by Sue Miller
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she says. And after a moment: “Graham?”
“I’ll call tomorrow, “ he says. “We’ll make a time.”
There’s another long silence. “Fine,” she says, and hangs up.
Graham stands there for a few minutes. Outside the window, an elderly man wearing a black beret—a Harvard type, Graham thinks—is talking to a woman his own age. Their polite white heads bob over and over, while the large black dog at the end of the leash the man holds is shitting in the dirt around the tree Graham considers his own. Graham doesn’t move, though. He doesn’t bang on the glass as he might otherwise do. His heart is pounding, but he feels sure now that he can do it, he can end things with Rosemary. He was rude, a bit, though he hadn’t really intended it. Perhaps, yes, unkind. But he had put something in motion. He had said they would talk. Now that would have to happen.
5
Annie’s studio was in Somerville, in an old red-brick industrial building near Union Square, an area full of other old industrial buildings, almost all of them converted into condominiums by now—you could tell which by the curtains or the treelike plants visible inside some of the old steel window frames. The artists in Annie’s building knew the days were numbered until this happened to their building, and Annie had actually begun to look around for another studio. She understood, though, that it would be hard to replace this one, she’d had it for so long and it was so perfect for her. Graham had helped her build it out, making it into a two-room space. Both rooms, the darkroom and the open area, were just the right size—the working area large and light, the darkroom smaller and windowless.
She used the darkroom only occasionally now—almost all of her work was in color and digital at this point, and she paid a lab to have the printing done. Slowly the little space had filled up with boxes and files and camera equipment. She felt almost apologetic every time she opened the door.
In the middle of the larger room she had a big square worktable set up. She moved around it now, getting ready to wrap things, setting out the equipment she’d need—the bubble wrap, the tape, the boxcutter.
The pictures she and Danielle had agreed on were leaning against the walls all around the room. It had been a difficult process, choosing which ones to include. Annie had unthinkingly left up some of the photos she’d taken at the start of the farming article, the ones that still had people in them. When Danielle saw them, she’d assumed they would be among the images they’d hang in the show. She couldn’t believe that Annie didn’t want to use any of them. As a result, the tone between them was strained from the start.
Then Danielle didn’t want several of the pictures that Annie liked best. One the grimy kitchen of a farmhouse, everything embrowned, as Annie thought of it, but with a solitary, pristine bottle of milk set out, a pure, almost overwhelming white against the worn maroon linoleum of the counter. Another, the unoccupied living room of an elderly couple Annie had grown fond of. The television was on, turned to a morning talk show, and the furniture was clustered around it, as though the blurry talking heads were honored guests. The fireplace was visible behind the television—the fireplace that might have been central in some earlier life. Instead it was overflowing with sloppily stacked-up old newspapers and magazines.
“God, these are incredibly depressing,” Danielle said. She preferred the photos of more civilized, orderly interiors. She liked one of Frieda’s bedroom, spare and neat and chaste-looking, the bed carefully made. She found it “Dickinsonian.”
Danielle was hard to argue with, and part of that was how impeccable she was personally. Small—about Annie’s size—delicate, her hair cut just so, in a sort of Louise Brooks bob. She had perfect skin, she wore clothes that were unusual and yet also elegant—Issey Miyake kind of clothes. Clothes that reeked of money. You couldn’t stand in front of her in blue jeans and insist on anything. “Really?” she’d say. It was never a question.
“Really?” she’d said to another shot Annie liked—a picture she’d taken of her own empty bed, the sheets tangled after she and Graham had made love, books scattered on the floor on either side of it. “A little too cluttered for me. And we’ve seen this kind of thing before, don’t you think?”
Well, Annie knew what she meant, but she had thought of the image as an evocation of the intimate, sexual heart of a marriage. She had wanted it to be the first thing people saw at the show.
They’d agreed on several other shots of farmhouse interiors, tidier, cleaner, but in their own way just as arresting—maybe even disturbing. One had dozens of gnomelike figures set everywhere, as though they were observing or supervising the life of the absent inhabitants—or taking over, which was how Annie liked to think of it. Another was of a kitchen saturated with color and busy with pattern, every shelf covered with flowered paper, the walls with cheerful or kitschy mottoes. The chairs at the table were cushioned in gingham, and hanging on the wall over all of this was the picture of a gorgeous, Aryan Jesus Christ, looking down with forgiving pale-blue eyes while he held open the bosom of his white robe to reveal, through a tidy opening, his valentine-shaped heart, a vibrant orange-red. After they’d agreed on several more like these, Danielle had yielded to Annie on three or four of her favorites.
Once she’d finished wrapping the framed photographs, it took Annie a long time to load the car—one picture at a time, up and down the three dark flights of sloping stairs over and over, once nearly tripping on one of the loose aluminum strips nailed along the outer edge of each step. When she turned to shut her studio door for the last time, carrying the last photograph, she was startled at how barren the room looked, how emptied out.
It was after two by now, and she was tired and hungry. She drove to the South End, and then through its streets of bow-fronted brick town houses, most of them renovated—the outward signs of that being the polished brass of the door hardware, the fresh black of the wrought-iron fences and ornate railings, the chic plantings in the tiny front yards.
She bought a sandwich to go at a shop she liked on the ground floor of one of the old town houses. She sat on a bench in the nearby park to eat, watching the Chinese boys playing pickup basketball on the asphalt court and the dog owners standing around talking to each other in the enclosure while their pets dashed wildly back and forth in barking waves.
She was thinking of this morning, of Graham. It was clear to her that he’d forgotten completely about the show: What are you up to today? She shook her head now—it had been so surprising.
Was she angry at him about that, then?
Not really, she thought. More puzzled. Puzzled because it loomed so large in her own thinking. And because it was so unlike him to forget what was happening in her life, even momentarily.
But something was going on with him. And she didn’t know what.
Well, there it was, wasn’t it? He had his life, his worries, and she had hers. Was that what was happening between them? The thought made her sad.
When she was finished eating, she went across the street to the chic wine shop there and bought a dozen bottles, half red, half white, for the dinner party tomorrow night. For dinner tonight, too.
She drove the few blocks to the gallery and parked in the vast empty lot next to it, encircled by the old factories, almost all of them full of offices and galleries and restaurants now. She carried the first framed photograph in. She could see Danielle in the office, busy on the phone. Her assistant, Valerie, was seated at the desk in the open gallery space, and she got up to help Annie, going back and forth with her, hauling the pictures in. Together they set them down, leaning them against the white walls below the paintings that were coming down the next day.
Before she left, Annie stopped in the office doorway to talk to Danielle. She was, as usual, a bit cool, a bit distant, but cordial. Just before Annie left, she said, pointing her finger at Annie, “This show is going to be good. It’s going to get you going again.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that you think t
hat.” Annie couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice.
“Of course I do,” Danielle said. She sounded surprised at Annie’s surprise. “I wouldn’t be interested in putting it up unless I felt strongly that way.”
“Yes, of course,” Annie said awkwardly. “Well, good!” She patted the doorframe for emphasis. “Great. I’ll see you Saturday, then.”
She drove distractedly back to Cambridge, the sun in her eyes as she headed west on Memorial Drive. She saw without truly noting them the tilted sailboats crowding the glimmering river, the half-naked joggers on the sidewalks that traced its banks, the Canada geese moving in slow waddling groups on the grass, their long necks arched to peck at the ground, their goslings strung out unevenly behind them, disorderly and confused-looking.
She was pondering the surprise of Danielle’s vote of confidence. One of those mysterious people, so reserved as to seem critical when nothing like that was intended, apparently. How did she manage to have a life? She was married, she had grown children. What would it be like to have such an unreadable wife? Or mother, for that matter?
Then she was remembering that Sarah had accused her of something similar once when she was twelve or thirteen. Something like unreadability. It was after a dinner during which Sarah had loaded her plate with second helpings of everything. They had been to the doctor not long before, weight had been discussed, and Annie couldn’t help herself, she made some comment. She couldn’t now remember her exact wording, but it didn’t matter. Sarah had burst into tears and fled the room. Her feet were thunderous as she mounted the back stairs.
“Oh, Christ,” Annie had said wearily. She and Graham pushed their chairs back at the same time. “I’ll do it,” Annie said. “I started it.”
She found Sarah lying on her bed, turned away from the doorway. The light from the hall fell on her rounded shape and on the poster on the wall behind her: Suzanne Farrell, en pointe. It had always made Annie sad, looking at it. Sarah had been five when she picked it out to decorate her room. She was taking classes at the Boston Ballet School. Already at that age she towered over the other students, those little fragile-looking girls. And it wasn’t just her height that had made Annie ache for Sarah. It was her solidity, her unpretty thick legs, her loud voice, her big hands.
Annie asked if she could sit down.
“No,” Sarah said, without turning over. “I don’t want you here, and I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to hear any of the understanding things you’re going to say. Because I know what you think.”
“And what do I think?”
“You think I’m a fat pig.”
“Oh, Sarah, that’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you meant. You think I’m fat, and you hate me.” She had readjusted herself slightly on the bed, and her voice was muffled now, smaller.
The problem for Annie was that she didn’t feel loving toward Sarah at this time. Sarah was always angry at her. Annie felt it was because she was angry at life, and perhaps at herself, for the hand she’d been dealt. The big, smart, nondescript girl, too shy even to have friends. “I couldn’t possibly hate you, Sarah. How could you think that?”
There was a long silence. Then the little voice said, “Well, you sure don’t love me.”
“That’s not true. I do love you.”
Sarah lifted her head and looked back over her shoulder at Annie. “How am I supposed to know that?” she said clearly. “You never show anything that you feel.”
That was it, wasn’t it? How Sarah thought of her. Annie couldn’t remember what else they had said. Maybe not much more. She did remember going back downstairs and talking about it with Graham. Graham, whose relationship with Sarah at that stage—at every stage really—was so much easier than Annie’s. They had conferred over the leftover dinner wine. They didn’t often talk about it together—Sarah’s size, her isolation—but now they did, keeping their voices low. How could they help her? Was there anything they could do to make her feel better?
Perhaps we should ask her that question, Graham said.
So he went up. When he came back down, he reported that Sarah had let him sit on the edge of her bed and rub her back, briefly. But when he asked her their question, whether there was anything he and Annie could do, she said no. She said they should just stop trying, that it made everything worse for her to know how much they worried about her.
Now Annie remembered that later that night, just as she was finally dropping off to sleep, Graham had spoken to her out of the dark in his gravelly voice: “Are you allowed to say that your own child makes you almost unbearably sad?”
They lay side by side without speaking for a minute. Annie felt swamped by her own sorrow about Sarah, by her inability to feel loving toward her at that period in their lives, by her awareness of Sarah’s understanding of that, at whatever level she was experiencing it. “No,” she had said then in the dark. “I don’t think we want to begin that conversation.”
* * *
She had already prepared the white beans with thyme and olive oil for tomorrow’s dinner, and the plan was to put the lamb in a marinade tonight. But she still had some shopping to do—last-minute things.
Back in Cambridge, she stopped at Formaggio, the fancy neighborhood shop, for cheeses—cheeses and crackers and several kinds of olives. They had cherry tomatoes that looked nice in the produce section, so she got those too, and a few other things for a light dinner tonight.
Standing in line to check out, she was mindlessly looking over at the flowers displayed in the corner of the shop. There were tulips, lilacs, peonies, irises. Gorgeous, she thought. Hopeful, as spring flowers always are. She’d get some. For the party, of course. But for Graham, too. A pick-me-up against whatever it was that was bothering him.
She stepped out of the long line, sacrificing her place, and went over to the flower stand. As she was waiting for the person manning that counter to trim the bunches of things she’d chosen, to wrap them in the clear crackling cellophane they used here, she thought she saw Rosemary Gregory by the produce section. She couldn’t quite tell, the woman turned away so quickly.
But when she went back over to rejoin the line to pay for the cheeses, yes, there she was. Annie stepped in line behind her. She was in gym clothes, her hair pulled back, enormous running shoes on her feet. “How are you?” Annie asked, thinking of Rosemary’s divorce from their friend Charlie, of something Graham had said about her after a party they’d all been at a month or two earlier. That she seemed a bit . . . what was it? Desperate, maybe.
“Oh, I’m fine,” Rosemary said.
“You shame me, exercising,” Annie said. “I haven’t been in weeks.” This was almost so. Maybe ten days anyway. She’d been feeling vaguely guilty about it.
“I try to go every other day,” Rosemary said.
There was a little silence that was just beginning to feel awkward when Rosemary spoke again. “Some bouquet! What’s the occasion?”
“Well, we’re having some people over after a reading at the store.” And then, because she remembered at that moment that, of course, Rosemary hadn’t been invited, she said, “The same party you’ve been to a dozen times.” This wasn’t true. They’d had Rosemary and Charlie over maybe three times, total.
Trying to change the subject, she said, “Really, though, they’re for Graham.”
“Oh?”
“Just that he’s been a little blue lately, and I want to cheer him up. Plus, of course, it’s a way of telling him what a nice husband he is.”
“Oh,” Rosemary said, her voice suddenly less friendly. “Well, good. Good for him. Good for you.” And she stepped forward to pay for whatever she’d bought.
Leaving Annie feeling awkward and chagrined: the party Rosemary hadn’t been invited to. The mention of a nice husband to someone just divorced. Why did she have to open her big mouth? She’d probably offended Rosemary. Worse maybe: wounded her.
But her sense of discomfort about this fell quickly aw
ay as she drove home through the warm green of the tree-lined streets. Inside, the house was lit with the rays of late-afternoon sun. She loved this time of day, the thick slantwise yellow light. She went back through it to the kitchen area and put away the food and wine she’d bought. She had just finished arranging the flowers in an old white slop pitcher when she saw Karen standing in their backyard. She was dressed now, but barefoot. The cat sat by the old lilacs between their properties, apparently waiting to see what she would do next.
Annie set the big pitcher down on the table. She opened the back door and went down the steps to where Karen was standing. She greeted the older woman, but Karen didn’t answer her. She was looking at the boxwood that circled Annie’s brick terrace.
Without lifting her eyes, she said in a soft, puzzled tone, as if to herself, “I’ve no idea why I planted these horrid box shrubs, when I detest them so. They’d better come out, I think.”
“Oh, I think not,” Annie said, perfectly cordial.
Karen looked up at Annie. “But they’re so . . . unimaginative!” she said. “I’ve always hated them.”
“That may be true,” Annie said. “But since this is our yard, that just doesn’t matter.”
Karen’s mouth opened. She was frowning, about to speak, but Annie spoke first. “Why don’t you come inside, Karen? Come in, and I’ll fix us a drink of some sort.”
Karen looked at her. She seemed to be pondering this.
“Then we could sit out here, on my patio, to drink them.”
The old woman’s face shifted somehow. For the first time she looked as though she knew who Annie was. “Now that sounds lovely,” she said. She smiled her chilly New England smile. “I’ve always liked your patio.”
“Let’s go get that drink, then,” Annie said.
They went in, and Annie fixed Karen a shandy, always her drink of choice. She’d put two bottles of the good white wine in the refrigerator earlier, and now she opened one with the nearly hydraulic fancy corkscrew Graham had insisted on. (“When we want wine, we want it now!”) She carried both of their glasses outside, leading the way. They sat on the terrace in the wicker chairs there, surrounded by the boxwoods, by birdsong. Her wine was a little too warm. In the distance somewhere, someone was playing the piano. Chopin, Annie thought. Nice rubato.