Interviewing Matisse, or the Woman Who Died Standing Up

by Lily Tuck

  I said, “How much does Bibi weigh, Molly?”

  Molly said, “You have to multiply a kilo by two point two to get what Bibi weighs in pounds, Lily. I hate all those conversions and I can never figure out how many kilometers in a mile and how to change Centigrade into Fahrenheit.”

  I said, “All I know is that it is only about fifty degrees out now—oh, but this also reminds me of the time I was in Italy and I bought an ice cream. I had a what-do-you-call-it gelati the day I visited the fountain you throw your money into, the day Jack Kennedy smiled at me and we made eye contact, and this single scoop of gelati, Molly, cost me thousands of lire. Oh, and when I bought the dress—the blue dress with the gold flecks in it, the dress I might wear to Leslie’s wedding—I completely lost track of the zeros.”

  Molly said, “Now I have it, Lily. Bibi weighs ninety-nine pounds. Bibi weighs less than one hundred pounds.”

  I said, “I remember, I told Sam: I don’t care if your wallet was stolen, I am still going to buy the dress. Well-made clothes last forever.”

  Molly said, “Claude-Marie, too, has clothes from since he was a boy and from before the war, the Second World War—oh, and poor Claude-Marie. When Price called, Claude-Marie was in his pajamas already, he had to get dressed again, and I told Claude-Marie: Look at me, I am not in bed yet, I am still sorting through these papers in my desk—I told you, tomorrow I have to go to the dentist.”

  I said, “You are right, Molly—someone had to go and where, I ask you, would any of us be if no one ever did anything? Where I ask you would we be if no one took a stand—a stand against the greenhouse effect, a stand against the deforestation of the Amazon, and what about pollution? Acid rain? The ozone layer—oh, remember how Inez used to worry about the ozone layer? What did Inez say? Inez said: Me and my fine skin, I’m just kidding—oh, and what else—drugs? Yes, the war on drugs. And what was it I read in the paper the other day? I read about an asteroid orbiting around the sun at forty-six thousand miles an hour that just missed hitting us. The asteroid missed the earth by a half a million miles. Imagine, Molly—in cosmic terms, a half a million miles is next to nothing. The astronomer whom they interviewed said: Yes, yes. Sooner or later. Now this, I said, is something to worry about. And this, Malcolm said, proved his theory—his second moon theory. Sixty-five million years ago, Malcolm said, an asteroid fell into the ocean and caused a huge tidal wave, which destroyed Atlantis and killed off all the dinosaurs. Remember, Molly? Weren’t you there when Malcolm said this? When Malcolm showed us the rubbings? The Inca rubbings Malcolm brought all the way from his house in East Hampton to show Price. You can ask him. Ask Price.”

  Molly said, “Malcolm has all kinds of funny theories. It was Malcolm, remember, who told us about this idea he had for a new kind of museum, Lily. A scent museum, a museum to preserve smells. Smells that you might want to keep, smells that might no longer exist and might also become extinct—the smell of baking bread, for instance, or the smell of old-fashioned roses, or of cigarette smoke, and everyone at the restaurant—the Vietnamese restaurant—when Malcolm told us this, made rude noises. Remember—Yuri farted.”

  I said, “Oh, Yuri—he did? At will? Yuri is something. But I remember Jason—the dog—used to do this in the car. I would have to open all the windows, even in the winter. Winter in Cincinnati—ugh. The roads from our house were sheer ice. I would tell Sam: I, for one, am not going to drive on this stuff. I, for one, am not going to land in the hospital.”

  Molly said,” Oh, God, don’t remind me about Bibi and Jerome on the motorcycle, because the last time I spoke to Bibi I wanted to ask her if she finally had made up her mind about this summer and instead, all Bibi could talk about was a test. A biology test she had failed, Bibi said, and that Jerome, who had not studied for it half as much as Bibi said she had, got a hundred on.”

  I said, “Oh—I nearly flunked biology, Molly. Our teacher, Mrs. Millard, I’ll never forget, was a real martinet. She was also very overweight and one day, Mrs. Millard perched herself on top of one of the stools to dissect something and the stool gave way. Mrs. Millard hit her head against the radiator. How can I forget this? The whole class was excused, and we all rushed off to the movies.”

  Molly said, “But Mrs. Millard? She didn’t die, did she?”

  I said, “Mrs. Millard? No. She died later. She died of something else. They named the school lab after her. The Eleanor Mosby Millard Laboratory, which sounds very grand when all it was was a couple of rusty Bunsen burners—oh, and, Molly, I still remember the movie we went to.”

  Molly said, “The first school I ever went to, Lily, the teacher rang a bell. All the children from first grade through sixth grade studied together. The schoolhouse too, was painted red, and I’ll never forget what we nicknamed the teacher. We probably did not know what vagina meant. Kids then were not as sophisticated as kids are today—kids like Jerome and Bibi, I mean.”

  I said, “We saw East of Eden.”

  Molly said, “Oh, with James Dean.”

  I said, “Julie Harris was in it, too. Remember how the two of them kissed on the Ferris wheel?—but what were we talking about, Molly?”

  Molly said, “Bibi—poor Bibi flunking her biology test.”

  I said, “At least Bibi is getting an education. Nowadays, all you hear on television is how badly educated American kids are—oh, and what was the word you used, Molly? Not palimpsest, the other one? Innumerate. Yes, how innumerate the kids today are. One of the kids I heard said he thought Chernobyl was Cher’s real name and the District of Columbia, he said, was some place in Central America. Makes you think, doesn’t it? I watched this program the night I was supposed to play bridge with Nora and Nora could not make it. Remember, Nora said she had a problem with her sister, Mercedes, and I said: For heaven’s sake, Nora, Mercedes is not a problem. I told Nora we could take turns, we could each sit out a hand, and Nora said the problem was Mercedes had a stomach ache.”

  Molly said, “Yes, if only Mercedes had rented Inez’s room, things, Lily, could have been different.”

  I said, “But Nora was lucky. That night, Mercedes had to have an emergency appendectomy—poor Mercedes. I told Nora: If Mercedes has to stay in the hospital a long time, I’ll—oh, this reminds me, Molly, of what Sam said if something should happen. Sam said we should have our appendices out before we crossed the Sahara, and I told Sam to go ahead and have his out if he wanted to, I was more concerned about running out of gas or getting lost in the desert.”

  Molly said, “I just remembered—Regina Pendleton was my teacher’s name. I wonder what has happened to poor old Regina. Regina would be in her eighties now, and you know something else, Lily, to this day, I feel guilty—oh, and what time did you say it was?”

  I said, “That’s the thing, time goes by so quickly, and what did you say, Molly? What time is it? It’s after four-thirty in the morning, but I was telling you what I told Sam—any operation that requires anesthetic involves a certain risk, this is what my brother William said—William is a surgeon, Molly, an orthopedic surgeon—and a little girl, God forbid she was a patient of William’s, died right there in Richmond while she was having her tonsils out. The little girl, William said, got an infection. The infection must have spread through the radiators and this affected a lot of other people in that hospital. People who were just in there for routine surgery or to have babies.”

  Molly said, “Oh, I was lucky with Bibi. Bibi was easy. Only some people—Inez, for instance—Inez was in labor for thirty-six hours before they had to do a Caesarean on her. And just look at fifty or sixty years ago, look at a hundred years ago, look at Emily Dickinson—then half the women died in childbirth or of pneumonia.”

  I said, “Molly, I had pneumonia. I caught pneumonia from living in that apartment with no hot water—remember the apartment overlooking the Pare Monceau? Every time I turned on the shower, Molly, the water came out freezing cold, and when I complained to the landlord—Monsieur Gruass was his name—Monsieur G
ruass would start on this same long harangue about how during the war he never had a hot bath, how Americans were too soft and too spoilt, how Americans had never endured any of the hardships their allies had, and, Molly, on and on and blah, blah, blah, he said, and Monsieur Gruass would corner me. Monsieur Gruass would corner me on the stairs, he would block the steps so I couldn’t go up or so I couldn’t go down and until I would end up thinking: A freezing cold shower is better any day than having to listen to this old windbag. Poor Monsieur Gruass. He died, Molly. Monsieur Gruass died on the bus. The number ninety-two bus went to the end of the line—who knows where this was—Neuilly? Boulogne Billancourt? No one noticed, and not until the bus driver turned around and said something like: Nous voila or Nous sommes arrivés, and by then Monsieur Gruass had turned blue already.”

  Molly said, “The war, I know. Claude-Marie starts all of his sentences with: During the war when I was a boy—or: When I was a boy during the war—and I say to him: Enough, Claude-Marie. I say to Claude-Marie: I don’t want to hear one more time how during the war, you, Claude-Marie, could not buy a pair of shoes or how you, Claude-Marie, had to eat rabbits and how, one time, your mother did not say the rabbit was a cat and what made you so sick to your stomach.”

  I said, “Everywhere—not just in France, Molly, people had to make do. My mother—bless her heart—who was pregnant with me at the time, said that sugar was rationed and that she had a craving for candy. To the day she died, Molly, whenever she went out or whenever my mother went to a restaurant, my mother would take some sugar cubes home with her. She would put the sugar cubes in her purse. Just in case, she always said. In case of what? I would tease her. In case you get pregnant?”

  Molly said, “Oh—sugar always reminds me of the count, Lily. Of a story he told me—”

  I said, “You mean how sugar expands, Molly? Everyone knows that story and how, at last, someone figured out to make a little slit in the paper wrapper.”

  Molly said, “No, this story is about a cement mixer, Lily, a cement mixer truck if it gets stuck. The French count told me the only way to keep the cement from hardening inside the truck is to pour sugar in—des centaines de kilo de sucre was what the count said to me.”

  I said, “I told you, Molly, I’ve forgotten most of my French. Anyway, who was it who said the best way to learn a new language is to have a lover teach you? Yuri probably.”

  Molly said, “No, not Yuri, Lily—Yuri cannot speak a single language properly—and what did Claude-Marie say the other day about Yuri’s new girlfriend? Claude-Marie said: L’amie de Yuri est très jolie et elle est indochinoise mais franchement, jamais je n’arriverai à prononcer son nom.”

  I said, “Oh, dear, Leonard doesn’t speak French either. Leonard only speaks English. But I wonder, Molly, whether my decision was too quick—my decision about Leonard’s mother, I mean. I told you Leonard’s mother lives in Maryland. Leonard’s mother lives in a town not far from Washington and right off the Beltway, and I told Leonard that Maryland is too hot in the summer. I said I would rather go and visit his mother in September.”

  Molly said, “No, no, you’re right, Lily. Virginia, too, is terrible in June. Not just the heat, the humidity. I’ll always remember, Lily, how during the Miss Marys’ summer solstice recital everyone, including my own mother and father, sat there dripping sweat and listening to those poems by the Rossettis, and I remember, too, how one time someone in the audience passed out and fell out of his chair and Miss Mary kept right on going, Miss Mary never wavered: The blessed damozel leaned out/From the gold bar of Heaven.”

  I said, “Oh, I can still remember my lines from Julius Caesar. I played Marc Antony, Molly. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;/ I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him./ The evil that men do lives after them;/ the good is oft interred with their bones./ So let it be with Caesar—Molly? Are you listening to this?”

  Molly said, “I am, Lily. I am listening to every word. I am just trying to remember what came after: Her eyes were deeper than the depth/Of waters or something-or-other like this. Then She had three lilies in her hand/And the stars in her hair were seven.”

  I said, “Molly, you should have seen me. I wore this white tunic that kept slipping off my shoulders, I carried a sword made out of papier-mâché. If you have tears, prepare to shed them now—remember this? My favorite lines were: There is a tide in the affairs of men/ Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;/ Omitted, all the voyage of their life/ Is bound in shallows and miseries. Also, I will never forget the girl who played Brutus. Her name was Anne—Anne with an E. God forbid anyone should forget the E. I loathed her. Anne was so competitive. Anne was captain of the volleyball team.”

  Molly said, “I am still trying to remember who it was who fainted and fell out of his chair during Miss Mary’s recital.”

  I said, “Oh—Zapruder, Molly! Zapruder is the man’s name who shot the film of Kennedy’s assassination. The whole time we were talking I have been trying to think of it. I went through the entire alphabet beginning with A in my head.”

  Molly said, “Yes, I hate not to remember something and I hate not to find something. I told you how I am still looking for the interview—the interview with Matisse. I promised Havier I would show it to him. Matisse, Havier told me, is his favorite Impressionist.”

  I said, “Van Gogh is my favorite artist. How many millions was the last van Gogh painting sold for, Molly?”

  Molly said, “I told you how if only Claude-Marie had not followed Thomas Hamlin Aldrich’s investment advice and how if only—but let’s not talk about money, Lily. Claude-Marie said: Money is not everything, and I should take a good look at Madame Florisson’s daughter-in-law. Who would have guessed? Now, Claude-Marie said, Madame Florisson’s daughter-in-law has a brand-new lease on life. The last time he saw her, Claude-Marie said, Madame Florisson’s daughter-in-law was all decked out in a brand-new mini-skirt. Everyone in Paris, I told Claude-Marie, is wearing those things now. Soon, I said, if we are not careful, Bibi will be. Or Bibi will be wearing those skin-tight things people go running or bicycling in, like what Ngh, Yuri’s new girlfriend, wears—the girlfriend with the unpronounceable name—which is another reason why I told Claude-Marie I hope Bibi changes her mind and goes to camp this summer.”

  I said, “Molly, send Bibi to the camp in Maine I went to, the same camp I told Inez she should have sent her boys to, the time I told Inez: You never know—this was when I told Inez how my father survived the terrible squall by treading water and hanging on to the hull of the boat, and Inez told me but she didn’t know how to swim anyway.”

  Molly said, “Wasn’t your father wearing a life-vest? Suzanne said when she crossed the Atlantic in the small sailboat—the ketch, the time she gave up cigarettes—she never once took off her life-vest. Suzanne said she kept her life-vest on to do everything—even to go to the bathroom, she said, only Suzanne called it the head. Suzanne said she also kept on her life-vest the one time the wind died down enough for her and Harry to make love.”

  I said, “Isn’t this something? Roberta told me she made love in the lavatory of an airplane once. Frankly, I do not care what Roberta does. I told Roberta: There isn’t even room enough to wash your hands in there, which was also what I told Inez. I told Inez: I don’t care how many times you and Kevin make love. Sex is not the answer to everything.”

  Molly said, “Exactly what I have said to Bibi, Lily.”

  I said, “And I said: Inez, I am not frigid. I told Inez she could ask Leonard. She could ask Jim. She could ask a number of people. I told Inez: The first boy I slept with was when I was seventeen years old. I’ll never forget him. Peter wrote me these long letters—I almost wish I had kept them—letters he wrote me while he was working for this construction company way up north near Juneau, Alaska. Peter wrote how he had to live in a barrack with hundreds of other men—Poles mostly, Czechs. Men, Peter said, who did not speak English, and men who drank a lot and who fought each other with knive
s. If only I had kept them I could read you those letters, Molly. The letters sort of reminded me of how what’s-his-name the writer who wrote about people freezing to death in the snow and who wrote about huskies—oh, of how Jack London wrote. The letters were sort of a mixture between Jack London and Hemingway—oh, my father, Molly, knew Ernest Hemingway, only this is a whole other story—and I wrote Peter and I told Peter: You could be just like a writer, you could be just like Hemingway. I don’t know what became of Peter, but I’ll never forget how, in one of his letters, Peter wrote about this one young man, a Pole, I guess, who drove his huge bulldozer off an embankment. The clutch cable broke and the young Pole could not get the bulldozer geared down, and Peter wrote how he and everyone working on the same site could hear the young Pole screaming all the way down the side of the mountain, and, Molly, believe me, Peter wrote this so vividly that to this day and while I am talking to you right this minute on the phone. I can still hear that young Pole screaming.”

  Molly said, “Oh, horrible—poor man. You should have kept those letters, Lily.”

  I said, “Some people are naturally born story-tellers—my father was. My father could talk your ear off about Cuba and fishing and sailing and about how he met Hemingway. My father could talk until the cows came home was what my mother—bless her heart—used to say about him. But you’re right, Molly, those screams kind of stay with you. And something about a man screaming. It’s so poignant.”

  Molly said, “I told you how the Closerie des Lilas was Hemingway’s favorite restaurant, didn’t I? I told you how I went there with Price.”

  I said, “Men scream louder is why. You should have heard Sam—”

  Molly said, “Didier. Lily, you should have heard how Didier yelled at me for touching his stamp, the Penny Black. No wonder I told Claude-Marie I wouldn’t go to his house for lunch the day the plane crashed.”