by Betsy Berne
Jack had a sterling set of personal moral standards, but he carried it like a shield. I’d always harbored a mild crush on him, but it seemed like a long shot. He regarded me, I thought, as a fellow black cloud and nothing more. I think it was at one of Rachel’s soirées that he accused me of flirting with him. I walked away. The next time I saw him was at a garden party out of the city. We pulled a couple of wrought-iron chairs into the sun and sat there for the duration. I think he was seeing a tortured actress at the time, and he rambled and raged. When we left we agreed to get together soon, but when I called him he was evasive. Then one summer day he called. It had been a fiscally advantageous year, so I was about to leave on a trip. Jack’s finances weren’t in great shape, and the tortured actress had jumped ship. We stayed on the phone for an hour.
When I came home from my trip it was almost fall, the time of year when the sun starts to set at six-thirty and the bleak, raw light makes you wish you were on a sailboat somewhere. It was still light when Jack came over—it must have been around five-thirty, although he wasn’t due until much later. Jack thought the ideal date should start at four so that you could end up in bed by seven-thirty, at the latest. We sat on the couches until I got nervous. It was pitch black outside when we left to go to the restaurant down the street. The restaurant was in an uncool phase, but Jack was so out of it he thought it was still cool. Having reached the stage when you can hardly get out of the house, he liked to go to a cool restaurant when he did, so he could see what was going on with the young people. The evening went by so quickly and easily that we both went home puzzled.
A week later I learned about my heart problem. The damaged valve was revealed through the chest pain I’d ignored for a week. The doctors in the emergency room decided that I would have to have open-heart surgery immediately to replace the valve. Jack happened to call the next evening when I was on some very effective sedatives. He was uncharacteristically upbeat: He had to come downtown for a drink, so he wondered what I was doing—maybe he could stop by? “Sure,” I said, and told him what had happened.
“Oh, God,” he said. “Jesus . . . I actually have tears in my eyes.” He paused. “Well, are you sure you want me to come over?”
“Sure,” I repeated. “I’m not doing anything. My parents are here, but I sent them to dinner with my brothers. I couldn’t handle going out.”
So he came over and he ended up ditching his drink date. My father insisted I have the surgery at his hospital or, at the very least, get a second opinion from his cardiologist. After some initial balking, I agreed to go a couple of weeks later. In the meantime I lingered in New York in a sedated limbo while all my friends competed to be the most solicitous. Jack won and I showed my appreciation. We neglected to posture and play coy because time seemed short.
He was still Jack though. The night before I left for my parents’ he was supposed to come over, but at the last minute he called to cancel; he was too depressed.
“Depressed about what?” I asked.
“That’s the thing,” he said. “There’s no real reason to be depressed, so I’m even more depressed.”
“I guess I’m lucky,” I said. “At least I have a real reason to be depressed.” That got him, so he came over.
The surgery threat turned out to be a false alarm. The condition would have to be monitored, but surgery probably wouldn’t be needed for at least a few years. When I got back I called Jack, but someone else had told him first, so he was nonchalant.
“Thank God. Now I won’t have to take care of your cat. I was sure she’d jump out the window and I’d have to replace her and you’d notice,” he joked. His voice sounded distant. “Oh, listen, I have another call. Can I call you later?”
Without the crisis, we had to backtrack, and our retreat was awkward. There was a series of dates canceled without any convincing excuses. “I guess I must be busy,” Jack would say, and then he’d laugh derisively. Well, it was fall, the busy season-anyone worth his salt was making plans and canceling plans feverishly. One time I said, “No, you just don’t want to get together,” and his response, a weak laugh, didn’t argue very convincingly either. I took it in stride. Trust your first instincts, I told myself. Jack was always a long shot. But who can remember their real first instincts?
Then he called one night, pretty drunk—Jack was ethnically inclined toward pharmaceuticals, but he did like his evening cocktails. I actually had been busy, no doubt to ease the void left from the crisis, and I made myself sound even more busy and cool to get back at him. It worked. He sounded so impressed that I couldn’t keep it up.
“Oh, please,” I said. “I’m at the age where I can still fake it. Barely though.” And then I took pity—he really didn’t sound so good. “You’re cracking, aren’t you?”
“Cabin fever, I guess,” he replied. “I should probably do something, go out, but I can’t think of what to do or anyone I want to call.”
“C’mon, you have a lot of friends.”
“Yeah, sure . . . friends.” We were in the middle of analyzing this problem when he interrupted urgently: “Well, what am I to you?” I sputtered in reply.
He came over the next night, and since I still had friends, I took him along to some early-Saturday-night social events, openings and such. The night felt as easy as had all the other nights—maybe even a little bit more. When we were walking back from the restaurant, Jack said, “Slow down, you’re going to lose me.” He hated how fast I walked.
“Oh, God, I always forget. Forgive me, I wasn’t thinking. Sorry, I just got going, I thought you were next to me.”
“You sound just like your mother.”
“How do you know? You’ve never met her.”
“I can just tell.” That did me in. At the subway we were paralyzed. “I should go home,” he said.
“Okay, but you know, well, my neighbor did tell me about a party, later . . .”
“A party?” For a second his eyes flickered interest. “But why would we go to a party? What would we do? How much later? What time is it now?”
“I don’t know, a couple of hours later. We could read the paper at my house till then.”
“Well . . . no, I should just go home tonight . . . I should get up early . . . no, I have to work tomorrow.”
“Okay, then. Well, bye.” He kissed me quickly and started toward the subway, but then he turned around.
“Oh, could I have the sports section?”
“Oh, sure, here.”
“Oh, and maybe the ‘Week in Review’?”
“Here, take it.”
“Oh, never mind, I’ll just take the sports. Good night.” He kissed me again, with more vigor, and started to walk away again, so I did, too. “Hey!” he yelled.
“Yeah?”
“You said you’d come uptown.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, when?”
“When you invite me.” He gave me a shy look then, and I remember it well because it was the last look I got. I remember shivering, too, even though it was warm for fall.
Dead artists are traditionally raised to mythical, heroic heights, and Jack was no exception. At the funeral he became Saint Jack. His “best friends” talked about his “struggle with intimacy” in halting voices that didn’t make sense to me—if they were his best friends, what could be more intimate? His colleagues spoke of his “uncompromising integrity,” and all illustrated it with the same five folksy anecdotes. On the way out, I ran into Jack’s neighbor, Dick, a gentle soul with big, eager eyes. When Dick whispered, “You know, Jack had a real thing for you—in case you hadn’t noticed,” it jump-started my first public.
When I woke up, Jack was gone. So were all the other guests. I went downstairs and found Aaron asleep by the glow of the TV on a soft sculptural couch, surrounded by ashtrays stuffed with half-smoked cigarettes and half-empty glasses of wine.
The next two days were as cloudy as I could possibly make them. I would like to say that I went about my business on
Wednesday. But I didn’t. I waited for a call from Joseph Pendleton. That pride I’d sworn off so solemnly forbade calling him. By dusk, with some help from a couple of pharmaceuticals, at least I wasn’t angry anymore. Pharmaceuticals are less sloppy and more predictable than drink, especially when your intention is just to get past angry. I got way past angry. I was stunned. Obviously narcissists hadn’t lost their appeal for me, but it was becoming more and more apparent that they did not foster equanimity.
While Joseph Pendleton didn’t exactly inspire trust, I’d glimpsed signs of compassion; obscured tough-guy compassion that was not unfamiliar. Nothing had indicated behavior this aberrant. Nothing had prepared me for a cruel streak. This behavior had serious implications. A perpetrator concerned with incriminating leakage should not risk crossing a potential leaker, especially one with fluctuating hormones. Joseph Pendleton did not add up. I was sure he was the one who’d suggested getting together, having a drink.
I lay in a stupor, waiting. I was exhausted by waiting. My neighbor stopped by late. His face was uncommonly severe and his eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t treat a dog like this.” He spat it out. That was all. We went through my old records together, searching for some neglected classics for Deejay Night. We assumed our positions on the couches and listened to the records loud enough so that we couldn’t hear each other. If I could have, I would have said, “The hell with Joseph Pendleton” then. The hell with Joseph Pendleton and his rotten set of personal standards.
C H A P T E R
7
“HOW ARE YOU?” Rachel got in the cab, her old self, motherly in a businesslike manner.
“Okay, I guess.”
“You never heard from him?”
It was seven in the morning, and the air in the cab was thick and sticky. Only the end of May and the city already resembled the tropics—with staccato rainstorms puncturing the monotony of swollen heat. The sun was still out when we got to the clinic, which was hidden in an insipid skyscraper in the East Forties—directly across town from the father-to-have-been’s lair, come to think of it.
We had enough time to stall a bit in the outdoor plaza, a midtown version of the eyesore in my neighborhood with its own midtown bums sitting on cement cubes. We shared a cube in the shade of a mangled-steel sculpture. My doctor had arranged to meet me at the clinic because she couldn’t perform general anesthesia in her office. Local wasn’t going to do it. I needed to be knocked out for the duration. Rachel kept up a sweet steady prattle. Her brow was creased as she chattered; her face was pale, her hair was wet and combed back severely, and her eyes, blue eyes you could see right through, were even more transparent. All I had to do was nod encouragingly. There were several hapless-looking women in the seventeenth-floor waiting room, and a few helpless-looking men. All the women were young. We were among the common people. I don’t believe Rachel had been among the common people before. Her face took on a stricken expression that almost made me laugh. I had to fill out several long forms, and Rachel continued prattling. Every time she paused to glance around furtively, I’d look up from my papers and wave her on: “Keep talking. Don’t stop, whatever you do.” I listened gratefully to every minuscule detail of why Jean had refused to go to last night’s cocktail party and what he had said to her when he’d come to her apartment later in a fit of pique. I heard that he’d been a mess, sweaty, unshaven, drunk, in dirty jeans. I egged her on: “How’d he leave?”
“Oh, a dirty look. And he slammed the door—hard.”
“Did you go after him?”
But I went cold when she confessed that she had begun working on a new book a few weeks ago, a photo book of jazz legends, and guess who was cooperating by lending his collection. She’d barely known who he was then—someone had suggested him. Then she hadn’t known whether to tell me or not.
“He seems like a really nice guy, though, I mean he’s doing it for nothing.”
I didn’t reply.
“Maybe this isn’t the best timing,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” I reassured her. “It’s not your fault. I’m the one whose specialty is bad timing.”
The woman behind the glass had a kind face, and when she motioned me in I tried to look back kindly, but I couldn’t form a kindly expression. It wasn’t so bad going through more paperwork, but it began to get bad when she handed me a packet of abortion accessories and ushered me into a stuffy stall to change. When I shuffled out in my paper slippers, she motioned me over to a bench in the dingy gray hallway, where I slumped next to three young women flipping through copies of teen magazines. Young women do not have a clue—that’s a walk in the park despite what they may think. The woman told me to wait there to be called for my sonogram.
I’d been under the impression that I was coming here to meet my doctor and to be whisked in and out. Hospitals were the only places—except for the hip art restaurant down the street—where I knew how to get royal treatment. This was not what I’d signed up for, not what I was paying extra for. I didn’t understand the need for a sonogram. I didn’t need to witness concrete proof that it looked big and healthy, that it might even make the ninety-eighth percentile one day. I was able to avoid looking at the screen, but the nurse said “six weeks” loud enough so that I couldn’t not hear it. I struggled to stifle the public that was brewing.
CNN was swinging on a pole high up, or maybe it was MTV, in the mini airport lounge I was ushered into next, with the rest of my listless group in our matching paper gowns and slippers. A woman came in and said it was time for my counseling session, and my dignity failed me. I snarled that I didn’t need any fucking counseling. She was understanding and gently prodded me into another dingy room, where I sat with my eyes closed and wet while she counseled me quickly. They moved me into a private room with carpeting, where the pile of magazines included the issue containing my liposuction article. It didn’t divert my attention.
When the doctor came to get me, she apologized for the delay. I could barely mumble a reply. My vision was blurry with unfocused rage. I followed her slowly. Under the lights I finally had the public and the doctor patted my arm. By the time I stumbled out into the waiting room, with my vision still blurry, the room was packed with hordes of common people, and poor Rachel looked beyond stricken. I motioned to her to follow me and kept walking.
•
Once Rachel had escorted me home from the clinic, I thanked her profusely and told her we could discuss the jazz book and its contributor later—it was just an unlikely turn of events, nobody’s fault. I changed into the most pristine virginal white cotton nightgown in my possession. I was a little light-headed but didn’t feel the least bit physically impaired. I threw down a sleeping potion and got right into bed—under the covers, not on top of the bed in my normal sign-of-the-cross nap position. Not long after making the termination decision, I had purchased the air conditioner I couldn’t afford. A hot and soggy post-termination session could very well have put me over the top. I turned it on high and luxurious, and soon it was loud and frigid and surreal enough in the pinkness to silence any ghosts.
When I resurfaced, I showered and took out a short, festive, melon-colored dress. My beauty editor had told me that the color melon stirred up emotions, and mine were numb. I wasn’t sure if numbness was a good or bad sign, but I put the dress on anyway. I saw that it was tight across the chest, a reminder that the hormones would continue to dance their ugly dance a little while longer.
I met my brother and neighbor for dinner at the usual spot down the street. A cold front had come in from Canada; it was comfortable and breezy, so we sat at a table outside. At the next table sat a group of art people with the current hot art dealer posed like a Greek statue at the center, a steady procession of artists, most of them art-world casualties, paying homage. I nudged my neighbor and pointed, and he said, “Oh, not him. Let’s move down a table. I can’t eat dinner and watch middle-aged artists grovel at the same time. I’ll get indigestion.”
We moved down a
table. It was a lovely summer evening. You could see the World Trade Center planted solidly and protectively in one direction and the Empire State Building planted solidly and protectively in the other. There were people out strolling, and two thirds of them knew my neighbor. It was consoling, listening to them say hello, the breeze on my face, not having to say much, and I was not without some relief that the ordeal was over. I did say, “I’m not going to let him get away with it.”
“You’re nuts,” my brother grumbled. The concubine was still ensconced in the cult overseas, and he was in the process of exerting all his willpower to stay away. “You’re just going to start it up again. You’re asking for more trouble.” He turned to my neighbor.
“I’m behind her one hundred fifty percent whatever she wants to do,” my neighbor said in his singsong liar’s voice, without looking up from his plate.
•
When I got home I swallowed another medley of sleeping pills to squelch any imprudent dreams, and the next morning I marched like a robot into my windowless studio. My studio looked like a cross between a space capsule and an early cave dwelling. It was crammed with junk, the overflow from the rest of the loft, and it had reached its limit. I got right down to business. I gessoed some small canvases, and then I began to throw away empty paint tubes. I stapled a fresh white drop cloth onto the grimy, paintencrusted wall. I scrubbed the floor, mottled with paint and greasy with linseed oil. I filled four bags with garbage using my favorite kind of garbage bag—the huge industrial three-ply kind—and lugged them downstairs.
By the time I was done cleaning up, the canvases were dry—and white and clean and fresh, and I was damp and filthy. I left a message with his new secretary to call me. Then I put on my headphones, turned the volume up high and painted. I almost didn’t hear the buzzer when it rang. It was a delivery and at first I thought, Oh, maybe. It was a basket filled with flaccid fruit, cheap chocolates, ornamental cookies. There was a note from a plastic surgeon I’d interviewed for the liposuction piece: “Great job—loved the piece. Thanks.” I rescued a box of plain hard biscuits and threw the rest out.