Torn and rocked.
You come, pulling at me
Little hands, big hearts
Flowers turned toward the sun.
I will not be your sun.
I would be no one’s sun.
I, too, turn toward the sun
Kindled, blazing
Consumed in its rays.
—MSC
Aaron converted the garage behind their house into a studio. Once it had been a stable. When they cleaned it out, they found boots that were stiff with age, an ancient saddle and riding whip, piles of empty liquor bottles. He hired a contractor to build a smaller shelter for their station wagon. The contractor’s crew poured a new concrete foundation and installed skylights and windows. Aaron enclosed a courtyard with a wooden fence where he could work in good weather.
In late October when the work was completed, they gave a party to celebrate. All that Sunday Eleanor cooked to the strains of classical music on the radio. As she prepared the finishing touches, a Bach concerto was playing. Eighteenth century harmony with its deep sadness beneath silvery joy soothed her. She basted the roast, poured some of its juices into a pan, added herbs and a little Cotes du Rhone, and whisked it all together into a gravy.
At times, waves of sadness engulfed her. Her secret sexual life had come to a halt several months earlier. After her last fling with a man who worked for an ad agency (she’d picked him up in the Gourmet Department of Bloomingdale’s Basement) she had felt too disheartened to resume. They’d stopped seeing each other, out of a mutual lack of passion. How illusory one’s desires were, she reflected. Satisfaction shimmered in the distance, but like a mirage always seemed to vanish.
Last night Aaron had not come home until the early hours of the morning. When he got into bed very quietly, she awakened briefly, then fell back into a troubled sleep. Her mother’s words came to mind.
“My dear,” Ruth said on her last annual visit—Eleanor recalled that day her mother wore a gray silk suit and pearls along with her usual sensible, low-heeled shoes. “You must overlook Aaron’s flaws. You must be practical. He loves you, but he has an artist’s temperament. You chose this life. You have made a commitment, my dear. It’s the woman, after all, who holds a family together. Don’t be like Aunt Deborah.”
Eleanor recalled tales of how her aunt reacted to her husband’s infidelities. In tears, she would fling herself upon Ruth. One day she threatened suicide.
“I put a stop to that!” Eleanor’s mother said. “I simply told her, ‘Don’t make a mess.’” Her mother’s scorn for such loss of control deeply affected Eleanor. According to her, Deborah’s hysteria destroyed whatever affection her husband still felt for her. Eleanor deduced that to display jealousy was fatal. But she secretly seized a bit of freedom in her own body. By exercising her freedom, she took revenge, and she created a life for herself which no one else could touch.
Rosa began to play the piano. She, too, was taking lessons. Against the Bach concerto sounded a blues melody which Rosa was fingering. Eleanor rather liked the blues, and she turned down the radio. But then Rosa repeated it again and again as she practiced the chords, and this began to irritate Eleanor.
She had been sipping wine all afternoon, and now she refilled her glass. Her face was flushed from the heat of the stove and the alcohol. There were fresh peas with white pearl onions, boiled in just the barest amount of water. Stuffed potatoes. A green salad. Strawberries and whipped cream. Devil’s food cake, Aaron’s favorite. For hors d’oeuvres she had prepared a plate of shad roe caviar and Brie with water biscuits.
“Rosa, please help me set the table.”
“Okay, Mom. In a minute.”
“Now!”
“Okay,” said Rosa regretfully.
Together, they set the dining room table buffet style.
In the midst of this, Jesse and Howard, who had been playing outside, came in noisily through the back door. They clamored that they were hungry, and so she fixed peanut butter sandwiches and poured them glasses of milk. Skinny little boys of eight and ten, they looked very much alike in their corduroy jackets and jeans, their dark hair cut short. However, Eleanor thought that Howard had fairer skin and eyes and that he resembled her brother, Frank, who died in the War, his plane shot down off the coast of Sicily.
How she missed him! One night shortly after he died she thought she encountered his ghost in the kitchen, where she had been crying bitterly over his death. They were still living in Manhattan then, and Aaron was fast asleep. “Don’t grieve for me, Eleanor. I’m here with you,” he said, although not in human words. She actually seemed to hear his voice, and she felt his hand on her shoulder for just an instant before he vanished.
“Aaron, what shall I wear?” Eleanor asked now, as she stood in their bedroom in her slip. He surveyed her choices: a red woolen dress with long, flared skirt and a black skirt with white silk blouse.
“This one,” he said, fingering the soft material of the red dress.
He looked so much younger than she did. Yes, she served him well as his peasant mother-cook-sexual partner. His face was relatively unlined, and he was slender, with only a few gray strands in his black hair. He was magnetic and vital, while there was a heaviness in her, a fear of completion—the unfinished stories, the fragments of poems—which he did not seem to possess.
“I feel old,” she sighed.
“My old woman!” he said in a joking mood. He was in boxer shorts and undershirt. “I love you.” He pulled her against him, caressing her breasts and buttocks. She could feel him growing hard. How physical he was! Any woman … yes, any woman could arouse him.
“No, not now!” she said, flustered but pleased, as she pushed him away. “Get dressed and go on down. The guests will be here soon.”
Lingering after he had left the room, she put on the red dress along with a silver necklace and earrings, applied a few drops of Fleurs de Rocaille to ears, wrists, and bosom, brushed her soft, fine hair, and was just powdering her face when the doorbell rang, and she heard voices. It was Heinrich and Erica, whom they had not seen in years.
Excitement pulsed through her. There had always been a strong attraction between her and Heinrich. When they first met, he and Aaron were both working for the WPA. Heinrich had been an administrator, but in his spare time he painted. At the time, he had been married to another woman. He had met Erica, a refugee, after the War.
Quickly she finished applying her makeup and ran down the stairs to greet them.
Heinrich, who had once been thin, had put on weight. Erica was small, full-bosomed, with soft, curly hair. They dressed with a certain elegance: Heinrich in tweed jacket and dark flannel trousers, Erica in a soft blue hand-woven skirt and shawl.
Eleanor embraced them. When she felt Heinrich’s body against hers, she trembled. Was she just imagining it, or did he tremble too? “My God, Eleanor, it’s wonderful to see you again,” he said.
They all went outside to look at Aaron’s new studio. The room was spacious and filled with late afternoon light. Aaron’s tools hung on wall hooks. Segments of a partially welded copper woman lay on a worktable. On a modeling stand in the corner were small figures in clay. Overhead stretched a broad shelf crowded with Aaron’s past work: human figures and busts in bronze, plaster, and in clay, abstract metal sculptures.
“I envy you this studio,” said Heinrich. “I have a lot more difficulty than you do in creating.”
“You’re a wonderful artist,” said Eleanor. She thought of certain drawings of his—images of terrified rodents with huge teeth, drawn with painstaking care.
“I’m too severe a critic of my own work.”
“You always give up too soon,” said Aaron.
Heinrich scowled and changed the subject. He remarked that the bare concrete floors would be cold in winter.
“We’ll bring you Dutch clogs,” said Erica.
“How will your models keep warm?” asked Heinrich.
“There’s an electric floor heater.”
“You’ll have to warm them yourself,” said Eleanor, with a smile.
“El is my best model,” said Aaron, putting his arm around her.
“What will you do when I’m at work?”
“Well then, I’ll have to make other arrangements.”
Everyone chuckled.
“I should really go inside. More guests will be coming any moment now,” said Eleanor.
“Actually,” Aaron said, addressing Heinrich, “I haven’t worked with human models for quite some time. I’d like you to take a closer look at what I’m doing now.”
“They want to be alone. Eleanor, can I help in the kitchen?”
“You can keep me company.”
As they left, the two men were deep in conversation. Aaron had picked up his blow torch and was explaining how he would weld a leg onto the upper half of a copper female body. “She has no feet,” said Heinrich. “Her feet will be part of the earth,” said Aaron.
Outside it was cold. The sun was just setting, and the air felt refreshing to Eleanor as she and Erica walked the short distance between the studio and the back door. Eleanor poured them each a glass of sherry. They began catching up on the past. Erica worked for the Dutch Consulate, while Heinrich had been director for a succession of museums. Erica had just begun to talk about her husband’s latest job when the doorbell rang, and their conversation was cut off by the arrival of more guests. Among them were parents from Nursery School days, friends of Eleanor’s and Aaron’s from their respective campuses, artists from the City, and several of Aaron’s favorite students.
A beautiful young woman in a black knit dress sauntered in. She had classical Greek features and dark shoulder-length hair. “Mr. Bernstein.” She placed her hand on his arm in a familiar way. “Sandra!” He kissed her on the cheek—too warmly, thought Eleanor—and with a slightly embarrassed air introduced her to Eleanor as one of his students. When he handed her a drink, they gazed a trifle too long into each other’s eyes.
Later on when people clustered in the living room, Eleanor saw her children gathered around Heinrich and Erica, who had brought them a book of photos from Amsterdam. Jesse and Howard leaned their heads against Erica’s shoulder while she read to them. They listened with rapt faces as the couple talked about life in Holland. In her throaty, accented voice Erica described how they used to skate on a small canal behind their house in winter, whenever it froze hard enough.
“I rarely skated,” said Heinrich. “I was too busy studying.”
“Tell me about your life,” said Rosa.
His household had been quite different from Erica’s. He was an only child. He hated his family, and at the age of eighteen he had come to America to get as far away from them as possible. He, too, read books on psychology, which her parents scorned.
Rosa’s heart throbbed in sympathy.
“But Erica’s life was not just about skating,” he said. “She is a heroine.”
“Heinrich!” Erica protested.
“Tell them about the war,” he said.
“My family was Jewish,” said Erica. “But like yours, entirely assimilated. We were not religious at all. We thought of ourselves simply as Dutch. We were well-to-do. We were happy. I married a fellow student at the University. Then the Nazis came. He was killed.” Her voice caught. “I escaped. I drove an ambulance during the rest of the War.”
“I could not have done it,” said Heinrich. “She has nerves of steel.”
“Someone had to.” said Erica.
Everyone was quiet for a moment.
“Rosa, tell us something about yourself,” said Heinrich.
As she talked about school and her interest in acting, her self-consciousness began to melt. In their eyes, she felt reflected as someone good, interesting, even beautiful. For Rosa, the couple sent out an immaterial substance like warm golden honey—something like love.
Later on while everyone was eating, Jesse began to play a song by Bartok on the piano for Heinrich and Erica.
“Not now with guests,” remonstrated Eleanor.
“Ah no, let him play,” said Heinrich, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “He plays beautifully, with a sure touch.”
His eyes met hers for a split second. Not the slightest motion betrayed either of them, although they were sending invisible signals.
She left Heinrich and Erica there with Jesse, while she mingled with other guests. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, and they all praised the food. Aaron was showing Sandra and a male student some of his small terra cotta sculptures in the study. He leaned very close to the girl. Let him enjoy her, she thought. To each his own. Eleanor refilled her glass.
In the kitchen, Clyde helped Eleanor with the dishes.
“How’s the man from Bloomingdale’s?” He asked as he dried a large pot. Over the years they had become good friends. Tall and ruggedly handsome, he took pains to conceal his homosexual leanings from his other colleagues at the college where he taught Theater.
“Caput,” she said with a wry smile.
He was in the midst of telling her about his frustrations with his own young lover when Sandra and two other students wandered in to say goodbye.
“Thank you, Mrs. Bernstein.” said Sandra. Her voice sounded too sweet to Eleanor’s ears. “The dinner was wonderful.”
“Yes, thank you,” said Jerry, an ex-GI, who was somewhat older than the other students. He wore khakis and a leather jacket. “I’ve learned so much from Mr. Bernstein.”
“He’s at his best as a teacher,” Eleanor said, thinking of lectures she had attended.
After the students left, Clyde and she glanced at each other. “His best students are always the prettiest ones,” she said, while to her surprise, tears welled up in her eyes.
“I don’t want to upset you … but I saw them kissing in the laundry room.”
“Why should it upset me? I have my own life.”
Aaron, Heinrich, and Sol were talking in loud voices. Heinrich, who was seated in the most comfortable armchair, puffed at a cigarette. The other two men leaned towards him, as if he were an arbiter, thought Rosa, who stood nearby listening. Her father in black turtle-neck and corduroy trousers. Sol, short and plump with dark beard. Heinrich, a large presence, leaning back in the old leather chair. Aaron talked as if Heinrich were his father, as if he were trying to impress Heinrich and justify himself, she thought. Heinrich’s voice was deliberate, almost as if he were on stage, while Aaron’s was tense with bristling energy.
Rosa took a sip of white wine from a slender goblet. The wine went a little to her head, as she had only drunk it on a few occasions in her life.
Sol was talking in a strong, guttural Brooklyn voice about a friend who lost his teaching job at Pratt because he had been a card-carrying Communist. He now lived on an isolated stretch of Oregon coast. “We were all Communists back in the Thirties,” said Sol. “How safe are any of our jobs? Will they prevent galleries from showing our work?”
Aaron tore a match from its cardboard holder, tore it again into two strips with his fingernail. He glanced with a certain furtiveness around him, and he looked uneasy. One never knew who might be listening.
Rosa drew closer.
“Our situation reminds me of ancient Rome,” her father said with an eager catch in his voice, shifting the subject away from the dangerous topic of Communism. “At a certain point their republic became a dictatorship. Their ideals foundered …” He went on talking about Rome, but Rosa lost interest. She had heard him expound on this subject before. His words were like armor with spikes, she thought, covering up what was soft and vulnerable.
With the McCarthy hearings in full swing, her father had signed a Loyalty Oath in order to keep his teaching job. He had told her not to discuss his former political affiliations with anyone, and she had never breathed a word. But she was secretly disappointed. It would have been thrilling if he lost his job because he stood up heroically for what he believed! She would willingly suffer pov
erty, even starvation, and she could help the family by getting a job. But he had failed her. His ideals had foundered.
A while later, after the men had dispersed, Eleanor went upstairs to see if the boys were in bed yet. When she reached the second floor landing, she was startled to hear Heinrich’s voice. “Eleanor, is there another bathroom?” He stood outside its closed door.
“Yes, there is. I’ll show you,” she said. Very conscious of his nearness, she opened the door to the attic and walked ahead of him up the stairs. Their movements seemed inevitable. They were magnetically attached. She half expected to feel his hand between her thighs.
“Here,” she said, pointing out the former maid’s bathroom.
“Eleanor, wait. Don’t go.”
Her heart pounded a little as she looked down at the unpainted floorboards. She felt as if this moment had been pre-ordained. The huge unfinished attic with its sloping beams was murkily lit by several bare light bulbs that dangled from the ceiling. Trunks and boxes were piled about. Old dresses from her youth hung in plastic garment bags. Two larger-than-life white plaster molds of work that Aaron had long ago cast in bronze lay in a dark corner like abandoned corpses.
She heard him piss, heard the toilet flush, heard water run in the sink. When he came through the door, without thinking she pulled him into the maid’s room, which hadn’t been used in years. He took her into his arms. For the longest time they held each other, not moving a muscle. She had never held anyone close for such a long time, it seemed. Her face pressed against the rough tweed of his jacket.
Then damned-up sobs burst out of her. She found herself biting his jacket in an effort to stop.
“You’re lonely,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I am, too.”
“There have been other men,” she murmured into his jacket.
“I’ve been unfaithful, too,” he said. “Sometimes you have to be, be faithful to yourself.”
“Aaron has his affairs,” she said. “That girl tonight.”
“The one in the black dress who acted like God’s gift to men?” said Heinrich, with just the right touch of irony.
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