The following Saturday, to celebrate the launch, Blema Weinberg invited us to a garden party at her mansion in Amagansett. That morning, Dana woke with a bit of a fever, but there was no way she’d cancel on Blema. Ethel was ill as well, probably with the same virus. She declined the invitation; despite being the subject of a long paragraph in Women and Arts, she stayed at Harperley Hall with Rosie. Judy couldn’t come either, since it was her mother’s birthday. “Do you want me to go with you?” I asked with as little enthusiasm as humanly possible. She seemed disappointed at first but ended up shrugging her shoulders theatrically. “Don’t worry about it. Go with Dana. It’ll be a lot more fun than with my parents. You know the menu at casa Stern — disappointment, lamentations, guilt, and roast chicken.”
So we went, just Dana and I, like in the old days, when things weren’t quite so clear between us.
I got behind the wheel of her new Austin-Healey 3000 so she could rest. She was pale, her skin almost translucent like those cold, melancholy women in Italian Renaissance paintings. In the elevator in Harperley Hall she wavered on her legs a moment, and I had to hold her so she wouldn’t fall. She tried to reassure me, claiming it was a side-effect of the codeine Rosie had given her; she’d be fine by the time we got to the Hamptons. Shouldn’t we stay home? “Not a chance!” Sea air would do her good, she claimed.
It was sunny out, and warm and humid. We cut through Central Park, went south on Fifth Avenue, then east on 42nd Street. On I-495 we sped towards Long Island, roof down.
It might have been the air, it felt fresher with every mile that took us farther from New York. Or maybe it was the sweet image of Dana dozing in her seat, her shoulders turned towards me, like a sleeping spouse. Perhaps it was the sun on my skin, the wind in my hair, or “Mrs. Robinson” jingling on the radio. I was overcome by a sudden and blind confidence in the future — I’d return to Quebec in December and find my friend Moïse. We’d have long, lively conversations together and he’d introduce me to his beautiful Louise, and he’d be so proud it would bring tears to my eyes. I’d find work in a museum in Montreal and wait out the war. I’d come back to New York eventually and return to Dana, Ethel, and, perhaps, Judy. Things weren’t so bad after all. I was lucky, luckier than most boys my age.
“What are you thinking about?”
Dana had woken up, her head turned toward me.
“Nothing.”
“Liar. It’s impossible to think about nothing….”
I smiled, took her hand, and said, “Thanks. For everything.”
She took her sunglasses off and gave me a long look. I continued, my voice filled with emotion, “If you hadn’t been there, I don’t know what would have become of me.”
She straightened in her seat and blew her nose loudly. “What are you talking about?”
I smiled. “You remember that timid, ridiculous boy who knocked on your door with a box of Tampax hidden under his shirt?”
She burst out laughing. “My God! Ethel and I laughed about that for days. You were so sweet!”
It was funny to remember that fifteen-year-old, so insecure, his face purple with embarrassment. On the road to Amagansett, the blue sky veiled with humidity, I remembered that stick of a boy, wondering what he would have thought if he could see me now, twenty-three years old, happy and optimistic, at the helm of a red Austin-Healey, racing towards the Hamptons. That’s me? You’ve got to be kidding.
“If I hadn’t had you, Dana …” my voice broke.
She brushed my cheek. I took her hand in mine and brought it to my lips. A tender kiss, not sexual at all. There was no more sexual confusion between us, no more desire, not even the memory of desire. I was simply filled with a soft, sweet feeling. She giggled like a little girl. “If you hadn’t had me, Romain Carrier, you would have become a little pervert!”
We laughed. Then I apologized for our fights at Harperley Hall and my sometimes disrespectful attitude. “I love you, Dana.”
Her eyes filled with water, and she told me to shut up before she cried.
That morning, on the road to Amagansett, I told myself that life had really given me all its blessings. I felt I had a future, a real one. My studies, my work at the museum, it wasn’t an end in itself, but they would bring me further, I knew it. Judy wasn’t an end, either. I’d cross paths with other incredible women, I knew that too. I was free. Free. A flight of birds turned above our heads, and Dana laughed again. We were as happy as children on summer vacation, our hair in the wind. On the road to Amagansett, I surfed on this sudden happiness, like light bursting through clouds, almost mystical, without thinking of its colour, or the dimension and magnitude of the wave that was carrying me, nor the great treasure and disaster that would come in its wake.
9
A mansion. A castle. Twenty-six rooms in all, without counting the guest pavilions. Blema Weinberg’s manor was built on dozens of acres with a stunning view of the Atlantic. You visited a dozen countries in as many minutes as you walked through the gardens. Rose bushes, grandiose sculptures signed Henry Moore, Giacometti, Louise Bourgeois. A Calder, light and ethereal, welcomed guests at the entrance. Dana and I were stunned.
Blema Weinberg came to meet us in a white silk caftan. She was drenched in makeup, all but bent in two under the weight of emerald necklaces, a grotesque copy of Liz Taylor in Cleopatra. She gesticulated with excitement, clucking with pleasure, “Welcome! Welcome, my dear friends! Oh, I’m so happy to have you with us! Isn’t it wonderful? What a beautiful day! How was the drive?” She turned to Dana and rushed towards her, arms open, “Oh, Dana! Wonderful Dana!” She pulled her so tight against her that her perfume clung to Dana for the rest of the afternoon. “Come,” she insisted. “Come, I’ve something to show you.”
When she entered the great hall, Dana cried out. A dozen of the works reproduced in Women and Arts were hanging from the walls. Blema Weinberg had had them brought over and installed by the museum staff. Works by Krasner, O’Keeffe, Escobar, Nevelson, DeFeo. All it took was a phone call, and an exhibition was set up in her house. Guests walked in and whistled, impressed; Blema Weinberg chuckled triumphantly.
Artists, including the women featured in Women and Arts, chatted next to the pool, champagne glasses in hand. Blema introduced us to Roy Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist. A handful of guests were amusing themselves in the hedge maze. You could hear them call out, “Is someone there? Where are you?” Under tall, white tents, giant tables dressed for a royal wedding buckled under the weight of the victuals — smoked salmon, blinis, caviar, chicken skewers, salads. A feast. Excited, Blema Weinberg pulled us aside, Dana and me, for the guided tour. She spoke of her husband, dead after a long illness; he had the mansion built for her. She had three boys, all married, with kids. They came from time to time to Amagansett, but certainly not often enough. “And yet,” she said, as we were walking through a labyrinth of rooms on the second floor, “there’s enough room for everyone.” I was counting them, actually. Eight. Eight bedrooms, each as richly decorated as the next, with four-poster beds and massive hangings. “Sleep here tonight,” she begged, “it would make me so happy. I love it when the house feels inhabited.” But Dana, still looking rather sick, delicately blew her irritated nose, and declined the invitation. In the state she was in, she preferred to sleep in New York. “I don’t think I’ll be staying very late, Blema. I’m truly sorry. Romain will bring me home as soon as I feel too tired.”
“Oh, poor Dana! Of course. I understand completely.” She continued covering her disappointment, “What a beautiful day, my friends! What a wonderful day, right?”
In the garden, a jazz band was warming up the crowd. Blema Weinberg laughed and clapped her hands. Dana joined a small group chatting around the pool — Marisol Escobar, Jay DeFeo, Dana Feldman — three beautiful brunettes with embers in their eyes, talking passionately about art. What a scene! I took advantage of the action to disappear, pulled towar
ds the ocean — crashing waves, agitation, the sheer immensity of it. Living in New York, sometimes I forgot about the sea. But seeing it before me, I realized how much I missed it.
The great river of my childhood, so wide we called it the sea.
I walked to the end of the garden, went down a small pine stairway and took my shoes off, feeling warm sand between my toes. Children were playing in the waves; men and boys tossing a ball; women tanning in the sun, glistening like sardines in oil. A breeze brought a waft of coconut to my nose. I sat in the sand and watched the sea, greater than my own sea in Métis Beach, and closed my eyes. I scanned my memory for an event that might make me feel nostalgic about my past, but simply couldn’t find one. I recalled Gail’s face, replaying the film of that night in 1962, and I felt no sadness, no guilt. No more than a neutral spectator. Was I cured? The scar gone? With closed eyes, I savoured this moment of fullness, letting myself be lulled by the calming thunder of the Atlantic.
“May I?”
I opened my eyes. It was one of the girls at the party who had accompanied Lichtenstein and Rosenquist. A small blonde, her blue eyes painted in the latest style, with a thick line of khol.
“Please.”
She sat next to me, watched the sea for a while, then said, with an accent à la Petula Clark, “What’s your name?”
“Romain Carrier.”
“Felicia Jackson.”
“A pleasure.”
She had a small, vague smile. “Do you want some?”
In the palm of her hand, a cigarette she had pulled out of nowhere.
“What is it?”
“Hashish.”
I said sarcastically, “And you’re going to smoke that in front of all these nice families?”
She shrugged. “All of them are drinking, aren’t they? Alcohol is socially acceptable, but it’s far worse for you. I know a thing or two about that, I’m British, after all.” Her face darkened for a moment, as if a bad memory had suddenly caught up with her. She put the cigarette in her mouth, wet it with her tongue, “While this doesn’t hurt anyone.”
She turned her back to the wind to light it. I’d never smoked hashish before, not even at university, not with Moïse either who hated the smell — “It smells like degeneration, man, like camel shit.” I had had plenty of opportunities in Washington Square, but the idea of swallowing smoke — like Dana with her Kools, all day long — put me off.
“Come on, try some, you won’t regret it, I promise.”
Her flirtatious voice. She scooted towards me, held out the joint. I took a few puffs, I didn’t want to look like a guy who wasn’t hip. The acrid smoke burned my throat. She grabbed the joint from me and took a long drag before offering it to me again. I was about to refuse when she placed a hand on my shoulder, and slipped it onto the back of my neck, through my hair, and I felt myself fall forward, too excited to resist, and found myself kissing her, her mouth, her lips, her tongue, and she kissed me back with such avidity it felt like distress, and a mad desire, irrepressible, to take her breasts in my hands, to feel them, to suck on their hard nipples under her dress, to stick my fingers inside her to make her come, there, on the beach, in front of all these people. She laughed, dancing eyes and dilated pupils, and I laughed too, filled with voluptuous stupor, my brain hazy from my first joint, and now the second she was lighting.
“Where were you?”
By the pool, Dana, her skin pale and her eyes feverish, caught me by the arm.
“You look terrible. Go clean up. We’re leaving.”
“Now?”
She stared at me, suspicious. “What’s going on with you? You’ve been drinking?”
“Did you see me drink?”
“Don’t answer a question with a question!”
“I was on the beach, I didn’t have a single drop.”
She mumbled something, blew her nose. “Fine, so what’s wrong with you then?”
“Nothing. I’m fine, okay?”
“You’d better be. I’m tired. That was our deal.”
But I wasn’t okay. My heart was beating too quickly. A strange sensation in me, almost worrying, oppressive. Felicia disappeared after that man had begun yelling at us, a crowd around us suddenly, men and women, their mouths open as if they were lost, scared children peeking from behind them. My shirt was off, my pants undone, my zipper down, we’d been messing around for almost an hour on the beach. “Go on, say it again, sweetheart! Say what you just said!” A man with black trunks was shouting at us, a tall guy with thick legs.
“Go fuck yourself!” Felicia shouted. “You heard what I said, dumbass!” With a strong arm he grabbed me by the belt and pulled me to my feet.
“You get the fuck out of here with your whore, or I’m calling the cops!” Felicia laughed, and I did too, an uncontrollable, convulsive laugh, like the grinding engine of an old car, and we ran back towards the garden, stumbling on the burning sand. Once we arrived on Blema Weinberg’s property, Felicia was gone.
Around the pool, the guests were watching us, and I had the clear impression they were judging me severely, reading my thoughts. Dana got up and handed me the keys to the Austin-Healey. “Oh, no! Already?” Blema Weinberg was disappointed to see us leave so soon, though glad her party had been so successful. She accompanied us to the Austin, saying the same thing a hundred different ways, how happy she was with Women and Arts and how she had other projects for Dana. Her constant clucking made my head spin. Dana gave me a suspicious look each time I lost my footing on the gravel driveway. I followed the women, trying to walk as straight as possible, wondering how I’d manage to drive.
Dana kissed her goodbye, and we climbed in the car. My trembling hands took a few moments to find the ignition, and Dana seemed exasperated. The motor finally came to life, and she sat back in her seat. Blema Weinberg waved at us from the top of the steps to her manor; the illuminated Calder floated like a gigantic butterfly in the humid, foggy air. Night was falling.
My legs thick, my heart beating in my ears, I carefully brought the Austin onto the road and turned right on the 27. I was dizzy, like I was in some slow-motion film. I was cruising at fifty-five miles an hour, feeling I was driving through butter, then I reached sixty, sixty-five, seventy, and still that feeling of not moving at all. The windshield wore a sheen of humidity and dead flies. The moon was shining, but not enough to illuminate the road. “Hey!” Dana straightened, her nails dug into the dashboard. “Slow down, for God’s sake! What are you doing?” She grabbed my forearm, frightened. “You’re going too fast! Pull over onto the shoulder, now!” I couldn’t react; my brain, my arms and legs, simply weren’t answering my orders. Dana was shouting, hitting me with her fists. My clumsy feet were looking for the brake. Or was it the accelerator? The Austin-Healey began careening along the road. “Brake, for God’s sake! Brake!” In front of us, a seafood restaurant. “Stop here! Here, I said!” The Austin careened again, skidded on the gravel and turned circles before stopping against a line of trash cans, not far from a cook, who’d witnessed the whole scene.
Dana got out of the car, hysterical. She was trembling with fear and anger. “You could have killed us! Is that what you wanted? To kill us? You’re in no shape to drive! Get out of there!”
With difficulty, I managed to pull myself out of the car. I moved around it, holding onto the body, and fell into the passenger seat.
“Idiot!” Dana shouted at me one last time before getting behind the wheel and driving off.
After that, I don’t know what happened. I remember waking up as the car careened from side to side. In front of me, another car flashing its headlights at us desperately, honking. Dana had fallen asleep, her chin on her chest. With a quick gesture, a reflex, I grabbed the wheel and pulled us to the right. Dana was startled awake, howled in fear, and the Austin-Healey zigzagged on the road. In the distance, headlights flashed, insistent, blinding.
Then our shouts of fear, the howling of rubber tearing itself apart on pavement, and the crash of metal.
Then, nothing.
10
“What happened, Romain? For the love of God, tell me!”
I couldn’t give Ethel, who was inconsolable, a clear narrative of the tragic events. Just flashes. Furtive memories, scattered, like a deck of playing cards thrown about by the winds of fate, without pity. I awoke in a ditch. Sticky, warm blood on my face and in my mouth. A thick silence, then a sinister screeching in the darkness — the Austin-Healey’s wheels turning in the air, the car on its back. “Dana? Dana?” The slow breathing of the sea nearby. Mad birds cackling as they flew in the dark. I hurt everywhere. Couldn’t get up. No, wait, I could, walking slowly. Towards the road. A strange music playing in the air saturated with humidity. I didn’t know where it was coming from, “Run, run, little horse … run, run, little horse….” Waiting for help. Headlights in the distance, I waved to attract attention. I was lucky — a patrol vehicle. (Later, I’d be told that the Suffolk County cops found me unconscious in a ditch.) My eyes veiled with blood, barely able to make out a figure slumped against a tree. I shouted to the cops (again, fruit of my imagination), “Help her, quick! It’s Dana Feldman, the famous feminist!” with a touch of vanity in my voice. The two cops looked at each other, intrigued? Horrified? The birds cackled louder. “Dana? Dana?” My eyes couldn’t see. A cacophony of sirens and loud voices scared the silence out of me. Ambulances shrieking. The serious faces of the paramedics, their movements precise, quick. The clacking of stretchers being opened. Comfort from a blanket draped over my prone body. I was cold though it was warm out. They were moving me to the violently lit emergency room of Good Samaritan Hospital, in West Islip. Orders being shouted, quick feet moving around Dana’s stretcher. I couldn’t see her, though I knew she was there. We were separated. I wanted to protest but didn’t have the strength. Lying on my stretcher, I didn’t have as large a crowd of doctors and nurses around me. They were calmer with me, much calmer. Standing over me, checking me out, asking questions. I answered yes, no. I was naked, didn’t know how my clothes had been taken off.
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