The Italian Teacher(18)
“What I can’t figure,” Bear says, “is why it took you so damn long to come out here! It’s a helluva trip, I guess. Are we ever tickled to have you! We got some times ahead, Charlie! You on board?”
“Yes, sir!” In Rome, he sometimes wondered if Bear really was so splendid. But love sluices through the teenager just to stand before Dad, who grabs Pinch in a roughhouse cuddle, leaving the kid determined to upturn his whole life, to speak his mind, to denounce those who deserve it, to adore those who require it, to paint sublimely—suddenly certain that he will. Shy to be smiling like this, Pinch looks anywhere else.
“I started to think,” Bear adds, “that your mother would turn up here with a pitchfork if I didn’t send you a ticket. Good old Natty!”
Pinch tries to dismiss this—hearing Mom’s name jars him.
Then Bear winks, immediately restoring his son’s smile. “Young fella,” the man says, poking Pinch’s ribs. “You need a little shut-eye.” He nods to the others, and everyone makes their way out.
Abruptly, Pinch is alone, alert to any sound in the house, their voices downstairs. He looks through the window down at the backyard, a long lawn, a swing set backed by maples. Momentarily, he’s distracted by arithmetic. If that funny kid Owen is eight and Widgeon is six, both were born while Dad was in Italy. Is that possible? Dad and Carol weren’t even married then. Bear was often away from the Marinetti apartment, working late. Pinch banishes the thought—I’m here.
He unbuckles his suitcase, pulse quickening: A rolled canvas lies there. He lifts it out with trepidation, unfurling it on the bed, his knee planted on a corner. The leg survived—that’s what this painting depicts, his bare left leg. Pinch is too timid to ask strangers to sit, and it feels dopey to keep painting Mom, so he depicts his own body. Also, that’s how Bear learned to draw, sketching himself in enlarged detail after he leaped from a window as a little boy for kicks and ended up in traction. Pinch snorts with amusement—what a card, Dad, even then!
Summoning courage, Pinch makes himself consider his painting. Sometimes, it has seemed excellent; other times, awful. But his attention is too fractured to evaluate it now. He sniffs pipe tobacco from downstairs and steps onto the landing, marveling that his father is Bear Bavinsky, who is a floor below and will be taking Pinch everywhere these next two weeks, showing him the life of a famous painter in New York. Standing at the banister, Pinch imagines enduring in history, a major painter, he and Dad recalled together. And he cannot restrain himself, bolting downstairs, finding a raised newspaper in the den, Bear on the other side, smoke rising behind the page. “Dad, could I show you something? When you get a minute.”
“Weren’t you resting?” Bear lets the newspaper page wilt. “Shoot, kiddo. What’s on your mind?”
“Just, there’s a painting I did that I brought for you to see. Remember how you showed me all that stuff in Rome? I’ve been painting since then. I paint all the time. I never said it in my letters because I was lousy before. Maybe I still am lousy.” He looks up, pursuing a denial—then hurries out more words. “Maybe you could tell me if it’s okay. Or if it’s no good. I don’t mind. Either way. Dad?” He scrutinizes his father’s expression. “Only if you have time.”
“You are painting pictures? Chip off the old block! Hell, I’d love nothing more than to see what you put together.”
From euphoria, Pinch’s voice leaps in register. “Can I show you now? I could get it from upstairs?”
But Carol enters with a tray of peanut butter cookies. “Widgeon made these, you guys. I only helped, got me?” She gives a stage wink. “Ain’t that so, Widgey?” The little girl—fingers jammed in her mouth—clings to Carol’s leg under the woman’s dress, peeking at this overgrown boy in their house.
Bear grabs three cookies, pops one in his mouth, uttering all manner of approving moans, the crumbs accumulating down his beard, the little girl clapping in excitement. Bear leans to Pinch, raising one eyebrow, whispering through crumbling cookie: “We can’t properly cut out right now, with the little darling like this. You understand.”
“Absolutely.”
“I am busting to see what you did, kiddo. We’ll find the right moment. What say you?”
Before Pinch can respond, Bear has grabbed his squealing daughter with one arm, hugging her lovingly, flinging her in the air.
17
Every day, Bear drives to his barn in North Salem to paint, come hurricane, war, or the visit of a child. He is going to show Pinch the messy old place as soon as he finishes a major work currently under way.
While waiting, Pinch spends his hours with Carol, who treats him to a matinee showing of the The Sound of Music, takes him around the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, brings him on suburban shopping trips, the hi-fi panel in her Oldsmobile playing doo-wop, radio broadcasters’ patter flooding through the boy. He hasn’t adjusted to hearing English everywhere—still thinks of it as the language of school or home, but not a sound of passersby. Each afternoon, Carol picks up Owen and Widgeon from day camp. Pinch tries to be the big sibling Birdie was for him, but neither child buys him in this role, Widgeon bolting if left with her half brother, Owen talking back in gibberish. “Oh, baby,” his mother says indulgently. “Don’t do that, baby.”