by Alison Lurie
“So you never married again,” Lily Unger said to Zimmern, in a teasing tone that Alan had never heard her use before.
“No. Tried it once, didn’t like it. Same thing with oatmeal.”
“Oatmeal?” Lily giggled.
“It’s supposed to be good for you, maybe it is, but it’s also tasteless and lumpy.”
Yeah, you could be right, Alan thought, and then was interrupted by Davi Gakar’s wife, on his own left, who wished to talk about the differences between Eastern and Western religion. It was not until she turned to her other neighbor that he was able to speak again to Lily Unger and ask the question that had been on his mind all through the shrimp bisque.
“Who’s the old bald guy talking to Delia?”
“Wally Hersh,” said Lily, well informed as usual. “He’s a big trustee. Also powerful on the Alumni Council.”
“Yeah?” Zimmern said. “He looks like a big hamster.”
“He does, sort of.” Lily giggled.
Alan stared down the table. Wally Hersh was large and beefy, with the muscle-bound physique of a former athlete now running to fat. At the moment, Delia was leaning toward him, laughing. Her red-gold hair was piled on top of her head, and she was wearing a low-cut blouse with a big white lily tucked into the cleavage—apparently one of those that this same Wally Hersh had sent and Jane had thrown at her.
“He was here all last week for the yearly meetings,” Lily said. “I don’t know why he’s still hanging around.”
Wally Hersh, who was not only well over sixty, but red-faced and slightly popeyed, was now leaning toward Delia, smiling and patting her soft white hand with his coarse red paw. How can she allow that? Alan thought.
“He’d better watch his step with Delia,” Zimmern said. “She can be dangerous.”
“Really?” Lily Unger remarked with surprise and some disapproval. “She’s been tremendously popular at the Center. A little overemotional, maybe, but very nice and charming to everyone.”
“She wasn’t nice and charming to me,” Zimmern said. “She cut me dead at the reception just now.” He gave a short laugh.
“Really?”
“I figure she’s still mad about something I wrote once. It was years ago, but apparently she hasn’t forgiven me.”
“Oh? What did you say?” Alan leaned forward.
“It was when she came out with those Southern mountain tales of ghosts and lost children and unfaithful lovers and black crows that sit on the roof and foretell death. Heart’s Ease, yeah, that was the title. I called her the intellectual’s Dolly Parton.”
“You know, there is a resemblance,” said Lily Unger, laughing. “She’s just as pretty, anyhow.”
“You should have seen her twenty years ago,” Zimmern told them. “You can’t believe how beautiful she was then. And some of those early stories really weren’t bad. The trouble was, after a while she began to repeat herself.”
“Her reading was a great success,” Lily Unger said, a little huffily.
“No doubt. Most people can’t tell the difference between the original and a good copy. My theory is, Delia hasn’t really taken in anything that happened after she left the mountains of West Virginia. Her life there was so intense, so violent, so primitive. It was full of everything that’s in the early stories: passionate crazy people and crazy ideas. If she’d stayed, it probably would have destroyed her. So she escaped, she went to college, and then eventually to New York. Never went back. But she paid a price. The world outside the mountains isn’t quite real to her, you can tell that from her later writing. Same thing with Edna O’Brien, same thing with Colette, but worse because Delia’s never found another subject the way they did. No, I’m afraid she’s had it.”
With difficulty, Alan said nothing, fearing that if he spoke he would speak too vehemently, betraying the strength of his feelings. Lily Unger, however, came at once to Delia’s defense. “Well, I must say, I don’t agree. I admired her last book very much.”
“I’m sure you did,” Zimmern agreed politely, but in a manner that somehow cast doubt both on Delia’s writing and on Lily Unger’s artistic taste and discernment. Then he turned away to a pretty woman on his right, the wife of a dean, whose main interest was the preservation of the natural environment.
“So how are you feeling these days?” Lily Unger asked him kindly. But Alan was almost unable to reply. At the moment, he was hardly aware of the pain in his back, he was so preoccupied with a sour, angry sensation that he had not felt in many, many years—a sensation that he identified, after a moment, as not heartburn but corrosive sexual jealousy. “Oh, not too bad,” he lied, smiling with effort and trying without success to wrench his gaze away from the far end of the table, from Delia.
FIFTEEN
“Well, hello there,” Henry said as Jane, nearly twenty minutes late, came up to him at a display of homebaked apple and pumpkin pies on Saturday morning. It was a cold, windy day, the last weekend this year for the Farmers’ Market. But the sun was bright, and several dozen people were buying root vegetables and eggs and homemade pottery and bread from those stalls that remained open. He touched her cheek lightly, causing a sensation that resembled her sister’s description of a hot flash.
It had been a hard week for Jane. Living at her parents’ house was awkward and constraining. Though her mother loved her, she could not help treating Jane like the child and adolescent she had once been: asking her to set the table, sending her to the P&C when she ran out of milk, reminding her to dress warmly. Carrie had always had definite ideas about what Jane should do, and what she should do now was go back to Alan. He was her husband and he needed her. She should forgive him and let bygones be bygones.
“How can I forgive him if he won’t admit he did anything wrong?” Jane had asked rather desperately.
“He knows he’s done wrong,” Carrie had said, not ceasing to knit the blue sweater with a pattern of red and white ducks that she was making for Jane’s sister’s youngest child. “And he knows you know it. I’m sure he feels sorry and ashamed of himself now.”
“Maybe,” Jane said.
“But a man has his pride,” her mother continued, as if Jane had not spoken. “And it’s not as if he’d actually been unfaithful. From what you told me, it was probably just a little hanky-panky. All you need to do is say that you want to put this behind you, and go on with your life together.”
“Maybe,” Jane repeated. But I don’t want to go on with that life, she thought. I want to be with Henry, only Mom doesn’t know it, because I haven’t told her. I’m just as bad as Alan, a liar and an adulteress.
“I’m sure he’ll be relieved and grateful. And of course you’ll let him know that it mustn’t happen again.”
“But it will happen again, probably. Because of that awful woman.”
“You don’t know that, dear.” Her mother looped a strand of red wool over the white. “You’ve had such a good marriage. And everyone admires you so much for the way you’ve taken care of Alan since he got ill.”
“Mh,” Jane had said. She wished she could talk to someone besides her mother. But since she began to love Henry, she had stopped confiding in her friends. The only person she could talk to now was Henry, who was half the problem.
“I’m sorry I was late,” she said to him now as they moved apart from the crowd around the stalls and stood under the bare yellow branches of a big willow.
“That’s okay.”
“I brought you some black walnuts, from the tree we saw on Warren Road. Here.” She handed over a heavy brown-paper bag. “They’re much better than the walnuts you get in the stores. But you need to let them dry out for a few weeks, and then crack them on stone with a hammer.”
“Thank you. . . . So how’s it going?”
“All right. Well, not all right.”
“Really.” A dark shadow seemed to cross Henry’s face. “Why is that? No, wait. Come and sit down. Let’s talk.” He led the way to one of the picnic tables by the windsw
ept lake and set his basket of apples and sourdough bread and honey on it. “Okay. Tell me.”
“It’s all wrong,” Jane said, catching her breath. “It’s all lies. Everyone thinks I’m a good person, but I’m not. Not anymore. I promised in church to take care of Alan forever, and now our house is falling apart and the fridge is full of mold.” A sob escaped her.
“Maybe that serves him right,” Henry said.
“Well, in a way it does, that’s what my mother says, but not forever. She says it was right that I left, because then he would know I was serious, and he would feel guilty and appreciate me properly. But now she thinks it’s time for me to go back, so we can all be together for Thanksgiving. Anyhow, my sister’s coming from New Hampshire, and she’ll need the spare room.”
“It’s important for your family, Thanksgiving,” he suggested.
“Yes, it is. My sister and her husband and kids always come, and my uncle and two aunts from up the lake, and usually there’s cousins too. Isn’t Thanksgiving important for your family?”
“Yeah, but I don’t always make it to Toronto. I didn’t last year, but I’m going up this weekend.”
“And will Delia be there?”
“Nah. She’s going to New York. She doesn’t get on with Canadians.” He took an apple out of his basket, looked at it, and returned it. “So your mother thinks you should go back to Alan,” he said. “And do you want to go back?”
“No,” Jane admitted.
“That’s good.” Henry smiled for the first time. He put his warm hand on her arm, between the wristband of her blue parka and her driving gloves, and Jane did not have the strength to remove it.
“But it doesn’t matter what I want,” she said weakly, pushing back her wind-tangled brown curls. “What I want is wicked and selfish.”
“You really believe that?”
“Yes—no. I don’t know,” Jane wailed, and buried her damp face in her hands. Another sob escaped her. “I’m an awful person, really.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I’m so angry all the time, and violent.”
“Violent?” Henry laughed.
“Yes. I told you how I nearly threw that big glass vase at Delia.”
“But you didn’t, because you didn’t really want to hurt her.” Henry smiled.
“I did too. When she started laughing, as if it was all some big joke, I wanted to hurt her. I only didn’t throw the vase because it was a valuable heirloom. It belonged to Matthew Unger’s mother, and now it belongs to the Center.”
“Oh, Janey. I love you.” Henry pulled her toward him and kissed her, but Jane only partly responded, looking over his shoulder for spectators and spies.
“I don’t see why,” she said miserably when he let go.
“I don’t know. I guess it’s because you have such sea-blue eyes, and you’re so hopelessly honest.”
“Only with you. I’m lying to everyone else all the time, because I’m not telling them the truth. I used to be a good person, but now I’m not, I’m angry and mean all the time, really, inside. Alan’s in so much pain, and I used to feel so horribly sorry for him, but now I don’t care, almost. I don’t love him anymore. I don’t even like him much.”
“That’s wonderful,” Henry said.
“But it’s all wrong. My place is with my husband, my duty is there, that’s what my mother says. And her new minister, Reverend Bobby, says the same.”
“ ‘Reverend Bobby?’ ” Henry laughed.
“I know.” In spite of herself, Jane smiled. “He’s only about twenty-six years old.”
“Well, I don’t agree. I think your place is with me,” Henry said. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he added. “I was afraid you weren’t coming.”
“I almost didn’t,” Jane admitted. “But I wanted to see you too much.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Me too.”
“Even though you never came last Sunday when you said you would. I waited here until it was dark.”
“I couldn’t. I explained that. Delia was insisting we go to this drinks party, and if I hadn’t agreed she would have been suspicious.”
“Yes, you told me.” Jane raised her streaked face and looked out across the shimmering, wind-troubled water of the lake. “It’s not the same for us now, is it?” she said, uttering the thought that had sat on her head like a tight dark hat for the whole week. “I’ve left Alan, and you haven’t left Delia. You haven’t even told her you know what happened.”
“No,” Henry admitted.
“Are you going to?”
“I’ve got to wait a bit, Janey,” he said. “Right now she’s tired of me. I figure she’s on her way out. But if she knew I was in love with somebody else, she could get jealous and possessive.”
Jane frowned. It seemed unlikely to her that anyone could be tired of Henry. He’s a coward, she thought miserably. Or he’s stalling. He might love me a little, and want to sleep with me, but he wants to avoid trouble even more. “You want to avoid trouble,” she said, shivering in the cold wind, which seemed now to come directly from the North Pole.
“Yeah. But it’s only for a little while.”
“Oh? How long?” Jane was feeling colder and colder, even though Henry’s arm was around her shoulders.
“I don’t know.”
Jane said nothing, but she took a step back.
“We’ll be together very soon, I hope. When things are easier.”
Jane looked at Henry, his square shoulders, his thick curly hair, and the strong blunt lines of his face. He’s here, but he’s not really here, she thought. I can’t count on him.
SIXTEEN
It had been another strange week for Alan Mackenzie. By Friday he felt as if he had been on a long alternately exhilarating and exhausting nature hike of the sort he remembered from camp, slogging up steep slopes and down into thick swamps. The highs had been his meetings with Delia, his restored ability to drive, and another sale at the gallery in New York. There had also been the soggy lows of persistent backache, obsessive jealousy, a growing despair about his work, and the sudden awkward reappearance of Jane in his life.
On Friday night he lay awake between three and five a.m., suffering from pain and artistic depression. He could not find a comfortable position—the lizard kept shifting its grip, alternately clawing his lower back and left hip. Also something he had eaten, or the drugs he had taken, was causing severe gaseous indigestion. Since Jane had moved to her parents’ house the suppers she left had been getting less and less attractive, culminating last evening in a nasty congealed-looking macaroni and cheese casserole with lima beans. Either she was punishing him with worse and worse meals, or she was (no doubt unconsciously) trying to poison him.
If Alan’s friends and colleagues knew that his wife had left him and gone home to her mother, dinner invitations would have been forthcoming. But as yet he had not told anyone, because he assumed that, as Delia put it, Jane would soon come around and make this admission unnecessary. Also, he didn’t want to answer the inevitable question, Why has she left you? either with a lie or with the truth.
Worst of all, as he stared into the cold blackness of the cloudy November night, he had finally admitted to himself that he was sick of miniature ruins of famous public buildings. The first dozen or two had been exciting and satisfying; but lately, as he turned the pages of travel books looking for possible subjects, he had begun to feel weariness, even disgust. Maybe, even probably, his career as an artist was over almost before it had begun. Delia Delaney loved him—anyhow, she had often allowed him to love her. But when she knew he was finished as an artist, she would be disappointed and maybe even scornful, as she had been about her husband’s giving up poetry. (“He had a couple of bad reviews, and couldn’t take it.”)
At five a.m. Alan unwound himself from his snarled sheets and blankets and staggered into the bathroom. In the smudged, foggy glow of the night-light, he saw the face of a hysterical aging loser: in chronic pain, deserted by his wife, prob
ably about to be dropped by his mistress, and without inspiration. Someone who might as well be dead.
But on his way back to bed, dizzy with drugs and nausea and despair, he had a revelation. By accident he switched on the wrong light in the hall and saw, blindingly white against the black of an unused bedroom, part of a wall, an open door, and a wooden goose in graceful flight toward the dark. He stopped in his tracks, flash-frozen. The scene was fragmentary, but also eternal That section of wall, that doorway, that chair, that motionless yet moving white bird, could have been—could be, made of plaster or stone or painted metal. It could stand free, as another kind of artificial ruin—perhaps comic, perhaps ironic, perhaps tragic.
And if this vision could be made three-dimensional, so could other fragments of domestic architecture, each with its own complex, interlocking meanings. The monumental, even mythic corner of a kitchen, with dishes in the rack and a window open over the sink, a knife and a half-sliced tomato on the sill. A bathroom with crumpled hanging towels, a dining room with part of a table, dishes, glasses, a napkin thrown down—
Or a section of wall from his childhood bedroom, with a half-open casement window, his narrow maple bed with its ball-topped posts and thrown-back patchwork quilt; his toy Scottish terrier and suspended model airplane, frozen in time like the ruins of Pompeii. All white—or, maybe more interesting, in a spectrum of sepia browns or grayed pastels.
And he needn’t limit himself to domestic architecture, or to this country, Alan saw suddenly. The images could come from anywhere and anywhen. All of history and geography was available to him. Colonial, Victorian, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Modern—Medieval, Renaissance, eighteenth-century—anything, everything. Fragments of schools, stores, libraries, offices, churches—the haunting architectural equivalents of a George Segal sculpture—
Yes. He could do it. And as an architectural historian he could make all these ghostly tableaux authentic, with the right door and window frames, shutters, cornices, chairs, hanging garments, decorative objects.