Daphne got up and went into the house without kissing Pizarsky good-bye. It bugged me that she didn’t kiss him good-bye, as if now even a simple kiss on the cheek could mean something between them. Pizarsky’s leave-taking was good, quiet, neither hurried nor labored—good in that I didn’t really even have to say anything to him, or look his way. I thought that if our eyes met I’d have to take a swing at him.
Daphne went upstairs but not into our room. She went into one of the spare bedrooms and put her flowers on the bedside table. I followed her in; the predominant smell was mothballs. We haven’t had an overnight guest for a long time.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” Daphne said. She fluffed the pillows, pushed all the blankets onto the floor, and jumped onto the bed.
“Like the flowers?” She flung out an arm in their direction.
“They’re okay,” I said.
“First prize for this afternoon’s croquet. Pizarsky won them, but he doesn’t care about flowers, so he let me have them.”
“Good of him.”
“I’m hot,” she said. “Could you bring me some ice?”
“Just ice?”
“Just ice . . .”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Look at it. Feel cool. God, St. John. Does it matter what I do with the ice?”
“I’ll get it in a second. What’s going on? Why are you taking a nap in here? Don’t you like your bed anymore?”
“Oh—don’t let’s fight,” she said. My right hand was still closed up tight, to keep Mary quiet, and Daphne looked at that hand for a couple of seconds, then at my face. I guess she thought I was making a fist at her.
I wanted to ask her if she meant to spend the night here as well, but I didn’t want her to say yes. It could be that she was in some kind of mood and just wanted a nap and my question might force her to adopt a stance. She does that, I’ve noticed; she lashes out when she thinks she’s been given a cue.
“Is it okay if I host a luncheon for some underprivileged inner-city girls next Wednesday? Not too many, five or so.”
“Fine by me. Got your underprivileged inner-city-girl bait? Want me to drive you down to the city so you can catch them?”
“Be serious. I want to join Bea Wainwright’s Culture Club, and the luncheon is kind of an audition for me.”
“That’s fine. Just don’t let them into my study. I mean it—that’s off-limits.”
“Of course.”
She stood up before I could go and get that ice she’d asked for. “I’ll get it myself, okay?” She went up on her tiptoes and kissed my forehead. Quite sadly, I thought.
On my study desk I found a brand-new notebook open on my desk, neatly placed in the centre. There was a list written on the first page. I looked at the list for a minute or two. Points in favour of “D.” and “M.” It was almost my handwriting, so close that for a second it seemed to me that I’d made the list and forgotten about it. But I hadn’t written it. These weren’t even thoughts I recognised.
So Mary was writing things down now.
I looked up and she was laughing. Soundlessly, of course. She was even more appealing as a mute. Like an image my eye was chasing through one of those flip books—she wasn’t moving, I was. I beckoned her.
“You wrote this,” I said. Mary came closer, gesturing helplessly towards her mouth.
“Just nod or shake your head,” I said. “You wrote this, didn’t you?”
She folded her arms.
“Did Daphne see this?”
No visible response. I closed the notebook and laid my fist on top of it. It was starting to ache, vaguely, but with a throbbing that promised to get stronger.
“This is childish, Mary. Don’t do anything like this again.”
She curtseyed wickedly, and left me.
I tore the list out of the notebook and ripped it to shreds—I needed both hands for that. Even if Daphne had found the list and taken any notice of it, she must know that I couldn’t write a thing like this in earnest and leave it somewhere she’d find it. But Daphne knew something, or thought she knew something. That tiny kiss on my forehead—why had she given me that? It stayed with me unbearably, like ashes at the start of Lent, the slap on the hand I got whenever I went to brush them away as a kid.
I must have been twenty-five years old when I realised Christ never came back from the dead. Some people would say it wasn’t a big deal, it was just that I wised up. But I’m talking about something I’d always believed until then. I damn near knocked myself flat with these new thoughts. I mean, the resurrection could be true—it could be, I wasn’t there, so I can’t say for sure. But it probably isn’t true. So that means Christ was killed and that was the end for him. He’d gotten mixed up with some pretty intense people in his lifetime, though, and those people thought he was too important to let go. And they made themselves important with this idea that their friend couldn’t be killed, told everyone all about it. And hundreds died because they believed Christ couldn’t be killed, and thousands more suffered, I mean, the martyrs, think of all the martyrs, and—I was walking down a street in Salzburg, eating an apple, when these thoughts came to me, and I just kept right on chewing and swallowing, chewing and swallowing, since it was something to do.
Love. I’m not capable of it, can’t even approach it from the side, let alone head-on. Nor am I alone in this—everyone is like this, the liars. Singing songs and painting pictures and telling each other stories about love and its mysteries and its marvelous properties, myths to keep morale up—maybe one day it’ll materialize. But I can say it ten times a day, a hundred times, “I love you,” to anyone and anything, to a woman, to a pair of pruning shears. I’ve said it without meaning it at all, taken love’s name in vain and gone dismally unpunished. Love will never be real, or if it is, it has no power. No power. There’s only covetousness, and if what we covet can’t be won with gentle words—and often it can’t—then there is force. Those boys at the bar downtown, coming round talking idly about more ideas to die for. Something terrible’s coming, and everyone in the world is working to bring it on. They won’t rest until they’ve brought it on. Mary, come back—distract me. No, stay away, you’re the problem.
31 RULES FOR LOVERS (CIRCA 1186)1
From The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Cappelanus
1. Marriage is no real excuse for not loving.
2. He who is not jealous cannot love.
3. No one can be bound by a double love.
4. It is well known that love is always increasing or decreasing.
5. That which a lover takes against the will of his beloved has no relish.
6. Boys do not love until they arrive at the age of maturity.
7. When one lover dies, a widowhood of two years is required of the survivor.
8. No one should be deprived of love without the very best of reasons.
9. No one can love unless he is impelled by the persuasion of love.
10. Love is always a stranger in the home of avarice.
11. It is not proper to love any woman whom one would be ashamed to seek to marry.
12. A true lover does not desire to embrace in love anyone except his beloved.
13. When made public love rarely endures.
14. The easy attainment of love makes it of little value; difficulty of attainment makes it prized.
15. Every lover regularly turns pale in the presence of his beloved.
16. When a lover suddenly catches sight of his beloved his heart palpitates.
17. A new love puts to flight an old one.
18. Good character alone makes any man worthy of love.
19. If love diminishes, it quickly fails and rarely revives.
20. A man in love is always apprehensive.
21. Real jealousy always increases the feeling of love.
22. Jealousy, and therefore love, are increased when one suspects his beloved.
23. He whom the thought of love vexes eats and sle
eps very little.
24. Every act of a lover ends in the thought of his beloved.
25. A true lover considers nothing good except what he thinks will please his beloved.
26. Love can deny nothing to love.
27. A lover can never have enough of the solaces of his beloved.
28. A slight presumption causes a lover to suspect his beloved.
29. A man who is vexed by too much passion usually does not love.
30. A true lover is constantly and without intermission possessed by the thought of his beloved.
31. Nothing forbids one woman being loved by two men or one man by two women.
That nails it—I like this Cappelanus fellow!—M.F.
Ha, ha, ha . . . indeed.—S.J.F.
HMMMMM.—D.F.
I stayed in bed almost all day Monday. To see if St. John would notice, and if he did notice, to see what he would do about it. But he didn’t notice, didn’t even come up to ask me about dinner. Too busy with his book, I guess. It can’t be easy killing people off the way he does, especially since each death has got to be meaningful. I heard him on the radio once, before I even met him—a fan of his called in, oh so earnest, asking him why some character or other had died in such a meaningless way. St. John’s answer: “I was going to say that the meaninglessness of her death has a meaning in itself, but the truth is, I missed that one. So thanks. I’m going to work harder.”
While he worked, he played a symphony I liked—he played it very loudly, but it was good that way, rising through the floorboards and welling up around me. I was lying on music, my arms and legs flopping down over a pillar of the stuff, my back the only straight line in me. If only my old dance teacher could have seen me, she’d have had a fit. I was always the girl who was “just so.” It was the easiest thing in the world back then—if I felt as if taking too deep a breath would make me fall flat on my face, that meant I was “just so.”
There was housework to do, things to dust and scrub and polish and move around and fret over, work that has never been visible to anyone else, and I took great pleasure in not doing any of it. I spent a few hours looking at a book of watercolors that just happened to be lying around, but they began to make me feel weepy. They were so faded, the landscapes, and they reminded me of some I’d started and put up in the glasshouse, half finished, because painting them made me yawn so much, and I didn’t suppose that anyone who came out there for a cocktail on a summer evening would care enough to ask if they were supposed to look like that. They’ve been there two summers and no one’s asked yet.
When it got dark, Mary Foxe came and sat by me with a candle. I’d gone so dead in my senses and my brain that I’d been expecting her, and it was actually nice to have a change. She closed the door so we’d have some privacy. I didn’t protest. “He won’t be coming up,” Mary Foxe said. “He’s probably going to go to sleep in there tonight.”
“Again. I know.”
She was naked, and not a bit self-conscious about it. She didn’t need to be. What I saw by candlelight made me sure that this was really going to happen—St. John Fox had dreamed himself up a nice little companion who wasn’t going to get old, and he was going to drop me and live with her. She looked younger than me, a lot younger than him—
“For God’s sake, put some clothes on, will you,” I told her.
“I don’t know where they’ve gone. I think I’ve annoyed him and he’s trying to punish me. I’m sorry if I’m making you feel uncomfortable. Give me any old thing to wear and I’ll put it on,” she said, in a very simple way. No guile, no false concern, just honesty. I couldn’t really be mad at her when she spoke to me like that.
I got out of bed. “Come on.” We went to my dressing room and I gave her a lilac shirtwaist to put on. I didn’t tell her, but it was my favourite thing to wear. I’d worn it in Buenos Aires on the first day of our honeymoon. There it was all over again, the first day, the first day, the first day, his hand in mine, all that woven into a dress. And there was no denying that Mary Foxe looked as cute as a button in my dress; its shade brought out interesting hues in her hair, or vice versa. I was glad we were the same dress size. It was something of a consolation to know that I’m nowhere near as fat as I sometimes think I am.
Mary Foxe sat in the chair at my dressing table and I stood beside the chair and she stared at me and I stared at her. It was just interesting to see what St. John wanted in a woman. Her hair hung over her shoulder in a wispy plait, clumsily done. Someone should show her how to plait her hair. I wondered what would become of me. I didn’t see him turning me out, not exactly—but I might be too proud to stay. He’d make me some sort of allowance, I suppose. I couldn’t go back to my parents, though. Pops would forbid Maman from giving me a piece of her mind, and she wouldn’t—not while he was there. But she’d give me that resigned look—Messed up again, Daphne? Just what I expected. The look I got when I quit college, only ten times worse. I should fight this, make some kind of threat. Greta would fight like a hellcat. Twice now, some girl has tried to get Pizarsky to fall in love with her, and each time Greta’s seen the girl off. She’s not above fighting for her man. How do you threaten someone like Mary Foxe, though?
“I’ve never seen you this close up,” Mary Foxe said. “I like looking at your face; it’s a good face.”
I couldn’t help laughing at her formality. I wanted to say I thought the same about her, but I couldn’t make myself do it. Greta would have risen up in my mind like a ghoul, sneering. That’s right, pay her compliments while she replaces you. I was always weak in the head—that must be it. I can’t seem to care anymore about what I’m supposed to do. This is not a typical scenario.
“What are you thinking about, Mrs. Fox?” Mary Foxe asked.
I laughed again.
“You’re thinking of something funny?”
“He said you were British.”
“Mrs. Fox,” she said. “I think I’m more like you than not.”
“How can you know that?” Anger began to kick in. “How can you know that?”
Mary Foxe looked up at me with big, thoughtful eyes. “I’m glad there isn’t a stapler around.”
Abruptly, I asked her if she knew whether I was pregnant. I’d cancelled my appointment with the doctor. It’d be a bad scene if I was pregnant and a bad scene if I wasn’t.
“You don’t look pregnant,” Mary Foxe said.
“Do you mean you don’t know? If you don’t, just say so.”
“I don’t know. Of course I don’t know. How could I know that? I’m not a doctor.”
“I thought you were . . . magical or something. Like a spirit.”
She opened her eyes very wide, wondering at me. “No, I don’t think I am.”
“Okay. Not magical and not a doctor. Got it.”
She was really too amusing. Now that I’d asked if she was magical, I could see her wondering whether she might be magical, after all. What was this, me finding myself wanting to look out for this girl, thing, whatever she was?
“What do you want, Mary Foxe? My husband?”
“I believe in him,” she said slowly. I wondered if she’d ever told him that, and if so, what he had to say about it. Someone you made up turns around and tells you they believe in you—what response could you possibly make? The scenario is just plain weird. And really kind of impertinent on her part, too. If it happened to me I think I’d be speechless for the rest of my life.
“I love him,” she added. That simple tone again; she thought this was something that was all right to say to me.
“That’s nice. So do I.” We sized each other up again.
“Mrs. Fox.” Mary put a hand on my arm, and we jumped away from each other in a hurry. The static, the awful static of her touch, it was exactly the way I imagined I’d feel if I ever brushed against an electric fence. My knees knocked together in a frenzy.
“That caused an unpleasant sensation and I won’t do it again,” said the little comedian across the room.
“Good. Well, you were about to say something. Go on.”
“I wondered if you had eaten today.”
“No, I haven’t. What’s it to you?”
“I wondered—I wondered if we could go out to dinner together. Someplace fancy. And if I could wear a nice hat.”
She wondered if we could go someplace fancy for dinner and whether she might wear a nice hat. One of mine, I suppose, since there weren’t any other hats to hand. For all her shapeliness, this wasn’t a woman I was dealing with. This wasn’t the M. I’d pictured when I’d looked over that list of things in her favour. She seemed a girl barely in her teens, mentally speaking. What if I worked on her a little, taught her a difficult attitude and sent her back to her master with it?
“I know a place,” I said. “Let me just get dressed.”
She turned her back while I dressed. Then we tried all my hats on and I got caught up in the excitement of taking someone new—a brand-new person, almost—out to do something new. She got the giggles and so did I, so loudly that I thought St. John was going to hear from all the way downstairs and come up to see what was going on. He didn’t. She decided on a hat. Then changed her mind. And changed her mind and changed her mind. Very indecisive about hats, that Mary Foxe. Maybe she’d tire of St. John and slope off somewhere. Maybe she’d vanish the moment I set foot in the restaurant and asked for a table for two. How foolish I’d look. But I was prepared to risk it. I wanted to see a smile on her face—some people make you want to see them smiling. And I like a project. I do like to have a project.
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