by May Sarton
“Well, I’m sorry you feel that—don’t let them get you down.”
One thing Anna hated about the apartment was that it was impossible to taste the air. Now outdoors on Beacon Street she was met by wonderfully crisp invigorating October weather. Fonzi trotted along beside her. It felt good to be out, anonymous, alone with the companionable little dog. Anna took deep breaths and made a try at shutting out all that was troubling her that morning, but when she sat down on a bench near the pond in the Public Gardens to rest for a moment there was no shutting disaster out. She was helpless against the tide of depression—her violence of the night, the unexpected attack on her professional self, Ned’s characteristic leaving without saying goodbye.
“Oh Fonzi,” she said, stroking Fonzi’s silky ears and letting him lick her hand, “it’s an awfully lonely business.” Lonely to be married to Ned, but what she could not ever explain even to Teresa, lonely to be in that ceaseless battle to develop and refine a talent, lonely to appear on a stage before a thousand people and summon what it takes to give a good performance. The endless anxiety, the endless pressure, and the almost certain disappointments along the way. One of Anna’s fantasies had always been to give it all up, live as ordinary people did—but then, did they? Was there such a thing as an “ordinary life”? When Anna looked around her it seemed that everyone she knew was engaged in some impossible battle … Clara with her alcoholic husband, Mary with apparently no way to get published after all these years of sending poems out … and she had genius, Anna was convinced. No, Anna, she admonished herself. You simply cannot complain.
“Come on, Fonzi, we are going to prove that we can be tough!”
Chapter II
When he got home at half-past five, Ned was astonished to find Anna apparently perfectly calm. For a moment he wondered whether she had not seen the paper, but then he noticed the Herald on the coffee table, folded at the review, and decided at once to say nothing about it.
“They expect us at seven. I guess I have time for a cup of tea before I shower.”
“I’ll get it for you.”
While Anna was in the kitchen, Ned talked to Fonzi and then rubbed his eyes, rubbing the long tiresome day out of them. After that he looked around and decided to lie down on the floor and try to get the kinks out of his back, but a person who chose to lie on the floor was fair game and Fonzi leapt upon him barking excitedly, licking his face, coming back for more when pushed away. It was hopeless and Ned was laughing and thoroughly rumpled when Anna brought him a cup of tea and a piece of cinnamon toast.
“Thanks,” he said. “That looks good.”
And after Anna had sat down on the edge of a chair he handed her The Evening Globe. “You’d better look at the review,” he said, “It’s quite a good one.”
“I didn’t dare buy it—after the Herald,” she said, ruffling it through to find the page, then reading with great concentration.
This time there were no odious comparisons but instead the reviewer remarked on her “delicacy of tone, and perfect command of the music. Anna Lindstrom has the voice for Mahler. She can handle the transitions as few of her contemporaries can. A well-tempered instrument. The ovation at the end was deserved.”
Ned was waiting for Anna to say something. She didn’t. After reading the review she folded the paper and laid it on the table.
“I’ll just go and change while you finish your tea.” But as she went by his chair, she kissed the top of his head. So, Ned thought, maybe after all she was not going to behave like a wounded tigress. He had dreaded coming home not knowing what he would find: Anna in bed ill and refusing to go out to dinner, Anna weeping and pacing the floor, Anna in a state of silent gloom. Instead he had found a docile wife who made him a cup of tea! Well, you never knew.
“It’s going to be all right, Fonzi,” he said, stroking Fonzi’s ears and submitting to being thoroughly licked before he went back to The New Yorker. All right as far as last night’s performance went … but that was only one layer of their life together. And the more intimate side of it was not getting any better, as far as he could see or know. Ned had convinced himself that the only way to understand Anna was to consider her a Jekyll and Hyde. The insoluable problem for him was that he could never tell which side was operating at any given moment nor when to make his escape. A scene like that of last night left him closed in on himself, cold as ice. He appeared to have married a woman whom he admired as an artist, who could still trouble and even transport him when she sang, but whom he could not admire as a woman, whom he was beginning to find tiresome, for whom he sometimes felt contempt. Lack of control, irrational anger, as he called it, was high on his list of severe flaws. He had even gone so far one afternoon on his weekly call at his mother’s to ask her whether she and his father had ever engaged in violent scenes of anger.
“Anger?” she had said, raising an eyebrow, “What a thing to imagine!”
“You were never cross with him?”
“If I was, I didn’t show it,” she said, and as he waited in silence, she built her defenses, “Of course, Ned, times have changed. When I was married the unbuttoned behavior of today would have been impossible—that was for the immigrants, not for us. But why are you asking me such a question?”
“Anna is very cross with me,” Ned said. “Almost everything about me seems an irritation.” Even as he said it he regretted it.
“You have to remember that Anna is not one of us,” his mother said, pouring herself another cup of tea and swallowing it with so much relish, it was clear at once that his confession was not unwelcome.
“She is immensely gifted, so, you are right, she is not one of us!” he said firmly. “We are ordinary people. She is not.”
“She is half Italian, after all.”
“She is also half Swedish. Why is it better to be half Swedish than half Italian? Why do you imply that the latter is somehow not quite acceptable?”
“I didn’t imply that at all. All I meant was that the Italians are temperamentally rather unlike us.”
“Anna is unlike me, that’s for sure,” Ned said stiffly, “But I would myself shy away from generalities, especially in regard to a towering personality such as hers!”
“I’m sorry you are not getting on,” his mother said gently. “Would it help if I had a little talk with her? I do after all know you somewhat better than she does and have known you for forty years!”
Ned swallowed the word, “You haven’t any idea what I’m really like,” and murmured something about perhaps not betraying his confidence.
“I wanted you to be happy,” his mother said then in a querulous voice he knew only too well, the voice that always put him in the wrong somehow.
“I didn’t marry for happiness,” Ned said.
“What did you marry for, then? What a strange thing to say.”
“I married because I was enormously interested. Until Anna, women had not interested me very much, I’m afraid.”
Ned was still entangled in remembering that talk with his mother when Anna came back, dressed, he realized, in that dark blue dress with a flaring collar which she had worn when he proposed marriage. Was it an apology?
“Wow!” he said, getting up, “You’re looking very grand.”
“I always feel I have to be in armor to meet Paul. This dress is my armor.”
“Is it indeed?” Ned teased. “You were not inclined to be a fortress the night I proposed marriage, if I remember.”
“Darling, I couldn’t be a fortress against you.”
It was easy to kiss her then. And as he did Ned felt stirred as he had not been for weeks.
“Why do we do such awful things to each other?” she said, running a finger along his mouth.
Ned restrained the impulse to argue that he had done nothing “awful” and went in to have a shower. And Anna went into the music room and took the Duparc songs out. She was just finishing one of Ned’s favorites, “Mon enfant, ma soeur, songe à la douceur, d’aller là-ba
s vivre ensemble,” when he stood in the doorway, dressed and ready to go. She was not aware of his presence, at least did not acknowledge it, and Ned for a few moments soared with her on that remarkable voice. It flowed over him like a pardon, like a justification. He couldn’t utter a word. And when she turned to him with one of her deep looks, all he could say was, “I’ll get your coat.”
“Damn Paul! I wish you were taking me out to dinner.”
The Paul Frasers’ house had always both charmed and intimidated Anna. The high-ceilinged rooms and long French windows were spacious enough to contain a vast clutter of objets d’art, books, and paintings, without seeming crowded, and she had learned to let Paul achieve pinnacles of rudeness on their arrival because that was the way he apparently had to operate: first knock your guests over the head, silence them, and then talk without stopping for at least a half-hour.
So she took it calmly when she uttered her pleasure at going into the library where books were piled on every end table and chair, and Paul’s answer was “I should think it would be a pleasant change from that morgue you and Ned have chosen to live in.”
Instead of reacting as Paul perhaps hoped she would, for he liked to draw blood, Anna suddenly chuckled, then laughed.
“What’s so funny about that? I can’t understand anyone choosing to live in an apartment and then to make it look like a page from House Beautiful!”
Ned had disappeared into the kitchen with Hilda and for a second Anna felt panic, but she was still laughing. “You are so preposterous, Paul. If someone put you into a novel, no one would believe it.”
“Several people have, as a matter of fact.”
She moved closer to the fire for the house was chilly, and on this October evening one window was open, but she did not sit down. “Good novels?”
“Of course not. There are no Prousts around these days.”
Was he laughing at himself? One of the fascinating things about Paul had always been whether he was serious or his arrogance only an affectation, armor against the world which must judge him as not a success, at least in relation to his powerful younger brother.
Ned and Hilda came in then, Ned carrying a tray of champagne glasses and Hilda, the bottle in a silver container of ice.
“We were talking about Paul as the subject of a novel,” Anna said demurely.
“The hero of this imaginary novel had better open the champagne,” Hilda said. Anna had observed that she treated her husband rather as one might treat a spoiled child, nearly always managing to be amused rather than offended by his behavior.
“Champagne, eh? And what is the occasion for such a splurge?”
“We have with us this evening, a diva, and a toast in champagne is in order, I felt.” Hilda sounded firm.
“You know I prefer Scotch,” he said, taking the bottle out and skillfully loosening the wire fastening.
“Yes, but tonight you are being deprived …”
“I’m sorry, Paul, it’s my fault! Can’t he have Scotch?” Anna was smiling and as she caught Ned’s eye began to laugh again.
“That’s right—laugh at him! He’s quite impossible!”
The cork flew out and Paul poured the champagne. “I presume there’s another bottle? This won’t take us very far.”
Paul was sitting and had already taken a swallow, so Hilda and Ned stood alone and Ned lifted his glass, and proposed a toast, “To Anna Lindstrom who has given us much joy!”
“Now can I sit down comfortably and drink?” Anna asked. Ned was being very kind and she was touched. In fact she felt tears in her eyes.
“You’re not going to cry, are you?” Paul asked. “The diva is not going to give us a scene?”
“Oh, I could at the drop of a hat!”
“Or a name? Kathleen Ferrier, for instance,” Paul needled.
“No fair!” Hilda said.
“When has Paul ever been fair?” Ned said lightly, but Anna knew he was cross. His face was quite red.
“I heard you were marvelous,” Hilda interposed quickly.
“Only not quite as marvelous as Kathleen Ferrier,” Anna said quietly. This time she was not going to rise to any provocation.
“We heard her in London, didn’t we, Hilda?” Paul said happily. “She was absolutely smashing in something or other …”
“Orpheus and Eurydice,” Hilda said. “She was very ill then, and everyone knew it.”
“All I need is cancer,” Anna said, but regretted it at once, and looked across at Ned in shame. That was the trouble. However hard she tried to keep the balance Paul always managed to make her teeter at some moment. But she recovered. “I never had the luck to hear her, but I have studied the records. She was beyond compare. And I would like to propose a toast to her!”
“Bravo!” Ned said, lifting his glass.
“And now shall we change the subject?” Paul asked irritably.
“By all means. Whose feathers shall we ruffle next?” Ned asked, smiling across at Anna. “What’s in the works, Paul? What new poet have you discovered?”
“Poet? Nonsense, there aren’t any poets. It’s the age of infamy, self-advertisement. The confessional has ceased to be a box with a priest and a sinner in it, and is now the entire reading public and some people who can’t read—and an exhibitionist who can’t write. Poets?” He laughed scornfully.
“So whom are you publishing?”
“An exegesis of Wallace Stevens.”
“Old hat, old boy,” Ned said. “Surely that’s been done into the ground.”
“I must go and finish cooking our dinner,” Hilda announced.
“I’ll come with you,” Anna said quickly, delighted for the chance to escape and also for the chance to talk with Hilda. “I can mix the salad or make myself useful in some way, I trust.” They took their glasses and left.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Hilda said. “There really isn’t much you can do. But I wanted to have you for myself for a little while. Paul is so impossible.”
Anna sat on a high stool and looked around. “I love your kitchen,” she said. There were pots of herbs on the window sill, a long shelf of cookbooks, the kind of disorder that has meaning … pots and pans hanging from the ceiling, everything close at hand that could be needed. But also in a remarkably large space. The windows looked out on a vegetable garden inside a high wall, “Sometimes I envy your life here …”
“Good heavens, why? Now the children are all away at school or college it’s much too big for us, really.”
“Paul is right, you know. Our apartment is cold. And I guess that is because neither of us wanted to impose our past, so we ended up with a kind of blank good taste. I really like the Beverly house much better, but we only manage a rare weekend there these days. I’m away an awful lot, Ned too, with all those meetings. I don’t think we’ve started to live our real life yet. Do you suppose we ever will?
Hilda came over and gave Anna a hug, “I love you, Anna, you’re so open.”
“Ned hates that.”
“I expect he does. All the Frasers are knotted up so tight, so afraid. Paul buries himself under mountains of antagonism because he is so afraid of being found out.”
Why had she married Paul? Anna had longed to ask the question for two years, but she still didn’t quite dare.
“Does he mind your painting?”
“Oh, I expect so,” Hilda said, putting the salad together, her back to Anna now. “We never talk about it. He isn’t interested … and maybe that’s just as well!”
“Are you working now?”
“Yes. Isn’t it wonderful?—I’m in a great burst of painting. I’m breaking out of the abstract at last. I’m going crazy over flowers. Born again, I feel!”
“Ah … it must be marvelous to be able to do what you want to do, not to have to wait to be asked, not to have to finagle and wait and hope for a chance. I’d give my eye teeth to sing Orpheus!”
“Ned is supportive, isn’t he? That must be a great help.”
&nb
sp; “Yes,” Anna left it at that. “Do you and Paul ever fight?”
“We used to.”
“How did you make your peace?”
“We didn’t. We gave up trying to change each other.”
“Oh.”
“Hey, we’d better get out the champagne … dinner is just about ready.”
Anna hated to leave the kitchen and Hilda. There were so many things their brief exchange had started in her mind. Was every marriage a battle for emotional territory, for instance? Was the antagonism part of violent attachment, the thing that aroused anger and even hatred … because … because … But they had, of course, to go back into the lion’s den. Obediently she went back into the library, bearing the champagne. The cold air hit her, an icy blast from the open window.
“You must be an Eskimo, Paul,” she said, shivering.
“Well, we can close the window,” Ned got up and closed it.
“Not an Eskimo,” Paul said irritably, “we are Anglo-Saxons. Don’t you know how they always have the windows wide open in England?”
“Yes, and have chilblains,” Ned said.
“Hilda and I never have colds,” he said, apparently affronted.
“Neither does Anna. She can’t afford to catch cold, she must be protected.”
“So fragile,” Paul murmured as his wife came in to join them. “You open this one, Ned, I’ve lost my grip.”
And while Ned struggled, Paul got up and put a big log on the fire. It was a concession, as Anna gratefully realized.
“One glass and we’ll be on our way into the dining room,” Hilda said. “I hope you’re hungry, fragile or not.”
“Of course,” Anna said, “I’m as strong as an ox!”
“Good at hauling logs?” Paul gave his short laugh rather like a bark.
“Good at singing,” Ned said. “It takes a lot of strength to produce that amazing sound out of your throat!”
“But what must make you feel fragile is that you are your own instrument. It must be scary,” Hilda said. “Do you wake up on the morning of a concert wondering if you have a voice?”