Cascade

by Maryanne O'Hara

  Dez shrank back against the wall. It wasn’t even eight thirty. What kind of a party had someone blind-drunk so early? She didn’t want to go in, but the smell was disgusting; she burst inside. The apartment was one large room with high ceilings, scarred, smudged walls, and a heady smell of paint. Thirty or forty people stood around drinking and smoking and talking and laughing. Abby was nowhere in sight, but Dez pretended to look for her, edging her way through the crowd to keep herself moving, feeling both invisible and awkward. A tall, lanky man with wild curly hair that was far too long did a double-take as she walked by, but no one else seemed to notice her and she did what people who were uncomfortable at parties do—pretend great interest in their surroundings. In this case, she didn’t have to do too much pretending. Two large paintings leaned against the back wall. They were big, urban landscapes, uncontained as the studio itself, populated with hobos and bread lines. Nearby, a ratty sofa sat in a corner, two people sprawled on it, all over each other, and she couldn’t tell if they were two men, two women, or one of each.

  She paused at the drinks table. There were bottles of gin and a pitcher of water, but nothing else, so she filled a small juice glass with gin and stood sipping it slowly, resisting the urge to make a face at the unpleasant fizzy juniper-berry taste. It didn’t matter. She could have made all kinds of faces. No one looked at her, no one even noticed her; everyone seemed to be in the middle of some boisterous group. She would slip out, she decided, even though that would mean somehow sidestepping the horrible vomit. She was about to put down her glass and edge away when a woman, the kind who invaded personal space by standing a little too close, sidled up beside her. “You going to drink that down or just look at the glass all night?”

  The woman stuck a cigarette between her lips to free her hands so she could pour herself more gin, speaking through the cigarette. “You were at the Museum School in Boston, weren’t you?”

  Dez scanned the woman’s face. She couldn’t place her. “Yes,” she said, aware that the gin had gone instantly to her head. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a drink.

  “Maxie Eisenberg.”

  “Maxie,” Dez said. She didn’t remember anyone named Maxie, and didn’t recognize the woman, even though she didn’t seem to be the kind of woman you could forget. Her hair was bottle black, her eyeliner thick, her lips slick and red. Although maybe all that was new, put on. Dez tried to look past the makeup to the original face.

  “You won the Cabot Prize,” Maxie said. “I was so jealous.”

  “Sorry,” Dez said tentatively.

  Maxie just laughed. “Those were the days before I resigned myself to facing what I wasn’t. I wouldn’t be jealous now. Now I would just try to sell that painting. Did you, ever?”

  Dez’s head buzzed pleasantly. “I did, actually. Do you work at a gallery?”

  Judging from the reaction on Maxie’s face, she had revealed her ignorance of the state of the art scene in New York City. Maxie was obviously somebody.

  “I own a gallery. And aren’t you refreshing. Here you are being nice to me and you don’t even know who I am.”

  Dez’s brain clicked. Maxie, Maxie. Then it came: Maxie Eisenberg. Ran the New New York Gallery. In school, she must have been that older girl, Maxine, known for having her own place on Commonwealth Avenue. Her father was rumored to own half of New York. Maxine had been homely, devoid of the makeup that made her face so arresting now. They had never spoken.

  “Boston was dreadfully staid, wasn’t it? Father thought he could polish me up there. But you know what? I do thank Boston for helping me realize I am not staid.” She laughed aloud. “And I thank Paris and Venice for making me realize I’m no artist but something I like better, a connoisseur.”

  Dez nodded, bits of information picked up from her copies of Art News coming back to her now. Maxie Eisenberg lived in Europe for a couple of years. She moved back to New York, began acquiring pieces, and now she had opened a gallery that showcased American modern art. At a time when most galleries still kowtowed to the Europeans, Maxine was rich enough and brash enough to push Americans.

  “Ah, you know who I am now. I can see it in your eyes.”

  “Yes, of course,” Dez said, perhaps too politely, because the look on Maxie’s face changed in an instant to contempt. Just as instantly, Dez responded with a hard, short look of disinterest and glanced away.

  “Were you interested in sleeping with me?”

  Dez had had just enough gin that she could conceal her shock. She could even banter. “No,” she said. “Sorry. Are you badly in need of someone to sleep with?”

  Maxie laughed harder. “I thought you might want to get something on my walls.”

  “Surely that’s not the way someone gets something on your walls.”

  “Damn right.” She stubbed out her cigarette into a big glass ashtray and talked through the smoke streaming from her mouth. “I’d never make a name for myself if I chose art that way, now would I?” She waved at someone behind Dez. “Marco. I’ve got someone for you.”

  Abby’s infamous Marco turned out to be the wild-haired man who had given Dez the eye when she walked in. He took the near-empty glass from her hand and put a full one in its place. The glass rocked, dropping a bit onto the hollow space between her thumb and wrist bone. He lifted her wrist and licked off the drop without missing a beat. Her blood pulsed, the soft wet of his tongue intoxicating and repulsive. She wanted to run home and hide, and turned on herself. What is wrong with you? Cascade is too provincial, New York too raw and lascivious. Are you ever going to be happy? She swallowed more gin, told herself to loosen up.

  People gathered around Marco and Marco introduced Dez to Sidney Orenthal, their host. Someone came in shrieking about the “revolting mess on the landing,” and everyone decided people would have to leave by the fire escape. Marco hovered attentively. Everyone was drinking and the atmosphere was animated, Sidney Orenthal leading a heated discussion, insisting that the Regionalists were irrelevant, that art needed to make social statements that were stronger than hope.

  By her third full glass of straight gin, more than Dez had ever had to drink in her life, her uneasiness had transformed into soaring euphoria. She would become friendly with some of these people over the course of the next few years, and her first impression of them that night would be correct. They were most of them wild, and obsessive about creating art. Not all of them had been to Europe, and those who had were adamant that American art had to lead the way from now on.

  Abby showed up and Dez suddenly understood Abby, and had great empathy for her. Abby saw that Marco was interested in Dez, and it seemed that Abby was being stunningly generous when she whispered that she would go home with Jack Borenstein.

  Maxie pulled her aside, too. Abby had told her that Dez was the artist behind the Standard’s new series. “Those paintings are good representational art, but you stick with that stuff, you’re never going to make a name for yourself. You should have used a different name for stuff like that.”

  Dez said she had done that, instinctively. She had used her maiden name, Hart. Her legal name was Spaulding.

  “Well, stick to Spaulding if you ever show in my gallery.”

  Dez tried to keep her face neutral, but Maxie knew she had nudged her hopes. “I said if. And if you show, the critics will pounce on you if they know right off the bat you’re that postcard girl. It’s bad enough you’re a girl to begin with. They’ll pigeonhole you as illustrator art, not that there’s a damn thing wrong with it. Lots of people—lots of men—do both, but let them praise you first, then if they want to skin you alive, they’ll have to eat crow. And they don’t like eating crow.” She lit a cigarette. “Abby said you’ve got some damn fine paintings.”

  Dez swallowed more gin and thought that she loved Abby, that she had never met anyone as wonderful as Maxie.

  “Come to my flat,” Dez suggested. It was becoming difficult to talk. Her tongue was getting in the way. “See my work
.”

  “I didn’t say Abby’s opinion was worth anything. I barely know her.”

  “Oh, but in this case…” So difficult to get the words out.

  “I like this girl,” Maxie said to no one in particular. “There’s nothing bohemian about her. She’s working at The American Sunday Standard. Who can blame a kid for making an honest buck?”

  It seemed to Dez that, finally, all the dots were connecting, all of life making sense. At some point, Marco slipped an arm around her waist and walked with her down to the end of the loft. They didn’t even pretend to look at Sidney Orenthal’s landscapes but stumbled onto the ratty couch, where she gave in to exhilarating, uninhibited lust, thinking, Fuck Jacob. She had never been one to curse and the freedom to let herself do so made her reckless and satisfied. Fuck Jacob.

  Marco was tall and lean with dark hair as unruly as her own. She would barely remember going home with him. The memory of the night would always be of skin slippery with sweat, the smell of gin seeping through pores, and big, blank patches of black. She remembered having the presence of mind to tell him she wasn’t safe, to ask if he had anything. She woke up with him, on a mattress, barely covered with a sheet, her head the size of a small planet, her mouth sour, gut sick and strained. It all came back to her—the night, the gin, Maxie, Marco. Jacob. Marco was naked and sweaty, his mouth half-open as he slept, everything about him looking too skinny, too shriveled. Repellent. She gathered her underwear, her shoes. She stepped into her crumpled dress and stumbled out into a blindingly sunny morning with no idea where she was, every step against the pavement making the bones in her head pound. A street sign read Grove Street, but that meant nothing. She walked, hoping for a taxi, until she found one on Hudson Street. Finally, somehow, she reached her apartment building and crawled up the four flights. She drank glass after glass of water. She licked salt and swallowed four aspirin. She lay down on her bed and forced herself to sleep, wanting to sleep forever. She woke at one point to her bell buzzing insistently and dragged herself downstairs to accept a telegram. She ripped it open. It was from Lily Martin, Rose’s sister, and had been forwarded from Alma in Cascade. Dez read, gripping the landing post when the solid black words made no sense. Rose was dead, the words said, dead of a stroke. She was still so nauseated, her brain fuzzy. She wasn’t sure she trusted what she was reading. Lily promised a letter would follow, but Dez couldn’t bear it, didn’t want to hear anymore. The whole time she was living her degenerate evening, Rose was dying or already dead. Her reflection in the window glass was repulsive. She wanted to smash it, paint it, fix it.

  34

  Saturday was lost to her. She stayed in bed, slipping in and out of consciousness, dreaming of Rose and Timon and crazy things—madeleines and gravestones and Timon’s tin toys, wound up and marching over the Cascade River bridge.

  On Sunday morning, she immediately tried to burrow back to unconsciousness. She didn’t want to be awake, didn’t want to know that she would never visit Chicago to see Rose; that she would never see Rose again. She cracked an eye open to the quiet of a New York Sunday morning. The sky was rosy. Birds sang. Occasional voices rose up from the sidewalk. Two miles south, Jacob was lying in bed with his wife, an image so painful it propelled her from her bed. She put the kettle on the gas ring and wrapped her arms around her chest. At least she didn’t feel nauseated anymore. Her glance fell on Portia’s casket and she had an urge to fling it out the window.

  “Nothing is infinitely worth saving.” She said it aloud. It wasn’t true, she didn’t mean it, but whatever was in that casket meant going back. She needed to go forward. She needed to do something large. She needed to fill her head with work.

  She sat down at the table. She drank her tea. Then she stepped out onto the landing, crossed the hall, and knocked on Walter Munroe’s door to ask for some long strips of wood. Through the morning, he helped her nail a frame together. Then she stretched a large rectangular canvas, tall as herself. She pushed the armchair and dining table aside, leaned the canvas against the wall, and got to work prepping it.

  Though the piece would be a product of restlessness, it found order and beauty in chaos. Her moving hand, clutching its brush, felt like an escape, like a tempest within, a feverish intensity, rising, flying, hurling upward. She painted through the day, wolfed down a couple of pieces of toast at dusk, and continued into the night with lights rigged up along the walls.

  The last thing she wanted to do was go to work on Monday. She bathed and dressed, wanting only to slip into her smock and get back to her canvas. She even went so far as to consider, crazily, asking Mr. Washburn if he would be amenable to letting her work as a stringer, but she couldn’t be without steady money, and would be a raving fool to leave a secure job. At work she watched the clock, anxious to get back home.

  She started setting her alarm for first light, painting until eight, getting herself to the office, scooting home at lunchtime to paint what needed to be painted in natural light, then grabbing something at the Automat and staying up late. She laid down the last stroke on Saturday night and named it The Tempest, painting the title in a tiny scroll along the bottom of the piece. It was a spun-sugar dream of a painting, lyrical with brushstrokes suggesting cloud-capp’d towers melting into thin air. Harsh lines hinted at violence, but she had tempered these with luminous panels that billowed and seemed to expand beyond the boundaries of the canvas. She had never painted anything like it—not quite abstract, vaguely impressionistic. She signed it D. H. Spaulding.

  She would paint a series of them over the course of that summer, six in all. And the style would be different in each one. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were neatly interlocking figures of jewel-like color and texture, enveloped by a recurrent motif in the shape of a bloody crown. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was a lush evocation of contrasts, of brilliance and darkness, of beauty and folly.

  Except for her Postcards from America and the first Cascade Progress Report, she did nothing else those weeks it took her to paint the series. Abby called in to the office to ask her to another party, and lunch. Marco wanted to see her again, Abby said. Dez went to lunch but turned the party invitation down.

  She did run into Maxie Eisenberg one morning, in a Fifth Avenue coffee shop, and said hello. Maxie nodded without recognition, so Dez reminded her who she was. Maxie shrugged with disinterest, her hands shaking as she lit a cigarette. Dez stood awkwardly by Maxie’s booth until she realized that Maxie was ignoring her, then she turned on her heel and left without a word.

  Weekends were gifts, two long days to paint. She often went for hours without thinking of Jacob, and when she did, she thought, Why, this is easy. It will only get easier. Then he would consume her thoughts for hours, bad as ever—torturous “if only” thinking. She would visualize Ruth’s growing belly and have to put down her brush and pinch the bridge of her nose to stop herself from getting emotional.

  She had letters from Asa. Bud Foster had already sold out but had six months to stay in the house before he moved the family to Bath. Construction of the baffle dam had begun, digging of the great tunnel to Boston was under way. Big news: a man in Sturbridge, who was buying up old buildings with the intent of creating a living museum, had bought the Round Church; they were already getting ready to cart it away. But yes, Asa wrote, he had inquired about him possibly taking the playhouse, too, but it didn’t fit in with the man’s vision of an early nineteenth-century farming village.

  She started writing to Elliot Lowell daily. Persistent, handwritten notes, a constant barrage to remind him the playhouse needed moving. He was working on something, he replied. In the meantime, she wrote to the colleges around Springfield and Worcester, offering to donate the playhouse in exchange for its paid removal.

  By late August, she had one tentative offer—from a buildings administrator at Amherst College who was truly interested and understood the need for preservation but had outspent his budget through 1936. He had no funds to pay for the removal. At the same time, As
a wrote to warn her that demolition had already started on Spruce Street; she might never see her childhood home again. They’d gotten to work so quickly. Dez’s first thought was to race up there and see her old house one more time. But—what would she do, really? Stand there and look at it? Her Twilight, Cascade Common was the essence of her memory of her old home in a way that the actual structure never was, once they’d moved. And the painting lived with her, every day.

  Another letter from Asa informed her that he had found a beautiful center-chimney colonial in Belchertown. The back of the house got a lot of light, he wrote. Did she want to train up and see it? She hesitated writing back. It was good of him to think of light, but it wouldn’t do him any favors to pretend she was coming back. She wrote that she couldn’t come, that she was sure whatever he chose would be fine. She didn’t hear from him for a while and knew he was upset. He’d expected she would give up New York in a month. Now she had been away two months, with no sign of returning.

  She wrote again. She told him about the series she was doing; she described each painting—at the time, she was on the fifth canvas. It seemed important that he know that her life in New York was work-based and austere. In return she got a letter containing only one line:

  Is he there?

  She wrote back: No.

  Another day, she received a letter bearing an official return address and the seal of the Massachusetts Water Commission, requesting her permission to exhume the bodies of William Hart, Caroline Hart, and Timon Hart and move them to the newly created Cascade Memorial Cemetery in Bath. The letter emphasized that families were not to be present during the removals. Private services after re-interment are advised. She sat right down and signed the response form. She sealed it and stamped it and carried it down to the mailbox. She wanted it gone, wanted the imagery it conjured out of her head.