by Jessica Lott
I shook my head, and she told me, “If you go I can give you some names. A lot of artists show in temporary venues without much publicity. That bad commercial strip in L’Eixample still dominates, unfortunately.” She carefully cut the slice of eggplant, still pinning me with her eyes. “I know the exhibition you were referring to in Chelsea. It was at Kinz, Tillou and Feigen. They have a feminisms show up now with a fabulous Adrian Piper piece.”
“I love that piece!” I said, unintentionally gushing. “The mirror that says ‘everything will be taken away.’ You look into it, and the words are written across your face.”
“Indeed,” she said.
From across the table, Bill asked, “So how did you two reconnect?” Gesturing, not to Laura, but to Rhinehart and myself, and not entirely innocently.
“We ran into each other. I actually thought he’d died, because I read an obituary—”
“Oh, that!” Laura said. “He’s talked about nothing else!”
“It’s incredibly jarring to see yourself laid out dead in a major newspaper,” Rhinehart said. “It made a strong impression on me. Understandably.”
“I still can’t believe that it happened in the Times,” Jesper said. “The smaller papers, on the other hand, will print anything. In Gotland a few years ago, a group of students submitted my colleague’s memorial to the local paper as a hoax. It was heartwarming, actually, they told of how inspiring he was, and how he’d made a difference in their lives.”
“Every time you tell this story, I find it unsatisfying,” Bill said. “How macabre, all of them plotting it out. You couldn’t pay me enough to go back in front of the classroom after that. And it’s very different from Rudy’s case—an impartial person composed it, an obituary maker, or whatever they’re called. Not a eulogist.”
Dan and Melinda didn’t know about Rhinehart’s obituary and had to be filled in. “It was only released online, not in the print version,” Rhinehart said, “so it was easy enough to retract. Still it’s amazing how many people saw it in the short time it was up on the site.”
Bill said, “Remember when CNN released all those draft obituaries with the wrong information? Dick Cheney described as the ‘UK’s favorite grandmother’?”
“There’s so much competition to be the first to release news now, mistakes happen,” said Dan. “Servicemen are often reported dead when they’re not. I remember seeing an announcement on television that the White House press secretary James Brady had died, when he hadn’t.”
“Yes, but he’d been shot in the head,” Rhinehart said. “He was in critical condition. There was no precipitating cause for releasing my obituary. And I found it unnerving that they’d had it prepared already. I’m still in my fifties. In good health, I thought. I should check with my doctor to see what he’s been saying around town.”
“What I find more interesting are the cases in which the people are actually thought to have died,” Bill said. “My grandmother used to tell a story about a neighbor who’d drowned. In the middle of the wake, she sat up in her coffin and asked for a glass of whiskey. The entire room was overjoyed, except for her husband. He dropped dead of a heart attack on the spot. My grandmother claims he died of guilt since he was having an affair with a young girl in the next county. Wanted to marry her.”
I felt my face turning red and instinctively put my hands over my cheeks to hide it.
“Well, this is a morbid conversation!” Laura said. “And, Rudy isn’t dead. He’s sitting right there.”
“I could have been though,” Rhinehart said. “Marcus Garvey had a second stroke after reading of his death in the paper, which described him as ‘broke and friendless.’ ”
“Yes, but yours was impressive,” said Bill. “You should tell them not to change anything. And you were headlining. You got the verb.”
“What’s that?” Melinda asked me.
Laura rolled her eyes. “Evidently they only put the headline in present tense for the most important person who kicked off that day. Per page, or something like that. A minor point since he’s alive.”
“Laura’s right,” Rhinehart said. “I’ve been talking about it too much. I’ve been thinking about it too much. You know what bothers me the most is how it said I’d never known much about my family. It’s true! My mother died when I was young and all of our history went with her, the five years I spent over in Ukraine that I can’t remember, the only link to my father. Why didn’t I ever try and trace my background?”
“I agree,” Laura said. “You should know more. But why begin researching it now, when we have a major fund-raiser coming up that I need your help on.” She turned to Melinda. “This is what I was discussing before, the Chicago Women’s Art Fund. We’re having it at the Carlyle. It’s a bit stuffy for me—I wanted to use this new event space in Tribeca with absolutely stunning views, but Belinda said that since it was a cocktail event, it was better to do it uptown. The traffic near the tunnel might be a problem at that hour.”
“I won’t be involved this year,” Rhinehart said. “I’ve already told you.”
“Tell me again,” Laura said, putting down her fork. It rang against the side of her plate. She turned to Melinda. “You need to hear this—the blast of hot air will take the curl out of your bangs.”
“I think there are some pitfalls in making philanthropy into a series of high-end parties for the donors and corporations. I think it potentially—” I could feel him being cautious with Dan at his side, “could be reinforcing the class mentality that has provided the conditions for economic inequity in this country. I prefer a more hands-on approach.”
Laura was about to respond, but Dan was quicker. “But let’s be realistic. We can’t all quit our jobs and start volunteering. Someone needs to make the money to fund these programs.”
“I believe there are ways of contributing that are more valuable than writing a check,” Rhinehart said. I remembered the years he spent doing job training in low-income neighborhoods in the Midwest just before I met him. “Tatie, would you still agree with this assessment? We used to talk about it.”
“Yes,” I said. I realized that I’d slipped into the old habit of being quiet in a group discussion.
“I believe in changing policy,” Bill said. “I always admired the poets I knew who were activists. Muriel Rukeyser was in Spain at the outbreak of the Civil War, and then in Vietnam protesting, and then in Korea campaigning on behalf of a jailed writer there. And she’s a fine poet. That to me is the perfect use of a life.”
“Except you’re no longer the frontline type,” said Jesper.
“I’m not the frontline type anymore. It’s true,” said Bill. “I prefer to fight injustice from the chair in my study. I’m the petition-signing type.”
Laura said to Rhinehart, “How can you say chairing these foundations isn’t compassionate? Do you realize how much time and effort goes into that work? Why would people do that if they didn’t care? If they could just spend the afternoon at Neiman’s?”
“Laura, we’re having a discussion. Please don’t take it personally. I’m not criticizing your level of commitment.”
“Really, because it seems to me that you are.” She stood up and started collecting the plates, banging them together. Melinda half-rose to help her, but sat down when Laura spoke again, harshly. “It’s just so easy to sit there and cast judgment.”
Rhinehart said, “I’ll clean up.”
She ignored him, and I tensed.
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Rhinehart said, and I was ashamed of the placating tone in his voice. “We disagree on this, passionately,” he told the room, “but we’re still having a wonderful night.” He turned to Bill, and said heartily, “It’s great to see you again.”
“Same here,” Bill said warmly, reaching out and squeezing Rhinehart’s forearm.
All of a sudden Laura did sit down, creating an unexpected movement of air between us. The dirty plates that she’d collected were stacked in front of her in an
unstable, ominous-looking pile.
Laura gestured, with a magisterial little wave of her hand, to Rhinehart. “Well. Get to it.”
Rhinehart remained seated. He was breathing heavily through his nostrils like a horse that’s just been run. It was as if all of us had dropped away, and there was only Rhinehart and Laura fiercely staring at each other across the chasm of the table, until they, too, no longer existed, and there was nothing except this strong, sour disagreement pressing them into their seats. Rhinehart broke it by standing and reaching for the dishes. After a nudge from Bill, Jesper also stood up to help. Taking away my plate, Rhinehart averted his eyes.
Once Rhinehart’s back was turned, Laura said to me, “I’d be feeling pretty good, too, if I’d had six scotches and sat on my ass all afternoon.” I flinched. Rhinehart had paused in the doorway.
“Not my father,” Bill said. “That’s about the time he got out the belt.”
CHAPTER THREE
I’d almost succeeded in putting the memory of that dinner party out of my mind when a week later I received a note from Rhinehart. He’d either looked up my address or still had it from years ago, when I’d sent him that congratulatory letter.
Tatie, I’m sorry. I’m still ashamed about the way the night turned out. Laura and I have separated—things have not been good between us for a while, as you may have guessed. I’m going to Italy for a couple of weeks, but I’d like to be in touch when I get back. —R.
I read it quickly and left it on the side table, as I was late for work. When I got back home, Hallie was there. Rhinehart’s note had been moved to the kitchen counter where she’d presumably read it before rooting through my refrigerator.
This was one of those times I was tempted to ask for my keys back. I’d thought now that she had two residences—the apartment in midtown that she had first lived in with Adán and a new house in Jersey—she wouldn’t feel as compelled to spend time at my place, the small and somewhat dark one-bedroom in the East Village that we’d shared for the majority of our twenties, longer than either of us had expected we’d be able to tolerate living together.
She had a strange affection for it. Before she’d moved out, she requested I keep her bed around for a while in case she wanted to sleep over, and even though I refused, she still expected me, as the keeper of the rent-stabilized domicile, to preserve it as some sort of mausoleum of her single life, resenting my redecorating and calling me at work to accuse me of getting rid of the green velour couch, “the pregnant lady couch,” that sagged so deep in the middle you had to hoist yourself up by gripping the back.
In truth, my best years in the apartment were when we were still new to the city, heated up with enthusiasm that made everything seem decadent, our minuscule kitchen, the back bedroom with its air shaft windows (“It’s perfect for sleeping—no outside light,” Hallie had said) that we’d shared initially to preserve the living room for socializing before we decided we didn’t care about inviting people to dinner and wanted our own bedrooms, the pipe heating in the bathroom that burned you if you bumped into it, the fire escape where we grew tomato plants in the summer and sat out in the evenings, smoking cigarettes, watching people walk down Fourth Street, and discussing things that seemed very important at the time.
I knew some tenants who reinvested the rent they saved into renovating the kitchen, buying a new stove, or redoing the floors. In the years I’d lived here alone, I’d done considerably less than that, but I had upgraded the furniture, and hung artwork and antiques that I imagined created a friendly, warm, cared-for environment. Yet, lately I’d begun to feel trapped by my good deal, which, as the rent went up, seemed less and less worth the sacrifice. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this narrow walk-up with its tilted stairway, the dark stained carpet in the hall, the small, low-ceilinged rooms and leaky bathroom fixtures and missing tiles and temperamental gas stove with its worn knobs, stubbornly asserted an identity that dwarfed mine, preceding me by many years. It was if I were caught inside the building’s interminable aging process, surrounded by all my nice little things. I felt myself aging along with it, never being able to change. Hallie insisted it was “perfect for one person. Very cozy.” I suspected she just enjoyed the luxury of being able to visit both the apartment and herself at twenty-three.
Gesturing to Rhinehart’s note, she said, “How come he didn’t just email?”
“I don’t think he has my email address. And he always liked to write by hand, so it makes sense.”
“That so? Since when do you know so much? I hope you’re not getting hung up on him again. I thought we’d seen the last act.”
I’d been behaving oddly enough this afternoon that my boss, Marty, had approached me in that tiny studio crammed with portraits and promotional cardboard displays and an elaborate gold-lettered sign “Photography by Martin” that he had feared would get stolen if he hung it outside, to ask me if I was upset about the raise I’d just received—if I thought it was too low. “You’ve been staring off into space all day,” he said. “You’re reminding me of my Aunt Rosie whenever she was listening to her saints.” I’d been thinking about the deep, open look Rhinehart had given me when he passed me my photograph in the library, how he’d laid his hand on my back instinctively to lead me into the dining room. I had started to think that we could spend time together, just as friends. Maybe, in being around me, he would be reminded of the time he was writing poetry and be inspired. We could go to a reading together. Or to the Lucian Freud show at the Neue Galerie. We both loved the way Freud painted feet, as expressive as a face.
Hallie took my silence as a self-indictment. She had one pointy elbow on the counter and was preparing to lecture me. For someone who claimed to live in the present, she enthusiastically borrowed from more than thirty years of our shared experience to build arguments.
“Even if he is suddenly free that shouldn’t have anything to do with you. Up until recently, you hadn’t seen him in decades.”
“It’s been less than that.”
“You haven’t been with him since we were in college. I remember. I had box seats to that tragedy.”
There had been many breakups during that spring semester. I’d always gone back with renewed optimism that I’d worked through things by crying. I was prone to unhealthy, near-manic states of jealousy with him—a pattern that had never been repeated with the same intensity since. Hallie was reminding me of a time, soon after Rhinehart and I had split up, when I suspected him of dating a Russian girl named Natasha. She was in my World Literature and Civilizations class. I sat near her, in whichever seat afforded the best view for spying. She had a much older woman’s way of settling herself into her desk, and her hair always looked unwashed; she used to wear it in a short ponytail, like a gymnast. She wasn’t pretty, but I knew Rhinehart didn’t care about that. In fact, he probably liked the shadowy sideburns and heavy brows—he had once mentioned a preference for hairy girls. Although we’d split up, I still saw him twice a week in the poetry class he taught that I was auditing. I attended, sitting resentfully in back, refusing eye contact. He had pressured me to drop the course, but I was running on a lunatic’s mix of fear and stubbornness, and had refused.
Natasha was also in his poetry class, but not in the same section as me. She was with me in World Lit, though, making it the second most interesting class of the week. I’d show up ten minutes early so I could watch her as she came in. Under her heavy coat, I made out the bulge of her hips. “It’s so warm today,” I said to a girl next to me. “I don’t know how people can still be wearing winter stuff. It’s kind of depressing.” Other days, I’d sit in the desk alongside her and make rapid movements, attempting to catch her attention. She never let her eyes rest on me for more than a split second.
“Paranoid speculation,” Hallie had said. “Give me some proof if you want me to listen to this.”
“All of a sudden he’s really into painting. She’s a painter.” He’d started this before he ended our relationshi
p. Abstract things with triangles. Smeary apparitional figures without any faces.
“So what?” Hallie said. “Maybe he’s with that art professor Hotten. She just got divorced.”
“She’s not his type.” Meaning, Professor Hotten was nothing like me. She had dyed red hair and a flat butt, and wore heavy eyeliner. Her body was shaped like an ant’s, all the bulk in the middle.
“You have to let go,” Hallie said. “I’m starting to think I should be making an appointment for you at the counseling center.”
Two days later I saw Rhinehart and the Russian together. It was pure accident. I’d been shadowing him around campus for weeks, but I wasn’t doing it at that particular moment. I was coming out of Brighton Hall, thinking about whether I should have my hair cut in one of those short, choppy styles that Hallie was pushing me to get. I suspected she just wanted to see how it looked on me before she got it done.
From across the lawn, I saw him. He was listening to something Natasha was saying, his hand on her upper arm. Was he stroking it? He smiled indulgently. Lovingly, almost. I stood there, transfixed, paralyzed by terror, revulsion, and excited vindication, like at a beheading. She was bent over with laughter, her nose grazing his coat. It was this, the graceful movement, the sight of her happy little teeth, like milk teeth, that got me. I’d never seen her smile before. So it was true! My legs, my whole body started vibrating like a struck tuning fork. I ran into the building, down the hallway, and out the double doors behind. Sprinting, I reached the apartment in minutes, sweaty and panting. No one was home. The bright yellow sun poured onto the kitchen floor, where I lay, wailing like a speared animal. Later I locked myself in my room. I stayed in there all night, drinking vodka and crying, looking through old letters Rhinehart had written me—how he’d changed! I fell asleep, the letters underneath me.
It was late afternoon when I went downstairs. Hallie was flipping through a magazine at the kitchen table. She started when she saw me. “Jesus.”