After Gregory

by Austin Wright

  Nobody seems to give a damn about my marriage to Sharon.

  Sharon’s a nice girl, isn’t she? She used to be married to David Trace. Before that she worked for Luigi Pardon. Good old Luigi. Jane Delaware swelled up her throat and bass crooned my sweet embraceable you, rollarollaroo. I too, we’ve both worked for Luigi Pardon.

  What kind of work?

  Stenographic. Is that a euphemism? I took pictures of him. I took pictures of him and gave them to Jack Rome. What kind of pictures? You know.

  Without his knowledge?

  Mercy no. He was very proud of how he looked in that condition. I also took pictures of Luigi and Sharon. He was very fond of Sharon. As far as I know, he still is. Perhaps you ought to know that, keep it stored in the back of your head.

  Luigi and Sharon?

  Sharon and I, we were Luigi’s slaves. He liked Sharon better than me. I was too intelligent to be a good slave. So was Sharon, but she didn’t mind so much. I hope I’m not upsetting you. You ought to know these things. There’s a lot of conflict in the upper reaches of the Rome Matrix. Jack Rome and Luigi Pardon and David Trace, only the power belongs to Jack. He keeps them under control.

  And you’re married to Jack.

  That doesn’t mean I have to like him. He treats me well, I can’t complain. I do good work for him.

  What else do you do, besides take pictures and run errands and promote his vicious schemes?

  Calm down. Most of what I do is respectable. I’ve answered his telephone, screened and transmitted his personal messages. I managed his benevolent projects division. I’m empowered to negotiate the arrangement with Miranda Landis. Benevolent projects. That’s you, that’s how I first heard about Stephen Trace.

  All sorts of things I’ve done, she continued. Used to be an actress, okay? Actress on the bum in New York, spotted in an audition by Luigi Pardon who was looking for points. Flunked the audition but made a hit with Luigi. Oops. Lucky girl. I had class. My manners, how I held my fork. So he took me in and gave me my start. From Luigi to Jack, abilities speak for themselves. Standards of behavior, poise and enunciation. As for Jack, I have a whole apartment to myself inside his apartment in New York.

  So listen my beloved, will you do this little thing for me? Her soft hair blocked your vision, her strong leg had a grip on your hip. If Miranda is willing to pose for me, as I am sure she will, would you be so kind as to find out—delicately, tactfully, when you have got her into the most receptive mood—if she would be willing to pose also with you?

  You’re out of your mind.

  We’ll conceal your face. I know you can’t let pictures of you be published. No one will recognize you. The important thing is the visibility of Miranda.

  The danger of being recognized as Peter Gregory through photographs of Stephen Trace had not even occurred to you. That wasn’t what you meant. You didn’t question where the revulsion came from or whose it was, but there it was. What are you trying to do to me? She pressed you down, smeared her face over yours while she said, Don’t worry, darling, you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.

  Don’t you think it’s horrible?

  She sat up. Who cares what I think?

  Take a moment, take a breath. Then you do think it’s horrible.

  I didn’t say that.

  Something—the nakedness, the athleticism, the steamy midafternoon atmosphere, the struggle to persuade, had altered Jane Delaware’s appearance. Makeup gone, face shiny, like a freckled ex-child, but a good many years beyond childhood, with some old haggard anger showing through. You’re not being ironic?

  If you mean I’m not telling you what Jack Rome would like you to do, then no, I’m not being ironic. Anything else I may have said is up to you.

  So after a while, once more quiet, you asked: Who are you, actually? Where do you come from?

  Me? I’m an orphan. I don’t come from anywhere.

  She put her head against your neck under your beard. An orphan child, while you stroked the fine soft gold hair. I grew up in a building. With other orphan kids. I did bad things. I stole, I told lies. I did good things too. I was kind to animals, dogs and cats. I had one great friend named Emily Lake. She was a wonderful womanly teacher at St. Kate’s School who taught me everything good I know. She taught me how to be a lady. How to talk, how to hold myself. How to dress. How to think about people. How to be kind, how to love. I owe everything good to her. What else do you want to know?

  Why did you marry Jack Rome?

  Because he wanted me to.

  Are you going back to him now?

  That’s my obligation. To stand by him as his loving wife. I don’t necessarily like myself very much, in case you were wondering about my judgment. Will you do what you can? Jack would be grateful.

  Jack.

  I would be grateful, Jane Delaware said. We’re only asking you to do what we have every reason to believe Miranda herself wants and expects. If it’s her idea to go public with her new sexual persona, we only want to help. You can make it a little easier by anticipating her wishes, if she’s too shy to tell you herself.

  Jack Rome would call your resistance a recrudescence of Gregory. If so, Gregory was stronger than you realized. But as Stephen Trace you had no direction. As Stephen Trace it was hard to figure out why you should resist at all, and it would certainly be foolish to resist without reasons. You agreed to see Miranda tomorrow, but beyond that promised nothing.

  You fell asleep with the Venetian afternoon light in the high windows. When you woke, the light was shadowed, time had moved on. You did not know what you were, with a woefully melancholy feeling of exile and estrangement. The sadness of the world was in the airy drapes which had lost their brightness.

  In this slow waking, you heard someone crying. It sounded like a woman, sobbing deep, echoing against canal walls where a black gondola carried a movie coffin. The echo grew louder, not one woman crying but two, then three, and more, a whole crowd of criers, mourning, nor just women but children, mostly children, all children, an army of children bereaved or dead wailing off the canal walls, the old buildings, palaces, canyon walls, mountainsides, the plains of the country like hitchhikers grieving on the Interstate. Who are they, and what are they crying for? The questions brought you one step further into waking, where the noisy sorrow vanished abruptly into the silence of a room in fading afternoon. The silence was deathly because it shut the mourners in a box. Still not knowing who you were, if anybody, you saw beside you in the bed a woman, pale and white, lying on her back like a corpse, looking at the ceiling. Her face was pale and thin, a stranger, you did not recognize her. Her eyes shifted, her breath moved slightly, she was not a corpse but a priestess, a norn. Her closeness chilled you, not merely because she looked so wizened and foreign on the pillow staring at the ceiling, but because you knew she culminated miles of distance crossed since your last memory. You could not know what wastes of land you had traversed after memory failed, nor what people had gone, nor whom you had loved, only that all were replaced by the white-faced stranger who occupied this space.

  A name came to you, Jane Delaware. You remembered some kindness of hers, and suddenly you wanted to speak, and as if she knew she turned her head and looked at you. But her eyes, close to, lined and shadowed with makeup, made her suddenly sexual, which was against your mood and estranged her again. You mastered that in a moment with another thrust of consciousness enabling you to speak.

  What did you say? she said.

  I’m remembering too much.

  You’d better stop remembering, then.

  I killed my children.

  No you didn’t.

  I killed them in my drunken car. I knew they were dead because the sheets covered their faces.

  Those weren’t your children.

  I killed my wife too. The car crushed her.

  That wasn’t your wife.

  Who was it then?

  Wake up a little. Tell me your name.

  You tried to s
ay it but stopped, remembering suddenly that it wasn’t what you thought it was.

  She laughed and raised herself on her elbow.

  Wake up, my friend. Your name is Stephen Trace. Don’t forget it.

  Oh. Which brought everything back. But it was dreary, how bleak the world was. If your name was Stephen Trace, then your wife was Sharon, whom, with Delaware beside you, you had lost like the others.

  Meanwhile, however, you felt Delaware’s fingers down below. A surge of present-day warmth that changed everything. It woke you up at last, enabling you to forget Sharon Trace too. You realized how much your happiness depended on short term memory: on careful retention of the circumstances that named you and brought you here, and careful severance of nostalgic guilt that could only drag you back to the non-existent past.

  THIRTY ONE

  The next day Stephen Trace brought Miranda Landis to the hotel to negotiate with Jane Delaware. Afterwards he was supposed to seduce her.

  You didn’t like it. The feeling was physical, like a hole in your middle where the wind blew through. Miranda the virgin healer bored you, her implicit dishonesty irritated you. You went in the early afternoon, a back canal, a grilled gate, a flagstone courtyard, stone staircase to a corridor and a wooden door with a mailbox and a doorbell button.

  Miranda herself opened the door, recognizable from yesterday, not the television image. The poorly dyed short platinum hair, without the hat and wearing clear glasses. A light green and white dress and bare legs. She was pale.

  Who are you? Oh, I know you, you’re Mr. Trace. You’re to take me to Mrs. Delaware.

  She got a hat, white with a big brim like the other. She called out back: I’m going now, Rosie.

  She took your hand and led you down into a narrow street, going fast. This way. Avoiding your eyes. I recognized you from your picture. You’re going to take care of me until I get settled. Nervous, her hand cold and damp.

  Now you could see the television Miranda Landis, the small features, the slight overbite and narrow mouth angelic on television but anxious now. A tense forced smile. She set the pace, drawing you ahead by the hand through the pedestrian streets of Venice. She said, You’re going to be my guide, right? Voice out of middle America.

  Escort.

  And I’m to live in your house? On an island? How is it for security? They said they’d provide security.

  What do they mean by that?

  Bodyguards. To protect me from God’s Police.

  Bodyguards in my house?

  I have to be protected from kidnapping, you know. Until I go public. You walked along holding hands and trying not to bump the crowds. Her pallor was unhealthy, like those who die young.

  You didn’t like this planned stay in your house. Probably she could use Sharon’s old room. When do you plan to go public?

  After I get the money.

  And then you’ll move out?

  Don’t you want me there? she said. Not that, I just want a sense of how long it will be. I’m sorry, she said, I thought you wanted me to stay with you. Yes, but some things are a little vague, and I’d like to anticipate. She said, I can move out once I know what’s going to happen and get a place of my own.

  To be friendly: Then what will you do?

  I’m going to be a star.

  Try to decide how old she was. Her movements, walk, holding your hand, suggested sixteen, but her eyes were older. Your curiosity was aroused. Did she really believe in her father’s God? Was she conscious of being a fraud? What caused her to change? Could she understand such questions?

  What’s the matter? you said.

  They will give me money, won’t they?

  That’s Jane Delaware’s department.

  They said they’d give me a sizable grant. That means money, right? Do you know how much? A lot depends on that.

  I’m sure Delaware will tell you all you need to know.

  I hope it’s enough. I couldn’t do it otherwise.

  How much do you need?

  I’m giving up my whole life. I’m abandoning my home, my friends, my profession. If they don’t compensate me, if they don’t give me what I’m worth. She stopped. You were about to come into the piazza by the cathedral. Wait. She fished in her purse to exchange her clear glasses for dark ones. Public places, play safe. Better not hold hands.

  You went along the water’s edge past the rubbing gondolas, wind across the water, to the hotel, the gilded elevator to Jane Delaware’s airy room. In the elevator, Miranda Landis frowned at the floor and clenched her fists. Jane Delaware opened the door, and they shook hands, elegant lady, nervous girl.

  They sent you down to have coffee with Helen Copzik. She was an inconspicuous little woman of any age. You felt ashamed for expecting to be bored. She had been concealing a lot of excitement. For you know, she did like Venice, this might even be the high point of her life. She wanted to see more art, Titian, Tintoretto, the churches. Thrilled by the onion domes of the cathedral reaching out to Byzantium and Turkey and the infidel East. Marco Polo returning at the waterside, and Othello and Brabantio, Shylock and Portia. Byron and Wagner, who died in a palace. Rappacini’s poisoned daughter (but that was Padua) and Henry James with his publishing scoundrel (that was Venice) as well as his dove with her face to the wall, and Thomas Mann dreaming of Platonic beauty and dying on the Lido beach. There was a lot you didn’t know about Helen Copzik, filled with literature. The only thing that bothered her was the question of health. She wouldn’t have thought of it except for Thomas Mann, who had tipped her off to the city’s reputation, which she was reminded of by the hazards underfoot in the streets and the stink of the sewery canals. You could see her nostrils trying to close and her hand over her tea cup to keep out the Venetian air.

  And then her curiosity about Miranda Landis. What’s she really like, Stevie? Do you believe in her miracle cures? Good, neither do I. She said this, then carefully thumped the table with her fist, checking her force enough not to jar the cups. I wonder how she does it. How can you get so many people to lie? Everything Helen Copzik said had an air of surprise.

  Maybe they don’t realize they’re lying.

  That can’t be. If you’re pretending to be a cripple, you must know you’re pretending.

  You weren’t so sure. It was your impression lots of fakes don’t realize they’re fakes. This throws the whole question of hypocrisy into an ambiguous light.

  Helen Copzik discovered something: What it means is, that girl’s a fraud. What a terrible thing to say. However, she is giving it up. Probably because she realizes she’s a fraud and is tired of it. Fed up. Innate morality asserting itself against even parental force. I suppose her father forced it on her. What do you think?

  It must have been her father.

  Copzik was worried, she was shocked. The Virgin Miranda, it’s blasphemy. It’s a parody.

  Not for them. They believe in her, those people.

  Well, that’s a shame. I don’t believe in blasphemy, but it’s blasphemy. I believe in the Spirit of Man, but if you believe in the Spirit of Man you respect the great religions and their symbols. That dumb girl as the living Virgin, she is absolutely vulgarizing a great religious symbol. It’s disgusting, Stevie.

  It’s not her fault.

  It’s his fault, then. Don’t you agree?

  Stephen Trace respected her outrage.

  Jane Delaware and Miranda Landis came to the café triumphant, especially Jane Delaware. All settled, Delaware said. We’ll stay in Venice until Monday. See the sights, get to know each other. Then New York and a new life. A toast to Miranda.

  Banal forgettable conversation (gondola rates, dirty streets, hotels) while Miranda had a limonade. I don’t drink, she said. You were having bizarre connection problems. Still trying to extract the ethereal television Miranda from the uncomfortable girl. With Jane Delaware, three images: elegance of the beige dress, golden hair, diamond eyes. This was now transparent, giving a direct view to the naked sex fiend in yesterday’
s sunlit hotel room. The lost part was the First Lady who once inhabited the elegance.

  You took Miranda back to her aunt’s apartment. She said, I can’t go to dinner with you tonight because I promised Aunt Rosie, but you can take me out tomorrow night.

  That’s all right.

  I understand you got a grant from Jack Rome too. How much did he give you?

  Enough.

  I wonder if I capitulated too quickly. I should have bargained, more. I bet Delaware would have given more if I held out. Do you think so?

  I wouldn’t know.

  They’re giving me forty million. Is that enough?

  It’s more than I got.

  Oh, I’m sorry, she said, as if she had been tactless. I guess I’ll get a house, like you, she said. I’ll hire a staff, an agent. Do you know any agents? Do you have any contacts?

  Do you mean you’re going into this blind?

  What do you mean, blind?

  Don’t you have anybody to help you?

  Jack Rome is helping me. You’re helping me. I’m reasonably famous. When I go public, that will attract attention. I’ll get offers. Won’t I?

  Sure you will.

  Do you think my public will be disappointed? Will you be disappointed?

  Disappointed by what?

  Not to see me on the Landis show any more.

  You told her. I never watched it.

  You didn’t?

  I saw part of it once.

  Oh. She was disappointed, but she adjusted. Well, there are a lot of people who love me, but I think I’ve done it long enough. I have my rights. What do you think? (Certainly you have your rights.) I want a bigger and more interesting career. Do you think that’s gross and selfish of me?

  I’m sure you know what’s best for you.

  I was getting too specialized. I need to branch out. I only did one thing, over and over.

  You mean, curing people?

  A puzzled look, and you felt sorry.

  A more rounded career. I say to myself, Miranda, face the facts, I have my following, but I’m not a star. I have it in me to be one, but I’m not one now.

  What kind of star do you want to be?