Unmentionables. Laurie Loewenstein
I was doing landscapes, snow in the woods, that sort of thing.” Louie paused to light a cigar. A house cat silently descended some porch steps across the street and melted into the bushes.
“But now, whole different ball game.” He made an expansive motion with his hands, fingers wide. An odor of turpentine eddied from his jacket.
“This way?” he asked, taking Helen’s arm and pointing up the street with the cigar.
“Sure. Fine. All the streets end up in the same place anyway. Go on.”
“So, in cubism, you think about something you might paint such as, say, someone’s face. Your face, let’s say. But instead of trying to get it to look as much like you as possible, like a mirror image, I take the pieces apart.”
Helen raised her brows.
“The face is made up of all different pieces, right? Eyes, nose, mouth, nostrils, all that. And also, when I look at your chin, say, from this direction . . .” They were under a streetlight. Louie grasped her chin and tipped it to the left. “. . . I see it one way. But when I do this,” he continued, pulling her face to the right, “it looks different. And when I do this . . .” He bent toward her, pressing his lips against hers. After a moment he said, “And when I do that, I don’t see your chin but I feel it.”
Helen pulled back, her eyes narrowed. “That just seemed like an excuse to kiss me.”
Louie threw up his hands. “Not at all! Just trying to bring some of the world of modern art to the culturally impoverished.”
“Now you’re making fun of me,” she laughed, thumping her handbag across his shoulders.
He grinned. “Just saying maybe you should get out more. Visit Chicago.”
“I have,” she said smartly. “And I’m moving there.”
“Terrific. This is my last job of the summer. I’m heading back to Chicago in a couple of days. I’ll take you to the Art Institute, give you some education.”
“You really don’t give up, do you? But it won’t be until next year.”
“Next year? Can’t you make it sooner?”
Helen flung a hand up. “Too complicated.” Inside, her mind was busy: Why not now? She was not going to change her mind even if Grandfather Knapp made her wait ten years.
“Say, what’s over here?” Louie was saying. He took her hand and pulled her toward a stone building flanked by wide granite steps.
“It’s First Baptist. My friend Mildred goes here.” Helen allowed herself to be led down a shadowy concrete walkway along the side of the church.
“Is that so?” he said absentmindedly, as if he wasn’t really listening. “What’s in here, do you think?”
Helen started to answer and then realized that Louie wasn’t really asking her a question. He pulled her under the small portico of a side door and put an arm around her waist. Helen glanced fleetingly over his shoulder at Reverend Carlisle’s manse next to the church. None of the lamps were lit. Louie’s other hand hung at his side, pinching the burning cigar.
“Put that out,” she said and he immediately dropped it. The cigar emitted a small shower of sparks before it was ground out by his shoe. She put both her arms around his neck and, when he kissed her, his lips were pleasantly moist and firm.
After a few more kisses, Helen pulled him out from the doorway. “Let’s keep walking.”
They turned left onto State Street, passing a stray dog with a wiry coat who trotted by purposefully. A display in the sporting goods shop caught Louie’s eye and he spent some time talking about the athletic prowess required to work scaffolding, as he examined the fishing hampers, golf bags, and medicine balls.
At the corner of Main and State, he stopped to light another cigar.
“How old are you?” Helen asked.
“Twenty-seven. That okay?”
“Yes.”
“So, your daddy’s a big shot in town,” he said, leaning against a streetlamp.
“Stepfather. Sort of. But it’s more my grandfather. He’s president of the savings and loan.”
They took a different route back toward the Chautauqua grounds. When the brick belfry of the United Methodist Church came into view, it was Helen who pulled Louie around the rear and down into an open basement stairwell. This time, after kissing her lips a number of times, he pressed his mouth to her temples, the space between her brows, and the tender spot just below her jaw where her pulse fluttered. She looked up at the rectangle of sky visible from the stairwell as he unbuttoned her shirtwaist. There were no stars visible, only a skim of clouds hanging in the warm night air.
Louie had smoothly freed her four top buttons and Helen felt his fingertips skimming her bare right shoulder in brushlike strokes. The sensation was dizzying, as if a cord below her belly, from deep within, was vibrating until her entire body thrummed.
“Did you say something?” Louie breathed into her ear. His fingers scooped inside her shirt.
“I need to get back to the tent before the program’s over,” Helen said, stepping away and securing her buttons. He protested, but she was already halfway up the stairs.
At the top she glanced at her watch and judged it would be about an hour before the Mystic Entertainer reached his grand finale. There were, she knew, at least two more churches between United Methodist and the Chautauqua grounds, and she meant to stop at each.
CHAPTER SIX
THE MYSTERIES OF HEREDITY
“YOU’RE SURE?” Marian asked.
The Negro youth sitting beside her in the driver’s seat of the Packard nodded. “Yes’um. I carry Mrs. Mummert in her touring car when her gout acts up.”
“You’re positive you know how to operate this?” Marian repeated uncertainly.
He skated a finger around the glossy rosewood steering wheel. “This a fine machine.” His cushioned voice knocked against the words like felt-covered piano hammers.
It was the morning after the Mystic Entertainer had conjured a cloud of Hindu spirits. The day was clear and already too warm. Just minutes ago, at ten a.m. sharp, Emmett Shang, Laylia’s son, had tapped on the Lakes’ front door. His hair was parted to one side with mathematical precision, his white shirt spotless.
When Marian had reluctantly come around to the understanding that she would be remaining in Emporia until the ankle healed, Tula cranked up the telephone. One call was to Nettie Harmon, the piano teacher, requesting that some of her more promising pupils entertain Marian in the afternoons. The other was to Harp’s Garage, pleading for someone to take Marian on morning outings in the Packard, now parked alongside Tula’s gardening shed.
Marian fidgeted in the passenger seat, searching for the least painful position for her swollen ankle. “All right, let’s see how you do. Crank her up. I don’t want to sit in the driveway all day.”
“Certainly, ma’am. I was . . . uh . . . just waiting for you to get ready.”
“I am ready.”
“Yes’um, I see that.” Emmett quickly got out of the car and moved to the front of the grille. “I just thought maybe you’d forgotten something.”
“No, I did not. I’m crippled, not addled.”
“It’s just that when I drive Mrs. Mummert, she wears a hat and veil. For the dust. That’s all.”
“Umpf,” Marian