Flannery had loved Anne truly. And truthfully. She had seen Anne clearly, not covered with the reflective glitter a person acquires if you view them in your smitten, solipsistic state, thinking with excitement, She is just like me! Rather, Flannery had that other gift love can give — the capacity to perceive your loved one’s curves and chasms, her scars and smoothnesses, an idea of where her secrets are stored and the calm certainty that you should leave them alone. She has her reasons for keeping them hidden.
Flannery had had years, since, to think. About Anne and herself; but also about Anne and Jasper. What at first fell on Flannery like a blow, one that left bruising and softness for months after, finally came to seem more like a slap — the restorative, snap-out-of-it slap, to get someone out of a dream state — that allows your head to clear and you to see what is actually what. Anne had wised Flannery up with that sudden break, and forced her to understand. Anne adored Jasper. The fact of their love became an element Flannery could think of with equanimity, and eventually even a peculiar mixture of relief, and awe. They loved each other. They had that!
When Flannery ran into the couple that time in Soho, she saw the ease and grace in the way Anne’s neat round shoulder (how Flannery remembered that delicious shoulder — biting it, kissing it) nestled against the tall man’s chest. How his arm folded around the petite Anne with a throat-catching I’ve got you gesture. How free they were. Not for him the rigid She’s mine, you can’t have her. Flannery was struck by that vision. Anne was alight and vibrant as she always had been, and animated by the certainty of Jasper’s affection, which poured from his face, palpable as light from the sky. Later, when she read The Awakening of Influence, Flannery found in the last pages the demure, devoted acknowledgment: ‘For Jasper Elliott, without whom there would have been no awakening, and little influence. This book is, like its author, dedicated to him.’
Flannery never forgot this. Anne Arden, a woman who meant more to Flannery than Flannery felt she could ever have meant to Anne, had found the person she was intended for; so Flannery need not be bitter, and never was. Anne loved Jasper, and was loved. What more could you want for someone who mattered to you? Motherhood only confirmed the principle for Flannery. You wanted the people you loved to be happy, whether it had anything to do with you or not.
It was comforting, finally. By the time twenty or so years had passed since the emotional tumult of her passion for Anne, all Flannery ever gained from thinking of Anne and Jasper together was solace. It soothed her on a rough night, when she found the body next to her foreign, and growing unfriendly, to think of that couple. The way mysterious medications can calm your stomach when you are traveling in lurching, abrupt movements over rough and nauseating seas.
31
How many loves in a lifetime? One? Three? None? Nine?
Flannery was pretty sure she knew her number.
Had she been writing her own story forward, at eighteen, imaginative Flannery might have told it differently. After her melodramatic heartbreak in New Mexico, the younger woman picked herself up again and grew, wiser, into her adult self. That great first passion for Anne felt at the time exceptional, but perhaps it was just her inexperience which gave that impression. Anne had taught Flannery how to be in love, and Flannery could take this gift, as if it were a gold band around her wrist or ankle, and wear it throughout her romantic future.
It had not gone that way, though. Flannery’s love for Anne turned out to be neither a blueprint nor a rough draft; it was not a mold from which she cast other later loves.
What Flannery felt for Anne, and had with Anne, was unique. A one-off, as her old English friend would have said. A private language, a never rediscovered country. All right — a jeweled, irreproducible masterpiece.
So. One. That had been Flannery’s allotment of deep, character-altering romantic loves. It was enough, Flannery Jansen felt in her surprising, comfortable house in San Francisco, where a talented man she had married lay largely beside her, breathing heavily as he dreamed. She tended this man, she gave her body to him and her affection, she received his kindnesses and his insults, and together they built something — an installation, a collaborative piece, a bond. That beautiful, beloved child. All in his space, of course. Where Flannery was one of the many assistants, in a sense, working toward Charles’s overarching concept. Their love was a project, an endeavor, and it had not seeped down into Flannery’s heart to change the nature of who she was. Only one person had ever done that.
It had been enough. One was a perfectly good and fair number.
Yes, hers was far in the past. So long ago you might imagine the memories had become sun-warped, like CD cases used to when you left them out on the hot dashboard of your car. But, no. The elements were still there, pictures, sound, sensations. The unforgotten words that had gone back and forth between the two women during that half year long ago, about novels and olive oil, Paris and palm reading, lipstick and literature. The shape of Anne’s lips, and how it felt to kiss them. The hope. The heights. The fall.
One was plenty.
32
Charles did not know about Anne.
That is, Flannery had told him about her, a few times in recent years, but it had not stuck. This was not surprising. Charles only had room for so many of Flannery’s stories in his mind, after which they spilled and fell out of it, like Lego pieces from the crate in Willa’s room. Much of Charles’s squarish head was crowded with his own great stories, thoughts about his work, memories of romantic conquests, and probably furtive desires for more in the future. Apart from a few vivid landmarks, the finer details of Flannery’s past were blurry to him, smears out of a train window.
Mainly he knew about Adele. She was the memorable figure — tall, fair, full-lipped, with a sharp humor and double-jointed hands — not least because she was such a colorful, lusty character in Flannery’s book. Flannery had described her racily and well.
Also, Charles had met Adele when she passed through San Francisco with her partner and paid the married couple and their little girl a visit. Willa was a year old and unusually ornery on that particular day, wailing and hard to settle, so the stop was brief — though that might have had as much to do with Charles’s unnerving demeanor.
‘You must be Maddie!’ he had brass-laughed to Adele on opening the heavy front door to her. Maddie was the name Flannery chose for her girlfriend in the book, to spare some morsel of Addie’s privacy, though for the wide circle of people who knew the couple it did no such thing. The memoir was still a delicate subject between the two women, another note Charles had not taken in, apparently. As soon as the child had been displayed and admired, Flannery took Willa aside to calm her, and Charles launched into a few of his favorite scenes from A Visit to Don Lennart, as if Adele were a stand-up comedian and he was paying homage by playing her best bits.
‘I loved that night when you guys got drunk and started singing Abba songs at the bar,’ Charles chuckled. ‘And told the Australian tourists you were whatshername’s daughters.’
‘Agnetha Fältskog,’ Adele supplied. ‘The blond one, who was married to Björn.’ (‘How did you remember her name?’ Flannery had asked Addie at the time, which she pretended to find offensive. Addie punched Flannery’s arm, kind of hard, and whispered, ‘She’s our mother. How could I forget it?’)
‘Dancing Queen . . .’ Charles crooned, doing a brief, lamentable shimmy. ‘I bet everyone at the bar loved you.’ Flannery could see that Charles’s trying too hard, uncharacteristically, was related to his desire, touching in its way, to prove his affability to his wife’s former girlfriend. ‘Also, the time you dressed like a man so you two would look more like a straight couple.’ If Flannery had not been holding Willa, she would have made that cut-off gesture to stop him talking, though it might not have worked. ‘So you’d be safer. I’d love to have seen that. Flannery calling you Albert for the whole long bus ride.’
‘Good times,’ Adele deadpanned, shooting a look at Flannery, and then both women contrived to bring Willa back to center stage, to change the subject, and her partner helped shift the focus from Adele.
A Visit to Don Lennart had broken Flannery open as a writer, lifted her career up to improbable elevations, forcing a fundamentally shy person into an uncomfortably exposed position. The book’s success also meant that many of Flannery’s recollections ceased to be her own, transformed both by being shared with a large public and by the very process of her writing — the slight altering of timings or details to make them work better in print. The narrative was tight, funny, and coherent, and the colorings Flannery gave her experiences overlaid the originals, the way a restorer makes a Renaissance masterpiece brighter with modern colors. Addie became Maddie, and Flannery, playing an exaggerated version of herself, was alternately brave and cautious, sophisticated and naive, playful and withdrawn. She did not make herself a hero, which was central to the book’s charm.
Nowhere in those pages was Anne. Flannery’s telling Charles about her first lover from her Yale days had been off the record, and Anne had therefore faded from his mind. No wonder Charles did not remember her. Unlike Adele, or Maddie, Anne had never been a bestseller.
33
She sent him the link.
There were always ways of half telling important facts to the person you lived with. Classic strategies would never go out of style: mumbling, imparting information when the other was clearly distracted, mentioning a controversial plan while out with other people in order to quell your partner’s initial hostile reaction. Mobile phones multiplied the opportunities for mis-communication, running as they did on the fractional attention their owners tended to pay to them. The effect could be achieved through simple lies — Damnit! I’m going into a dead zone ; That email must have gone into my spam filter — or diversionary tactics like the one Flannery used, in this case. She sent Charles a link at the end of an email, suspecting he would not find the time to click on it.
So, I want to try to go to this conference in October. I think it would be a great place for me to ‘network’ and connect again with other writers. As you can see from the link they’ve got some great people coming . . .
Flannery’s experience of Charles was that at unpredictable points he would recall, as a person might a pleasant vacation taken some years earlier, his enjoyment of Flannery’s status as a well-regarded, if minor, author. If the job of Charles’s wife primarily involved sexual availability, attentive audience, childcare and logistical support, nonetheless Flannery’s writing, when recalled, could be a kind of reputation-burnishing extra (his reputation, that was), like having a nanny who spoke Mandarin, or a personal chef who made documentaries.
Flannery tried him one night, when they went out to a new restaurant on the fringes of Hayes Valley. It was one of the new rustically designed joints with paint-peeling walls and tables made from wood reclaimed from some Midwestern barn, and a name that meant ‘cupboard’ or ‘pantry’ in Italian (Flannery didn’t catch which). The menu featured hemp powder and garbanzo dust, squid ink reduction and loquat foam. Flannery always endeavored to keep her palate up to date, but that night she prepared to eat a lot of bread. She dipped a wedge of pain de campagne into a saucer of olive oil whose deep green made her think of the swoon-inducing color of Anne’s eyes.
Charles, in his element, launched into one of his lengthy chats with their server, a honey-skinned beauty named Paola who had plenty to say about ingredients and provenance, and with whom, Flannery guessed, Charles might happily have lapped up some loquat foam, if given the opportunity. When he finally ran out of questions Paola retreated, with a fake chuckle (or, who knew? Perhaps it was sincere) at Charles’s parting joke.
‘Did you see that link I sent you to the writers’ conference?’ Charles was smiling, but tablewards, savoring the aftertaste of his own wit. ‘They’ve got some good people coming.’
Her husband’s face, flushed slightly from a cocktail that had citrus muddled with an aperitif Flannery had never heard of, remained benevolent.
‘Definitely,’ he answered. Ambiguously. He popped an amuse bouche into his mouth. ‘Wow! That’s fantastic.’
‘My old TA is going to be there,’ Flannery made herself add. ‘I think I’ve told you about her. Anne Arden? She wrote this important book called The Awakening of Influence. Anyway, she teaches at NYU now.’
‘Huh!’ Charles said, looking around the restaurant to see if he recognized any of the other diners. One of Charles’s many arts was appearing to absorb what a person was telling him, while also evidently distracted. Though you could never tell how deep the distraction: Charles might accurately quote back a fact or line you thought he had not taken in; or deny having been told a key detail you were sure you had given him. It was perhaps his way of playing the miscommunication game, too.
They were brought small pewter plates, each with a sculptured pile of microgreens scattered with flavor nuggets of a fried unknown crustacean.
‘I swear,’ Charles said, examining the tiny pan-fried being between his curious fingers, ‘these restaurants must have in-house naturalists, whose job is to scour the ocean for new creatures we can eat.’
‘And botanists,’ Flannery agreed, ‘digging up heritage wheats and ancient grains.’ She pressed on: ‘So, I’d only have to be gone five or six days. Alicia Delgado is happy to teach the one class I’d miss. I did her a favor last semester.’
‘Right.’ Charles grimaced in response to the strange food’s flavor. That, or this subject, did not entirely please him. ‘And what are you going to do about Willa?’
Flannery looked levelly at her husband. A few tart remarks came to mind, something like It is more a question of what I’m going to do about you, but she smothered them.
‘I thought,’ she said slowly, grinding a sea creature between her molars, ‘that you might be able to handle Willa. It will be less than a week. You could have some father–daughter time together.’
‘Listen, I’d love to.’ The man was nothing but amiable, as everyone around them would hear, especially as he spoke at volume. ‘But I’ve got to be in the studio dawn to dusk, like I told you. For Detroit.’
Flannery took a deep breath, but before she could exhale, he continued.
‘Here’s an idea,’ he said, after sampling and then assenting to the sommelier’s proffered bottle of pinot bianco. ‘Why not take Willa with you? She could have a little adventure. See her mother’s alma mater. The maternal alma mater.’
The pun pleased him.
‘I don’t think I’d be able to participate in a conference with Willa there. The sessions go on for half the day.’ Though there was a passing sweetness in the idea of showing her daughter those streets, that place, one day. ‘It’s a six-hour flight. She’d miss school. It would be expensive, then when I got there I’d have to find a babysitter.’
Charles shrug-nodded, then sipped his drink with one hand while, with his other, he took out his phone and started flicking his thumb over its surface. ‘Women Write the World, eh?’ he said skeptically. ‘It looks more like New York, to me. New Yorkers always think they’re the world.’
‘I think that’s why they want me. In this context I’m diversity. I’m the West.’
‘I don’t know — Times columnists, a poet,’ Charles continued to read, as their plates were cleared. ‘It sounds kind of academic. Andi Chatterjee is funny, she’d be great, but I don’t see who else is that big a name on this list.’ He grinned at her, in a way meant to be winning. ‘Present company excluded, of course.’
‘Ellen Kessler’s work is very important,’ asserted Flannery, who had been intending for years to read it. ‘And Lisa Sahel Jefferson is the Poet Laureate.’
‘OK.’
‘I just think it’s important, you know, for me to stay connected. The way it is for you.’ She allowed a beat.
‘I’d like to go.’
Her mother, of course. That would be the answer. Flannery would ask her mother to help. That is what it came down to in the end. Mothers and daughters.
‘Sure, sure. Andi Chatterjee. Who knows? Maybe you’ll get your big break in TV, if you talk to her. The small screen, at last!’
‘Maybe so,’ Flannery said, weighing whether Charles was mocking her. ‘Though my heart, you know, is always going to be with the printed page.’
A platter of roasted waterfowl descended to the center of their table. It nestled on a bed of root vegetables and something that looked a lot like seaweed.
‘Leg or breast?’ Charles offered Flannery chivalrously, holding a fork and spoon above the meat. ‘Because you know me.’ He winked at her. ‘I like both.’
34
Flannery’s mother agreed to step in to make the trip work.
‘Though — will Charles mind my being here?’ Laura asked.
They sat together over cups of tea at the broad marble table, while Willa played in her room. Flannery could never get past the sensation that her mother, who appeared ordinary-sized in her single-story ranch home on the Peninsula, always seemed diminished in this house of Charles’s, on which Flannery herself had made only a faint impression. Charles filled the space with his material and immaterial presence: his art on the walls, his expensive modernist furniture, the industrial bookshelves, the complexly mastered lighting; and his music, keyed into the house system, his sensibility in the air. When Flannery and her mother were alone at this vast, dramatic table she felt as though they were two dolls placed in an outsized dwelling, meant for different toys.
‘I’m guessing you’ll hardly see Charles,’ Flannery said. ‘He has a lot of work to do, a big piece for the Detroit Institute of Arts.’ Passing this along, Flannery heard the pride in her own voice. So there was that — the ego burnishing could go the other way, Flannery admitted to herself.
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