Pack Up the Moon Read online

Page 5


  “I thought she was going with the doctor!”

  “He is the doctor!”

  “Oh,” I said, catching up.

  “Anyway, he’s no one for you. He’s ten years older than you, you know,” Daisy went on. “He was in the Vietnam War. Well, he was a doctor over there for a while. Detests Americans. Thinks he knows it all. Although I guess he does. His English is really quite remarkable for a Kraut. But he’s a dirty sleep-around. He’s even bumpsed with Isolde, if you want to know the truth. She told me.”

  “She did?”

  “Yes. Such cheek!” And then: “He was quite good, apparently.” Daisy spotted the time. “She’d better get back soon, though. Lamb takes a year and a day. We won’t be eating till nine or ten. I hate that. And I hate those gladiola. They make me think of funerals. She thinks they’re Art Deco.” Daisy snorted. “Oh. And another thing. She wants everyone in Trachten.”

  “Trachten?”

  “You know. Bavarian traditional dress: loden green jackets, feathered hats, dirndls for the ladies—acceptable, even preferable, in place of formal attire in Bavaria.”

  “I’m not going to wear one of her stupid dirndls,” I muttered.

  “Of course you must. If you want dinner. If I’ve got to wear one then so must you. She said you can have one of hers. She’s got a closet full. She nicked them all from the Bogner fashion shows.”

  “Oh, all right,” I said, imagining the splendid food.

  “’Course it’s all right with you. Makes you think you’re Heidi. You wouldn’t much care for it if you looked like me.”

  The record stopped and immediately Daisy went trotting off to start another up. Isolde had a superb record collection of classical, jazz, and semi-jazz. Daisy chose her favorite part of an early Keith Jarret.

  I put one foot up on the dining table chair, a position I’d hardly dare were Isolde there herself, and admired, for the ten thousandth time, the window. Or windows, really, for there were many. Lead-lined panes one after the next and up and down, some of which opened with their own little latches. The whole was as large and light as a cinema screen. I hugged my sketchpad to my chest and took a quick snapshot of the scene for later reference, found a pencil, and sketched away. The well-scrubbed antique pine table shone like honey. Isolde, with her relentless dash, had arranged the window seat with raspberry- and sagecolored silk pillows and buckets and clay pots of flowers. Isolde cried poverty all the time, but there were always opulent bunches of flowers. Flowers and candles and wine. Luxuries I’d grown up knowing only when the priest came to dinner. Now here they were, necessities, purchased routinely along with the potatoes and the laundry detergent. And fruits. Bright-colored, luscioustasting apricots and strawberries. Where I came from, we were allotted poor-people plums, twenty-seven for a dollar, and that was it, now go do your homework. Here, blueberries cascaded casually every day from slim balsa-wood cartons on the sill.

  Beside these extravagances, there were also two well-fed, muttering, surly gray parrots named Storm-Foot and Swift Wing for the Greek mythological monsters, Harpies on Phineus’ island. Each dwelt in its own jealously guarded, two-storied cage. They were known to all and sundry, though, as Stormy and Swifty.

  Daisy hummed busily to herself. I stood and headed to the birds’ messy cages, sticking one of my fingers in and nuzzling Stormy’s head.

  “Please don’t go getting him all revved up stroking him, Claire. He’s been squawking all day long and he’s only just settled down. He so hates to be teased!”

  “No, he doesn’t, he loves it. Don’t you, Stormy?” And it was true. Storm-Foot ruffled his feathers for me and barely put pressure at all while he nibbled away at my moonstone ring.

  For me, Daisy was nothing less than gold. Who else would do my laundry, scour the bathtub, and empty out the ashtrays, quick, before Isolde saw? I smoked too much. But then, whatever I did, I did voraciously. It was gluttony. I know that now. But hedonism and excesses were the order of the day and none of us saw anything wrong with pleasing ourself. Not then. Not yet.

  Daisy was invaluable to me in many ways and, best of all, was not yet fed up. Still dazed by Isolde’s chic and ribald lifestyle, she’d wake each morning full of curiosity as to what would happen next.

  Here I was, busy every day, feeling happy and safe with supper to come home to. It was almost like being a child, with furious, tidy Daisy barring unworthy enthusiasts from the house, the respectable agency in charge of my cash, and world-class, churning Isolde in charge of my life.

  People gossiped about Isolde constantly, assuring her a steep notoriety in Munich, as far as Klosters in Switzerland, really, but they always came if she invited them. She gave, as she said, a hoot about all that. Why, this was the age of Aquarius. It said so everywhere you looked. New York had gone through it with enthusiasm and now Munich, obediently carefree, would go through it, too.

  On this front both I and young Daisy were united and excited; there was lots of action going on here, enough action to get caught up in and catch tail ends of. Although we’d tell each other that we heartily disapproved, we knew, too, that it was not often in life one came in such scrutinizingly close contact with a diva. For that’s what Isolde was. A drive-men-mad-and-let-them-drop authentic diva.

  The whole business horrified the virginal and naive Daisy while reassuring me. No one thought to bugger me with mindencompassing Isolde about. It was almost a replica of my life as I’d known it at home. My stunning older sister, Carmela, had always held the limelight, leaving me free from scrutiny, free to languor about, dream, and draw. I’d always felt comfortable in the background—or at least as though I belonged there, considered it my rightful place in the family. But where Carmela’s beautiful, benevolent eyes had suddenly turned angry and mistrustful when I had found myself in frightening adolescence, Isolde now offered me the grace of indulgence whenever she beheld me. For Isolde really liked me. I was an immediate draw for her table, for one thing. Any foreign model was. But besides that, Isolde admired my ever-ready and loud disdain for the “glamour” of modeling, my thirsty passion for art, and the fact that I truly enjoyed being alone, something she herself never could stand to be. On the evenings Daisy would have off, out the door Isolde would spring in a flounce of spangles and perfume, saying, “Thank heavens for Claire! She’s so good with the children!” And I would collapse with relief onto the sofa. I was simply lazy at heart and I didn’t mind at all being left alone with the children (these I simply ignored and, sure enough, eventually they’d go to sleep.) for I would also be left alone with the refrigerator, the likes of whose innards few world-weary models got to get a whiff of. Isolde’s refrigerator was small, but it was filled with cheeses, hefty, pungent cheeses. Cheeses from the countryside. From France and Switzerland and Denmark. There were bird carcasses in there, too, delicious dry things from the evening before, fragrant with herbes de Provence and rubbed tenderly with Dry Sack. Once I found that I’d eaten the miniature partridges Isolde had planned for the weekend. There’d been so little meat on the things. How was I to know? I’d taken them for leftovers. Limp, bright green beans lay in a hardened yellow coddle of butter. On the windowpane were shiny, bursting tomatoes from Israel. In the cupboard were yawning hunks of sunflower bread just waiting to be sawed into. Or Swedish wheels of crumbly flat bread. Two or three half finished bottles of magnificent Bordeaux from the night before lined the wooden counter space. And then there was the endless assortment of heartbreaking records. Duke Ellington. Ella in Berlin.

  Isolde admired my ability to occupy myself, drawing or listening to music. At home, activities having to do with philosophy and art had been seen by my mother as grievous faults, fraught with laziness and self-absorption. Here, these same ways were regarded as qualities of depth. Vladimir was like that, too. Quiet and still. Watchful. Isolde would always gravitate toward that quality in others as though it were a refreshing pool. My pool, I can admit it now, was a bit put on. I’d find the record that I thought would mo
st impress Isolde. As it turned out, I learned to appreciate those artists she held in esteem, so I guess it did me no harm. But most of all, Isolde liked that I was a bonafide American. I was somebody here, not just the little one raising my hand, insisting, “Me, too!”

  Thinking of all these things I found myself in the kitchen making tea.

  Vladimir, Isolde’s husband, came in. “Hello, the pretty Claire,” he teased me.

  The kitchen was so tiny and he so big. “Oh! Hi.” I ducked my head, trying to shrink but then I had the feeling that he didn’t mind me. I never let myself feel what I really felt about him while Isolde was around because I was so nervous she would think I liked him that way or he liked me. But while she wasn’t here I could be myself. He and I were actually very compatible in a friendly way. Easygoing. He slipped a pan from under the stove. “May I use your water?” he asked, bumping into the braids of garlic and drying tufts of herbs.

  “Sorry?”

  “Your water. In the kettle. May I have some?”

  “Oh! Sure. Here, help yourself.”

  He poured some of it into a pan. It was already boiling and he slipped some spaghetti in after it. I thought of myself and how if I made pasta I’d fill a huge pot and have to wait forever for it to boil. He stood there stirring the spaghetti attentively. Vladimir, big and slow moving, had a particular way of looking at things—almost as though he were seeing something for the first time—and he made you feel it, too. When it was just done to the teeth he tipped the water into the sink, slipped the pasta onto a plate, poured olive oil into the pan, and cut up shards of garlic into it. He looked at me. I was dunking my teabag up and down into the teapot, watching him. “Now this is the most important moment to wait for,” he warned, catching my eye. “We can’t let this moment get away from us or we are lost.”

  “Okay,” I said. Together we watched the garlic turn from alabaster to gold.

  “When the perfume reaches your nose it will tell you the moment,” he whispered. We waited together, watching. Just the edges of the garlic crusted brown. “Now,” he shouted. I jumped and he pulled the pan from the heat. He slipped the spaghetti back into the pan, dashed white salt and black pepper over the top. There was an old crust of hard cheese on the counter I’d thought meant to be thrown away, but no. He broke off a small bit and held it before my nose. He opened his great nostrils wide and sucked in with a spectacular performance of appreciation. It smelled, I thought, stepping back, very ripe. But not bad, no, not bad, I agreed. He crumbled this small piece between his huge fingers and onto his dish, handed me a fork, poured spots of last night’s wine into two jelly glasses, and there in that little kitchen, sitting on the washing machine and he standing with his great hulking self leaning across the cutting board, I enjoyed one of the simplest yet finest meals I think I’ve ever had. All these years gone by, so many restaurants and meals, and yet, I can still taste that nutlike and delicious afternoon.

  “Upfh!” Vladimir suddenly realized the time, dumped his dish into the sink, and disappeared. When he left, the kitchen became just a kitchen again. I was rinsing the dishes when Dirk, Isolde’s older son, marched in and held me up with a water pistol.

  “Very funny, Dirk,” I said. “Please don’t get me wet, sweetie.”

  “Bah,” Dirk maintained and squirted me in the face. The truth was that I found myself a little terrified of Dirk. I didn’t know then that children love whomever loves them and he only wanted attention. I thought there was some special way to be. I thought there was a catch.

  “Come in here with me now,” came Daisy’s arbitrary voice from the next room. “Come along, Dirk. Let Claire get on with the tea.” Daisy maintained equal amounts of fair play and bullying in her tone, which is just what little boys need. The doorbell rang and Daisy went to get it. But I’d forgotten all about the tea. I went back to it, carried the tea tray to the dining table, and sat down.

  Daisy came back in with a basket of clean laundry. “That was Frau Zwekl,” she said, “with the children’s whites. Good thing, too, because I can’t keep up.”

  Isolde and Frau Zwekl had had words of the harshest kind some time ago. I had always supposed the confrontation had had something to do with late hours and respectable people and strangers tromping up and down the stairs.

  “That wasn’t it,” Daisy had confided in me later. “Dirk pinkled all over her clean washing.”

  Frau Zwekl held no grudge against Dirk. It was Isolde she couldn’t abide. I didn’t understand this at first. I thought it was stern moral disapproval. I know my mother would have been appalled at the goings-on. Frau Zwekl didn’t like men in and out at all hours. Empty French wine bottles twice a week in the overflowing recycler. Twice a week! she would sputter, horrified. Later, I imagined it was jealousy. I saw it glitter like hard stones in the old woman’s eyes when I helped Isolde carry fourteen potted mums up to the flat. Up and down the stairs we went, our boots tromping the tight snow loose on her clean floor, our arms laden with vibrant color. I’d gone down for the last load and sat for a moment on the step with Frau Zwekl. Snow-lit sunshine filled the stairwell from the skylight. I felt guilty for the sloppy steps. I knew I shouldn’t. We had every right to go up and down. And it was her own problem if she chose to scrub the darn steps. Nobody made her. But I couldn’t help sympathizing with her. We were chums, sort of, by now.

  She didn’t like that Isolde had access to mums in the middle of winter when everyone knew they were only to be had in the fall. “Imports!” Frau Zwekl would shake her head emphatically. It was unnatural! I explained they were from Israel. “Ach,” she’d snorted. “And red tomatoes she buys in the middle of winter!” She didn’t much care for that extravagance, either.

  Frau Zwekl had told me other things, things I’d rather not have known. Her husband had been much older than she. He was a kind man, but she hadn’t loved him. He used to make her kiss his thing. She’d shuddered. You see, there were no other men around. They’d all gone off to war. “Schwierigkeiten.” She would shake her head, fold the linen sharply. Hardships.

  Isolde had told me that whenever she smelled oranges it made her think of Christmas. She’d never smelled them before that. I was beginning to realize that this affluence was new.

  “Isolde will be home any minute,” Daisy reminded me, bringing me back to the present.

  “Who’s that in there on the sofa?” I gave a hitchhike nudge across my shoulder.

  “What? Oh, him. He’s been here so long I’d almost forgotten him. That’s Harry Honeycutt. Is he still asleep?”

  “I guess so. I can only see his head. Harry?” I called. We looked toward the living room. There he was, just coming to. He didn’t answer.

  “He’s always hanging about,” Daisy grumbled.

  Harry Honeycutt, with his plump form and excellent shoes, was becoming rather an embarrassment—respectable Englishman though he was—who would mope about the house waiting for everyone to leave, consuming great quantities of scotch in the meantime, hoping to have a quiet word with Isolde. If Isolde fancied someone, she’d simply boot Harry out. If she didn’t, he’d be allowed to park his inebriated body on one sofa or another for the night. Isolde didn’t bother to sleep with him. He was so useful in restoring her antiques, having redone all the picture frames and most of the better furniture. He had been very kind to me, admiring my moon-phase wristwatch when everyone else had laughingly deemed it junk. It would be years before such things would become fashionable, but Harry had the eye. He also wrote the occasional critical column in fashionable artsy magazines and had a standing vanity column in the Times Sunday supplements.

  “Isolde says he’s a big shot in his field,” I reminded Daisy.

  “It’s very hard to think of him that way when he acts like a sheep. Don’t defend him. You shouldn’t defend him. He’s a man. He ought to get on with his life.”

  “You’re right. It isn’t that I like Harry, because it’s difficult to like someone who so obviously despises himself, but
he gives me the opportunity to administer pity, an uncommon luxury at our age, don’t you think? He reminds me of the hesitant ant you let live. Poor thing, you think, imagining it on its way home from an enterprising exploration. So you keep your god feet to yourself, admiring its perseverance. And you forget it. Then, before you know it, there are seven hundred of them marching obliviously across your ledge. And now there is no stopping them.”

  “Do you hear yourself? The way you talk? It puts people off. Please do watch your cigarette ash, Claire.”

  “Hello, darlings.” Isolde, strong as Hercules, swept into the room with a box of groceries and two woven Spanish shoulder baskets filled with stuff. She clomped the carton of Nutella and bottles of wine and produce in the midst of our tea, rattling and almost upsetting the saucers. A paper of bright black cherries spilled across the table and we all filled our mouths as we reached to refill the horn of greengrocer’s paper.

  Dirk flew in and squirted the parrot with his water pistol and Rupert attached himself to Isolde’s leg. Harry woke up from his nap on the couch and followed Isolde into the kitchen.

  “Haven’t you got any pots of water going on the stove yet?” Isolde returned almost immediately and attacked plump Daisy.

  “No,” Daisy said, “I thought we were having lamb and I was just waiting for you to come back and—”

  “Well, then, the oven should be hot! And who,” continued Isolde, “used up all my Jil Sander perfume … You?”

  Daisy and I exchanged panic-stricken looks. Both guilty in all things concerning Isolde’s sumptuous properties, we shared some unbreakable bond. It wasn’t as though Isolde really cared, we told ourselves. She’d push things on us when she was in a good mood.

  “Dirk!” Isolde ordered. “Dirk, come over here and give your starving mother a sloppy wet kiss. There we are. What’s that on your forehead?”

  “He’s been tattooing himself once again with the fruit gum tattoos,” Daisy calmly explained as she proceeded to unload the stuff from the carton and carry it into the kitchen. She had to do it around Isolde, whining Dirk, who was having his head wiped, and the yawning and belching Harry, whom Isolde had not yet chosen to recognize.