by Amina Cain
“You’re a vision,” I said. “I want you to keep it.”
“I couldn’t. It’s yours, Vitória.”
“But it looks so much nicer on you than it does on me.”
“I’m sure it doesn’t.”
“I’m certain it does.”
A pitcher of lemonade was on the table next to us, and after our initial insistence and resistance I poured us each a glass of it. I offered her a slice of blueberry pie.
“Tell me more about your life,” I said. “I want to know what it’s like now.”
“I’m going to have a baby.” She smiled. “I’m almost twelve weeks pregnant.”
“That’s wonderful, Antoinette. You’ll have the most adorable baby, I’m sure of it. Are you happy?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been more at peace.” She blushed and ate a forkful of pie. “I’ve not always been happy, you know.” She looked at me warmly. “And you, will you and your husband have a child soon?”
“No.” I laughed. “I don’t think I was meant to.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I haven’t yet wanted to be a mother.” I took a sip of my lemonade. “And I haven’t become pregnant even though my husband and I have made love many times.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Why, can you tell by looking at me?”
“Of course not. But it fits what I remember of you.” She paused. “Outside of the things you wanted, you always told me what you didn’t want too.”
I didn’t yet know what I could say to Antoinette, how candid I could be. Our renewed friendship was only at its beginning. Who knew if it would go on.
“Do you enjoy sex with your husband?” I asked.
“Yes. Do you enjoy sex with yours?”
“It’s the part of my marriage I enjoy most of all.”
“I suppose that’s all right. At least there’s something you enjoy about it.”
“That’s true. After I have an orgasm I feel healthy. Like having a perfect night’s sleep, or walking across the city, or swimming. And I almost feel close to my husband. Not quite, but almost.”
“I feel infinitely close to Frederick then.”
As Antoinette and I went on, I found myself at peace too. I was still surprised she wasn’t angry or upset with me; I didn’t understand it, but I let it go. I was just happy to know her again.
We didn’t see each other as often as I saw Dana, but when she could get away, she visited me, or we took walks as we had those years before. I wanted to visit her, but at first she wouldn’t allow it. She said she was too embarrassed for me to see where she lived.
“But why? I haven’t always lived in a house like the one I’m living in now, you know that. And who knows if I always will?”
SOON IT WAS SUMMER and I was again filled with longing and glad for that longing. The lake, calm and alive, growing darker as the day grew dark, gaining movement as the fronds of those date trees had, showing me something of life, how to exist.
I would let myself get hot before swimming into the water. I did this all day, hot and then cold. How lucky I was. The other people on the beach unpacking their lunches, the children burying one another in the sand and then breaking free, chasing one another.
I knew then that I could write however I wanted, that I need not shy away, even if I must shy away in conversation with people I didn’t love. The gentle waves washing over the sand, sex, friendship, the ballet, the desert, the tropics, the paintings, they had helped me.
I began to write with more energy and focus, and I read when I got tired. I walked from one side of the city to the other and back again.
Soon, Antoinette started to show even more …
One morning, when it was already warm, Dana and I sat in the park. I tried to read from the book I had brought with me, but I couldn’t because Dana was reading my notebook. No one had ever read my writing before, so I was alert and nervous and distracted.
“You mustn’t watch me. I won’t be able to focus.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid.”
“Don’t be afraid. Look, if you’re going to watch, you should let me take the notebook home so I can read it in peace.”
“I can’t be without it.”
“Then do something else.”
I read my book as long as my attention would allow me, then I began to write in that book too, though I had never written in any book before. I tried to keep my books as perfect as I could, but this was the only thing that would stop me from looking at Dana.
After some time had passed, Dana turned to me. “You write so nicely of the paintings, Vitória, so evocatively. I feel I am standing in front of them, and that you are there too, showing them to me. What a guide you are, a spiritual guide almost, one I wouldn’t have imagined.”
How happy I was. I had created an experience for someone; I hadn’t been sure I could actually do that.
From then on, Dana asked to read from my notebook from time to time and then she would talk with me about what she’d read. “A humble sense of purpose,” she said once, “and of fascination. You are fascinated by everything around you.” On a few occasions I did let her take my notebook home, when I thought I wouldn’t need it, that it might be good for me to be without it for a while. If I found I wanted to write, I opened up the same book I had written in already and wrote there again. I had already defaced it, and I was starting to feel as if I were having a conversation with it.
TODAY AT THE MUSEUM, looking at paintings of the night. How serene they are. Without trying, you can almost absorb their quiet. First I stood in front of mountains I’ve never stood before in person, maybe never will. Yet they didn’t seem far. Granite peaks and a green meadow spread out below.
Then other paintings of other nights, in England the sky the most satisfying shade of black. A strange Arizona, with an emerald-green sky, a pale green moon, the mountains a metallic color.
Then I looked at the most curious one of all, less serene than the ones before it. The wind is heavy, the trees in the distance blowing sideways, and a lady is all in white, her shawl swept up over her head. Is it her maid who is accompanying her? It looks like it. Are they hurrying together to another place, escaping something we are unable to see? Maybe that is why the maid has turned around; she is making sure they are safe. And in this painting there the two remain.
“You’re different now,” my husband remarked, and he liked me again, now that I wasn’t having trouble. We were sitting in the garden together; it was late for us to be out there, but our own night was still immensely pleasant, with its warm air and dark leaves and grass, the bright house behind us. It didn’t make sense to be inside.
“Different in what way?”
“You know what I mean. From how you’ve been.”
From the bushes the cat emerged and jumped onto my lap and the dog barked at her sudden appearance. I stroked behind her ears, under her chin. She was so soft. I was not, and that was part of the problem.
“It’s not that I’ve changed.”
My husband said nothing in return.
I sighed, for I knew I was giving him hardly anything. “It’s true I’m doing better now. The summer makes me happy,” I tried.
This should have been a reconciliation, and he did take my hand, but instead I was restless. I wanted to write more than I wanted to sit next to him; I enjoyed looking at paintings more than his conversation. I didn’t even want to have sex, and that was something new.
WHEN MY HUSBAND WORKED LATE, I had Dana over for dinner, and once in a while Antoinette, when she could get away, when her husband was working late too. I wanted to help fatten her up for her pregnancy. Or I ate alone; I would daydream by candlelight in front of the dishes that sat quietly on the table. Sometimes I brought my notebook with me, writing in it just a sentence or two. A leaf falling from a tree, I could see it from where I sat. Now someone would step on it, probably my husband.
What was it I wanted then? If I think
back?
Well, there were too many things.
I didn’t want to be invisible, though sometimes I treated others as though they themselves were. My notebook in my hands changing the energy in the room. All of us do this, change the rooms we’re in.
Picturing the river, empty of people. Some things are better left that way. Picturing that void on the lake.
Picturing Dana putting on her costume, walking up the stairs to the stage. In which moment is she most herself? She is unfolding, always. Antoinette too. I would picture her at home, not knowing what her house looked like.
I would see these things so clearly and then eat my stew. For the first time, I had asked Solange not to put meat in it.
“But you’ll want meat for your other meals, I assume?”
“No, I’m tired of it.”
I thought that was that, yet she continued to put meat in everything, not every night, but when I was eating alone. That meant something, I’m sure of it. She was trying to play games with me. She would say she had forgotten, but everything else she did perfectly, especially for my husband.
“Solange,” I would say in frustration, “you’ve given me meat again.”
“I’m so sorry, madame.”
“Take it away. I’m done with it.”
“Of course.”
“Please bring me the basket of biscuits.”
I had quite a few biscuits during that time.
“SOLANGE HATES ME,” I whined to Antoinette, the stage in front of us empty and bright, waiting for the dancers, for movement. I had brought Antoinette with me to the ballet; it was her first time, as mine had been not so long ago.
“I’m sure she doesn’t. What on earth for?”
“She’s cold for no reason. She always has been, and when I tell her I don’t want meat in my meals, she gives it to me anyway. She ignores everything I say.”
“She probably can’t remember. It’s so unusual, after all. Everyone eats meat.”
“Sometimes I see her looking at my husband, studying him. I wouldn’t doubt that she’s in love with him. Or maybe she’s trying to figure something out, but what that could be, I don’t know.”
Antoinette took my hand, and we stayed like that as the music began and the curtain rose to the ceiling.
The dancers were animated in a different way that night; their movements seemed to begin from a different place, which I was enthralled by. But I was always enthralled; I knew this about myself. It was almost annoying. As usual, some energy was in Dana that surrounded only her, but she danced in perfect synchronicity all the same, the dancers leaping across the stage almost as one being, then breaking apart, becoming their own selves. I enjoyed this coming together, this breaking apart. I wanted to do it in my writing.
“Which one is Dana?” Antoinette whispered.
“There to the right, at the very end.” There she was, dressed in bright red like a rare flower.
“She dances like a dream.”
“I know, doesn’t she?”
Dana, not warm or cold, just endlessly present.
In the second act, the dancers wore long dresses and greeted each other as if they were at a ball. They broke into pairs, and the stage was much darker than it had been before. I felt a strange anticipation. In that scene it was night and candles were in the windows of the room they danced in. Before this, they had been outside. In their pairs, they danced closely for a long time, then when they were tired, they rested on the floor. Something about watching them lie there like that was relaxing. It made me want to slide down in my seat too.
DRAWINGS OF WITCHES and old women; they float in the air and grab on to one another’s clothing. A braid of women, a clump.
In one drawing, four figures are floating: two pairs ascending or falling, we don’t know which. The two in the foreground are barely holding on; an old woman is laughing gleefully while pulling another woman’s hair, that second woman crying out in pain. It must be pain. If they are falling, she will be the first to hit the ground. The second pair touch the first and they look as if they are embracing. They are shadows, drawn all in gray.
The clumping, what does it mean? Are they intimate or is it more abject than that?
In another drawing, a group of people are clumped together in a tree. The drawing is still but it seems as though the people are fidgeting. They look like children in that way. But somehow the drawing is somber, as if everyone is sick.
The caption below the drawing reads, “In this print, a group of figures has settled on the branch of a tree. Some have been identified as witches and others as members of the nobility. They are being lectured, but not all are paying attention.”
I can’t tell who is a witch and who is a noble. The clump, that’s all I see.
ONE DAY WHILE AT THE LIBRARY, I found out there was to be a reading the following week by an author I liked. How exciting, I thought. After reading from his novel, the author would be interviewed by another author. Questions would be taken from the audience. I had never been to a reading before.
The evening of the event I dressed carefully. I wore gold earrings, a full, dark-colored skirt, and a light-colored blouse. I wanted to be simple and elegant. Not that anyone would be watching. I hoped I looked like a writer. I did feel like one.
I walked to the reading, and when I looked at the streets, I saw a city filled with people I didn’t know, would probably never know. It didn’t bother me; it’s the same for everyone. When people look at me, they also see a stranger. In a way it is good, and I smiled at the thought of being a stranger walking down the street.
At the reading, the author spoke in a loud voice that was also dramatic, yet he wasn’t reading a dramatic part. Every so often, he looked at the audience with a great amount of purpose. It was difficult to want to look back. The few times he looked at me, I looked immediately past him, to the window with the night sky in it. At least I had something else on which to focus my attention, something open and calm. Or I looked at the wastebasket, completely still. I didn’t like him, and I hadn’t expected that. I didn’t like the man who interviewed him either, who spoke out of turn, I thought, of his own success, both at the start of the interview and then again sometime in the middle of their conversation.
That second author said, “When you are first given accolades for your work, it is tremendously exciting, but it soon becomes tiresome.” I didn’t believe him. If it were true, why would he be saying it now? It meant something to him to be able to say it. He probably hadn’t been able to stop himself, as I sometimes had trouble not saying something I later regretted. Or maybe he would never regret it, thought it important to the conversation he and the author were having.
I wanted to lock them in the room after the reading was over and make them listen to each other forever. Let them look at the sky when they got tired, or at the wastebasket. I thought they deserved that. I wanted to tell them how terrible the reading had been, that it had ruined the writing, how shallow the interview was, how much I had hated all of it.
When I walked out of the room, I said simply, “You’re both worms,” and they looked at me, not knowing how to respond to a statement like that. “Of the worst kind. When you open your mouths, you are male worms eating from a toilet.”
THE NEXT MORNING AT BREAKFAST I tried to tell Solange what I was writing. I’d never bothered before and I don’t know what made me try. I wanted to communicate something, I guess. I wanted to say something about myself, about how I spent my days. I was trying a final time, perhaps, to connect. It didn’t go well.
“I’m writing about myself looking at paintings,” I told her. “And sometimes at plants.”
“Is there an audience for that?”
“I’m sure there is not.”
“What makes you do it, then?”
“My soul,” I said boldly. I didn’t care how it sounded. I ate my oatmeal. It wasn’t something in which Solange could put meat.
Solange had no reply; she was so involved in was
hing my husband’s dishes from breakfast you wouldn’t think I had said anything at all. She folded a dish towel neatly, then folded a dishrag. I had never before seen a person fold a wet dishrag.
“It’s too wet to fold it now, Solange. It’ll never dry that way.”
“How would you know anything about dishrags?”
It was so direct I didn’t know how to respond. If I said, “I have used a dishrag my entire life, up until these last two years,” and said it with too much feeling, I would sound ridiculous. I knew that and I said it anyway. My voice was dramatic.
Solange unfolded the rag and laid it on the table next to where I was eating, which was the most ridiculous thing of all.
“As you wish, madame. Here is your rag.”
“I’m going out,” I said angrily, and I took my rain jacket and went.
As was common for me, I instantly started walking in the direction of the museum. My notebook in my jacket pocket; maybe that was a kind of clumping, what I tried to pull close. I put my hand in my pocket several times to make sure my notebook was still there. Solange is a witch, I thought, and I hate her. I am a witch too. Neither of us is noble.
In one of the galleries was a small collection of unfinished works I hadn’t yet looked at, and I went to them before anything else. Paintings with empty space in them, I thought I should see that. They hung as confidently as any other painting would, unfinished or not, several on each wall.
In this one, blank faces and faces undone. In this one, a dog not yet filled in. In this one, a landscape missing. A brightly lit woman on top of darkness. This last one sent me back to Solange, which bothered me to no end.
I found a table in a corridor and sat down to write. I thought this would help. In the museum, even a corridor was beautiful, with its intricate molding and views of the galleries, and the table was elegant and fine. I had never sat at it when I worked here, but I had cleaned it all the same. Now I sat here often.