Monkey Boy

skin inside her open collar. It’s a black dress, with a dense pattern of small white letters like Linotype print all over it in no discernible order, letters like hundreds of rioters milling around waiting to see what comes next. She’s so small and delicate looking, Beth Alamy. You look at the bones in her wrists and think of sparrows. She still has that pretty face, eyes like lustrous prunes, and abundant dark-brown, silver-streaked hair, simply pulled back and tied in a knot. Something Emily Dickinson about her, maybe it’s that impression of a small intelligent face inside an old pendant. Her teeth are a little uneven, slightly stained with nicotine or coffee in the way nearly everybody’s used to be. She lives in these top two floors, rents out the bottom two. We didn’t talk much before I went and stood before that painting. She did tell me that she’s a lawyer. Beth sits up and looks perfectly awake, her eyes like black lamps beneath the light thrown by the naked bulb in the ceiling.

Oh really, don’t worry about it. I was up anyway, she says. I would have told you to come back tomorrow if I’d really wanted to.

Herb is still alive, in Morocco, living in Marrakesh. That’s what she told me even as we were climbing the stairs to come up here. I ask, How old is Herb now?

Ninety-seven years young. He has that exhausting male monster longevity. You know, like Picasso. Saul Bellow and Pinochet, one who I love and the other who I obviously don’t, were born the same year and died last year, at ninety-one.

Kissinger is still going, I say. It’s like that saying, Mala hierba no muere.

But good Hierba Felman no muere, either, says Beth, pleased with her pun.

Bert, too, well he made it to ninety-three. I won’t say what kind of weed he was. Let Beth think good enough. Nicanor Parra, I add, because how can I not?

That sort of longevity is rarer in men than in woman, says Beth. Somehow female longevity doesn’t seem to derive from that monster energy whose ideal seems to be to go on making yourself the center of the universe until no one else is left. Grace Paley. Penelope Fitzgerald. Georgia O’Keeffe. Agnes Martin. Oh my God, Louise Bourgeois. Doris Lessing. She’s not that old yet, but Toni Morrison better live to be a thousand. I’ll stop because I can just go on and on.

Mother Teresa, I say. Beth nods and says, Mother Teresa too. So what kind of law do you practice? I ask.

I’ve worked as a public defender here in the Suffolk County courts for twenty-five years and still going. This house is still Herb’s. His income nowadays comes from his properties and investments; he was smart with his money. My father’s old bakery gives me some income too. It’s a Brazilian coffee shop now, and Herb rents the upstairs part, where our family used to live, to store his art and papers. I feel bad taking it but he insists and I do need that money. But I’m so ready to try something new. I want to write a biography of Herb Felman, Frank. Herb has had such a remarkable life, and the obscurity he lives in now makes it all seem even more, I don’t know, poignant and profound.

You’re going to go to Marrakesh to talk to him?

In two weeks. I’m planning to spend at least three months there.

How is Herb’s memory?

Herb the Memorious, she says. I must have a slight look of surprise. She says, Upstairs, it’s wall-to-wall books, and I love Borges.

I wonder what Herb remembers about my parents, I say. He spent a month painting that portrait of my mother. She sat for it three times a week. He must know what she was like back then better than anybody else who’s still around.

I know Herb adored your mother, Frankie. You don’t mind if I call you that, do you? It was your name when we met, it feels weird to call you Francisco. You can tell he did from the portrait, don’t you think? Your mom sure does look smokin’, but that’s not what I mean. She has that compelling mysterious something that tugs at your heart. I find myself just wanting to stare into her eyes and, I don’t know, become her friend. That portrait has hung there on that wall exactly where it is now since the day Herb finished it. That has to tell you something about how he felt about your mom.

Beth, has it really?

How many years now? Well, we’re the same age. A long time. Don’t be depressed. She smiles.

Fifty years, oh man. And the chair she sat in, and the screen she told me she used to change behind, are they still around?

Long gone. That stove has never moved; of course we can’t use it anymore. There’s a room upstairs with a skylight and views out the back window where you can see some of the river. I never really understood why Herb didn’t use that room as his studio.

Maybe he just liked looking out that window down at the street.

Yes, just waiting for you to turn up at two in the morning some snowy night and see the light on and the portrait through the window and then ring the doorbell to ask the person who answers the door if you can come up and see it because it’s your mother and Herb used to tell you war stories when you were a boy.

I’m amazed you let me in.

I guess I am too. But you really were convincing. It’s more furnished upstairs, by the way, and there’s more of Herb’s work hanging, but my friend Mickey got in from London earlier tonight and she’s asleep up there. I’ll give you a tour the next time you want to come by.

Sure, I say.

You know, I was thinking of trying to get in touch with you anyway, now that I’ve decided to try