Twice Told Tales Read online

“I suppose I should be ashamed at my selfishness. But I’m too desperate for that.” Katherine looked at the young woman. “You too,” she said. “Is it possible that every woman I meet these days is desperate?”

  Myrna said she didn’t know. She could only describe her own situation … lost … the sense of time having almost run out … herself grateful for a new, inspiriting career, Tulip-raising.

  “If anyone should be ashamed, it’s me,” Katherine Eudemie said. “You’re helping. I’m doing an imitation of being helpless.”

  They were at the park playground. Puerto Rican children climbed all over the statue of Alice In Wonderland. The day became noisy.

  “Is it an imitation?” Myrna asked. “Or can you really not help doing it?”

  “I don’t know,” Katherine Eudemie said. “There’s so much masquerade in my life, anyway. All I know is when I needed someone—and I didn’t even know I needed them—you were there. I’ve never been too good at having friends. Emerson says the way to have a friend is to be one. And I’ve had and lost so many.” She was speeding now, as she did a lot these days. “Do you have many friends?” she asked.

  “No,” Myrna said. “Not right now.”

  “Friends were such a comfort when I was a youngster.”

  “Me too,” Myrna said. “Actors are always with friends—hanging out at coffee shops.” She sighed a memory. “Whenever I smell coffee that’s bitter from reheating I think of friends.” Katherine Eudemie fixed Myrna with a stare that made Myrna nervous.

  “I’ve been on the move so much,” Katherine said. “My only friends have been my ambitions. I had an older man who guided me in Chicago—but we were lovers so—and then I came East. I HAVE TO DO SOMETHING WITH MYSELF BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.”

  “I understand that,” Myrna said, uneasy.

  Katherine Eudemie grabbed her hand; on an impulse she held it to her lips.

  “Can we be friends?” she said.

  Myrna did not know where to look until she got her hand back. Then she said, “I don’t really understand what’s going on.” And began to cry. Short quiet sobs. Katherine Eudemie held her until she stopped. Then they walked on talking and listening.

  Myrna felt her life had all been a waiting game in which nothing added up to much until Tulip. There was no explaining why Tulip was the answer, since the question was so unclear. But there it was! Tulip was what had happened. It was as complicated and as simple as that. But that was the one thing you couldn’t tell the child’s own mother. Impossible to discuss the surprises of Tulip with her own forgetful lost mother, Tulip so found, her mother so lost. For a moment Myrna felt she loved Katherine Eudemie the way she loved Tulip. But it was only for a moment.

  It had been spring when Katherine Eudemie’s copy of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life had been forgotten; now it was fall.

  Fall also brought an offer from Paul to buy out Lew’s share of the RR.

  “I’ll keep paying that fat philistine forever before I’ll give him a crack at this restaurant,” Lew yelled into the phone. “Ask him if he’d like smaller bills so they’ll fit better.”

  “Hey,” the lawyer said. “Hey.”

  “Or maybe your client could lend me some money without interest just for auld lang syne?”

  “Hey,” the lawyer said. “Hey.”

  Myrna’s obsession with Tulip grew with each passing parapraxis. But now it was split between kid and mother. Myrna read Katherine Eudemie’s novel, The Country of the Young. She thought she’d never read such a beautiful book. Why, she wondered, wasn’t it famous? Sometimes, when business was slow she read passages aloud to Tulip informing her that it was her mother’s book.

  “She did that before I was born,” Tulip commented, placing the work in correct literary historical perspective.

  Myrna also ran after dogs because Tulip ran after dogs. Lew didn’t mind. He hated dogs in his restaurant. She also ran after ’cellos because Tulip did. (There were more such to worry about in the RR than there were dogs.) Both dog owners and ’cellists were charmed by Tulip and Myrna was made happy.

  Krasner was livelier than usual, too. Operation Tulip was starting to work. The actor put together pages of numbers, hand-crampingly compiled—(B.C., Before Computers.)

  “Lunches are up,” he called out.

  But when the afternoon light began to slant, when Tulip arrived wearing purple mittens and a matching wool scarf, bad news about Katherine Eudemie began to seep into the RR.

  Someone mentioned sickness, someone else spoke of a diagnosis; someone even more else mentioned another diagnosis. Lew understood Jackson Eudemie’s ambiguous but grim remarks the day he’d brought Tulip’s clothes in. From the way things had run, Myrna expected something psychiatric. After all—forgetting a child, even once! … But fifty-six times!

  What was needed was a confirmed diagnosis!

  One such came from Joe Larrabie, Lew Krale’s personal surgeon. Yes, Lew had such an animal. Not for himself, but for the regulars who needed medicosurgical advice. Not for Lew was the usual, “Ask your doctor.” The RR was a complete life-support system, not just a restaurant. Hence Doctor Joe Larrabie with his own practice and his own booth just at the entrance to the dining room.

  It was Larrabie who passed along the awful diagnosis of cancer. He glanced around as he hissed the terrifying middle sibilant. By chance, neither Myrna nor Tulip was on the premises.

  Only Lew and sly old Sasha heard Joe. The old Russian woman swallowed the fearful word with the stolid acceptance of age. “Boije moy,” she muttered; a familiar Russian incantation of woe to come and woe remembered.

  Fatalism, okay! But what Imp of the Perverse made Sasha tell Myrna when she came on the next afternoon?

  Sasha tells Myrna.

  Myrna, despairing, tells Krasner.

  Krasner’s first thought is Jackson Eudemie. He assumes Jackson brought the suitcase full of Tulip’s things knowing she needed a new home, soon to be motherless. “I know Jackson Eudemie,” Krasner says, jowled with suspicion, “from the old days. Once a hanger-on, always.”

  Lew butts in. “You think Jackson’s laying off his kid on us? Crazy!”

  Krasner nods, rabbinic. “Everybody should be so crazy. Books and poetry but he lives.” In Krasner shorthand this translated as: anybody who can actually make some kind of living by putting together anthologies of Chassidic Love Poems isn’t so loony.

  Myrna’s heart slowed down in terror. Maybe Krasner was right. Not only the girl’s father but even her mother must have known all along that they had an imminent orphan on their hands. Myrna remembered the fall afternoon Katherine Eudemie had sought her out offering her money and confiding her life story and her terrifying lapses of memory.

  Parapraxis my ass! Myrna murmured. (Perhaps the first time in history the first and third word had ever been used in a single sentence.)

  Katherine Eudemie’s impending mortality changed everything. An impromptu Educational Planning Commission was set up. Music, art, dance, these were easy to come by at the RR. But what of science, what of English, what of math? Lessons were needed. But, for example, which—the New Math or the Old? There were so many issues to be decided. Being a parent was no easier when there were a dozen parents instead of the usual two.

  Then, shortly after the terrible gossip circulated as fact, Myrna became a prisoner of her new obsession. Her insides moved in calligraphic certainty. The message was as clear as if the entrails of a chicken were spread out before a medieval rabbi: a childless destiny. There was no evidence; no cysts, no spotting; only an obsessive sense of permanent internal decay. The abortion sponsored by Sheffield and endured by her was much on her mind. Such an event was a permanent judgment, she decided. It had sealed her fate. She was so convinced she told no one.

  The result was: Tulip became Myrna’s last chance. The kidnapping which later astonished everyone was now inevitable. Thus are born future New York Post headlines:

  ACTRESS SNATCHES KID FROM POSH RESTAURANT
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  NOVELIST MOM MAKES POIGNANT PLEA FROM HOSPITAL BED

  The first heavy snow brought to New York the Asian flu Type B and Russian refugees of all types. One of them was Yuri Yevshenkowitz, a skinny chain-smoker from Moscow University, formerly a professor on the verge of a breakthrough paper in topology and now a waiter at the RR.

  “Chulip,” Yevshenkowitz said, “a/ex times the square+=is how you arrive at the answer. I hed a student in Moscow half your age. Well—”

  “Tell me again,” said Tulip who had not even departed from the question. Myrna watched in despair.

  “Eh, maintenant,” the small bald man said to Tulip, “Il faut que tu fasses ton leçon pour le jour. Répète, Les sanglots longs des violons …”

  “Les sanglots longs des violons …” Tulip murmured in perfect imitation.

  “Harold,” he said, “Elle a une bonne oreille.”

  “Eugene,” Clurman said, “Isn’t she a little young for Verlaine?”

  “Jamais trop jeune pour Verlaine,” Ionesco said. He was in town for rehearsals of a new play and Clurman thought it would be nice for Tulip to start learning another language besides Russian. After rehearsals Ionesco would get slightly tipsy and start teaching. Once Clurman caught him in an error of grammar. Ionesco replied, “I am a Roumanian. We are not fanatics of grammar as are the French.” They were cheery sessions. No one had told either of them about the condition of Tulip’s mother.

  “The elongated sobs of the violins of autumn wound my heart,” Tulip recited happily in French. She bowed and the entire bar area applauded. Myrna watched in despair.

  The day that Captain Kolevitch came for lunch, Tulip was in the kitchen learning how to make chicken Kiev. She didn’t feel too well but she didn’t want to spoil her first cooking lesson. And she didn’t want them to have to summon Myrna from the front.

  “Congratulations,” Lew said. “It’s Wednesday. The Siberian pelmeny is terrific today.”

  “Nu, Lew,” Kolevitch said. “It’s been a while.”

  “What’s this ‘nu’? You’re not Jewish. I’m Jewish! You’re of Ukrainian anti-Semitic derivation.”

  “That’s what made this country great. All of us living together. The place has changed.”

  “Yeah. We put Christmas decorations on the ceiling.”

  “I meant something much more profound. All these new faces.”

  “Which? What new?”

  “Lew, I know this territory. Don’t forget I wrote six unproduced plays before I decided to give it up and become a policeman. And two of them were as good as anything your snotnose off-broadway scribblers are doing today. So I know.”

  “Know what?”

  “I know that the place is full of agents, suddenly. There’s Sam Cohn, there’s Flora what’s-her-name? ICM, CAA, the restaurant is lousy with acronyms. Movies, plays. Also, Woody Allen has been seen here.”

  “Don’t talk like a cop, Kolevitch. It’s not a crime to be seen here.”

  “I was just making a point. It’s different. It used to be hangers-on, schleppers. Emigré Russians, out-of-work actors.”

  “They’re still here. I’m proud of their loyalty.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Well—not at lunch so much. More late night.”

  A waiter appeared. “Can I get the Captain a drink before lunch?”

  “I’m in uniform, schmuck. That means I’m on duty. Get me a water glass with vodka and some ice in it.”

  “Captain Kolevitch will have the pelmeny, Pierre,” Lew said. “Make sure it’s hot. And a double Scotch for me.”

  “You see,” Kolevitch said.

  “See what?”

  “What kind of a Russian name is Pierre? Where’s Gregory?”

  “HE’S OFF TODAY. MY GOD. And Pierre was in War and Peace!”

  “That reminds me,” the policeman said. “Now there’s the publishing crowd. Royalty conversations, paperback deals. Very chic, very in. No empty tables.” He tossed back a quick swig of water/vodka.

  “Come back on a Monday. What the hell are you nudging me about?”

  “We had a tip about the kid in the restaurant, Lew. But that kitten has been out of that bag for some time.”

  “What kitten? What bag?”

  Lew covered his confusion with Scotch. Kolevitch sipped his on-duty vodka like water.

  “Lew,” the policeman said. “Everybody knows about Operation Tulip.”

  “What operation?”

  “How this kid is living in the restaurant—how you’re taking care of her and she’s taking care of you. You can’t hide such a spectator sport. It’s not good, Lew.”

  “It’s not true, either!”

  Kolevitch tossed off the rest of his vodka and signaled Pierre for more.

  “We have a statement,” he said. “Your hat check girl has a boyfriend. Had. He turned you in. The kid’s name is—” pause to consult small notebook—“Tulip Eudemie.”

  “Aha!” Lew said. “Is that a real name? Tulip. A dumb story.”

  But he was defeated. He drank two glasses of Scotch before saying another word.

  “This place,” Kolevitch said, his mouth full of veal dumplings, “it means a lot to me.”

  “Yeah …”

  “A shrine to my youthful hopes.”

  “You couldn’t write,” Lew said. “Somebody said you looked like Saroyan in your moustache so you wrote plays.”

  “Don’t piss on my youth.”

  “Don’t threaten my restaurant with anonymous informers.”

  “Not anonymous. Name is Sheffield.” Another glass of vodka vanished.

  In desperate distraction Lew said, “How’s your poor Helen?”

  Kolevitch shook his head, hopeless.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “She’ll never get straightened out. She sang her song and now she’s lost the tune.”

  “Those Laughing Academies are awful,” Lew said, hoping for a reprieve if not a full pardon. “They could kill the song in a nightingale.”

  “And you should know what they cost.”

  The two middle-aged men lean over the plates of soups and sour cream in the middle of the table, wrung by their separate griefs.

  “I’m happy for the turnaround, Lew, and for you,” Kolevitch says. “But it cannot go on. A child cannot live on premises where liquor is sold. Not in my precinct.”

  In the kitchen Tulip finally succumbs to the violence of her stomach cramps.

  “I’m sick,” she cries out.

  Someone scoops her up; someone else runs to find Myrna. Diarrhea no longer waits, like God, in the wings.

  In front Captain Kolevitch wobbles to his feet and searches for the headwaiter. Questioning is imminent.

  “Kolevitch,” Lew calls out, “I swear I have never done anything illegal in my entire life except maybe adultery. Wrong, yes. Illegal, no! NOBODY LIVES HERE. THIS IS A RESTAURANT.”

  Myrna, in her finest role, wearing a borrowed Persian lamb coat, strolls past, hiding a gray-faced Tulip under the fur. It is as close to being pregnant as she has been able to manage in her young life. She revolves through the door. Outside she grabs Tulip by the hand and races for her apartment and the bathroom.

  Kolevitch finally corners Misha.

  Terrified of Cossacks, Misha tells everything.

  Lew Krale still remembers Christmas coming that year in New York blessing everything with snow; remembers the immense snowy sadness hanging over the entire world, able to think of nothing but finding Tulip, and of her mother in Mt. Sinai Hospital. He took to walking the cold streets flirting with his old friend, failure, in its most extreme forms—death by walking in December without an overcoat, death by not looking both ways when crossing 53rd Street. One midnight, in a parking lot on Broadway, he howled to the sky, “Bring her back, God, Myrna, whoever. Don’t do this.” Nobody noticed.

  As a gesture of hope or exhaustion he left up the Christmas decorations, the gold streamers and the red balls surrounding the
lights in the dining room. I’ll take them down when Tulip is back, he thought.

  The long drought was over at the RR; apparently the change was permanent. First lunches, now dinners were up—and stayed up. The same new fancy media types Kolevitch had anatomized in his merciless way were there to stay. And Lew was denied even the pleasures of his long romance with failure. He didn’t need the acerbic style of Krasner to tell him it had all been bullshit, a pose, a parody of his Russian-Jewish grandparents. His muttered What does it all mean? had lost all conviction because it was no longer rhetorical. Now he wanted an answer!

  None came. The small band of regulars who had drifted away returned. From New Year’s Eve on they took turns, as if the restaurant was a place of mourning, arriving shortly before closing time: Clurman after writing a theater review, Balanchine after a performance at the City Center; actors who would have gone to Sardi’s for a drink and home to bed sat up, instead with Lew … the comedians who had gone on to better things came back for the bad times … Krasner returned to the scene of his crime and told and retold Operation Tulip … the musicians just back from a tour came for hot tea with preserves in the Russian style … even Paul Buchalter suspended hostilities to sit silently at the mourner’s table … Joe Larrabie came with medical bulletins: Katherine Eudemie’s life was dwindling down in a room at the Guggenheim Pavilion which Jackson Eudemie could not afford.

  All through the beginning of the new year they rerehearsed the scene when Kolevitch had come back with a search warrant and two other cops the day after his lunch with Lew. They’d searched. They’d sought out Lew who no longer had to lie in the awful absence of Tulip and Myrna. The next target was the headwaiter, since Misha had spilled everything the day before.

  The only problem was Morris was on duty, not his brother. Snotty, sardonic Morris, afraid of nothing and fanatically protective of Lew.

  “I never told you anything.”

  “Don’t lie to an officer of the law.”

  “I never saw you before.”

  “You’re under arrest.”

  “I’ll sue you blind.”

  Kolevitch took Lew aside. “Look,” he said. “I don’t want to arrest anybody. We just don’t want a kid shacking up in a restaurant in this precinct.”