The Apple Must Be Eaten

Masaccio, "Expulsion from Paradise"

          Jean first met Willard on the elevator on a rainy afternoon in March. They were alone on the elevator. Tall for his age, he was slender and bright-eyed. He was wearing a neon yellow slicker on which droplets of water glistened like yellow diamonds. He had an iPhone in his hands. She recognized it by  the Apple logo, the white apple with the bite taken out of it. Willard was using his thumbs with the incredible dexterity that everyone under thirty—Jean was forty-six—seemed to have mastered. For someone for whom the expression “all thumbs” was a synonym for clumsiness, the speed with which his texting thumbs could maneuver around a minuscule screen astonished her. 

When Willard  glanced at  the peculiar look on Jean’s face, he immediately stopped texting. She could see he was embarrassed. He could probably engross himself on his iPhone in a taxi or even in first class on an airplane, but he apparently understood it might be impolite to do it on the elevator of a luxury Park Avenue apartment building in which the tenants were for the most part polite and sociable.  

“I’m sorry,” he apologized,  blushing. He slipped the iPhone into the capacious pocket of his slicker.

“Oh, don’t be sorry,” she was quick to reassure him. “It’s perfectly all right. It’s just that  I’m having trouble with my new iPhone,” she said, taking hers out of her pocketbook.  “I envy your skill with yours. What model is it?”

“iPhone 6,” he said. "I've grown very attached to it."

At that moment the elevator in its swift ascent had stopped at her floor. 

“I get out here,” she said, somewhat flustered, still holding her iPhone as she stepped out of the elevator.  

“Let me help you,” he said, following her off the elevator with the graceful, fast step of a ballet student.  He was as tall as the average male adult, as tall in fact as her husband, who at that moment was off somewhere in Africa hunting, with his gun and cell phone. She had forgotten which country,

She had come to realize that in  the digital age a home without a boy was at a disadvantage. For someone her age and sex, every boy was a whiz when it came to technology.  For him, a problem with an Apple computer, iPad, or iPhone was probably child’s play.  

“Would you like me to look at it?” he asked her as the elevator door closed behind him with a mechanical swoosh that she couldn’t recall being fully conscious of before.

“Look at my iPhone?” she asked. He nodded and after a moment’s uncertainty, in which he looked around at the decor of her floor, she held it out to him.

“Your floor is different from mine,” he said, turning her iPhone over in his hand, examining it, front and back.

“The color scheme was my idea,” she told him, referring to the unusual color scheme and design on  the walls. “I was inspired by Mondrian's Cubes and Squares.”

“Of whose?” he asked.

“Piet Mondrian,” she said, and with her next breath asked, “Do you live with your mother?” 

“Uh-huh,” he said, turning on her iPhone. “This is one of the new ones,” he said. “I haven’t seen this model before. My father believes technology is a pact with the devil," Willard said. 

         "What does he do?" Jean asked.

         "He's a big wheel at Apple."

“I’ve been on the elevator with your mother,” she said, suddenly recalling. “At least I think I have. She has blond hair? Like mine?”

“Uh-huh,” he said absently as his thumbs moved so fast on the screen of her phone that she felt she was watching a silent mini-Charlie Chaplin  movie. 

“Does your father live with you?” she asked.

“No,” he said without taking his eyes or thumbs off her iPhone. "I don't see him much." She couldn’t believe  he could carry on a conversation while the screen,  in response to his thumbs,  constantly shifted.  But then his thumbs began to  move more slowly, as if he was closing in on the glitch, as a hunter might stealthily move toward  a deer in a thicket. He appeared to be holding his breath as he proceeded.

“Ah,” he said as his thumbs stopped moving, suspended like the wings of a bird about to alight on a branch. “I think this is the problem.”

“What is? she asked.

“It’s complicated,” he replied. 

‘I’m sure it is,” she said, feeling somewhat patronized.

“There’s so much involved,” he said. She noticed beads of perspiration in the down on his upper lip. She could see he had not begun to shave yet.

“There!” he exclaimed. His search had apparently ended. He let out his breath as she had once seen a Hawaiian pearl diver do after surfacing.

“You fixed it?” she asked.

“Uh-huh,” he replied. “You probably messed it up by futzing around with it.

“Futzing?” she asked, but he didn’t answer. His mind was already elsewhere.

“What is your name?” she asked as he handed her back the phone.

“‘Willard, ma’am. Willard Shaler.”

“My name is Jean. Jean Harlow.”

“Glad to meet you, ma’am.”

“Does my name mean anything to you?

“No, ma’am. Should it?”

“No, no,” she said. “There was an actress, but that was a  long time ago. She was known as the Blond Bombshell.” 

“Like Madonna?” he asked. 

“Well, yes,” she said. “Sort of.” Jean's father, whose last name was the same as Jean Harlow's, had been a big fan of hers, and had carried a pin-up photo of her when he was an eighteen-year-old soldier in Vietnam, as soldiers the Second World War had pin-ups of Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth.

Willard was looking again at the walls and the playful design.  “Does your place have walls like this?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “But it’s unusual.”

“Unusual?” he asked. But before she could answer, the iPhone in her hand rang.

“Who can this be?” she wondered aloud. “Oh,” she said, looking at the number that was calling. “It’s my husband. Hello? Howard? Where are you? Yes, I thought that’s where you were. You’re what? Going to where? So you won’t be back next week. No, no. That’s all right. Where am I? I just got off the elevator at our place. No, I’m not alone. Who? The young man who lives above us. No, not that family. They moved out some time ago. He just fixed my iPhone. What? Oh, he’s pretty smart, I’m sure.”

When she hung up, she said to Willard, “Where were we?”

“We were talking about your place,” he said.

“Of course,” she said, as if she was resuming walking barefoot across a shallow stream, one stepping stone at a time. “Would you like to see it?”

“Sure,” he said eagerly. 

She opened the door, which was a complicated process because her place had more alarms than Fort Knox. Holding the door open for him to enter first, she smiled like the doorman downstairs. Willard hesitated. He seemed somewhat discombobulated by her deference. “Please come in,” she urged him. 

When he entered, he stopped after taking a few steps.  Looking around, he was stunned. “I feel like I’m entering  the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” 

“You frequent the museum?” she asked.

“My class went there on one of our culture field trips,” he explained. 

“That must have been interesting,” she said.

“What’s that painting over there?” he asked, walking over to one of the many paintings on the walls. It was a painting of a naked woman.

“That’s the 'Blonde Bombshell,' or that’s what I call her anyway. It’s a painting of a once famous Hollywood actress. Or at least that’s what my art consultant thinks.”

“Which actress?” he asked, examining it more closely. 

        "Jean Harlow. The Bombshell herself."

       “She looks kind of funny,” he observed.” Her vagina was like a black bush and her blazing long blonde hair looked like the trail of a comet. “What style is it?” he asked.

“Expressionism,” she said, following behind him as he made his way among the many paintings. She concluded he must be precociously responsive to art. Her husband had not looked twice at any of the paintings.

“What’s this one?” he asked, stopping in front of a painting of Adam and Eve. It looks different.”

“That’s a copy of a fresco, a wall painting by Masaccio. It’s called ‘The Expulsion from Paradise.’ I call it 'The Apple Must be Eaten.' Somebody had painted over the genitals, but when it was restored the fig leaves were removed.”

“This isn’t expressionism,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “Masaccio was long before that. He was one of the first to use perspective. He died when he was twenty-six.” After a short pause, her curiosity got the better of her. “How old are you, Willard?” 

“Me?” he said, nonplussed.  “I’m twelve.”

“Twelve?” she repeated trying not to reveal her surprise.

“But I  can pass for fifteen or sixteen,” he added.

“Yes, I’m sure you can,” she added, trying to sound casual, trying to adjust to the realization that he was still, strictly speaking, a preteen. 

The silence was broken when his iPhone rang. The iPhone 6 ring, called the Marimba, coming from the pocket of his slicker, sounded to her like the faint tintinnabulation of a grasshopper playing on a tiny xylophone.

“Excuse me,” he said to Jean as he took the call. “Linda? Is that you? I’m so sorry. I lost track of the time. Where am I? I’ll explain later. I’m on my way. Right now. I promise.” He was gone in seconds, leaving the door open as he left. Who was Linda? Apparently not his mother. Possibly an older futzy female  of thirteen or fourteen? What did futz mean? She looked it up immediately in her Merriam-Webster. It was derived apparently from the Yiddish phrase arumfartsn zikh, literally, “to fart around.”

With the Merriam-Webster still in her hands, she went over and stood in front of Blond Bombshell  for a minute. Then she sat down on one of the half dozen modern wooden Danish chairs in the  Wishbone style that were scattered throughout the large room. Through the window she could see Manhattan below, stretching to the East River, and to the boroughs beyond.

“Farting around,” she said with a laugh. Then she became reflective. Finally, she had a good cry for herself.