American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [14]
In her tent, he scolded her for going to meet Solomon. What was she doing, he said, waiting at sunrise for a man she didn’t know? He might have been dangerous.
If I hadn’t gone to meet that man, she reminded him, I would never have met you.
After the parting of the Red Sea, during which Pearl had followed Mr. DeMille’s strict instructions and rushed headlong into the waves with hundreds of others in order to retrieve seaweed and spread it around on dry sand so that it would look as if the ocean had just separated, Pearl agreed to go to New York with Joe. They stopped briefly in Los Angeles to tell her parents, who were relieved at the thought of their daughter settling down and getting out of the picture business, and who arranged the wedding quickly and modestly. They had a small house in a flat part of the city. The reception was held in their minuscule yard. Pearl later remembered her wedding day as the image of a palm shadow on a tablecloth. The image was captured for eternity in the background of the picture in her living room. Their honeymoon was a ride on a comfortable train east. By the time The Ten Commandments opened at the George M. Cohan theater in New York that December, Pearl could navigate her new city like a native, and she and Joe were expecting their first child.
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The doctors didn’t have any answers, he said.
What? Honor said.
Milo’s eyes were closed. He had a look on his face, even with his eyes closed, like he was trying to remain calm, as though he were keeping some great pain at bay. It reminded her of an animal working away at a wound with a perfectly composed expression.
They never figured out what was wrong, he said.
The doctors here? What are you talking about?
Every year for five years Pearl lost a baby.
Honor stopped asking questions.
I’m sorry, she said.
There was always a lot of blood.
I’m very sorry, she said.
He was still talking with his eyes closed. Now it was like a statue talking, or a ghost.
We wanted a child so much, he said. It was hard to see her sad. She was very brave.
Very brave, Honor said.
You have to understand, he said, there was a lot of blood.
Then his face twisted into a horrible mask, like one of those monstrous inflatable Halloween masks, and then as if someone had pulled a string, the face folded and slowly collapsed into itself like some airless and decomposing plant.
I understand, she said.
She couldn’t tell him that she didn’t understand. That she wanted desperately to know if his pain was for the story he was telling her or for his own hidden story, which he wouldn’t tell her.
Either way, she supposed it didn’t really matter. She felt the sadness in him and it hung around her shoulders and when she left he was resting and calm again and she very quietly closed the door.
At the nurses’ station they were talking about recipes and global warming. The lights were low and on a desk there were cups of soda and a sandwich. Honor recognized most of the nurses by now, some of them she had come to know a little. She looked over at them while she waited for the elevator. Then one of them said, What is it? You don’t look so good. Honor came over and sat down.
She took off her bag. Her long hair swung. Her coat grazed the linoleum floor.
He seems like he’s getting worse, she said.
They all get worse, one of them said. Then sometimes they get better. She put her cup down and turned a page of the newspaper.
I’m not sure I’m helping him.
Can’t be sure, another one said. Even if you think you are helping, it could just be God’s work.
Three of the four of them nodded.
But sometimes I think I’m even hurting him, that the work I do causes him pain.
That can happen. Nothing so bad about pain.
Honor’s eyes widened a tiny amount at this remark as she took it in. The nurse who