Monica was upset to discover how irresponsible Sheila Trask was in terms of practical life. There were desk drawers, cabinet drawers, even kitchen cupboards stuffed with bills (paid? unpaid? long forgotten); there were letters never opened (from Internal Revenue, Merrill Lynch, one or another of Sheila’s banks, money-men, attorneys); there were requests of various kinds (would Sheila Trask be interested in a teaching position, or a position as artist-in-residence, would Sheila Trask be interested in being interviewed on television, on radio, in a national arts magazine) never answered. “How can you live like this!” Monica said, genuinely shocked. And Sheila, stricken, put her hands over her ears in a childish gesture. “Don’t tell me. Don’t frighten me,” she begged.
Nothing to be done, then, but that Monica Jensen take over. To the degree to which she could spare the time.
And the problems, the vexations, were so close at hand: Sheila’s cleaning woman was incompetent, or lazy, or deliberately dishonest; the boy who groomed Parsifal did a poor job of it, so that—as Monica learned to her amazement—Sheila herself had fallen into the habit of doing most of the work, without wishing, or daring, to say anything to the boy; the man who cleaned her septic tank (Roman Valentino was his unlikely name) had charged her $450, approximately three times too much. (Monica learned this by simply making a few telephone calls.) The Edgarsville roofing company had quoted so absurdly high an estimate, for repairs on the roof of the house, Sheila hadn’t wanted to have the work done; nor had she gotten around to calling in other companies, for other estimates. It maddened her, she said, to be cheated; yet she felt resigned, listless. Morton was always being cheated and so it was quite natural that she was being cheated but what could she do about it. . . .
Sheila’s fatalism in these matters angered Monica; the women fell to quarreling. “It’s all so petty, so soul-numbing petty,” Sheila said, “—let the sons of bitches cheat me if they want to,” and Monica said, exasperated, “Don’t be ridiculous, that’s just what they are counting on, don’t be stupid.” So Monica examined the bills, the receipts, the letters, Monica examined Sheila’s checking accounts (she seemed to have three), Monica made telephone calls, spoke briskly and assertively as she would never have spoken merely on her own behalf. (For who was Monica Jensen set beside “Sheila Trask”?) She derived a genuine pleasure from redressing outrageous wrongs, informing local tradesmen that their bills were exorbitant and would they please submit legitimate bills; otherwise, they may as well strike the account from their books.
There was the matter, more crucially, of Sheila’s impending show. (Postponed now until May 17, the last possible date for the season.) Calls came daily from Sheila’s gallery, from both the owner and the manager, was Sheila going to be ready on time? was Sheila all right? why wouldn’t Sheila come to the phone? Numberless arrangements had to be made: invitations mailed, the brochure’s galleys proofread by the artist, prices for the paintings settled, last-minute contacts made with the media. A champagne opening, of course, but Sheila must be there. (“I promise that she’ll be there,” Monica said, with more certainty than she felt.)
With Monica so often at Edgemont Sheila was spared the necessity of talking on the telephone, an ordeal she dreaded. More and more, lately, since returning from North Africa, she was developing an aversion to the telephone; an almost pathological hatred of it. “I’m so grateful to you, Monica,” she said; and Monica said impatiently, “I’m not doing these things for you, actually, I’m doing them for the sake of your paintings, and because I can’t bear the thought of so many people taking advantage of you. I want them to know,” she said, “there’s someone here who is in charge.”
7
Sheila had good days in her studio but they were balanced—in her private cosmology they were necessarily balanced—by bad days. Heights were followed by depths; exhilaration by depression. Yet she wasn’t, she insisted, clinically ill: “I’ve been through all that before,” she said mysteriously.
It was Monica’s task, Monica’s privilege, to help Sheila maintain an emotional equilibrium: an activity that took a great deal of her time but was in itself exhilarating. Walking a tightrope, high above the ground. Eyes fixed resolutely ahead, arms outspread for balance. The trick being not to look down; not ever to look down.
Monica had dropped her study-discussion group that met on Thursday evenings; she made her excuses—vague, sincerely apologetic, guilty—to Keith; of course she had no time for swimming in Olcottsville; she had systematically pared back her life to teaching, and those academic meetings from which she could not reasonably absent herself, and her involvement with Sheila Trask. It was of paramount importance that the paintings be finished, the show properly hung. And the arrangements, the numerous arrangements, yet to be made . . . !
Because Sheila would far rather paint than eat, on her good days, Monica had to keep a close watch on her. She kept herself going for hours—eight, ten, twelve—on black coffee and amphetamines; she explained impatiently that she hadn’t time for sitting down to eat and she hadn’t any appetite in any case unless—unless Monica kept her company, Monica prepared the food, there was something special about the food Monica prepared. (And it was true, Monica had a flair for preparing unusual concoctions with the blender, experimenting, as she said, improvising, with exotic soups that never failed to intrigue Sheila: yogurt with shrimp and dill; puréed apple with curry; mulligatawny; cauliflower with onion and carrot, thyme, fresh-ground black pepper, in a strong chicken broth. She had to eat anyway, Monica told herself, she would have to prepare dinner at home, so why not in Sheila’s handsome kitchen at Edgemont?—amidst the copper utensils, the blue and white ceramic tile, the broad windows overlooking a splendid sweep of land.)
Even when Monica worked hard to entice her, however, Sheila sometimes couldn’t eat: she sat at the table, trying, her forehead damp with perspiration, trying trying to lift a fork or a spoon, her shoulders hunched inward, the cloth of her shirt pressed lightly against her breasts, showing only faintly the outline of her small breasts, the tiny hard nipples. Please eat, Monica begged, you must eat, Monica said severely, soup, omelettes, cheese and French bread, a lavish green salad filled with things Sheila loved, or had once loved, and eaten greedily. You must eat, Monica said, sitting across the table from her friend, watching—you’ll break my heart if you don’t eat! she said, making a joke of it. But Sheila simply couldn’t. Her stomach had closed, she said, her throat had closed, she felt no more attraction for food than she’d feel for chunks of paper or cardboard, nothing had any taste, she was frightened of becoming nauseated if she swallowed a few mouthfuls, please wouldn’t Monica understand?
“Yes,” Monica said, slowly, staring at Sheila, “—I understand. But my heart is broken just the same!”
So she joked about the situation, she teased and cajoled and went away hurt, furious, baffled, worried. (Should she call Sheila’s doctor in Philadelphia? Should she insist that Sheila make an appointment to see him?—as if Sheila could be talked into anything of the kind.)
One day Monica happened to find, amidst a pile of bills and receipts in one of Sheila’s drawers, an astounding document: a bill from Argus Investigative Services of Greater Manhattan, for $1,200, dated December of the previous year, and stamped PAID.
For some minutes Monica simply sat there, staring.
Argus Investigative Services . . .
December of the previous year . . .
Then she snatched up the receipt and ran over to the carriage house, ran up the stairs to Sheila’s studio, half-sobbing in her fury, muttering under her breath, How dare you, how dare you, bitch, liar, she slammed into the room where Sheila was squatting before one of her canvases, brush in hand, she thrust the slip of paper at Sheila, into Sheila’s dazed face, she began to scream, suddenly she was screaming, she was sobbing, “How dare you, how could you be so contemptible, so vulgar—this is so vulgar—” It was a measure of Sheila’s odd blank resigned state that she made no attempt to defend
herself against Monica’s sudden frenzy: Monica slapped her, Monica even punched her on the shoulder, knocking her off balance: “Sheila, for Christ’s sake, how could you!—how could you!”
Though Sheila could not have known what was wrong, she crouched guiltily, protecting her face with her arms, hunched like a small frightened child.
“How could you—” Monica cried a final time.
The frenzy had burnt itself out as suddenly as it had flared up. She was standing over Sheila, panting, sobbing; she felt as if she were on the very brink of madness . . . that she might do, and be allowed to do, something irreparable.
But the attack was over. The studio was quiet except for the women’s harsh frightened breathing.
(And this incident was never again mentioned by either of the women. In her fury Monica crumpled the yellow receipt and threw it down, and, afterward, when she was alone, Sheila must have picked it up to examine it; but she never mentioned the “Argus Investigative Services” to Monica, and she certainly never apologized.
Very likely Sheila simply forgot, as the wisest and most practical of all procedures.)
8
Monica, disgusted, smarting with hurt and anger, stayed away from Edgemont for a day or two, Monica had after all (she told herself) her own life; and when she saw Sheila again she was alarmed at the change in her . . . wondering perhaps if it was her fault.
Sheila did look sick; vague and dazed and exhausted.
Her skin was a dull dead white, yet mottled, as if with teenage acne; the soft flesh about her eyes had grown puffy. In her speedy state (speedy being Sheila’s own term) she gave off an unnerving radiant heat, sheer energy; in her other state (for which there was no appropriate term) her voice was slurred and her bodily movements uncoordinated.
“She’s killing herself,” Monica thought, staring.
And then: “She will not kill herself.”
Sheila quite saw the humor of the situation, Sheila wanted no particular pity, out of self-respect, she said, and to do her small bit toward purifying the world, she really ought to slash her wrists: but she couldn’t spare the time.
“Do you think that’s amusing!” Monica said, “—I don’t think that’s amusing.”
Sheila said defensively, avoiding Monica’s gaze, “Look: in my family suicide isn’t that significant. My mother allowed herself to die in a way that wasn’t altogether ‘natural’ yet wasn’t a melodramatic gesture of any kind, it was in fact ruled an accidental death, sparing us a good deal of nuisance; and no suicide note. One of my uncles died by simply blowing most of his brains out at the age of forty-nine, and two of my cousins killed themselves, no, please, don’t look so distressed, as you can see it isn’t that significant, it’s simply a way of asserting control at the proper time. When you’ve lived through all there is for you to live through, when you’re burnt out, thoroughly, and the mere notion of returning to life, and doing it all again, the seasons, the years, the decades, O dear Christ. . . . When you’re balked, nullified, stalled, it isn’t a significant gesture, it isn’t at all emotional, it’s just something, you know, you do. And then it’s over.”
“Except of course it isn’t,” Monica said in a low trembling voice.
Sheila made an irritated dismissive gesture.
Sheila slouched out of the room, and refused to discuss the matter further.
Sheila did not trouble to reply when Monica called after her: “Except of course it isn’t—you know very well that it isn’t.”
“If you cut down on your smoking,” Monica said severely. “And your drinking. Those God-damned pills of yours.”
“Yes,” said Sheila.
“Are you listening?—are you going to try?”
“Oh yes,” said Sheila, hiding her face in her hands.
Then there was a day, a Friday, at the end of a spectacularly busy week for Monica, when Sheila became possessed by the idea of joining a contingent of women—artists, writers, educators—who were going to China for six weeks, leaving the first of May. Anything, she said, to get out of Edgemont—out of her studio—out of her head.
The invitation from China had come to Sheila Trask by way of the State Department, many months before; she had of course turned it down without a second thought. (To be precise, she tossed the letter into a drawer without troubling to reply. “We can get perfectly good Chinese food right here in Glenkill,” she told Monica, “—why the hell travel so far.”) Now, however, she telephoned Washington a half-dozen times, she telephoned a liaison person in New York City, to see if arrangements could be made for her after all. It was an emergency! She wanted, she said, to immerse herself in Chinese culture. That inhospitable Peking climate of which she’d read—prolonged cold well into the spring, dust storms, aridity, life lived close to the bone—a region where individuality did not exist (except perhaps as pathology) and where the State swallowed everyone up and where there was not (for how could there be?) any margin for personal anguish and personal desire.
Anguish and desire, Sheila argued—aren’t they identical?
And perhaps there would be a Chinese analogue, a sister of the soul, a “Sheila Trask” in that world: Sheila herself but totally transformed, purged of her failings, her sins.
“She could teach me a good deal,” Sheila said wildly. “If it isn’t too late. A sister—there—there—on the other side of the world—if it isn’t too late—”
Fortunately, nothing came of Sheila’s sudden flurry of interest.
By the time one of her calls to the cultural exchange office in Washington was returned, she had changed her mind—it was an absurd desperate ploy. And she was in the midst of rethinking the last of her paintings, she was greatly excited, she couldn’t be disturbed: would Monica handle the call, would Monica explain?
Monica would, Monica did.
9
Suddenly, in early May, Sheila decided to give a dinner party.
She was tired, she said, teasingly, of hillbilly truckers with no last names; she ached for some social life, a little adventure of the kind she and Morton had frequently had amongst the local gentry.
“You’re being preposterous,” Monica said.
“You can’t mean it,” Monica said.
Sheila laughed, Sheila ran her hands through her hair zestfully.
“But you’re first on my guest list,” she said, reaching out as if to poke Monica, or to pinch—though she did neither, “—unless of course you decline. Yes? No?”
More soberly she told Monica that she hadn’t given a party of this kind—a genuine party—a dinner party—in years. When Morton was in the right phase he quite enjoyed these parties, he thought them the reverse of real life, like photograph negatives. The local gentry, not an artist among them; that is, not a serious artist; just as the farmers were all gentlemen farmers and country squires, playing at a rural life, keeping herds of useless Brahman cattle simply for the look of them, transforming meadows into putting greens, that sort of thing. She wanted to cook for an entire day, seriously. She wanted, she said, to wear a long dress and to be a hostess.
Monica had a dinner engagement with Keith for that evening and though Sheila said indifferently, “Fine—bring him along,” Monica decided against it. She wanted to see Sheila as the mistress of Edgemont, she wanted to examine that other Sheila, with no distractions.
The first surprise of the evening was that a man named Hen—Hennessey—a neighbor—of whom Monica had never before heard—was Sheila’s partner for the occasion, her “date,” so to speak; judging by his manner, his ease, his general high spirits, he was virtually cohosting the party with Sheila. “Monica dear, this is Hen,” Sheila said in a bright false voice, drawing Monica forward as if she were a recalcitrant child, “—Hen is an old, old neighbor—I mean an old friend—old and dear, aren’t you, Hen?—we’ve known each other for ages but we rarely see each other, it’s a shame. Hen, Monica Jensen, Monica is a new friend—a very dear new friend—she’s renting that place Morton and I used to
own, that house, you know, on the Olcottsville Road, yes, the one the Dorrs lived in—Monica is teaching at the Academy, isn’t that interesting? All those adolescents—”
Hennessey was tall, wide-shouldered, handsome in a slightly florid way; in his early fifties, perhaps. His handshake was strong, his smile gratifying. Within a few seconds he had muddled her name (“Mona?—ah yes: Monica”) and mixed up the Glenkill Academy with another local school, the Quaker school in New Hope (“That’s an excellent place too, my boy Josh went there”), but his gallantry toward Monica, as Sheila’s friend, assuaged her feelings; and made her feel, for a while at least, that she had not made a mistake in coming.
And the other guests, the “horsey” set, the country squires and their wives—they too were extremely interesting; and certainly well-spoken. Like Hen they were warmly friendly with Monica, asking her questions, the same sort of questions (“Do you like it here,” “How long have you been here,” “How is the Academy—we hear such conflicting reports”), flattering her with their attention though (as Monica well knew) none of it could be sincere.
Hen made Monica a strong drink, which she accepted with gratitude; and as she sipped it, nervously, contemplatively, she decided it had been naive of her to be surprised that Sheila was on such companionable terms with a man she had never mentioned to her. Hen, Hennessey, an old dear friend and neighbor, with a five-hundred-acre farm off the New Egypt Pike; Hen, a man of considerable attractions; quite clearly wealthy. Perhaps the two were lovers, or had been lovers at one time: what of it?
No doubt there were many such men scattered through the world—lovers, former lovers, confidants, old dear friends—a network of people who had in common their connection, licit or otherwise, with Sheila Trask.
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