“You know, we’ve probably passed each other dozens of times. Do you think Julia would like these”—Susan raises a handful of the fragrant nicotianas out of the water—“or one of those orchids?” She tilts her head, considering.
Camille had seen Ware Properties signs on houses forever and had a vague memory of meeting Susan’s husband, Aaron Ware, at a political fund-raiser. Tall, well-dressed; the image goes blank other than that. Memorable suit, though, well cut and fitted. Maybe Susan had shopped for him. She has no recollection of seeing Susan. If she had, she’d recall someone with such a flair. Camille admires Susan’s hip gray jacket stamped with black medallions, urban and a little tough, short black skirt and strappy heels. “The delicate ones suit Julia. But maybe a long-lasting orchid might be better.”
“Kind of generic, but they are cheerful. I always touch them to see if they’re fake.”
“I’ve been looking forward to her dinner.” Camille doesn’t say that all day she’d been excited about seeing her new friends again. Sitting around with them at Susan’s last night, just chatting, had been fun. She hadn’t had fun in, how long?
“Me, too. See you there in a few.” Susan feels a bolt of exhilaration for the night ahead. The three of them, each on the verge of changes. And much to learn about each other. Susan senses Julia’s damage, and that Camille still feels sucker-punched by her husband’s death. Is it easier for me? she wonders. Aaron has been gone three years. She lived in a vacuum for a year, and then one day she stepped outside and a small bird on a twig began to sing ferociously, a song far stronger than the tiny body reasonably could project. Susan listened, transfixed, and after that life quietly started to resume, not the life she had before, but a life that would continue. Susan then ran the company, but sold the building and the business last year. She stays on for a few clients. Neither of their girls, Eva and Caroline, was interested in selling houses. Adopted as infants from China, the girls had challenges growing up in the South. Susan always made sure they had the best birthday parties with ponies and clowns, wore the cutest clothes, and went to the best and most protected private schools. Her strategy—she made them enviable. Still, they fled to California for college and ever since, they’ve been happily launched in their IT careers in the multicultural Bay Area, where they feel less alien.
What she’s looking for is the next big thing. Though the girls will object, she’s actually considering a small nest at Cornwallis Meadows. She’d feel free to travel. Free from the sharp memories in every square inch. Married to a dynamo real estate broker, she was married also to some deal always pending. Most of the trips they did take had business attached. They’d managed a few flying vacations with their daughters, but mainly their getaways took place on Figure Eight Island, where Aaron had sold initial plots by the dozens when the barrier island off the North Carolina coast began to develop. He scored a beachfront lot for himself, where they built an iconic gray shingle house with a long porch. Originally planned for a long-term investment, Sand Castle became their haven only two hours from home. They could load the car after work and be grilling burgers by dark.
* * *
—
Aaron, six years older, started showing signs of dementia at sixty-five. He worked to conceal lapses and lost words. Eva and Caroline, home for holidays, insisted, “Everyone forgets things, you’ve just stored a million more names and facts than most people—your hard drive is overloaded.” And, “Daddy, I’m going to sign you up for these word challenge programs, KenKen and Lumosity. They’re fun and keep you agile.”
Denial, denial, until Susan started finding notes and lists he depended on. She became more and more despairing as smart, smart Aaron stared at a milk bottle or an onion, casting about for the noun. Early onset, the doctor said. They told no one. They told each other, This will be slow, there are good years left. New drugs will help. He took the prescriptions that made him sick. He started washing them down with a couple of hits of bourbon. Who could blame him? He had to have antidepressants, otherwise he couldn’t stand to get out of bed. Count backward by sevens? He wept. He used to add three-column numbers in his head. After a couple of complicated years, they restructured the company so he could retire. The crushing depression lifted as he forgot he was succumbing to dementia. Then, the coup de grace. Aaron’s younger brother needed a bone marrow transplant and Aaron offered to be the donor. What did he have to lose? He was required to undergo an MRI to qualify. A symptomless tumor showed on his liver, a blot already the size of the onion Aaron couldn’t name.
Susan was stunned: he diminished daily before her eyes. He was dead mercifully fast. Susan was sixty-one; Aaron sixty-seven. Too soon. The girls took Susan with them to California for three months and she went back and forth between their apartments in Berkeley and Mill Valley, blinded in the harsh light glancing off the Pacific Ocean. Inside the barbed pain lodged in her rib cage, secretly there was a burning votive of sad relief. Healthy Aaron could have lived for years, descending further and further into the no-man’s-land of Alzheimer’s, pulling her life down the well after him. Of the many fearful prospects of living with an erased Aaron, she had a recurring horror of sex if he had no idea who she was. Was sex ever forgotten? She didn’t want to know.
At home again, she immediately donated all his real estate suits, all the dress shirts, jogging and golf clothes to the homeless rescue shelter. She began volunteering there two days a week. She processed the defeated or belligerent men who exited during the day. She made medical appointments, arranged transportation, and checked them in before curfew. Sometimes one of them would be wearing an Aaron suit, still with the jaunty silk square in the breast pocket.
* * *
—
Susan placed the spring flowers in her cart. Should she buy the nicotianas for Julia, too? She smiled as she remembered Aaron leaning across the table at the expensive New York restaurant, saying Sweetheart, why not have the lobster and the cracked crab? She remembered something else he said; she’ll share it tonight for a laugh. She grabbed the nicotianas, then decided to dash to the back for a bottle of very good wine.
* * *
—
When Camille walked into Julia’s house and heard the name Hubert Ganyon, she remembered him well. She’d loved auditing his seminar on Greek and Roman art when she first started teaching. She and Julia discovered they’d been on campus at the same time, Julia as a student, when Camille, newly married and holding her fresh MFA, began teaching art history. Hugh later moved on to Princeton but had kept his house for retirement. “I can still see him in the classroom, standing beside the slide of Hermes by Praxiteles. He was totally silent before such a beautiful thing, just let the class stare, take in that perfect form. Professor Ganyon was, of course, young and gorgeous himself. I had a crush on him.”
“It was a coincidence that we met for coffee just when he was looking for a house sitter and I was looking for a speedy exit from Savannah.”
Susan noticed that Julia never mentioned her husband, she always said she “left Savannah.” He must still be there? “And what coincidences! We three meeting in an unlikely spot. We could have gone on different days and never met.”
* * *
—
Julia opened the long shutters and lighted candles on the sills. Mellow light illuminated the spines of books, the draperies’ faded rose colors, the faces of the three women: Julia, pale and attentive, all silky taupe and loose sable curls; Camille, every feature defined, and blue, blue eyes intense and focused, her long legs curled up on the sofa; Susan, girlish and angular, ready to laugh, sprung with energy. She launched right in. “This is totally spontaneous—just tell me if I’m crazy—we’ve known each other all of two days—but I would love for you two to come with me next weekend to Figure Eight. We—I’ve—got a house smack on the water. The beach is wide and usually quite empty on spring weekends. I’m not a great cook but I really can do breakfast, even ham bisc
uits. We can walk, cook or go out to this great fish place, talk about what we want to happen, not just what we think should happen.”
“Or what someone else thinks should happen.” Camille sighed, thinking of her daughter-in-law’s grim little smile.
“I just remembered a few minutes ago something Aaron said once when a client wanted to be shown property in a retirement community. He teased her out of it by saying, ‘You want to sign on for a luxury cruise down the River Styx?’ ” Everyone laughed.
“I would love to go to your beach house. My son and his wife, maybe mainly his wife, are convinced that I need to ‘simplify,’ as they put it. When Charlie called to see how I liked Cornwallis Meadows, he seemed disappointed that I didn’t fall in love.” A small pressure was building in her mind. Being older, being alone made those around you want to see you walk some walk they imagine appropriate. She didn’t feel obsolete in the least and was not going to abide others’ good, wrong intentions.
“Well, without doubt, the Meadows would simplify life enormously.” Julia uncorked the pinot noir Susan brought. “Remember those croissants? And the decent chardonnay at lunch? Remember Morning Glory?”
“I also remember the dismal Barcalounger in that brown place with the newspapers stacked everywhere,” Camille said. Her position was beginning to solidify.
They all laughed. “Do we want to simplify?” Susan wondered. “That is the question. What if we wanted more complication? Why this pressure to simplify now? I did love the kitchen at Morning Glory. But wasn’t there a funny smell in there?”
“I would absolutely prefer a weekend at the beach to making any decision. I’ll bring a big beef stew. That’s the question, Susan—to simplify; that’s kind of the crux. I’m thinking that’s issue number one for me. I’ve escaped a big chaos in Savannah. A calm day to me seems a good day.” Julia slipped into the kitchen. She was attracted to the steady groove of the Meadows, even though she was the youngest of them and could conceivably start any complex life she wanted.
At Julia’s table, they praised her garlic soup, the lemon chicken, smashed potatoes, and tiny green beans with tarragon and crumbled bacon.
Camille passed the platter of chicken around. “I had the weirdest dream last night. This came from nowhere, like most nutty dreams.” As she described the coffin and the images, she had a flash of insight. Maybe the dream did come from somewhere. Was she even sleeping? “After I nailed together the box, I saw this palette of brilliant colors in front of me, and what I’m remembering now is how happy I was to paint designs all over the box. The sequence must have lasted hours. How long do dreams last—are they all instantaneous? I have no idea. But what a dismal task, building my own coffin. That’s too negative. Why would I dream that? Then I upend the thing for shelves. Such a practical move—blankets and sheets, I think. Why? I’m puzzling this one out.”
“At the tour, didn’t you say you used to paint? Maybe these were symbols that meant something to you from paintings,” Julia said, “but the coffin bit is a little chilling.”
“I studied studio art in college, I even got an MFA at UVA. Then I thought I’d be a painter, but getting married, having a child, all that totally derailed me and I loved teaching my one or two courses a semester. We’d go up to New York. My artist friends were already showing. I’d come home feeling sick. Everything seemed trivial. One gallery exibited hotel notepad doodles, cross-dressed Barbie and Ken dolls; another prestigious gallery showed a room full of tires. Then at home, they were showing kitsch. Some good landscapes but mainly dreck. And life was, oh, full. I was happy with the house, the dinners, the whole thing. For a while, I had a little painting room off the garage. I was out there recently and found two boxes of desiccated art supplies. Finally tossed them! Truth is, I lost sight.”
A silence. Then Julia breathed out a long sigh. “Well. There you have it, my friend. Obviously, obviously, painting is the big message of this. And the coffin, you readied it for burial out of despair, feeling that life’s over, but then you’re painting like crazy and standing that box up for storage—the housewife’s obsession!”
“Well, Miss Freud!” But Camille was intrigued. “What did you dream?”
“I was in a cabin in the woods and a huge bear was trying to rip into the window. Somehow I know the frame would withstand only a hundred-and-twenty-five-pound force.”
“Your exact weight, no doubt,” Susan ventured. “Maybe you’re the bear and also yourself inside.” Julia served a salad of ephemeral greens with avocado and crisp slivers of cucumber and radish. Susan continued, “While you all were struggling with the forces, I was diving into a huge swimming pool and somersaulting way underwater. Just as I was about to burst, I kept breaking through for gulps of air.”
“I like that—freedom and release,” Camille observed.
“Who said that every part of the dream is yourself, like if you dream of a house, you’re all the rooms?”
“That sounds hopelessly egotistical. I, I, I.”
“Wasn’t it Jung?” Julia had made some notes about that.
And the night proceeded. Camille and Susan shared their stories, though Julia did not. The lemon soufflé was devoured and the wine emptied to the last drop.
As Julia cleared the table after they left, she turned up the music. Etta James singing “At Last” filled the kitchen, and through the open door to the back garden, spring tree frogs seemed to pick up the beat, screeching into the night. My love has come along. Not a chance, Julia thought. She sang, too, her voice trembly but full of vibrato.
It would be a pity to quit Margaret, as Colin suggests. (Why does he come up with this idea? Because she made him edgy. Because she stared at him. Because she ridiculed others so he knew she ridiculed us? Because she flew in the face of any accepted idea.) If I did shred her pages, she would be bits of oblivion, she who was vivid. She who was driven. Also, damn it, she who left me the money to have this freedom to write, just as I was on the edge of returning to the U.S. for a teaching job. I would have kept the house, thanks to what’s left of the poetry prizes and my inheritance. I could rent to colleagues and friends, still spending summers here. I don’t like someone sleeping in my bed. A first-world problem, I know, but one’s own creative life is important, too, and to give over two thirds of my life a year would dampen the spirit. I’ve taught before. Rewarding at times but you do walk into class, open the silver faucet in your throat, and the lifeblood pours out around your feet. Magically, the students do not notice.
For now, Margaret stays.
* * *
—
“What kind of name is that, Miss Kit Raines.” Those were the first words Margaret ever spoke to me.
Soon after I bought my gone-to-ruin place in Tuscany in 2003, I was invited to dinner at the apartment of two expatriate Greek women, both translators, stylish in a vintage way and given to quoting poetry, which endeared them to me immediately. We’d met when they introduced themselves in line at the porchetta stand.
The Greek women, Ritsa and Vasiliki, lived in an apartment in a vast palazzo. The dining room walls and ceiling were covered with frescoes from the time of Napoleon’s invasion. A bit funky—the formal table held a line of candles stuck in wine bottles, a taverna moment. Everything was set out on the sideboard and we served ourselves. A hearty vegetable stew and lamb chops. Cold salads with feta, other cheeses, and mounds of fruit. It was a hot night. A pitiful little fan put out a hint of breeze. I was introduced to the other guests: novelists (oh god, Muriel Spark and her partner); William Weaver, the translator; a nonfiction writer whose name I didn’t get; a journalist from Torino; and Riccardo, now my friend and the only one left who knew Margaret. Suddenly, I realized that a colony of writers lived in these hills that I thought I’d discovered.
One guest was Margaret Merrill, a writer I had long admired. She’d moved to San Rocco about twenty years ago after living for years in Sicily a
nd Rome. I knew she was in the vicinity and wondered if I’d ever meet her.
I was awed by the company, interested in the sapphic Greeks, and drawn to Margaret Merrill, who wrote about clandestine, convoluted political situations, the raucous lives of workers, women in black, children, and about the insidious infiltration of the Mafia into everyday life. I’d read only one of her political books, In the Cold Shadow. What those kinds of informative, investigative books cost the writer! They’re published, make a splash or not, and inevitably they drop into an abyss. But her luminous fiction dazzled me. An original for sure, she reminded me of Marguerite Duras, Djuna Barnes, Jean Rhys. That elliptical style. The power of suggestion.
Here she was, taking delicate bites, sipping wine, the woman who chose to live in severest inland Sicily, driving the pen across page after page, recording the toughness, humor, and cunning of the dirt poor. When I read Labranda, the novel that percolated up from the ruined postwar South, I knew it was one of those blessed books that I would reread, teach from (when I had to), and pass around to friends. In it, she wrote about a love affair that never could work (married-man thing), but she intertwined the romance with the stories of three families. Their lives were desolate and hard, their humanity shining and strong. She exposed the almost-norm of incest. Little girls were fair game for fathers and uncles. Margaret wrote unsparingly, brutally of the push-pull of the foredoomed love affair and also the fatidic lives. I flashed on her as a great eagle staring down from an aerie. It struck me with the same power as James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a book it resembles in its penetration of a time and place. Her photographs matched her prose—reserved and stark. Come to think of it, she must have been influenced by Agee. Shall I ask her?
Women in Sunlight Page 5