This Is Not for You

by Jane Rule

  “Did you really send this report on the children’s villages to the Queen?”

  “She asked me for it,” Grace Hardwick said.

  “Well, if it’s possible to say what you think, it’s possible to do something about it, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, and a good thing for you to learn. You’re so nearly a candidate for the Junior League, I wonder how you came to be here at all.”

  “I’m half breed,” I said. “Mongrels can’t be volunteers. They have to be professionals.”

  “Really? Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve been home.”

  “You wouldn’t like Washington,” I said.

  “Do you mean I wouldn’t get along there?”

  “No,” I said quickly “No, I—”

  “Don’t be embarrassed. Everyone’s a little shocked by the system here at first. You have to understand how elaborate authority is in Greece before you can ignore it, and you have to be a foreigner. People don’t usually stay long enough to find that out. I only appear to be reckless. I never am.”

  That night we had dinner together at a restaurant where Grace Hardwick often ate. As soon as she had done the ordering for us both, she sat back and looked at me with direct but amused regard.

  “This is the evening I’ve set aside for getting to know you,” she said. “Shall I ask questions, or will you just talk?”

  “I don’t really know what sort of thing I should say.”

  “Do you have an apartment in New York?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you live in it alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about it. Tell me what’s in it.”

  I don’t remember another question or command all through dinner. When we had finished and she had paid the bill, she said, “Now, would you like to see mine?”

  “Very much,” I said.

  It was an apartment very like one I would live in. There were a few pieces of family furniture. There were paintings. There were more objects, collected over the traveling years. When I had looked around and asked questions about some things, we went out onto a balcony that looked across the city to the lighted Acropolis. A bottle of brandy and two glasses had already been set out on a small table.

  “How do you feel about Athens?” she asked, once she had poured our drinks.

  “I haven’t seen much of it,” I said.

  “You don’t like it.”

  “No.”

  “No, neither do I,” she said. “As for the Acropolis, I’m nearly too old for that by now, but I expect you aren’t. You would admire Athena.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I have too much of Arachne in me to admire any of them, or did have at one time. The errors of the gods don’t seem that important to me now.”

  “Is it hard to live for a long time in a place you don’t like?”

  “Not at all. You see, I love it. Greece. I’m thinking of asking you to come along on a trip I have to make next week. How’s your driving?”

  “Good,” I said.

  “Mine’s not. It never has been, but I don’t like taking any of my Greek staff with me. They’re too suspicious, too critical.”

  For a time then we sat without talking, watching the large, star-lit sky above the distant temple. When I finished my brandy, I got up and said good night.

  “Don’t show me to the door,” I said. “I can find my own way.”

  The policy of working through local welfare agencies which had seemed an uncertain solution in Italy worked very well in Greece under Grace Hardwick’s direction, but she spent a great deal of her time driving around the country to see that the money was being used as it should be. She not only made it her business to know all the local authorities but also kept an eye out for people who might be good in the welfare offices. Her knowledge of regional politics was her knowledge of particular people. On that first trip, I began to keep a notebook of names and comments, hers and my own. We called on villages where money was being used to reestablish pottery factories, wineries, olive groves. I started a second notebook on village industries. We saw particular families, too, sometimes because they were old friends, more often because we had heard about a child who needed an eye operation or a scholarship, things that could not be arranged without permission of the head office. They were long days. We were often on the road by six in the morning, and we never ate dinner before ten o’clock in the evening, usually with at least two other people, but Grace often slept for an hour or so in the car, and she insisted that I take an hour’s rest in the afternoon, often simply under a tree by the side of the road after a picnic lunch. At those times, she wrote in notebooks of her own. At first, I found it hard to doze while she was busy at work, but by the fourth or fifth day I didn’t have to be ordered to relax. I could fall asleep in the middle of a conversation. Once, when I woke, she was watching me, amused.

  “You’re still no more than a child,” she said. “I wish I could do that.”

  “I wish I could help it,” I said. “It’s the air. It has the taste of my childhood.”

  “You like it here, don’t you?”

  “I love it.”

  “I should take time to show you temples, but I haven’t got it. You’ll find the time one day yourself.”

  The trip, as first planned, was to take just over a week, but, because the Athens office seemed to be running smoothly and because there was always something else to check on, someone else to confer with, we spent more than two weeks in the Peloponnesus. Grace didn’t talk much in general about the work though she answered questions readily enough. She could, anyway, reveal more with a quick comment than most people can in an hour’s lecture. She accomplished more over ouzo with two officials than I had seen accomplished all the time I was in Washington.

  “Your Greek’s improving,” she said, as we were on our way back to Athens. “You have a good ear. And you can drive a car.”

  At that compliment, I passed a burro and rider with more style than courtesy, and she had the good humor to laugh.

  “I’m told you’re being groomed for executive work in New York and Washington. I’m told you’re very bright about policy and government regulations. Also tactful and presentable. Is that what you want?”

  “I thought so,” I said, “before I came here.”

  “How would you like to stay?”

  “Is there any chance of it?” I asked, my tone of voice answering her question.

  “I’ve been offered the salary for an American assistant for several years, I suppose because I’m getting old. I haven’t liked the idea. But I am getting old, whether I like it or not. I haven’t more than five years left, maybe fewer. I’d suggest that you be appointed provisionally for a year. After that, we could see how you liked it, and how I liked your work.”

  “There’s nothing I’d like more than working here with you.”

  “Well, we’ll see.”

  I had only ten days in Athens by the time we got back, but in that ten days arrangements had been made, with some flattering reluctance in New York, for me to stay on.

  “I told them there are lots of people with good manners and political connections. You happen to speak Greek,” Grace said, pleased with herself. “Now, what are you going to do about your apartment?”

  “Sublet it for the time being.”

  “Good. Finding a place in Athens isn’t hard as long as you have money, but there really isn’t any reason to spend it. You could move in with me.”

  “That’s kind of you,” I said, “but I’d better not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love you,” I said, as matter-of-factly as I could, “and you might find that a nuisance.”

  “I’m too old to find it a nuisance,” Grace answered, “and you’re old enough to put up with it.”

  So I wrote to Dan, asking him to pack me a trunk, store my paintings, and find a tenant for my apartment. Then I packed the suitcase I had and moved into the spare bedroom at Grace Hardwick’s
apartment. We were neither one of us in it very often except to sleep. A girl came in early every morning to fix our breakfast, clean up after we had left and do our laundry. She was gone by the time we came back for an hour’s rest after lunch. We were often not home again until midnight. Grace took only a Sunday holiday which she usually spent reading and writing letters. It did not seem to occur to her to fix a meal for herself even then when there was time. After I had been there a month, I was tired of restaurant food and of always eating in public.

  “I’m hungry for my own cooking,” I announced. “Would you mind if I got you a meal this Sunday?”

  “Can you cook?” she asked doubtfully.

  “Have the courtesy to risk it just once,” I said, “and then you can decide.”

  “Well, see that it’s good. I’m cranky about a bad meal.”

  “You’re not. I’ve seen you perfectly good-humored after meals I could just barely choke down.”

  “But on Sunday I don’t work,” she said.

  I had not eaten three meals a day with her without noticing what she enjoyed. Our first Sunday meal was so much a success that there was never a question of eating out on Sunday again. In fact, Grace occasionally complained that she got a decent meal only once a week, but there wasn’t time for me to shop or cook during the week. Often we were invited out to dinner, which I enjoyed more than Grace did. She found some of the formality of political social life tedious.

  “You’ll really be better at this one day than I am,” she said late one evening as we were coming back from a particularly solemn evening. “You can be as stuffy as the worst of them.”

  “That’s why I was a candidate for Washington,” I said.

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’m glad. You know, I intend to have two tantrums and a stroke if you decide to go back at the end of the year. I might find another assistant, but I’d never find such a cook again.”

  “You know I want to stay,” I said.

  “So you see, living with someone you love isn’t impossible, is it? That’s not a bad lesson to learn, however peculiarly. But will you want to stay after I’m gone? That’s what you really have to decide.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know, Kate, my darling, to hell or Italy or some place. I won’t stay here. I don’t feel guilty about not dealing with your sexual appetites. I’d guess they’ve been nothing but a problem to you anyway, but I’m not interested in your appetite for martyrdom, either. One dying mother is enough.”

  “Do you think I could handle it alone?” I asked.

  “Sure of it. Oh, I also think you’re awfully young and silly, but you’ll outgrow that. Do you want to do it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Good. That’s reassuring. But we must set aside an evening or two for talking about what you don’t know and why you don’t know.”

  “Make it three evenings,” I said.

  “Are you really that complicated?”

  “No. I’d hoped there would be time for you to tell me what you do know and why you know it and when it happened.”

  “I think it would only confuse you,” Grace said. “We aren’t really at all alike.”

  That night I had the first attack of insomnia I had had since I arrived in Greece. I lay listening to the violent noise of Athens that does not die away until nearly dawn, high-powered sports cars gunning up the narrow canyons of streets, people shouting to and at each other, doors and windows slamming. I tried to think what it would be like to live here alone without Grace, who stood not only between me and the test of the job but also between me and my own desire and loneliness. Finally I got up quietly and sat on the balcony, looking out at the temple built in tribute to perfect balance, perfect self-sufficiency. It rose above the ugly city more a rebuke than an inspiration.

  “Can’t you sleep, either?” Grace asked, standing behind me.

  “I guess not,” I said.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “Athena’s a hard goddess,” I said.

  “Then there’s some protest in you after all,” she said. “I always really thought so.”

  “A lot,” I said. “But there’s no point in protesting, is there? We live in our ugliness, simply rebuked by beauty.”

  Her mouth came down upon mine as if to speak to my grief.

  “I’m really no good at this any more,” she said, “but I don’t see how else you’re going to learn. Come to bed.”

  After that night, which had no sequel, I asked endless questions in my head, occasionally found a moment when I might have asked them of Grace, but somehow I felt I shouldn’t. I should discover the answers for myself.

  “You worry at the world so, Katie,” she said to me one Sunday evening as I sat staring away from a book in my lap. “What is it now?”

  “Did you live like this when you were my age?” I asked.

  “How can you expect me to remember so far back? I don’t think I ever was your age.”

  “Yes, you were,” I said. “I’m sure of that.”

  “But I was never you, so it can’t make much difference.”

  “But where were you when you were twenty-six?”

  “I don’t know. In jail perhaps, or maybe that was the year I was writing a book.”

  “Did you live alone?”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t often.”

  “Were you in love?”

  “I have never been in love,” Grace said, “except with my work. That’s just how some of us are made. It’s fortunate because there’s a lot of work to be done.”

  “And the big, blond German turns his gun on his wife and shouts, ‘Country first!’ ”

  Grace laughed. “It’s been my line. No point in taking it out of the script by now.”

  Grace held a lot of views she felt that way about. If I took issue with her, she would complain good-humoredly that she was too old to change. A new idea in work she didn’t let herself be reluctant about, but it tired her. In February, she had a heavy cold which she didn’t quite get rid of; I worried at her until she agreed to go away for two weeks at the end of March. While she was gone, I had to make a major decision about the budget and, as a result, had a major disagreement with the head of the clinic. By the time Grace got back, I was thoroughly discouraged.

  “Don’t think I’m going to bail you out of this,” she said. “Oh, I could, but then where do you stand the next time it happens and I’m not here?”

  “I don’t stand. I run,” I said gloomily.

  “That’s the spirit!”

  A virtue of a job that is impossible to do is that there is not time to brood much about any aspect of it. Three days after Grace got back, we left Athens for another tour of the south. By the time we got back, the head of the clinic had resigned himself to my decision and was even pleasant over ouzo when we met by accident. Just the same, I knew that Grace’s refusal to interfere had more to do with his mood than any power of my own.

  The mail had piled up while we were gone both at the office and at home. News from Doris was that young Frank was going to marry a Quaker, but not a poor one, and they were faced with another American wedding. “Frank’s rewriting his will in defiance of the daffodils.” There was a letter from Andrew, letting me know that they had a son, born in late March, named Peter for Monk’s brother who had been killed—and perhaps for Peter Jackson, though Andrew didn’t mention him. I was pleased, but I also found it strange to realize that already the burdens of salvation were being handed on to the next generation. The gallery had now had half a dozen very successful shows. Andrew was beginning to be invited to sit on museum boards. “The charity boys are also after me. Please advise.” I did not find your postcard until I got down to bank statements and investment reports. A Mexican under a sombrero on the front, not bad enough to be funny, and printed across the back, “Here for a divorce. Write to me at Mother’s.” Stupidly I counted up the months on my fin
gers as if you had been telling me that you were expecting a baby and then was embarrassed for you that the number was nine. I don’t know why, an indecently bad symbol, I suppose, like some of your sculpture when you ignored obvious connotations. Why a postcard? Then I tried to imagine a letter full of dashes and faces. I could not imagine the last nine months of your life. I didn’t know how to begin.

  “Going for a walk,” I said to Grace, who was just on her way to bed.

  “Why don’t you pace up and down the balcony instead and talk to me?”

  “Because you need your sleep.”

  “I wouldn’t sleep. I’d wonder if you were doing something silly.”

  I didn’t know whether to protest or be flattered. I remembered Doris saying, “It’s the only part of being loved that you’ve missed. You might even enjoy it.” So I poured us each a drink and we sat in coats with rugs over our knees, looking out over the city, while I again tried to tell the story of your life or my life, or whatever this is, for the first time with some candor. I must have talked for nearly two hours.

  “Every time, I begin to talk about Esther and end by telling the half story of my own life. It’s like a Shakespearean bad quarto—a minor actor remembering his own lines very clearly but paraphrasing the major part,” I said finally.

  “Maybe you’re not minor. You’re wondering what you ought to do about Esther. Isn’t that it?”

  “I don’t suppose there’s anything to do.”

  “But you wonder. Why don’t you go and find out?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I’ll give you a week in June,” Grace said, getting up. “That ought to be time enough. Now, we have to get some sleep. You are getting to be a nuisance.”

  For the next six weeks Grace seemed determined to face me with all that was dullest and most disheartening about the job. I saw all the people we wouldn’t admit to the clinic for lack of funds or on some technical silliness. I was assigned as guide to important American visitors who wanted cheap goods and cheaper night clubs. I was sent north to investigate personal rumors about one of our field representatives, whom I then had to fire. Grace even suggested, in a flair of vindictive humor, that I should attend stunt night at the American Embassy.