In Louie’s truck, boxes filled with produce were fixed to the sides, large ones below, then middle, then small, in a hierarchy of size. Louie kept his lettuces silvered with moisture — Sonny watered them at various stops in the journey. Sometimes Sonny filled a watering can from the Margolises’ outdoor spigot; Mindy, wandering outside from the breakfast nook where she did her homework, admired his deftness even at this low-value task. He didn’t waste motions, though he would pause briefly to say hello.
“Hello,” she’d say.
He watered the lettuce. Behind him, within the truck, potatoes were dotted with the wholesome dirt they’d been wrested from. Carrots came in mischievous shapes. Summer squash and zucchini lay side by side like gloves in a drawer. There was a makeshift aisle between the wares for the convenience of Louie and Sonny. It narrowed sharply as it approached the rear (really the front, just behind the cab), distorting perspective; the aisle seemed to go on for a mile. In the very back, a treasure within treasures, seasonal flowers stood in buckets. Every so often, after business was done, Louie would go into his truck and return with a bouquet which he presented to Mrs. Margolis, his cap still on his head.
Arcimboldo’s work reminded Mindy of the vegetable man, and the vegetable man’s abundant stock reminded her of Arcimboldo. Sometimes, standing at the rear of the truck, Mindy spotted a butternut squash like a bulbous nose or strawberries that side by side would have made a perfect mouth. You could put those tiny pearl onions between the berries, she said to Talia. Teeth.
“Nature imitates art,” Talia explained. “That’s an apothegm,” she added. Again there were sudden tears behind her glasses. “I wish Daddy would get better.”
On Thursdays Mindy continued to watch Louie or Sonny or both fill several slatted baskets and carry them into the kitchen and leave them there. Next week, emptied, they’d be waiting in the vestibule. Louie’s system was considerate, his truck was pridefully kept in order, and though he couldn’t have made a living in the insurance business, he was an excellent vegetable man.
And Sonny, second group notwithstanding, was an excellent apprentice. After awarding him her one-word greeting, after silently admiring the truck, Mindy always returned to the breakfast nook. She had a good view of the vestibule. Louie stood there having his audience with her mother. Mindy watched the two of them, Louie recommending, her mother thinking, and saying, Yes, two pounds; or Yes, a couple of good ones; or No, not today. Louie wrote the requests in a spiral notebook. Beside him, Sonny did the same, in a notebook of his own. When enough had been ordered for a one-person haul from the truck, Louie nodded at Sonny, and Sonny went outside. The rest of the Margolis order was inscribed in Louie’s notebook alone. Then Louie joined his child; and soon they both entered the kitchen with baskets.
Mindy guessed she’d feel sorry when she had to stop watching this routine. But next year she hoped to play her viola in the school orchestra, which had afternoon rehearsals. Or she might go out for basketball. And sometime in the future there might be embarrassment between her and Sonny. She was destined to become desirable — all three sisters were. Their mother, like a good witch, had promised them loveliness one Saturday after an afternoon of unproductive shopping. Talia sniffed, as if she knew that tall skinny bespectacled girls rarely underwent transformation. “Can’t I be a lovely boy?” Tem wondered. But Mindy trusted the prediction — she already resembled her desirable mother. She was destined to become the prettiest daughter of an acclaimed doctor — of a late acclaimed doctor, if the worst happened. Sonny was destined to remain a vegetable man’s son. If he loved beyond his station, loved Mindy or some other elevated girl, that love was doomed. But this predictable disappointment seemed as far away as the receding back of the truck; now, on this year’s Thursdays, Mindy still sat in the breakfast nook taking silent part in the domestic performance.
One Thursday Sonny didn’t show up.
“Sick,” Louie said to the inevitable question.
Also the following Thursday and the one after that, and he seemed to be absent from school. Mindy was used to seeing Sonny with the other group-two students as they trooped through the halls. She didn’t see him now.
Sonny’s absence coincided with Dr. Margolis’s reappearance. One Saturday morning he came downstairs in his robe. Tem like a four-year-old hurled herself at his shins. Talia stood still, her mouth working. Mindy slid her arm under his and laid her head against his heart. The following day he came downstairs wearing slacks and a sweater, carrying Legends. A few days later he joined them for dinner; afterward he helped Aunt Cecile with a crossword puzzle. Retransformation at last…Soon he would go back to his office.
Louie was still working unassisted.
But one week, like their father, Sonny stopped being sick. He was in school on Monday, and on Thursday he came with his own father to the Margolis back vestibule. It was raining. Louis and the boy wore yellow slickers, Mindy observed from her nook — did they think they were fishermen? Her mother completed the first half of the order. Sonny went out to the truck.
“I’m glad he’s gotten better,” Mindy’s mother said.
Silence. Louie raised his head. Then he said in a dull voice: “He hasn’t. He hasn’t gotten better. He’s not going to get better.”
That was all. Her mother did not say What or I’m sorry or Doctors can be wrong or even Oh, Louie. She remained standing in the vestibule looking down at the vegetable man and he remained looking up at her, and the space between their dissimilar profiles formed a misshapen vase. Then her mother turned away. Louie went out. The vase disappeared.
The girl went outside too. The rain had stopped. Around their backyard hung a mist. Sonny’s slicker was folded neatly on the grass. She watched as within the illusive length of the bright truck the condemned boy, soon joined by his father, silently filled baskets with squash, apples, melons — noses, cheeks, chins — the two working with their rare efficiency, as they would continue to do while they could, until they couldn’t.
Her throat ached. Sonny, intent on his task, was losing a future, his future, maybe stunted and loveless and second groupish, but his.
Friday night, Mindy and Talia sat side by side on Talia’s bed, their legs dangling as if from a raft into a lake. Side by side but not hip to hip; they were separated by an expanse of tufted bedspread. And so they managed to face each other by twisting their slender torsos. The profiles did not match: Talia’s nose was long and commanding, Mindy’s straight and agreeable. Mindy’s non-Jewish features might serve to move her even higher on her mother’s imaginary ladder, might even allow her to swing over to the Yankee ladder, onto a Yankee rung, next to a Yankee boy. Her parents would wring their hands but they would not declare her dead. “Sonny has a lethal disease,” Mindy said.
“Fatal,” Talia corrected. “Sonny…? Oh, yes, the vegetable boy. Which disease?”
“I don’t know.” Mindy repeated the conversation she’d overheard.
“That’s too bad,” Talia said.
“It’s terrible.”
“Terrible, then.”
“I mean…suppose it was us.”
“Were we. You’re always thinking of yourself.”
Mindy only guessed that Suppose it was us, though brief and ungrammatical, was a necessary first step toward putting oneself in someone else’s shoes, for you had only to reverse subject and complement to say Suppose we were Sonny. Suppose we faced pain and then darkness; pain, what is it like for Sonny; darkness, how will it be? But she was sure that Talia, not far from her on the bed, was insulting her and that what might have been a moment of closeness between the girls had turned into a kind of spat. “I’m sorry,” Talia muttered, but too late — Mindy stood up and left her hard-hearted sister.