Contract with the World

by Jane Rule

  Carlotta had struggled so negatively hard to keep Roxanne from being nothing more than a failed self-portrait that finally she had caught no more than Roxanne’s attention—victory at a basic level, but that was all. Their peculiar sexual encounters did accomplish the one thing: distance. Though Carlotta had anticipated its opposite, she could use what she had instead. Intimacy with anyone else had put Carlotta almost immediately in touch with the violence and vulnerability she had assumed was at the center, in one form or another, of everyone. But she had known only men. Roxanne was no more vulnerable naked than with her clothes on, maybe because she went around exposed by choice. The only thing she had to impose as a lover was gentleness, which had made Carlotta feel childishly immodest, as if she’d been caught masturbating by an adult too timid to punish her.

  It was nearly as hard for Carlotta to admit to herself that she included Roxanne’s finger up her anus in her masturbating fantasies as it was to know how much more often she recalled Mike’s raping her than any of his gentler lovemaking. Pierre’s suicide had shocked her into knowing that her own toying with that violence had to be put down and left behind once and for all. With it went the fasting, which had always produced more negative hallucinations than she should have lived with. But sex unflavored with some sort of humiliation, defeat, would be without climax. It wasn’t really the physical violence that had excited her. Carlotta, if she wanted sex, usually had to make the first aggressive suggestion. To know Mike wanted her whether she wanted him or not was her triumph in that affair. She had had the power to make him violent and ultimately vulnerable … for a few moments anyway.

  It had taken her months to admit that, if he hadn’t left, eventually Carlotta would have driven him away. She didn’t attract, entrap, whatever the talent was, men domestically not, as she always supposed, because she wasn’t as attractive as Alma, but because she didn’t want them.

  Ann obviously did. There was not much else about her that could attract. Oh, she wasn’t bad-looking, and she had a good deal more presence than Joseph. Once you really looked at Ann, you didn’t forget her. Men as different as Allen and Mike tended to idealize her, but the woman they courted was Alma.

  “Do you think men are more vulnerable than women?” Carlotta asked because talking with Ann was a way of keeping her mind on Ann.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Ann said.

  She had been in the middle of counting stitches, and she held her hands still as if they could remember the number while she was distracted.

  “Ah,” Carlotta said, “that is what I want. Exactly.”

  What everyone in the world wants, just that kind of attention.

  Roxanne and Ann rather than Joseph and Ann would be companion pieces.

  With Pierre dead, with Roxanne and Allen and Mike all gone from town, with Alma banished, Carlotta was more alone than suited her. But she was also too much in the wrong company of Ann and the children to have energy in the evening to go out to find people. She read a little, but she had a limited tolerance for the printed word. She didn’t own a television, not because she scorned it but because she was afraid of it, as she was of alcohol and drugs. Escapes from anxiety were not cures; only confronting and controlling it were.

  That was why doing Allen’s portrait, which should have been the hardest of all, was so simple, so clear from the beginning. He was such a manifestation of her own existential anxiety with its murderous terrors, except that he had a focus: Pierre.

  Carlotta brooded about Pierre, his awful loneliness, a child playing dress-up day after day in that empty house. He had called more often than Carlotta remembered to call him, and she did his portrait more as a way to keep him company than as a requirement of her own imagination. He had become really interesting to her only now that he was dead. If you had to worship something, it was obviously better to have the object of worship something less fragile than another human being. Pierre should have stayed Catholic. Or maybe he had. Maybe suicide was his only escape, the only renunciation that worked, Allen only incidental to it.

  She had a message from Allen that the show had been well, if silently received, until it got to Winnipeg, where it was not only announced and noticed in the paper but reviewed there and on local radio with as much “pretentious snot as could be found in Susan Sontag.” The tone was definitely Allen, and Carlotta tried to feel reassured. She wished she had been able to see the show herself, not just the catalogue. The rumor around town was that there had been too many famous queers in the show. Even though homosexuals were said to be not only willing but anxious to oppress each other, surely Dale Easter hadn’t shut it down for that reason. Allen’s own explanation of Alma’s displeasure sounded like her imperious self but wasn’t really plausible either. Uneasy curiosity about that made Carlotta both wish to see Alma and put it off.

  Then Mike phoned.

  “I have a favor to ask.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In Phoenix.”

  “Oh.”

  “Listen, Carlotta, I got married last week. I didn’t want to say anything beforehand to Alma. It’s not as if I should ask her permission. But probably she ought to know. Could you just sort of let her know?”

  “I don’t suppose you really are a bastard at all,” Carlotta said. “You just sometimes seem like one—a matter of method probably.”

  “Well, look, I can’t send her a formal announcement.”

  “How about a warm, personal letter?”

  “She’d have to answer it.”

  “How long has it been since you’ve heard from Alma?”

  “Months,” Mike said. “Since Christmas.”

  “All right. I’ll tell her.”

  “You know, just so she knows.”

  “I hope it’s a good idea,” Carlotta said.

  “Oh, it’s great.”

  “Does she have a name?”

  “Bunny.”

  “Bunny.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, Trasco, good luck.”

  Carlotta didn’t phone. She went directly to the house. She was not accustomed to Alma out in West Point Grey, tended to think of her still in the neighborhood, but this house, ablaze with azaleas, open to the whole view, did suit her much better. Victor answered the door.

  “Is your mother here?”

  “Yeah. She’s in her room.”

  Since he didn’t offer to go get her, Carlotta asked, “Where is that?”

  “Upstairs at the end of the hall.”

  It was easy to find behind the only closed door, on which she knocked. There was a pause and then a surprised “Yes?”

  “May I come in?”

  “Lot!”

  The door swung open, and Carlotta was caught in an uncalled-for embrace.

  “You’ve put on weight,” Alma said as she finally let her go. “You look almost healthy.”

  “So have you. Are you still pregnant?”

  “How did you know? Who told you that?”

  “Allen.”

  “But how did he know?”

  “Roxanne told him on her way out of town. He told me on his way out.”

  “But she didn’t know! I hadn’t told her!”

  “She knew.”

  “What an unholy mess it all is! I wonder if anyone, leaving home, ever actually says good-bye. Mike said he didn’t know he was leaving until he’d been away for weeks, but Roxanne knew. She packed and moved all her things while I was out of the house, and she did say good-bye to Tony and Victor. Why didn’t she say?”

  “She probably wondered the same thing about you.”

  “I hadn’t decided what to do, that’s all. I thought Roxanne would probably love a baby, me having a baby. But when I actually was pregnant, it seemed more complicated than that. If Mike were like most men and didn’t really care about children, it would be fine. He’s very possessive about his children.”

  “It’s Mike’s?”

  “Well, of course, it’s Mike’s. Who else could it be?” Alma
asked impatiently. “And I was afraid of making her jealous. Roxanne’s terribly jealous.”

  “But you’re still pregnant?”

  “Well, she’s gone. If she’d asked me to have an abortion, maybe I could have.”

  “Is it too late?”

  “I suppose so. Anyway, I’ve decided to have it.”

  “Will you tell Mike?”

  “I was just trying to write to him,” Alma said, gesturing to a mess of papers on her bed.

  “You weren’t thinking of going back to him …”

  “Well … oh, Lot, can you understand this: can you understand that knowing I’m lesbian hasn’t really turned out to have much to do with the way I want to live? I did try. I even tried to turn myself into a feminist. The first time Mike came back, just going out to dinner with him, just walking along the street … to feel so blissfully ordinary. And then at Christmastime to see the boys with him, Tony particularly—I don’t know how to keep him from veering off. All the time Roxanne was here, I kept worrying …”

  “But you haven’t been in touch with Mike for months.”

  “I’ve felt so guilty, you can’t imagine. It isn’t as if I didn’t care desperately about Roxanne. When I first realized, I really did wonder if she and I could somehow … and then she just left. That’s been devastating. I couldn’t really think for a while. Maybe going back to Mike is a crazy idea, but what else can I do?”

  “Something,” Carlotta said. “Mike just phoned me to tell me he’s married again. He wanted to let you know without exactly confronting you with it.”

  “What’s her name?” Alma asked.

  “Bunny.”

  Alma’s incredulity shattered into laughter. Carlotta joined as well as she could. She knew this was as close to tears as Alma would get. When Alma recovered, she walked over to the window and looked out over the view.

  “I’m going to be thirty-five day after tomorrow. It seems old to be an unwed mother.”

  “Can’t you get rid of it?”

  “I wouldn’t,” Alma said. “I’m not a secret Catholic or anything. I’ve even marched in abortion parades. But I wouldn’t have one.”

  “It would be preferable to throwing yourself off Lion’s Gate Bridge or anything like that.”

  “Not after Pierre, thanks, and there’s Victor and Tony.”

  “How will they feel about your having a baby?”

  “I’ve already told them. Victor called me an old fart, but he’ll get used to it. Tony’s the problem. We haven’t exactly been on speaking terms since Roxanne left. There was getting to be too close a thing between them. I guess he blames me. What am I going to do? I’ve been asking that question for the last five years, and every time it’s about something worse.”

  “Ann Rabinowitz thinks we all lead very agitated lives.”

  “She’s such a nice person, why can’t I be like that? Bunny. Did you really say Bunny?”

  Carlotta nodded.

  “I feel sorry for her. Isn’t that awful? I don’t really think I’m quite in focus. I shouldn’t feel relieved. Or anyway, I shouldn’t say so, particularly in front of you. You’ve always really disapproved of me, but you never used to mind. Have you come back just to say this for Mike?”

  “No. I’ve been meaning to come. I decided I didn’t know why I kept aspiring to teach you a lesson, since no one else was ever going to. Everyone else I was trying to be loyal to has left town. I’ve run out of perfume.”

  “But everyone is teaching me a lesson.”

  “Maybe inadvertently.”

  “It’s all revenge. There’s nothing to learn from that, is there?”

  “Nobody’s being vengeful.”

  “Allen is,” Alma said.

  “What’s all this about Allen?” Carlotta asked.

  “Didn’t you ever see the show?”

  “How could I? According to Allen, you’re the one who had it closed down.”

  “I had to, for all of us. You were in it, too, you know.”

  “I did know,” Carlotta said. “Frankly I was flattered, and it was a good picture. Did you really object to being in Auden and Isherwood’s company?”

  “But it was everybody,” Alma said, “from his personal friends to a United Church minister, a college president, a member of Cabinet—all gay; that’s how he chose.”

  “I hardly feel I qualify,” Carlotta said. “How do you know? He couldn’t have told you since you weren’t on speaking terms.”

  “I didn’t have to be told. Allen’s gossiped to me for years about these people. I could see for myself.”

  “How very clever,” Carlotta said.

  “He won’t get away with it, not once the show gets to Toronto,” Alma said.

  “I think he may.”

  “Anyway, Roxanne did agree with me about that. She did think it was a despicable thing to do.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s doing exactly what was done to him, only to dozens of people—and his friends. How many suicides does he want committed? What does he think he’s proving?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Why is it so hard for you to disapprove of nearly everyone but me?”

  Carlotta laughed. “You have all the privileges, why should you have the rights as well? And you do do awful things, awful things.”

  “I didn’t ever make love with your husband.”

  “I didn’t have one.”

  “Or your woman lover.”

  Alma’s voice dropped a tone, and Carlotta realized that her frivolous attempt at intimacy with Roxanne had troubled Alma a good deal more than Carlotta’s much more important affair with Mike.

  “At the time you seemed to be through with them. …”

  Alma was sitting cross-legged in the middle of her bed, the now-pointless letter to Mike scattered about her. There was no energy in her for an argument, and perhaps there was no point in trying to distract her with it. It hadn’t been Carlotta’s intention to paint her friends at the crises in their lives, but over and over again that seemed to be when their need and hers coincided. Or they were always in crisis, as Ann thought.

  “Don’t leave me alone now, will you?” Alma asked. “You’re the only one left.”

  “No.”

  Carlotta hadn’t before begun a portrait while she was still working on another. Once she had started Alma’s, she wondered why she had put it off so long. The tension Carlotta often had to create between herself and her subject was natural between herself and Alma, who never cared whether she pleased Carlotta or not as long as she was interested. For the first time, since doing Mike’s portrait, Carlotta’s attention was caught rather than forced. Though she privately thought Alma was risking far too much to have another child, she was as a goddess of fertility irresistible, except apparently to Roxanne.

  “I used to think that it was you I wanted to go to bed with, you I was leaving,” Alma said.

  Carlotta snorted.

  “I still have rape fantasies about you. I was jealous of Mike, you know, not of you.”

  “Well, I was jealous of you and always have been.”

  “It’s flattering,” Alma said.

  “Women are meant to be rivals, not lovers.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Yes. That’s why all this attention to Persephone and Demeter can’t explain anything. The myth for women is Arachne and Athena.”

  “I’m your Athena?”

  “Exactly. Women don’t worship their goddesses; they correct them. We have to because all our goddesses, like you, are prosocially aggressive.”

  “I must have missed that particular lecture.”

  “You’re for the status quo, for marriage, for motherhood, and no matter how often, how clearly, how passionately one of us spins out the errors of that life, you banish us. You turned Roxanne into a spider. You turned me into a spider years ago.”

  “That’s very exciting,” Alma said, brushing a long, heavy strand of hair behind her ear. “I could ha
ve seemed simply dull instead.”

  “You’re never dull, just stupidly mistaken and immortal.”

  “You’re very hard.”

  “I wear my skeleton on the outside, which is your doing. Don’t complain.”

  Carlotta liked the irony of their sexual discoveries, useless to each in the way she wanted or needed to live, the natural envy of their bond, the deep familiarity. She even half believed what she said: artist as finder of the flaw, which was always discovered in the distance between an idea of the self and its needs, but she was really more interested in the idea, more concerned with portrayal than betrayal, unlike Allen.

  “I did try writing,” Alma said. “I worked at it. Then I collected a lot of rejection slips, and I realized I was too old for that kind of failure. I’m too old for any kind of failure really.”

  “That’s why it’s called the prime of life.”

  “What’s so lovely about being pregnant is you don’t have to ask, ‘What’s the point?’ Finally it isn’t yours to make or even necessarily to see. There may be generations of people born just to make one possible—a Joan of Arc or an Einstein.”

  “Genes don’t make geniuses,” Carlotta said. “Cultural necessity does. If you lived in the States right now—I mean, if you’d been raised there, you wouldn’t be having another baby; you’d be getting on with writing and probably publishing it.”

  “No, I wouldn’t … I’m not as much of a conformist as you think, and anyway, it’s not all that different down there. You never go there. You just read books about it.”

  “It’s cheaper.”

  Carlotta didn’t really mourn the loss of Alma’s stories to the world, or even to Canada, so why did she taunt? Because Alma’s self-justification was so simpleminded and smug, because Carlotta’s own, if she ever voiced it, would sound both pretentious and preposterous. Canada no more needed painters of uncertain direction than writers of dubious insight. Certainly she wasn’t painting in response to any cultural necessity. Was her drive then no more than the idiot goading of one great-grandmother or another in her blood who otherwise would wait out eternity without a point?