother in the middle of the afternoon.

  “Darling, guess what? Your father and I just got off the New Jersey Turnpike. We’re heading for Minnesota. We plan to be there in three days. Your father can’t take the heat anymore in the city—it’s been the worst summer. We know it will be cool in Minnesota—what with all those lakes and so far north. We’ll stay for two weeks “

  “Mom—” I started to say how humid and hot it was in Minneapolis, but she had hung up.

  They’re coming, I said to myself, and felt a sour taste on my tongue. I was afraid the heat was a pretense, that my mother suspected something was wrong because I had continued my monosyllabic conversation with her the other two times we spoke.

  I immediately began cleaning the house. As I was vacuuming, Gauguin came home. “Well, well, Nell, what’s come over you?” His face lit up. “The little housekeeper.”

  “Shut up,” I said, turning off the power. “My parents are coming. For two weeks.”

  “Two weeks?” Gauguin sat down on the couch. “Why so long?”

  “You know how they are,” I said by way of explanation. He nodded but had no idea what I meant.

  Marian and Matthew were going camping in Wyoming and offered to let my parents stay in their apartment upstairs.

  As soon as they arrived, I showed them upstairs and my father declared that he was boiling. He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand and declared, “Don’t you people believe in air conditioning?” He immediately found a little standing electric fan that Matthew had bought at a garage sale, carried it with him into the toilet, placed it in front of him, and turned the switch to high. When he was finished, he went back outside to unload the car.

  “Edith, three? Three.” He turned to me, holding up three fingers. “She thinks she’s the Queen of England. One suitcase for her jewels, one for her coronation, and the third is just filled with shoes. Nell, do you know how many pairs of shoes your mother has? This whole block”—he made a sweeping motion with his arm— “couldn’t hold all her shoes.”

  “Please, Irving, a woman—she needs things. C’mon, bring them to the second floor.” She turned to me. “Nell, it’s so good to see you.” She gave me a big hug and kiss.

  “That’s why she has me around. Nell, tell me, do I look like a valet?” My father lifted the third suitcase to the curb.

  “C’mon, I’ll help you.” I lugged one up the stairs. “Jesus, Mom, what do you have in here?”

  “Dear, not you, too. There are things in there,” she said mysteriously. “Female things. Lingerie, jewelry, cosmetics.”

  When we’d finished with the luggage, I made us coffee in our apartment.

  “Where’s Gauguin?” my mother asked. She looked around her. “Hmm, things look in order.”

  I stiffened. “Everything’s fine,” I said.

  “Yes, that’s what you said on the phone. ‘Fine!’ ” she mimicked.

  “Gauguin will be home after work,” I explained, and clenched my mug.

  My mother came down that evening wearing a particularly good-looking white linen skirt with three buttons down the left side, ending in a slit by her knee.

  “Was that the white skirt you wore to Aunt Helen’s last summer? I don’t remember noticing how nice it was,” I said.

  “No, it’s a different one,” she answered.

  “You mean you have two white skirts?” I asked in astonishment, emphasizing the two.

  “No”—she smiled—“I have many, but I only brought three.” I stood there aghast. “Nell, let’s walk down to a food store and fill the refrigerator,” she suggested.

  “Why? I bought forty dollars’ worth before you came,” I said.

  “Well, I saw some space in your fridge, and I thought we should fill it.” She got up from the couch. “You look a little thin. Are you eating?”

  “Of course I’m eating.”

  “C’mon, please your mother just this once,” she pleaded.

  “Okay, okay. Maybe we should take the car,” I said.

  “No, I’ve been in a car too long today, and besides, in Brooklyn we walk everywhere.” She was looking toward the door.

  “This isn’t Brooklyn.” I got up. “We could walk to the Northtown Co-op.”

  “Fine, fine.” She was out the door.

  While squeezing every cantaloupe in the pile of eighty, my mother asked, “So, Nell, how is it?”

  “What? I got a bag of cherries,” I said.

  “No, marriage. Good? Yes? You like it?” Bingo! Edith found the perfect melon and held it up like a prize.

  “Yes,” I said, and reached for the round fruit in my mother’s hand. “Hmmm, it smells good. Mom, you’re an expert,” I said, and hoped she didn’t notice my avoidance.

  She looked at me hard. “Nell, you must give a hundred percent. Your father, he’s a baby. I give and give. That’s the way.”

  “Not mine.” I pushed the cart to the check-out line.

  When we got back, Gauguin was sitting in the living room with my father.

  “Hi, Nell,” he said, and then kissed me on the cheek. He hugged my mother and welcomed her.

  We all went into the kitchen and cut the melon into eighths. We ate down through the salmon-colored meat to the green, flipping the rinds in the wastebasket and then replacing the lid to keep the flies away.

  “Boy, this is a hot summer,” Gauguin said.

  We turned on the news.
The announcer said that all over the country it was hot. “Chickens and old people in Texas are dying on the spot because their blood is literally boiling. Stay out of the sun!”

  “Oy,” my father said. “Chickens dying in Texas. I am so hot! Edith, I’m exhausted. Let’s go to bed. I’m even too hot to eat dinner. Please, let’s go upstairs.”

  My mother’s mouth hung open. “No dinner, Irving? Are you okay?”

  “I drove all day.” He headed for the stairs and my mother reluctantly followed.

  Gauguin and I went to bed early, too. That night it was so hot, I didn’t even have the energy to think about Sherry. That was a relief.

  My parents had been with us a week when I drove with them out to Stillwater, a town built on the bluffs of the St. Croix River. The town was considered very quaint with its cobblestone streets. Within a half-hour, my father was panting and sweating from walking up the steep hills.

  “Let’s stop here and have something to drink.” It was a sidewalk café called The Parsley. White wrought-iron tables with large red-and-green umbrellas were set up on the sidewalk all the way to the curb. We chose a table near the street, because it was in the shade of a maple.

  “Would you like to see a menu?” the waitress asked.

  “Yes, please,” my mother responded.

  “Edith,” my father growled under his breath, “we only stopped for a drink; some ginger ale or a Coke.”

  My mother paid him no mind. She looked at the list of selections. The waitress went to serve a table near the door.

  “Just as I suspected. They serve fiddledeedee here too,” my mother announced.

  The waitress returned. “I’ll have a scoop of peach ice cream.” My mother nodded, closing the menu.

  “I’ll have a Perrier,” I said.

  “Nell,” my father groaned, “don’t order a Perrier. I’m begging you. It’s a rip-off. They put water from the Hudson River in green bottles and call it French. Then they add bubbles and people like you order it for two dollars a glass.”

  I turned to the waitress. “I’ll have ice and lime with my Perrier, thank you.”

  My father looked up at the waitress with a martyred expression. “No one listens to me. I guess all I can afford to order now is a coffee. Black.”

  My mother was about to place the first spoonful of ice cream in her mouth when we heard a tremendous roar around the corner. We all looked up. Suddenly the street was filled with motorcycles. Harley-Davidsons, Sportsters, and 1200s pulled up at the curb right in front of us. Men and women in black leather, snapping gum and sucking on unlit cigarettes, dismounted from their equine machines. One man had a scar from his forehead down his nose to his chin. In sleeveless jean jackets, other men exposed swollen biceps, tattooed with American eagles, skulls and crossbones, Nazi swastikas, and “Joan loves me or else.” One woman in skin-tight silver pants and purple high-heeled leather boots stepped away from her man as they left their bike and crossed the street. He shot out his arm, grabbed her long black hair, and jerked her to him. “Where do you think you’re going?” he sneered.

  My mother’s ice cream melted on the spoon, poised before her open mouth. None of us moved. The bikers all piled into the bar across the street. We watched until thirty-one motorcycles gleamed black and still like beetles. The last red-bearded man disappeared into the bar with a chain hanging out the back pocket of his jeans.

  I took a deep breath and a sip from my Perrier. I looked at my parents. They were in shock, but my father still managed a comment. “And every one of them”—he nodded—“has a mother.”

  The waitress came over. “They’re headed for the big bikers’ convention in South Dakota. We see a group of them about once a day.”

  “Can we have the check?” my father asked, and then, under his breath, he said, “Let’s get out of here.”

  When we were settled in the car, headed back to the Twin Cities, he said, “Boy, this is some place. Hot and humid as the devil, and they accost you with Hell’s Angels when you stop for a cup of coffee. Nell, you can’t be too cautious around here. It looks nice, but they’ve got something up their sleeve.” He lit up a Bering Plaza cigar, and I had to open a window, even though their car was air conditioned.

  As we pulled up to the curb in front of our house, Gauguin waved to us from the stoop. He had come home from work early to surprise us. All of a sudden, I realized how hard he was trying to connect. In fact, he had been trying for the last three weeks, but it had been so tense between us, I hadn’t noticed. Out of the blue, I felt an opening in me as I sat in the back seat of my parents’ car. It wasn’t all his fault. I had been with Tiny, and we both had made that stupid agreement about sleeping with other people. We could work it out. After all, weren’t we married? A small voice in me said, “Go ahead, love him again.” And like pressing the shift key on a typewriter, so the carriage raises a quarter inch to make capital letters, I made that small shift, too, and it mattered. Something in me relaxed.

  By the time I opened the car door and stepped out, I was different.

  “Hi, Gauguin.” I waved cheerily.

  When we got up the porch steps, Gauguin said, “Alice just called to apologize. She can’t make it tonight. She’s not feeling too well.”

  “What’s the matter?” my mother asked.

  “Didn’t say. Alice is real stalwart. No matter how sick she is, she usually ignores it. So I think it’s a good sign. She’s being kinder to herself.”

  My mother nodded. I could see what Gauguin said made no sense to her. “Can’t we do anything?

  “Naa.” Gauguin waved his hand.

  That night when we went to bed, I told him I appreciated his effort while my parents were here. I touched his shoulder in a tender way and we began to make love. I felt the zinnias blooming orange and red under the lilac bushes and all the plum branches fruiting in our yard as I took him into my body. All of summer woke up in me. Basil leaves shone even in the humidity, Bibb lettuce grew full in a row next to the tomatoes all within the length of my torso. My legs hummed and a bird warbled in my head.

  The next morning, Gauguin and I sang songs together outside, like in the old days, leaning against the house’s foundation, as the shadow of the duplex next door crossed our outstretched legs.

  My father must have heard us singing. He came dancing out the back door, a newspaper on his head. “ ‘When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin’ along.’ ”

  We laughed.

  “Let’s go out for bagels. An air-conditioned place. Oh, last night your mother accidentally kicked Matthew’s kitten. What’s its name? Red Dog? Peculiar name for a cat. But it’s fine. You know your mother and animals. I’ll go and get ready. Be down in ten minutes. Your mother’s sleeping late.”

  After he left, I turned to Gauguin to explain. “My mother doesn’t like dogs—or any animals. She bunches them all together. She has no particular reason. Her parents didn’t like them either. I think it’s a throwback to the ghettos. The Cossacks used dogs when they attacked the Jews.

  Gauguin nodded. “Wow.”

  When we returned from breakfast, my mother was up, dressed, and packed.

  “What’s this?” I asked. “You’re not leaving for three days.”

  “Nell, we have to get home,” my mother said.

  “How come?” I asked.

  “It’s just time. We’re hot—”

  “And we’re worried about Grandma and Rita,” my father added. “It’s a long time for them to be without us.”

  I rolled my eyes. Here we go again. I didn’t even make an effort to stop them or ask why they hadn’t told me earlier.

  My mother hugged me hard on the top step of the stoop. She whispered in my ear, “Nell, give a hundred percent. If he doesn’t do the dishes, you do them. Why, your father hasn’t done anything for thirty-five years. If I waited for him, the house would fall down around our ears.” Then she let go of me. My smile looked like the letter Z turned on its side.

  At the en
d of August, I was invited to exhibit in an eight-woman painting show in downtown Minneapolis. The opening was in December, only three months away, so I frantically rushed to produce some new work before my teaching job started again at the beginning of September.

  One late afternoon as I was busily applying red to the surface, it dawned on me: Hey, I never even mentioned painting to my parents the whole time they were here, and they didn’t see any of my work. I shrugged. I’ll send them photos after the show. I can’t think about that now.

  I was engaged in the picture before me. I was using canvas now. The paint spread well. After my show at the Riverside, I decided I could splurge more on my materials. I didn’t know where the picture was going. Dusk set in outside, and I turned on the ceiling light.

  Just then Gauguin came in. “Nell, I joined a band.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “No, I’m not. The other musicians are nineteen years old, but I don’t care. I want to play.”

  “Where are you going to play?” I asked, brush still in hand.

  “Oh, they’re kids. They’ll take anything. They have gigs on weekends in small towns in Wisconsin. We’ll even play in high school gyms. When I’m home, I’ll still free-lance for my father.”

  I was stunned. “What? You’re quitting your job? You didn’t even discuss it with me.”

  “Hey, you got your show. I have to do something.” His face grew tense.

  “Oh, so that’s it.” My eyes narrowed.

  “What’s it? I want to play.” He slammed the bathroom door.

  Five nights later, he came home from his first gig at four in the morning, and I punched him in the arm as hard as I could. He slept on the couch. I hated him as much as I had after the Sherry business. I thought of moving out, but a week later we found out that Alice had cancer.

  42

  ALICE HAD GROWN UP on Sand Hill Farm outside of Cedar Falls, Iowa. She once told me, “Oh, Lord, it was so lonely there as a young kid, I’d eat dried husks of corn in October, just to hear the sound in my teeth.” Then she gave off a cynical laugh that showed her nicotine-stained teeth. “My own mother had an affair with the hired hand, and my father, who was tired, didn’t bother to notice.”