She will return to Theo, to all of that longing in his face, his eyes wide and hopeful, and she will see that he wants this for her, and although she does not, she says what she knows she must say.
“Oui, Theo. For you, I will do it.
“Maintenant, did you water my grounding grass? Even from here, I can see it looks parched.”
Joan pictures a long, rectangular concrete container, filled with aerated dirt, organic fertilizer, and grass, in the middle of Paloma’s studio. Paloma Rosen’s grounding grass, which is Theo’s responsibility to water twice a day, with a hose that reaches from a deep, old-fashioned stone sink in the northwest corner. When she feels herself too lost in creation, or overly indulgent, Paloma eradicates those extreme impulses by kicking off her work boots and socks and stepping onto the grass, sinking into the loamy earth, the bottoms of her feet arched, then flat, against the soft grassy blades, until she feels rooted again.
Joan is far ahead of herself; she and Paloma are still in France, married to Jean-Pierre Beson. New York, in Paloma’s life and in Joan’s writing, is in the future. The old Duncan Hines factory that Paloma Rosen will buy and live in for decades is still churning out cake mixes that scent the neighborhood in vanilla, chocolate, strawberry. And Theo Tesh Park, whatever his original name may turn out to be, he has not yet even been born.
She looks down at the notes she has taken, at the poor sketches she has tried to draw of Paloma’s remarkable sculptures, and realizes she is thinking of her own mother for the first time in years. Is it because Paloma speaks French—the language of Eleanor Ashby’s rare warmth and kindness—or is it because Eleanor thoughtlessly became a mother knowing she felt not the slightest maternal instinct, while Paloma, who kept herself free from children, possesses, deep down, both the heart and the nature to provide that specific sort of sustenance, of care?
Joan shakes Eleanor Ashby from her head while she washes her face, brushes her teeth and her hair, pulls on a wrap over her pajamas, socks on her feet, and retrieves her morning tray from outside the door. Eleanor Ashby is gone by the time Joan places on her desk the day’s flower, an orange vase holding an unopened yellow bud, drinks the hot tea, eats the steaming lentils that warm her up, powers up her laptop, and begins another workday.
* * *
At one, she takes a deep breath, leans back in her chair, and reads through what she has written.
The last time Paloma Rosen presided over a large dinner party she was twenty-nine and married, and living in a high-ceilinged apartment in the sixteenth arrondissement that received wonderful northern light and had immediate views of Boulogne Park and the Eiffel Tower. It was a long, cool place owned by her husband’s family, and while Jean-Pierre was at the office, she painted in the deliberately unfurnished room he called, without irony, l’atelier de ma femme. That last dinner party had been splendid: artists, writers, philosophers, and poets Paloma had known for years or a day. Although Jean-Pierre could not follow the corkscrewing conversations—“Au-delà de mon métier,” as he said—he was a fine host in other ways, smiling and laughing and unstinting with the Besons’ store of fine wine. Paloma had been a vision, all pale definitive beauty. Dressed exquisitely in a long-sleeved white gown, slashed open from clavicle to sternum, waves of glossy brown hair falling down her bare back. She was applauded as the chef de cuisine at the end of the evening, which did not occur until the early hours of the new day. She and Jean-Pierre had fallen into bed when the light was breaking, made love, and did not wake again until the cocktail hour.
Not the next day, or even the next week, but the following season, early spring in Paris, she knew with certainty that both painting and marriage were too confining. In her studio that spring afternoon, Paloma stepped away from her canvas in progress and moved to the windows. Thunderclouds roofed the sky, the birch trees along the sidewalk, and the Eiffel, were shrouded in fog, and the park, spread out below in virgin green, was empty; no one strolling along the romantic promenades, not even the old man who led his crippled dog on a long walk in all kinds of weather.
She thought of how her husband of five years loved her, and was mostly competent in bed, and did not press the issue of their unborn children, and showered her with handmade jewelry soldered together with diamonds. But their years together had demonstrated there was something too angelic about Jean-Pierre, he lacked imaginative bad habits, could not fathom the internal propulsion that drove her. Paloma Rosen was made more sternly, and although Jean-Pierre would crumple, her defection wrenching his heart, she could not continue on if she wanted to live according to the precepts of her own personal faith, distant from any notion of religion.
Paloma considered the tangential selflessness of her disappearing act: Jean-Pierre would recover and be better off with a soft woman who wanted to become softer still, who wanted her belly to rise and her breasts to fill with milk, who would only ever use her hands for love and tenderness. Paloma understood what she had long known: she was not that soft woman, this sweet and tender life was not what she wanted, and painting was not her way forward.
By four, the thunderheads had released a slanting rain that hit the cobblestones hard, creased the tall windowpanes, and Paloma saw herself walking into the fog a free woman. Of course, there would be legalities, the divorce and all of that, but Jean-Pierre was an avocat and he could properly attend to the particulars, or instruct someone else to do so. At some point, she would have to sign documents severing their bond, but that could wait for future instructions she would leave at their bank, about how and where she could be reached, when she herself knew.
By five, her tubes of cadmium red, Prussian green, titanium white, lamp black, vermillion, marigold, and cerulean, and the thin and thick brushes made from hog bristles, red sable, and the hairs of other unfortunate animals, and the cans of thinner and turpentine, and her stained wooden palettes and knives were neatly packed away in boxes. She wrapped up in old sheets the blank canvases she had stretched herself and nailed into place on sturdy wooden frames. Against a wall, she set all of her finished work, made sure her name marked every piece. Perhaps one day these paintings, the last she would ever make, might be worth something, and she wanted Jean-Pierre to remember her fondly in the unfolding years, to possibly benefit from his tenuous connection to her, which would have faded by then.
Jean-Pierre was still at his office when Paloma placed the keys to their apartment on the tray atop the antique table in the blue foyer. She carried two bags: one of clothing that would see her on her travels, the second of her treasures—sketchpads and journals and a few favorite books. She debated the dramatics of leaving a note. To disappear without one was preferable, but Jean-Pierre, though he had the simple views of a man born into a well-to-do life, did not deserve that, he was good after all, and so Paloma set down her bags, and in his navy silk-walled study, she penned a few lines on his fine stationery, cribbed Jean-Pierre’s name across a matching envelope, sealed the end of their marriage within, took the envelope back into the foyer, and left their relationship next to her keys.
The front door solemnly fell into its lock, protecting all she no longer cared about, was leaving behind. Out in the hallway, sepulchral light streamed through the tall framing windows at each end, and she saw that the angry rain had been tamed, a drizzle now, more mist than drops. Her heels clicked on the seafoam tiles as she walked the long corridor toward the lift.
She passed M. Alvien’s door, where his wooden table with the indefatigable vase of dried flowers still stood just to the left, there the day Jean-Pierre carried her over the threshold of their own apartment, she in her wedding gown, a delicate, lacy confection that served up her breasts, something Marie Antoinette might have worn lounging at Versailles, and in the blue foyer of her new home, Jean-Pierre had unbuttoned every one of the hundred ivory satin buttons that trailed down her spine while she, out of character, stood docile as a lamb.
She reached the Montes’ front door and there, on the wall, was a finger-painting
made by Luc Monte during a morning spent with Paloma when he was seven. She saw Luc sometimes, swooping into the lift on his skateboard. He was a big boy now, nearly twelve, his nose too large for the under-face that spoke of his childhood, the shadow of distinct, distasteful hair emerging on his upper lip, and whatever artistic grain was once within him had disappeared. As far as she knew, the painting she was looking at was the only piece of art Luc Monte would ever create; she thought it unlikely he was destined for anything great.
No matter how hard and fast Paloma pressed the button, the lift was not rising, and she felt suspended, neither staying nor leaving, until, at last, it finally juddered to a stop on the seventh floor. For the first time in all her years living a married life in the lovely apartment with a husband who adored her, painting her pictures like a cossetted housewife whose art was viewed as merely a hobby, the filigreed door with its artisan-hammered metal leaves cut into her skin when she pulled it open. There was blood on her fingers, a cut across her palm. When she pulled the door shut and descended to the ground, her own blood sent her off, a crimson smear that told her this version of Paloma Rosen was already gone.
She headed to Gare de Lyon, the station from which she would travel by train to the first of several stops in other countries, on a quest to discover a material with which she wanted to work, an expressive material she could love over the long haul of the life she planned to create for herself. She wanted something tough and masculine, the kind of substance that required strength, that would decimate those who possessed no true bravery, some magical substance that once in her hands would make everyone forget the work had been done by a woman.
Joan’s heart is beating hard when she looks away from the screen. She has been with Paloma Rosen as a child in Egypt, her art-school years in London, her time in Paris where she met Jean-Pierre, the whirlwind courtship, the wedding, the settling love, her world there in that arch, luxe environment, and now Paloma is leaving, has left, and there are endless avenues for Joan to consider as Paloma heads out into her new freedom.
Last night, Martin’s latest email arrived and she declined to read it. This morning, she concentrated on her work, but the work is done, and her husband has something to say.
It still jolts Joan when she sees joanmanning as her email address. Here, she has not been Joan to anyone except Natwar briefly, and Willem Ackerman, and a Manning to no one. She has not been Mom or Mother. No matter the company she and Eric may be in, even among sojourners who mention the families they have left behind, the call of India louder than the call of home, he has never referenced their blood relation, has never faltered in calling her Ashby. Here she is only Ashby. The facts of her life—that she is someone’s wife, has a husband, is a mother—are like old garments she removed one day and stored on a shelf in her suite’s pine closet. Dressing again in those old clothes seems increasingly impossible.
Each time Martin sends her a message, she needs more and more time to reset her mind, to remember her other life unfolding without her, seventy-five hundred miles away. She can no longer picture Martin’s face, not completely, or the routines of his days, in operating rooms, with patients, on his bike with Men on Bikes on the weekends, the order in which he pulls on his clothes when he dresses in the mornings, how he packs his suitcase for his surgical trips—it is all a white blank.
Lately, his messages, voice or word, carry a certain tone, a particular articulation, and she understands—he has shown steady patience, has allowed her to try to work through this travesty on her own, but he wants her back in their joint existence, has not agreed to her disappearing forever. She understands, but she bridles, rears up against his entreaties. She had evaded as long as she can, but it is time to read his email.
I’m thinking of coming to Dharamshala. You’ve been there such a long time that I want to see what has kept you so intrigued. We could travel back home together afterwards. I am figuring out how to clear my surgical schedule and then will look into flights.
She is not ready to contemplate what her response might be. She has spent hours thinking about and then writing Paloma Rosen’s escape from her old life, the way she chose to leave her husband, the future she envisions for herself. Has Joan already written the scene of her own leaving? Did it happen when she bought the ticket to Delhi, or went to Dr. Abrams for the shots, or when she and Martin were so quiet the night before she left, or when he drove her to the airport and they kissed, or when she boarded the plane, overcoming that first urge to turn back? Or has she not written that scene yet, has she not actually left him, has she not made up her mind? She closes her computer without writing a reply.
43
Joan bathes quickly and then she is dressed, a bright Indian tunic over the only pair of jeans she brought, her feet in the golden crystal sandals she intends to wear until it is too cold to do so, a light wrap in the bag on her arm.
She is hurrying down the mile-long hill from Hotel Gandhi’s Paradise to the courtyard behind the Dalai Lama’s compound, for Ela’s meditation group at two, which she now attends daily.
She has known this day was coming, but she’s been dreading when Camille leaves Dharamshala until next year, returns to her home on the outskirts of London, returns to her damaged children and the art-therapy lessons she gives them. It is the third of September, and Camille is flying tonight from Gaggal Airport in Kangra—the airport’s existence fourteen kilometers southwest of Dharamshala a surprise to Joan—to Delhi, from Delhi to London Heathrow, then a train from London Heathrow to her terraced house at the end of a block in Twickenham, in southeast London, near the River Thames. She has shown pictures to Joan, springtime pictures of the front of her house: yellow daffodils in window boxes painted black, the window shutters painted white, a row of pink tulips on a small stretch of grass, ceramic ducks—that do not seem at all like Camille—marching along the path to Camille’s pink front door. Behind her house, Camille has a glass addition that extends beyond her kitchen, where she meditates through the year until she returns to Dharamshala. She showed Joan pictures of that too.
Joan is the last one to arrive, to sit on the red silk pillows in her usual six position. Camille is in her regular place, at seven, and Joan squeezes her hand, then finds Ela at twelve, and smiles, and is shocked to see Eric sitting next to Ela, at eleven. She told Eric about Ela’s group, but he meditates on his own in his backyard, or with the large group that gathers in the late afternoons at Tsug Lakhang, listening first to the Namgyal Monastery monks holding fierce, disciplined debates, until they fall silent, raise their hands and commence the meditation. But Eric is here, smiling at her, his ponytail, now nearly half the length of hers, thrown over one shoulder. In these months, Joan has kept separate Camille and Ela from Eric, and now they are all gathered together.
“Namaste,” Ela says. “Namaste,” everyone chimes in return.
“Our own Camille Nagy leaves us tonight, and so this is her last meditation in Dharamshala until next June. Before we begin today’s mantra, which Camille will choose, I wanted to tell you a story about an Indian man named Chand who has a home nearby, but spends most of the year driving a taxicab in New York City.
“In New York, each day he passed a blind musician playing his violin on a street corner. And each day, Chand put a dollar into the case at the musician’s feet. This went on for months, and then one day the blind musician was gone, and Chand debated what to do with his dollar. He put it in an envelope, and he did the same thing each day the blind musician was missing. Soon Chand had collected fifty dollar bills. When the musician reappeared playing his violin on the corner, Chand did not have the envelope with him. ‘I have missed you and your playing, my friend,’ Chand said to him, and learned the musician had been ill, but was better, and would be back to his regular schedule, playing on the corner each day. But the next day, the blind musician was gone again, and Chand continued to collect the dollar bills he would have otherwise given him. This went on for two years, until the envelope held seven hun
dred and eighty dollars. Chand added bills until there were a thousand, and then, when he knew the blind man was gone for good, he sent the money home, to Dharamshala, and asked his brother-in-law to donate it to the music school for the blind, with the request that it be used to buy instruments for musicians in need, which the brother-in-law did. Although Chand never saw the blind musician again, he has collected a dollar a day ever since, sending money back home to the music school. His donations have allowed the school to buy five violins, two cellos, and a flute, so far.
“This story carries the tenets by which we are intended to live, and underlies many of the mantras we chant. It is important to remember that the smallest gesture of kindness and generosity can have a huge effect, rippling the waters out from ourselves, allowing us to touch others in a wondrous way. Those of us who stand in the sun must share the light with others.”
Ela takes a moment to sweep across each person’s face, smiling all the while. Then she says, “Camille, which mantra will we chant today?”
“Ela, thank you for such an honor. And in the spirit of Chand, I have chosen the Moola mantra, in honor of my friend Ashby who has learned this mantra by heart, although her first time here she could not make heads or tails of it, and sweetly lied to me when she claimed to have enjoyed the experience. I knew she had no intention of coming back, but she did, and I am so glad for that.”
Joan feels she’s graduated from something important, or to something important, the way Ela, and Eric, and Camille are smiling at her, and those on the other red silk pillows, faces familiar and unfamiliar, smiling at her too. The tears she never used to shed, how much easier they come now, a few drops sliding down her cheeks, her hand in Camille’s, and then Ela hits the gong, once, twice, three times, settling the group, knitting it together under that tonal embrace, and the chanting of the Moola begins.
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby Page 47