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Authors: Brad Leithauser
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don’t,” Bea replied.
CHAPTER IV
“Bianca, look at those textures,” Ronny cried softly. His finger darted and danced in the air, directing Bea’s attention toward the satin crown of a hat, a velvety cuff, a crinkly piece of paper, and a scarf that was a different, less brittle kind of crinkly. The painting was called Young Man Reading a Letter . It was by a Dutchman, Gerard Ter Borch, whose name evidently rhymed with stork.
Look at the textures! Ronny urged again, with the schooled reverence of an artist attuned to all the pains taken in their replication. If Ronny was the best overall draftsman in Professor Manhardt’s class, nowhere was his preeminence more dramatic than in his mastery over textures. He wasn’t the best portraitist perhaps, but nobody could equal him when it came to reproducing a coarse, wayworn rag, a swept-together heap of broken glass, a tender pussy willow, a rust-blistered bolt.
The two of them had made it to the museum at last. The trip had begun to look ill-starred. Twice Bea had had to cancel—first for a reason she naturally couldn’t explain (terrible cramps) and then because Papa had asked her to attend, in Mamma’s stead, the wedding of Jack O’Reilly, the son of his boss Mr. O’Reilly. (Mamma wasn’t feeling well, or so she said.)
In the interim, she and Ronny had seen each other alone a handful of times, mostly at Herk’s Snack Shack. They’d also had club sandwiches at a luncheonette near the Institute, and a somewhat fancier meal, with a tablecloth, at a place called Luigi’s, where Ronny ordered a beer. (Bea was grateful he didn’t ask whether she’d like an alcoholic drink. Having earlier determined that he must be twenty-one, she shied at confessing to being only eighteen. Nor, for that matter, was she in any hurry to divulge that she drank wine regularly, that her father made wine, in the cellar. She was indeed in no hurry to expose her family background—her mother contemplating the kitchen calendar, her emphysemic grandfather, who hardly spoke English … All the more so as Ronny had mentioned, with a glancing assurance, that his father was “a businessman.”)
Fortunately, Ronny made it easy to sidestep topics. Bea had never known anyone so easy to talk to about nothing—although none of this felt like nothing, their rapid-fire chatter: oh, it felt like something , it felt like life itself. Their first few conversations, Ronny had done most of the talking. But Bea soon learned to leap in—phrase tumbling over phrase—and Ronny had welcomed her arrival in that place where words crowded like exuberant guests at some New Year’s fête. Had she ever, ever so much enjoyed talking with anyone? She played his words over and over at night, as she lay in bed, and could it be she was falling in love? It could be.
Or was she so eager for Ronny’s bright talk because life had turned so dark? Not just at home, though home was the worst of it. There hadn’t been another argument, true—and yet Mamma did little but brood over her coffee and candy.
Meanwhile, as if in response to the madness on Inquiry Street, the entire city had gone mad. There had come a night, June the twentieth, when the radio reported that Detroit had broken out into a riot: a race riot. Papa had declared that nobody was leaving home the next day—except of course for him, for he had a job to do.
Yes, it seemed that for some thirty hours the city had gone mad, with terrifying rumors flying everywhere, and President Roosevelt himself ordering soldiers down Woodward Avenue, and some of the rumors turned out to be true: whites had beaten blacks and blacks had beaten whites, including a white doctor named De Horatiis, an Italian, clubbed to death while paying a house call on a little colored girl. Before order was restored, some thirty-four people, nine whites and twenty-five Negroes, lay dead. Mayor Jeffries was quick to explain that full order had been restored, but what in the world was
CHAPTER IV
“Bianca, look at those textures,” Ronny cried softly. His finger darted and danced in the air, directing Bea’s attention toward the satin crown of a hat, a velvety cuff, a crinkly piece of paper, and a scarf that was a different, less brittle kind of crinkly. The painting was called Young Man Reading a Letter . It was by a Dutchman, Gerard Ter Borch, whose name evidently rhymed with stork.
Look at the textures! Ronny urged again, with the schooled reverence of an artist attuned to all the pains taken in their replication. If Ronny was the best overall draftsman in Professor Manhardt’s class, nowhere was his preeminence more dramatic than in his mastery over textures. He wasn’t the best portraitist perhaps, but nobody could equal him when it came to reproducing a coarse, wayworn rag, a swept-together heap of broken glass, a tender pussy willow, a rust-blistered bolt.
The two of them had made it to the museum at last. The trip had begun to look ill-starred. Twice Bea had had to cancel—first for a reason she naturally couldn’t explain (terrible cramps) and then because Papa had asked her to attend, in Mamma’s stead, the wedding of Jack O’Reilly, the son of his boss Mr. O’Reilly. (Mamma wasn’t feeling well, or so she said.)
In the interim, she and Ronny had seen each other alone a handful of times, mostly at Herk’s Snack Shack. They’d also had club sandwiches at a luncheonette near the Institute, and a somewhat fancier meal, with a tablecloth, at a place called Luigi’s, where Ronny ordered a beer. (Bea was grateful he didn’t ask whether she’d like an alcoholic drink. Having earlier determined that he must be twenty-one, she shied at confessing to being only eighteen. Nor, for that matter, was she in any hurry to divulge that she drank wine regularly, that her father made wine, in the cellar. She was indeed in no hurry to expose her family background—her mother contemplating the kitchen calendar, her emphysemic grandfather, who hardly spoke English … All the more so as Ronny had mentioned, with a glancing assurance, that his father was “a businessman.”)
Fortunately, Ronny made it easy to sidestep topics. Bea had never known anyone so easy to talk to about nothing—although none of this felt like nothing, their rapid-fire chatter: oh, it felt like something , it felt like life itself. Their first few conversations, Ronny had done most of the talking. But Bea soon learned to leap in—phrase tumbling over phrase—and Ronny had welcomed her arrival in that place where words crowded like exuberant guests at some New Year’s fête. Had she ever, ever so much enjoyed talking with anyone? She played his words over and over at night, as she lay in bed, and could it be she was falling in love? It could be.
Or was she so eager for Ronny’s bright talk because life had turned so dark? Not just at home, though home was the worst of it. There hadn’t been another argument, true—and yet Mamma did little but brood over her coffee and candy.
Meanwhile, as if in response to the madness on Inquiry Street, the entire city had gone mad. There had come a night, June the twentieth, when the radio reported that Detroit had broken out into a riot: a race riot. Papa had declared that nobody was leaving home the next day—except of course for him, for he had a job to do.
Yes, it seemed that for some thirty hours the city had gone mad, with terrifying rumors flying everywhere, and President Roosevelt himself ordering soldiers down Woodward Avenue, and some of the rumors turned out to be true: whites had beaten blacks and blacks had beaten whites, including a white doctor named De Horatiis, an Italian, clubbed to death while paying a house call on a little colored girl. Before order was restored, some thirty-four people, nine whites and twenty-five Negroes, lay dead. Mayor Jeffries was quick to explain that full order had been restored, but what in the world was
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