Must Read Well, page 17
FOURTEEN
Anne finally stopped me after I’d read her account of Greg’s departure for the concert, saying she needed to rest for a while. Her previous energy was gone, her face gray; she had slumped back into the pillows, exhausted. I returned the journal to her, stood, and began to remove my chair.
“No, leave it there,” she said. “Maybe you’ll come back later today if I feel better. And if you have time.”
“I have time.”
Her voice sharp with rue, “I don’t,” she replied. “Which is why I’ve been trying to get us to the end of this story as fast as possible. Beth, I have a weak heart,” she went on.
I tried to look surprised and concerned to learn this “news.”
“It’s been weak ever since I was eleven, after a bout of rheumatic fever. Strep throat, you’d call it now, but back then, before penicillin, it was very dangerous. I’ve always known I might have a stroke or a heart attack and die early—that I might very likely do so, in fact. Well, that didn’t happen,” she added with a weak smile. By now she looked even worse. I wanted to urge her to rest, for my own sake if not hers, and resolved to keep this conversation brief if I could.
“Now, though, the end is near. How melodramatic that sounds! ‘The end is near,’” she repeated scornfully—scornfully, even though she was so obviously spent! “Like a soap opera. Would it be better to say, ‘There’s no doubt I’ll die soon’?”
It was a rhetorical question, the question of a writer asking herself how best to put something, and I kept quiet.
“Yes, I think so. ‘I’ll die soon’ is dramatic, but not quite so clichéd.” With no trace of self-pity, “I’m quite reconciled to this fate,” she went on. “In fact, I’m happy about it. The last ten years or so have been a snowballing accumulation of bodily breakdowns, increasing pain, loss of friends, humiliating disabilities, my vision above all. But the soul outwears the sheath, as Byron wrote, and I do want to hear the whole of this story before I go.”
Despite her assertion that she was ready for death, despite the fact that Marta had already told me her situation was dire, I felt torn between sadness for her and bitter disappointment for myself. I had learned so little about her sense of herself as a writer! I needed more time to gain her confidence, become a familiar face—and so, somehow, get her to tell me the answers to my original questions: what she thought the impact of her work had been, why Vengeance had had such a strong effect on women when it appeared, which books or teachers or public figures she saw as her influences, what the biographical roots of Catherine Clark’s story had been, the extent to which she’d considered herself part of a women’s “movement.”
The journals were a superlative record of her inner life, and now and then, in essays and magazine features, she’d expressed her views on the position of women in society, but after Professor Probst’s warning, I feared I would need a direct, prolonged interview—or a series of short ones—to produce the kind of material I needed to succeed in my dissertation. I noticed my jaw was clenched and tried to relax it.
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” I said. “I’ve enjoyed our readings. I’ve enjoyed getting to know you.” I doubt I’ve ever uttered greater understatements.
“And I you. Our conversations have been a nice distraction from my health, or rather my deterioration. And I’ve come to like you,” she went on. Her smile seemed genuine, but not especially warm. It was a secret smile, I would have said, a knowing smile, and a little sad. The smile of someone who thinks she knows more about you than you do. “Which is very fortunate.”
After this, she let her eyes close and sent me away.
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I stayed in all evening, hoping against hope that she would rally and ask for me to read again. I ate another can of baked beans for dinner instead of going out. But she remained quiet, doubtless asleep. Even Marta went in to check on her only a couple of times.
Then, shortly before she went home for the night, Marta knocked and came into my room. She had offered to stay with Mrs. Anne, she said, even sleep on the floor beside her bed, but Mrs. Anne wouldn’t allow it. Now she asked for my cell number and wrote it down on an index card, making gigantic numerals with a thick black Sharpie.
“I am going to leave it with the magnifying glass on her night table, next to her lamp and phone,” she said, “in case she needs help in the night. I hope she will be able to read it. At least I got her to leave her door open. Could you please leave yours open too, so you can hear if she calls out for you?”
I said of course I would and told her I’d already taken to doing so. I slept uneasily that night, gnawed by the fear that Anne might die before morning, afraid to fall too deeply asleep in case she did call out for help, and worried that, if she did, I wouldn’t know what to do. In the morning, Marta returned. She went in to see Anne and came out to make tea and some Cream of Wheat for her. I hovered around the apartment—ate breakfast in the empty dining room, read and answered emails, graded some papers. The hours went by and still Anne issued no summons for me. At last, I resorted to reading The Bell in the living room.
And so it happened that at two o’clock, when the intercom buzzed, I was curled up on one of the red velvet love seats there. Marta was in the bedroom with Anne, so I answered. “Patrick Quigley is here,” said the doorman.
I recognized the name, of course. Telling the doorman—it was Peter; I knew them all by now—to ask Mr. Quigley to wait there just a minute, I hung up and went down the corridor to make sure he was expected. I found Marta already on her way to answer the buzzer, which she too had heard. Reseating myself in the living room, I tried to look absorbed in my book while she called down to Peter and said to send the visitor up.
When she opened the front door, I glanced toward the foyer—casually, I hoped—to see Quigley, still cheerful, still red-cheeked, unbuttoning his coat. A short, solid young woman in a pencil skirt and a cable-knit sweater was giving Marta her coat. She trailed after Quigley as they came into the living room.
“Beth,” Quigley said, shaking my hand before I had a chance to stand. “This is Amber Waring, my assistant.”
We nodded to each other and I started to get up.
“No, don’t trouble yourself. We’ll be on our way in a moment,” Quigley said. “I’m glad to see you here. I’m sure you’ve been welcome company for Anne. Marta tells me she’s in her bedroom?”
He looked around, plainly wondering where this room might be. Then Marta appeared and took them through the dining room to the hallway, leaving me to speculate on what errand could have brought them to the Windrush. After what Anne had told me about her health the day before, I could only think that she was changing her will. People did such things on their deathbeds (if such hers was to be), at least in books and movies. It might have been a long time since she’d written it. Maybe a legatee had died since, or she’d decided to leave some money to the Authors Guild instead of PEN. Or maybe, I could not help but think, she wanted to leave some little souvenir to me. Copies of her own books, perhaps, or even her whole library. Who knew?
On the other hand, it might be that, having arranged to hear what she wanted of the journals, she’d decided to direct now that they be burned on her death.
I noticed that in my own mind I had used the word “burned” and saw it for what it was: a relic of a vanished time. No doubt they’d be shredded in the impersonal jaws of a machine in Quigley’s office. The image of Patrick Quigley sitting at his desk and dropping one flaming notebook after another into a metal wastebasket made me laugh out loud, in spite of my renewed horror at the idea that this intimate record of their author’s life might be destroyed.
A minute or so after Marta escorted the visitors to Anne’s bedroom, I heard her washing dishes in the kitchen. After a long time—almost an hour and a half—Quigley finally came out and called for her. She went, and I heard Anne’s door close behind her. Soon afterward, all three emerged. Then they made a detour into the kitchen. Through its open door, I heard them murmuring, sharing their concern about Anne’s worsening health, I imagined, Marta perhaps filling Quigley in on the recent, grim visit to Dr. Braudy. His cheerfulness was gone when, on his way to the front door, he silently nodded goodbye to me.
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At six o’clock, Marta put her head into my room to say that Anne would like me to read to her. After her lengthy conference with her lawyer, I had stopped expecting this and gone out to get a breath of air and buy some groceries. Now I was thankful my absence had been short.
I went straight in. Anne was sitting up against the pillows, looking weak but serene. Whatever was wrong with her will, she must have fixed it. The journal was in her lap. She gave it to me and thanked me for coming.
“Of course. I’m glad to,” said I, ever the willing handmaiden. I found the place where we’d left off.
“I’m tired,” she admitted, “but I’ve had a little nap, and somehow I feel more aware than ever of how short my time may be. So, whenever you’re ready.” She pulled the quilt up and slid her hands under it despite the warmth of the room.
“We’re still on the day of the concert, but a bit later on.”
She nodded. I began to read.
6:30 p.m., the Lantern Inn.
Dressed and ready to leave for the Academy of Music after eating the world’s quickest and most depressing dinner at the coffee shop around the corner. The Copper Kettle, it’s called.
I phoned Steve right after Greg left, to report on Ginny. After two days of I.V. antibiotics, her condition is much better. Of course she’ll be in the hospital for a long time, but if nothing changes, I’ll come home tomorrow afternoon. As for me, I’m fine, just a little worn out.
Steve caught me up on his own day—lunch at Keen’s Steakhouse with Victor Moore, an afternoon spent reading up on best practices in treating a brain hemorrhage, and his plan to stay home and thaw the meatloaf I’d left for dinner. It was unusually warm in New York. Was it warm in Philadelphia? I didn’t know; I had been in a taxi, then at the hospital all day. Then we hung up.
Off to dress and make myself up for the concert, not that Greg will see me.
“There’s a blank line after this, before another entry you wrote that night.”
“Thank you.”
10 p.m., the Lantern.
A beautiful evening, one I will not forget. I arrived at the Academy of Music half an hour early, but since it turned out to be a gorgeous theater, in the opulent style of the era when it was built, I was happy enough to wander around for a while before taking my seat.
Greg had given me the ticket. It was in the orchestra, on the left side but more than twenty rows back from the stage. A precaution, he explained, though I can’t imagine what purpose it served. Surely all the women in the first nineteen rows can’t be having affairs with him. And how would friends of his, if some were in attendance, have any idea of my connection to him?
Still, there I sat, reading the program. It had the same biography and photo as the program at Carnegie. I continued to feel just a little of the irritation his standoffishness (if that’s the word) had provoked in me during the day. But I was also anxious to see him in his glory—indeed, bursting with pride and longing to tell my neighbor he was my lover. (Perhaps this was why he put me so far back in the auditorium.)
Then the lights went down, the orchestra came in and tuned up, the audience quieted, von Karajan appeared and was greeted with applause, which swelled as, last of all, Greg walked onstage. He nodded, smiling, to acknowledge the welcome, then sat down at the piano. Now all of my resentment vanished. How I loved him in that moment—I will call it love.
Von Karajan waited for silence in the hall, then looked to Greg to be sure he was ready before raising his baton. As it came down, I realized that such a performance is indeed a kind of athletic event, with a starting gun, a team, an obligation to keep up, to do one’s part (quite literally) without a moment of let-up—particularly for any soloist at the center of the racing wheel. Then the music engulfed me, sublime, transporting. Beethoven’s “Emperor.” As at Carnegie, Greg’s bows after the last notes died were met with wild applause. Waves of audience members leapt up, one after the other, until the whole auditorium was on its feet. Whatever motivated that ovation, it wasn’t merely the ignorant tribute a celebrated musician so often receives after even a lackluster performance. He had richly earned it.
Someone handed him a bouquet, he shook hands with Von Karajan, then with the concertmaster. He stepped back to gesture to the orchestra, to share the acclaim with them. He was on and off the stage four times before the applause let up. Then, in a buzzing crescendo of chatter, the audience began to filter up the aisles and out to the lobby for intermission.
I went with them, taking my coat and hat. Greg had warned me he wouldn’t appear in the second part of the concert—a soloist in this type of program doesn’t, he explained—and I had made up my mind not to stay. He, of course, will wait till the concert ends, after which he’ll go out for a drink with his colleagues—and without me.
Still, soon enough, I’ll have him all to myself.
I paused here and looked up to find Anne lost in a haze of reminiscence.
“I remember that concert,” she said dreamily. “I remember it even more clearly than the sex we had. Reliving all that,” she went on, “our desire for each other, and the details of the particular things we did together in bed—listening to you read those passages brings back the texture of the time for me, the strange sort of...sort of waking dream we were in together. But the way Greg played that concerto—that, I’ve never forgotten.”
I asked if I should go on to the next entry.
“In a minute. I want to savor what you just read.”
Smiling, she closed her eyes. In that smile was certainly pleasure at the memory, but also a certain ruefulness, it seemed to me, a recognition of how very deep in the vanished past all this sweetness was now. I thought it tactful to look away and trained my gaze on the nightstand. On it now, along with the phone and the carafe of water and so on was the index card with my cell number on it.
It was quite a while before she opened her eyes and told me to continue. The jagged handwriting made it clear she had written the next entry on her way back to New York.
Sunday April 7, 3:30 p.m. Just past Trenton on the train.
Greg and I agreed to meet at his studio again this coming Friday. Now I feel as if my stomach might explode. Everything inside me is churning and clawing, the way it did when I was a little girl and told Mother a lie. How will I manage to keep from Steve where I’ve really been, all I’ve done since I left him behind? My mind is full of the weekend, especially last night. Though our lovemaking was far less vigorous—Greg was tired after the concert—it was sweet, lingering, emotionally connected in a new way. I’m sure he felt this too.
In fact, I’m quite, quite sure, because while he was still inside me, he said, “I don’t know how I lived before I met you.” That’s a lot to say—and I have to confess that, so soon after seeing him in the spotlight at the concert hall, I heard it not only as a grown woman would but also with the thrill of a girl with a crush. Actually, I think I do have a crush on him. It feels just like that—although also, of course, a thoroughly adult attachment to him, one I’ve already allowed myself to identify as love. Whatever love is. I’ve always disliked the word love, especially the way “I love you” is used to signify some ultimate, permanent surrender—as if “love” never changes, as if it means the same thing to every person at every stage of life. A precise, concrete word, like “chipmunk” or “shoe.” How silly, how false.
But all that is about language. The truth, the physical, literally gut-wrenching truth, is that I don’t see how I can go on living with Steve.
FIFTEEN
After Anne’s complaints about the indiscriminate use of the word “love,” she left a gap of two lines before resuming the entry.
“Did I?” she asked absently, when I’d informed her of this, her thoughts clearly somewhere else. I let her think in silence a moment or two before starting to read again.
I didn’t answer Greg in words, only buried my mouth in his neck, then drew back to hold his face in my hands. I held it a long time as we looked at each other without speaking—he into my unremarkable brown eyes, I into his intense, mismatched ones.
Lucky me.
Oh! I think I forgot to write down that when I packed for Philadelphia, I brought the Instamatic camera Steve gave me for my birthday. Yesterday, I told Greg I had it and that I wanted a photo of us together. I could see right away that the idea made him uneasy. All the same, at the handy but now rather tiresome Copper Kettle, where we had lunch before parting today, he suddenly suggested it himself. We’d left the inn by then, taking our suitcases with us. He told me to get the camera from mine and I did so, awkwardly, opening it in on the floor in the gap between our table and the next, kneeling to fumble my way through it. Then I zipped it up again and sat down with the camera. When the waitress returned with our order, Greg asked her to snap a picture of us. I hadn’t noticed this waitress at the Kettle before. She was very young, pleasant, a little mystified, maybe, at why two people in what she must see as middle age would want a photograph of themselves, but glad enough to oblige.
Greg pulled his chair around next to mine—behind us was a large poster of the Liberty Bell—and put his left arm around my shoulders and his right under my skirt. Then, while I tried not to burst out laughing, he kissed my cheekbone, holding his lips against it until the flash bulb erupted. And now, somewhere inside my valise, is an undeveloped piece of disastrous evidence.
Or maybe not? Maybe it’s blessed evidence whose discovery could free both Greg and me to spend the rest of our lives together. But it’s too soon to think of that, or so I tell myself. At all events, once I’ve had the film developed (at a place far from the Windrush—even far from Carnegie Hall, for good measure) I will hide it, and well. Maybe I’ll bury it in the pages of “Persuasion,” another book Steve will never take from the shelf.
