American Music - Jane Mendelsohn [67]
The sun was starting to set and the sky was shimmering with heat. The little girl, Honor, played in the sand. Her hat had fallen off and Pearl thought of mentioning this to Anna but she was careful not to seem a busybody. It was enough that Anna had remembered a hat, she thought; the girl was still in college. The fact of the child had been absorbed, but nevertheless she worried about Anna’s prospects. A single mother. This boyfriend digging for silly props in what was essentially the outskirts of Los Angeles. It was absurd the lengths to which people went to take the movies seriously. She had long ago stopped caring about the movies. She still went, but there was no such thing as glamour to her anymore. Her head was throbbing from the heat, and her vision seemed to be blurring at the edges, but she didn’t say anything about it.
Anna asked her questions about her job on the film. What had she done as a wardrobe girl? Was this really where she had met her husband, the grandfather whom Anna had never known? The little girl kept sifting the sand and talking quietly to herself. The sun sank a millimeter lower and the whole sky changed, softening, and the heat lifted a little. Anna stopped asking questions. The workers continued their busy activity in the distance. Pearl settled back into the beach chair. Her head throbbed and the scene before her began to pulse and waver in the heat. She felt faint but she didn’t want to trouble Anna. She experienced a dull jolt in the side of her skull like she was bumping her head in a dream and then she knew that she had drifted to someplace unreal. She would stay there, she thought. Just for a moment. Nobody else had to know.
A figure came walking toward them across the sand. It appeared to be a man. Pearl was aware that he had been summoned from her imagination but she did not want to send him back. He was tall and olive-skinned and he was wearing a suit. It was hot for a suit, most of the people working down in the field were wearing T-shirts and jeans, but somehow he did not look strange to Pearl. He approached. As he came closer Pearl tilted her head with curiosity and then stared intently at him.
Do you remember me? he said.
I think I do, Pearl said.
Solomon Eckstein, he said, and held out his hand.
She leaned forward in her little chair and he lifted his other hand and said Don’t get up and he knelt down in front of her on one knee and shook her hand. It seemed for a moment like he was going to kiss her hand but he just kept holding it. He held it the whole time they talked.
This is incredible, isn’t it, he said.
She thought he was talking about the dig and she said: Who would have imagined that they would have considered this something worth digging up!
No, he said, I meant seeing you again.
Oh, that, she said. She half smiled sweetly and looked off to the side. Well yes, it is incredible.
But it seems right, he said. He looked into her eyes.
Yes, she said, it does.
So, he said, switching his legs and still kneeling, what happened to you? I looked for you when I got out of the infirmary but you were gone.
I went east to start my life, she said, brightly.
How did it go? he said. Your life.
She shifted in her seat and drew her knees in closer. She was aware that her walking sneakers had filled with sand.
It was full, she said. I have a great-granddaughter. She gestured toward Anna and Honor who were burying each other’s hands and feet in the sand a little ways away.
That’s wonderful, he said.
The sun was setting fully now, sending deep colors, pinks and mauves and oranges and greens, across the sky and the colors seemed to be radiating out from Solomon’s head. He looked to