Sea Lovers

by Valerie Martin

  Could she do what Isabel wanted? Could she stay here and leave everything she knew behind? She looked out the window, at the dark leaves of a tree and the fresher green of a vine curling over the sill, patiently working the frame loose from the wall. There was something in the vine that was not a leaf. As Edith focused upon it, it moved. It was a lizard, small, bright green, with a pink throat, opening and closing over its glassy eyes the mauve double folds of its curious eyelids. It took one cautious step onto the dusty stone ledge.

  Edith watched the lizard, fairly holding her breath at the strangeness of it. She had the sensation that some reliable anchor was being cut away and she was now completely adrift. A line from a gospel song she had heard—but where? when?—ran through her confused thoughts: “Praise God, the open door. I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.” Where am I? she thought. She had a sharp recollection of the field outside her parents’ house, a hot summer day; she was sitting on the porch, angry voices raised behind her, gnats batting against her face, the hum of insects, and before her the flat yellow expanse of the field, which had been mowed and would soon have to be hayed, a job she hated.

  Isabel had said coming to Rome was like coming home, and Edith had to take her word for it, because she had not ever had that sensation in her life and she doubted that she ever would. It was too late now to find a home to go back to. She pictured herself lying flat on her back on the floor of a leaky rowboat, above her face the blue sky, and all around water, water, to the end of the world. In the distance she heard a door open, which she registered unconsciously as the door of the lecture room. Then there was the sound of rapid footsteps coming toward her. The lizard heard it too, scurried across the sill, disappeared into the vine. Edith abandoned her reverie and turned from the window to see Isabel approaching, moving swiftly with the dancer’s powerful, slightly duck-footed gait. She was exhausted, Edith observed. Her eyelids were still swollen from last night’s tears, and there were dark circles beneath them. She’d pulled her hair back tightly and made a schoolmarmish bun at the nape. She hadn’t neglected the lipstick, which was bright red, but it served only to outline the downward cast of her mouth.

  The ugly business at the college had shaken Isabel, Edith understood. She was wounded by it in some vital center of her confidence. It was her way to dismiss what she couldn’t control, and put the best possible face on every failure, and that was what she was doing now, but it was hard, she was having a hard time of it. She came to the doorway and leaned against the frame, giving Edith the wan smile of a comrade in arms. “Are you ready?” she asked.

  THE CHANGE

  Gina had all the symptoms: sleep disturbances, hot flashes, irritability, weight gain, loss of libido, aching joints, and heart palpitations. The one she complained of most was hot flashes, which she dealt with by throwing off her clothes and cursing. As far as Evan was concerned, her irritability was the worst symptom; she was increasingly difficult to get along with. Churlish, he told her. Her lack of interest in sex was possibly more frustrating, though he admitted to himself that he found her less desirable because she was so uncivil, so he didn’t suffer unduly from wanting her and being rejected. When they did make love, it was a wrestling match, which Evan enjoyed well enough. They had never been much for tender embraces.

  Her work was changing, too; it was getting darker. As he stood looking at an engraving of trees, of a dark forest, he wondered how it could all seem so clear when it was almost entirely black. She was working all the time, well into the nights, because she couldn’t sleep. Often enough he found her in the mornings curled up under a lap rug on the cot in her cluttered, inky little studio with the windows open and the chill early morning light pouring in.

  She wasn’t taking care of herself properly, not eating enough, not washing enough; she hardly took any exercise at all. Sometimes she lay around the living room all day, napping or reading magazines, getting up now and then to rummage around in her studio, then back to the couch, where she left ink stains on the upholstery. There were dust balls under the beds and in the corners of the rooms, dishes always stacked in the sink.

  “It’s driving me crazy,” Evan complained. “Can’t we get someone in to clean this place, since you can’t keep up with it?”

  She gave him a cold, reproachful glare over her magazine. “I can keep up with it,” she said. “I just don’t keep up with it.”

  “Well, then, hire someone who will.”

  “You hire someone,” she replied. “Since it bothers you so much.”

  Evan turned away. He did all the cooking as it was. How could he possibly take on the cleaning as well? And he had no idea how to hire someone. He went to the kitchen and threw open the refrigerator. “And what are we going to eat for dinner?” he shouted to her. “This refrigerator is practically empty.”

  “We’ll go out,” she shouted back.

  They went out. She was in a good mood for a change. They laughed, drank too much wine, walked back through the city streets with their arms locked around each other, made love on the living room floor. Evan went to bed, but she wouldn’t go with him. She went to her studio, and twice when he woke in the night, he saw that the light was still on.

  The next day she was a harridan again, peevish and distracted. His own work was going poorly; he had taken on too much and had two deadlines he didn’t think he could make. When he complained to her, she shrugged. “Then don’t make them,” she said. “Tell the editor you can’t do it.”

  “Right,” he said. “And then she never calls on me again. I need the work.”

  “You always say that,” she snapped. “And you always have more work than you can do. So obviously you don’t need it.”

  Evan followed her out of the room into her studio. “I don’t always have more than I can do. Sometimes I don’t have any. It’s feast or famine in this business, as you well know.”

  Gina yawned, put her hands on her hips, and stretched, making an agonized face at him. “Jesus, my back hurts,” she said.

  “It’s freezing in here,” he said, moving toward the open window. “Why don’t you close this?”

  But before he could reach it she blocked his path. “Don’t close the window,” she said angrily.

  “Ugh,” Evan said. “What is that?” For on the windowsill were the remains of some animal. Evan pushed past his wife to get a closer look. It was the back half of a mouse, tail, feet, gory innards.

  “Where did this come from?” he said.

  “The cat must have left it.” She turned away, bending over a partially engraved plate.

  “We don’t have a cat.”

  All at once she was angry, as if he’d done something annoying. “The neighbor’s cat,” she sputtered. “Would you just leave it? I’ll take care of it.”

  “It’s disgusting,” he said. He looked around the room at the half-empty coffee cups, the dishes with crumbs and bits of old sandwiches or dried cottage cheese stuck to them, the confusion of ink and paper, copper plates, presses, the disorder of the bottles of acids and resins, the writing desk overflowing with unanswered mail, bills, and photographs. “This whole room is disgusting,” he concluded. “How can you find anything in here?”

  To which she replied, “Who asked you to come in here? Will you get out of here?” And she pushed him out the door.

  They were invited to a dinner party. Gina was in her studio until it was almost time to leave. Then she came out, washed her hands, combed her hair, threw on a skirt, and said she was ready. Evan had showered, shaved, dressed carefully, even polished his shoes. He looked at her skeptically. “That’s it?” he said. “You’re ready?”

  “Why not?” she said.

  No jewelry, he thought. No makeup, no perfume. There had been a time when it took her at least an hour to dress for a party.

  The party went well, it was easy conversation, good wine, old friends, until a couple Gina and Evan had not seen for some time arrived. Evan spotted the woman, Vicky, first, smiled and waved
as he caught her eye. Something was different about her, he thought, but he couldn’t be sure. She looked great, very bright, very intense. Her blouse had flecks of gold in it; she was sparkling. Gina, standing next to him, laughing at something their host was saying, turned and saw the woman too. “Oh my God,” she said softly. Vicky moved slowly toward them, smiling.

  Seeing Gina’s drop-jawed amazement, the host said confidentially, “She’s been done.” Evan sent him an inquiring look, to which he responded by tapping his lower jaw with the backs of his fingers.

  Vicky had stopped to speak to someone else. Evan watched her, though he tried not to stare. In a distant, agreeable way he had always admired her. The last time he had seen her, several months ago, he had observed that her delicate beauty was fading. Now she looked good, he thought. She’d changed her hair too, probably to disguise the more surprising change in her face. They’d done a good job on her. Perhaps her mouth was a little stretched at the corners, and of course the flesh around her chin looked tight. She broke away from her conversation and continued toward Gina and Evan.

  “Vicky, how are you?” Evan said, catching her outstretched hand in his own, as if he were retrieving her, he thought, or pulling her out of a fish tank. “It’s good to see you.”

  He was aware of Gina at his side, of her steady, even breathing, but he didn’t see her face until it was too late. “Have you lost your mind?” she said sharply to Vicky. “Why would you do something like that? You look awful.”

  Vicky missed a beat to astonishment and another to dismay, but that was all. “I may have lost my mind,” she said, “but you seem to have lost your manners.”

  Evan turned on his wife. He was so angry he wanted to slap her. “For God’s sake, Gina,” he said. “Are you drunk?”

  Gina blinked her eyes rapidly, ignoring him. She was concentrated on Vicky, who was easing herself away. “So you count on people not to say anything. Do you tell yourself they don’t notice?”

  “Excuse me,” Vicky said, disappearing into the crowd.

  “It’s ridiculous,” Gina continued. “She looked perfectly fine before. Now she looks like something from television, like a talk show host.”

  “I think we’d better go,” Evan said, trying to take her arm, but she shook him off.

  “Will you calm down,” she said.

  So they stayed and the rest of the evening passed uneventfully, but Evan was miserable and felt humiliated. At dinner they were seated as far from Vicky and her husband as possible, probably at her request, Evan thought. Vicky was the center of attention; Evan could hear her tinkling laugh but couldn’t bring himself to look her way. Gina leaned out past him now and then to shoot a disapproving look toward the offending jawline, but she said nothing more about it, and once she got into a conversation with her neighbor, which Evan joined, she seemed to forget the unpleasant incident. They talked about publishing—the neighbor was also a journalist—and then about travel. Gina told a funny story about a hotel they had stayed in on a Greek island, and Evan, though he had heard this story before, though he had actually been there when the porter threw Gina’s suitcase out the window, found himself laughing as heartily as their friend. He applied himself to his wine and resolved to forgive his wife.

  Evan noticed the book a few times before he actually picked it up to look at it. He’d seen it on the table in the living room, half buried in a pile of magazines, and on the kitchen table, and once on the nightstand next to their bed. A woman’s book about women, he thought, about all the trials of their biology and psychology, the special wonderfulness of it all and the failure of men to comprehend any of it, though it was going on right under their noses. Women lapped this stuff up like cream, even intelligent women like Gina, which was what really made it annoying. Here was the book again, jammed between the cushions of the couch with a pencil stuck in it to mark the page. He pulled it out and opened it to the page with the pencil. The chapter was titled “No Longer a Woman,” and it told all about the biological changes attendant on menopause: the shrinking of the uterus, the drying out of vaginal tissue, the atrophy of the ovaries, the steady depletion of estrogen.

  Pretty dry reading, Evan thought with a sardonic chuckle. He put the book back where he had found it and wandered off to his desk, where his article was not taking shape. No longer a woman, he thought. But if not a woman, then what? It was ridiculous. When was a woman ever not a woman? All the symptoms Gina complained of only proved she was a woman, and a susceptible one at that, which was part of being a woman too. An old woman was still a woman, still behaved as she always had, only more so. Evan thought of his grandmother. Not an old woman but an old lady. She wore violet perfume—he could still remember it—and was fond of a certain candy, a puffy, spongy, fruit-flavored ball that came in tins; he hadn’t seen any in years. She was small, bent, arthritic, but industrious to the end. She did a little gardening on the last day of her life. She had survived her husband by twenty years. Perfectly nice, perfectly sexless. Serene, agreeable. Everyone loved her.

  Though he remembered that once, when he was praising this wonderful woman to his mother, she had commented drily, “Yes, she’s very nice now. But she wasn’t always.”

  Their son, Edward, called. Gina answered the phone. Evan stood by waiting for his turn; he was fond of his son and looked forward to these weekly calls. Gina was smiling. She laughed at some witticism and said, “Watch out for that.” Then for several minutes she fell silent. Her eyes wandered around the room, never settling, and she shifted her weight from foot to foot restlessly. At last she said, distantly, “That’s really great, dear. Here’s your father. I’ll talk to you next week,” and held out the phone to Evan.

  While he stood talking to Edward, Gina sat down at the table and pulled off her sweater. Then, as Edward went on about his psychology class, she stripped off her shirt and bra. She stretched her arms out across the table and rested her head upon them. Evan turned away from her and tried to concentrate on his son’s description of his daily life. When he hung up the phone she was sitting up, blotting her forehead with her sweater.

  “You were a little abrupt with him,” Evan said. “He asked if you were okay.”

  “Of course I’m okay,” she said.

  Evan took a seat next to her and watched as she pulled her shirt back over her head. “Did he tell you about his psychology professor?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He talks too much.”

  Evan ran his hand through his thinning hair, trying to stroke down his impatience. “You’re not the only one who’s getting older, you know.”

  She pushed back her chair, dismissing him. She was on her way to her studio. “It’s not the same,” she said in parting. “It’s different.”

  It was always different, he thought. They wanted to be treated the same, but only with the understanding that they deserved special treatment because they were different. It was true that they had been treated as if they were different for a long time, but they had been treated as different in the wrong way, they were not different in that way. What was different was the deal they got, the way they were treated, which was never fair. He loosened his collar; his face felt hot. But oh no, it wasn’t anything that wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t hormones surging uncontrollably like guerrilla fighters, it was just his lousy blood pressure, which was elevated by his annoyance with his wife’s suffering, and if he was uncomfortable, if he felt a little snappish, well, it was all his fault, because her bad temper was a symptom, and his was just plain old garden-variety bad temper, typical in the male. He got up and staggered into his study, where his article accosted him, demanding what he could not, because of Gina, seem to give it: his undivided attention. He turned away and went into the kitchen to make coffee.

  Gina had gone out to have lunch with a friend. Evan was alone in the apartment with his article. He sat at his desk reading over his notes, listening to the taped interview he had done with a teenage girl who, he recalled, had been dressed in something tha
t resembled two pieces of bicycle tubing. It depressed him to listen to her agitated, rage-filled monologue. She had a vocabulary of twenty-five words or so, insufficient to express any but the most basic threats and complaints. She was the current girlfriend of a gang member named Smak; Evan’s article was about these girls, the attendants of brutal young men, about their precarious, angry, voluptuous, and mindless daily lives. On the tape she was trying to explain to Evan that she did not get up at the same time every day, which was why school was not a possibility for her.

  He switched off the tape machine and stared at his bright computer screen for several minutes, but nothing came to him so he switched that off too. Then he got up and wandered through the apartment to Gina’s studio.

  The lunch was a kind of celebration; she’d finished all the work scheduled for a show next month. There were two new engravings on the drying rack; the rest were stacked away in two big portfolios, ready to go. As Evan stood looking at one on the rack, a line from one of her catalogs ran through his head: “She is a woman who has never stopped loving the forest.” They had a joke about it, a follow-up line: “And she is a woman who has never stopped living in Brooklyn.”

  For twenty years her subject had been the same, but this didn’t mean her work had not changed. In Evan’s opinion the change had been gradual and persistent. She was more patient, saw more clearly, though the prints were progressively darker. That was the odd, wonderful thing about the newer prints; though they seemed to be covered with ink, they were full of an odd kind of light, an almost subterranean glow. In this one, for instance, he could see through a tangle of vegetation to the ground beneath, and on that dark ground he could make out the tracks of some small animal, a mouse or a chipmunk. In both prints on the rack, the viewpoint was high, as if the viewer were above it all, in a tree perhaps, looking down. Evan studied the second one. He seemed to be falling into it; it was truly an exhilarating angle. There, as he looked deeper and deeper through the accumulation of lines, he made out something extraordinary. He crouched down, close to the paper. It was the small hind foot of a rabbit, no bigger than his fingernail, but perfectly clear. In the next second, he knew, it would be gone.