Banishing Verona Page 6

  Zeke did, in the chair nearest the door. “I saw Phil the other day,” he offered. “Brenda is five months old.”

  “And you,” said his father, turning his knees, his chest, his chin toward Zeke, “are twenty-nine, and for most of those years your mother and I have taken care of you. We helped you go to university, we took you in when you were ill. We’ve done our honest best for a quarter of a century and how do you repay us?”

  If only the parrot would speak, if only the phone would ring.

  “Do you have a problem with my arithmetic?”

  Zeke managed to move his head from side to side.

  “I’ll be blunt with you,” Don continued, eyeing him unwaveringly. “We need you. We need you to work in the shop, even if it’s only half days at first. Gwen does a super job, but she can’t manage alone. You know the hours, you know how much heavy lifting there is. When can you start?”

  Every part of him felt squeezed. He appreciated, absolutely, the justice of his father’s calculations. But if he were in the shop twelve hours a day, how could he hope to find her? “Soon,” he said. “When I finish this kitchen.”

  “Soon,” repeated his father, as if it were a swearword. “This loony stuff can only take you so far. You know, one of your doctors suggested it was a way of hiding from us. Well, that’s not going to work any longer. I nearly died, and if you can’t help now we’ll follow your example. You ignore a quarter century of affection and we will too. Our house will be closed to you. And—I can’t say this more clearly—you will no longer be our son.” He looked at Zeke for one final moment and turned back to the parrot. “Say good morning,” he said.

  How long he stayed in that chair, how he left the room and made his way home, Zeke would never know. The one thing he could have sworn to, on the pendulum of his grandfather clock, was that his father neither looked at him nor spoke to him again. This is the future, he was saying; this is what you’re asking for.

  Even before Ariel opened her mouth, Zeke recognized that he was in the presence of someone having a difficult day. He had decided not to phone ahead but had driven over in his lunch hour, hoping for the best, and here she was, standing in the doorway, blinking. Her hair was flattened on one side as if she had been lying down, her sweatshirt had a large stain on the sleeve, and the fly of her jeans was an inch short of closed. Normally he would have backed away from such disorder, fearing contagion; today he hoped it might make her an ally.

  “Hello,” he said. “I’m Zeke Cafarelli, your painter.” Always wise to assume that other people shared his difficulties. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I think I left my jacket here on Sunday.”

  Ariel’s deep-set eyes receded still farther. Really, she was almost too small to be an adult. “I haven’t seen it,” she said.

  For a moment he didn’t know what to say. “I remember,” he insisted truthfully, “taking it off in your living room.”

  “I’m sure I’d have noticed a strange jacket in my own home. Well, maybe not.”

  “Please, could I take a look? Perhaps you thought it belonged to Gerald.”

  Ariel stepped back and headed toward the kitchen. After a brief hesitation—surely she did not expect him to check the living room by himself?—Zeke followed. Waiting for the Barrows’ return, he had managed, just barely, to keep his anxieties at bay. Now, entering this room where everything, except for the pile of papers on the table, looked the same, whatever tiny layer of fortitude he had developed shattered. He longed to throw himself on the floor and beg for Ariel’s help. One glance at her untidy person, however, was sufficient to make him sit down and continue to apologize. “I’m sorry about the other day,” he said. “I couldn’t seem to stop putting my foot in my mouth.”

  “None of us were at our best. You can imagine the shock. Coming back from a trip to discover that some—” She paused and Zeke kept his face very still, fending off the insults he could feel her longing to hurl at the non-niece. “Some stranger,” she concluded, “has been staying in your house.”

  “But”—he repeated her husband’s speculations—“how would a stranger know that you were away and I was working here? She brought two suitcases.”

  “Suitcases?”

  Too late he realized what these might suggest. “For her clothes,” he explained. “That was another reason I never doubted she was a friend.”

  “Gerald thinks that too.” She sat straighter, and Zeke recognized a not unfamiliar moment—himself coming into focus—and with it the danger of Ariel, for all her self-absorption, detecting his true motives. He looked back, trying to keep his features calm and pleasant. “Did you hide the stuff, the water and biscuits, under the desk?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  He could see the syllable making its way through the corridors of her brain. Would she ask why? The possibility of their being allies once again opened before him. But she didn’t, and they weren’t.

  “I can’t tell you,” she said, stressing the verb, not the pronouns, “how strange all this is. A few years ago, at Whitsun, we were burgled. They only took the CD player and the VCR, but my shoes were all over the floor and I had the same awful feeling of people knowing things about me, even stupid things like my shoe size, and of me knowing nothing about them. Still, at least that made sense. Whereas this woman …”

  “I think she just needed a place to stay.” He was about to add that she hadn’t seemed that interested in Ariel, or Gerald either, but maybe that would be insulting. “I have to find her,” he said simply. “I hoped you would help.”

  He began to describe her, trying, as he had with Phil, to capture some part of her in words until Ariel held up her hands. “Please,” she said. “Perhaps I’m crazy, but I can’t get it out of my head that she’s connected with Gerald.”

  “Do you think”—Zeke reached out to straighten the four pencils lying on the table—“he’d tell me where she is?”

  “Tell you?” Ariel stood up, although given her size it made little difference.

  “Sometimes people talk to me,” he said, “because I’m different.”

  “I can see that.” Ariel nodded. “You also—forgive me for being personal—have the face of a Raphael angel.”

  Zeke nodded back. Women had made this comment before, though with different artists: Donatello, Leonardo, Botticelli. What they meant was that he had fair skin, blue eyes, hair that approximated the color of lemons, and a full mouth. His misfortune, mostly. At school and in the shop, girls had followed him, and later at university a girl called Rhea had sat outside his room, wrapped in a blanket, for a whole unnerving month. Nothing to do with him, just some notion she had because of the incidental conjunction of flesh and bone.

  “You’d better go,” said Ariel. “If you do find out anything, please don’t tell me. I used to believe knowledge was power. But sometimes it’s exactly the opposite, plus all the pain.”

  Thank goodness, thought Zeke, I didn’t tell her about Ms. F. “I think,” he said carefully, “when we find this woman, she will turn out to have nothing to do with your husband, at least not in that way. And I think—forgive me, I hardly know you—that you might like her.”

  “Spare me.” Ariel’s sharp features grew still sharper. “If you want to find Gerald, try the French Bar in Soho. He usually drops in after work, or whatever it is he does all day.”

  Zeke stood up. Before he could move, she circled the table and put her arms around him. “Poor Ariel,” he whispered, and took the opportunity to rearrange her hair. It did not seem appropriate to mention his jacket again; just as well he had emptied the pockets.

  As he worked on the traveling clock that evening—it had gained thirteen minutes since his mother’s visit—Zeke felt as if two large figures were standing on either side of him, tugging. To his left was the non-niece whom he needed, desperately, to find. To his right was his father, who had left four messages and who now preferred a parrot to his son. How could he choose between them? But as he puffed compressed air int
o the tightly coiled movement, he decided that tomorrow, come what may, he must go to the shop. He bowed to the shadowy figure of his father and, at least for the present, his father bowed back and released his hold. And in the evening—he turned to the non-niece—he would visit Soho and find Mr. Barrow. She too retreated, smiling.

  The next morning, shortly before seven, he was out of bed and driving toward the shop. As a teenager he had risen even earlier than this to accompany his father to market. He remembered the shock of entering the brightly lit warehouse after the dark streets, the aisles already crowded with vendors calling their wares: freshly picked mushrooms from Kent, Guernsey tomatoes, apples from New Zealand, oranges and avocados from Spain, beans from Kenya. At that age almost everything Zeke knew about the world came from fruits and vegetables.

  When he pulled into the parking space at the back of the shop, his mother’s car was already there. She answered the door, mouth open, eyebrows arched. “Oh, it’s you. What are you doing here?”

  “I came to help.” Wasn’t that obvious? “The tiles for the chef’s kitchen aren’t in yet.”

  Her eyebrows dropped. “Well,” she said, “your timing couldn’t be better. Kevin has a dreadful cold. I had to send him home.”

  Like Phil’s kitchen, the shop was in a state he had never seen before, even after the busiest Saturday. The newly purchased produce lay, haphazardly, in the middle of the floor and the floor itself was filthy; worst of all, the bins of fruits and vegetables—his father’s pride and joy—were half empty, their contents shriveled, sprouting, sinister. One rotten apple, Don used to say, can lose you a dozen sales. Taking all this in, Zeke understood again the truth of his father’s claim that he had almost died. He counted grapefruit as fast as he could until his mother said, “Let’s put this stuff away.”

  After he’d carried the produce into the cooler and swept the floor, he fetched a rubbish bag and started to go through the vegetables. Sometimes leeks could be saved by peeling off the slimy outer layers, ditto celery and cabbage, but no time for that kind of fiddling today. On the other side of the shop, Gwen was working on the fruit. Her hands moved with their customary speed and her dark trousers and blue sweater were familiar, but something was different. Was he just being his usual obtuse self, Zeke wondered, taking in the set of her shoulders, the curve of her jaw. As they converged on the salad, he figured out what the change was: his mother was not wearing makeup. The effect was the opposite of natural. Put on some foundation, he wanted to say. Where’s your eyeliner? But neither of them interrupted the radio until everything was ready, the door of the shop unlocked, the awning unfurled, and the crates of apples and oranges stacked on the table in front.

  Then Gwen made second cups of tea. “I don’t know what happened when you came round the other day,” she said, “but Don’s been in a foul mood ever since.”

  Zeke watched the cars in the street outside speeding back and forth, like a separate species. “He’s ill,” he said.

  “He’s convalescing and you’re not helping. I mean, you are today, but in general you’re not.” Her voice shrilled. “He could live for another thirty years. Do you want to be at loggerheads the whole time? You said you’d give a hand in the shop, and now you don’t answer our calls. You’re driving him mad.”

  Zeke jerked his head, although he wasn’t sure what he meant to convey: Yes? I hear you? No? Even before seeing the shop he had known they needed him. He tilted his tea so that little ripples appeared. “What about—?” Surprisingly Maurice’s name was right there, waiting to be used, but he had no intention of doing so. Let him be a blank.

  “What about him?” Her earrings swayed: simple gold hoops. “On good days I have a drink with Maurice on the way home.” She raised her cup, then paused. “Is that what you think? That I want you to take over the shop so I can bolt with Maurice and not feel like a total bitch?”

  He felt her gaze boring into his forehead, trying to find a way inside, and turned his own on a scaly pineapple, once a sign of welcome, as the many stone ones on doorsteps and gateposts testified, now a fruit they sold only occasionally. Had he thought that? He wasn’t sure. All he knew was that his father’s anger was suddenly there in the shop, a weight across his shoulders, heavier than a sack of potatoes or a box of bananas.

  “This is not the rest of your life,” said his mother. “This is now, and you can always change your mind.” He wanted to protest that that was like asking one of his clocks to run backward, but her mouth kept moving. “Of course I’m going to wait until Don’s okay, and I’ll tell you right now he won’t appreciate my loyalty. He’ll think I’ve cheated on him twice over, once in loving Maurice and a second time in standing by him. Mark my words.”

  She gave Zeke another hard stare, as if somehow he were to blame for this too and, reaching into her pocket, produced a little black tube; soon her mouth was the familiar glossy pink. Zeke seized their mugs and carried them to the sink, where he set to work washing the disappointingly small pile of dishes. He wanted to run out of the shop and keep running until he reached his father. Then he would explain that, as soon as he finished the chef’s kitchen and found the non-niece, he would devote himself to fruit and veg full-time for as long as they needed him. He was scrubbing the tea stains from the last mug when the bell pinged. The first customer was through the door, and he and Gwen were in motion.

  Once Zeke had asked Phil why he had taken him on, and Phil had said, I saw you at the shop. It was true that, without thinking, Zeke could keep a running total in his head, while tipping broad beans onto the scales and slipping peaches into a bag, but he had forgotten what hard work it was and how noisy. So many people clamoring: Are the avocados ripe? Any watercress? After only an hour his legs ached and his hands smelled of apples and potatoes and money. When he went to the cooler to fetch another box of mushrooms, he had to fight the urge to close the door and sit down in the chilly dark. As a teenager, when he first started working in the shop, his mother had explained over and over that he couldn’t simply ask people what they want. He had to be polite. But they’ve come in to buy something, he’d argue. Why beat around the bush? This isn’t beating around the bush, Gwen said. This is showing that you appreciate their custom. Finally he had written it out on a card—1. Hello. 2. How are you? 3. Nice/nasty day. 4. How can I help you?—that he kept in his pocket. Although he seldom referred to it, his social skills did improve. Today, however, he rapidly gave up on 1, 2, and 3 and took refuge in the kind of behavior which used to exasperate his parents, regarding people’s ankles rather than their eyes.

  From this perspective the boots worn by Mavis were interchangeable with those of many of the younger customers. “Hi, Zeke,” she said, in her velvety voice, “Mavis. I’d like a pound of tomatoes.”

  As he stammered out the prices—so much for the ordinary tomatoes, more for the fancy ones—he wondered was she back with Phil or did she just happen to be in the neighborhood?

  “I’d better have the fancy ones,” said Mavis. “Nothing is too good for Brenda.”

  She offered exact change and accepted the tomatoes. And then, with five customers waiting, she hugged Gwen and told her how well she was looking and that she hoped Don was on the mend. For the first time that day Zeke saw his mother’s lips part in a way that suggested something other than anger or despair.

  By six o’clock he could barely speak; every muscle and tendon ached as he carried in the crates, put the perishable items in the cooler, and washed the floor. His mother was still thanking him when he announced he was off and let himself out of the shop. The streetlights were on and the streets were busy with people coming home from work or heading out for the evening. Among the crowds, Zeke walked more and more slowly until he came to a stop outside a kebab restaurant. As he stared at the meat, revolving indefatigably on its spit, going to Soho seemed out of the question; he would never manage a tricky conversation with Gerald. Tomorrow, he promised the non-niece. Cross my heart. He headed back to the shop, retri
eved his van, and drove thankfully home.

  He was locking the door of the van when a man’s voice called his name.

  “Hey, Zeke, where have you been? I was just calling you.”

  In the gloom he turned to see Emmanuel hurrying toward him, waving. “What are you doing here?” he said. “Aren’t you flat on your back?”

  “Obviously not. Let’s go inside. I want to talk to you.”

  Definitely his old friend, and yet he too was different. As he ushered him into the hall and upstairs, Zeke understood at least one part of the change. No longer did Emmanuel reek of sweat faintly masked by his grandmother’s Christmas gift of Old Spice. Instead he smelled as if three hospital nurses had just bathed him from top to toe with sandalwood soap. Inside the flat, other changes became apparent. In fact, if Zeke hadn’t met him first in the dark, he might have failed to recognize him. Gone was the silly little Dostoyevsky beard; gone the peculiar haircut, shaved sides, long on top, that Emmanuel had cherished for the last two years; gone the hooded sweatshirts and unraveling scarf. Now, in sleek dark clothes and a leather jacket, he looked as if he worked for an auctioneer or an estate agent, rather than wielding a paintbrush.

  “So,” he said, “you met my friend.”

  6

  Emmanuel refused to say another word until he had a beer. In spite of Zeke’s protests, he rooted around in the fridge, contemptuously pushing aside yogurt, hummus, anchovy paste, and grapefruit juice, until he found a bottle he must have brought with him the last time he came around, six months ago, and, oddly, failed to consume. Both the exercise of power and the immediate prospect of alcohol seemed to calm him, draw him back from that brink of swearing and ranting that he needed to fall over every few weeks, not so much out of anger, Zeke had decided after observing the phenomenon on several occasions, as to remember who he was. For himself, Zeke poured a glass of water and sank down into the nearest chair. His emotions were swirling and scattering like leaves in a playground on a windy day; he glimpsed joy, rage, hope, amazement, jealousy, frustration, and exaltation flashing by.