Lorna Mott Comes Home

by Diane Johnson

  Frivolous coed? Astonished and embarrassed at this peculiar description, Lorna felt blood rise to her cheeks. And what had been her path? She had lectured at the Doria Pamphili and the Louvre. Sweet, frivolous, little. The inexplicable knot of irritation did not subside. But why should she care?

  “My field is really academic French painting of the nineteenth century, rather an orphan category. You might have heard of the art pompier—I’m especially interested in the painter Meissonier, one of the pompiers, whose work was so reviled, after being the most celebrated painter in France, that a statue of him in the Louvre was thrown out. But Meissonier is another subject. Today I want to tell you about the tapestries of Angers, in France.

  “I happened on the Angers tapestries almost by mistake,” she began somewhat crisply. “They are conserved in a dungeon in Angers, quite far from where I live—lived—in France, so I went to see them. I found them overwhelming, and then discovered the scholarship was directed mostly at conservation issues rather than the artistic traditions of their composition…” The audience shifted and settled back, sensing the autobiographical introduction about Lorna to have finished and the lecture to have begun.

  “I say ‘dungeon’ advisedly,” Lorna said, initiating her first slide with a touch to her computer keyboard. Miraculously, a photograph blazed onto the screen, a big relief to Lorna when the photo appeared clear and in focus; she was quite used to technical glitches with the first few images, the pauses, fiddling and apologizing, a volunteer from the audience, usually male, bounding up to help. But here were the perfect images of the dank and mossy stone ramparts of a forbidding, windowless castle, in French, donjon.

  “This is the Donjon d’Angers, built by Duke Louis I, partly dating from the thirteenth century, now refurbished as a safe repository for these precious fourteenth-century tapestries. The dungeon is dedicated to preserving the seventy-one surviving pieces, which are extremely delicate. It has been retrofitted with climate control and lighting—you see them in near darkness. Bear in mind that these tapestries are immense—each about ten feet high and fifteen feet wide. Here is the first of them.” A broad-winged angel bearing a scroll fluttered over the morose figure of Jesus on a donkey, with Saint John diffidently shuffling behind.

  “It was a miraculous concept and a tremendous tour de force to achieve—each segment would have taken months to weave, probably in the Flemish provinces. They were commissioned by the local duke for his cathedral, for ceremonial occasions, but lost over the centuries, and in obscurity they fell to being used as rugs or for lining sheds and stables, or as horse blankets—anything you need a heavy cloth for.” She had not spared the conscientious learners at her Altar Forum lecture the technicalities of tapestry preservation or the minutiae of medieval iconography or the controversies in biblical interpretations of the Book of Revelation.

  She thought it over back at her apartment later, making herself a cup of tea. It had all gone very well, but had one astonishing aftermath. When it was finished, the Reverend Train—Phil—had insisted on walking her home, since the cathedral was not far from her house, and they’d had a drink in a cute little bar, the Nob, on the way. At a back table, inconspicuous, and anyway no one was there, it was only about four in the afternoon, he had taken her hand and squeezed it affectionately and said how much he enjoyed the lecture, how much he had learned, and so on. Then he had asked her if she’d thought of remarrying.

  She had laughed. “I’m not exactly divorced yet.”

  “No, but eventually.”

  “I have a bad record, after all,” she said.

  “You and I have known each other a long time. I’m a widower, you knew that?”

  “I wondered what your status was,” she admitted.

  “I thought we should explore that,” he said.

  “Oh, Phil, what a funny idea,” she had said, not dismissively but caught off guard.

  “Not a picnic being the wife of a clergyman, a lot of work, actually. I know you’d want to continue your career…”

  “I can imagine that the dean of a cathedral needs a wife,” she said, not meaning it to sound like an accusation. An attractive man was making a marriage proposition to someone her age! Well, his own age.

  “I didn’t mean this to sound like a job interview,” he said. “I’ve admired—loved—you for forty years. More.”

  “Thank you, Phil. I’ll think about it. I really will.” She really would, she told herself. “I can see how we’d suit.”

  She did think about it, all evening. The compliment, how much sense it made, how it would solve a lot of problems. The negatives were, did she love Phil Train, and would she love life as a minister’s wife, something out of an English novel, tea and jumble sales, parish visits?

  And would she like living forever in the U.S.? This thought was unbidden. Hadn’t she come back with the idea of returning forever to her native land, as Americans were fated to do? Why did this prospect now strike her as bleak? She had remembered America differently, without people lying in the street, neighbors being tied up and robbed, junk food, obesity, cars everywhere.

  How nice of Phil. Yet she couldn’t bask in satisfaction, because she also couldn’t stop thinking things about how little a lecture meant when a life was beginning—for instance, Hams’s baby or Gilda’s—and would need help and love. The uneasiness didn’t leave her, about the triviality of lectures on tapestries beside the wish to devote her life somehow to something larger. And there was the idea of remarriage. Usually she was an impulsive person, not given to rumination, just kind of knowing in her heart what to do; but neither instinct nor impulse was of help now in thinking about marriage.

  * * *

  —

  A few weeks passed. She had an email from Armand saying to expect one of Russell’s paintings. She had dinner a few times with Phil, went to a few dinner parties. She was aware that she had achieved a modest local celebrity in San Francisco, and had not been unhappy with the glamour lent her by being someone who had lived in France for a long time, and knew both Russell Woods the painter and a former English shadow secretary—attested to by those who had seen him at her party—and was also a recognized expert on an art subject or two. But she felt fraudulent about claiming the politician and was piqued that her serious scholarship seemed to count for little alongside her social achievement, though this did not surprise her. The upside was that as a result she had been invited to several very nice dinner parties, among art people and Episcopal laymen both, and began to feel more like a San Franciscan again.

  She had projects—had resolved to read some serious works from the past she had not read, like Spengler and Nietzsche and Max Weber—she had a list. After dinner with Phil Train one night, he stayed over. They had quite a nice time, despite some senior complications, but overall so much less complicated than in the days of fertility; and life as a single, older woman began to seem not so bad, though she was never sure how much she owed her social success to Julie’s stopping in with the British politician.

  * * *

  —

  She had not forgotten the day of the promised counseling session with Donna, who came back at the appointed lunchtime, for which Lorna had made sandwiches. The weather was fine and they could sit outside in the somewhat-mangy garden, where Lorna had put in tomatoes that weren’t thriving, and some daisies.

  “You have to put in Early Girl,” Donna said of the tomatoes. “Nothing else works in San Francisco. There isn’t enough sun.”

  Together they parsed Curt’s letter again. “The face of God.” Was God a metaphor? For what? The part about coming home was clear enough. They discussed the practicalities. What was Donna’s income? What were her expenses? What did she herself want to do professionally if obliged to go back to work? Shouldn’t she go to Thailand to look for her husband? Lorna was impressed with her own businesslike competence on Donna’s behalf; too bad she nev
er applied it to her own life.

  “I can’t go to Thailand, the children…,” said Donna.

  “Peggy then. She and Curt have always been close and she needs some variety in her life, some adventure. Plus she knows how Curt thinks, she always has.” Lorna thought for the millionth time that she needed to help Peggy if only she could think of what Peggy needed most, and maybe this was it, a trip to Thailand.

  “For sure I don’t,” said Donna. Lorna was prepared to be irritated by Donna’s passivity, but discovered that she did have some initiative, some spark; she was already involved in Curt’s business ventures and directing them herself, or at least in tandem with Curt’s partner Harvey Avon, whom she seemed to know slightly, though Curt had always kept home and start-up separate. Since Lorna could see certain parallels between Donna’s situation and her own—Donna’s so much more serious, of course—on the whole, she was disposed to be admiring of her abandoned daughter-in-law.

  Later that same afternoon, while toiling away at Derrida, she became aware that someone was ringing at her door. After the burglary at the Chins’, Lorna had formed the habit of peering from a certain spot in her living room where she couldn’t be seen, to check out who was on the steps. If they were standing in just the right place, she had a view of the whole figure, but now she could only partially make out someone in dark pants, probably a man, vaguely familiar and not menacing, pressing the bell. She crossed her living room, bringing the person into view. Armand-Loup. Though she had expected the painting, she hadn’t thought it would be he bringing it. Armand-Loup here in San Francisco! Carrying a large parcel, probably the Woods, or maybe her silver, and peering into her hall. It was too late to pretend not to be home, he could see her, the disadvantage of the glass-paned front doors common here. Despite herself, she felt a hostesslike, welcoming smile stretch across her face.

  “Well, hello, Armand.”

  “Chérie.” He bent to embrace her, shifting the parcel between them.

  “Well, how amazing, come in. You didn’t say when you were coming.”

  He looked around. “Un peu triste, ta nouvelle maison, non?”

  “Un peu,” she agreed. “I’ve just moved in.

  “What are you doing here?” she added in a less friendly tone. He looked significantly at a chair; she waved him to sit and sat down herself. He’d lost weight. She had remembered him stouter, less the picture of a suave senior dignitary. She caught the familiar scent of his aftershave cologne, was it called Mariner? Corsair?

  “I emailed you about this, didn’t you get it? I’ve brought you one of Russell’s pictures, the one owned by the mairie, the one for you to sell. And”—here he brought a little parcel from his pocket—“a bone, presumably a pinkie, presumably but not certainly Russell’s.”

  “Good God, why on earth?”

  “Relic. Porte bonheur. It could also be Saint Brigitte’s.”

  “Good God.”

  “San Francisco has changed, I find. Many more tall buildings depuis the five years since I’ve been here. More traffic. More people lying in the gutters.”

  “You came all this way to deliver a human bone?”

  “Well, non, I came with a friend for a short visit and to bring the painting, naturally.”

  “Oh, Armie,” she said, not recovered from this surprise, not happy but not unhappy to see him. She supposed, while she had him and thinking of Phil Train, she ought to ask about the status, from his point of view, of their separation. He said vaguely that the necessary papers had all been filed, all was well.

  “Except with the house. The Anglais who bought it, at the signature they forfeited their deposit. They didn’t ‘perform.’ Curious word, only used in English for the theater and the bedroom, I gather. And for real-estate transactions. Couldn’t get up the money. I don’t know but what I might not move back in for the nonce. How are all your children?” He once might have said “the” children, or even “our” children.

  Lorna heard herself launch into a too-voluble response to this question: “Hams’s expecting a baby, and they live in a rathole. Peggy, too, no boyfriend, getting fatter, Curt whereabouts unknown. He’s found God, apparently, his wife came by a couple of days ago to tell me this. Or he’s on the lam, no one knows which, or both. Ran has so much money, his wife, that is, but he does nothing for them—the children—and then his wife gave Donna, hence Curt, three million dollars for their mortgage, the others nothing, how can there not be hard feelings, though they don’t express them? So well brought up…Donna never hears from Curt, not that I like her that much, either, and then she got this letter…”

  Much more came tumbling out. How comforting to talk to someone who knew what she was talking about, knew the names and characters of the children, had always taken an interest, always been a good listener—the reason for his success with women probably, one of the reasons…her thoughts flew. She took a breath.

  “Some coffee, Armie? Whom are you visiting?”

  “A photographer friend. She is having a success with her photographs of the bones in the market hall in Pont, her show is here at the—PhotoArt Gallery, I think is the name. The spectacular bones of Pont-les-Puits.” With a familiar stab of rage, Lorna couldn’t resist asking “She?” about the photographer.

  “Called Tory Hatcher. Tory? I suppose that must stand for something. Victoria? Seems like a nice woman.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell,” Lorna said. Was this a new girlfriend? Armand-Loup extracted his phone and showed her the images, the skulls laid out on their cushions of rags on the long wooden tables where apples and fish were usually displayed for sale. She had the startled idea that the upheaval in the cemetery in Pont-les-Puits had been predicted in the Book of Revelation, and that a morsel of the prophecy had been borne out. She knew the book by heart from the tapestries:

  12…1. he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

  13 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

  14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

  Despite the creepiness of the photos of skulls and tibiae, Lorna had a pang, not the first, of missing the village where she’d spent, after all, eighteen years. Maybe she was even missing Armand-Loup, his cheerful hedonism and real erudition.

  She had a few practical questions about the painting—in whose name would she sell it, where did he think would be best: Sotheby’s or Christie’s? Privately? Was the ownership clear? What was the insurance status? Was he comfortable with her keeping it here, or should they put it in the bank? When these issues were settled, he rose to leave. How little their twenty years together appeared to weigh on him, how like that of business associates their conversation. At least this was amiable, even affectionate, in tone.

  At the door he said, almost an afterthought, “Est-ce que tu es heureuse ici, Lo—are you happy here?” Lorna had no answer to this; it struck her with the force of a paralyzing dilemma, like the lady or the tiger. Was she happy here? Was “happy” an operative term in her life anymore? Here were all the things she hated—the automobile, her dingy apartment, traffic, the immediacy of family cares, crime, a new hairdresser, the mystery of her finances, the lack of response to her professional queries, and the absence of trains. Deciding how to answer was like teetering in an open window ten stories above a sea of cement pylons, drawn to jump.

  Anyway, happiness was not a commodity one ought to covet, or even think about. Evanescent, it would dissolve in your grasp like foam. It had to exist in an oblique peripheral field of vision where you might be conscious of it but shouldn’t seek or define it. It was a thing you just were. Or weren’t.

  “It’s all right,” she said
. “There are advantages an—”

  “—and disadvantages,” he pronounced with her in chorus. “Well, when are there not?” He kissed her on both cheeks, like a stranger. She thought of how much she loved him—had loved him. She could not resist watching out the window as he rejoined the woman in the boots, presumably Tory Hatcher, and got into her car.

  The same afternoon, about twenty minutes later, her doorbell rang again. She could see it was a woman she didn’t know, probably selling something, or a religious proselyte, though the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons always came in pairs. This person was in jeans, expensive shoes, and a suede jacket. Lorna went to the door.

  “Excuse me, but was Tory Hatcher here by any chance?”

  “I don’t know Tory Hatcher, sorry,” said Lorna warily, having just heard of this person from Armie.

  “Oh? Well—sorry to bother you.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Okay, um, goodbye.” Peering at the card over Lorna’s bell, mott dumas. The unfulfilled quality of this encounter prompted Lorna to add, despite herself, “I think she may know my husband, Monsieur Dumas.”

  “Ah—it was really him I was looking for.”

  “He was here, but I don’t know where they went.”

  “Oh.” They looked at each other with commiseration about the futility of quests to know where people went. As the newcomer took her leave, she turned to ask, redundantly, if Lorna was Mrs. Dumas.

  “Yes,” Lorna said, without further explanation, and got no hint from the woman’s expression what this was about.

  “I’m Susan Warner-Ford. The cook? You may have seen my book on the cookery of the Pont-les-Puits region? Emphasizing the Allium tanisium and the puitières. I give recipes using the deux-sauce capabilities of the puitières, and a lot of onion recipes, of course. The quiche recipe from the Fringale restaurant, and so on.”