Banana Rose

  Then she went out into the plaza. Lo and behold, along came Anna from across the street. She walked right over to Nell and told Nell that she looked beautiful. Nell crossed her arms and turned away. Anna got on her knees and begged Nell, “Please, be my friend.’”

  Nell refused and replied, “You only want me for my sunglasses.”

  Anna begged some more, “Please, Nell, it’s not your glasses. It’s you. I won’t write anymore if you don’t want me to. I’ll just play with you.”

  I stopped writing. I realized that Anna never called me Banana. I began writing again:

  “Nell, I love your name Banana Rose. Where did you get such a name? Banana, dear, if you would be so kind, I’d like to take you across the street for a malted.” Anna would do anything for Nell. Nell saw this and conceded because of the goodness of her heart. Nell was very compassionate and forgiving and was full of Buddha nature.

  I stopped writing and leaned my head on my left hand. It was getting cold in the room. I tucked my feet under my legs.

  I went to the top of the page and titled my work of art The Malted Afternoon, a novel by Rose Schwartz. I kept out the names Nell and Banana from the author’s name, because they were already in the novel. I didn’t want my public to know the story was about me, the author.

  “It’s not such a big deal to write a novel.” I smirked. “Anna can go fuck herself.”

  I wished Gauguin would get home. In my next novel, I would write about him. In the novel his name would be Clem. “ ‘Oh, Clem,’ said Columbine as she fainted in his arms.”

  10

  THE NEXT DAY, I sat in an idling Betsy Boop outside the Plaza Bar above the movie theater while Gauguin ran in to see if he had a gig there next month. We had just been to the post office and I managed to get our mail right before they locked the door.

  A thick envelope from my mother was on my lap. I hesitated and then put my index finger below the flap and ripped it open. There was a clipped Daily News article about Charles Manson and another one about Isaac Bashevis Singer and why he wrote in Yiddish. Then a two-page handwritten letter fell out.

  “Dearest Nell darling,” it began. “We’re worried about you. We haven’t heard from you in 81/2 days”—so who’s counting?—

  and then it was only a postcard, and every time I call the school, they say it’s summer vacation and you are not there. What kind of school is that, anyway? When I called two weeks ago, they said the students were on camping trips. Can’t they afford to put those children in bungalows? Please, Nell, call us. Why don’t you get a phone where you live? Your father is worried sick, as am I, and if you don’t care about your parents, think of poor Grandma. Every day she asks me, so have you heard from her yet? Imagine my shame in having to say no. You know how much we love you.

  Rita is home for the summer. She ran out of money. You know how expensive Manhattan is. She is auditioning as a singer and the music that comes out of her room—such noise! Bless her heart, Grandma walks around with her hands over her ears. But it’s a pleasure to have her around.

  Your father says if you won’t visit us, he’ll send me to see what you’re up to. Your poor father, he works day and night. Business is good, but it’s hard to find honest help. Johnny quit last week to try his hand at the pickle business.

  I have a nice brisket defrosting. I wish you were here to eat it. Please, Nell, write soon.

  Lots of love,

  Mom and Dad

  I stuffed the letter back in the envelope and blanked out. I couldn’t think. I just sat in the truck. I noticed that the S on the Plaza movie marquee was hung backward. A woman with rhinestone sunglasses walked by. She wore skin-tight white pants and walked a poodle on a chain. I hadn’t seen a poodle in years. Wait a minute—she looked just like Aunt Ruth. I moved my head closer to the windshield. Could it be? Then I sat back in my seat. Cool it, Nell, I said to myself. What do you think, your relatives are invading Taos plaza? I imagined Uncle Morris from the Bronx, Uncle Al from the yeshiva, Aunt Mildred and Cousin Sarah all marching around the plaza, looking for a kosher deli. Good luck. I started to laugh.

  Just then, Gauguin stuck his head in the open window. “What’s up? I’m sorry I took so long.” He got in the driver’s seat. “Want to read me your mother’s letter?”

  “Naa, she sends her regards.” I started to laugh.

  “Yeah, I bet. She’s some writer. She seems to write you every other day.” Gauguin started the ignition. In all the months I was with him, he’d gotten one card from his mother.

  “Jealous?” I asked.

  As we drove down Placitas, I told Gauguin about The Malted Afternoon. We pulled in front of the House of Taos. Gauguin was quiet. I could tell by the way he took off his glasses and put them on the dashboard that he was thinking about something he wanted to say.

  “Banana, I think you’re a little bit in love with Anna.”

  “No, I’m not a little in love with her. It’s all the way, but she’s obsessed with her damn novel. She left for ten days without letting me know. I stopped by there, and she was gone.” I got out of the car and headed for the restaurant.

  Gauguin followed. We sat down at a table by the window. “She’s not married to you, you know.” He paused. “Banana, I think you need something to do this summer. If you’re not working, you get antsy.” He had his glasses back on.

  We ordered a mushroom and onion pizza. I gulped down some ice water. They served us salads. We were silent, our heads bent over the lettuce. Suddenly, I looked up.

  “Yeah, like what?” I snapped at Gauguin and hailed the passing waitress. “Excuse me, please. Can I have a small Coke? No, make it big.” I turned and glared at Gauguin. He didn’t dare say anything, even though we had sworn off sugar for the whole summer. “I could read a novel every day. I could sit under a tree until I get enlightened.” They brought the pizza. Gauguin pulled out a piece, then turned the plate around.

  “How about doing a painting every day,” Gauguin cautiously suggested.

  I glared at him again. I had told him clearly a while ago never to discuss painting with me, that his ideas weren’t helpful.

  “It was just a suggestion.” He took another bite from his pizza.

  I switched the topic. “The problem with Anna is, she’s writing a book about the wrong subject. Who cares about cows? I say leave them for India. She should write a novel about me!” I stretched my neck and tilted my head toward the ceiling.

  Gauguin had just taken a gulp of water, and he sprayed it all over the pizza. I started to laugh, too.

  Gauguin said, “Why, Rose, it probably never occurred to her. You should mention it. ‘Oh, Anna, by the way, have you thought of me as the main protagonist of your novel? I know you’ve already written three hundred pages, but you can just toss them away.’ ” Gauguin shook his head. “Banana, you are too much.”

  “Well, what else should I do with my life if I can’t make it as a heroine? ‘Oh, Banana, wherefore art thou?’ ” I paused and changed my tone. “You know, I’ve been thinking about going backpacking alone in the Pecos. What do you think?”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Gauguin”—I waited until he put down his water glass—“I get scared. You have music, and Anna has writing, and sometimes I feel left out. Like who am I? And then I put all this pressure on painting, like that will define my life.”

  “Just do it if you want,” Gauguin said. “I think you’re great either way.”

  I decided not to say anything else about it. He didn’t get it. It wasn’t his fault.

  I was quiet the rest of the meal, just chewing pizza, gulping Coke. Gauguin was looking at a pamphlet about horseback riding on the pueblo that he found on the window ledge at the restaurant. I noticed the shape of his ear, and suddenly I felt a rush of love for him.

  The night before Gauguin had told me to sit perfectly still on the kitchen chair. He came over and began kissing me, but he said I couldn’t kiss back. Down my neck he went. Small, thic
k kisses and along my collarbone. He undid one button of my pale yellow blouse at a time and every once in a while he commanded in a soft voice, “Don’t move.”

  “Pleeese,” I moaned.

  “No,” he said.

  My breasts were aching, the nipples hard below the cotton. I had no bra on, just the thin fabric of my top. My blouse now was all unbuttoned, and he pushed the left side over and licked at my erect nipple with his wide tongue.

  “Oh, Gauguin,” I said, my hands pressing the wooden chair seat on either side of my buttocks.

  “No,” he said. “No talking.”

  He put the blouse back over my breast, slowly so I felt the cotton run along my nipple.

  Then he knelt in front of me and separated my legs, kissed my inner thighs. I was wearing my red short shorts. He kissed up to the brim of my underpants. He ran his finger inside the elastic, all along until his finger ran thump over my hardened clitoris.

  I groaned. “Shh,” he whispered. And he put his fingers inside me.

  My eyes rolled back.

  “You want me, don’t you?” he said.

  I nodded, now silent, still, and obedient.

  “I don’t know if you can have me.” He smiled, considering. He stood up. “Come with me,” and he took my hand and led me into the bedroom.

  I was all wanting. I lay down on the bed and he pulled off my shorts, leaving my blouse on, unbuttoned.

  He took off his pants, and his penis sprang out from the side of his undershorts. I reached up for him and he had no hesitation. He came down to me on the bed.

  I rolled an ice cube around in my mouth and smiled, remembering this. Gauguin was checking the bill. I rubbed my foot along his calf.

  He looked up, a hundred miles away, and took his wallet out of his back pocket. I watched his hands, long, freckled, delicate fingers, wrinkled around the knuckles. Those hands had touched me—I felt awe and desire. My breath became smoky. I ran my hand along the edge of the table and crossed my legs.

  He counted out two fives. “You owe me one,” he said.

  “I know,” I said, but I didn’t mean a five-dollar bill.

  As we walked outside, I was aware of my thighs touching each other under my long skirt. I wanted Gauguin.

  When he got behind the wheel of Betsy Boop, I slid over to him. I said, “Okay, now it’s my turn.”

  He turned to me. He didn’t know what I was talking about. I pulled his T-shirt out from his pants and put my hand on his belly. It was tender like I knew it would be. He caught on. “Not here,” he said. We were in the parking lot behind the plaza.

  “Yes, here,” I said. “You just listen to me now.” I bit his shoulder. Then his earlobe. He took his hands off the steering wheel in an act of surrender.

  I unzipped his pants, put my hand in them and whispered in his ear, “I’m going to take you.” I felt him harden and his breath thicken. Then I bent my head down to his lap.

  “Oh, Nell,” he groaned.

  I stopped a moment. “Shh,” and then I kept going.

  Suddenly he grabbed me. “Get up.” We were parked near a rented car. “Here come some Texans.”

  “Who cares,” I said. I sat up and began to pull off my shirt.

  “I care,” Gauguin said, and yanked down my shirt, switched on the ignition, put the clutch in reverse, and peeled out of the lot backward.

  “Oh, Gauguin.” I pouted.

  He put his hand on my knee. “I’m sorry, Nell. I got scared.”

  I was quiet for a while, feeling myself land back into an ordinary body again. “It’s okay. I’m just disappointed.”

  “I hear you,” he said. “We can make love when we get home.” He made the turn to Talpa.

  It was 8:30, but it was still semilight and there was that smell of summer, different from Brooklyn but summer just the same.

  Gauguin pulled up to the house. “Ready for bed?” He kissed my cheek, his hand on the nape of my neck.

  “Naa.” I shook my head. “I’m not interested now.”

  Gauguin stood still in the kitchen for a few moments. I knew he was thinking, C’mon, Nell, you wanted me just a little while ago.

  I got out a candle and put it on the kitchen table. “I think I’ll stay up awhile,” I said.

  “I’m going to go to bed. You sure you don’t want to come?” He bent down and licked my ear. He knew I loved that.

  I shook my head. “Nope, not now.”

  He hesitated, then turned and stormed into the back room.

  I lit the candle, turned off the overhead light, and sat at the kitchen table. Two moths were soon circling the wick. The white one’s wing began to burn and crackle in the flame. I blew the candle out and walked outside. I sat on the bench in front of the house. The sky was so big. I leaned back against the stucco, my legs straight out in front of me. The black horse whinnied in the corral around the bend.

  I heard the screen door snap open. It was Gauguin. “I couldn’t sleep without you.”

  “Come here beside me.” I patted the bench. “I was just sitting here and smelling.”

  “What were you smelling?” he asked.

  “Summer, the way it is in Talpa,” I said. “And then I was thinking how I’d like to get that smell down in a painting, how the smell feels in my lungs and muscles.”

  “I’d like to feel your lungs and muscles, too.”

  I chuckled and pushed his hand away. “You can only sit with me if you behave.”

  “Okay, I’ll behave,” and Gauguin, too, settled into the night and its quiet.

  The black horse whinnied again. Gauguin yawned and looked up at the sky. “You know, the first horse I loved was Dixie Sue. I was eight, on my grandmother Mary Ellen’s Iowa farm—the same place I saw those monarch butterflies. Remember?”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah, Dixie Sue had white stockings and a star in the middle of her face. Her eyes were deep brown and the size of golf balls. Together me and Dixie heard the sound of summer when we rode through the fields. The hills were filled with oak, scrub brush, and sumac. We commiserated over the heat as we sweated and swatted mosquitoes. We were best friends.

  “My grandmother worried that I was too in love with that horse. She said only young girls loved horses that way. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I’d sneak out barefoot. I knew by instinct where in the large pasture Dixie Sue would be feeding. I’d climb on her and lean back, so my head rested on her rump. I’d just lie there and look up at the stars, a lot like tonight. They spread over Iowa like a great dark American flag.” He sighed. We both were leaning back, our eyes glued to the sky. “Dixie Sue’d just continue to eat the sweet grass, hardly moving. She knew it was me on her back.

  “Sometimes we’d take off in the moonlight. I’d hold tight to her bronze mane. The bluffs along the Blackhawk River and the narrow paths between shrubs and trees were lit with a shimmering silver, and there was a guiding light.

  “Once we came to the top of a ridge farther than we’d ever been before. Nell, I never told anyone this.” He hesitated. “Nell, we saw angels. Three of them. They were having a cookout below the ridge.” When he said “cookout,” I started to laugh. “No, I’m serious. They were sitting around a fire and their bodies shimmered like rippled water that you can put your hand through. Two of the angels were yellow, but the middle one, she was the color of salmon meat. She was beautiful. Dixie Sue and I just kept gazing at her. Then the angels got to realizing we were there. We could tell, because they began twinkling faster. We didn’t want to bother them, so I yanked Dixie Sue’s mane. She turned her long neck and head and we started home. The whole way back I hummed ‘Angels Watching Over Me, My Lord.’ ”

  Now I was sitting erect, looking at Gauguin. “Wow,” I said. “Was that true?”

  He nodded. I took his hand and tried to imagine seeing angels.

  “Gauguin, I don’t think there were angels in Brooklyn. At least not when I was growing up.”

  “Sure, there were,” he said. “
You just weren’t looking in the right places.”

  We got up and went to bed. Just as I was falling asleep, Gauguin began to talk as though finishing the conversation we were having out on the bench. “Nell, sometimes I think I am a horse. I used to watch the horse in front of me when I rode with someone, how long and graceful its back legs were. Their legs move right into their hips in a magnificent motion—”

  I fell asleep just then and in my dream I was an iguana on a beach. I turned over and woke up. It was a short dream. Gauguin was still awake; his arms were up on the pillow behind his head. “Hey, Gauguin,” I said. “You might be a horse, but I’m an iguana.”

  “Oh, Nell, you are bananas,” he said.

  “No, really. I dreamed I was an iguana, just now. I’m an iguana!” Gauguin laughed and I hit him.

  Gauguin began to make whinnying noises like a horse. I felt his hot breath on my neck. This horse began to make love to his iguana. His iguana lifted her short green iridescent front legs over the horse’s shoulder. We turned over each other as I closed my eyes. Horse and iguana. Horse of ribs and hanging flesh, old horse rolling in bed with the sharp fast body of iguana. Above us was a waterfall. Egrets hung from trees like white gardenias. Bougainvillaea were draped over the branches of a magnolia tree. What country were we in? Horse and iguana didn’t care about country. We felt the sun on our backs, and we slithered over rocks as we joined our juices together near a shallow wide river, flowing over sand embankments.

  11