Our hips and legs touched companionably under the sheet: “Teddy, how come you went to India with Maggie?”
He laughed: “It’s a long story.”
“Tell it. We have all night with nothing else to do.” There was no sex left between us, only friendship, affection, maybe love of a fraternal sort.
The story wasn’t all that long, or surprising. In those years many people went to India, for various reasons, most of them on some quest for a different mode of living, insight: whatever. “And she?” I asked about Maggie. “Was she on a spiritual quest too? Hard to imagine,” I said, for Maggie was so very much of this world, of this earth, as could be seen in the way she trod it with her firm little feet.
“Quests, all quests,” Teddy explained, “start with dissatisfaction, and Maggie was dissatisfied. Nothing had turned out the way she wanted; you know the feeling, Helly, we’ve all been there. Maybe everyone gets that way, once they reach a certain age, or stage in their pilgrimage. That’s where we were, Maggie and I, when we caught up with each other again. I had already decided to go to India—I was doing a tremendous amount of reading, the Upanishads and so on: it’s terrific stuff, Helly, one day I’ll read them with you.”
“You read them with Maggie?”
“No, I was having sex with Maggie. It was inevitable, Helly honey—you can understand that: I mean, Maggie. Even now.”
“You mean now that she’s so fat and sweaty?”
“Yes, isn’t she?”
We both laughed but only briefly. He went on to tell me about their joint passage to India. They landed in Bombay where Maggie soon entered a circle of art-lovers and theater enthusiasts. Teddy too felt at home with them for a while; everyone was so sincere, and even the people with tremendously well-paid jobs in advertising or tobacco companies had these sort of deep Indian eyes that showed how they yearned for some other mode of being. They were also very hospitable, and Maggie and he enjoyed staying in their grand houses and flats overlooking the Arabian Sea. Maggie started theater workshops and elocution classes—all were eager to change their accents for the Tennessee Williams and Harold Pinter plays they staged. But Teddy decided that his journey lay beyond Bombay; he longed to go up into the Himalayas to breathe the pure air that suffused the ancient texts he loved. Maggie gave him money—“She’s very generous when she has it, or has friends who have it”—though after a time his needs were fully met in the monastery he had entered. He missed out on Maggie’s period with the Arab husband or lover, and by the time he came down from the mountains, she had gone from Bombay, no one knew where. He didn’t catch up with her till just before he brought her to Springlake, having found her in New York, once more poor and on her own, though now a Princess.
George, who was a romantic, loved her title. He asked her about its derivation—the age and origin of the dynasty and so on—but she was as evasive about this as she was about other aspects of her past. We didn’t hear much about the Prince either—just the sad smile she had for all lost souls, or all those who had treated her badly. “He needed a lot of help,” was as far as she went. She and George became close and had long conversations together. I watched them walk up and down by the lake. It was George who did most of the talking, though sometimes they stood still and she talked to him, while he listened with lowered head like someone being told something for his own good.
On her first visit here twenty-five years ago, George had admired her as we all did (except Father), but they had had no particular relationship. Of course at that time our mother was still alive. Father used to say that Mother smothered George—and the word “smothered” suited the way they lived together among her outsize cushions and the arum lilies delivered every second day from her florist. There were times when George escaped: once, he took a house in Mexico for six months, to live with a friend. Our mother telephoned all the time, and then implored him to return home, if only for one evening to take her to the opera; and he did, because he loved the opera and to be seen with her, still at that time a platinum blonde and wearing her silver furs. But when he returned to Mexico, the friend had moved another friend into the house and there were dreadful scenes before George managed to evict them both and abandon the place and return to Mother in New York.
Maggie explained—in the same words she had used about her husband—that George needed help. She said this to me, to apologize for spending more time with him than with me. “But now you and I are going to have a real talk,” she told me. She was sitting on a sofa, with her long skirt spread around her, leaving little space, so I sat at her feet, which did not quite reach the ground. When she smiled down at me, an attractive dimple appeared in her cheek; she looked both sexy and maternal, and I did want to talk to her, unburden myself in the way George had presumably done. Only of what? When my silence became too long, she laid her hand on my head as though to awaken something in me. Nothing happened, and I felt sad, remembering how we used to talk about the Performing Arts Center. Now none of us spoke of that any more, and there seemed to be no more plans.
After dinner on the day of her arrival, Lisa informed George and me that she had something to tell us. Although we weren’t yet through with our dessert and coffee, we got up when she did. Maggie, with her immense tact, pretended not to notice her exclusion, modestly lowering her eyes to where she swirled the sugar around in her coffee cup. But Teddy followed us into Father’s study where Lisa had led us. She stopped in the middle of the sentence she had already begun and looked at him with her bushy eyebrows raised. “I’m your father,” he said and sat down with us, apologetically but as by right. Lisa could do nothing about it—nothing about him: he was her father, surprising as that fact never ceased to be.
With Father gone, it was Lisa who had assumed his authority. At first George had liked to think of himself as the head of the family responsible for all decisions. But after he had made such a mess (I’m sorry to say) of our financial affairs, Lisa took them away from him—just in time, before we lost more than we could have afforded. “George is an idiot,” was her comment. Yet she continued if not to trust at least to respect him more than she did Teddy and me. It was easy to see why. Teddy and I have remained physically as slight as we always have been—and Lisa would say not only physically; but George’s added weight has given him an air of authority that waiters and even cab drivers respond to. He has become a person of substance, who can’t be ignored the way it is easy to pass over Teddy and me. So it was to her uncle George that Lisa unfolded her plan, turning to him as the only sensible person in the room.
It was about Springlake. Instead of selling the place, Lisa had decided to lease it to her own firm, as a retreat for its senior officers. She pointed out that it was ideal for this purpose, within easy reach of the city and of course fully and splendidly furnished the way Father had left it, with its closets crammed with linen, its sideboards with dinner services and silver. She would negotiate an excellent price, making it a source of income instead of a constant drain for the three of us. “For Uncle George and me, and Helen,” she said—unnecessarily, for Teddy knew himself excluded. Father had made no arrangements in his will for Teddy—which of course was perfectly natural since our marriage had long since been dissolved. But it always made me feel guilty, so that, whenever Teddy needed money badly, it was a relief for me to give it to him. Now too I pressed his hand to assure him that, whatever might come to me from the lease, he would be entitled to a share of it. He returned my pressure; but I knew that it was not only about the money that we were in agreement. He was as distressed as I was by the decision Lisa was handing down to us; and I could see that George too was not happy about it, shifting uneasily in his chair from one big buttock to the other. Yet none of us made any protest—how could we? It was obviously the best possible solution for the place; and besides, Lisa always knew best and it was not for us to contradict her. So she said, “Good,” into our silence, which she was entitled to take for assent. Then she too was silent for a moment, maybe waiting for us to thank h
er for the clever arrangement she had made. When we expressed no gratitude, she shrugged—the way she often shrugged at what we did or failed to do. “Typical,” was all she said.
It was only when we were alone and in bed together that Teddy and I whispered our dissent. We decided to consult with George and made our way along the upstairs passage to his bedroom, tiptoeing past Lisa’s and past Maggie’s. But we found Maggie with George—in his stately four-poster in which one would never have thought to discover any woman. Maybe that was why neither of them was embarrassed; they were just two people, two friends, talking over a shared problem.
Maggie tried to console us: “George says you were going to sell the house anyway.”
“That was before you came.”
“I!” Maggie laughed—she had a surprisingly gruff laugh, also loud, which made us nervous that Lisa might hear. Maggie didn’t lower her voice: “But I’m just one of your guests. And,” she pointed out, laughing again in the same way, “one whom your father personally turned out of the house.”
“Maggie, really.” Teddy was as annoyed as he could ever be. “That was years and years ago when we were all—when we all did such stupid things. Look at Helly,” he said, smiling to lighten our mood. “She even married me.”
We remained gloomy. George said, “The sort of people Lisa is bringing into the house never did a stupid thing in their lives.”
“Businessmen. Stockbrokers. Rich people. What’s wrong with that?” said Maggie. “Your father was a businessman. And rich.”
“Oh, but Father wanted us to be different! He was so proud whenever I was in a play, he’d travel miles to see me; and George’s poetry . . .” I trailed off and George waved it aside. “And he wanted us to start the Arts Center in the house, he would have given us any amount of money if we’d kept it up. If you’d stayed to keep it up for us.” This was our first reference in years to that old idea.
And at once it sprang up again, alive: “Why shouldn’t we?” We looked at one another, George, Teddy and I: “And now you’re back,” we said to Maggie.
But Maggie said, “Lisa doesn’t like me.”
“If she got to know you,” George said slowly and weightily, “she’d realize that you were—what you are. A very sensible person. A very warm dear sensible person who would do wonders for all of us.”
Teddy and I shared George’s trust in her, though it was difficult to say on what we based it. Seen objectively, Maggie was as much a failure as the rest of us. After having done so many things in her life in so many places and been both a Russian and a Princess, here she was dependent on us for a place to live—and for money too, though she was very tactful about asking for it. She never approached me directly but always through Teddy, who was not embarrassed about borrowing, either for himself or for others in need. And George probably didn’t have to be asked, he was so used to giving it to people he liked and wanted to keep near him.
That same weekend we saw Maggie walking up and down along the lake with Lisa, in the intimate way she had done with George. She was talking, explaining—we assumed it was about the house and our plans for it. However, shortly afterward Lisa came storming into the drawing room where we were watching the sunset, as we did most evenings. “Have you been giving money to that woman?” she demanded. Maybe George and I looked as if we were about to deny it, so she continued, “She told me herself. Yes and how much, and I think you’re both crazy and so is she. Would you believe it, she wanted it from me too, an outrageous sum, who the hell does she take me for!”
George and I exchanged looks of surprise but then he began to explain, “Well of course for the house—our plans for it—”
“Nonsense. It was for herself. She even told me in what name to make out the check—she calls herself Princess now.”
“She is a Princess,” George said.
“Yes and all sorts of other things too.” Lisa bit in her lips as though too outraged to say anything further. But then she did: she told us everything that Maggie had told her. We were amazed because it was much more than she had ever told us. She had worked her way backward with Lisa—starting from the Arab prince, she told her about his Russian predecessor who had pretended to be a prince but had only been a smalltime actor she had met on a film-set where she had been an extra, trying to make a little money to survive. Yes, she told Lisa, she had always had to struggle and so had her mother who had had to work at every kind of miserable job after Maggie’s father had run off; and then Maggie herself had run away because of her stepfather’s behavior with her while her mother was on night shift. She was only sixteen at the time, completely alone and helpless, so that just in order to eat and have somewhere to stay she had been led into doing things she should not have done, stupid things that sometimes got her in trouble.
“So now you know what Grandpa found out about her,” Lisa said. “All he had to do was look up her police record.” And she went on and on, telling us what Maggie had told her—her progress from the streets of America to those of the world. George and I listened, enthralled by what seemed to us a thrilling tale of adventure and daring; and while listening, we watched the sun sinking behind the trees and a flock of birds flying in the orange flood of its setting. But Lisa had her back to the window, and she told Maggie’s tale not as the romance that we saw but as something sordid and shameful.
Lisa left for her office early next morning. She said she was returning the following weekend with some members of the board to view the house; and by that time, she threatened us, Maggie had better be gone. George and I were bewildered: why had Maggie done what she had, and instead of explaining to Lisa about our plans, had asked for money for herself? Maggie seemed under no suspicion that there was anything wrong or that she was again being turned out of the house, this time by Lisa. She had come to see Lisa off and had kissed her goodbye—“in the Russian way,” she announced as she planted her lips on Lisa’s. She had turned away before the car drove off, so she missed seeing Lisa wipe her mouth. Maggie was in a good mood, humming to herself, and she stayed in it day after day. She was very much at home by now, mostly lying on a sofa with her feet up, doing her nails, sipping a drink—comfortable little things of that sort. It would have been a pity to disturb her with our questions.
Instead we turned to Teddy. It was not the first time that George and I had brought our difficulties to him. Teddy was a very simple person, and he hadn’t had much education either, unlike George and myself who had been sent to the best schools. But there was a sort of wisdom in Teddy—even Father had called him “a wise fool”—which had nothing to do with education or reading books, nor even with his experience of knocking around from place to place and living on nothing. It was more something inborn, maybe even part of his simplicity, which was a kind of selflessness in him. He had a lack of self-regard that made him as tolerant of others as most of us are of ourselves. It also gave him understanding—anyway, he understood Maggie: “She wanted Lisa to really know her, know what sort of a life she has had.”
“Did she tell you any of that?” we asked Teddy.
“Some of it,” Teddy said.
“About why Father had turned her out?”
“Not exactly, but I guessed. You see, that’s what’s so great about Maggie: that she’s been right down in the dirt and then she’s come up like some beautiful flower. Lotus, is it—that flower growing out of mud? And that’s what she wanted Lisa to know, where she’s been; you can’t really appreciate what she’s grown into if you’re ignorant of that.”
Certainly, George and I regarded her with new eyes. In comparison with her, how innocent, how blank were the two of us who had started off and continued with every material advantage; and how easy it had been, under these circumstances, to keep ourselves immaculate—well, at least socially. But even while respecting her more, I couldn’t help thinking about the dirt Teddy had mentioned and to notice anew that the hem of Maggie’s long gown was soiled from trailing on the ground; also—something I struggled
to hide from myself—that she perspired heavily and did not, it seemed, bathe every day. I wondered whether George shared these unworthy thoughts; I was sure that Teddy did not, for he never thought ill of anyone.
Meanwhile the week went on, with Maggie as happy at the end of it as she had been at the beginning, and even more comfortable as though sinking deeper into our sofas. But George and I became more uncomfortable at the approach of the weekend, and with it Lisa’s arrival. Of course there was no question of Maggie leaving, but we wished we had some explanation for Lisa as to why it was essential for her to stay. In any case, we longed to hear and talk more about our plans—about her plans for us, for our Center. The days passed and Maggie said nothing but continued to lie on her favorite sofa. She was now reading a great deal, turning the pages very quickly—as quickly as she ate her meals, which she always finished long before we did, especially George who masticated very thoroughly. We circled around her, waiting for the right moment to raise our subject, but she remained entirely engrossed in her book.
At last, the day before Lisa’s expected arrival, in desperation almost, we stood before her. I cleared my throat nervously; George, just behind me, cleared his: “Maggie, we must talk.”
She looked up, took off the glasses she wore for reading, and gazed at us in kind inquiry.
“The house,” I said.
“Our Center,” George said.
“Oh yes,” she agreed, “we must have a chat about it all. There’s plenty of time—Art is short but Life is long—no the other way around, I always get mixed up.” She gave her gruff laugh and put on her glasses to continue reading, only looking up briefly to tell us, “This is such marvelous stuff—in translation unfortunately but still—” She turned another page.
“Lisa is arriving tomorrow.”
“I know it,” she said. “I’m well aware of the fact.” This time she didn’t bother to look up; what she was reading at that moment was so astonishing that she made an exclamation point in the margin with the little gold pencil she had borrowed from me.
My Nine Lives Page 10