Thirty-three Swoons

by Martha Cooley

  “Don’t be arch.”

  “Aaaarch,” he crooned. “Lovely word.” Extending one arm in front of himself and cocking its wrist downward, he spread his thumb and fingers into an upside-down U. With two fingers of the other hand, he mimed a mincing walk-through beneath the arch.

  “Time to go, Stu,” I began.

  “Bye-bye,” he sang. “She’s evicting me—there’s a first!”

  “Quit it,” I said. “I’ve got a client coming in this afternoon to pick up a purchase I haven’t wrapped—”

  “Okay, Cammie.” Airborne, Stuart’s hands wafted downward, two large feathers settling on my head, the warm palms sliding down to embrace my ears. He leaned over and kissed me on the nose. I smelled his aftershave, a clean, subtle citrus, familiar and reassuring.

  “I was over on Seventh Avenue running some errands, passed by your shop, and there you were! Actually I was wondering if you wanted to grab lunch, but we can do it another time.”

  Stuart and I often eat lunch together. It’s a pleasant twenty-minute walk from Bedford Street, where I am, over to Washington Square, then up University Place and over to Fourth Avenue, where Stuart’s bookstore is located.

  “Soon,” I said. “Something to look forward to.”

  He gave me a clipped salute, chest thrust forward. I walked him to the door and watched him march eastward. Halfway up the block, he was still miming a soldier’s erect progress. “You look ridiculous,” I called after him. Without breaking step or turning around, he raised a hand and lowered all its fingers but the third.

  WITH CARL, the man with whom he’s lived for half as long as I’ve known him, Stuart owns Backstage Books. It’s dedicated to theater, with the best selection of plays in the city, lots of biographies and critical works, and journals of all kinds. Above the shop is Stuart and Carl’s apartment, which is nicely furbished, thanks to Carl.

  Carl’s a benign presence, consistently easygoing about my friendship with his lover. He doesn’t interest me much, though—no more, I suppose, than Sam ever interested Stuart. As for Sam’s Lila, she doesn’t interest me either. She’s thirty-seven, thirteen years younger than I am, and the difference shows: in our bodies, of course, but also in our frames of reference. To her, JFK’s the Oliver Stone film, not the memory of a gym class interrupted by a teacher shrieking the news.

  Lila doesn’t try to undermine Sam’s and my ongoing connection. I sense she realizes it won’t lead to the demise of her marriage to a man she obviously loves. Whether the feeling’s mutual is something I’m unable to evaluate. Sexual heat, compatibility—I have no idea whether any of it’s in place for Sam. Maybe none of that matters as much to him as it once did.

  I’m ongoingly grateful to Sam for making it possible for me to continue running my own show at The Fourth Wall. I’d be completely at sea in a regular job. In this I’m like my father, who never enjoyed being an employee; other people’s professional priorities simply didn’t interest him. Jordan was a perfumist, and he spent most of his time in his lab, focused on his central obsession: odors and the architecture of their molecules. He never knew what he might hit upon while he was mixing things up, and he liked it that way.

  So do I. Though I’m no artist, I’m a decent sleuth. I cater mainly to bona fide collectors, and I know the kinds of things they’re seeking. There’s nothing like my shop in New York City, or anywhere else in the country, for that matter. I don’t go in for the posters and T-shirts sold by those theater souvenir stores on Broadway. There you won’t find a letter written by Giuseppe Verdi to his neighbor in Bussetto, thanking him for several kilos of superior parmigiano. Nor could you purchase a snapshot of Maurice Ravel sitting in the back of a New York taxi in 1936, necktie askew and expression dismayed, as if he’d just caught a whiff of his own death, which did arrive, a mere twelve months later. These are the sorts of small treasures I offer.

  My job’s something like that of a theater coach, except my clients aren’t actors. They’re designers of private dramas in which props themselves are the stars. The people who come to my shop want to acquire objects other people can’t readily find: recalcitrant gems. My role is to pep-talk this variant of desire. You, I tell each of my clients, are in pursuit of something most people can’t appreciate, can’t even imagine! How many other people, I ask them, are really capable of understanding what it means to own a conductor’s baton custom-made for Arturo Toscanini, with the maestro’s initials inscribed on its tip? Or a silver cigarette case owned by Sir Laurence Olivier? Or a little stuffed rabbit that sat backstage at the Helen Hayes Theater throughout the entire run of Harvey?

  Naturally I know all the serious merchants of memorabilia in the city, and I go to all the best antiques shows and estate sales. But I also scavenge. I’ve found breathtaking surprises in streetside trash and unkempt attics and cellars. It’s not all golden, this line of work. It’s a bit like being a private investigator: loads of time goes into following up baseless rumors and barking up wrong trees. Although I’ve been at it for years, occasionally I wind up in a tricky situation. Once or twice I’ve had to defend myself against charges of theft. Infrequently but memorably, I meet a genuinely deranged individual—someone who believes he’s a famous director, or a world-class cellist, or the man who really wrote all of Edward Albee’s plays. Such encounters supply their own form of drama, reminding me that although I’m no actress, I can still play my part in the theater of the absurd.

  AFTER STUART left I spent a frustrating hour readying one of my client’s purchases for pickup. This man, an odd and very rich duck, had recently paid a hefty sum for a pair of wheels from a large wooden wagon that had appeared in the New York premiere of Brecht’s Mother Courage. As I fumbled with cardboard and packing tape, I distracted myself with a mental inventory of Eve’s apartment. What, I wondered, might Danny have been referring to when she spoke with Sam? What had she found while going through papers there?

  I pictured the cramped, dimly lit study at the rear of the apartment. This room had usually been a total mess. After Eve’s death I’d been gratefully surprised to find all her important personal and financial documents in one obvious place—an ancient metal filing cabinet beside her desk. The desk itself was a nondescript oak worktable with a couple of off-kilter drawers. Instead of a chair, Eve had used one of those miserable backless stools popular in the Seventies, the kind you tuck your legs under. The only other piece of furniture in the room was an old rocker, its cane seat pockmarked with holes into which Eve had inserted bunches of dried flowers.

  Eve hadn’t been interested in interiors. Her eye had always landed first on gardens, shrubs, trees. The only good furnishings she’d owned were several Stickley armchairs and an unusual Art Nouveau rug. These had come from the family apartment, as Eve used to call it: the place on Ninth Street in the West Village where she and I grew up.

  I spent the first eighteen years of my life in that apartment. Dan Pell—Eve’s father—and his second wife, Sarah—Eve’s stepmother—had agreed to take Jordan and me into their home after Jordan promised to cover the rent. Dan was broke, so Jordan’s offer must’ve seemed too good to refuse, even given that Dan had no idea who he was dealing with. My father and I had materialized more or less out of thin air. About our existence Dan knew nothing until we arrived from Paris, the city where Camilla Archer, née Pell—Dan’s sister—had died during childbirth. Mine, that is. I was a few months old when we landed in New York.

  DANNY SHOWED up just as I finished tidying my back office.

  I can always tell it’s her when she enters The Fourth Wall: I can smell her, faintly but distinctly. She favors Guerlain fragrances, which seem made for her. Very few twenty-five-year-olds can get away with wearing Jicky, Champs-Elysées, or the other Guerlain old-timers (which seem made for women over forty, with checkered pasts), but Danny’s one of them.

  “I’m here,” I called. “Come on back!”

  All six feet of her appeared. Though she’s large-boned and tall like Eve, Dan
ny’s never looked anything like her mother. She’s got brown eyes; Eve’s were dark blue. Danny’s long brown hair is streaked with blond highlights; Eve’s hair was short, dark, and curly.

  She gave me a little wave; I took in the flash of red fingernails and her usual silver rings. “How goes it?” she said, stepping toward me.

  “Just fine,” I said, hugging her. Her eyes were a little red, but otherwise she looked good, her color restored. The chic, pulled-together Danny, I thought, immediately suspecting this judgment was premature. “You smell super.”

  “This is a good one,” she said, giving the underside of her wrist a quick sniff before extending it toward me. “I just started wearing it. It’s a Guerlain called Lui. Mom had a bottle of it, but she didn’t like it so she gave it to me. Good thing she did—it didn’t suit her at all. You have no idea how much perfume was in her bathroom closet, Cam. Like a damn department store. The only one she ever wore was that one of your father’s—what was it called, Lune?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, there’s none of that left. I threw out the one remaining bottle, it was nearly empty. All the other stuff must’ve been gifts from her fuck-mates.” Danny’s voice thickened with sarcasm. “You’d think Mom would’ve had to label each bottle. You know, this one is Jim’s, this John’s, this George’s . . . Wouldn’t do to get them confused, would it?”

  “Cool it,” I said.

  “Oh come on. She’s dead. I can vent to my heart’s content!” Her snicker sounded forced.

  I leaned in for a close sniff of her scent. It reminded me slightly of Chanel No. 5. Both fragrances have the same bottom notes of iris and vanilla, but a woody, shadowy underlay in the Guerlain distinguishes it from its famous sister. On Danny, I could detect a hint of fern.

  I have a decent nose, though I find certain scents hard to recollect. The best perfumes can’t easily be called to mind. One of my father’s—Lune, my favorite as well as Eve’s—was maddeningly elusive. To this day I can summon only its initial notes, not the delicate medley arising hours after its application. Lune was the olfactory equivalent of moonlight dappling the surface of water, apparently serene, yet really not.

  “Have a seat,” I said, releasing Danny’s wrist.

  Taking the chair opposite mine, she dropped her leather backpack on the floor and sat in silence, staring downward. When she was in high school, she’d sometimes done the same thing: gaze vacantly at her knees, her hands clasped between them.

  “How’s work going?” I said.

  “Busy. Frustrating. In addition to everything else, today I was asked to design the cover of a new art book. Sam would hate it! Tacky photos of fat old people in casinos. Like bad Weegee.” She shook her head. “Still, it’s a gig. Work’s basically fine,” she ended.

  “Keeps you out of trouble,” I offered.

  She frowned a little—whether in response to my platitudinous remark or to something else, I couldn’t tell. We sat in further silence.

  “Care to tell me why you’re here?” I asked at last.

  MY DIRECTNESS seemed to rouse her. Training her gaze on me, she said steadily, “I’ve been thinking about my father. About his relationship with my mother. He wasn’t in the picture for very long, was he?”

  The question was completely unexpected. As a child Danny had occasionally asked about her father, but her interest in him had never been sustained. During her high school years she’d referred to him as the garden boy, in reference to the fact that Eve had said she met him on a landscaping job. Otherwise Eve had rarely spoken of him. He’d died in a hospital, of a freak infection, when Danny was a toddler.

  “No,” I said, “he wasn’t. In fact, I think you’d just turned three when he—”

  “I’m not referring to his dying,” she broke in. “I’m talking about how Mom didn’t want him around. Do you know why?”

  “Nope.”

  She frowned. Clearly, monosyllabic answers weren’t going to cut it. “Your mother didn’t normally acquaint me with her reasons for doing things,” I added.

  Danny nodded, but I could tell she wasn’t satisfied. She’d been asking many questions about Eve since her death, seeking, I supposed, to weave my perceptions into her own, and thus render the whole more graspable. I’d been responding to her inquiries as vaguely as possible. It wouldn’t be right, I’d decided, to off-load my own messy feelings onto her. I’d kept them to myself while Eve was alive, so why discharge them now? Yet Danny was continuing to press me. Occasionally our dialogue felt like a subtle tug-of-war.

  “When your mother became pregnant,” I continued, “she hadn’t known Billy for more than a few months. She was living upstate. But you know that already.”

  “Billy Deveare,” said Danny. “What kind of a name is Deveare?”

  “Got me,” I said. “Could be British, could be French . . .”

  “She ever describe him to you in any detail?”

  “No.”

  She twisted one of her rings, pried it off her finger, pushed it back on. “What was it about him that made Mom not want to have him around?”

  I shrugged. “As I said, she didn’t talk about it—not with me, anyway. You’re not actually surprised to hear me say that, are you?”

  “Mom was like that with everyone,” she replied tersely, as though detecting in my question a case of special pleading. “Do you know if Billy wanted her to keep the baby?”

  “Eve never said. She wasn’t in love with him, though. That’s the impression I got, anyway. I don’t think she cared what Billy thought.”

  Danny tugged her ponytail loose from its elastic band, gave it a shake, and re-banded it. I knew these repeated-motion tics. When she was very young, she used to perform them frequently, sometimes as a prelude to a tantrum. I half-expected one now, though her tone remained calm as she asked, “Anything else you remember?”

  I THOUGHT for several moments.

  “I don’t think Eve disliked Billy—she just didn’t want to see him after you were born. I guess he went along with that.” The birth itself had gone smoothly, according to Eve; within a matter of weeks, she’d found a babysitter and returned to her job as a landscaper. “When your grandfather got sick, your mother had to move back to the city.”

  Whatever Eve’s plans might have been up to that point, they’d been altered in 1974 by her father’s illness. Danny was six months old when Dan was diagnosed with advanced emphysema. Sarah, who’d grown infirm physically and mentally, was completely unable to handle him. My father wasn’t around; he’d bought a small house in New Jersey in 1970 and seldom came into Manhattan.

  I remembered phoning Eve to relay the information about Dan. She and her parents had barely spoken for a number of years. My news must have surprised her, yet she betrayed nothing of what she was feeling. Within a week she’d shown up in New York and begun making arrangements for her parents’ care. I hadn’t been prepared for such bustling efficiency. My memories were of a headstrong teenager with a messy bedroom.

  During Dan’s illness, Eve and Danny stayed with friends in a walk-up in the Bowery. They came to the West Village only when Eve needed to be at the family apartment. Her tousled hair restrained by a bright silk scarf, Eve moved with the easy assurance of a woman who took the swell of her hips for granted. She dressed casually yet fashionably, favoring snug jeans, V-neck shirts, and boots with high heels.

  Eve had struck me as an assured yet oddly detached parent. She seemed not to have succumbed to that helpless infatuation most new mothers experience. Right from the start, she was glad to accept my babysitting offers whenever I made them. I was twenty-five and single, with little but work—at an antiques shop—to occupy me. It was fine by me to pick Danny up on a Sunday morning, take her for a stroll or over to my place on Cornelia Street, and return her later in the day. I enjoyed being with her. She was an unfussy baby.

  Not until several years later did I realize that Eve had begun collecting, on those days I freed up for her, a set of partners on
whom she could rely, men for whom sex had as much weight as a bubble. Sex had always been a kind of remedy for Eve, and if her child had to be made to disappear regularly so she could obtain it, that was a cost she’d pay.

  Dan died about eight weeks after Eve’s arrival. After his death Sarah was installed in a nursing home. She’d gone willingly, relieved to drop the pretense of family unity now that her husband was gone. At that point I’d expected my cousin to head back upstate, but Eve surprised me by announcing she’d decided to stay in the city for good. She’d found a cheap rental, she said, and was planning on opening a gardening shop in Chelsea. She was coming home.

  IT WAS time for me to quit shuffling my deck of memory cards. Danny awaited some sort of statement about Billy Deveare.

  “If you want me to tell you what kind of man your father was, I can’t,” I said. “Honestly, I think he was just some guy who impregnated your mother. Since Billy hadn’t meant much to her in the first place, she must’ve thought it’d be a mistake to give him a role in raising you.”

  “Apparently.” Danny shifted sharply in her seat, recrossing her legs. Her fingers returned to her hair, worrying its elastic band. “But who the hell knows what my mother really wanted?” She redid her ponytail, the movements of her hands practiced and aggressive. “You ever meet anyone—anyone—more clueless about herself than Mom was?” The elastic band fell into place with a short, loud snap.

  “Well, look,” I said. “Eve did know she wanted a kid. She could have terminated her pregnancy, right?”

  I’d hit a nerve. “Oh, fuck her wanting me,” Danny said. Turning her head slightly to indicate that I wasn’t to involve myself, she wiped her eyes with the back of one hand. Then she fumbled around in her backpack.

  “I’ve got something for you.” She drew forth a Polaroid snapshot. “My parents,” she said, handing it to me.