“I said they must be cute, aren’t they?”
“Well,” was Mr. Belli’s safe reply.
“Be modest. But I’m sure they are. If they favor their father; ha ha, don’t take me serious, I’m joking. But, seriously, kids just slay me. I’ll trade any kid for any grownup that ever lived. My sister has five, four boys and a girl. Dot, that’s my sister, she’s always after me to baby-sit now that I’ve got the time and don’t have to look after Pop every minute. She and Frank, he’s my brother-in-law, the one I mentioned, they say Mary, nobody can handle kids like you. At the same time have fun. But it’s so easy; there’s nothing like hot cocoa and a mean pillow fight to make kids sleepy. Ivy,” she said, reading aloud the tombstone’s dour script. “Ivy and Rebecca. Sweet names. And I’m sure you do your best. But two little girls without a mother.”
“No, no,” said Mr. Belli, at last caught up. “Ivy’s a mother herself. And Becky’s expecting.”
Her face restyled momentary chagrin into an expression of disbelief. “A grandfather? You?”
Mr. Belli had several vanities: for example, he thought he was saner than other people; also, he believed himself to be a walking compass; his digestion, and an ability to read upside down, were other ego-enlarging items. But his reflection in a mirror aroused little inner applause; not that he disliked his appearance; he just knew that it was very so-what. The harvesting of his hair had begun decades ago; now his head was an almost barren field. While his nose had character, his chin, though it made a double effort, had none. His shoulders were broad; but so was the rest of him. Of course he was neat: kept his shoes shined, his laundry laundered, twice a day scraped and talcumed his bluish jowls; but such measures failed to camouflage, actually they emphasized, his middle-class, middle-aged ordinariness. Nonetheless, he did not dismiss Mary O’Meaghan’s flattery; after all, an undeserved compliment is often the most potent.
“Hell, I’m fifty-one,” he said, subtracting four years. “Can’t say I feel it.” And he didn’t; perhaps it was because the wind had subsided, the warmth of the sun grown more authentic. Whatever the reason, his expectations had reignited, he was again immortal, a man planning ahead.
“Fifty-one. That’s nothing. The prime. Is if you take care of yourself. A man your age needs tending so. Watching after.”
Surely in a cemetery one was safe from husband stalkers? The question, crossing his mind, paused midway while he examined her cozy and gullible face, tested her gaze for guile. Though reassured, he thought it best to remind her of their surroundings. “Your father. Is he”—Mr. Belli gestured awkwardly—“near by?”
“Pop? Oh, no. He was very firm; absolutely refused to be buried. So he’s at home.” A disquieting image gathered in Mr. Belli’s head, one that her next words, “His ashes are,” did not fully dispel. “Well,” she shrugged, “that’s how he wanted it. Or—I see—you wondered why I’m here? I don’t live too far away. It’s somewhere to walk, and the view …” They both turned to stare at the skyline where the steeples of certain buildings flew pennants of cloud, and sun-dazzled windows glittered like a million bits of mica. Mary O’Meaghan said, “What a perfect day for a parade!”
Mr. Belli thought, You’re a very nice girl; then he said it, too, and wished he hadn’t, for naturally she asked him why. “Because. Well, that was nice what you said. About parades.”
“See? So many things in common! I never miss a parade,” she told him triumphantly. “The bugles. I play the bugle myself; used to, when I was at Sacred Heart. You said before—” She lowered her voice, as though approaching a subject that required grave tones. “You indicated you were a music lover. Because I have thousands of old records. Hundreds. Pop was in the business and that was his job. Till he retired. Shellacking records in a record factory. Remember Helen Morgan? She slays me, she really knocks me out.”
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered. Ruby Keeler, Jean Harlow: those had been keen but curable infatuations; but Helen Morgan, albino-pale, a sequinned wraith shimmering beyond Ziegfeld footlights—truly, truly he had loved her.
“Do you believe it? That she drank herself to death? On account of a gangster?”
“It doesn’t matter. She was lovely.”
“Sometimes, like when I’m alone and sort of fed up, I pretend I’m her. Pretend I’m singing in a night club. It’s fun; you know?”
“Yes, I know,” said Mr. Belli, whose own favorite fantasy was to imagine the adventures he might have if he were invisible.
“May I ask: would you do me a favor?”
“If I can. Certainly.”
She inhaled, held her breath as if she were swimming under a wave of shyness; surfacing, she said: “Would you listen to my imitation? And tell me your honest opinion?” Then she removed her glasses: the silver rims had bitten so deeply their shape was permanently printed on her face. Her eyes, nude and moist and helpless, seemed stunned by freedom; the skimpily lashed lids fluttered like long-captive birds abruptly let loose. “There: everything’s soft and smoky. Now you’ve got to use your imagination. So pretend I’m sitting on a piano—gosh, forgive me, Mr. Belli.”
“Forget it. Okay. You’re sitting on a piano.”
“I’m sitting on a piano,” she said, dreamily drooping her head backward until it assumed a romantic posture. She sucked in her cheeks, parted her lips; at the same moment Mr. Belli bit into his. For it was a tactless visit that glamour made on Mary O’Meaghan’s filled-out and rosy face; a visit that should not have been paid at all; it was the wrong address. She waited, as though listening for music to cue her; then, “Don’t ever leave me, now that you’re here! Here is where you belong. Everything seems so right when you’re near, When you’re away it’s all wrong.” And Mr. Belli was shocked, for what he was hearing was exactly Helen Morgan’s voice, and the voice, with its vulnerable sweetness, refinement, its tender quaver toppling high notes, seemed not to be borrowed, but Mary O’Meaghan’s own, a natural expression of some secluded identity. Gradually she abandoned theatrical poses, sat upright singing with her eyes squeezed shut: “—I’m so dependent, When I need comfort, I always run to you. Don’t ever leave me! ’Cause if you do, I’ll have no one to run to.” Until too late, neither she nor Mr. Belli noticed the coffin-laden entourage invading their privacy: a black caterpillar composed of sedate Negroes who stared at the white couple as though they had stumbled upon a pair of drunken grave robbers—except one mourner, a dry-eyed little girl who started laughing and couldn’t stop; her hiccup-like hilarity resounded long after the procession had disappeared around a distant corner.
“If that kid was mine,” said Mr. Belli.
“I feel so ashamed.”
“Say, listen. What for? That was beautiful. I mean it; you can sing.”
“Thanks,” she said; and, as though setting up a barricade against impending tears, clamped on her spectacles.
“Believe me, I was touched. What I’d like is, I’d like an encore.”
It was as if she were a child to whom he’d handed a balloon, a unique balloon that kept swelling until it swept her upward, danced her along with just her toes now and then touching ground. She descended to say: “Only not here. Maybe,” she began, and once more seemed to be lifted, lilted through the air, “maybe sometime you’ll let me cook you dinner. I’ll plan it really Russian. And we can play records.”
The thought, the apparitional suspicion that had previously passed on tiptoe, returned with a heavier tread, a creature fat and foursquare that Mr. Belli could not evict. “Thank you, Miss O’Meaghan. That’s something to look forward to,” he said. Rising, he reset his hat, adjusted his coat. “Sitting on cold stone too long, you can catch something.”