TAXI GIRL
Chapter Nineteen
Tania ran to her gate at O’Hare and just made it onto the 8:35 p.m. flight to Minneapolis. She arrived at MSP airport at 10:11 and took a cab to Good Samaritan Hospital.
At 11:06, Tania got on a hospital elevator and pressed the floor-three button. A few moments later, the doors opened. She stepped out of the elevator and walked between two workers who were mopping the floor. One spoke to the other in Spanish.
“El viejo se murio?”
Is the old man dead yet? translated Tania in her head. She followed the signs to the third-floor waiting room. First, she saw her brother-in-law, Jim, then her sister, Maria, and finally her mother, Angela.
It’s like Christmas but without the cheer.
“He has a broken leg,” said Maria.
“And pelvis,” added Jim.
Tania’s mother said nothing.
“That’s all we know for sure,” said Maria.
At 11:30 p.m., Tania touched her father’s left hand as he lay on a hospital bed and glimpsed his blue-tinted toes coming out of a plaster cast on his right leg.
“I love you. Everything’ll be fine,” she said.
He died fifteen minutes later.
At 10:00 the next morning, Jim, Maria, Angela and Tania went to the Paul H. Braverman Funeral Home.
“Today’s your lucky day,” said Paul Jr. “There’s an available plot right near Jim’s mother.”
How convenient, thought Tania. Too bad Daddy couldn’t stand her.
The foursome moved on to the coffin room. Angela pointed to a brown metallic casket.
“The Blacks always get that color,” she said.
Where does she get this stuff? wondered Tania. Is she talking about coffins or Coupe de Villes?
Her mother moved on to a silver one.
“That’s more like it,” she said. “Carlos has a suit in that same shade of gray.”
After the funeral parlor, the family went to Tania’s parents’ apartment. Her mother cooked sunny-side-up eggs and roasted red peppers fried in garlic and olive oil; she served them with toasted French bread. Jim made everyone a Bloody Mary. Tania finished hers and made herself two more.
Where’s Daddy? she thought. It feels like he’s here, but he’s not.
There wasn’t a wake; most of Tania’s parents’ peers were dead. Carlos Wildman was laid to rest in a gray suit, pale-yellow silk boxer shorts, a light-blue Italian dress shirt and navy bedroom slippers Angela had bought him the week before at Dayton’s.
“He said they were the most comfortable he’d ever had,” noted Mrs. Wildman.
Tania, her mother, her sister and brother-in-law, their two oldest kids, plus Tania’s Aunt Nell, her daughter, Bernadette, Bernadette’s husband, Bob, and Bernadette’s brother, Gene, along with Tania’s Aunt Sadie, her husband, Preacher, and their twenty-five-year-old son, Johnny, who “wasn’t right in the head,” gathered for a funeral mass. A soprano sang “Ave Maria.” Bill Casado, who’d worked with Carlos Wildman since 1946, came late and stood in the back of the church. He offered his condolences at the end of the service, then left. The clan headed over to the Edgewater Club next door to Tania’s parents’ apartment building for lunch.
“What a shock,” said Aunt Nell. “It’s a good thing he died. He would’ve been a vegetable.”
“Everything happens for the best,” added Bernadette.
Nell continued, “Remember when our cousin Bert got run over by his tractor? His wife had to wait on him, hand and foot, for years and years and years. Fed him like a baby; had to change him too. Aren’t you glad you won’t have to do that, Angela?”
Mrs. Wildman said nothing.
Yeah, it’s our lucky day, thought Tania.
The group kissed each other goodbye and went their separate ways. Tania and her mother headed to what was now her mother’s apartment. Angela went into the bedroom she’d shared with her husband and changed her clothes. Tania opened her father’s hall closet. There was a burnt-umber leather valise with CLW engraved in gold letters standing upright on the floor. A brown-and-white-checked sports jacket tailored for Carlos in Cuba sixteen years earlier hung next to a navy-blue camel hair overcoat.
Quicksand swallowed him up, and this is what’s left.
Angela came out of the bedroom; the pair sat in the den. Tania looked around the room.
Daddy took a picture of me sitting in that green leather chair wearing my prom dress. I’d lay on that sofa and watch The Millionaire when I stayed home sick from school. There’s the spot where I set the rug on fire and blamed Jacque the poodle for the stain.
“How long can you stay?” asked Angela.
“I don’t have to be anywhere,” answered Tania.
Six weeks later, Tania and Maria helped Angela move into a smaller apartment on the same street as her old one. Tania rented a studio not too far away and furnished it with stuff her mother didn’t need in her new place. She’d already sold the yogurt cart for $137.50 through an ad in Chicago Classifieds, taken a job running an afterschool program at a private school and started doing theater workshops for kids on weekends. On Tuesday, November 5, she reconnected with her friend Jane over breakfast at the Riverfront Cafe near U of M. As they came out of the restaurant, Ron Silverman and Lorraine Zacarro walked toward them.
“Hello, Ron Silverman,” said Tania.
“What a nice surprise,” said Ron.
“Yes, it is,” said Tania.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” asked Silverman.
“We’re not together anymore,” said Tania. “I live here now.”
Jane took her car keys out of her purse; Lorraine opened the door to the cafe.
“Let’s have dinner,” said Ron. “Call me at the university.”
Tania waited three days and then called Ron’s office. He didn’t answer; she left a message and her phone number. He called back.
“Hello, Tania,” he said. “It’s Ron Silverman.”
“I can have dinner with you, but I can’t have sex because my father just died, and I wouldn’t want him to see me doing that,” she responded.
“Not a problem; I haven’t been able to get it up since my wife left me.”
“When was that?”
“Two years ago.”
The next night, Ron picked up Tania in a red VW station wagon; they drove to the Good Karma Cafe. Tania ordered a macrobiotic platter; Ron did the same. Thirty minutes later, there was a commotion in the kitchen. Tania saw their waitress rip off her apron, throw it on the ground and head for the exit.
“Is it my imagination or is our food taking a really long time?” asked Ron.
“I think our waitress just quit,” answered Tania.
Ron got up from the table and headed to the kitchen; he came back carrying two macro platters.
“I know the owner; he teaches part-time at the university.”
Ron set down one of the plates in front of Tania.
“Thanks,” she said. “If I come here again, I’ll make sure I’m not hungry.”
Tania and Ron finished their meal, left the cafe and got in the VW station wagon.
“Well,” said Tania.
“Well,” said Ron.
“Let’s go to a grocery store and get some food,” said Tania. “I’m starving.”
On November 21, Tania called her mother.
“Would it be alright if I invite a guy I’m dating to Thanksgiving dinner?”
“You’re dating someone?”
“Yeah; his name’s Ron Silverman, and he works at the university.”
“Isn’t that a Jewish name?”
“Does it matter?”
Angela said nothing, then posed a question.
“How big of a bird do you think I should get?”
On November 28, Tania’s mother set down a platter holding a ten-pound turkey on her dining room table. Tania brought a long, sharp knife from the kitchen.
“My husband used to do the honors,” said Angela.
“I’ll carve the bird,” said Ron.
JESUSMOSES!!!!! thought Angela. Carlos is dead, and a Jew’s taking his place at the table.
At 9 a.m. on December 5, Ron picked up Tania at her apartment in his station wagon. They drove to the municipal building on South Fifth Street and were married at 10:23 in the morning. The couple went back to Ron’s apartment. He got it up and kept it up for the first time since they’d been together.
It’s okay if Daddy sees us cuz we’re married.
Two months later, Tania bought pastrami, kaiser rolls, coleslaw and potato salad at Gold’s Deli. She and Ron had sandwiches and salads for dinner that night. An hour later, Tania went into the bathroom and puked in the toilet. A week later, her period hadn’t come, and she went to the doctor.
“Have you been taking the birth control pills I prescribed you?” he asked.
“Of course, except for the placebos.”
“What placebos?”
“You know, the pink ones, the ones that don’t do anything, the ones you don’t need to take.”
“In order for the pills to work, you need to take them all.”
Oh shit, thought Tania.
After they found out Tania was pregnant, she and Ron took a field trip to Ian and Amy’s house. Ian was a friend of Ron’s from the university’s art department. The couple had a two-year-old son named Liam. Ron and Tania arrived at their home at 8 p.m. At 8:05, Amy took Liam upstairs to bed. The other three settled into seats in the living room. There was a half-finished mural on one of the walls; Tania pointed to it.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Something I used to do,” answered Ian.
At 8:12, Amy came into the room and sat down on the sofa next to Tania.
At 8:13, Liam came downstairs and wrapped himself around his mother’s leg.
“MAAA . . . MAAA . . . MAAA.”
“Liam, stop screaming,” said Amy. She pulled his hands off her calf and got up.
“MAAA . . . MAAA . . . MAA,” he continued.
Amy flipped the child around, secured her hands under his armpits and carried him across the room. He screamed and kicked all the way up the stairs.
Ian shook his head.
“He’ll be back; it’s the same thing every night.” He shrugged his shoulders. “You just live with it.”
Tania and Ron drove home.
This baby’s getting bigger and bigger, and I’m getting smaller. It’s eating me up. It’s gonna kill me.
“I can’t do it,” said Tania.
“Do what?”
“Have a kid.”
There was silence.
“Neither can I,” said Ron.
The following week, Tania had an abortion. Afterward, she thought, I’m canceling my subscription to love; no wonder Garbo wanted to be alone!
In early April, Tania told Ron she was leaving him; he sat on their bed and wept. Tania moved in with her mother and slept on a hide-a-bed in Angela’s living room. Ron tried to contact her; Tania didn’t respond. On the seventeenth, mother and daughter celebrated Mr. Wildman’s birthday. They set a place for him at the dinner table, filled his glass with wine, toasted him and cried. Then they served up portions of his favorite meal—roast beef sliced “fino fino,” papas fritas and “un poco de ensalada.” For the final course, Tania’s mother had baked a pineapple pie; she topped each piece with a scoop of Lady Borden vanilla ice cream. Tania and Angela gobbled up their desserts while Carlos’ ice cream melted down the sides of his pie wedge. On May 1, Tania rented a studio apartment. She bought a new mattress and got a phone. In June, she purchased a chest of drawers and a gateleg table at New to You, a secondhand store. In early July, she got a brand-new Sony cassette tape recorder. For her birthday, Tania’s mother gave her Mr. Wildman’s Ronson Spartan Art Deco chrome black-stripe table lighter, a Snoopy battery-powered electric toothbrush and fifty dollars.
At 10:30 p.m. on July 26, Tania was brushing her teeth with the Snoopy toothbrush when she heard someone knocking on her apartment door.
Who can that be? How did they get in the building?
She hurried to turn the deadbolt lock and secure the chain guard.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“When I’m calling you
Oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo
Will you answer too?
Oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo
You’ll belong to me
Ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee
I’ll belong to you,” was the answer from the other side.
There was silence. Tears flooded Tania’s face; she sucked in air.
“HUH-oo-oo-oo-HUH-oo-oo-oo-HUH-oo,” responded Tania.
