It is in your way, isn’t it?”
He wasn’t humming anymore. He was almost as wide as his doorway. He wore a plaid vest, a striped shirt, and a dotted bow tie, with all the colors of the rainbow visible in wool, cotton, and silk. I don’t know if it was because of his shortness, the colorful brocade vest, or the beard, but he reminded me of the boisterous, larger-than-life character Gareth in Four Weddings and a Funeral. His little daughters had already come back out and stared at me with the same anxious faces as before. But it was all an act. I knew these girls had a flair for drama, and that their apparent gravity was all just part of the show. They wanted to keep performing.
“No, no, not at all! I was just wondering if I could help you carry it up to your apartme—”
Without even letting me finish, he turned and thundered:
“Alice! I’ve finally met your lover! He’s a very handsome young man! Well done, my love!”
“Who . . . who are you talking about?” chirped the unfaithful wife.
And Alice came out.
And Alice made her appearance.
I’m not sure which of those two expressions best captures the effect I’m trying to convey. The upstairs neighbor, the maman with the stroller, the disseminator of crumbs and cartons of milk, came nearer. She recognized me and smiled. And if, as she smiled at me like that, looking me straight in the eye, she hadn’t also leaned against her husband’s shoulder (she was much taller than him) and slipped a careless arm around his neck, I would have fallen in love with her right then and there. Now, immediately, and forever. But unfortunately there was that detail—that “careless”—that compromised our chances for bliss. Because that was what made her so beautiful and so sexy. It was that ease, that confidence, that instinctive way she’d leaned against him, even here on their doorstep, with a dish towel in her hand, for no reason at all. Just to ask a question. It was because she adored her little blusterer of a husband (you could feel it), who loved her in return (you could see it), and who must make love to her all the time, that she could allow herself to turn me on that way, with such vulgar guilelessness.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, little mother . . . that was hot.
Of course, at the time, I was too disturbed to analyze everything that was going through my head, and contented myself with repeating my offer to help.
“Oh, thank you! That’s so kind,” she exclaimed, and then she was taking her husband’s jacket off as if it were a satin cape.
Respecting the ceremony, as it were, but shoving him very slightly forward at the same time.
Very Mary Poppins and Rocky Balboa.
He grumbled, undoing his cuff links and handing them to one of his daughters and then removing his bow tie and giving it to the other daughter. Then he pushed up the sleeves of his shirt (it was of very fine cotton and I really wanted to stroke it) and turned to me.
He was perfectly round, like a fireplug or Misha the Olympic bear, and as he descended the stairs with a daughter clinging to each hand I conducted a kind of physical assessment in my head, to figure out if it would be better for him to be in the front or the back of the armoire while we carried it.
The front.
It wasn’t all that heavy, but of course he acted like it weighed several tons, and his groupies were in heaven.
He cursed impressively with each step: “Ah! This would make a preacher swear!” “Jesus Christ on a bicycle!” “Ten thousand thundering typhoons!” “Heavens to Murgatroyd!” “Odds bodkins!” “Good Lord almighty!” “Ay caramba!” “Goddamn this Formica devil!” “Damn it all to kingdom come!” “Great balls of fire!” “Thunderation!”
. . . I could go on.
His daughters grew more and more scandalized at each curse, scolding him and waving their arms at him. “PAPA!”
I brought up the rear, lapping it all up—and bearing all the weight.
What would they have left for later in life, after a childhood like that? I wondered. A life of boredom, or a taste for partying? A timid stomach or a hell of a lot of chutzpah?
God knows I loved my parents, so composed, calm, and discreet, but I would have loved it so much if they’d entrusted me with this secret in addition to their affection. That happiness was found in stairwells, and that you mustn’t be afraid. Afraid of making noise, afraid of being happy, afraid of disturbing the neighbors and swearing at the top of your lungs.
Afraid of life, of the future, of crisis, and of all the made-in-China Pandora’s boxes that old assholes who are even more afraid than we are keep opening to discourage us so they can keep all the booty for themselves.
Yeah, maybe these little girls will become disillusioned someday; maybe they have it too good too soon and it’ll all go by too fast; and maybe pretty soon they’ll start to feel overpowered and weighed down by their all-powerful mini-Papa, but in the meantime . . . in the meantime . . . what wonderful memories they’re storing up.
On the third-floor landing, a curious old biddy has opened her door.
“Madame Bizot! Finally, finally! There you are, Madame Bizot!” he bellows. “Maison Lévitan, delivering you the ‘Marquise d’Azur’ armoire you ordered from us in April 1964! Beautiful, isn’t it? Excuse us, excuse us! Push, Madame Bizot, push! Now, where would you like us to put it?”
She was aghast. I laughed. I laughed, not giving a damn that I was doing all the heavy lifting and bashing a bunch of plaster off the wall while I was at it, because the passage was so narrow and he was so round that I was going to end up flat as a pancake without him even realizing it.
“Let it go,” I eventually ordered, hoisting the thing onto my back. “I’ll take it the rest of the way by myself; it’ll be quicker that way.”
“Oh . . . oh, you scoundrel. You just want to show off for my wife, is that it? Monsieur wants to flirt? The Casanova, the boy toy, the . . . the smooth operator wants his hour of glory, right?”
He didn’t stop for breath until I was at their front door.