Amy Bloom - Lucky Us

FRANCISCO MADE MEXICAN CHICKEN soup and tortillas and Danny showed us his spelling test, with the big red 100 across the top. Francisco kissed him, and while Danny was setting the table, Francisco showed me a contract for the Penn Station barbershop. He was selling it to Jorge and Gracie, who wanted to expand.

“I’m retiring,” he said. “And we got some money in the bank.”

“I’m going to be on the spelling team,” Danny said. “We’re going to have a tournament.”

We cheered for ourselves, and ate the soup, and when the ice cream truck came, I gave Danny a dollar. The three of us sat in the back on the picnic table, blissfully eating our Creamsicles. I thought, I’ll be a doctor.

I BEGAN TO THINK I SAW GUS HEITMANN EVERYWHERE. HIS long, foxy jaw. The sharp, pocked cheekbones. His wide shoulders, dipping to the left, driving the car ahead of me. It was ridiculous to think I’d seen Gus in Great Neck, as if he hadn’t died or, having not died, had chosen to come back here. I told Francisco, who said, “Yeah, I saw De Gaulle in Nassau Hardware. Right behind me.”

IT TURNED OUT, GUS had seen me. He’d been looking for me. He’d called the Torellis three times and he said that each time he’d felt sicker than when he’d reentered Ellis Island and had to claim to be Gersh Hoffman, Nazi victim. He never reached Mrs. Torelli, who I think would have told him where I was. He got a snippy girl with an English accent, who was probably the new governess, and he got a shy Negro maid, who thought he was selling something. Twice, he got Joey, who yelled, HelloHelloHello, into the receiver and hung up. Once, he dialed his old number in Lake Success but the woman didn’t know any Reenie Heitmann and a man took the phone from her and told Gus to stop bothering his wife. Gus said that he’d never thought he was a coward until he sat looking at my name and address and phone number in the Great Neck telephone book, and couldn’t bring himself to dial.

He didn’t want to be Gus Heitmann anymore. He wanted only to be Gersh Hoffman, Jewish math teacher, and he wanted to find me. He never told me what he would have said to Reenie if she’d answered the phone.

DANNY AND I WENT to Stricoff’s bakery like other people went to church. We were Sunday regulars, and if it was a bad week, you could find us picking out a chocolate babka on a Wednesday afternoon. That’s where Gus saw us. He said we looked like the tall and the small of the same person. He watched me give my ticket to one of the Stricoff sisters and get handed a box and a small white bag and right before we made our way through the throng of Sunday shoppers, the old men with their lists and the other young women with their small children, Gus got into his car and followed us home. He parked his car a block away, like a real spy, he said, and stood on our corner. He watched me and Danny carry in our groceries. Francisco held the door open for us, saying, as he always did, “Hail the conquering heroes.”

Gus said when he saw Francisco, he hated him. He said that he couldn’t imagine why I had married a man like that, but he saw me hug Francisco and it looked like I loved him and he thought that there was no reason to get in touch, after all. I put on my dungarees and Danny and I played while Francisco put the groceries away and started dinner. Gus watched us, hidden by our hedge, batting the hell out of our tetherball. When Danny wrapped the ball around the top of the pole, I cheered, and we went back into the house for Danny’s math and my med school applications. I looked back, at nothing, at the sound of a car starting, and Danny tugged on my sweater.

THAT NIGHT, IT WAS raining like the Flood. Trees bent toward the ground, the sky cracked white every few minutes, and black, oily water ran in the black streets. Thunder woke Danny up twice and I sang to him. On the third verse of “Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball,” he fell back asleep. I tucked him in with his old holster, just in case. Francisco was reviewing the transcript we’d devised before typing it on our state-approved and watermarked paper. I was taking a break from organic chemistry, skimming my Little Blue Book on modern mathematics. Francisco had already aged the parchment for my high school and college diplomas and done the calligraphy. A man he used to shave had a brother-in-law who had the state seals for New Mexico, New York, and New Jersey, and now, so did we. Francisco had amortized all our medical school expenses over the some thirty-five years I could expect to practice and he said I was a good investment. He kept a ledger book of what I owed him. Sometimes he wrote in things like Teaching Danny Spanish: $10,000.00, Eva’s Eyebrows: $2,000.00. We graduated me magna cum laude from the University of New Mexico. (Not summa. Do not overreach, my father had said.) I applied to medical schools in New York and I hoped that they felt about New Mexico the way I did, that it was American, and legitimate, but wide open and a little unknowable. My UNM transcript showed that I had aced everything, including classical music and botany (well rounded), and had spent three years as a lab assistant for the recently deceased Dr. Andrew Azores. His reference letter emphasized that he had never recommended a woman before; nevertheless, he believed that without in any way compromising my femininity, I would contribute to the field of medicine. Dr. Azores approved of what he felt was my natural interest in pediatrics. He emphasized my devotion to medicine, my skills, and my modesty. There was a suggestion that I would never marry. Francisco and I both thought Dr. Azores was a pompous ass but he was, entirely, our pompous ass. We didn’t give me Phi Beta Kappa, on the off chance that someone on some admissions committee would give a damn, and thinking to help or hurt my cause, call the Phi Beta Kappa office.

Letter from Iris

Queensberry Place

South Kensington, London

September 3, 1948

Dearest Eva,

I understand why you never wrote. I’m sorry that I stopped writing. It was too hard. It was like etching my awfulness on every mirror. I have tried to be a better person. I even look in the mirror less often.

The clinic is becoming a reality. I continue to be the Singing Guinea Pig, and now I am on the board, which means I beg rich people for money, every single week, on behalf of Dr. McIndoe and the boys, and, in my own mind, on behalf of Reenie. I am usually partnered up with a very handsome, badly maimed RAF major. I don’t know that most people see his handsomeness. I imagine they see the ruined remains. That’s what we count on — because just as the rich person begins to wince (usually as Teddy is knocking a tray of crab puffs to the floor with his stump, or misjudging the distance from the glass to his twisted mouth), I cut in with my pretty ways and waltz them into another room, so they can write us a check in comfort. We have perfected this. I love Teddy and he loves me. If I was going to sleep with a man, it would be a short Scotsman with one arm and half a face and a taste for morphine.

I’ve been a guest star on Café Continental six times now and it looks like our West End revue will run forever. I am enclosing a check, which I hope will be helpful to you all. I’ll send you a check every month that I’m working, from now until I die.

Oh, Eva, please forgive me for every shitty, unspeakable, unforgivable thing I did to you. I know that as lists go, this is one with real depth and real breadth. I have no business staying away — except that I think you are better off without me and at least here, I make myself useful. If you write me and tell me to return, I will.

If you can, forgive me. If you can, let me make amends.