‘No, not actually loud, just loud, in making its point.’
‘Oh.’ Flannery laughed. ‘Yeah, that sounds right. Charles is loud, and he does like to make his point.’ She sighed, and Anne could see that one of the complicated emotions traveling across Flannery’s face was, actually, pride. And why not? Marshall was successful, and his work was interesting (more so, in her view, than giant balloon animal sculptures, or divided shark tanks). ‘He’s finishing a piece right now for the Detroit Institute of Arts. Your old city.’
‘Yes. I know.’ They were bound to reach this point eventually. Anne braced herself. ‘My sister works there.’
‘In Detroit?’
‘At the DIA.’
‘Patricia — your sister — works at the DIA? You’re kidding, right?’
‘I’m not. She does.’
‘Jesus. Patricia Arden?’
‘Hanes. Her married name.’
‘Patricia Hanes is your sister? Jesus Christ. I can’t believe it.’
Anne gave her lover’s shoulders a light shake. ‘It’s all right, Flannery. Don’t panic.’
‘It isn’t all right. They’re having . . . issues with each other, aren’t they? Fuck.’ She exhaled, a sharp snort of disbelief. ‘I bet you’ve heard some stories about Charles.’
‘I have,’ Anne admitted. ‘Occasionally, in the past month or two.’
‘Christ.’
Anne lay on her side, and turned Flannery’s head toward her; then held Flannery’s cheeks in her own cupped hands. ‘Flannery. There’s no point in invoking the deity. He has nothing to do with it.’ Flannery’s eyes were burning into Anne’s with some kind of fear, or embarrassment — or perhaps guilt. ‘Why does it matter?’
‘He just . . .’ Flannery was agitated. ‘Charles manages to be everywhere. Even here! Even with you. There’s no getting away from him.’
‘I don’t think he’s actually here.’ Anne made a jokey show of looking under the covers. ‘Unless he’s being very, very quiet.’
‘You understand what I mean.’
‘OK. All right. But he’s part of you. Of course he’s here.’ Anne moved her fingers along Flannery’s lean arm. To calm her — and to feel her, too. There was strength there. She was reminding them both.
‘I didn’t come all this way to talk about Charles,’ Flannery said, though she seemed to hear the petulant note in her own voice. She allowed the calming to work; her face softened. ‘I came out here, sweetheart . . . to see you.’ Flannery moved to pull Anne closer again, but Anne, for a moment, resisted. She felt certain that this attempt at hiding was not one to indulge.
‘Flannery, love.’ For a moment Anne felt older again. The shower-how. The longer-traveled. ‘Both are possible. You may have come all this way to see me.’ She kissed that bonnie girl on either fair cheek, three times, as the Dutch do, in greeting or farewell. ‘But you may also have to talk about your husband.’
33
Flannery had thought of Charles. Of course. If you had a husband, however unlikely or unimagined he might be, however often you argued, with whatever lack of recovery after, you did not forget him, just because you were thousands of miles away and in the arms of a woman you had always, impossibly, loved.
Flannery had turned her phone off so there would be no vibrating news or queries from California, but she knew that a reckoning lay ahead. Inside, and out. Even before the horrific coincidence of Anne’s sister knowing Charles, Flannery had the sense of his being there in New Haven, with her. They were tied together. She realized that her sulky child-like blurt — There’s no getting away from him — was not only true, but was supposed to be true. It would be wrong to fault Charles for that.
‘Marriage.’ Flannery stated the word, as though she could just deploy it and it would do all the work for her: of explan-ation, excuse, illustration. Celebration. Disappointment. ‘Well . . . you know.’
‘I don’t.’
‘No, I just mean . . .’ Flannery winced, feeling the familiar potential for tactlessness. ‘With Jasper, I’m guessing, you –’
‘We never married.’
Oh.
‘Oh.’ That stopped her. ‘OK. I guess I thought . . .’
Anne had never been one to fill up empty conversational spaces, even, or especially, awkward ones. Flannery had to make the effort. Find the words. Complete her own sentence.
‘Well. That makes sense to me, actually.’ Flannery resolved not to recede into one of her mumbling apologies. Not tonight. ‘Maybe marriage is only for people who need the paperwork. The documents. Whereas you and Jasper’ — this was risky, no question — ‘didn’t.’
Anne declined to respond to this speculation, asking instead, ‘Is that why you and Charles married?’
It was one way to tell the story — I got married because I was pregnant — and because familiar, it was an easy narrative to hear, but a fuller truth was that Flannery herself had wanted documents, paperwork, binding. She could try to explain this, but Anne had never previously been very interested in Flannery’s personal history, and Flannery’s instinct at this late hour was that the evening, with all it already carried, could not additionally bear the weight of her exploring the way her parents’ marriageless state might have led by a winding route to her own possibly reckless adoption of that legal status, that resolution, for herself.
It would be best to keep it simple.
‘Yes,’ Flannery said. ‘Because of Willa.’
Anne found the scar low on Flannery’s belly and moved her index finger along it, without commentary. This was where Flannery had been opened for Willa to emerge into the world, on the long night of Willa’s birth. Charles had carried the infant first, as Flannery lay weakly on the operating table. Exhausted. And joyful.
Until now, Charles had been the only soul to know this altered body of Flannery’s: at thirty-eight, having given birth to Willa, breastfed the baby for a year, worn herself out for several sleepless years over her care. Softer in places than she had been, more worn than she had been, more whole than she had been.
‘Charles changed me,’ Flannery acknowledged. Tears came to her eyes. ‘And I did love him, too. Of course. Getting married wasn’t just a . . . transaction.’
Anne nodded. ‘You still do.’
Flannery pursed her lips, and almost laughed. ‘All right, professor,’ she sniffed, brushing the salt from her eyes. ‘Yes. I do. He can be awful. He can be charming. I don’t need to tell you all the details . . . But yes. Charles is under my skin. We share flesh and blood. It’s . . . I don’t know. Biology, for God’s sake. Oh, you don’t want me mentioning God. OK, then. It’s life. We made a life together.’
‘Right.’ Anne had the expression of someone who has led the student to the anticipated endpoint. But her face was in shadow, and that could only be cast by her grief for Jasper.
Flannery moved impulsively toward Anne and embraced her. She held her very close in this quiet room, where they had already explored so much together; and this press now was not a sexual one but simply the seize of love she felt toward Anne, knowing that she was in pain, or had been. It was not, Flannery knew, a pain that she could heal, or solve.
‘He and I . . . we’re so different from you and Jasper.’ How to put her thoughts into words? Flannery and Charles had touched each other, yes, but they did not reach each other. Anne and Jasper had always had a deeper connection. Hearts and minds aligned.
‘How can you be so sure?’ Anne’s voice was low. ‘You didn’t know Jasper, or us together.’
‘I met him once or twice. In Albuquerque, let’s not forget.’ Flannery grimaced. ‘But more than that — through you I knew him. It was as though he was always with you. I felt it.’ Flannery knew she was walking a high wire here.
A silence stretched between them, and Flannery feared mightily that she had overreached, trod heavily on
her idol’s beloved toes. She knew better now than to try to amplify or fix what she had already said. She was capable of keeping quiet, too. At last, Anne spoke.
‘Don’t idealize, Flannery. It’s a bad habit for a writer. Jasper and I . . . we were just a couple. Like anyone.’ Anne took a breath, held it, then exhaled slowly. ‘It was a beautiful system that we had, together. Then –’ she opened her hands, as if releasing a bird, or to reveal a vanishing — ‘it stopped.’
Flannery didn’t answer. Was that all Anne and Jasper had been? There was no way to explain to Anne the grief this would cause Flannery, to lose the image she had held in her own darkness with Charles, of Anne and Jasper having created something uniquely pure and enduring. A different love. A truer one.
What picture would keep Flannery company now?
34
‘I’m going to leave in a little while,’ Anne said.
‘You are? I’m sorry . . .’ Flannery was bereft and distraught, until she felt the tender press of Anne’s kiss. Their lips together spoke so much. Named this. Whatever it might be. Flannery was stirred again, and could imagine diving back in, but Anne pulled back slightly, brushed her fingers over Flannery’s mouth.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ she hushed. ‘It’s not the scandal it was, but I still think it best that I not be seen stepping out of the hotel with you in the morning.’
‘Oh, I agree.’
‘Besides’ — Anne raised a suggestive brow — ‘I have to introduce you.’
‘To whom?’ Flannery asked sleepily. Fatigue was sneaking up on her.
‘To the world, babe. The one you’re writing. Tomorrow evening. Remember?’
‘Oh, that.’ Flannery brought her hand to her forehead. ‘Them.’
‘I’m not even sure where to start.’ Anne sized Flannery up. ‘What are you — a memoirist, or a novelist?’
Flannery shrugged in mock apology. ‘I guess I’m . . . undeclared.’
Anne issued a short laugh. It was an old joke between them, from the days of Flannery’s undergraduate quandaries over her major. The two women had from the start enjoyed seeing many sides of any given word.
‘Actually, I’m precisely nothing right now. I haven’t been writing at all. It’s’ — Flannery tried to chuckle, as if to undercut what she said next — ‘incredibly depressing. I don’t even know what I’m going to read from, believe it or not. I don’t have anything new.’
‘Nothing? Really?’
‘Just scraps. Ideas. Hardly anything written down. I don’t have the time . . . or, you know, the heart.’ The last word was all but inaudible.
‘Well, tell me one or two of your ideas,’ Anne said. ‘Talk.’ And, propped up on her elbows, she kept her gaze steadily on Flannery, until Flannery submitted.
‘At some point I thought about writing for kids. Because of Willa, obviously.’ She shrugged sheepishly. ‘You probably think that’s a stupid idea.’
‘Listen — it’s not as though I think of children as some lesser form of being, you know.’ Anne’s voice was tart, her manner feisty. ‘They’re people. They read. I once knew a child who liked to be read to from How to Cook a Wolf.’
‘Really?’ What was Flannery questioning, though — that there was such a child, who appreciated M.F.K. Fisher; or that Anne might know her, or him?
‘Yes. He kept hoping, I think, that the book would turn into a horror story, or possibly an adventure, rather than a book about food. Carry on. What else?’
‘Um. A couple of years ago I started writing this surreal, bitter story about a woman trapped in a royal family, in some unnamed European country.’
‘That’s unexpected.’
‘Yeah. It turns out I couldn’t pull it off. It ran out of steam.’
‘There’s no shame in that.’
‘No, but there’s no manuscript in it either.’ Flannery hesitated. ‘All right, last one.’ She took a breath. ‘Something in the marital comedy line.’
‘Hmm.’ Anne’s skepticism was unmistakable.
‘But dark,’ Flannery clarified. ‘Edgy. Otherwise, it will just be whining.’
‘Dark how?’
‘Murder!’ Flannery exclaimed with delight. ‘It involves murder.’ She was sounding more confident now. ‘I have a title.’
‘Yes?’
‘Reader, I Murdered Him.’
Anne did laugh. Flannery had forgotten how thrilling it was to make her laugh.
‘Here’s how it works. The narrator confesses to the murder in the first chapter, but then it turns out that so many people want to kill the guy — his studio assistant, his dealer at the gallery — that slowly doubt is planted in your mind as to who really did the deed.’
‘So the victim is, as it happens, an artist?’
There was a pause, in the air of the small hours. ‘Well,’ Flannery conceded. ‘I might end up changing that.’ Her voice had humor in it. ‘Anyway, all of this is in my head. None of it is on paper. I have nothing new on paper.’
‘So read something old.’
‘I’ll have to. I’ll probably just read from Don Lennart. I can practically recite passages in my sleep. It’s a crowd-pleaser, leaves ’em laughing, which is good.’
‘The novel you wrote is better.’
Flannery propped herself up with sudden alertness. Someone — a smart person and an incomparably sharp reader, who loved Flannery (yes, these few hours had convinced her of that) — was speaking about her work.
‘Do you think so?’ Flannery asked.
‘Oh, Flannery. Of course it is. You know that. It’s sad and strange and gorgeous. Don Lennart is very good; but the novel is better.’
‘The publishers didn’t think so. It didn’t sell half as many copies. They weren’t pleased.’
‘Willa Cather won the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, which became a national bestseller. It’s one of her worst novels.’ Anne shook her head. ‘Don’t make me start giving a Cather lecture in the middle of the night! There is an outer reality and an inner reality, and you know the difference.’
What calmness you felt within, when someone named a truth about yourself, one that you had scarcely admitted.
‘Lately, I haven’t always known,’ Flannery said softly. ‘But when you say that, I know you’re right.’
‘Don’t forget that. Don’t lose that compass,’ Anne instructed her sternly. ‘I mean it: don’t. If you do, you’re lost.’
‘You’re right,’ Flannery said, wondering as she said it if it were already too late for her to make her way back.
35
A fitful dream about hands and mouths in an orange light. Her body being touched. That shattering relief.
A snowfall in a memory-blurred landscape; it might have been Michigan. Notes cascading diagonally across contrasting keys.
The half-awake jolt of a reminder, from the business department of Anne’s brain, that she must send in a recommendation for one of her students seeking a fellowship. A recollection of Steven Marovic’s Yugoslav invitation, and the seeding of a new bed of ideas. Such were the workings of Anne’s predawn mind, after her dark walk back to her solitary suite, and a brief patch of sleep.
And the sensation of sore muscles, a salty aftertaste in her mouth, and a deep new vibration within her, or possibly the quieting of an old one. The body’s bashful admission that it has changed, in being seen and held again by someone who loves you.
Someone you love.
It went both ways. Anne knew this now.
She loved Flannery. The heat of her humor, the salt of her intelligence, that golden fall of her hair; the life in her eyes and smile and how they riffed off one another. Her gentle voice, speaking softly and calling loudly, that mad paradox that was and always had been Flannery, timid and bold, apologetic and self-deprecating yet also knowing better than anyone what she truly had to o
ffer a person about whom she was passionate. The ballad of Flannery’s beautiful body, the deep breathless lyric of herself inside, that wet, untranslatable center of her.
Anne loved her.
Yet the revelation need not disrupt any existing order. It was a discovery of something previously concealed, like one of Kepler’s geometric harmonies, an aesthetically pleasing arrangement of the constellations. It had always been there. It served no cosmic purpose, was simply a good in itself.
The love between these two women did not refer to anything outside itself. Anne believed this: that the connection between her and Flannery had no bearing on Anne’s relationship with Jasper. It never had. She did not fall in love with Flannery out of reaction against him, nor return to Jasper out of weariness with this very dear, and then very young, girl. If Anne loved Flannery now and still, it was not out of missing the Jasper who had left her, a man changed from the one she loved for twenty years. This love, here, came from Anne stepping forward into a future, finally. Stepping into this river, which was never the same twice. Jasper had for years shaped Anne’s days, her travels, her work, her home. But Flannery also, Anne knew, having seen and held her again; Flannery was in her bones.
When would they see each other again? Five o’clock that morning had no answer to that question, though even sleep deprived, Anne knew this hunger within her would not just be forgotten, or stashed on a far-off shelf. Another twenty years must not pass. Not five, not two. The two women would have to braid their paths together more often. Anne planned to know Flannery in her forties, as her daughter grew older and became more of a companion to her, and the younger woman made whatever peace she needed to with her marital situation. When next they met, Flannery would be bolder, less beaten down. Might Charles Marshall learn about the women’s university tryst? Anne had the sense the information would not prove integral to whatever decision Flannery and Charles reached.
Also, Anne wanted an encounter after Flannery had produced another book from her depths, not the shallows. She would do it. Anne could feel Flannery’s heart fluttering, eager to escape — Anne had almost held it, it seemed, beating there in her palms as she and Flannery opened up one another. Once that heart was freed, Flannery would find her way back to her nimble, expressive fingers and the mind that animated them. All that was stored in her would be let loose on the page, and if that happened, she could not fail. Anne hoped to be able to embrace Flannery when that happened; to lie alongside her, go to those dark, wet places with her, celebrate her midnight self.
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