Alex saw himself in his house in New Jersey, walking through the rooms one slow step at a time, looking for his wife, listening for her laughter and her soft voice humming as she cooked dinner. He moved to Hannah's side and put his arm around her. "What did she die of.''"
It was as if he had not spoken. "Such an awful time," Hannah said, slowly shaking her head. "Somehow, I was still teaching and living what looked like a perfectly normal life, but I knew I was being absolutely crazy, and my mother didn't know what to do with me. After a while, of course, I snapped out of it. But it took
a long time. The point is, we do get over terrible times; we're built to do that. Most people learn again to laugh and love and respond to beaurv^ and fight ugliness and clasp hands with friends, even though they've lost a kind of joy that they'll never get back. There's an unlit corner in their hearts and no light will ever penetrate to it. It will always be dark."
She paused, looking at her clasped hands. "That's why it's so important to be close to those we love, not to take them for granted, not to give up when we're baffled by how complicated it can be to understand and be understood by another person. And that's why you should open up to people; not just ask questions like a journalist but share your feelings with them, because that's what makes us close and loving and human. If you don't, you may wake up one day and find your chances for love and closeness gone, and that's another kind of death." She looked up at Alex. "Tragedy is no excuse, you know. However long it takes, we do recover."
"Yes," Alex said quietly. "I believe that."
Claire walked in from the garage, carrying a flat leather artist's case. "Am I interrupting something.^"
"Not at all," said Hannah, slipping from within the circle of Alex's arm. "We were getting acquainted. Goodness," she added, looking at Claire, "you're all lit up."
"It was a good meeting. I'm sorry I'm late. I thought I could just drop these off, but the marketing people wanted to talk about them. Is there any coffee left.'"'
"There's a new pot. And coffee cake. We've been through both of them; Alex came early."
"The traffic was light," Alex said to Claire. He could not take his eyes off her glowing face; she was happy and excited and her beauty seemed lit from within. "And I was eager."
"Then we should get started." Claire took the tray Hannah had filled with two mugs and the coffeepot and a plate of cake. "You've seen the house.^ Where would you like to talk.-^"
"Hannah showed me the house; I'd like to go to your studio again."
They took the same chairs they had taken the afternoon before. Once again, all the lights were on, and the brightness made the gray clouds beyond the windows look even darker and more lowering. Alex, still under the spell of Hannah's story, took a long
breath. "I'm glad to be back here; it's a very soothing room, and gladdening. Especially when the world looks bleak. Hannah was right; you look very happy. They liked your designs.'"'
"All of them. That's unheard of in this business. And they're all completely different from anything on the market today, but no one looked shocked or even raised an eyebrow. Of course they'd already approved the first group; I think they may even be in production, but this was a whole new group and all they did was ask some technical questions about the materials I'd specified for each piece, and they wanted to see color charts and samples of lettering. That was all. They told me to go on and finish the line. I couldn't believe it. I still can't."
"Are they confidential.'* Or can I see them.''"
"They're confidential when it comes to anyone connected with the cosmetics industry. That doesn't include you." Claire opened the flat briefcase she had carried into the house and took from it a stack of drawings on heavy paper, each protected by a sheet of tissue. She laid them on her drawing table and Alex joined her there. Together, they bent over them and Claire adjusted the light. "There are two objectives in design. One is to convey a message, briefly, quickly, unambiguously and memorably. The other is to make an impact, to jump out, so it's the first thing a customer notices, or, if not that, to be the one design that leaves a lasting impression. Everything is so crowded now—store shelves, display cases, magazine and newspaper ads, billboards, even the yellow pages in telephone directories—it's hard to make something stand out, especially something that's done in a traditional way. So I decided to be untraditional."
Her voice had changed, Alex thought, making a mental note of it for his story: she was poised and professional, not hesitant or diffident as she had been the day before when she talked about money. This was her field and she was comfortable in it; she was comfortable with herself in it.
He concentrated on the drawings. Some were in crayon, some in different colors of ink, a few in watercolor paints. Each heavy sheet held two actual-size drawings of a product, seen from the front and the back, sometimes with a third, side view, ('laire said little as Alex slowly turned the sheets; another sign of her professionalism, he thought: she let her work speak for itself. And he was impressed with its strength. All the packaging was in shades
of amber, but the variety was extraordinary: there were jars sculpted Hke free-form female torsos, bottles curved like scimitars with jeweled handles, tubes imprinted with sinuous gold and silver bands, jars in undulating shapes that seemed to stretch out from the page, others like quiet teardrops. One of the most intriguing, Alex thought, was a case labeled eye restorative, a flat amber oblong with a hinged lid set with a single jewel.
"They're very different, and ver>^ beautiful," he said as he turned the last sheet. "And most cosmetics packaging isn't, is it,-^"
"No, most of it looks as if it came straight out of the laboratory, which is what most companies have always wanted. But, no matter how much scientific research went into them, there's still a lot of fantasy and a kind of ritual in using cosmetics—most of it is people trying to convince themselves whatever they just bought is going to do all the magic they want it to do—and that begins when they pick up a jar or bottle or tube first thing in the morning and feel the texture and shape of it before opening it. That's where their fantasy begins. I think that's where they want beauty to begin."
"You think it's a fantasy, people trying to convince themselves something will work,"
"Mostly." Claire looked at her drawings. "Are you about to ask me how I can help lure people to spend their money on products I don't believe in.'^"
"I wouldn't have put it that harshly."
"How would you have put it.^"
"I would have asked you how important you think those fantasies are for people, and if that's why you brought such enthusiasm and skill to the job you did."
"That's a more interesting question than mine." Claire picked up a pencil—I know that instinct, Alex thought; we both think better with a pencil in our hands—and leafed through her drawings. "I think fantasies are essential to our well-being," she said slowly. "That's why I bought lottery tickets; it was a game I played with myself, a fantasy, like a little spark in a very quiet life. And I think the best designs always touch somehow on fantasy. But the reason I put everything I had into these designs is because I don't think about the product when I'm designing the package. I just love to design. I discovered that after I quit my job. I missed it. There was an emptiness, and I didn't know what
it was at first, but as soon as I started designing again, I knew it was the space left when I wasn't creating beaurv'."
Alex nodded, almost to himself. There was an emptiness. He knew that, too. He felt it every day that he did not, could not, write the books he loved to write. An emptiness. A need that nothing else could satisfy.
"Well, you've created beauty," he said at last. "I'm glad you were able to go back to it."
At the pain in his voice, she looked at him quickly. "Perhaps you'll go back to it, too," she said quietly. Then, to give him time, she turned away and returned to her chair. "Something else happened today. I got a call while I was at Eiger Labs from the president of a chain of restaurants; apparent
ly Quentin had shown him copies of a couple of my preliminary- sketches, and now he wants me to design publicity brochures and new menus for his restaurants. And he's talking about new china and glassware. I've never done that."
"So you said yes.^"
"I said I'd talk to him about it when I finish this job. I'd like to do it, but if I'm going to work for other companies, I have to think about secretarial and design help, which means forming my own company. I'm not sure I want to make that commitment right now."
"You're still having too much fun."
She smiled. "I guess so. I love being able to do what I want."
"And you also love design."
"Well, if I'm lucky, I'll be able to pick and choose."
Alex sat beside her again and took out his tape recorder and pressed the small button that set it going. "How do you feel about work, now that you don't need it to sunive.^"
"More sure of myself," Claire said promptly. "I think the biggest problem with working for someone else is there's no time built into the job to think about what you're doing and how you could do it better. When people do that, they're accused of daydreaming. You're lucky; you don't have that problem, working on your own; you must spend a lot of your time thinking."
"More time staring, thinking, daydreaming, than writing. But the payoff is, if the thoughts go well, so does the writing. 'ou haven't told me v»'hy you decided to work again."
"To know where I belong," (Claire said, suddenly somber.
"Sometimes, when I'm dashing around New York with a friend, if I stop and ask myself why I'm there and how I feel, I can't think of an answer. It's not that I don't have a good time shopping with friends; I do. It's just that, when that was all I did, I began to feel at loose ends, as if I needed an anchor. When Emma was growing up, she was my anchor, even more than my job. But our lives are so changed . . . where is Emma.^ She told me she'd be here this morning, to talk to you."
"Hannah said she was still asleep."
Claire gazed across the room, as if she could look into Emma's room at the other end of the house. "She sleeps so much lately," she murmured.
Alex said nothing, waiting for her. In a moment she turned to him. "Well, that's why I work. Because when I'm sitting at my design table or my computer or even taking a walk at night and thinking about a design problem, I have something to focus on and a place where I know what to do and how to do it. I know exactly why I'm here and I know how I feel."
"How do you feel.''"
"Wonderful. I'm doing something I'm good at, that I like to do, and that's mine, not anyone else's. I'm making something of my very own, and when I come up with something that I know is good, there's no better feeling in the world. You must feel the same way with your writing. That's why I can't understand how you could give up writing novels. They give you so much more room to build and create, to stretch out ... it seems to me that magazine articles are like small rooms and a novel is the whole world."
"Exactly," Alex murmured. He sat at ease in the bright studio, talking to a woman who was responsive and whose mind worked much as his did, and he felt wonderfully at home. You should open up to people; not just ask questions like a journalist but share your feelings with them, because thafs what makes us close and loving and human. Finally, he said, speaking slowly, "I didn't make the decision to stop writing novels, Claire. One day there just weren't any novels inside me waiting to be written. I was empty."
Claire thought about how that would be if it happened to her. She shivered. "That's a little like dying, isn't it.''"
He gave her a quick look. "Yes. Not manv people understand that."
"But did they really just disappear?"
"Probably not. Though that does happen; writers never know when they'll suddenly run dry and be finished for good." He paused, but he was still under Hannah's spell—and Claire's—and the words came more easily than ever before. "A lot of things happened to me at once, a few years ago. I told you that my wife died; it was very sudden, completely unexpected. She was healthy and busy—she was a fabric designer and she'd just gotten a major order—and one afternoon she said she felt tired and lav down to take a nap . . . and never woke up."
Claire drew in her breath. "What was it.'"'
"A heart attack. No warning, no history of heart disease in her family, no clues. She was just gone. And if there was one thing that wiped out my writing books, that would be it. Sending my son to my sister and her husband, selling the house, moving away from everything that had given me a sense of having a stake in life ... all that was very bad. But what was worse was the sudden feeling that there was nothing I could count on. I couldn't imagine writing novels—making up stories that progressed in an ordered world—when I didn't believe there was an ordered world. I haven't been able to get past that."
"You mean you can't predict what will happen."
"More than that. There was a time when I was very sure of what my life would be, and how it would unfold, and for years everything went exactly as I'd thought it would. My stories were published in literary^ reviews from the time I was in high school; I won a full scholarship to college and then a fellowship to graduate school; I won the PEN award with my first novel when I was twenty-eight. I married the woman I loved; we had a son, we had good friends, we bought a house and a dog and took in a couple of stray cats who turned out to be wonderful pets. And my wife was making her own reputation as a designer. It wasn't just that everv'thing was happening the way I'd plotted it, it was that it was happening on schedule, as if someone, somewhere, was directing this play the way I'd ordered, and keeping the action moving."
Restlessly, he stood and walked about the studio, stopping at Claire's drawing table to gaze absently at her drawings. "Then someone pulled the curtain. That perfectly plotted life collapsed and so did my belief in my own power. The Greeks call w hubris.
you know: pride. Defying the gods; believing you can plot your life and the lives of those you love. I was guilty of that: I thought I could control our fate."
He came back to sit in the armchair, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. "I felt I was being knocked around by invisible forces, malevolent and invincible, and there was nothing I could do but give in. That was when I sent David to my sister and sold the house."
"And had no more books to write."
He nodded. "Writing a book is a leap of faith and a declaration of love. You believe you can put on paper the ideas that are so clear and vivid in your mind; you give yourself to what you create with a kind of love that can't be duplicated even in the most passionate affair; you believe that someone will publish your work and others will read it and libraries will buy it so that future generations will discover it. You believe you can create stories that resonate with the readers of your own time and also those future generations: that you can find universal themes and present them in ways that give people hope or greater understanding or the rare pleasure of an escape from the shadows of the world around them. Or all of the above. In other words, you believe in the future and in your ability to make a place for yourself in it, on your own terms. I stopped believing that."
The tape recorder clicked off. Alex gazed at it. "Damn it, I've done it again." He shook his head. "This won't do, you know; I've got a deadline on this story and there's more of me here than there is of you."
"What would you like to talk about.^" Claire asked gently. Her heart ached for him, for his sadness and emptiness and for all his lost loves: his wife, his son, his books. "Do you think we can do it in an hour.^ I really have to get to work after that."
Alex inserted another reel of tape in the recorder, pocketing the one that had run out. "An hour will be fine. Let's start with this house and the different patterns in your life. And I'd like to hear you talk some more about your work. And then, if Emma is awake, I'd like very much to talk to her."
Claire poured coffee for both of them and sat back. The room was quiet, muffled, and she glanced at the window to see large flakes of snow drifti
ng through the branches that brushed the glass, already turning white. The studio seemed even brighter, a
snug haven, and Claire listened, as if she were an observer standing in the doorway, to the murmur of their voices as she and Alex talked, the sound of their laughter, the soft clink of coffee cups. In that warm place, she felt comfortable, with nothing to prove and no tests to pass. He was easy to talk to, subtle but not sly in his questions, and quick to understand when she was fumbling for the right word. She realized she was having a very good time, and when she thought about work, she let the flow of the conversation sweep the thought away.
The telephone broke the mood. They both jumped slightly when it rang. Alex stopped the recorder as Claire answered it. "Yes," she said, and Alex heard the sudden tension in her voice. "I thought it was eight o'clock," she said after a moment. "Well, yes, I can be ready at seven." With a red pen she drew circles on a pad of paper beside her, circles within circles. "We're going to Roz and Hale's.'' . . . No, I didn't know, but that's fine; I love it there. And you're right; it's at least an hour's drive." She linked the circles with smaller circles, forming a chain that looped around the page. As she listened, a small smile appeared on her lips. "It's only been four days." There was a pause. "Yes, of course I am. I will. Until seven."
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